We are all the same age inside a library – curious, young and eager to learn

I am back to my traditional regime of touring around village halls, deconsecrated churches and public libraries. 

Despite usually performing in two to three towns a day, I always hope to arrive at my destination early enough to explore. 

Usually, if I find that there is more than 20 minutes on the platform when changing trains, I will walk out of the station and see how much I can experience in these few spare minutes. 

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Over the last month I have enjoyed Tamworth and Kettering. I watch the flowers, see what grows in the cracks. 

I marvel at the boarded-up bingo halls that were once mighty Odeons entertaining the nation with war movies and then kitchen sink dramas of abortion and heartache, before the death knell of Carry on Emmanuelle. 

In a side road in Northampton, I find a mightily beamed railway building where the rails have long since been melted down and now it stands like an image from Heidi – just a stones throw from Cash Convertors. 

I have become a far more obedient observer of bud and blossom. 

In a dusk-dimmed churchyard I look at daisies and remember the delightful fact that the daisy is one of those flowers that closes up its petals for the night – “no more for us to do today, we will open up and receive the light again sometime after dawn”. 

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I watch the dandelions as they turn from blooming to seedy timekeepers in Macclesfield, then see a splurge of graffiti that declares that “Shaggy Rules!”

And once I have finished seeking arcane architecture and celebratory spray paint, there are the people
I will find. 

I began in Siddington village hall. Here I went off on so many tangents that for the next four nights, in the next four villages, there are people who return to request I finish my stories on Peter Cushing and Jodrell Bank. 

I think I finished them all by the time I left the stage in Tarvin Community Library on the Sunday night. 

My new book is about neurodivergence and it has been a joy when audience members have the confidence to tell me personal stories of their battles and progress. 

But it is not just the neurodivergent. The afternoon shows often have people in their 80s and 90s in the audience. 

At Knutsford, I eavesdropped on their book club. I heard a fantastically succinct review. 

“Michelle can’t be here today, but she scores it six out of 10 and writes: ‘Sentences too short, book too long.’” 

It may be a negative review, but by goodness, I would put it on my cover blurb if I received that critique. 

At the front of the library audience is Joyce. She has lost her husband and only has one surviving child. She comes up to me to talk afterwards and I feel the joy of seeing how some of my words have connected with her.  

In the library, we are all the same age. We are all curious and young. An eagerness to learn eviscerates the age gap. 

As I leave, I see a five-year-old with a face of glee marching to the library, the excitement for books and stories is palpable. I look at the jigsaw and connect one more piece of sky. 

Robin Ince is a comedian, poet and broadcaster. His new book, Normally Weird and Weirdly Normal: My Adventures in Neurodiversity, is out on 1 May (Macmillan, £20). You can buy it from the Big Issue shop on bookshop.org, which helps to support Big Issue and independent bookshops.

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