As he wheeled his wheelbarrow through bits broad and narrow

THERE’S a lot of people walking about with wheelbarrows. I wonder, could you just push a wheelbarrow all day and no one would stop to ask what you were doing?

Nice class divide as the workies are wearing caps and the management are in hats.

No hard hats in those days either as this is May1939, when the extension to the Mitchell Library at Glasgow’s Charing Cross is being built. That pesky Second World War got in the way as work was later suspended, and the actual extension was not officially opened until 1953. Now that’s what I call a leisurely pace of building.

But to be fair, the work did not resume after the war until 1949.

The Earl of Rosebery performed the official opening ceremony and presented the library with copies of two books his father had written. Awfully nice of him. And The Herald reported that the new shelving system installed was so light that “a woman could move it with one hand”. The newspaper did not clarify how many hands a man would need.

Lord Rosebery decided to be a little bit controversial, saying he feared the growth of television could lead to a reduction in book reading. As he said: “It is a great pity that from the moment you go into some houses the television is switched on and you find that books are hardly read in those homes.”

Thank goodness he did not know about a future of cat videos and selfies on mobile phones.

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