This story shall the good man teach his son

Frog's working with local schools and playgroups on a project to provide children with positive role models. He's been doing a few story times in the hope of being a positive role model despite being, as he says, "a tired old git."

The staff demographic for the Library Service is disproportionately female and the demographic for "The Professionals" is overwhelmingly ladies-of-a-certain-age.

Over the past year Frog's been working with the Assistant Librarians to train Library Assistants ("non-professionals" in the public library sector jargon)(no comment at this moment in time) so that they can be coerced into doing provide story times in the branch libraries, freeing the Assistant Librarians up to do other things.

Frog suggested that seeing as how Elmo's had the training and is interested in doing something with it he could be involved in the male role model project. No can do, said Doreen, the staffing situation's not good. Now that the staffing situation is slightly less bad he suggested it again. This time he was told that Elmo didn't have enough experience to do it. Frog pointed out that he wouldn't get the experience without getting the experience, to no avail.

In response to some strangely intemperate language, Mary and Doreen collared him by the photocopier.

"Why can't one of the Assistant Librarians do this?"

"They're all female."

"So why does it have to be you or Elmo? All the Assistant Librarians can do storytimes, so there's no need for you or him to get involved."

"This is about male role models. They can't do it."

"Well, I can't see why not."

"None of them are equipped for the job."

"You're just being difficult."

I thought he was very good. I'd have been drawing diagrams by that point.