The bell started ringing to mourn for poor Bessie

Local councils all over the country are laying waste to front line services with swingeing cuts earnestly looking for efficiencies and Helminthdale should be no different. The fact that the last time good times rolled in Helminthdale was when the Prince of Wales was asking Victoria if she hadn't finished with that throne yet makes it a bit of a challenge.

So we are being Consulted For Ideas. This is, of course, part of the government's Big Idea for Big Society: we are all invited to suggest ideas for savings and then the government does what KPMG and Ernst & Young tell them to do. All frightfully democratic and that. [Pauses to wave flag, wipe eye with onion and shout "Ingerland!"]

Maisie's having a day off and Maudie's rushed off her feet servicing the Lyons Corner House that should be the upstairs reading room (the Education Department's Management Team have borrowed it for a meeting and somehow this requires Maudie to ply them with tea and biscuits ad lib.) I've been picking up a lot of their calls and it strikes me that there's a very simple saving we could and should be saving...

Nearly all the calls involve people asking me to leave messages for Maisie or Maudie to let them know that something's been done. The bloke's fixed the tiles on the roof at Windscape Library. The plumber's sucked his teeth at Catty Library. The van driver has delivered the box of stationery he delivers every Thursday to Umpty Library. These are all external telephone calls. All would have interrupted one or other of the girls while they were trying to concentrate on sorting out any one of a million problems that are created for them. And every single one of them would have been better done as an email for free to be dealt with as and when necessary.