Lee Davy walks into the library without realising that it’s no longer a place of serenity and silence, but a rock concert full of people he wants to kill.

An Asian woman talks to her partner. He sits opposite her fingering his mobile phone. The juxtaposition of a Mars bar sitting on of his salad making me want to drown him in a vat of lentils. She is loud. So is the old man behind me talking to someone on his phone. Then there are the screaming kids. They are playing tag. One of them stares at me. Out comes my tongue. He still stares. I try again. He’s still there. I mouth the words FUCK OFF, and he runs away crying.

There was a time when a library was like a frozen world. Nobody moved. Each time anyone as much as coughed an old lady – the type with spectacles hanging from the rim of her crow like nose, held together with a chain – would give you that look, and you would swallow that shit.

I used to come here to read Herge’s Adventures of Tintin and The Adventures of Asterix and Obelisk. These days I don’t come to read. I come to write. And if everyone would shut the fuck up I might get something done.