A bearded baby in a three-wheeled pram smoking a clay pipe

One of the Family Service Managers at Dogford Community Office arranged with Frog to do some story and poetry activities for children during the summer holidays. He's set the time aside to do the planning and delivery and has sorted out the material for the gig.

Imagine his delight earlier today when he bumped into said FSM who says:

"Hello Frog. We're going to cancel those sessions with you. We've had a better offer from the Parks Department."

Frantically looking for runaway fleas

A Big To Do. Somebody's transferred four - count them - four! tatty old books were tranferred to Tench Road Library.

Peeling away three days' worth of senior management fuss and fustle the message can be summarised as: "If a book's too scruffy to go on your shelves, don't transfer it to somebody else's library. If you receive one that's too scruffy to go on the shelves, withdraw it from stock and don't have it inflicted on the poor bloody customers."

How much hard work is it to say that? Far too much for The Professionals

Some long-lost uncle of grime

It's pissing down today. Absolutely teeming down. Frog's been out to Victor Maddern Park to walk through the arrangements for a poetry in the park event this summer. He comes back in absolutely sodden wet, his raincoat black with rain water and the brim has collapsed on his Yorkshire Seamen's Mission ushanka.

Voice from the stalls:

"Bloody hell! Are we doing Chekov?"

A turn-up for the books

An exchange in passing by the kettle. I'm starting to enjoy watching these ping-pongs of insolence from the ranks.

Julia: "I don't know why we keep on buying all these books. We don't have any room left on the shelves."

Voice from the staff room table: "you might want to try encouraging people to borrow some of them."

I had my tray table up and my seat back in the full upright position

Overheard:

"There's something very wrong with a man who sees an upturned umbrella in the bath and doesn't have to quell a violent primeval urge to have a crap in it."

Autograph hunting

There's a huge pile of paperwork by Noreen's desk.

"What they?" I ask.

"Invoices to be signed by Mary when she comes in."

"She was only in on Monday. Have you done that much work since then?"

"Oh no. She's doing the usual 'leave it with me, I'll do it in a minute,' but there's only half a week to chase her up in and we've no idea whether or not she's in from one day to the next so it all just gets left."

"Who signs invoices in the half a week she's not in?"

"Nobody."

"So what happens when Corporate Procurement ask questions as to why it's taking so long to pass invoices?"

"T.Aldous or Mary come over to ask us why it's taking us so long to receive the incoming stock."

Monte Carlo or bust

The lads have just taken the van to a Mobile Library meet.

"It were great," says Billy, "we had loads of visitors. They thought we were a vintage model brought in special."

"We had a look around one or two of the others. I were looking at some of the DVDs and the bloke asked me if we had DVDs on our mobile. I told him: we don't even have DVDs in our main library."

Healthy living

Year in, year out, the front-line staff in our libraries and in the one-stop-shops have had to cope with whatever germs The Great British Public brings through the doors. Flu, norovirus, winter vomiting virus, chciken pox, measles, mumps, malaria, whatever. It should come to no surprise, then, that some are occasionally of sick with one thing or another. The council's reaction to this is to hold quarterly inquisitions about these services' sick leave statistics.

First sign of swine flu in the area and the Town Hall reception area is kitted out with antiseptic wipes and all surfaces are swabbed down with a religious fervour.

We hope this is borne in mind in the next round of sick leave inquisitions.

The plot's very simple: he stays a frog all his life

Wendy, one of the Reference Librarians at Umpty Library, has been making it clear that she "doesn't feel able to deliver the sessions outlined for this year's Family Learning Month at her library. I can't say I'm surprised. Salome's given the job of trying to sort out a salvage operation.

"She's told Julia and T.Aldous that she hasn't had much opportunity to get to grips with the internet," she tells me.

"She's had a networked PC on her desk for twelve years," I reply.

We both know that this won't count for anything in the scheme of things round here.

Changing rooms

We're having a bit of a domestic about meeting rooms in Helminthdale Central Library at the moment. We've got four meeting rooms in all: Meeting Room One (counting from the left) and Meeting Room One (counting from the right) are for staff use downstairs on our floor. These are usually reserved by our writing on a board by the doorway. Meeting Room One, which is the big room in the lending library, is available for use by staff, community groups and other parts of the council whereas Meeting Room One, which is the small room behind the reference library, is only available to staff, community groups and other parts of the council. [This all sounds mad when I write it down. No wonder we're cracking up.] These rooms are reserved by ringing the lending library and having them record the booking in the bookings diary kept there. Unless you ring downstairs and have the booking recorded in the bookings diary kept there. Or ring the reference library and have the booking recorded in the Day Book. Anyway, it's all pretty simple and transparent.

Today, Maudie had booked Meeting Room One for the Asian Ladies' Reading Group; group of youth workers had booked Meeting Room One; and downstairs Maudie had booked Meeting Room One for a meeting with the auditor, which left Meeting Room One free for Doreen and the Assistant Librarians to have a chat about how to address with the swine flu outbreak in one of the local schools now they've received official advice from the Health Unit...

Until T.Aldous commandeered that room for a meeting with a furniture salesman to discuss some new tables for Carbootsale Library. Which left Milton with a problem as he wanted to have a meeting with me to go through a programme of activity we've suddenly discovered is being planned for Catty Library. And both of us with a problem as a key piece of work had been arranged to be done with the PCs in Meeting Room One and the IT guys had come over to do the necessary. But this was OK as Maudie and the auditor had decided to work at her desk anyway. Which was just as well as a carpet salesman arrived to show T.Aldous some samples for the proposed foyer at Umpty Library.

So, while T.Aldous had simultaneous meetings in two different rooms; and Julia went to find some staff to have a look at the carpet samples; and everybody found something else to do so that they didn't spent the morning looking at table samples (really); and Milton checked that the IT guys were OK with the project; and Maudie walked the auditor through the e-procurement processes; and Salome supported the reading group; and Bronwyn moved the display boards for this week's author visit out of Meeting Room One so that it could be poshed up for a Big Chiefs' Pow-Wow; and Maisie made teas and coffees for the youth workers because T.Aldous told her to; I got on with my morning's work and hoped for the best.

I never wear buttons but I got a cool hat

A minor mutiny in the Branch Managers' meeting this morning. They will not take minutes of their meeting. It is not in their contract. Salome, attending the meeting as a representative of the Junior Management Team, tried to talk some sense into them.

"Do you want to have these meetings?"

"Yes."

"Well in that case you'll have to take minutes of the meeting to show what was discussed and anything that needs to be taken up and addressed elsewhere."

"But we haven't got time to write minutes."

"Make the time. If the meetings are important enough for you to come along to them, and for people to take the time to make the arrangements to provide cover for you at your libraries then they're important enough for one of you to take the minutes."

"Can we take the minutes and get somebody else to write them up?"

"No. I've been told we're not to dump any more work on Maudie. She's busy sorting out the materiel for your summer holiday activities."

"Well, it doesn't say anything in my contract about doing secretarial duties."

"I think you'll find that your job description says: 'Any other duties required by the Library Service.'"

Eventually one of them got fed up and volunteered to take the minutes. Salome made a point of telling them that they wouldn't be required to do them next time, too. This went down a storm with the others.

Salome told me about this afterwards. I couldn't understand the problem: the Branch Managers in the other areas of the Borough take the minutes of their own meetings and have never made much of a drama about it to my knowledge. They just take turns in alphabetical order and get on with it.

"What? Even little libraries like Glass Road?"

"Yes, even little libraries like Glass Road."

A few 'phone calls confirmed this. Salome is now determined that there should be no question of the Branch Managers in her area not doing similar. Quite right, too, even Policy Group minute their own meetings these days.

Of course, there is always that element of doubt. Salome, like me, is all too aware that everything is optional in this Library Service. If somebody decides they don't like something they can not do it and nothing will happen. Quite the reverse, in fact, the bollocking generally go to the people who try to get things done. Hey ho.

As I lay bleeding there on the asphalt

Bronwyn and Maybelle are back from a meeting. They're the latest ones to tell me what other library authorities are doing on Facebook, Twitter, et al. A lot of it is just the usual rubbish but there are occasional sparks of creativity in trying to reach new audiences, or not lose the ones they've got. I receive this as positively as I can, bearing in mind that I want to scream at them that this is precisely what I was trying to do with them and a few others this time last year and they didn't want to know.

Last week it was T.Aldous: "Dourly Libraries are on Facebook and Twitter, they've done ever such a lot. It would be good if we could do something like that." Yes it would, it would be splendid if librarians listened to new ideas and perhaps even shifted themselves a bit and did something once in a while that didn't involve creating lengthy explanations why things can't be done.

"Why aren't we doing..." is a question I'm sick of hearing. The answer is that we've no management processes; no idea processes; no direction; no responsibilty; no accountability; no hope; no shame.

We are on Facebook and Flickr and quite a few other things. Unofficially. "We" being me, effectively. Given how much hard work is involved in dragging input from the librarians for to update the library web site we've only had for the past thirteen years I don't hold out a lot of hope.

Maybelle's dead keen on doing something for a couple of projects so we have a chat to explore the possibilities.

"I feel a bit bad about not picking up on this last year."

"So you should."

"Is anyone else doing anything?"

"..."

"It's really dispiriting isn't it?"

"Shall we see what we can do with these projects?"

And yes, it is really dispriting. Really, really dispiriting. And not really anything new.

Try to avoid any Virgos or Leos with the Ebola virus

We are on Full Swine Flu Alert, which is nothing to laugh about but we are struggling to take it seriously. For years and years and years we've had to buy our own cleansing materials as we've never much fancied the thirty-year-old bars of old Buttermilk soap. Despite all the cycles of local epidemic illnesses. All of a sudden we are swamped with antibacterial wipes, telephone sanitisers and keyboard deodorisers. Everything smells of chemical swipes. Telephone calls trigger asthma attacks.

Maisie's spent all day again today getting COSHH cerificates from sundry companies "in case somebody decides to drink any of it," which is either a reflection of the collective mood or a reaction to our recent Health & Safety intervention.

In the House of Lies there are vacancies

Once upon a time, in an earlier life outside the Library Service, I was up on a disciplinary on the heinous charge of Not Trusting My Line Manager. As the manager involved was a gay activist who outed three of his staff who had confided in him while they tried to resolve issues with families and children; and who was later asked to consider his position in the organisation after being found to be fiddling his expenses, I'm pretty cool about this transgression.

I had entirely forgotten this episode, which is odd as I really am one to bear a grudge, until reminded by an old friend. Whose partner is currently working under a regime where one of his colleagues has been given a warning for having an aggressive Scots accent.

The older I get the more I yearn for the old days of managers who were focussed on getting things done and didn't much give a shit whether or not you loved them. This new generation of touchy-feely we-love-our-workers managers generate so much childishly vindictive nonsense it makes me want to heave.

Now we finally got to Coruscant

T.Aldous has spent the past three days writing and re-writing a set of directions for a meeting here.

Ordinarily you'd think that folk could use a map or a sat-nav but this bunch apparently require to be told which lane to be in at each traffic light all the way from the M6.

Oh, did I say it was a Big Chiefs' Pow-wow?

Slumped over a peewit

I walk past Sybil, who has her head in her hands.

"Are you all right?" I ask.

"We'll never get that bloody tunnel finished," she replies.

Life is rosy

As part of the ongoing health & safety intervention it has been suggested that we should all avail ourselves of the online training packages to which the council's subscribed.

So I go onto the first module: Stress Management.

The network is so slow that it crashes after the first screen. So I try again. After the sixth attempt it dawns on me that this is corporate Helminthdale's attempt to reduce the headcount by natural wastage.

We're just technologically impaired

We've had an official complaint from a customer that a microfiche reader has been out of order for weeks. Which came as a bit of a surprise as we didn't think there was a microfiche reader anywhere except the Heritage Studies Centre in Sheep City. It turns out that the fiche reader's up in the reference library, where it's been made available to customers to look up titles in Books In Print.

We haven't bought a fiche copy of Books In Print since 1997.

Ever since then we've been using online resources, which cost the same but are regularly updated.

Maisie is told to try and get a new light bulb for the fiche reader. She finds it and it's horribly expensive. She girds her loins and prepares to go to ask T.Aldous for a cost code.

"How much?" I ask.

She tells me. I suck my teeth and explain what the fiche reader's used for. She goes and asks T.Aldous for the cost code. And tells him what the fiche reader is used for.

"Are they really letting customers use the fiche reader to look up Books In Print?" he asks me.

"Yes."

"How old is that copy of Books In Print?"

"Well before the millennium. We've not bought one for at least a dozen years."

"What on earth do they think they're doing inflicting antediluvian old stuff like that on their customers? You are sure about the fiche?"

"I honestly didn't think they still had it."

"Oh, they hang onto everything regardless," he said, stalking off.

Half an hour later he's back downstairs, a broken fiche reader in one hand and a set of the 1997 Books In Print fiches. After a brief 'phone call he comes out to talk to Maisie.

"'Phone this customer and tell him that we're happy to give him this set of fiches and that Sheep City are happy for him to pop in to use their reader to read them."

Bravo, T.Aldous!

So darn dysfunctional and Generation X-y

That time of year already?

T.Aldous bustles around asking people if they've had any achievements recently so that he can include them in his report to Committee.

I've given up suggesting that we keep a record of what we've done and what we're doing as we go along so that we can all know what's happening in our libraries and Policy Team can have no excuse for not knowing what their staff do for a living.

Colourful life

We have a Library Assistant measuring out a roll of cellophane and cutting it into three-inch lengths in readiness for the summer holiday craft activities for children. I ask Frog the obvious question.

"Wouldn't it have been more efficient and cheaper for us to buy twenty tins of Quality Street and save the wrappers?"

"Absolutely. But I'm only empowered to buy long rolls of cellophane."

Did you know this junkyard slave

I come in to find a box on my desk. I open it to find a pair of earphones.

"These earphones are broken"

the note said.

"Good luck to them."

I said as I threw them straight in the bin.

Prudence

Corporate Helminthdale sends a global email to all staff inviting ideas on how to make savings on the council budget.

It's almost too tempting to send a reply. Especially seeing as Frog's getting bogged down with the summer holiday events for a non-existant library today.