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The Upper Kawhatau Valley Public Library - Source: ONE News
To get there, you make a left off State Highway One, just after Utiku. Follow the road as it winds down to the Rangitikei then Kawhatau Rivers. Watch the grass in the paddocks shimmer like the pelt of some noble animal. Please do not entertain any reflexive jingoistic nonsense about how national virtues are magically derived from the country's natural beauty. After all, we didn't make it thus, and most of us are doing our level best to stuff it up.
On no account should you stop on a blind corner if you see large rocks on the asphalt, and - thinking of other drivers and axles - get out to hiff them into the ditch. My Dad did this and nearly found himself wearing the grille of his son-in-law Simon's Falcon.
Fifteen minutes after you've made the turnoff, just on your left, beside St Stephen's Anglican Church, you'll find one of New Zealand's smallest and - to my mind - most atmospheric structures: The Upper Kawhatau Valley Public Library.
The building itself looks like a shed, or a garage containing a very small car. Stater-moss climbs the walls, faintly green. The sole window is lace-curtained and heavily cob-webbed.
Unlock the door, and step inside. Admire the new floor. Inhale. There it is, contained in a fragrance of slightly damp paper: The aroma of Empire, and spent pleasure.
The library has about 1000 volumes, most of which are distributed around the walls. You'll see novels by writers whom are lost in, rather than admired by, Time. Pull them from the shelves. Though it's warm outside, the books are cold, as they've been in a fridge. Do you know S. E. White? I didn't. The library has the "colonial edition" of his The Silent Places, published by Hodder and Stoughton, London, in 1904. Sample dilemma:
'Dick had taken his rifle.
"You know," Sam reminded him significantly, "We don't need that Injun."
"I know," Dick had replied, grimly.'
There's also a copy of Carlyle's Sartor Resartus (London, Adam and Charles Black, 1897), inscribed flourishingly but illegibly by its owner on October 28th, 1899.
Dickens dominates (I counted 11 volumes in one study); P.G. Wodehouse is popular.
Some fun then, some improvement, some diversion from the tedious grind of coaxing money out of dirt.
Sitting in the semi-gloom, with the small curled corpses of bees at my feet, I thought of entertainment, and how it has changed since the books were new. In another century another explorer may discover a room filled with iPads, iPhones and flat-screen TVs, and marvel with self-congratulation at the barbarity and ignorance contained within.
The first time I visited with my sister Debbie, her husband Simon, and my parents. Dad, a hopeless bibliophile, clucked and sighed at the names. We made jokes about the titles. The Gay Triangle proved especially amusing. Later I returned alone, and felt - if not the sadness - then some of the futility of being a creature mired in moments.
Getting back to Debbie's place after the second visit, my mother sniffed me and said, "You smell like old books." Via a shower, I returned to the 21st century.
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