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.

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.

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."

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.

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."

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."

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...

Shoals of placid middle-aged men dabbing it behind their ears

Frog's back from a meeting about the council's new youth offer.

"What was it like?" I ask him.

"I was the youngest one there," he said, picking at his mustard plaster.

A slight problem there as the cat's got a bit of a tummy problem

News reaches me of a useful and productive sequence of meetings to make a bit of progress with a few family history projects. Wendy, who has been the Reference & Local History Librarian at Umpty Library since Noah was a lad, spent a whole meeting telling Henry that she doesn't know anything about family history.

The following day she then spent a whole meeting telling Daisy and Bella that they couldn't possibly deliver the family history online sessions they've been assigned to do without the supervision of A Professional.

Corvids

Frog's been doing the story time for a school class visit at Epiphany Library. He's been telling them the story of The Fox And The Crow.

Unfortunately, the children of Epiphany are not entirely in tune with nature. And in the local dialect, "a crow" is a particularly crusty bogie. Hence all the cries and groans of "uurgh!" from the audience.

This has got us thinking. Frog's decided that for one of his next puppet workshops he's going to show the kiddies how to make Billie The Bogie. We reckon it would be easy enough to make:

• Turn small green Marks & Sparks carrier bag inside out.
• Smear liberally with glycerine.
• Stick up nose.

We reckon it's a winner.

It makes you wonder what the enemy clothes horses were like

I bump into Ken Barmy, who is throwing pineapples at a lamppost in Market Street. He is in a bate.

"You'll never believe the latest proposal," he says.

Given that everyone I'm speaking to these days have either been sent letters asking if they want to take voluntary redundancy; letters telling them that they are at risk of redundancy; letters telling them that they are being made redundant; or all of the above, I shudder to think.

"We're going to Hell in a handcart. They're cutting staff and services and threatening to sell us down the river to a bad master. And all the while our library managers having been wringing their hands and telling us that nothing can be done, but take heart! because they have made sure that the power of the library service strategy stays in their hands.

"And do you know what the end product of a year's high-powered heavy-breathing strategic thinking turns out to be? Do you?"

I confessed I didn't.

"They're going to slap a lick of paint on the fucking wall and change the fucking name of the main fucking library. That's what."

"You don't sound impressed, Ken," I ventured.

"I am sore vexed," he admitted.

The public library service is safe in the hands of people who went to library school.

The rhapsody of the impending evening

'Phone call from the Lending Library. It's Lola.

"We've decided that the PCs in the foyer should be changed into 15-minute express kiosks. Can you come up and change them for us?"

It's five o'clock on the Friday afternoon of a very fraught week and they decide now's the time to start fiddling with the public access systems.

Only my consummate professionalism prevents the answer being: "fuck off and don't be so stupid."

All the best travelogues contain rickety foreign trains

The mobile library has been "urgently due for replacement" for longer than 17% of our customer base has been alive.

"The mobile's a proper advert for the council," says Billy. "It's a shit-tip and it's falling apart. In that case it does what it says on the tin."

Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and consciencious stupidity

Some people have spent the day at Internet Librarian International 2010 some people have.

I wish I could explain why I shall spend the rest of my life laughing at a coincidence.

Perhaps when I write my memoirs after I've been demobbed.

If the chocolate in the fountain tastes bitter it's because it's been laced with my tears

I've been tidying out some of the folders on my laptop. I look at the odd bits of workings-out; the reports and recommendations; the outline plans and sketches for things we could do and deliver and I feel an overwhelming sense of misuse of purpose.

Looking at the service development and achievements at work over the past five years I could have just as usefully spent my time sitting atop a Belisha beacon with a bottle of vodka in my hand, singing bawdy songs at passing policemen.

If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one

I've given more diplomatic answers...

Julia's just come back from a meeting of Librarians What Talk At Tables.

"Leamholt's got a really active Facebook page. Why aren't we engaging with social networking like that?" she asks me.

I hear myself say:

"Strictly speaking, you're not even engaging with the World Wide Web."

Braised fruit in trousers smoulder

A few people have asked about progress with last year's Transformational Exercise.

As, indeed, did we.

Commonwealth Senna Pod Day

The consensus of opinion in the office is that I am clutching at straws. I've spent the past few weeks trying to accentuate the positive and persuade people that they aren't necessarily doomed. Most of the time I can wear them down enough to pretend they've almost been persuaded but today they're not having any.

"Look at the advantages we've got over the rest of the council," I said.

"What advantages?" they asked.

"It's utter chaos out there. Nobody's got the first idea what the hell is going on and can't plan ahead from one day to the next."

"So?"

"That's how we've always worked. We're used to it. And what's more, we actually still manage to deliver services that the public like and appreciate and say nice things about in government surveys. While they're all wandering around all dazed and confused we could be nipping in there, nobbling the councillors."

A million miles from the Ovaltine

Going through the library I pass by Frog's Summer Stories Session. He's using one of those Nick Sharratt books that are split down the middle so that you can play mix and match with the pictures ("Exquisite Corpse" as the Dadaists would say).

"A bath full of custard!" he said. "Have you ever had a bath full of custard? How do you think it got there? Do you think it came through the taps? Cold custard through that one and hot custard through that one? Perhaps it's all cold custard - ewww! I bet that would clog up the plugs!"

I listened to this and looked at the faces of the children and wondered what the fuck we were doing making him sit in meetings listening to gobshites telling us how clever they are at engaging with the community.