The heart of the matter…

CHRIS BENNETT books his place for a little reading.

ONCE a month, along with millions of other South Africans, I attend to a small matter involving the affairs of the heart. My cardiological minder dispatches (well, maybe not personally) my medicinal needs to Port Edward, making life considerably easier for those of us who live in this neck of the woods.

Rather splendidly, the parcel is collected from the Port Edward Library, a fine and, I trust, thriving institution. It is also not a bad piece of architecture – to my eyes, anyway.

The hall, for such it is, in which the medicines are dispensed, is cavernous, and periodically does duty for other community functions such as people lying on the floor and waving their legs in the air. I think it is called aerobatics or something.

The man from the hospital in Port Shepstone, which, as most of us down here know, is just this side of Durban, brings in his potent patents and they are laid out on trestle tables neatly, sequentially and alphabetically.

Reigning supreme over this operation of compassion are the volunteers.

Volunteers are interesting people; selfless, patient and all sorts of other lovely things. Most of the time. The word, as I am sure you know, is derived from the Latin word voluntas, free will.

These three are sensibly aged women of fine aspect and they oversee what for me has become a most pleasant social occasion. I am not much of a one for social occasions, so those that last about four minutes and bring delight into my life, a life not totally devoid of other delights, are most welcome.

The library itself is a good place to visit; but then they usually are.

Over many thousands of years libraries have been one of the main fuses that drive the flower of human intellect (hat-tip to Dylan).

The Royal Library of Alexandria, or Ancient Library of Alexandria, in Alexandria, Egypt, was the largest and most significant library of the ancient world.

It functioned as a major centre of scholarship from its construction in the 3rd century BC until the Roman conquest of Egypt in 30 BC. The library was conceived and opened either during the reign of Ptolemy I Soter (323-283BC) or during the reign of his son Ptolemy II (283–246 BC).

It is said that during his visit to Alexandria in 48 BC Julius Caesar "accidentally" burned the library down when he set fire to his own ships to frustrate an attempt to limit his ability to communicate by sea. It would appear that the name Julius is not too propitious.

The library contained a walk, gardens, a room for shared dining, a reading room, lecture halls and meeting rooms. This model's influence may still be seen today in the layout of university campuses.

The library itself is known to have had an acquisitions department and a cataloguing department. A hall contained shelves for the collections of scrolls, as books were at this time on papyrus scrolls, from which we derive the term paper. It was rumoured that carved into the wall above the shelves, an inscription read, “The place of the cure of the soul”.

I was in the Port Edward library a while ago collecting my remedial lot. I was with a friend and I took him into the main room of the library to see something that had caught my eye some time ago.

It was a computer drawing of the proposed new intersection for access to Port Edward on what will eventually become the N2. It would appear, if I read the diagram correctly, that the off-ramps from the toll road will be built where the present road crosses the R61 to link Banners Rest and Port Edward south. There is a large hotel on the corner.

It is worthy of a look.