The singing toilet bowl

Much tumult and noise from the ladies' toilets, and the library not even open yet.

Salome spotted Lippy heading that way, sneaked in, switched off the light and hid behind the stall door. As Lippy entered and switched on the light Salome jumped out and shouted "Boo!"

Cue hysteria, screams of "I'm a ghostie!" and five minutes' worth of rude posterior noises made with the mouth.

Neither of these ladies is going to be seeing their fortieth birthday again. I don't know what the young ones make of it.

Relax, Goldilocks, and eat your porridge!

Over the past few hours every Reference Librarian on this side of the borough has rung Noreen asking what titles are on standing order.

Not only has Noreen provided them with umpteen copies of the standing order list, the Reference Librarians wrote it!

These are the people bringing Knowledge Management into the community...

Is Dad's Army on?

The Acq. Team receive a 'phone call from Catty Library. Noreen's patience is tested...

"What do we get on standing order these days?"

"I've sent three copies of the standing order list to Catty Library in the past two weeks."

"I can't find it. Can you check for me?"

"What am I looking for?"

"The Minutes of The Annual Meeting of the Particular Brethren."

"I'll just check... ...No, that one's been cancelled."

"Cancelled?"

"Yes, the Reference Librarians finally came up with a list of the standing orders we needed to pass on to the new supplier and quite a few titles were dropped in the process so that we weren't vastly overspending that budget yet again."

"But Mrs. Feathergill comes in to read this every year without fail!"

We rumba'ed to Edmundo Ros

It's Umpty Carnival next week and a few weeks ago Julia asked Frog to book a performer for the library's contribution to the hostilities. This he did forthwith. He also passed on the performer's request for a few bits of local colour that he could work into his patter - local landmarks, football teams, that sort of thing - to Julia and the librarians at Umpty.

This morning he gets an indignant 'phone call from one of the librarians over there. Frog had to spend twenty minutes providing a diplomatic answer to the question "Do I really have to do all this work before Saturday? I'm far too busy!"

He was interrupted in the middle of making the arrangements for another event at Umpty and doing the paperwork for the audit of Bookstart Treasure Box provision in the Umpty and Catty areas while his adversary had spent all morning sitting in the back office transferring three books to Gypsy Lane Library. In the circumstances I think he deserves a medal for tact and diplomacy.

A man trying to shave a drunken bear

The council's new cost-saving and efficiency regime is so successful that Maisie and Maudie are spending three staff days a week dealing with the support calls from people trying to get their PCs and passwords accepted by the printers or trying to work out why, if the printers are all the same, all the print settings are different from place to place.

This week they've wasted half a ream of paper in test prints so it's been a rip-roaring success so far.

Kerosene lamp belong Jesus went bugger-up

Bronwyn was coming out of a meeting in the council one-stop-shop when she overheard this gem of an exchange between a little old lady and one of the workers behind the counter.

"It's no better."

"It's no better?"

"Nay, lad. It's no better."

"No better than..."

"It's no better than the last time I came in and telled you."

"So... do you want me to..."

"I just thought I'd come in and tell you it were no better."

And off she went.

As the worker in question was a relative, Bronwyn couldn't resist asking: "what was all that about?"

"I've no idea. I was hoping that if I kept her talking long enough she might give me a clue but she wasn't having any of it."

Chairs XIV

"What are all these chairs doing stacked up here?" asks T.Aldous.

To be fair, it's a question any one of us could ask at any time, though the answer usually starts "T.Aldous..."

"That lot's for going out to Spadespit and them's for Roadkill Library," explains Seth.

"How are they getting there?"

"They're being picked up and delivered on Thursday."

"What are they going out for?"

"I've no idea."

"Nobody tells me anything in this place!" pouts T.Aldous.

The damned fool's only been in three hours and he's spent all that time sat in his office making a nuisance of himself with the telephone. This is not lost on Seth:

"Congratulations! You're now exactly the same as every other member of staff in the Library Service."

An hitherto well-loved favourite

You can tell that Big Chief Whatalumber is back in town. We've spent all day answering 'phone calls for him.

"I keep ringing people and they're not in and then they ring back when Maisie's not at her desk."

The painfully obvious question is: why doesn't T.Aldous answer his own telephone?

The painfully bewildering answer is that he says that he has to put his 'phone through to Maisie so that if anybody rings him while he's on his 'phone he won't miss their call.

So what happens is that Maisie's 'phone rings. Somebody (far too often poor old Maisie herself) then has to trot over to T.Aldous' office, peek in, try and work out whether or not he's on his 'phone, realise that he is, trot back and tell the person who would otherwise have been confronted with an engaged tone:

"Sorry, he's on the 'phone at the moment."

Sitting on the point of the captain's compass

Jimmy Huddersfield and I were discussing the Library Service post-Mary. We've both been sure that T.Aldous wouldn't be staying long after Mary retired: they've worked hand-in-glove for far too long for your man to be comfortable flying solo. Mary's working part-time for the past few months has changed the dynamic somewhat, with Julia coming to the fore as the generally-preferred partner-in-muddle, but we still think that T.Aldous won't be running the show this time next year. Added to that, the gossip in the Pay & Pensions Department is that he won't be hanging round after the end of the financial year. Mind you, according to the gossip in Pay & Pensions there won't be anyone over the age of twenty working for the council after Easter.

So what would happen post-T.Aldous? I'm not sure that he'd be replaced: after all, Warner's the head of service and he's got a whole Policy Team to run the show for him. And besides, we're massively over spent on the staffing budget (how??? we're constantly scratching for cover for all our libraries to keep the doors open...) and the council's boracic with only enough money to pay consultancy fees and councillors' expenses. Of course, all this would mean that some of Policy Team would have to up their game quite a bit. T.Aldous, for all his many faults, has much to commend him. He works damned hard, just too often not very effectively as he's hopeless at picking and choosing his battles and gets a tad obsessive about irrelevancies.

And the obvious question arises: how would some folk cope without having T.Aldous around to blame for not getting things done? We live in a time of Chinese proverbs...

Does anyone have a favourite woodcock?

I shall hang you on doodads no longer: this is an outline sketch of the salient events of Mary's last day in work.

The staff had organised a pot-luck brunch for Mary (which gave the caretaking and cleaning staff the opportunity to join in) and a lot of goodies were provided. People popped in from all over the place, including escapees like Jimmy Huddersfield, Tilly Floss and Onabushkan Flo. It was all very warm and convivial and pleasant. Warner Baxter popped in to say cheerio to Mary. And he waited, and everyone else waited, and Mary waited...

T.Aldous made a big fuss and got everybody into the staff room who wasn't needed to cover the front line in the library. Everybody got in, awaiting the presentation of gifts and card. T.Aldous returned, said thank you, took a photo and disappeared.

Eventually it started to dawn on people that that was that and they slowly drifted away.

Just after lunch T.Aldous made it known that everybody was to go upstairs to the Lending Library as he wanted to present Mary with the thanks of the Library Service and a parting gift. Now, this was well meant but... It would have been OK in a branch library, where the customers know the individual staff very well and are grateful for the opportunity to say thank you and good luck to departing people. But not often in our biggest library, where service tends to be a bit more of the production line methodology. And especially not as it's been a quarter of a century since Mary worked on the front line. The customers looked on bemused as T.Aldous did his spiel and Mary tried not to be embarassed.

The gift was a nice bouquet of flowers in a box. Which isn't the gift we've all chipped in for. And Mary's not had her card yet. We're hoping that both are being saved for the evening meal that's been organised for next week.

As I said the other day: well-meaning, but really not quite right.

Then Mary attended her last Policy Team Meeting, where they discussed the latest budget cuts.

Wow

We finally got the keys back to Carbootsale Library the other day. Milton and I nip over to have a look at the results of a very major bit of building work.

It looks utterly fucking fabulous.

You can ride a bike, still play tennis or drown an old cricketer

Jack Harry's been in post a few weeks now.

"How's it feel to be part of the machinery of ruthless pursuit of excellence in public library service delivery?" I ask him.

"It's... interesting," he replies.

I don't remember him being grey when he started with us.

It'll never, ever, ever be filmed by Ken Russell

Another afternoon where three librarians spend over an hour poring over the whys and wherefores of four rather foxed old paperbacks' accidentally being transferred to one of our libraries rather than being withdrawn from stock because they've more than had their day.

We have half a million of the bloody things. I shudder to think how many librarian hours would be involved in a review of the disposition of our stock.

Oh, so that's what librarians do is it? Someone needs to tell Bronwyn: she's running herself into the ground trying to put together a comprehenisve stock profile and replenishment process pretty much by herself.

Chairs XIIa

Twenty-seven chairs arrive. They were ordered before the recent budget clampdown and so have to be accepted, though somebody will get the usual bollocking from Corporate Finance for having ordered something that arrives after an unannounced surprise panic spending freeze.

There is one big problem: of the people available in Policy Team today, neither is prepared to accept responsibility for accepting delivery just in case T.Aldous on his return decides that they are the wrong shade of wood.

Santa got my letter after all!

I bumped into Ken Barmy at Victoria Station.

"I think we'll be supplying you with a Xmas story this year," he winked.

Nurture

Overheard:

"My son's starting to understand how the books are arranged on the bookshelves. He's only 34. I'll make a librarian of him yet."

"That could count as child abuse."