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.