This third space
On familiar strangers and mysterious chocolate
Last week, I got into a bit of a frenzy. The good kind, I think. One which involves getting lots of words on the page, typing late in the evenings, getting bleary at the screen and, even when occupied with other things, a part of me still dwelling in the story I’ve been trying to tell. The frenzy was fuelled by a deadline I had decided I was going to meet, and made a little more frantic by our next issue of the magazine heading to print.
I wrote almost 7000 words in just over a week. A good stint like that was long, long overdue. But that’s not the point of this story (and those words, no doubt, will be gradually and entirely replaced, through future redrafts, like the proverbial timber of a ship over time).
Toward the end of this frenzy, having spent one too many days behind my desk, staring out in concentration through the rain spattered windows of my office-come-spare-room, I decided to break the pattern with a day in the reading room at my local library. This is a disruption I try to make every week or so, crossing over the river and walking between the monastic ruins of Museum Gardens, then slipping through an old archway in the oldest corner of York’s city walls, to reach the charming red brick of York Central Library.
You can’t eat or drink in the reading room – a rule visitors are readily reminded of by signs and eagle-eyed librarians. But this, at least, makes for regular enforced departures from my screen – to get up from my chair and sip my coffee on the landing area just outside.
I had typed, at long last, the final sentence in a chaotic first draft of the essay I was working on. Feeling spent but accomplished, I took my insulated travel mug to the landing, with an orange, and stood at the window on the wide stone stairs. Still blinking to recalibrate my long-distance vision, I looked out over the square and street below. A perfect spot to people watch.
A few minutes go by, and then a man walks past who I’ve seen many times before: he’s a familiar sight round here. He’s not a large man; stout and grey, with a stiff-bristled moustache and, in almost all weathers, a grey coat zipped right up to the top. And on his head, always, a bright yellow fireman’s helmet. Old style – a proper vintage one, tall and closh-brimmed, with a thick black strap going underneath the chin. I’ve never not seen him wearing it – and it’s exactly the reason he is so easy to spot around town.
Hardly slowing his gait, the man drops what looks like a leaflet on a bench as he passes, then drops too more on another. It’s a new development; I’ve never seen this quiet firefighter do anything other than walk or linger around the city centre. Never accompanied, no interactions.
But the purple slips look heavy when they drop. More like slabs. I realise that they are bars of Cadbury Dairy Milk. He walks – as usual – with an attitude as if no one else is around, or at least, as if no one sees him. He pauses briefly at the railings to the park, leaning on them for a moment before carrying on, his helmet, the colour of a bright, ripe quince, disappearing around the bend.
It’s another dreary day and, like the helmet, the bars of Dairy Milk shout cheerfully from among all the endless grey. I stay and watch, fascinated, as passers-by notice the chocolate on the benches. Some prod to see if it’s an empty packet. Some pick them up, smiling, puzzled, and put them down again. Some find their attention snagged by the flash of purple but don’t slow down enough to find out why. Most just pass right by.
I want to go downstairs and outside and tell them they’re a gift from someone they don’t know. The kindness of a stranger, no strings, nothing more. But I don’t know why he left them, or what the feeling behind the action was. It was executed as if it were the most ordinary thing in the world. Perhaps he does it all the time.
I know nothing about this man, I realise. No inkling of his mind, or interior world. I have thought of him, I realise, more like a character. Harmless, unexplainable, accepted.
Someone has put a sign up in the library, freshly printed on a sheet of A4 paper, telling me that almost 900 people came through its doors yesterday. Some of those numbers will have been the same person, coming and going throughout the day. I do it sometimes; popping out for lunch, getting some fresh air in the garden tucked between the library and the ancient wall. And almost always crossing paths with people I recognise on sight; see regularly about town, and here.
There’s a thin, stubbled man, silent and never still, who seems to hold a perpetual look of worry in his downcast eyes. Another, more baby-faced, who arrives at opening every morning to log into his usual computer and spend the two allotted hours searching up definitions of words; slung low in his swivel chair, giggling now and then, chin almost at the desk. An older woman, usually in colourful knitwear and usually taking the computer opposite, will spend her two hours watching new episodes of period dramas. Another man comes later, never stays for long. Walks with a high bounce and always carries a single carrier bag.
I notice these people, these characters, and I can’t help but wonder who they are, what lives they lead. What kind of homes they go to. A broad-shouldered man, younger than most regulars – perhaps in his early forties – is often on the library landing, tearing through packets of custard creams and borrowed hardbacks, the well-worn cube of an Uber Eats bag at his feet. He leaves every once in a while; I assume to fulfil an order. He’s in good shape, this guy. Dark hair, tanned skin, used muscles. But he never lifts his face or smiles. He seems to have a city wall around him… a quiet self-defence.
I sometimes wonder if he has a home to go to. On certain days lately, when the weather has been repeatedly bad, he’s spent almost the whole day on that hard bench on the library landing, under its draughty ceiling dome. His Uber Eats bag looks heavy, well used – not just carrying other people’s food.
The library is one of the only third spaces left to us now: a building, free for all to use, with no monetary gain or expectations. No exchange, no strings, just a roof that belongs to everyone. People meet here, work here, shelter here. Children sing and babies cry here; teenagers bring revision, young parents bring hopes to occupy an hour. Some people come to just exist here: to dwell among other humans, be one of many lives, and take anonymous comfort – even if they don’t lift their faces or connect with any other eyes.
I wonder if I’m a character in anyone else’s observations. Probably not. But these rhythms which pass through the orbit of other people’s lives… they do allow you to feel part of a place; surrounded by familiar strangers. I hope they – the men and women (but mostly men) who I only ever witness from across the moat of their private world – feel part of it too.
I hope you have a swift and uncomplicated February. It can, so often, be the longest month. But the snowdrops are here, the daffodils are on their way, and if you listen, each morning, there is a little more birdsong to be heard.
Though we’re only a few weeks into this new year, I’ve felt as though I’m firing on all cylinders already - but mostly, truly, in a very good way. Despite the dark mornings and grey skies, I seem to be getting energy from somewhere.
I’m away from my desk next week, taking some pre-planned time out from the rush, bracing myself for all the many dates and deadlines going into my 2026 diary, right through spring and into summer. Though I’m making a small exception - an interlude to my holiday - on account of an event that I’ve been asked to chair at a certain parsonage in Haworth that is very dear to me. Teenage Kathryn would have been furious if I’d said no. But more on that next time.
Till then,
Kathryn x