We're being good and not telling the ludo joke

Seth and Kevin aren't having the best of days. Mary had arranged for the SureStart Centre at Sorry to take delivery of a palette of bookstart freebies and one of our unused desks. (The desk's unused because we've not been filling some of our vacancies for years and it's to go to the Centre because it's in the way of a pile of boxes due to arrive from the old Glass Road site.) So the boys load the van and tool over to Sorry. "Pile it all up against the grey wall," Mary tells them.

When they get there it's not plain sailing:

• The people there know nothing about it.
• They say there's no room at the inn.
• There isn't a grey wall there.
• "While you're here, can you move all those Bookstart packs from over there?"

They ring Mary, who rings the bloke who was supposed to be making the arrangements at the Sorry end.

"Where should these Bookstart packs go?"

"I'm not bothered."

So they come back with more than they went away with.

In too many respects this place reminds me of the blind, stupid bureaucratic processes in "The Good Soldier Švejk" (no, of course we've not got it in stock: it's a classic of European literature).