If you want to understand the difference between the town and the country, join your local library. God knows, we did. Before, we were trapped in an inner-city hell. When we crept out of our lead-lined, barbed-wire-ringed bijou North London bunker (two-up, two- down, not on the Tube but not many drive-by stabbings, a snip at £1.4 million) to borrow a Booker book or two, we knew that at the end of the journey we would find a group of earnest BLibs deeply impressed that we had dodged the snipers in the cause of free reading.

“You came!” they would cry. “And you brought back the last bunch of books you took out! Rejoice! Rejoice! Go, under-assistant librarian here on work experience, and slay the fatted calf! Today we give thanks for the prodigal borrower who is, and has, returned to us! And who cares that they’ve had the books out since 1986?” It made you proud. We had taken books out, we were taking books back.

Eventually. Yes, they had sent out frequent reminders of their non-return (“Hey, look, guys, you’ve had this book out for, like, ages. Give it back and we’ll, like, say no more. Peace. See you at Pride, OK?”) but we knew they didn’t really mean the threats they made (“Look, we could really fine you quite seriously. Like we’re talking half a Giro here, OK?”). And we laughed in their faces. Ha ha, we went.

Then we moved to Suffolk, and joined the local library. And we encountered the dark side of the library experience.

Granted, they play fair. We take the books out, they give us three weeks to read them, we take them back. They also give us a website so that we may, in our own time and on our own computers, renew our possession. It’s the most level playing field you could encounter. But it’s a game with rules, and you have to stick to them, in a way city borrowers just don’t. Here, if you go a day — no, a nanosecond — over the three weeks they fine you. One nanosecond, 10p. They even fine the kiddies.

There’s no doubt the money goes to a good cause — the library itself. In London the place was frequented mainly by people looking for somewhere warm to sleep; in Suffolk it is very much part of the cultural life of the area. They are always holding poetry reading evenings, and an annual short-story writing competition that I have entered for four years now and not once won, although I did finish third first time out and was rewarded with a £5 book token.

But that was beginner’s luck. Ever since, nada. After every failure I go along to the library to see what did win, and it’s very depressing. Each time the palm (and the £25 book token) has gone to a piece with a plot straight out of Woman’s Realm, circa 1956. Characterisation? Forget it. Dialogue? Don’t make me laugh. Humour? See “Dialogue”. And to cap it all they aren’t even typed, but written in Biro on lined paper previously used to wrap liver.

I’ve worked out, though, why it is that their moon-June-spoon scribblings win. It’s because the librarians are afraid of the people who wrote the Biro stuff and they aren’t afraid of me. Which in turn is understandable since, despite being about 4ft 6in, sparse of hair, generous of jowl and at least 80, they are extremely fierce. They never pay fines because they never go overdue, because they go back every day and take out the same book over and over, because they’ve forgotten they have read it.

About a year ago, for another example, someone in a position of authority observed that the stocking of the fiction section didn’t make sense. Take C. S. Forester, author of the Hornblower books. Depending on whim, his books could be found under War books, Sea books, Action books or F. Why not, the expert decided, put them all under F? And so they did. They closed the library for three weeks and arranged all the fiction alphabetically. And everyone who wanted to get in, find a book to read and get out was very pleased. And all the daily borrowers were livid. Arrange things so people could find things easily? It wasn’t British, or at any rate East Anglian.

And so there was a poll, and the reformers lost and everything was put back the way it was. And now I can’t find books easily again. It wasn’t like that in London. Well, it was, but I couldn’t find them then because some bastard hadn’t brought them back.