Opinion : A new use for the old library building in Queen Victoria Road?

The weather is so lovely at the moment indeed the sunshine put an extra spring in my step as I promenaded along Wycombe High Street making my way towards the grounds of the Parish Church to eat my lunch.

No sooner had I got my lunch box out than one of the youngsters who works at the same establishment as yours truly came along. He seemed to be looking at his phone a lot though.

‘Look at this Mr Ivor‘, said my friend. ‘Look here on the war memorial….‘, he continued pointing at his phone.

‘What on earth is it?‘ I replied. ‘There’s a poky-man on the war memorial‘, came the reply.

‘By George! I”l get him off‘, I exclaimed jumping up and walking towards the memorial. After all it’s bad enough having the children, workmen and drunks sitting on the memorial let alone a poky man.

‘No‘, replied my friend, ‘You can only see the poky man on the phone, he’s part of a computer game, come and look at my phone‘.

Naturally yours truly went to look at the phone and sure enough there was a little creature hovering on the war memorial. My friend moved his finger on the screen and the poky man disappeared into a ball.

After finishing my lunch my work collage joined me for my lunchtime walk around the town centre. I tried to explain the history of all the buildings we passed by to him but he only seemed interested in finding more poky men. He found another on Frogmoor and two in the shopping complex.

As we walked around other youngsters were carrying out a similar exercise on their phones too. It seems the lovable creatures are appearing all over the place indeed there was even one in Downing Street the other day.

Has this new fangled video game finally got the youngsters out of the confines of their bedrooms and into the real world? If so its a good thing.

Now you’re probably wondering what a this blog has to do with the old disused library in Queen Victoria Road?

Well, once captured the poky men need to be trained up in a ‘poky man gym’ where they can battle against other poky men. It seems these gym’s are appearing everywhere indeed there was even a news report of a church being designated as a gym.

So surely it makes sense to turn some of Wycombe’s disused buildings, such as the magnificent Old Library in Queen Victoria Road into a gym?

After all it has now been eight, yes eight, years since the old Library closed its doors and the building was last used. The powers that be are unable to find a use for the building and it’s just been left to rot so it makes sense to use it as a gym where the intrepid gamers can train up their poky men.

If Wycombe was a go ahead town it would be embracing the very latest developments in technology and the powers that be would be creating gyms to get the youngsters interested in the history of our town so they learn by playing the game. These gym’s could be a good marketing tool to get people to visit landmarks and shops too.

Sadly I fear the Old Library has come to symbolise everything that is backward and wrong with Wycombe. Such opportunity yet such waste….

What do you think?

*My blogs are published every Tuesday and Friday evening around 8.00pm here on the WycombeToday.com website.

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