The Mediatheque is one of the jewels in the crown of La Bourboule. It used to be a covered market, but a few years ago the town decided a library was more important, turfed out the market traders, purchased a dozen bookshelves, acquired the volumes needed to fill them, and installed several librarians to minister to the reading public.
Since the Mediatheque is of such recent origin, and the librarians are not prepared to accommodate easy to acquire low quality reading matter in their beautiful building, the first impression I had when entering was, So where are all the books? Had the town so exhausted their financial resources by refurbishing the building that they had no money left to buy any books?
I quickly realised that my initial impression was wrong. There are quite a number of books in the Mediatheque, and jolly good ones, too. It is just that I was so used to libraries which are short of space and crammed full of books top to bottom that the minimalist approach adopted by the Mediatheque took me by surprise. The building is open plan and flooded by sunlight. An upper gallery houses the CD and DVD collection, as well as a number of PCs for cruising the Internet, but the main collection is downstairs.
Half of the downstairs area is dedicated to books for grown-ups. There is a good history section, including many books on local events, many biographies, lots of novels, plus natural history and geography books. I spend little time here, because my level of French makes the children’s section infinitely more enticing. The children’s section contains anything from books for tiny toddlers to those for teenagers. There is inter alia a large collection of Bande Dessines, ie comic books such as Tintin and Asterix which I utilise extensively.
There is even a shelf of English books, courtesy of yours truly. When I first discovered the Mediatheque I enquired about foreign language books, only to be informed that unfortunately the budget did not run to such luxuries yet. Considering that most La Bourboulians only speak French that makes sense, of course, but I felt that they ought to invest in the future. La Bourboule is poor, it depends on tourists, and if it wants to attract more foreign ones then the people must learn English! The librarians agreed with my reasoning – at least I think they did, with their lack of English and my lack of French communication was uncertain – but repeated that there was no budget for foreign books.
Undaunted I offered them my English Tintins as seed-books for their English collection. ‘I am learning French,’ I told them, ‘and don’t need the English ones any more.’ ‘But what about the postage,’ they replied, ‘books are expensive to ship and we don’t have a budget for this.’ I airily waved this aside, feeling like Croesus, and declared that I would cover the postage myself. Having thus exhausted every argument to stop me from dumping my old books on them they expressed their gratitude, hoping no doubt that I would forget all about it.
But of course I didn’t, and in due course received a thank you for the Tintin books. By now I had developed a proprietorial interest in the Mediatheque and decided to become a major benefactor. Every month I sent a package containing several books to La Bourboule, hoping that the local children, who where learning English in school, would polish it to a gleaming sheen with the help of my books. To ensure an avid readership I sent what I hoped were the most enticing volumes, beautifully illustrated old classics and new favourites like Harry Potter. The next generation of La Bourboulians would speak perfect English, which would attract loads of foreign tourists, and La Bourboule would boom and prosper once more!
There was one problem with this scenario, but it only occurred to me after I was already too strongly committed to my scheme to abandon it. Currently La Bourboule is perfect for learning French, because few people speak English and everyone is trying hard to teach me their language, no doubt in the hope of being able to have a conversation with this interesting foreigner – well, that’s what I like to think, anyway. Once they all speak English, how will my French ever improve?
In closing I would like to thank the employees of the Mediatheque for their patience and forbearance with my monthly intrusions into their shelf-space. Had I tried this with any other library I would no doubt have been sent away with a flea in my ear – librarians don’t take kindly to being flooded with reading matter which is not of their own choosing. But like all La Bourbouleans, who humour me extensively and excessively, they were simply too polite and kind hearted to tell me off. Also they didn’t know how. Because they didn’t speak English. And I didn’t speak French.
