Sad farewell to the mobile library, as Joni Mitchell says

“Don’t it always seem to go
You don’t know what you got
‘Til it’s gone”

Ah Joni, I couldn’t have put it better myself.

Today Carmarthenshire’s Mobile Library paid its final visit to our farm. It’s been driving into our yard once a month for years.

“The service’s been cut”, the driver told us. He was embarrassed. I guess he’s had to repeat that news over and over today. What will he do now, I wonder?

In the big scheme of things, it’s not what you’d call a frontline service. Yet I felt a pang when Steve told me. He made full use of the service, feeding his passion for naval history. He’ll miss it. I won’t miss turning the kids’ rooms upside down trying to find the books I borrowed for them. It’s not the end though.

There will still be a mobile library service but now it will stop by the village hall, rather than visiting outlying farms like ours.

“I won’t remember to go down to the village on the right day,” Steve complained. Nor me.

We were always a little amazed that the library van would travel up the single track, no through road that leads to our farm and 3 others. For older residents, who get out rarely, it will be one less friendly face interrupting long days.

Those friendly local faces, the postman, the veg lady and the coal merchant are a source of contact with the outside world. My husband can get the weather forecast from myriad sources; the radio, the TV, the internet, but he always asks the postman, knowing he’ll get a reliable report.

Those local people who know members of the community have always done more than deliver things. They bring human contact, a friendly word and often can be the first person to find out if something’s wrong.

Communities rely on human contact to thrive. If you remove human contact, people and communities start to falter.

So farewell to the mobile library service, we’ll miss it.

Let’s make sure we value, use and fight for other services (like the Post Office) that we also might not miss ’til their gone.