PS When I was 16-18 years old I used to study regularly in the 'Great Dome' of this lovely building. There is a system (I am sure, now, universally available in large libraries) where by filling in a form and leaving one's desk number at the central counter, books would be located & delivered directly to the required desk within a few minutes, by assistants, if they were not too busy.
If the Muse were not upon us, we evil mischief makers would discover the most 'daring' or smutty works of reference which we believed the Library would house, and write titles and authors onto a form. We would then scan for a desk some yards away with just one young male working and studying hard, if we could find one. We would write his desk number in the appropriate place on the form, and one of us would unobtrusively wander past the central desk where the assistants were, and leave the form behind, walking all the way around the dome until back in situ, where we started from.
True to type, an assistant usually female) would walk up to the form, pick it up and go on her search to arrive, a couple of minutes later, laden with tomes at the innocent victim's desk. She would place them in front of him and go back to her own desk, and get on with her work.
The student would usually look up, surprised or frowning in incomprehension, and start to open the books. Well hidden behind our own places, we would be silently crying with laughter as the guy started to read, with various facial expressions of incomprehension, utter embarrassment or pure lust, furtively looking around, but seeing only silent, hard working students oblivious of his situation.
The icing on the cake:
Fairly regularly there was a right old battle axe who used to work there, who had very sharp eyes, so we had to be very, very careful. If we could place the offensive missive close to her desk without her seeing us, and get away silently, she would be the one to go searching for the dirty books. If she were the person delivering them, she would bang them down by the side of the student and glare savagely and viciously at the bewildered recipient before storming back to her leopard's cage...
A totally bemused young man would then start opening the books, with a rapidly dawning comprehension. We saw many a look of, "I did not order these, honest, honest!!!" on many a face, but the victim would be far too embarrassed to go and say so, to a harridan apparently approaching 93 (probably nearer 35, but to an adolescent...?...).
And yours truly, in company with 2, 3 or four friends would be eating his forearms to avoid exploding in joyous hysterics...
Who would believe that that august and noble building could possibly provoke so much mirth? I almost needed hospital treatment on more than one occasion. But if The Gorgon was on duty and we so much as tittered she would be over to warn us of instant expulsion if we did not behave...and that ALWAYS worked...
From time to time adolescent students ask me (as a staunch pillar of society) to referee for them in job/college/university applications (mainly 'job' ones, actually). I always do so, and recommend them warmly almost inevitably. I just wonder what some of them would say if they knew that the respected tutor who guides them was once (probably) far worse than they could ever imagine...I wonder...
