My next library was the newer branch library, a shorter walk away and without the steep steps but with fewer books.

By this time I had already had adult tickets for years, as the friendly library staff had accepted that it was not fair on my parents that I kept using all their tickets for my books. This was fortunate, as I doubt my parents would have approved my taking out The Well of Loneliness. (How that novel had slipped on to the shelves of a library in chapel country in the Seventies still astonishes me. It was an eye-opener.)