Nothing much

We're a bit thin on warm bodies here today, it's like The Mary Celeste on a slack weekday and it's not a whole lot better topside. Come lunchtime there's just me and Maudie.

"Are you OK for me going and getting some lunch?" I ask her.

"Oh, bollocks to it. If the 'phones don't get answered they don't get answered and hard cheese. If they were that fussed they'd do something about it."

The time for gentility seems to have passed.

They're just about managing to provide enough lunchtime cover upstairs to keep the doors open by the creative use of odd bits of time owing and staff being willing to be rather a lot more flexible than the Library Service generally manages in recompense.

If we get any incidences of swine flu, morning sickness or lottery winnings we'll be completely screwed.

I'd bet a quarter of the public libraries across the country could say similarly and we've not even had the "savage public spending cuts" yet...