Johnathan Zemlik

Freshers’ Week may be long gone, but the prospect of getting back to work seemed quite appealing at the beginning of this week. After the long months of doing sod all back home I was ready to tackle anything Cambridge could throw at me. Or so I thought, until I faced the UL.

It started out as any ordinary day does, a morning lecture, some lunch and then scanning the library for books. Unfortunately the book I was after wasn’t in The Seeley and the stone faced librarian told me I would have to go head-to-head with the UL to retrieve my prize.

Once described by Chamberlain as “this magnificent erection”, the UL’s imposing architecture was supposedly the basis for C.S. Lewis’ Dark Tower.

As much as I’d like to sideline Lewis’ description as Oxford snobbery, I can’t. The fact is the building is just ugly. Its architectural style is something akin to the Third Reich, and sticks out like a sore thumb in Cambridge. It looks more like a crematorium than a library; a place for burning books rather than reading them.

Inside, the building is a catacomb of corridors, giving the entire place a kind of Hammer Horror Mental Asylum feel: dust is everywhere and the lights are on timers that dramatically plunge you into darkness once they run out.

This maze of manuscripts would definitely be the perfect place for a real life game of Cluedo. With 2.5 million books and a smell so stale your grandma would smell like roses in comparison, it would be pretty easy to hide a body among the volumes.

Come to think of it, I can think of several of lecturers who would look the part in a game of Cambridge Cluedo: my interesting but mad HAP lecturer would would be perfect as the absent-minded genius Professor Plum.

And there are plenty of candidates for the old school Colonel Mustard – vaguely pervy fellows wondering college late at night, the kind that come to the library looking for the Victorian pornography.

Then there’s the mysterious Reverend Green, everyone’s favourite college Chaplin! Despite seeming pretty cool, there’s always something not quite right about him.

And how can I forget Miss Scarlet, that fitty you see around the faculty. You glance at her as she passes by, but she stares you down with those deep sensual eyes which you know will render you defenceless in a glance.

Finally we have Mrs White, the UL librarian, not old as much as mature. She knows everything and everyone, a most manipulative of characters.

But after spending far too long day dreaming about Cambridge Cluedo, I realised I still hadn’t found by book. I eventually  found my book and decided to get out and clear my lungs of the dust of perhaps 100 years’ worth of publishing: easier said than done. I spent an hour wondering the labyrinthine building before I stumbled outside, glad to have survived my first UL experience.

Click here to hear Johnathan Zemlik’s interview on CamFM