Scissors, Paper.... Oh never mind.

[Warspite]

Yes, the fear of showing ID necessitates that one visit 3 other libraries with the same request.

I would guess that she was trying to prove a point by then. I'd go to another library, too, trying to find out if it's a policy across the board, or simply that first librarian's paranoia. After the second, though, I'd have just asked and then gone and gotten my own damn scissors.

I think she's one of those annoying people with too much time on their hands and a need for a fight. In ten years, she will be driving her husband to suicide with her neurotic nagging.

[garbon]

I would guess that she was trying to prove a point by then. I'd go to another library, too, trying to find out if it's a policy across the board, or simply that first librarian's paranoia. After the second, though, I'd have just asked and then gone and gotten my own damn scissors.

The all important point that libraries won't let you borrow scissors?

[Tonitrus]

Ms Watts, from Islington, north London, said: "I asked why I couldn't borrow a pair of scissors and she said, 'they are sharp, you might stab me'.

"I then asked to borrow a guillotine to cut up my leaflets but she refused again - because she said I could hit her over the head with it!"

Unlike, say, a book?

[merithyn]

The all important point that libraries won't let you borrow scissors?

Nah,the point that she was just a paranoid bitch. And it would also depend on how much time I had to burn that day. Maybe she was bored.

[garbon]

Nah,the point that she was just a paranoid bitch. And it would also depend on how much time I had to burn that day. Maybe she was bored.

Dress making isn't all that it is cracked up to be...

[Agelastus]

Yes, the fear of showing ID necessitates that one visit 3 other libraries with the same request.

Two points to make here -

(1) Lots of people do not have the "PASS" card, as I believe it is called. I never carried one, and they did exist in the early nineties when I could have needed one.

(2) The point of my comment about spoons being removed from the shelves of stores as a "dangerous weapon" is that it is virtually impossible to find scissors without going to either -

(a) An out-of-town large store that thinks the crazies do not patronise it.
(b) A kitchenware/hardware store like Wilkinsons.
(c) A specialist sewing or other type of shop.

Admittedly, I could find scissors in central London. However, the place I'd go to is two tube stops along the Central Line from Holborn. That's how bad it can be.

But I must admit I am coming round to the Languish consensus opinion that after she got refused at the first library she probably did go to others purely to "get a story".