I love the library. Actually, scratch that, I hate the library. At any rate, I hate it in this moment. This moment in which I have been stamping up and down the blue polyester stairs and grey aluminium aisles for over three hours in search of enlightenment and, more literally, books, and have found not a single page.

 

Certainly, I have waded through a seemingly endless torrent of murder-they-wrotes and star biographies. I've tried my best to ignore the horrific prolificacy of Jeremy Clarkson and the fact that Richard Littlejohn has a book within swiping distance of Forster. What I have not achieved is one solitary word of what I'm looking for. Any author or title or keyword or general generality I fire through the buildings resident PC bounces back with a blank thud and an empty call of nothing.

 

Or worse, in desperation I plough the ground for the obvious and simple, names that simply could not be vacant, and I am given that cruel jester hope. Naturally, scoffs the search engine, we have oodles of that and buckets of this, we are a library you know. Gleefully, I set off with Dewey's decimalised code in hand and present myself to the appropriate shelf. Running a finger along the spines I come to the alphabetic home of my quarry and, fits and screams of frustration, it’s gone wandering.

 

However, and I recognise that after such a paragraph a little however may not cover it, but bear with me: I love the library. At any rate I love it in this moment, the one in which I write. For one, it is far, far away and unable to disappoint me. For another I am home and comforted by tea and the warmth of laptop on lap. Most importantly though, it is because of the paperback gem that it delivered into my ungrateful hand.

 

The second finest thing about a library (socialised literature being the unavoidable first) is that it surprises. While storming about unsuccessfully, a pile of books, inadvertently built, appears beside you. Its contents range far and wide and, arriving home having somehow taken them out, you are baffled as to how they could have been brought together. The full Winnie the Pooh, Supple and Reade's theatrical interpretation of Ted Hughes’ poetic interpretation of the mythical stories of Ovid, a dummies’ guide to podcasting; just three of the tasty morsels that await me now. The fourth is magnificent, on its own terms, and because I was quite unaware of its existence.

I may not be addressing the majority if I raise the topic of Ivor Cutler. One of the most loved and unlovely, barbarous and cuddly, intelligent and anti-intellectual things that can happen to a man. Part poet, part musician, part actor, part artist, part Jewish, part Scottish and a large part apart: it is, evidently, hard to sum up the man in clear cut black and white words. He is one of those most rare and necessary cultures in today's Google webbed world, a true cult.

 

YouTube will shine a little light by way of BBC 4’s excellent mini-doc and videos spawned from his occasional involvement with the early Beeb and the Beatles on their Magical Mystery Tour. Let this only be a whetter for your tin whistle. Dig down into Ivor as far as you can, you will be rewarded. He's a man of deep wisdom and deeper silliness.

The book I'm holding now is Life in a Scotch Sitting Room, an illustrated example of classic Cutlery goodness. One of the few examples of the great man's works to journey through a printer, it catalogues 16 (sort of) episodes in the life of a (sort of) Scottish family, Ivor both its youngest member and chief storyteller. The writing is grand and humble with the exquisite eye for minutiae and the freaks and foibles of human nature that characterises Cutler's work. All this in spite, or perhaps because, of its brevity: no story goes further than two neat pages. Little in his performed pieces passes the two minute mark and many cut short at half. Ivor was creating flash fiction before it had a hash tag.

 

The world of the Scotch Sitting Room is palpable and unaccountably recognisable, regardless of the absurd and extreme fantasy that fills it. It is the kind of book you read to everyone who will listen, reciting each chapter the instant you finish it yourself. I recommend it wholeheartedly and implore you to search it out. Just don't go looking in the library.