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In my book, King’s Cross is flirting heaven
Evening Standard – November 6, 2006
I’ve been spending my days recently at the British Library, researching a historical novel.
People feel sorry for me because it sounds like hard graft. But it’s not. In fact, if I were writing a guide to top places for married people to flirt safely, the BL would get a five-star plug. The joyful looks of people going in show you that something extra pleasurable awaits. Everyone, from students to academics to possible film types in Armani, is breathless with expectation. They’re here to have a great time.
In a library? At King’s Cross?
Inside, everything from bookshop to cafés to reading rooms is designed to please, and there’s a king’s library to stare at, in a giant glass column three floors high, if you want to know what George III liked reading.
But that’s not the reason for the buzz (though it helps). Nor does it come from the comfortingly elaborate rituals – basement lockers, clear plastic bags, and letting suspicious attendants search you to prove you haven’t nicked an antique map.
The happiness is fellow-feeling. You’re there to find out something important to you, to research your book or write your thesis. So is everyone else. You whisper in the reading rooms; you’re as respectful of the private journeys others are making as you would be in church. This is a place where the mind is worshipped. It’s the cathedral of Grub Street.
But when you slip out to the cafés to give your overstimulated mind a rest, something else takes over. The food tables are full of kindred spirits, with brains as titillated as yours. And there’s a slight thrill of the forbidden in taking an interest in others when you’re supposed to be having a solitary cerebral experience. Irresistible. So naturally you’re soon chatting with one stranger about a thesis on a lost Middle Bulgarian verb ending (in trouble because the verb ending is staying obstinately lost, but what the hell) or to another about his success getting Robbie Williams to discuss being gay. It’s as if you’d had the luck to get into an internet chat-room, without the hassle of going online.
I once read a mischievous article suggesting that what went on at the British Library was proper pick-up flirting — single people’s flirting — smouldering looks in Rare Books & Music, hand-holding in Humanities II. Which is nonsense. Spouses have nothing to fear.
Still, there’s a melancholy feel about leaving in the evening: alone again, serenaded only by lugubrious Tannoy voices saying “hand in your books”. It’s all drooping heads and wistfulness at the exit — not quite so sad, maybe, but still, not unlike the end of an affair.
ENDS