Where once I used to spread joie de vie, Brando spreads butter in Gay Paris

There is no polite way of saying this: Catty Library has got on our tits.

I keep thinking it's me being prickly because of the time of year and general beastliness but the consensus is to agree with me. The problem is that there's no single big issue with which to lock horns with them, just a very large number of stupid, petty niggly things.

• Like them sending back duplicate copies of best-selling titles...
• Or ringing other libraries up to check that they're running their notification reports...
• Or spending a week comparing passwords so that they could complain that the young staff have the same permissions as the older...
• Or sending all the stock to be swapped between the libraries in their area over here to be dealt with because they can't be arsed themselves...
• Or...

I must stop it. I thought I had a grip on it until this afternoon's meeting...

Every summer the Borough hosts a festival of world cultures, which is a big shindig involving music, cookery events and a party, this year to be held at the old Town Hall in Catty. This is just across the road from the library so it makes sense to arrange a couple of events in the library to tie in with the festival. It also makes sense to have a display at the party and to invite people to use the library as an overspill area (keeping an eye on the visitor figures as much as the community involvement). So that's what we're going to do: the "we" almost certainly being Bronwyn, Maybelle and Frog, with input from Nancy and me providing some moral support. Staff from Catty Library might even lend a hand.

So we're bouncing round ideas with Mary to come up with an outline programme of activities. In any other library in this situation we'd be talking about poetry workshops, drumming sessions, world music promotions, that sort of thing. We're talking about Catty Library so we're pussyfooting round trying to think up ideas suitable for a site that has an aggressively 1950s library mindset. So we're talking about perhaps doing a storytime; perhaps putting up a display of books about the Commonwealth...

Noreen interrupts to tell Bronwyn that there's a call for her from Catty Library, insistent on talking to Bronwyn. So she nips out to take the call. On her return she is unnaturally pale and taut.

"Fuck 'em," she says, "let's give them a drumming session. And lots of kids singing and dancing. And lots and lots of curry."

We didn't even bother to ask about the 'phone call.