Madame Rowley's Toilet Mask

A recent comment by Lavinia reminded me of something that happened here about six years ago. After thirty years of trying we'd finally been given the OK to close Tarpaulin Grove Library. No great loss: its monthly visitor count was just under the weekly count at Umpty, which wasn't exactly setting the world alight any at the time. Add to that the leaky roof, the drug den next door and a sudden five-figure cut in the staffing budget and the place was on the critical list. What finally did for it was the local councillor's becoming the leader of the opposition. The party in charge at the time saw their chance and ordered the library closed. Just like Helminthdale: the right result for all the very wrong reasons.

Clearing out the library was interesting. Not least because we found four gross of toilet rolls in the back work room.

It turned out that early in the nineties library staff were told that they would have to indent for toilet rolls for their libraries and that usage and supply were both being monitored for to save money. (Not that they actually needed to save any more money at the time but the Chief Librarian of the time came from Yorkshire and was regarded as tight-fisted even by the natives of that area.) The branch manager had indented for four toilet rolls and, after three days' worth of interrogation by telephone the order was duly permitted. Unfortunately, somebody slipped up and ordered four gross instead of four rolls.

Luckily, only use and supply were being monitored by the Chief Librarian, not expenditure, so all concerned decided that the wisest course of events was to pretend that four rolls were ordered and four were received. The rest was archaeology.