Antony 10th July 2021

I had another thought that I wanted to share. It is an explanation of 'Bun Day' which I mentioned before: Many years ago, myself and Anna used to work the early shift at the Franklin Wilkins library on Thursdays, starting at 0830 and it would be just me and Anna opening the library and then sitting at the enquiry desk. At some point I brought in a couple of buns (probably from Greggs, but memory fails me) and I gave one to Anna and she loved it. From then on, I started bringing them in every week, but Anna felt that this should be a shared duty and so we alternated weeks, bringing in all kinds of different buns and even sometimes experimenting with pastries or venturing into cake territory (often from Gregg’s but we didn’t discriminate, they could be from Tesco’s or whatever bun selling place we happened to venture into on a Wednesday evening or Thursday morning and subject to availability – biscuits were acceptable when any of kind of bun could not be sourced). Thursdays were re-christened as ‘Bun Day’. We would chat and gossip (this is not intended to read by anyone working at King’s and if they do then please translate ‘chat and gossip’ into working diligently) until 0930 when sadly (again for King’s staff members this should be read as happily) the flow of students into the library increased and other staff arrived for work. Then we would head off to our office desks and eat our buns, me with a coffee and Anna with her herbal tea. Anyway, one day she came to me quite seriously and said Tony I think we should stop with the Bun Days. So that was that. I do not remember an explanation, just that, for Anna, the time had come to bring Bun Day to an end. Happily, I was able to reintroduce surprise Bun Days very occasionally when I happened to work on a Sunday with her, and she was always happy that I did. I looked back at my old emails, and I see that she thanked me for one such ‘Sunday Bun Day’ and she said she was so happy she nearly cried. I am happy to recall her being happy.