Meet the Staff: Marie

 I have worked at Page & Blackmore for six months and find it a wonderful workplace where I meet great people every time I roll up to work (customers and staff!).  Previous experience in the world of books includes being on the library committee at college - this mean spending one lunch time a week behind the library counter (heavenly) and issuing stamping books - it seems very tame in this e-age but it was heady stuff in those days being 'in charge' of the books.  And then many years later working at Victoria University Bookshop firstly on the Information Desk and then as the textbook buyer, a move to Auckland saw me at the bookshop at Unitec and then moving to work for several years for ProCare Health Ltd, one of New Zealand's largest PHOs.

One of my earliest 'book' memories is walking to the Newtown library with my mother pushing my younger brother in his pushchair with me holding onto one side of her coat and my elder brother on the other side.  It was quite a walk up and down Edinburgh Terrace to get to the library and I often think of my mother's energy getting the three of us to the Library every week.  I come from a family of readers with a mother who frequently said if you have a book you have a friend.  Thanks Mum,  the books have proved to be friends over and over again and at times seemed to have saved my life.

I went to school near the Newtown library and my biggest ambition was to live in the council flat above the library - I figured it would be easy access to getting books.  In those days you had a cardboard library card with your 'number ' on it.  All the books had a removable card in the back - from a very young age I would remove the card, laboriously write my number on it before taking all the book cards up to the counter - then and only then, would the librarians stamp the return date in the book.  I absolutely loved the library - we didn't have many books at home and the library was a great escape route to the world. My ambition as an eight year old was to read all the books in the Childrens' section - when I did that I started using the Island Bay library - I have to admit that the Childrens' section wasn't enormous.

When my nieces and nephews were small they called me Aunty Books when they were small because I always gave them books for Christmas and birthdays - and in the case of a dyslexic niece, Audio Books.  Books have always been a vital part of my life and I know they always will.