The year in pieces

I'm not re-animating this blog. This is a coda or end-piece, or codpiece if you will, to explain why I feel that we have come to a close.

The world of Helminthdale Libraries is become a darker, more savage one than the one I had been chronicling. To be sure, there was always that cruel feral streak of the girls' playground about the place and there were always too many smiling assassins but things have grown appreciably worse as Call Me Dave's austerity measures have hit what was already a basket case of a local economy.

I was having a drink at Bronwyn's leaving do — the latest of many and only the last of this year's — and it was depressing to realise looking around that nearly all the people in the room were historical footnotes, at best, as far as the Library Service was concerned. Including myself.

And the real bloodbath has hardly started: next year, although no libraries are closing there'll be a major cull of front-line staff, books and other resources. Caretaking is already a thing of the past so God alone knows how the buildings will be staying open, what with hardly anyone to staff them and roofs held on with sticky-backed plastic.

For all his many and various faults it's hard to escape the nagging confirmation that the idiot T.Aldous presided over a Golden Age. Sadly, so much of the managed change that could have eased the pain of the new horrors, or even forestalled some of them, were blocked as efficiently and ruthlessly as were all the other grim realities of the new millennium.

But that's all history now.

I can't really bring myself to write about what's happening here. I'd feel like a hospital orderly describing the last days of a dying vagrant. And I'm not up for that.

It's been a great ride and it's given me the opportunity to chat with some lovely people. May Providence look after you. Thank you and goodnight.

I think I'll go home now.

Forever is composed of now

Yet another meeting where librarians tell me that they're too busy to put information on the web.

"It's easier if more than one of you are doing the job," I explain again, "that way you can divvy it up into more manageable workloads."

"But how will we know who's doing which bit?"

"if that's a problem you could always divide the work up thematically."

"That won't do: some themes overlap and some won't fit into the themes."

"Is it really that much of a problem?" I ask.

"The problem is that we won't know if somebody else has already done the job."

And there, ladies and gentlemen, is as clear a statement as to how we got up shit creek as you are likely to read.

I've got me tickling tackle and me nicky nacky noo

Dennis is working with us on a six-month work placement at Umpty Library. Any ideas he may have entertained about libraries being sedate, genteel places have been shot to bits by some of the customers.

"Donny!" shouts Mrs. Tumbleweed, "I'm trying to remember the name of that book I had the other week. I can't remember what it were called but it were about a lass as was taken up the jacksy by a sheikh. It were a Mills and Boon. I have to have them in the large print these days."

Ever notice that 'what the hell' is always the right decision

A sign of the times: Maisie, who is one of the gentlest of creatures, has been on the warpath this week because Jack Harry and Milton did some clever last-minute ordering and then made themselves scarce when the time came to authorise the payments. I take a 'phone call from her:

"Are they in?" she asks.

"No," I reply, "can I help?"

"No, it's about that frigging, frigging, frigging, frigging, frigging invoice."

Hang out the aspidistras

Mooching round the "all you can eat for a fiver" section of Hannigan's Truss Boutique, I bump into Ken Barmy. His council is very excited because they are to have a pre-nuptial visit from The Royal Couple. Their library overlooks the processionsary parade and they've spent the day being vetted by The Riot Police Of Hearts (P.C. Neddy Strangelove and a team of dog handlers, most of whom have been remanded pending medical reports).

"The Mayor and Corporation will be presenting the happy couple with three pounds' worth of Ann Summers vouchers," he tells me.

They're a couple of months too late in the efficiencies process to be awarded the freedom of the city's public lavatories.

His own white leather toilet seat

It wouldn't be March without a few dozen new chairs in the fire escape corridor...

Today's special: monkeyhands and chips

"Calling all librarians! Augmented reality app could save librarians hours," says the link.

Given some our librarIans' shall we say tenuous links to reality I think augmentation may be a step too far.

Chalet rash

I take a phone call for Milton.

"Sorry, he's on leave this week," I explain.

"That bloke has more holidays than Thomas Cook," mutters the caller who's been trying to talk to him for the past month.

Brutish summer time

They've put the clocks forward in Helminthdale. We're all very worried about That Hitler.

Enjoy yourself, it's later than you think

Ooh, there'll be some heads in Helminthdale this morning...

Yesterday evening we repaired to The Monkey's for Julia's leaving do. And very convivial it was, too. If, as threatened, she ever sets herself up on Facebook there'll be some explaining to do about the photographs.

Ours was not the only leaving do: most of the Engineers' Department was saying its farewells in the billiard room; the benefits advice team in the snug; the business advice team in the dining room; and the adult careers service on the main public bar.

Given the state of the borough before the cuts efficiencies, I can't say that any of this makes me optimistic for the future.

Nothing worse could happen to one than to be completely understood

These are difficult times and there are days when any of us can be a bit high-maintenance. It's Posy's turn all this week and she's going for it in a big way.

To be fair, she ended up being the one having to have the meeting with the bollock who wants us to give him a pile of money to "repurpose the reading library journey."

Vernalities

You can always tell the approach of the end of the financial year as all the managers disappear like the last of winter's bramblings.

Consequently, there's nobody around to countersign any of the invoice slips for the as-per-bloody-usual last-minute spendings. And nobody to authorise the orders in the first place.

The good news is that this means that the year end process is a doddle because they say so and have never seen any proof to the contrary.

And to be fair, it mostly is. Because they're not involved.

Spirit messages

I get a 'phone call from Milkbeck Library:

"I'm calling on behalf of the volunteer who's doing the family history session. He can't get any of the People's Network PCs to log onto the network."

Two points here: the person ringing was the member of staff responsible for that day's running of the library, including providing access to the Internet for the public; and it's their job to have logged those PCs on at start of play,

Sigh...

Infinite similarity

I really am sick and tired of this fucking place.

Consecrating an armadillo for St. Swithin's Day

Receive an email with the latest corporate exhortation to man the galleys for the glory of the nation.

"For fuck's sake, do they think I've nothing better to do?" I explode.

It turns out that on reflection no, I don't.

Trips around the lighthouse

It's going to be an interesting week. Julia's demob happy as it's her last working week before taking the remainder of her annual leave then early retirement. Her resentment at feeling that she was not wanted on voyage is more than tempered by the relief she's feeling now she's had sight of the iceberg.

Most of the rest of the nonsense is ladies sharpening their elbows.

The hand of the world is wounded by its own skill

The council's email servers are struggling because of overcapacity. Which is to say that they're full.

It probably doesn't help that librarians will insist on sending out 15Mb of high-definition photos that they've already put in the library folder on the intranet to 54 colleagues within the library service.

Or that half those colleagues don't check their email...

Hope is a waking dream

"Council leaders to be axed!" cries the Catty Examiner.

Sadly, it turns out that a few of them are taking early retirement.

Four seasons in The Sound of Music

Nancy Clutterbuck is a lady "of an age" who has worked at Umpty Library for longer than a gentleman should tell.

Today she's covering at Gypsy Lane Library with Gracie. Nancy turned up five minutes before overture and beginners in a state of deshabille and with her hair in that style so beloved by haystacks. Especially with the straw in her hair.

Gracie sized up the situation, dug a clean t-shirt out of her car and tidied Nancy up.

"For God's sake, Nancy, will you look at the fucking state of you!"

"A lady can't help it if she is to be pleasured in the morning," replied Nancy.

Time-share sandcastles

There's no money about so there are plans afoot to knock down the west wing of The Edie Grimshaw Memorial Market Hall (don't get excited: it's two stalls selling tubular bandages and a greengrocer's) and the car park so as to open up the culverted area and retrieve the local reaches of The Majestic River Helminth back into its pristine sunlit glory. The old bridges are to be restored so that the main roads can cross this babbling brook and passing gentry can spend their time counting the trout a-frolicking amongst the shopping trolleys.

This news has caused celebration in one part of the Engineers' Department at least. Staveley Fleetwood's the only person who can remember where the old bridges are, so he reckons his job's safe for a few months at least.

Wouldn't it be nice to sabotage a hotpot supper

You know how there's always someone worse off than yourself? Well, like as not they work for Benchmark Library Service.

They've spent the past ten years in perpetual reorganisation and penury (not necessarily in that order). The first thing that went was the Chief Librarian, which God knows isn't always a bad thing. Since then various combinations of poor devils have tried to keep the wheels on the tricycle (a handcart being beyond their means), in between cut-backs and culls of anybody who may want anything above the minimum wage.

I notice they're advertising the Chief Librarian's post this week. To oversee the latest round of reorganisations and efficiencies and Call-Me-Dave's Big Society.

Interesting to see that we've not entirely abandoned human sacrifice.

The Heft Of Cathedral Tunes

Talking of singing, I forgot to mention the new community singing sessions at Catty Library every Monday afternoon.

The more forward-thinking of our staff have suggested that they should start practicing for a performance of "Nearer My God," to be sung as the library slides under it's own weight into the local river.

Look mum, it's the singing gynaecologist!

News from Catty Library's staff meeting.

Julia had gone through the corporate briefing and news of the latest round of savage cuts minor efficiencies that do not affect front-line services and asked for any other business.

"There's the issue of access to the safe key during the lunch hour," says Agnes.

"Why would you want the safe key at lunchtime?" asks Julia. "Cashing up's done at the end of the day."

"We might need it," insisted Agnes.

"What for?" asked Julia.

"Well, what happens if an armed robber comes into the library and demands to get into the safe?"

Julia, to her immense credit, kept her composure.

"If any armed robbers come into the library you might want to not tell them about the safe," she says, quietly.

So that's why you're wearing that rah rah skirt

Today is International Hug A Librarian Day.

There's never a lump hammer around when you really need one.

Suspended animation

Bad news: the lift's stuck with someone in it.

Good news: Seth knows how to bring the lift down manually.

Bad news: it's Seth who's stuck in the lift.

A few words from a graduate from the Rank Charm School

We're not allowed to fill vacancies at the moment, in case the jobs need to be needlessly destroyed in response to a doctrinaire hatred of public services displaced as part of the efficiencies. But we still need to keep the doors open so we're using people from an employment agency. Unfortunately, this means that we're starting to employ women below the age of fifty at Umpty Library.

A customer greets a new, young, face at the counter:

"Hello love, I've not seen you before, are you new here?"

Bunty leans over and says:

"Don't get used to her. She's a temp."

I've seen some of the lads there sobbing their hearts out, at least that's what I think they were doing

Sally walks into the staff room at Umpty Library. She sniffs and is not impressed.

"My God! This place smells of boy!"

Pavarotti's ferret

I'm definitely due some holiday...

• Three 'phone calls about paper jams in the lending library printer.
• A 'phone call about a print job that wasn't being printed (because of one of the paper jams)
• A 'phone call asking what is meant when a book is marked "unavailable" on the catalogue
• A 'phone call asking why a lost book isn't available for to fill requests
• A 'phone call to say that there'd been a mistake typing in a borrower's name and address and what was I going to do about it
• A 'phone call asking what Milton was doing about a project I hadn't previously heard about

I want to shout: "for God's sake, get a grip!" but seeing as how half the staff has its hands around the throat of the other half...

Valentino lives!!!

You can always tell it's the third week in February: all the books about sexually-transmitted diseases are flying off the shelves.

Pale hands I loved behind the chalet, ma

The usual end-of-Friday missive or epistle from His Esteemed Excellency And Chief Executive J.Arthur Blenkenstein, detailing this week's efforts to undermine staff morale, cut public services and generally spread joy throughout the land, lands in my Outlook inbox at the same time as Microsoft's press release informing me of: "The technical beauty of Internet Explorer 9."

Strychnine on the rocks for me.

Akimbo

There are some nasty bugs going round. Half the staff are off with norovirus, some of the others are off with a debilitating virus. Hildie's just back in after a fortnight's illness.

"I was in bed bored shitless with my legs in the air," she moans.

"Is that how you caught the virus?" asks Sammi.

I'll have a P please, Bob

Today's word is Logorrhoea. Logorrhoea.

Milton has just spent 82 minutes of a meeting saying: "I'm not bovvered."

Going down with all hands

The bad news is that Carbootsale Swimming Baths is to close due to council efficiencies.

The good news is that the community room at Catty Library is the length of an Olympic size swimming pool.

We just need to move the photocopier from the shallow end.

You'll have someone's eye out with that

Every so often we worry about the physical state of some of the books we loan out to the public. It's not our fault this time, it's a book we've borrowed off Borsetshire Libraries via the regional loan service. It's a bit stained, battered round the edges and the pages are falling out. It also happens to be the only copy available for loan anywhere in the country and is well-used even today, with a waiting list as long as your arm.

The waiting list isn't the only thing about the book that is as long as your arm. As we find out by casually letting the book open at random. A shocked perusal by people old enough to know better confirms that it is, for all intents and purposes, fairly hard core gay porn.

"Who on earth requested this?" I asked Sybil.

"One of the old dears on the housebound library run," she replies.

Silly question, really.

Smells like teen spirit

This is wrong on so many levels…

Some of us have our sexual magnetism wave the white flag and give up at an early age. Not Mr. Tallyhassen, one of the regulars at Umpty Library. Evidently he still has it, even at the age of 74 judging by the conversation I've just overheard.

"I've just been helping Mr. Tallyhassen with his email."

"Ooh… Mr. Tallyhassen. Have you smelled him?"

"Oh yes. I leant over to point at the screen and it was all I could do not to go all funny at the knees."

"I know what you mean. Lovely."

Tearing away the false tinsel to reveal the real tinsel underneath

There's scaffolding up all over Helminthdale town centre and the place is being tarted up.

Apparently.

The old, blank wooden boards that cover the windows of the shops and pubs of the area have all been replaced by new, shiny wooden boards with ginormous photos on them to make them look lived in and prosperous.

Thus it is that to the passer-by on the Penkridge Road omnibus the old Earl of Derby's Post House has been transformed, apparently, into a spacious up-to-the-minute computer training suite.

Kitted out with 28b PCs running Windows 3.1.

(If you have to ask the question you can probably guess the answer.)

Just a minute

Consternation at Catty Library: Dulcie's on leave so they can't have a staff meeting because she's the only one who's been on the minute-taking course...

Trying to ease their dyspepsia by swallowing a raincoat

We live in uncertain times, the twenty-first century is sniffing round our heels and Call-Me-Dave's Austerity Britain is biting us on the arse so I suppose it's understandable that I'm a bit tetchy.

I'm doing a workshop to try and persuade some of our librarians that the internet is an information and communications medium. In a few cases it's tough sledding. In the end, I crack:

"How many of you have mobile 'phones?"

All hands go up.

"How many of you take photos with your 'phone."

Most hands stay up.

"Who's on Facebook?"

Half the audience.

"Who buys stuff online?"

Most of the audience.

"How many of you have gone on a mobile 'phone course?"

None.

"A digital photography course?"

One of the people who doesn't use her 'phone for photography.

"A Facebook course?"

None.

"An e-commerce seminar?"

Of course not.

"Don't tell me you can't use digital technology without training then."

Ermine street

Lucy is having a fag break outside Catty Library when she notices something coming down the pavement.

It's a ferret.

It pauses to look at her and then scampers off in the direction of the post office.

The crew shot an albatross for luck

Jack Harry has asked Posy to put together some project proposals for some funding he'll decide we can't get anyway so he won't bother. Posy, being young and still almost enthusiastic at times despite everything, has put in a load of work to do the necessary.

"Here you are," she says as she hands the work over to Jack Harry. "But I'm sure I've forgotten something important."

"I shouldn't worry about it," says Jack Harry, "I probably won't read it anyway."

A chocolate-themed away day

It's an awful thing but the earworm I've had jingling round in my head this past week or so has been the old theme tune for Uncle Rubbish's Tiny Tots' Tea-Time Toy Time Time:

"It's time for tiny tots' toy time once again.

It's time for tiny tots' toy time once again, yes it is.

It's time for tiny tots' time,

It's toy time for tiny tots.

Yes, it's time for tiny tots' toy time once again, yes it is, oh baby."

Which is entirely unfair, probably, perhaps. But there have been times...

These are difficult and uncertain times and it should surprise nobody that nerves are frayed and tempers on edge and people are feeling threatened. It would be inhuman to expect any different. The problems arise from the ways that people deal with this.

I will offend some of my readership by suggesting that men and women tend to behave differently in these circumstances. Don't care: in my experience it's generally true, with the inevitable occasional exception to keep life interesting. Men, even the best of us (and God knows, I'm not!), go in for a lot of posturing. I've done it myself in my time: you think you're a rational civilised human being then one day you realise you're sitting in an office doing gorilla posturing. Go into any testosterone-fuelled office and you'll see a lot of unconscious yawning and people leaning back with their hands being their heads and armpits in full flourish. Blokes do lots of ritualised "I'm bigger, more virile and more masterful than I really am" nonsense, most of which is utter bollocks (literally and figuratively). Women under threat are generally (generally) quieter, subtler and more dangerous, the primary aim being to undermine, belittle and/or exclude "the competition" by whatever means. And sometimes those means can get pretty horrible.

The library service is mostly staffed by women. Most of the time this is a good thing: there's not a lot of macho idiocy getting in the way of business. Unfortunately when times get particularly bad, like now, we can find ourselves having to manage our way through some very unnecessary and unseemly unpleasantnesses.

It makes me tired: we don't have time for this sort of nonsense.

Mister Volta's dancing frogs

Milton's spent the morning wondering why Dutch Bend Library's electricity meter is his problem, in between finally getting through to the direct works department's emergency voicemail.

The good news is that the fuses that have blown only connect up all the public workstations and the communications box for the library so we can pretend that it's business as usual as far as the customers are concerned.

There's no W in "puerile"

Oh goodie. As if things aren't bad enough we now have class warfare erupting in Spadespit Library's sewing circle. "The wrong sort of people" are trying to join the group and it's upsetting the members.

Posy is asked to adjudicate, and best of luck to her. I suspect she'll be needing brandy and brown sugar by the time the week's over.

This is how Call Me Dave's Big Society will be running public services in the future.

I'll get me coat.

I never knew what Goering had against the chip shop

So where were we?

• We're having a clean-up to meet the fire regulations, so the fire escape corridor is full of bookshelves, boxes, fire buckets and bits of old wood.
• Bronwyn, the nearest we have to decorum, spent a morning stomping round the office muttering: "couldn't they make this fucking thing any more complicated?"
• Milton is going round the place doing a more than passable impersonation of me.
• Frog has spent a depressing couple of days mapping out which children's centres, Surestart centres, nurseries, playgroups and literacy groups are being chopped due to "efficiencies."
• Sybil is being required to write a "what I do in my work place" essay.

And so on. Business as usual really.

The part you have just before you wake up screaming

Sorry for the lack of posts this week. I appear to be having some issues with Blogger and that, together with being a little preoccupied with work and another small distraction, is causing this slight hiatus.

Abnormal service should resume shortly, I hope...

A Dracula moon was rising

Traipsing through Helminthdale town centre is never exactly inspiring. On a miserable cold and drizzly day it's positively dispiriting. While other people may note the meanderings of Winter by the arrival of snowdrops or the passage of wild geese in the night sky we note January's twilight by the digging up of the main road. It matters not the what or why, the tarmac gets unpeeled and the trenches are dug each year.

It is unpleasant, though. Walking through the town centre is rather like exploring the tattered remnants of some cold, damp, grey corpse. Perhaps of some primeval mollusc or some long-forgotten Chelonian.

Many a good tune played on a small foible

"I'm living the dream," says Sybil as she drags yet another bag of outgoing mail out of the office...

Vamping till not ready

My days in this library service are numbered. In some ways this is a relief - it's never been a good fit - but in many ways it is to be regretted: I've never been better-placed for getting the stuff done I've been trying to do this past decade.

The good news is that there is almost certainly a job for me "elsewhere in the organisation," at least until next Winter's round of cuts when who knows what may happen. I can't say that I'm entirely thrilled by the prospects but I guess a gig's a gig and all that.

He did the only thing a rational man could do in the circumstances: he got blind drunk and slept with a penguin

We live in interesting times. Here is the company song...

Sacre flippin' blue

More fun at Catty Library.

The building works which were designed to stop the front falling off has done the trick all right. So much so that the additional weight to the building is too much for the foundations in the cellar and the whole kit and caboodle is now starting to slide downhill.

An occasional hippo

One of the customers at Dutch Bend has a bit of a dress code incident this afternoon, catching the hem of her skirt in her coat as she took it off, giving the whole of the library a flash of her unclothed nethers.

One of the other customers mutters to his mate:

"I had a turkey butty ready for me dinner but I'm not hungry now."

A simple game made complicated by people who should know better

Jack Harry's at Umpty Library's staff meeting, talking through the long and winding road that is the corporation's latest indecisions. In amongst the talk of efficiency and J.Arthur Blenkenstein's sermons on the subject of "adopting a can-do attitude to challenging circumstances" is one shaft of good news. Thelma has been covering Salome's old job as a secondment, it has been decided to make this permanent (thus making Thelma's old job available as an "efficiency" but keeping her somewhere useful and within hailing distance of the national average wage).

"That's not fair," says Andi. "What if one of the Assistant Librarians in this part of the borough had wanted that job?"

"Then they'd have applied for the secondment," replied Jack Harry, simply.

Which saves us any embarrassing questions...

Not wanting to block a badger's passage

The things you hear in libraries...

Two young male customers shouting from opposite corners of the entrance way to Carbootsale Library:

"Where was you this morning?"

"I had to go to the clap clinic."

"What yer got?"

"She says it's that chlamydia thing."

Verity stands at the counter and tuts.

"If he's got it, he'll have passed it round half the estate by now."

A member of the Sealed Knot Society pitched into life-and-death struggle with a division of tanks

Kind friends have asked about the state of Helminthdale's libraries during the current unpleasantness. The truth of the matter is that by any objective measure the general lack of devastatingly bad news would be a good thing if we were not in the fantasy world of Helminthdale, where a lack of bad news generally means that it's being stacked up for the holiday season. The one cast-iron guaranteed for certain absolute truth available to us is that the council will not be closing any libraries.

The buildings that host some of our libraries are going to be closed, but that's another thing entirely...

They can find trouble on a wet afternoon

Yet another wet day, yet another flood at Catty Library. The Easy Reader Collection is devastated. Bronwyn tells Moira, the children's librarian there, that there's just enough money in the kitty to replace the stock so if she put together a shopping basket of titles the Acq. Team will get them ordered p.d.q.

"Oh, I'm far too busy for that," says Moira. "Can't you do it?"

Bronwyn's up to her gills in Winter Reading programmes, author visits, stock management and the new literacy strategy. Moira is responsible for the children's library at Catty. So of course, it's Bronwyn's job.

Frog takes great delight in pointing out that there are two boxes of Easy Reader books that had been returned by Catty Library because Moira was too busy to do the stock editing and didn't have any room for any new books.

The turtle's head speaks

Frog and Sybil are having one of "those" days.

Fired by the latest austerities and with more than half an eye on improving efficiency they have decided that staff: desk occupancy would be much improved by a modest investment in new furniture, replacing all our chairs with commodes.

"We'd have to replace the Bobbing Up And Down Team's motivational posters."

"Something like: 'Is your journey really necessary?'"

"Or..."

They tried to stop owls wearing duffle coats

(after Taylor and Lane)

Working all the day inside the library.

Trying hard to think of things we do.

And when the focus shifts to some folk

We've simply

No clue.

Some folk deal with customers and help them.

Some arrange for an event or two.

But some don't serve or plan or buy or somesuch,

So what do they do?

They'll walk around and round with just a pencil.

And they'll tell you

Just how busy

They have been.

But when you look around in their bit of the library

No evidence of work

Is ever seen.

Change is coming in, we can't avoid it.

Harsh winds of business sense are blowing through.

If they will pretend that

It's not happening

Then what will

They do?

How dare you ad-lib with genius!

There's a meeting of the departmental bigwigs in one of the Meeting Room Twos (did I tell you we've got three now?). It seems to be a bit busier than usual.

"There's a lot in today," I remark to Milton.

"They've heard you're in a good mood," he replies. "They've come to have a look. It's a one-in-a-lifetime tick in the twitcher's log book."