And at a crisis, notch a score

You do have to wonder some days...

I've just been checking the online support for our library management system. It's one of those that "invites" you to check out the resolutions of existing calls before logging one afresh, which lets me see this gem:

Log #1597
Please re-open log #1575. This problem is not resolved.

I wonder what percentage of problems logged on this system are really just people saying: "Don't close this call, this problem is not resolved?" And I wonder what's best: "95% of our logged problems are closed within a day" or "90% of our problems generate more than two complaints from customers."

The goat would be Socrates

At least we don't have this problem:

Have had a meeting with colleagues from elsewhere and we've been discussing the options for our library management systems. The problem we've all got is that we've either got old systems that are starting to show their age; newer systems that have been iced suddenly because the companies concerned have been taken over by others; or newer systems that are just plain crap. We're in the happy position of being able to get by as we are for a year or so, which means that we've got to be taking a good hard look at the market at a time when the market's all over the place.

One colleague's just bought a new system and they're doing the project planning for the installation. This is always a tricky time — library management systems are necessarily complex because the whole business of the library is going through it; and very contentious because the whole business of the library is going through it. This case isn't helped by the library director's off-the-cuff announcement in a meeting the other day:

"This maintenance bill's a bit expensive. We'll let them do the installation then when everything's up and running we'll just cancel the maintenance contract and save us some money."

Some days you can see the car crash from miles away.

Laughing all day

It's times like this that all those years of hardware maintenance training I've never had become so very, very worthwhile...

"The People's Network printer's been out of order for the past four days. Can you fix it?"

"What's it not doing?"

"Nothing."

"No error messages?"

"No."

"What happens when you try to print?"

"Nothing."

"OK, then. I'll have a look at it."

Luckily, it worked fine once I put the paper in the tray.

Virtual unreality

Milton's being modern again.

"We should set up a Helminthdale Library on Second Life."

"A sort of fantasy library existing in a world completely divorced from reality where we can provide whatever services are required regardless of available resources?"

"Pretty much, yes."

"Just like the real one?"

"We might be able to staff it properly."

When Time of all our flannelled hostsLeaves only the renown

I'm desperately hanging onto the fact that I've just got to see this week out and then I've got a week out of this mad house. Unfortunately, I'm going to have my work cut out trying to catch up with all the things being put onto the conveyor belt (fondue set... a canteen of cutlery... signed photograph of Henry Campbell-Bannermann... cuddly toy...). Apologies to anybody getting tardy responses off me this week.

Now who said something about a cup of tea?

A hundred years ago...

Dearie me.

How very different it all is these days.

Seeing a troubled vet

Frog's turn again to be senior chief in the Library Service. At twenty-five past five he gets a 'phone call from Kelsey at Spadespit Library.

"Could I have tomorrow morning off?"

It's five minutes before end of play and Frog's trying to get Helminthdale Lending sorted, cash disposed off and then himself ready for tomorrow morning's children's holiday event at Umpty. Quite sensibly, he doesn't feel inclined to dig out tomorrow's rota, check out the availability of cover and then ring round to try and catch somebody who could go out first thing.

"Is it an emergency?"

"No. I was just thinking it would be nice to have the morning off."

Luckily, Kelsey's a fairly laid-back sort and doesn't take it amiss when the answer's no.

If the asphodel had made the wicket bumpy

Thelma's worrying, not without reason, about getting all the stock that's on boxes onto the shelves if there's only three-quarters of the planned shelving.

"You could get shut of all that old rubbish in the reference section," I suggest. "There's stuff in the booksale that's younger than that."

"Yeah but I'm not allowed to do stock-editing* so I'm stuck with it."

"Have a chat with Milton about it."

"OK."

"And don't worry about the other stuff. Get what you can onto the shelves and hold the rest back in reserve. With a bit of luck you're going to need to replenish the stock a few weeks after you've opened and people have denuded the shelves. And if not, well for once we actually know the true status of the stock so we know where it is and why. Given that more of Helminthdale Central's stock was in boxes than on loan when I did the CIPFA stats in April I shouldn't worry overly much about up to a dozen boxes."

Of course, some idiot will make a big deal of it, just before the library opens, but we'll ignore that bridge when we come to it.

* This is a story for another day, possibly nearer to Christmas when the dust has settled across the Borough. Possibly.

Lint in your navel and sand in your tea

Poor old Norma's had a bad journey back from her holiday in Batavia. By one of those eerie coincidences that suggest that God's a bit of a bastard really when the mood's on him the person sat next to her all the way back on the plane was the council's Chief Executive, J.Arthur Blenkenstein.

At no point in the flight did Norma say that she worked for Helminthdale Council.

Pile 'em high!

The dozen chairs that were littering our workplace have disappeared.

"They've been sent to Epiphany," says Maisie.

"But there was a couple of dozen chairs there already."

"Well they've got three dozen now. And nine extra shelf units because T.Aldous doesn't like the colour of the first nine because he reckons they're beech not maple."

Toothless people

There are a lot of very picturesque people in Helminthdale town centre this morning. I'm not sure if the weather's brought them out or just that I'm in the mood to notice them.

There are three Captain Bird's-Eye looky-likeys in the bus station. Two are wearing thick fisherman's sweaters. One character is actually wearing a fisherman's smock! They'll be up for to linger round Marks & Spencers this lunchtime.

An interesting old couple were walking down the Pardendale Road. She was wearing a thick woolly decorated with pictures of timber wolves. He was wearing German Army issue Norway Campaign snow camouflage gear, which went very well with his magnificent white beard.

Sumer is icumen in, lhude sing cuccu!

Dirty snail teenagers

After Mary's second foray of the day around Needy Corner to see if there's anything further that she can filch from our desks besides cups, pens, teddy bears and bookmarks we start to get a bit fractious.

Even so, Betty and Noreen tell me not to put up a notice on the wall saying:

Please come over here and steal things

Reluctantly, I behave myself.

Hanging nicely

We always have fun with furniture. Predictably enough, this time it's Epiphany Library. The shelving that's been delivered and installed are a bit of a botch job really: the backing's the wrong colour and the first set that was delivered was not as described -- if you ask for a set of shelves that hang from a suspended brace on the walls you don't expect to get some stand-alone shelving with interesting pedestal feet. The Buildings Project Manager was miffed when Thelma told him that he had to get them replaced.

"You've added £600 to my project cost."

"You should have ordered what we asked for and made sure that that was what they delivered then,"

replied Thelma in her best "in twenty years' time I'm going to be a right stroppy old cow" voice.

Anyway, they're in and they're up and they look very nice. Unfortunately, having started unpacking some of the fiction and putting it on the shelves there's an urgent message. Despite the fact that the specification was for four shelves per unit; and the fact that each unit has four shelves; the loading braces can only take the weight of three shelves' worth of books.

Oopsie.

Up for the cup

Mary's scavenging.

"You don't mind me taking your cup, do you? Maybelle's giving out cups for completing the six-book challenge and I didn't buy enough.

I just catch myself in time before I suggest that she could give them the Easter eggs that were never bought for the children's competition.

Lost in the outback

Talking to Nugent, who works in the council one-stop-shop over on The Strand in Senebene, he tells me of an incident they had yesterday.

"We had these two Aussies come in. They'd travelled over from Leicester because they needed to go to the Australian Embassy. They'd walked all around the housing estate but couldn't find it."

It's a measure of the fearsome reputation of the average Australian that they'd wandered round Senebene unmolested. Nugent gently pointed them London way.

For you, Tommy, ze rehearsals are over

It had to happen: the World War II vibe and the Stanley Slavski Method School have conjoined and the lunatic fringes amongst the staff (i.e. most of us) are living with the bastard offspring. There are people in this building who are Being RAF officers imprisoned by the Wehrmacht practising being Belgian migrant workers from Blackpudden in Brabant off to work in munitions factories near the Swiss border. I actually heard this exchange in the lift lobby:

"Wotcha, Wingco!"

"Dammit, man! What have I told you? That's just how Jerry will catch you out if you're not careful!"

The speakers were two middle-aged ladies.

I apologise in advance to any of you who ring our Regional Library Service and get the reply:

"Ich bin auslander, nicht verstahen."

A ladies' choir from the local building site

I mention to Thelma that I've just nipped down to Epiphany.

"It's a right mess..."

"It's the tidiest I've ever seen it," I reply.

For once I'm not taking the piss. OK, it's a building site. But it isn't a building site with a disintegrated floor and a threadbare carpet (imagine putting a ropy bit of thin hessian matting on a sand dune and you'd have it exactly right), nor a load of derelict steel and mahongany-style-deal-offcuts shelving leaning at 5° towards the sunlight.

Sweetie

Maybelle's leaving the building looking very smug.

"And where are you off to, little girl?"

"I'm buying sweeties in works time."

"How so?"

"The family literacy group's coming in tomorrow and I'll be giving them sweeties with their certificates for completing the six-book challenge."

Well done all. And best of luck getting the petty cash form signed by Mary!

The half-timbered librarian

I had thought that the new chairs littering our workplace are destined for the spruced-up edition of Epiphany Library. This turns out to be mistaken, I think. Leastways, when Milton and I visit the place to check out the wiring there's a couple of dozen chairs there already.

We find a plan of the furniture to be installed. One of the many puzzles of the place is: how come we have half an acre of library building yet the console for the public catalogue terminal obstructs the walkway into the counter?

The counter itself has a few surprises, too. For once the cable management system seems to include holes in the partitions for the cables to go through (this is a first). We just need some ports drilling in the top and we're then theoretically OK. Though there is one port already: slap-bang in the middle of the counter, well away from any of the cable management and dead centre in plan view.

Teamwork

Frog asks Mary a question:

"Who's doing the cashing up in Lending this afternoon? Bronwyn went up and did it this morning before she went out to the storytime at Senebene and she doesn't want to have to hang on to end of play today. I could do it, I suppose, but I'm trying to get my flexi-time down to single figures."

"Well it isn't my job," says Mary, "and I'm trying to get my own hours down, too... I suppose I'll have to do it."

Mary, Frog and Bronwyn are all entirely justified in being pissed off about this. Bronwyn the more so because she also had to go up and sort out today's rota for this half of the Borough before she went out.

Oh, and in between covering events at Raccoonville and Grimley libraries, Frog's spending lunchtime covering the enquiry desk.

There are three layers of operational management upstairs in Lending:

• The Counter Supervisor vacancy created when Maybelle got her new job;
• Two and a half Assistant Librarians, including the vacancy created when Bronwyn got her new job and the one caused by Lola's maternity leave; and
• The Group Librarian, Doreen.

Salome, the sole remaining Assistant Librarian for this half of the Borough, doesn't work today and nothing's been done by Doreen to make sure that there are enough bodies to keep the doors open and that they have change for the till, which moneys will be put away safely at the end of the day.

Chairs XI

T.Aldous has been moaning about all the boxes piled up by the staff room door. They contain the residue of the stock from Noddy and Glass Road that couldn't fit into the new libraries, waiting for a non-existant Assistant Librarian to do something about it.

Imagine my surprise, then, to find that twelve new chairs, in their wrapping, joining the throng. No idea where they're going.

Or when.

Livres

We've received some nice children's books in French, which will be going in the Junior collection upstairs. Unfortunately, we've had to hold one back, which is a shame as it's a copy of one of the Mr. Men & Little Misses series, which pretty much market themselves. In the end, though, the French edition of Little Miss Late will not adorn the Junior Catalogue.

There's no way we could have "Little Miss Retard" on our shelves. It's not worth the complaints.

Jiffy

Sybil's sent out an urgent message to all libraries asking for Jiffy bags for the Regional Library Service. Given that I'm told she's the quartermaster for the Escape Committee, I shudder to think what plans she has for them.

The war against terror

Perhaps the most blood-curdling news of the year comes this week: there amongst the adverts in the librarians' jobs list is one from MI5, advertising for spooks.

Like Mark E. Smith said of the modern music scene: "God help us if there's another war."

Skulking in a corner, scowling and burping immoderate

You're away from the office for a couple of days' training and what happens?

You miss out on Mary spending all day trying to get the right-shade-of-pink ribbon for her daughter's hair for a wedding she's going to this weekend, involving the Acq. Team's being on the receiving end of four 'phone calls on the subject from said child (who's pushing 30).

And the Acq. Team's picking up two 'phone calls for T.Aldous from "Joan the Infidel," who in the end turns out to be T.Aldous' wife (who knows what evil lurks in the heart of men?)

But I've not missed out on everything. Rosy Denshaw has just come in to show off her new child.

"He's a bit big isn't he?" I ask.

"I'm coming back off maternity leave next month."

The little mite crawls his way into my office for a look round and promptly throws up on the floor. He shows some sense, then.

Distressed orphans keeping horses in the woods in secret

We've bought into "Boys Into Books," one of the endless array of Reading Agency programmes this summer, this time aimed at encouraging early teen boys to continue reading as an occasional relief from the nursery slopes of self-abuse. Thinking on, we might want to provide Wet Wipes with each book.

We've already had a backlash from the training bra commandos:

"What do you mean, 'Boys Into Books?'"

"It's to encourage boys to read more."

"You should buy more books for girls if they read more. There's no point buying books for boys 'cos they're too thick to read."

They get even more terrifying once they're old enough to get tattoos.

The opposite of truth in the cause of verisimilitude

The Reference Librarians have been asked to put together a staff training package for library assistants who may be called upon to cover the reference libraries at Dutch Bend or Umpty.

Daisy Dormouse replies that there isn't any point as the library assistants would only be covering in the company of Daisy or Wendy, though "we can't do our jobs and always be in the reference library." Daisy's suggestion is that instead of training staff a brand new post should be created to do the job.

I don't know what colour their clouds are over there.

Perspective

What usually happens round here is that T.Aldous and Mary spend all year saying that we haven't got any money for buying anything useful and then all the way through March they spend money like water buying any old crap that can be delivered before the finance system's closed down for year end. We still haven't found uses for all the dirty great big metal cupboards yet (there's only so many pre-owned envelopes that any organisation can accumulate).

Bronwyn bumped into the early days of a "leave it with me," the strategem I forgot when I was cataloguing the long grass gambits. Her response was lovely.

"This will cost as much as any one of the reference books we buy for upstairs and that nobody actually ever looks at."

Take your hand off me knee, vicar, I'm trying to play the piano

It's Jelly Tots all round as Frog celebrates getting shut of the last of the Book Off books.

Mad fool.

We just know there'll be an administrative snafu and another one hundred and fifty boxes will turn up tomorrow morning.

Some of the branch libraries are already complaining that they've got too many new books. And we haven't hardly started spending this year's book fund yet!

News from the Empire

A correspondent writes:

Another gem from our IT section. This morning I rang to ask if they could reboot one of our servers for me. I have been told I can't ring someone directly down there who might understand what I want and simply go and perform such a straightforward task, I have to ring the unhelpful desk or whatever they are calling themselves this week. Of course they had to make out a "ticket", or work out how to make a "ticket" as they didn't seem to know. Sort of got a bit exasperated when they asked me for the badge number of the server, "it is down there, how do I know?"

Protestations to the effect that if I was near enough to read the badge number I was certainly near enough, and able enough, to reboot the thing fell on deaf ears. Having then pointed out I could have walked down there and rebooted it myself in the time it was taking to complete the "ticket" eventually he went away to find out how to reboot said server.

Quite efficiently once they had rebooted server I got an e-mail asking for feedback. THEY WANT FEEDBACK ON HOW WELL THEY PERFORMED IN REBOOTING A SERVER.

Some people just won't be told

Gordon, one of the library assistants upstairs in lending, is in a bate.

"I noticed that one of the books in the book sale was a signed copy from one of the author events a few years ago. I told them: 'this is a signed copy and there are people who collect this author. You want to make sure that it's not defaced before going into the booksale so that it's a more attractive proposition.'

"And do you know what? They stamped 'WITHDRAWN FROM STOCK' right over the fucking signature. That's what. How can they do that?!?"

I have no answer save the blindingly obvious.

Never give a sucker an even break

I've bet Thelma £2 that T.Aldous and/or Doreen has the booksale wheeled out into the entrance of Epiphany Library within a month of the place re-opening.

Seems to be the best offer

Just when you think you've heard the lot...

I'm at Epiphany to deliver some equipment and get a sense of what needs doing next from my perspective (and to give a sense of how likely I am to do it). Luckily, Thelma's fairly level-headed, if a bit wayward with her cultural references*. Which is just as well, given her baptism of fire with Helminthdale Council's Buildings Project Management Team, the bane of T.Aldous' life.

"Have you seen this?"

"What is it?"

"I asked the Buildings Project Manager for a whiteboard. This is what he sent me."

"What is it?"

"It's a board painted white."

And so it is.

---

* we are not naming the computers after 1990s grunge bands

Somewhere upon Elysian swards

Thelma's been allowed out for the day to start getting some of the stuff unpacked at Epiphany Library. The only reason she's been allowed out is that somebody needs to let the network guys into the building. She's been told that there's no chance of her and Epiphany's Library Assistant getting out again this week.

This is library project management at its best: the library's finally handed over, two months late, and the library's staff aren't allowed to ready it for opening because they've got to provide cover at Helminthdale Central. Any other place, the question would be: can we free up some staff to provide an extra hand or two in getting things sorted? Apparently it doesn't occur to anybody to wonder how Helminthdale Central would be keeping its doors open if Epiphany wasn't closed for building work. Or, indeed, how anywhere would be open if the central library at Catty wasn't also closed fo repairs. So much for all the loose talk we had at the beginning of the summer about taking steps to free up staff for service development projects.

Riders of the purple sage

The Stanley Slavsky method school are all in cowboy mode today. We discover that Sybil in the Regional Library Service does a very passable impersonation of Gabby Hayes (it would have been even better if she hadn't shaved today).

The saloon bar singalong in the staff room was a bit much, though.

Sisyphus

Between them, Frog and the Acq. Team have steamed through about eleven thousand kids' books for the never-ending sequence of national reading projects in the past couple of weeks. And yet again, just as it starts to look like we might see the back wall again another forty boxes of the sodding things turn up.

"Not another Horrid Henry!"

The rules of the game

As if it's not bad enough that we leave our vacancies for years to mature before advertising them we've now got a block on recruitment imposed by Human Resources. The cause is a complaint by a serial applicant.

"I sent in exactly the same application as the previous twelve times. I got an interview each time but this time I was told that I was unsuccessful. I was told that I had not addressed the job specification."

And so he had. Each time, he stuck a photocopy of his original application to his form and wrote: "see attached." Unfortunately, this time he didn't notice that the job specification had been rewritten to reflect recent changes in the service.

A lesson for us all: always read the instructions.

Co-operation

I mentioned yesterday's story to colleagues in the staff room.

They suggest that we should offer them our booksale books. If they ask nicely we could leave the date labels and barcodes in for them.

One day, five and twenty convicts...

There's a problem with the visitor counter and it's decided it's my problem.

"It's stuck. It won't move past '21'"

I have a look at the counter. It says 5221. I do my quick impression of the Trooping of the Colour and yes, it still says 21: 8221.

I take it off the wall and put it back on the right way up: 1228

From our own correspondent

A reader writes:

Our 3rd largest branch library recently moved to a temporary location while the original building was refurbished, lift out in and generally DDAed. The temporary location is smaller thus they couldn’t fit all the stock on the shelves, so in highly scientific fashion whichever box they unpacked first went on the shelves, none of this we need some 641s as they get borrowed, if there were no 641s in the boxes they opened there were no 641s put on the shelves.

"What do we do with the stuff which we haven’t room for?" They inevitably asked.

I advised that they transfer them to one of our redundant locations so it wouldn’t show on the catalogue, and then store it somewhere.

This apparently involved too much effort, so they decided without consultation with anyone that they would distribute it around other branches in the group AND withdraw stock to make room for it.

The slight flaw in this solution seems to have escaped them, as now it is coming time to move back they have realised they haven’t enough stock to fill the shelves, that they can’t empty the shelves of the branches they sent the stuff to as the items they unnecessarily withdrew aren’t available to go back, and they haven’t a cue what the stock gaps are, the ones they caused by being so unscientific about what they unpacked in the first place.

Apparently, and this is the best bit, they have now decided it is someone else’s problem to sort.

Gone! Gone! And never called me mother!

I've only just noticed...

Some bugger's been away with The World' Biggest Whiteboard!!!

What will we hide behind the big metal cupboards now?

Where shadowy crowds will watch the strife,And cheer the deeds of wonder

There are occasional advantages to "not really being part of the Library Service." Not being involved in meetings like this, for one...

Mary had collected together her lieutenants - Bronwyn, Maybelle, Nancy and Frog - to review workloads and projects for the next couple of weeks. Starting off with a quick review of what they're doing at the moment:

• Bronwyn - umpteen reading activities, four author visits, getting five trolleyloads of donations onto the catalogue and distributed, and giving Frog and the Acq. Team a hand with the latest batch Book Off books (a doddle this week, just the thirty boxes), and helping Maybelle with a couple of family literacy events with the local Asian community.
• Maybelle - the above-mentioned family literacy events, a couple of presentations and membership recruitment sessions to families of asylum seekers, a stock-edit of the Portuguese books in the outreach collection, and giving Frog a hand with the materials for a poetry event at Dutch Bend.
• Frog - the summer reading game, the summer holiday events and activities programme, BookStart, SureStart, Book Off, Book You, Booking Hell, et al.
• Nancy - "nowt really."

This was the day after Mary sprung the Sheep City poetry day on Frog. He brought along the mock-up of the activities he planned on delivering, including drafts of the material he was going to use with the children.

Mary could scarcely contain her indifference.

Maybelle, who usually presents as being very laid-back and easy-going (she isn't, but she presents as such very convincingly) was bouncing off the walls afterwards. It's difficult to know if she's the more pissed off with Mary or nancy.

But for an hour to watch them play,Those heroes dead and gone

Over the past week I've visited every library in the Borough with Milton. We're scoping out a couple of fairly big projects which I'm not looking forward to but should do a lot of good. It's been depressing but instructive.

The good news is that we still have very committed staff out there in the branch libraries. Absolutely shattered, but committed. Only one branch library was less busy than the main libraries, and we arrived there at the end of a very long day. Kids were drawing, reading, writing, talking, making things and having their faces painted. Grown-ups were reading, writing, talking, using the computers, helping the kids, helping the staff. And the staff were running round like blue-arsed flies making sure that everyone was being looked after and trying to provide as good a service as you can when you're out-numbered by customers twenty-to-one.

Which makes me wonder how on earth we would have coped had we not a main library and a full-time branch library closed for building works.

One of the Branch Managers mentioned, in passing, that this summer's holiday activities are a bit on the thin side. I pointed out that there are good reasons for this:

• Frog's working alone, with the same budget as in 1993 when six people were involved in the planning and delivery of the summer holiday programme.
• There weren't any planning meetings this year because Julia didn't see why two of the Assitant Librarians from her side of the borough were involved but none from Doreen's side of the borough. Julia has five Assistant Librarians. Doreen has one Assistant Librarian, another on Maternity, a vacancy and a vacant post that has been axed to save a bit of money.
• When Frog asked Doreen and Julia to make sure that staff would be available to support activities. He was told: "don't assume that staff will be available."
• Mary's signed us up to six or seven Reading Agency programmes (we're not sure which, they're a blur) which involve our getting something like eleven thousand books for kids all at once, to be distributed in set ways in set blocks and with stickies and stuff.
• And since T.Aldous and Mary let the funding for the BookStart project manager lapse all the administration and distribution work of getting umpteen hundred BookStart Treasure Boxes out to the deserving public has gone his way. But there's no administrative work involved in BookStart, oh no...
• And then there's the project T.Aldous accidentally signed us up for to encourage young men to read books...
• And Sheep City's summer holiday events brochure includes Frog's doing a day-long poetry workshop, which came as a shock because they forgot to ask him to do it.

Cattermole Street Library came as a hell of a shock.

Normally it looks the very picture of a cheerful disorganisation of activity. The other day it looked like a place under siege. Everything: trollies full of returned books, dump bins, boxes of new stock, craft materials for kids and Team Read materiel, was pulled together at the counter like a motte-and-bailey castle. The end of a long day of holiday activities, reading groups and workaday stuff in a busy, single-staffed library. Lily, the Branch Manager, gamely waves a white hankie and asks for fainites.

Milton's almost as shocked as me and resolves to have a quiet word with somebody about giving Lily a hand some time.

He'll probably be told "not to assume that staff are available."

Our cracks, perhaps, may join the ghosts

The council's Clerk of Works has handed Epiphany Library back to the Library Service. T.Aldous and Seth are not keen...

For some reason, when the contractors relaid the concrete floor they left a one-foot square rough patch.

"It was there before we came,"

the Clerk of Works tells T.Aldous. What he doesn't say is that there was also umpteen hundred square feet of rotted, sandy concrete but they covered that over.

Equally inexplicitly, the building's handed over without having had the gas meter installed. Doreen and Thelma were on site all Monday to wait for the gas man, taking the opportunity to start tidying things up a bit. The gas man duly arrived.

And went.

He'd forgotten to bring the gas meter.

Back on Tuesday ("some time between 8am and 6pm," as we all know and love). Seth's turn to hang about. The Clerk of Works popped in his head through the door (to check out the concrete footings which already look a bit iffy)(and to ignore the paint spillages in the entrance to the library).

"Can I borrow your mobile?" he asks.

"What for?"

"So's I can ring the gas man to let me know when he's coming. I'm just working up the road."

"Why aren't you waiting here for him then?"

"I've got work to do."

"So have I, mate."

"That's your job mate."

Imagine Seth's delight a couple of hours later when he noticed the Clerk of Works and the gas man, parked up in their vans in the car park, talking to each other on their mobiles. He suggested that they might want to get the job done and dusted.

Looking good so far.

Some freaks are burning crosses on my front lawn

These days I'm disliking work so much that I'm coming in as late as possible. The fact that this allows me to go for the sequence of train connections that give me the quickest commuting journey with the space and time to pick up copies of three free newspapers and a cup of coffee and a croissant from the nice Polish girls in the station forecourt is neither here nor there. Even so, I'm still working over my alloted hours (not including work done at home).

Unfortunately, this does mean that Betty and Noreen end up taking the occasional peculiar 'phone call from our occasional peculiar librarians. The council's increasingly flaky internet connection fell over earlier than usual this morning, leading to this conversation between Noreen and Lettie at Dutch Bend:

"Is Kevin in?"

"He'll be in in about ten minutes. Do you want me to take a message?"

"I was on the internet when I clicked a link and the screen said I wasn't allowed to access this web site because it was deemed unsuitable by the IT Section. So I tried going back and I got the same message. Who are these people to say that I'm not allowed on the internet."

"Oh dear. I know this one. It's what usually happens when the internet connection goes down at lunchtime."

"But it says I'm not allowed on the internet."

"Do you want me to take a message and get Kevin to get back to you?"

"Why have they banned me from using the internet?"

"The connection's gone down. I could get Kevin to report it to the help desk if you want."

"Can't I report it to the help desk."

"If you want. Or, you could wait ten minutes and have Kevin do it for you."

"Are you telling me I can't report it to the help desk myself?"

"No. I'm just saying that if you don't want to, you can wait ten minutes and talk to Kevin about it."

"So I am able to report it to the help desk."

"If you want to."

"Well, what should I do then?"

"Perhaps you want to report it to the help desk."

"Are you saying I'm allowed to do that?"

"If that's what you decide you want to do..."

It amuses me to hear librarians moaning that they're not allowed to take authority and make decisions.

Japanese fighting tortoises

Poor old Henry Irving buzzes in for a quick visit to pick up some stuff for an event they're having at Sheep City. He's particularly frazzled after having spent all morning in a Recreation & Culture Trust Management Team meeting (they seem to have stopped being SPLAT, I seem to have missed that one).

"My God. Given the choice between spending a day talking management bullshit with librarians and ten minutes with people from the sports centres, I'd take the librarians every time. Utter, utter shite. They keep banging on about addressing the needs of the customers and being customer-oriented and all that bullshit, all the time making damned sure that they don't go anywhere near anyone or anything actually providing a service to the poor bloody public. What a bunch of tossers!"

"Are they doing the numbers?"

"I'll say. And they've half an eye on getting the council to move the Library Service into the Trust."

"We weren't good enough for them before. I dare say we're good enough now that the golf club's made yet another big hole in the budget. I am right in thinking that the golf club's in the red again?"

"I couldn't possibly comment."

"It was the pavillion last year. An 'accounting anomaly' the year before. What's this year's?"

"I could't possibly comment."

"I'll bet it's half a million."

"I'll have to go now. Have fun."

That's all we need: getting manœuvered into becoming the financial milch-cows for the council's crappy leisure services again, just when we're finally recovered from years of that nonsense.

Keeping an elephant under his tarpaulin

Bad enough that the lift lobbies have been looking like minor adjuncts of Kew for the past half year. Now we find that we can't get into the First Aid Room to go and have a lie down in the sink because it's full of large pot plants, rescued at the nick of time from the old Roadkill Library site.

They've survived months of neglect only to end their lives in darkness.

Round and round the same old ground

Late yesterday afternoon, Mary collared me by the photocopier.

"What time are you going home? I need to talk to you about the DVDs."

I confess I laughed.

The Library Pig

We got talking about rationing, Dig For Victory and the like the other day at work, like you do when you've got photos of John Mills and Field Marshall Montgomery on your staff noticeboard. Someone wondered how we'd fare. We decided that we wouldn't prosper.

Take, for instance, the example of a community pig being fed scraps for to be fattened up for slaughter...

"The poor bugger wouldn't last a week. It would starve to death before our managers decided what type of swill we would buy."

"Then we'd have to send it back because it was the wrong side of brown."

"Yeah, like we'd be that organised."

"How do you mean?"

"What would really happen is that we'd be going about our business when somebody'd come along and say: 'Drop everything and rush through an urgent order for a pig. The slaughterman's waiting outside."

Rôle models

Thursday's children's library event at Umpty Library was a visit by "Harry and his Box of Spiders." We put posters up advertising "Harry and his Box of Spiders." And sure enough, parents and carers brought their children in to see "Harry and his Box of Spiders." The kids loved it. What marred things a bit was when Harry took some of the spiders out of his box and some of the grown-ups literally ran screaming from the room.

They must have thought they were going to see some boxes. Perhaps from a place called Spiders.

Frog was asked to investigate the health and safety risks involved in the incident.

"Round objects,"

was the stern reply.

Are you sitting comfortably?

Let's make a start with the catching up...

I've been thinking about Ken Barmy's saying that he still wants to change the world. I see his point about changing the world. I mentioned this to my counsellor the other day and she asked me if I wasn't just setting myself impossible goals. I heard myself reply:

"There isn't a lot in this world that really is impossible, if you think about it."

Which is true enough. Think about it: people are turning water into wine every day of the week; they're using vines and vats and time to make the miracle but the miracle they make. And we all of us change the world, all the time, for good or bad. It's all a matter of scale and time and expectation.

I can change the world, and I can change the Library Service. I'm just going about it the wrong way. I've come to the conclusion that I can't do it by being 'nice,' though I'd hope I wouldn't stoop to some of the nonsense that goes on.

In the midst of my mulling this over, Jim took me to one side.

"I've news for you..."

"Oh yes?"

"I've got another job. I've just put in my notice."

"Oh fuck."

"Funnily enough, that's what Milton said."

"Have you told T.Aldous."

"Funnily enough he helped me with the application form."

We'll have to have a sweepstakes on when, if ever, his job gets advertised. There's a whole future ahead of us; we could do with disinterring the world's biggest whiteboard to do the honours.

Apology

I know I've been quiet the past few days, apologies to those of you waiting for me to moderate your comments. It's been an interesting week and to be honest by the time I've got home, had the aspirins and camomile tea and climbed back down from the ceiling I really, really haven't had the heart to upgrade my anti-virus software, which ran out on Wednesday. Anyway, I've done the deed and I'm back, but knackered. I was doing OK right up until the fourth installation reboot when I was completely stumped by the requirement to represent the square root of minus one in base seven (the answer's 2√Rumplestiltskin).

There's a hell of a lot to be catching up with over the weekend...

Have fun yourselves.