A wonderful symbol of our culture

1:36pm Friday 6th June 2008

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I WAS hit by a sense of awe as I left the magnificent new library in High Wycombe at 8.05pm on Monday.

The streets of the town were still buzzing as people walked through Eden, to and from its shops, its bowling alley, restaurants and cinema.

And, better still, I had almost no distance to walk before I reached my car - parked conveniently bang in the middle of the town.

advertisementHigh Wycombe on a Monday night used to be pretty dingy and deserted in my experience.

But not any more. Eden has genuinely transformed this town into a place where people can go out at night and find lots to do without fear of tripping over a shed-load of drunks on the way back to some far-flung car park.

It's now almost been three months since the centre opened and, despite loads of criticisms from some townsfolk, I think it's been a rip-roaring success.

It's not all perfect of course; some of the daytime car park charges have been too expensive for my liking and it's no fun in the rain when you have to negotiate the now famed wind tunnel'. I'm also unsure as to what the point was of moving some shops from the old Octagon part to the new Eden when it is all meant to be one super cohesive centre.

But, by and large, Eden is everything and more we could have hoped for. To have six new restaurants in town is astonishing. I love Indian and Chinese eateries, but when I first came to Wycombe in 1991, that's about all there was.

However, Eden's crowning glory is its library. I spent Monday evening there in the company of various councillors, which was very nice for them.

I didn't get a chance to check out the books themselves, because I was too busy gossiping with the great and the good, but the building was fantastic and is a wonderful bedrock for the future.

I kept asking where the classics were and kept being vaguely told they were on the first floor, so my first mission when I next go there will be to check out their stock of Brontes and Dickens.

It amused me that one of the rooms in the library was actually named after the county council leader David Shakespeare.

When we're all dead and gone, future generations of children will bewilder their teachers by asking why the library has got the Bard's first name wrong.

The main point, though, about the library, is that it is slap bang in the middle of the centre, rather dominating it. This is a wonderful symbol of the town's commitment to culture and literature.

Critics of Eden will no doubt slag me off for gushing too much about its advantages.

However, I have fulfilled my duty as editor by publishing in the Bucks Free Press almost every negative whinge and moan from readers. They are entitled to complain, as much as I am entitled to praise.

In case you are new to this column, I must point out that congratulating council projects is a bit of an alien concept for me.

This was proved when I entered the library on Monday night and was greeted by some dignitaries who told me there was a collection of ancient copies of the Bucks Free Press nearby, dating from the year dot.

I joked that I was probably still the editor at that stage, to which one council wag replied: "No - I think they were probably nicer to us in those days."