You can’t eat food in the library. Just you try. Crunch of a cracker and one of the library’s security personnel will appear so quickly you will begin to believe that apparations, Harry-Potter syle, must indeed exist. Said black-suited, black-booted gentleman will then proceed to expound upon the demerits of eating in a space as sacred as the BPLES. That death-defying, capture-evading fugitive rodent on the lower ground floor is the result of that cracker in your hand (the fact that your study camp is based in the laptop area of the first floor is irrelevant, of course it is). And the dubious smell in the course collection area? That has something to do with you too and so, out you go.
The man – stony-faced upholder of our (ostensibly) foodless library’s sanctity – is doing you a favour. Sometimes it’s good to take a break, to snap shut those massive dusty dictionaries and, as Zadie Smith would say, stand upon a pile of them to reach the high shelf where the whisky is kept.
Admittedly, curling up on one of the red sofas in the Fourth Floor Café and dipping a chocolate-chunk cookie into a mocha is hardly the embodiment of Emersonian experience, but I suppose it is a step away from the Miltonic: the dark room, the book, the hushed whispers, the smell of a lamp.
And the Fourth Floor Café is a lovely, lovely place to be. Tinkle of glass, clink of cutlery, the discreet murmur of voices. At the far end of the room, a map of sprawling London; towards the front, framed portraits of the London School of Economics Class of 1923: prim, proper, high-necked youths peering down with knowing eyes as you surreptitiously slip an extra spoonful of sugar into your latte. And the conversation in the café, if you deign to listen carefully, is loaded with enough life to mollify even the most ardent of Emerson’s disciples.
The professorial-looking gentleman on the table next to you believes that putting biomedical enhancements in a historical context demolishes the ethical aspect to the debate. His colleague disagrees but – unfortunate man! – his mouth is filled with the café’s special Snickers-filled almond tart; all he can do is shake his head helplessly. The EC102 study group at the far end despairs over Alwyn Young’s fourth and final problem set; the two girls just next to them resolve to eat the Caesar salad but melt at the sight of the blueberry cheesecake on display. And the two guys on your other side – well, they’re just interested in each other.
And on it goes, on and on, the voices climbing higher and higher, a microcosm of life at the LSE. Outside London changes weather with characteristic English nonchalance,
splattering sunlight onto the red sofas from time to occasional time – and sometimes, if the blue-rimmed window is accidentally left open, slipping in fat droplets of rain.
Related posts:
- Make time for Timeless
- Part-time party
- The great Houghton Street thaw out begins
- More time for seminal studies
- LSE social spaces refurbishment