I blame Santa Claus for the Devlin family addiction to reading and books.

When he came down our Cookstown chimney, he generally left things for shared enjoyment.

As children, we came downstairs on Christmas morning, eager to inspect the sizeable doll’s house my father – a carpenter by trade – made for the birthday of the first of five girls, and with which Mr. Claus was so impressed he spirited it away every year and left it back on Christmas morning, gleaming new with new furnishings, wallpaper, curtains and lino.

The doll’s house was collectively owned, as were the board games and comic ‘annuals’ accumulated from the same source over the years of our childhood, so I guess Santa Claus must take his share of the blame for the Socialism bit as well.

He did, however, leave each of us our own small stash, which was mainly comprised of new clothes, and our very own ‘proper’ book.

An apple, orange and favourite chocolate bar completed the haul.

Two generations of Devlin-McAliskeys have inherited the addiction, and whatever time ‘the anti-book police’ comes knocking on our doors, our intergenerational guilt will be evidenced by our names having appeared on the membership list of the local library from pre-school age.

As with most of my crimes against the accepted social order, I remain unrepentant.

I am a passionate advocate of reading to children from the earliest opportunity.

The fact that we have a stubborn functional illiteracy rate of more than one in every five people over 16 years of age is an indictment of the State and successive Departments of Education.

It is not that people continuously fail to learn to read, but that the system for teaching continues to fail to teach children who learn differently, and to adequately resource diversity in adult literacy.

One of my lesser-known and more useful skills than ‘speechifying’ from my teenage years has been supporting people who missed out as children to learn to read as adults.

Way back, local libraries co-ordinated this volunteer small group/one-to-one activity, which was how I first got involved.

There are now less than 100 local branches across our 11 council districts – over 70 of which are located west of the Bann River, and only three in County Fermanagh.

There are three more in the Tyrone side of the wider Fermanagh and Omagh District Council area.

There is a fortnightly mobile library service in Fermanagh which, sadly, is currently “unavailable until further notice due to essential vehicle maintenance” – I hope they are not off the road, waiting for their MOT appointment.

Santa Claus will have been and long gone before they get one – the waiting time is about four months.

According to the 2021 census, the population of Greater Belfast is approximately three times the size of the population of the Fermanagh and Omagh District Council area, so you might argue that they need three times more libraries.

But people don’t live in libraries – they are just dropping in, using the Wi-Fi, and borrowing books.

Greater Belfast, with its 18 libraries, only covers 958 square kilometres.

The local council area is three times the size of Belfast, so people in the Fermanagh and Omagh area have to travel so that their children can enjoy the wonder of exploring the bookshelves and choosing books at their leisure; the elderly can drop-in and get help with mastering the internet; or just avail of the Wi-Fi and the warmth, while many of the city libraries are within walking distance or a short Black Taxi or bus ride of each other.

No matter how good a service might be in theory or practice, nobody can benefit from it if they can’t reach it and therefore can’t use it.

I am not advocating reducing local neighbourhood libraries in working class areas of Belfast and other cities but, rather, a return of local library access to small rural towns and villages.

Meanwhile, as our local libraries, like ourselves and our other public services, continue to struggle under the pressure of reduced budgets, inflated costs and political failures, and the revolution has not yet materialised, we can take comfort in membership of the library still being free.

Like all local services, if you aren’t using it, you are part of losing it for everybody else, so if you are not a member of your local library, why not join?

You will find it a warm and welcoming place for all ages, classes, cultures and levels of reading.

Libraries are also good starting places for information if you need to find support and don’t know where else to start, or making quiet conversation as a start to new acquaintance.

You can contact Enniskillen Library at 028 6632 2886, and Libraries NI at 0345 450 4580, or check out their website to see what you are missing – and while you are at it, encourage them to confirm when the mobile library will be up and running again.

You can check with the library and the website where it normally stops, and on what days.

Second-hand bookshops are getting harder to find, as they are more a passion than a business, but are my personal favourite source of books-for-keeps.

Not enough of them keep second-hand children’s books, but they are a great place for small locally produced histories of places and people.

Many of these are the work of the local history group, which I believe no self-respecting town or village should be without, or a printed dissertation for somebody’s Social History or Politics ‘Master’s.

Old books long out-of- print, addressing the ‘Class Question’ and ‘National Question’ or ‘Irish Question’ – depending on the perspective of the writer – add to my heaving shelves and keep the more frail local history pamphlets wedged straight between their hard backs.

One of these treasures is a 1923 copy of ‘The Irish Revolution and how it came about’, written by William O’ Brien in the same year.

O’Brien was a journalist, Land League and Home Rule agitator, and a member of the British Parliament almost continuously from 1883 to the general election of 1918.

He represented various Cork constituencies, and was primarily responsible for organising the ‘national plan’ to withhold tenant rents from the landlords, and use them to support evicted tenants.

This campaign ultimately brought landlords to the table.

He represented Tyrone South from 1885-86. William Trimble, who owned The Impartial Reporter, supported tenants’ rights.

Both supported the 1902 Land Conference which secured an agreement between landlords of all political hues and their pro- and anti-Home Rule tenants, and led to the 1903 Land Purchase Act.

People don’t read enough.