On Friday, seven families squeezed in the children’s corner for the Library Lady. Irene appeared stricken when one after another they jostled and hopped and skidded through the door, pushchairs knocking into bookshelves and children chattering, squabbling and in one case making continuous fart noises.

I wrapped up Trev’s second ReadUp session of the week and we both started moving chairs across to try to help create some sort of order. To my surprise, Irene intercepted us. ‘No need,’ she snapped, with a smug tilt to her chin, before striding over to the preschoolers’ book trolley, reaching behind it and bringing out a stack of carpet tiles.

She then pulled a whistle out from her beige blouse and gave a fearsome toot that stopped the chaos in its tracks. The gaggle of small children stared, waiting to see what would happen next while the adults looked on, equally as intrigued. Irene held out a carpet tile to the nearest child.

‘Sit.’

The little girl gingerly took the tile and sat on it. Within moments the others had joined her, all except for one girl crying in her mother’s lap because she wanted a yellow tile and they were all industrial blue.

‘This week, stories about animals. I shall make an exception to the silence rule, on one condition.’

‘If you ask a question or talk or make a noise then you have to go,’ a boy whispered to his friend, loud enough to have Irene glaring at him down her nose.

‘Questions, chatter and bodily sounds are still forbidden. However, the Library Lady shall permit the appropriate animal noises, as long as they are made at the right time.’

‘Ooh, can I do a donkey?’ someone asked. ‘I’m good at donkeys, listen…’ She then demonstrated her very loud, eerily accurate bray.

‘Sshhhh!’ various other children said anxiously – presumably those who had been here before, and knew the Library Lady did not make idle threats.

‘In case I wasn’t clear,’ Irene huffed, after a second toot. ‘You may produce the correct animal noise when I mention that specific animal in the story. If you make any other sound at any time, you must leave. Does anybody not understand?’

If they did, they weren’t admitting it.

‘Will you help us if we don’t know the right sound?’ a delicate-looking boy of about five asked. ‘I’m scared I won’t know and then I’ll have to go home.’

‘You could just keep quiet and make no sound instead,’ Irene replied.

‘But I want to make a sound. It’s more funner!’

‘It is more fun.’

‘Yes! So will you help me?’

Irene sighed as if already exhausted. ‘Yes. Now, if you are all quite finished, can we please get started?’

I left the Library Lady to it, unable to resist making a few animal noises as I left.

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