The bowels of the building

A 'rattler' came just after I'd got dressed this morning. I was still upstairs and I knew it was coming. The fur child suddenly looked freaked out, with big eyes, ears pricked and looking in the direction most aftershocks come from. Sure enough a second or so later the house was rocking and rolling. I did ok. It was over quickly and I'm glad it wasn't dark.

When I got to work I wasn't sure about parking my bike in the basement of the Central Library. Yep, all those 11 storys of Stalinist concrete above me.

The building is structurally safe but it's closed to students while the nearly 1 million books mixed with glass etc, are carefully retrieved. New shelving that doesn't tip over like dominoes needs to be sorted too, oh, and there is the small matter of replacing broken windows and fixing other non-structural things.

I'm a little unnerved as I swipe my card and enter. I'm only there to park my bike in this old cloakroom. No one uses it but I'm sure it was a good idea all those years ago when the building was designed. In the morning it's not so bad as I usually see a cleaner or two. But later on it's like a morgue and feels a little spooky.

To get there I have to go through 3 sets of heavy spring-loaded fire doors, and finally the spring-loaded door to the cloakroom. I'm as quick as I can! I've noted the cracked plaster just inside the door, from floor to ceiling. I don't think about aftershocks while I'm down there.

For all of that I wanted to take a photo of it. Note the doors to the old lockers swung open during the quake. I don't linger long enough to make it look tidy!