Waits and measures

Mary's been told to come up with stock procurement costs so she's going about it in our usual way: including as much as possible that could make us under-perform in an over-zealous effort not to look as if we're fiddling the figures. So far the costs include:

• Acquisitions staff salaries, including those of the two posts that have been vacant for more than a year-and-a-half; and Jimmy Huddersfield's post which has been vacant for eight months;


• The cost of the furniture and equipment;


• The maintenance costs of the ordering software;


• Stationery costs;


• The cost of having librarians and other staff choosing books for stock.

So far so justifiable. The point at which I departed from the exercise was when she had Seth measuring the floor space used by the section. Why? So that she could work out how much of the service charge we pay the shopping centre to include in the costs: if it's x% of the library's floor area then it's x% of the service charge.

"Why not include a proportion of the Chief Executive's salary?" I asked.

There was some quibbling as to whether or not to include the floor area used by the half of the double-sided bookshelves holding the donations that need to be looked at by the non-existant Stock Librarian. The crowning glory came when she instructed Seth to measure half of the office I used to share with Jimmy. This involved him stretching a tape measure across the office umpteen times until Mary was finally convinced that they were measuring the correct area.

"In what way has this office been involved in stock procurement since Jimmy's retirement?" I asked.

By this stage I was getting truculent:

"You'll need to subtract half of the pathway through the section that I use for egress from my office," I pointed out.

"We don't need that sort of detail," replied Mary.

How many pies can a porpoise poise on purpose?

This was floated by me at close of play tonight...

Kevin,
I've been checking up on the targets for this autumn's satisfaction survey. T.Aldous has committed us to:

Found the book they wanted: 94%
Found the information they wanted: 93%
General satisfaction: 95%

Is this achievable?
Jim

I looked around at all the books that hadn't been catalogued yet because Jimmy Huddersfield went and retired after only giving three months' formal notice. And all the books in boxes waiting to be transferred to other libraries by the non-existant Stock Librarian. And the chaotic state of Helminthdale Central where the priority has had to be "try and keep the doors open with the staff left after taking into account vacancies; sickness due to stress; and covering vacant posts at branches." Then I think of the depth and range of the in-house staff training on enquiry and information work and the library assistants dumped on the reference library desk at a moment's notice to make up numbers. I do a quick Google search and have a look at the actual figures achieved by a dozen library authorities, including some that we're always told are red hot good. They average out:

Found the book they wanted: 77%
Found the information they wanted: 75%
General satisfaction: 94%

Do I think it's achievable? What do you think, chums?

One golden spoon of ten shekels

Last week, Daisy Duck asked T.Aldous if it was OK to buy some new teaspoons for the staff room out of petty cash.

"I've a better idea," said T.Aldous, "I can buy some from Connor's Hardware. They'll be cheaper and they have nice gilt edges."

This morning a small package arrived at Dutch Bend. Daisy opened the package: there were ten new cheap teaspoons. With nice gilt edges.

And a memorandum:

MEMORANDUM

From: Chief Librarian
To: Daisy Duck, Dutch Bend Library
Date: 10th May 2006
Subject: Teaspoons

---

Daisy,

These are the teaspoons I promised.

Please make sure that they are put on the library inventory.

T.Aldous

Sproink

Three times in the past fortnight Gypsy Cream Library's telephone has been out of order. Three times BT have come along and strung a new line between the library and the telegraph pole at the corner of the road. This time we get a solution to the mystery...

"Oi! What do you think you're doing?"

shouts a workman from the building site next door (they're putting up some neo-Georgian executive dovecotes)

"I've just cut that down!"

It turns out that the telephone line was in the way of one of their gantry trucks so they cut it down ad lib. Needless to say, the bills for the reconnection fees will be going to the builders, though we suspect that they are only subject to law west of the Pecos.

Ouch!

Advice to gentlemen readers of this blog: if you ever give a lady a willy made of seaside rock, don't hang around to watch her having a go at it with a toffee hammer!

The veneer's peeling off my dressing table

Reality bites... Day five of the "trying to get the OK to buy British Standards Online" game. None of us in the Library Service are allowed to sign licence agreements. I ring one of the most helpful people I know, who tries his best:

"As far as I know, Fiery Jack's the only person in the authority who's allowed to sign licence agreements. If you send it to him he'll deal with it... oh dear... it occurs to me that there's a complication. It might have to go to the IT Partnership [outsourced as of last month], someone spent a lot of last year transferring licences from the authority to the partnership. I'm afraid you're going to have to talk to them. I'm really sorry."

My heart sinks. I have a nasty feeling that this may end up involving Arthur Sixpence, in which case I'll need to buy a sleeping bag and an elephant gun.

Just like any other man except more so

Me and Frog have a day out in Blackpool for a meeting.

"It's alright for some!"

said the Library Assistants, so we promised to pick up some rock for them. A couple of blocks back from the library we were visiting we spotted a rock shop and popped in. Amidst all the usual suspects -- giant humbugs; rock dummies; and those big red lollies with the cat's face on them -- they had some rock willies. Exactly the thing!

Actually, to call them rock willies is to understate the intimidating dimensions of the things. I spent a few moments looking for toes, or at least fingers. Anyway, we bought them to take back to the library. Only after we had parted with our money did we spot that purchases were placed into clear polythene carrier bags.

Still, we got a bit of space on the train back home.

A smile, a song and a boa constrictor

For some reason, whenever something odd happens people ask me or Frog if we're to blame. The latest example is somebody's reserving a copy of "Teach Yourself Tantric Sex" for Deidre at Senebene Library, who's not been well lately. I proferred my alibis, as usual, which weren't believed, as usual, and ditto Frog, as usual.

What's unusual here, for me at any rate, is that there is a book called "Teach Yourself Tantric Sex" and that we have two copies in stock (at Catty and Dutch Bend, the latter making a sort of sense). How the hell do you teach yourself tantric sex? I suspect this is one I don't want to think about lest it joins the ranks of three-in-the-morning mysteries.

Palpable proof of God's existence a posteriori

A colleague sends me a picture of the New Model Library Building planned by the council:

Tha can carry a duck up t'mountain but tha can't mek it quack

Talking to a colleague in IT support about our People's Network computers. He's perplexed:

"They're all the same model and make of PC. They've all got the same software on them. In fact, they're all copies of the same image, so they should all be identical clones. But they're not, are they?"

"No," I reply.

"I can't understand it. Anyway, I've taken the picture of the bloke in his vest off the desktop on PC1 again. And I've turned the sound down on 2 and 5 again. And I've put the Flash plug-in back onto 6 again. And when I'm logged on I haven't been able to replicate that thing on PC 10 where the Word document's in portrait orientation right up to the point where it gets printed: how the hell it does that I don't know, it only happens to some of your customers. We've been talking about this back at the office: what would you say to our blitzing the whole lot one evening?"

"Fire bombing's a bit extreme isn't it?"

"That's not what I meant but I'll take it back as an idea."

Like walking through Alaska in your underwear

I begin to understand why I want to shout at T.Aldous all the time. And, as usual, it makes distance to make things clear...

There's been a cock-up in the "Hooray for Literacy" campaign being run by the Young Persons Directorate. For some reason their publicity states that the library's doing a story time workshop next month despite the fact that nobody's asked the Library Service if it can be done. T.Aldous approaches Frog:

"Have you seen the Hooray for Literacy booklet?"

"No, has it come out yet?"

"It says that you're doing on story time workshop."

"Does it? First I know of it. When?"

"Have a look..."

"Well it won't be me doing it: it's not my Saturday and I'm on leave that week anyway."

"Nancy's got no right to do this without talking to you first. We can't not do this, we need somebody to do it."

"Well, I've got a meeting with..."

"Who can we ask to do it?"

"I've a meeting with..."

And so on for the next fifteen minutes, with T.Aldous rotating between "Nancy's got no right" and "who can we ask" with scarce a breath between. Until...

"I know! We could ask one of the SureStart workers to do it? Could they do it?"

"As I was saying, I've a meeting with them on Tuesday, I'll ask one of them to do it."

And there it is in a nutshell: when you hit a difficulty and need to sort it out urgently do you want to try and sort it out or do you want to listen to your boss going on and on and on about whose fault it is?

Your rosebuds are numbered

Being a bit paranoid about the people counters I was paying particular attention to the one in Pottersbury Road Library when I popped in this morning. I suppose it's just as well, but I'm not convinced. I was irritated, but not surprised, to see that the little red light didn't flash and the count didn't move when I walked past, nor when I wafted various body parts past the sensor.

"Looks like it's buggered."

I suggested with all the technical gravitas I could muster.

"Coo, look at that! Should it do that?" Says an elderly lady.

The numbers were spinning round like a fruit machine.

How many fingers am I holding up?

That's just Jim dandy that is: the people counters that have been installed in all our libraries have no moving parts, but we found last week that they can stick somehow (!!!) and three weeks' worth of stats for Noddy are lost forever; now we find that resetting the counter by pulling the plug isn't reliable either. T.Aldous discovers that giving the counter a vigorous shake and calling it "you sod" seems to do the trick.

"I didn't want to buy this model," he tells me.

For once I sympathise.

An old man going bonkers in the rain

I'm obviously in need of a holiday myself: it's taking me all my powers not to shout at T.Aldous and the strain is killing me. And in fairness, the man himself isn't being particularly irritating or stupid. If he pops his head through the door I want to shout at him. If he says hello I want to shout at him. If he says thank you for sorting a problem out I want to shout at him. I just can't cope with his "I can't do anything without the use of huge doses of adrenalin so the merest thing has to be A Major Problem that needs to be explained over and over again because It's Very Complicated" way of doing things. (Or not, as the case may be.)

Today we did hit a major problem caused by the very complicated procedures forced on us by the corporate support team's new Working Nimbly To Achieve Results Flexibly régime which means that none of us in the library service are allowed to actually buy anything that isn't a book and that we have to allow at least one week to get the OK to order anything and be glad about it. By the time T.Aldous had talked us both through to the inevitable impasse for the fourth time I was crawling the walls. As soon as he left the office I had to slink into the computer room, sit cross-legged on the floor and take lots of deep breaths to try and centre myself. I'm not sure that what I'm trying to do here is worth the pains in my chest.

I'll have to grit me teeth when he goes on about his hernia

Writing a blog is a phenomenally self-indulgent pastime. Unashamably so in this case. If I'm to tell the truth this blog's just a way for me to get as much bile as possible out of my system before this damned job has me cracking up again. So I'm writing this for myself.

Having said that, I'm curious to know who, if anyone, reads this and why. How believable is it? Honestly, although you won't find "Helminthdale" in the Municipal Yearbook the stories are true: 90% come from one library authority, about 9% from a nearby authority (must be something in the water) and the remainder are a hotch-potch of systems administrators' campfire stories that wary colleagues have consented to be published. I dearly wish that some of the other stories could be published somewhere, though. Perhaps when we've all been pensioned off.

In order to pander to this unaccustomed sociability on my part, just for this week I've switched the "comments" option on. I expect I'll come to regret it. (-:

The malady lingers on

The after effects of the acquisitions team's Stakhanovite labours are becoming horribly apparent: they both need holidays and as soon as possible. They're getting on each other's nerves -- not good in a team reduced to two people. Today's simmering irritation is the positioning of a fan, which involves more faffing about than you may imagine and ought to irritate me more than it does. Having achieved an optimum position, the tension racks up a little when Noreen gets back from lunch early to find Doris rearranging some of the furniture so that she "would get the benefit." Noreen, working on the basis that least said soonest mended, spends the rest of the day fuming.

The sooner they get a new line manager the better, though it may be some time yet as the post's only been vacant seven months and needs a while yet in which to mature. I don't know how people get on who fill posts promptly, it must be Hell.

Madame, you may have observed that in Casablanca human life is cheap

Seth collars me.

"I forgot to show you this before. Look: proof that the corridor was empty once!"

And there on his mobile 'phone is a picture of an empty corridor. I notice the date.

"Is that right? You've not set this up as a lark have you? It was never that clear then."

"It was, it was! Just for the one day, mind. I had to take a photo because when I rang my wife to tell her she didn't believe me either."

Any artiste mentioning football will be paid off

I've been out all day and, as Jimmy Huddersfield's successor (my designated deputy) doesn't exist yet Mary's had to field my 'phone calls. By all accounts she's had a torrid day of it. On top of her own job, which involves the wearing of way too many hats, and covering for my absence she's also been covering for Jimmy's post; T. Aldous (who's off sick) and Julia (on leave). By end of day she's frazzled and it's hard not to feel sorry for her. I can't help comparing and contrasting Mary and Julia, who's on the same pay scale. Whereas Mary's been knocking herself out to keep the show on the road, Julia's reliably reported as saying: "the rota for the week I'm on leave isn't my problem: I'm not responsible for what happens when I'm on leave."

Grunting and chunting, cantankerous

Seth and Lemuel are fuming quietly (oh, alright then, not all that quietly) about the state of the fire escape corridor. Up to the end of March it was chock full of boxes of incoming stock. For one heady day it was dead clear, then the boxes of incoming started to mount up after visit to the suppliers to get stock for the impending move at Noddy (don't mark your calendars just yet). Just as the acquisitions team started to get to grips with this there was a sudden influx of huge boxes, swamping all else before it.

"What are these?" I ask the lads.

"New shelving and display units," says Seth.

"Where are they for?" I ask before I can stop myself.

"They've not decided yet," replies Lemuel.

"If it's anything like last time, we'll be climbing over these right up to Wakes Week," says Seth.

"You'd think they'd know what they wanted 'em for before buying 'em," mutters Lemuel.

"You're joking," says Seth, "what about all them books in the corner? They've been for years and they've still not decided."

And so it went. A lot of the rest of the discussion wouldn't fit in with a family blog. In case of fire clamber over boxes in an orderly fashion.

Today I am two separate gorillas

One of the monitors on Senebene Library's counter died yesterday. I tried jerry-rigging a replacement, but that didn't work so the staff had to wait until maintenance came out with a replacement. Unfortunately, try as they would, they couldn't open the security cage of the PC so they couldn't plug in the new monitor. They tried every key in the place with no joy. I've just popped in, had a go myself and also failed. I wondered if the key had bent so I came back to pick up my copy of the key. Lo and behold, there was their key. I'd absent-mindedly stuck it in my pocket yesterday.

Readers will have already come to the conclusion that the systems guy is a prat; this will come as confirmation for them as need it.

In the path of the lovesick monkey

One of the longer-running soap operas is the saga of T.Aldous' telephone number. Back in 1997 it was erroneously listed in the Phone Book as the number for telephone renewals. It still is, which gives him the excuse not to pick up his own calls.

You or I would either:

• Make efforts to get the right number listed, not that difficult, says the man who, in a much earlier life, was once responsible for the council's entries in the Phone Book and Thomson's Local;

or

• Change your 'phone number.

Not him. Not a week goes by without one or more of us being told that we have to take his calls because his 'phone number's wrong in the Phone Book.

Let's call the whole thing off

Catty Library's been bellyaching about not having a PAC for ages. Every Catty Library staff meting results in me getting an ear-bending about the PAC. The guys from IT Support delivered, installed and set up the PC and spent about three days getting comfortable that it did what we needed, all the while with library staff hovering about asking them to hurry up. At last, last week, it was live. I popped in today to have a look at it.

Late morning and the damned thing hadn't been switched on yet.

In defence of reason

Renewed discussion on a new playbus for the borough. Frog attends the meeting. He reports that Councillor Oblong coruscates intellectually.

"I don't hold with playbuses. They have kids pissing in yoghurt pots."

That seemed to end the discussion for now.

On a sinking ship a seaman yearns

Yet more problems with the porcelain tuba, this time at Dutch Bend where the female library assistants are up in arms because male library assistants are using the staff toilet, which they insist should be ladies only (or at least, female). I have visions of the male staff having to go out of the library to pee in the kerbside grids and gutters. Come to think of it this might be an important means of preserving an important part of the local culture. You don't see many parents encouraging their children to pee in the grid these days. I well remember the father of one of my friends saying: "See if you can't pee on your shoes while you're at it, Tracey, let's see if we can't get some of that dog muck off the soles." Another part of the spirit of community that didn't survive the millennium. Sigh... Mind you, I expect the MLA to adopt this as a new performance indicator any day now.

Meanwhile at Bencup a fifty-two year old lady is picketing the library, signs and everything, in protest at having been banned from the reading group. I have no idea why she's banned: sometimes your instincts just scream to leave well alone.

We've got the staggers as well

The door to the admin. offices is hanging off its hinges. Actually, it has been sort-of doing so for the past week but today Lemuel decided to fix it by giving the offending hinge a sideswipe clout with a big hammer. For some reason this doesn't seem to have worked. Shame really: had it worked we were up for sorting some strategic issues the same way.

A phantom of delight

Warner Baxter pops in to see T. Aldous. They're going into London on Monday for a meeting with some high-ups as a result of one, other or all of last year's inspections. He's come over to work out a game plan and to make sure they've got whatever they need to take with them. In the middle of an open-plan office we hear T.Aldous say:

"I thought we'd work on it on the train going down."

The look that Warner gave him could freeze-dry raspberries.

"I'm all out of fag packets."

Her highly polished instrument is indicative of strong narcissistic traits

We'd been wondering about the state of the dishcloth in the staff room (and/or the state of some of the meals people have been having): even though it's changed daily it's always grimy and grey when anyone comes to wash up. Today we find the reason why: one of the library assistants polishes her shoes with it.

"I need to clean my shoes when I come in. What else should I be using?"

Some days you can only wonder that the sickness record isn't even higher.

Where's the exotic eastern mystery in a length of hosepipe?

Our only remaining librarian in this half of the Borough, Lola, is worrying about next week's rota at Helminthdale. She asks Julia, her line manager, for advice. Julia's response?

"I'm on leave next week."

Absurda non acta

A reader writes:

"You've been telling us for months about the preparations for libraries moving to new locations. Have any of them actually moved yet?"

Clue: the answer's "no."

Howl, howl, howl, howl

I want the reference librarians to go to the Library & Information Show next week so that they can see what's on the market that might be useful for the modernised fab 'n' groovy reference and information library services that we were supposed to be implementing after the Best Value Review four years ago. They, too, want to go, which is excellent news as it suggests that they're starting to bounce back from some of the nonsense that's been going on up there. I ask T.Aldous if they can go.

"That would be a good idea. I've no objection in principle to their going."

"So they can go?"

"Well, it's difficult. I can't see being able to send them both together."

"So if one goes one day and the other the other day...?"

"That's a possibility."

"Could we do it?"

"In principle, yes."

I had to leave it at that, my soul was crying.

Two scotch eggs and a jar of marmite

Ha! Pansy Potter's hoist on her own petard. Her replacement at Epiphany discovers a 1892 book on the shelves in adult lending and sends it in to be added to the catalogue.

Pansy's excuse is that when Reggie Clockwatcher went down to review the stock a few years back he looked at it and said: "Oh just leave it there."

"Didn't it get picked up when you were checking stock that's not issued lately?" I asked. "It was last issued in 1995."

"Oh yes. I could even tell you who borrowed it. But orders are orders, you know what they're like."

And so I do.

Ben Gunn and his musical cheeses

Staff meeting. The papers are full of rumours of library closures; we've a whole new reporting régime, including a bewildering array of monthly local targets and annual national targets; the place is full of new kit and new stock and scant few people; and there are two new reading initiatives to take on board. So we spend an hour hearing about Lola Ptitsa's parking problems.

Sigh...

He looked in the mirror and there was nobody there

Peculiar day. On the way into work I realised that for the first time in a long while (five or six months at least), I haven't thrown up before leaving home for work. Strangely disconnected all day.

Break-in at Seenbene Library; two PCs stolen. "Have you got the serial numbers?" asks T.Aldous. "Oh, I expect not," I reply. "That printer that went to Epiphany to replace the one that was stolen, where did that come from?" "It was one of the two in the ladies' toilet." "What did we buy it for?" "No idea." Any proper boss would have given me a bollocking. Mind you, any proper boss wouldn't have spent a month making an incomprehensible muddle out of the equipment inventory because he couldn't wait two days for me to come back from Xmas holiday.

"How are you getting on with the people counters?" I'm asked. "Oh, we get by," I reply.

I've just realised: I've not had any pains in my chest today either.

I'm probably already dead and too stupid to realise it.

Say goodnight to the folks Gracie

We're obviously all knackered. We were talking this lunchtime and Frog came out with:

"What day was Pancake Tuesday this year?"

And it took us ten minutes to realise the futility of our checking our diaries.

Gah

Oh it's obviously a good day at Catty. Ten minutes before closing time and they ring to say there's a problem with the printer for the People's Network.

It hadn't been switched on all day.

Curb your enthusiasm

We had to take the PACs off-line last year because the part of the network they used had been obsolete for a couple of years and it was being decommissioned. We'd been given a year's notice of it but I couldn't do anything about arranging replacements because of the usual budget problem (i.e. there ain't one so any time I need to do anything I have to rattle the charity tins for a few months and hope for the best). Cutting a very long story short, the first of the new PACs went live at Catty yesterday, that library having been chosen as they've been moaning long and loud about there not having one.

I rang this morning to make sure it was still behaving itself. No idea. They'd switched it on but nobody had looked at it.

We should have stamped little lions on them

Frog gets a 'phone call from Pansy Potter at Gypsy Cream: they've hidden one of the Easter eggs so well they can't find it. Please can they have another?

Oh to be in Helminthdale now that April's here

I hear that an urgent delivery of Easter events posters was slowed down on Wednesday by T.Aldous insisting they were all sent with (individually signed?) compliments slips.

Too easy

Himself pops his head through the doorway:

"Did you have any achievements last year? I need to do a list for committee."

"I've not killed you yet for a start," I thought.

Eggsasperating

Frog's set up an Easter activity for all the libraries next week: each library's been sent a six laminated cut-out Easter eggs plus a laminated quiz sheet and some competition forms. The idea is that staff "hide" the eggs somewhere in the library and children use the clues in the quiz sheet to find the eggs and answer the questions.

T.Aldous collars Frog:

"Who's supplying all these eggs and who's clearing up if any of them are broken?"

Alexander Graham Bell afflicted with laryngitis on the occasion of his inventing the telephone

I keep asking why the phrase "networked CD-ROMs" keeps cropping up in proposed notices and publicity materials for the library. Our resident Harry Potter look-alike (and resident Bungle Bear think-alike) explains:

"Well you will be networking CD-ROMs on the People's Network computers won’t you?"

"Well I could, except there aren’t any CD-ROMs to network because no one’s bought any."

"Can’t you put BBC Webwise on it?"

"Yes, but it won’t be available on all the People’s Network workstations. There aren’t 122 licences for the networking software."

"Can’t you buy some?"

"I don't have any money. Besides which, I’m not prepared to make a case for funding an additional 110 licences on the basis that you’d quite like to use them to network CD-ROMs you haven’t identified and haven’t bought in over six years' non-use of a CD-ROM network."

"Well, couldn’t you start small by just using the licences you’ve got to set up the CD-ROM network just in Helminthdale, say, and make Webwise available that way?"

"No. Don’t imagine that on top of all the other work I’m going to be expected to do over the next month I’m going to do a crash install of a system no one’s bothered with for the past six years just to make one free CD-ROM available at libraries that already have it on stand alone PCs."

Any clues as to why the Audit Commission say we score poorly on IT and marketing?

Boiling the bottoms of chrysanthemums

Today it is laptops. Went to a seriously boring meeting this morning at which some woman from aforementioned IT dept was giving a presentation. Now if I hadn't witnessed this due to enforced participation I wouldn't have believed it. I walked into the room to be greeted by plaintive cries of "do you know anything about laptops?"

"Maybe"

"Where do I plug my projector in?" remember this is someone who works in the IT Dept. Opening the panel at the back I plugged in projector and sat down.

"What about this?" She said holding up the power lead. Again I plugged it in and sat down.

"Do I need this?" She continued thrusting the comms lead in my direction. Repeat previous manouvre. And finally, and again this is someone from the IT dept,

"Where do I switch it on?"

Communing with imps

Daisy Duck had begged Seth not to take over any more boxes of books, bits of furniture and antediluvian sundries from the desks of librarians long-dead until they'd managed to sort themselves out after the panicky reopening. This afternoon Seth tools up with another vanload.

"What's this? I asked you not to bring any more yet."

"I'm really, really sorry, I've got to do it. T.Aldous' orders. He says you've no right to talk to me and that I've to do as he says because he's in charge not you."

The next time winter vomiting sickness hits the families of Dutch Bend I can see T.Aldous having to ring round to persuade people to do extra hours and put together a timetable for the five libraries Daisy ends up being responisble for (in lieu of the appointment of a Group Librarian to the post that's been vacant for three years).

General joy

I'm up to my ears in CIPFA stats; People's Network's going tits-up; I've got a thousand orders to roll over with no Procurement Librarian to share the burden and no possibility of using a batch rollover because of the way we do standing orders (my, they were fun, thank God Jimmy Huddersfield came in for a day gratis!)(I think he's crackers); Dutch Bend Library re-opened today after six weeks' closure (don't ask why re-open in a mad rush on a Thursday instead of letting staff do things properly and opening the following Monday); I'm climbing over boxes to get into my office because 20% of the year's new stock arrived in the past three weeks; I've been badgered about details of the moving of two libraries to new (crap) locations; we may or may not be moving to a new regional library system in the next month depending on somebody staying still for one moment and making a decision; and I'm trying to take up some of the MLA online reference offers by the deadlines despite not knowing whether or not there's any money for doing it. T.Aldous walks in and says:

"I've been worrying about Tench Road [closed since the beginning of January for repairs and it now turns out it'll be closed until the end of June]. If somebody was due to bring a book back the week the library closed and they brought it back to Tench Road when it re-opens then they'll just get four days' fines. If they bring it back to any other library then they'll get weeks' worth of fines. What will we do?"

"If they could bring the book back to any other library they could have done so any time since January. If they couldn't then there's not an issue."

"I'm just thinking: what would happen at the other libraries?"

We've only been doing things this way for sixteen years. We don't have enough problems as it is so he's casting about to invent some new ones.

I think my poker face must have deserted me. He left the office.

Plan view

In the space of half an hour Jim Lettuce and I find seven strategic plans for the library service for last financial year alone. Strangely enough, none of their outcomes include our being up shit creek, unable to open the doors without having to ask people to do extra hours with demoralised staff running round disguising the cracks like Preparation H on a cheap actress.

Please don't tell your friends...

All the staff from Dutch Bend turn up at Helminthdale as instructed by T.Aldous.

Julia rings down to Mary to ask if she's got anything for them to do as she can't cope with having so many staff upstairs in Lending.

It's clichéd to be cynical at Christmas

That's just what we need:

Frog and I have repaired to the Duck and Pullet for a pub lunch. We look out of the window: it's snowing.

My Fair Hound of the Baskervilles

"You need to think about changing the shelving sequence before you re-open on Thursday," T.Aldous tells Daisy Duck. This is six weeks after the library's closed, mind.

"What do you want?" asks Daisy.

"Consult staff and see what they think."

The staff are consulted and unanimously decide to stick with the status quo because they're all knackered and just want the place sorted before Thursday morning. Especially seeing as T.Aldous wants everyone up at Helminthdale on Tuesday afternoon as the heating will be off. (It was OK for them to all be working with no heating last week, mind). Daisy passes on the result of the consultation and she and her team get back to work.

For the next two hours T.Aldous wanders round like Banquo's ghost, muttering to each one she passes: "I don't know why you're putting those there. Now's the time to come up with a new shelving plan."

How nobody said: "sod off," I do not know.

Smiling and laughing and looking so fine I don't think you knew you were in this song

Pansy Potter's moving from Epiphany to Gypsy Cream Library, opposite the football ground. (Did I remember to tell you about the ducks in the car park?) When we were talking the other day I suggested that we do a stock check some time soon as there's stuff on the catalogue that I'm praying isn't there any more. She rings:

"You know all that old rubbish you thought hadn't been withdrawn properly and needs taking off the catalogue?"

"Yes..."

"It's here!!!"

Charlotte Green reads the Shipping Forecast for gentlemen of a certain age

I pop into Dutch Bend to reinstall the PCs and check up on the visitor counters (gah gah gah gah gah!!!)

Absent-mindedly I put my hand on the top of a shelf to steady myself as I mess around with a network point. The top of a 1970's wood and slat steel shelf unit holds just over a pint of water.

One o'clock jump

Seth's down at Dutch Bend helping to put up the last of the shelving and the counters and the buckets to catch the water from the new heating pipes because the caretaker there has slipped a disk trying to move heavy furniture around busy workmen while T.Aldous is on the hurry up. The man himself turns up to view progress. Just at the point where Seth is up to his armpits in a dodgy skeleton that may become a double-sized shelf unit T.Aldous says:

"You need to change the clocks now. People won't know what time it is."

It was suggested that it might be time to go.

Winter's discontent made glorious

Well I'll stand stuffing. The Acquisitions team have done it.

Just at this point another thirty-nine boxes turn up: a last-minute panic order by Mary. Non-fiction for Noddy. T.Aldous sourly surveys the scene (he hates piles of boxes that aren't book sale), tuts and tells the team: "Well, it had to be bought now. It can't be helped," and walks off. None of us have the first idea what he's on about.

Putting up a hook to hang my hopes upon

Desperately tidying up the catalogue prior to digging out stock statistics for CIPFA next weekend when T.Aldous tools up.

"We haven't withdrawn enough books. Can you do something about it?"

If I had a budget I'd hire a skip.

Sturm und drang

The carpet fitters have finished at Dutch Bend, after T.Aldous stuck his oar in about the best way to move the shelves and counter out of the way. The staff are now under pressure to get the shelving put up and restocked p.d.q. so the first lot of boxes of books arrived back from Pantagruel Library this lunchtime. Unfortunately, the carpet's not settled yet and the heating workmen are still working on the valves the only place to put the boxes is where the counter should go. Once the boxes are on the shelves the counter can go back. Except that the counter's in the way of the shelves.

Daisy Duck rings T.Aldous and begs for no more boxes to come back to Dutch Bend yet while they get sorted out. Seth's just rung to let her know that T.Aldous has told him to pick up another vanload.

"We need to have the library re-opened as soon as possible. There are too many boxes of books lying around in libraries," says God.

Jumpers for goalposts

Two libraries closed and their staff available for to provide cover and there's just one member of staff in the lending library in the main library here in Helminthdale.

Julia tells the caretaker not to open the doors until she says so.

"It's late now and they're queueing at the door!"

"I don't care. Wait until I tell you."

"What if they start banging on the door again?"

"Ignore them."

An excellent way of ensuring visitor figures and customer satisfaction soar ever skywards.

Say, does anyone know how to Madison?

The heating pipes and new boiler have been installed at Dutch Bend, though not actually commissioned. This is the point at which T.Aldous insists that the carpet fitters get into the library to lay carpets around men in big boots and dripping heating valves.

Bottleneck sweater

A long T.Aldous monologue ends with him saying

"And there just aren't enough people around, especially with Julia off sick and Mary on leave..."

I was just about to sympathise when I remembered that there aren't enough people because he's left one management post vacant for three years and another two vacant for twenty-one months.

Mood indigo

Someone in Helminthdale's lending library has locked the password again. The password changed yesterday but nobody told anyone who's in today and God alone knows what effort is made at recording these things for staff information. I get the password unlocked and pass the word. It's now locked again; someone new came in at lunchtime and blah blah blah...

Julia rings Mary to find out when the password was changed as she knows nothing about it (why Mary should when Julia's in charge up there I do not know).

"Can you have a word with Julia about this password?" asks Mary.

"I can have a number of words with Julia about this password," I reply.

"Don't worry, you're busy. I'll deal with it."

Light, power & speed

I have to squeeze my way past 56 boxes of incoming books to get to my desk. Last year T.Aldous claimed that the reason why we only bought 62% of the standard target stock was because of vacancies in the Acquisitions team. They were very, very offended: the real reason was because T.Aldous froze the book fund until August while he dicked about with ideas about targetting the spending that never got any further than glimpses of godly notions. So they're damned if he's getting away with it again: even with two posts vacant for a year or more and another for six months the team (both of them) are determined that the service is going to meet the standard and in so doing demolish another of T.Aldous' pet excuses: "if the standard could be met last year with just two of them left in post, why aren't you on target this year?"

The plan involves receiving more than 20% of this year's stock in the next two weeks. Good trick if they can do it!

Unpage the colours!

Deep joy.

As if we don't have enough to worry about, T.Aldous has decided that seeing as how Dutch Bend is closed for big plumbing we can get a new carpet in, too. We know it's going to be Sage Blue but by gum will we waste a lot of time getting there. Sigh...

A place of delightful prospects

I'm in the lift with Seth. He says:

"Has anyone told you the printer's been stolen from Epiphany?"

"No. When?"

"Monday."

"Oh."

"Thought you'd like to know."

"Yes, I suppose so."

You only busk when it's Xmas

T. Aldous is giving Daisy Duck a hard time for letting two library assistants from the same library have the same day off. No matter that the staff covering the absence will both have worked there recently, know what they're doing and are extremely capable. No matter that long-standing vacancies mean that you can't predict where any two members of staff anywhere in the Borough will be three days running. Oh no. As T. Aldous explained:

"What would happen if it were Christmas? You need to think before you act."

Rumour in cuneiform

Spring is in the air... the daffodils are starting to show yellow in the fields; the mistle thrushes are at it like knives in the cherry trees in next door's garden; and rumours are skittering around the consequences of the proposed library closures which nobody's actually seen and nobody will admit to but which we all know about one way or another.

Unlike the old days, even if the council actually did agree to close any libraries (and sentiment aside it needs to close at least four) it isn't as easy as them going for the line of least resistance; or putting one in the eye of the opposition party; or holding a grudge against a library assistant who wouldn't let you off the charge for a lost book because you're a councillor. The council's committed to trying to meet as many public library standards as possible (because of their commitment to the public service ethos in general and the public library agenda in particular and nothing to do with meeting audit commission targets or getting ticks in boxes to make sure the Rate Support Grant comes in sweetly), so the opening hours; book loans and visitors lost in the cuts have to be made up elsewhere. So it makes sense to finally let go of libraries which are in terminal decline and reallocate their resources someplace where they could be used. Like having all the branch libraries open in the afternoon to get the after-school trade. Needless to say, this being Helminthdale this won't happen in a million years but you can dream.

The latest rumour is that there'll just be five "superlibraries" in the Borough delivering services the like as you could barely conceive. The day that Helminthdale has the money, political will and project management skills to conceive and deliver five superlibraries they'll find the Pope singing bawdy songs atop a Belisha beacon in a backstreet in Irlam.

Paper chases

A chat with Liz at Gunsmoke Avenue Library amuses me. She's taken to buying the newspaper for the library herself, having given up with the newsagent.

"I'd keep having to chase him for an invoice so that we could pay it. In the end he said to me: 'can you do me an invoice?' So I wrote one and he lost it. I did another and he forgot to submit it. I did lists of the papers and magazines we'd had off him, including the dates and prices, and he kept losing them. In the end I gave up. Forty-five pence a day is worth it for not having to make lists up for him."

Life just kissed you "hello"

Betty Comstock, who's old enough to know better, was wearing a low-cut blouse at the counter today. She leant forward to hand some books to a little lad who turned to his mum and said:

"Mummy... Why has that lady got a bum on her chest?

Milky drinks and Sudafeds

Daisy Dormouse, the reference librarian from Dutch Bend, collars me.

"Is it true that we're getting some more PCs?"

"Yes."

"That's ridiculous. How are we to cope with any more PCs?"

As half of their time is spent dealing with people who want to get onto the People's Network, find all the PCs in use and then complain or book a later session or both I should have thought it would be a bit of a help.

And if we were to act on January's reference use survey which confirmed that 73% of all references used by the public were on the shelves behind the counter and had to be asked for then the reference librarians would have the time to do a bit more than just be glorified cybercafe receptionists and checkout girls.

I used to keep wickets for the Quakers in my Joy Division oven gloves

A colleague reminds me of the old joke:

An artist, a designer and a council architect are at a bar and they get talking about women. The artist pipes up:

"I tell you, woman must have been created by an artist: who else would have created such beauty?"

"Ah no, woman must have been created by a designer: who else would have created such form and function?"

"No, you're both wrong. Woman was created by a council architect."

"How do you make that out?"

"Who else would put a recreation area next to a sewage outlet?"

In church hall if wet

T. Aldous' turn for Noddery: he turns up at the Community Centre for a site meeting about the new library there and finds an art class in the room but no architects. Turns out they forgot to come to the party.

I used to be a babysitter but there's not much call for squashed babies these days

The people counter dash takes me to Noddy, first of four stops for the day. It doesn't go well. To begin with, the equipment for transferring the data from the counter to the staff PC, where it is turned into a useful spreadsheet, is missing. No big deal, the kit was installed in the midst of last autumn's mad extravaganza and like as not has been tidied away somewhere fatal. Happens all the time: the way things drag on around here it's a constant wonder that we ever find anything. As it happened I had another library's kit on me so's I could demonstrate how to do the monthly count. It goes downhill from here...

"Isn't it wireless? What's the point of that? I may as well just make a note of the number on the counter."

is the opening conversational gambit. I tried to explain that the data is a lot more detailed than that and tried to demonstrate this by downloading the data and opening the spreadsheet. My audience wasn't with me. I'm used to having to break off things like this so that staff can deal with customers -- we have to have our priorities right -- but I started to lose patience when the staff clutsered at one end of the counter while I was stood at the other end.

"Have I finished here?"

"Yes, you've finished."

I don't know what I've done to warrant all this, I'm just the guy who's had this dumped on him at the last minute and is wasting time he's not got trying to demonstrate something that's actually extremely important to them. Whatever.

As I'm packing up the caretaker starts up:

"They keep saying they've got no money but they can find it to waste on things like that."

I explain that as she knows fine well there's more goes on in the library than just the issuing of books and it's important that we can demonstrate that the library's earning its keep.

"It's just so that the council can economise isn't it? How come my council tax has gone up so much this year?"

Perhaps because people like you don't like the idea of the council economising love. Like an idiot I try to explain that the Rate Support Grant's not clever to begin with and that the government keeps foisting new services and targets on councils without providing the money to cover them; and that Helminthdale in particular is bad at performance monitoring and so misses out on some additional funding.

"Are you saying that some councils down south get more money than Helminthdale?"

"Yes."

"It snows in Dorset you know. You can't beat me in an argument. You can't win."

"I don't give a stuff. I don't have to win anything. You asked me a question, I gave you an answer."

At which point it occurred to me to wonder what the Hell I thought I was doing wasting my time standing at a public counter having this conversation. Irritated beyond measure and filled with self-disgust at the whole waste of time that was this visit I made my exit.

Gug nunc

A worrying conversation with a supplier prompts this correspondence:

4:32pm 6th March 2006

Hi Arthur,
You know those online reference subscriptions that I had to select and cost for you to order at the last minute the other week? Were they actually ordered?
Kevin


10:25 07 March 2006

Hi Kevin,

No, but they could be tomorrow if we still have the funding.

Arthur

I suppose it's better than "next week," but tomorrow never comes.

Restless legs

Yet another last-minute dash: this time to fit electronic people counters in all our libraries by 1st April. The equipment was fitted in most libraries at Xmas, I'm now running round to install the software that downloads the data and converts it into useful spreadsheets. The kit works on an electric beam: it counts the number of interruptions then divides the result by four (a two-legged person going in and coming out). T.Aldous told everyone who would listen, and many who had no such intention, that someone walking past with a ladder would count as a dozen people. The Chief Executive told Warner Baxter that he needs to schedule regular inspections of the ceiling and lights in all our libraries.

I've just downloaded the data for Epiphany Library. Epiphany is halfway between Helminthdale town centre and the head of the u-shaped glacial valley that forms the eastern end of the Borough. The library building sits on the main road into town forming a sort of protecting barrier between the local shopping centre and a four-lane highway. The bleak winds off the Pennines are funnelled down the valley and pick up speed down the road before hitting Epiphany admidships. Being built by an Helminthdale Council architect, the leeward side of the library is made of solid brick and the windward side is glass and steel struts. In the merest breeze the building shivers like a cat stalking a bird. In any sort of a wind the whole place hums like a glass harmonica. This has obviously influenced the results of the people counter: according to the results the library was at its busiest just after midnight last Friday when 64,000 visitors came in during the howling gail and hailstorm they had that night.

"We'll have to find some way of stopping the people counter from wobbling about," I'm told. Me, I can't see any problem: that's one public library standard sorted.

Any news of the iceberg?

It always amazes me what people will get away with in the name of charity. This story is wrong on so many levels it's delightful...

Frog Dropmore is chair of the local chapter of the RNLI. In the event of emergency it would have to be a damned powerful distress flare: we're forty miles from the sea.

The Dutch Bend Players are an amateur dramatic group that does a lot of charity matinees. This weekend they're doing "Titanic: The Musical." Frog's persuaded them to have a charity collection for the RNLI during the interval.

Déjà vu all over again

Human Resources ring me up again to ask why Jimmy Huddersfield hasn't sent in his sickness returns. I tell them again that Jimmy retired lo, these many moons ago.

The Wheel of Life sure turns quick around these parts!

Florence Nightingale should live this day

More PCs arrive. Seth and I feel duty bound to leave one toilet stall free so we commandeer the sick room and pile the boxes in there. Thus killing two birds with one stone. For some reason (i.e. Reggie Clockwatcher was the project manager when the library was built) the sick room had a sink unit fitted in where a camp bed or something should have gone. So for the last thirteen years, if you were taken ill you either lay down at your station or else went into the sick room and had a lie down in the sink. Relief at last: Seth has arranged the boxes such that the invalid just needs a leg up and they can have a nice lie down, the layers of cardboard boxes and styrofoam padding providing comfort scarcely exceeded by a goose feather bed.

Oh calamity

The only thing that's been keeping some staff going has been the thought that T.Aldous has been dropping hints for ages that he'll retire when he reaches 60 in May. (The older generation, they don't know they're born: free school milk; student grants; old age pensions...)

Their (probably entirely illusory) hopes have come crashing down. Lemuel the caretaker asked out right and was told that much though he'd love to, T.Aldous doesn't feel it's right to retire in May as "there's so much to do."

Block

One reason why staff in this library have so much leave to take before the end of the financial year is that the Group Librarian blocked all leave in October as her new granddaughter was due that month and she wasn't sure which days she'd be taking off for to join the happy family.

Frog suggests that this is not unrelated to the reason why the Saturday worked by the Group Librarian has 11 members of staff available and the Saturday worked by Frog and Lola has six.

Things to do when waking up screaming in the night is not enough

No matter where Hetty moves the PCs at Catty the leaks in the roof follow like ants at a picnic. One of the lads from PC Support went over and between them they've jerry-rigged a sort-of-working set up. An utter credit to their ingenuity and bloody-mindedness they've got the enquiry desk set up: a replacement PC on a sideboard under the staircase.

It's a brilliant set-up in the circumstances but I've still insisted that if anyone's standing in a puddle they're not using any electrical equipment.

This derelict shed is the one that the council's conservation officer insists can't have a wireless network connection.

The stuff that dreams are made on

Tench Road and Dutch Bend are closed for refurbishments and their staff are available to help provide cover at other libraries. Which is why we've got one member of staff on the counter in the main library at Helminthdale.

The reason? Staffing's been so tight over the past year that people haven't been able to take leave so they're trying to catch up with it. Sheesh.

Live from the bathysphere

Today's leak at Catty Library has taken out the entire enquiry desk including the PC and printer. Unfortunately, this PC is the one running the booking system for the People's Network. Hetty Bowling tried her damnedest but even she had to concede defeat when she realised that she was trying to reboot a PC whilst standing in three inches of water. Ctrl-Alt-Del caused a fine spray of water!

A northener surveys his roots

It's disheartening to find that toilets feature so heavily in my nice little blog on public library automation.

I begin to see where the Audit Commission inspectors' obsession with the subject arises.

Corks!

It wouldn't do to be caught short in Helminthdale Library. The PCs have arrived and I've run out of room in my office. We've had to commandeer one of the stalls in the lavatory and store them there.

All we need now is a dysentry outbreak.

Three thousand burning joss sticks sing "Happy Birthday" to Queen Juliana of the Netherlands

T. Aldous approaches Lola Ptitsa, our sole remaining librarian in half the Borough, doing two and a half librarians' work in half a week and fresh back from long-term sick due to stress.

"What are all these books on your desk?"

"I'm supposed to be checking them to see if they need replacing or transferring."

"Can you get them done today?"

"No. I'm on the enquiry desk all morning and then I've got next week's timetables to sort out and I'm supposed to be shortlisting for the Saturday cadets' posts."

"Well get them cleared quickly, they're in the way."

Says the man who commandeers the training room whenever he's got paperwork to do because his office is like Krakatoa.

All the little birds go whistle and tweet

No comment...

11.05am 21st Feb 06

Arthur,
Does today's conversation mean that the ten grand for reference subscriptions is now available to spend too?
Kevin


1312 21 February 2006

Kevin,
Is that the management system software?
Arthur


1:16pm 21 Feb 06

No. If you remember, it's the money for online subscriptions that I was begging for the other week when I was trying to take advantage of the MLA's negotitated price for Oxford Online.
Kevin


1003 22 February 2006

Oh yes. My apologies. I'd put that up as a budget saving. If you still want to use it you'll need to get the orders in today.
Arthur


10:21am 22 Feb 06

It's a tall order. I'll get the details of the stuff we need to you a.s.a.p.
Kevin


1137 22 February 2006

Cheers Kevin.
Does Warner Baxter know about all this from your point of view?
Arthur


11:37 22 Feb 06

Not yet but he will.


1145 22 February 2006

Thanks Kevin
Arthur

Twang

'Phone call from Arthur Sixpence, of blessed memory:

"Do you still want that software you asked for the money for last year?"

YES!!!!!!!! Dammit.

"Can you get me the details. I need to order it this week."

I obtain the fifth quote and sixth order form for him and hope for the best.

Every day's a re-run and the laughter's always canned

Like the turds returning on the tide at Brighton the paperwork for those damned PCs comes back to haunt me. I can't blame T.Aldous (except perhaps for his lousy timing in deciding to try and order any computer kit this time of the financial year). The poor sod spent two working days getting the run around from assorted bods last week. The upshot is that we (I) have to fill in a new form and -- get this! -- supply layout plans for the PCs on order.

I can just about understand the need for plans for installing PCs onto the network; at the project phase not the ordering phase. Why the hell we have to supply plans for stand alone PCs I do not know. By this stage I'd filled in eighteen three-page forms and was mightily hacked off with the whole gig. I drew detailed floor plans of the libraries involved and added the label: "this Pc to go wherever we feel like in this library."

The idyll passes

Have crept in early in the hopes of getting my head around the "to-do" list before it all starts going ape. To let myself in lightly I treated myself to a quick browse of the incoming non-fiction waiting to be catalogued by my non-existant deputy. I pick up a copy of "Sexual Signs," which turns out to be a British Sign Language manual. No imagination necessary: the sign for "penis" appears to be vaguely boastful; that for "vagina" quite disconcerting (perhaps that's the romantic in me).

And to think there were comments when I bought that book of football jokes for some of our branch libraries!

Doomed

Happy holiday...

Just had a 'phone call from T.Aldous. The call was to find out what type of PC we should be buying. On the requisition form I'd specified a desktop. T.Aldous had checked with Pookie Schnakenberger in IT to get the price and he was told:

It's the wrong form, we don't use this one any more.

You have to supply plans showing the precise positions of the PCs in the libraries.

You can't have desktops, only towers.

My response was:

I spent half an hour searching the intranet for a more up-to-date form without success. That's primarily because since 1999 the search facility has been "coming soon." That's the work of the guys who reckon that we should let them create the web interface to the library catalogue and not buy something in that's working in over a hundred libraries across the world.

To be fair to T.Aldous, he doesn't give a monkey's what form we use. Such is the animosity between him and Pookie that he'd be happy for the requisition to be written on bog paper, wrapped around a brick and lobbed through her window.

Conkers. T.Aldous agreed.

The desktops have a smaller footprint: the screens can sit on the processor, they can't on a tower. T.Aldous seized upon this with some glee and rang off.

I've managed to keep my telephone number a secret from him for seven years; he's somehow managed to wheedle it from somebody. Sigh...

When Alexander the Great was my age he'd been dead twelve years

Escape at last. The last lot of ersatz alarums and excursions involved performance indicators. Earlier this week I'd made the mistake of noticing that we'd actually achieved a public library standard. This set T.Aldous and Mary to the task of debunking the figures so as to prove that the services we provide aren't any good. For the fourth time in two days I find myself explaining: "those figures are the number of items added to stock this financial year and these figures are the number paid for out of this year's funds. Bear in mind that we spent two weeks in April desperately trying to spend up last year's book fund because you put the blocks on any spending the previous summer because you wanted 'to review the way we're targetting our stock buying.'"

Key to this is a fundamental gulf in the mindsets of myself and my managers. I will quite cheerfully tell any man and his dog just how bad we are organisationally while marvelling at the daily miracle of our not just getting the doors open but also providing a wide range of surprisingly well-delivered services to an unsuspecting public. My managers will tell anybody who'll listen — and many who won't — how bad our services are whilst claiming it's all somebody else's fault and nothing to do with the fact that they won't spend the money we're given and won't fill vacancies.

In the dark hours of the night I'm haunted by the thought that perhaps there is a management strategy in play in the library service after all. And its keystone is a scorched earth policy.

Eeek!

Utter shock!

For the first time in I don't know how long the telephone rings. It's an old dear wanting the housing office at Bencup.

I should have thrown the bloody thing at T.Aldous after all.

A mayfly dreams of eternity

It's my turn now. I'm having the next few days off so I'm desperately trying to get the urgents tied up before I go home. So at three o'clock T.Aldous trolls up and demands that I put together the requisitions for the fifteen extra PCs we need to meet the public library standard as a matter of urgency. This has been too-ing and fro-ing for about eight weeks now; I've provided the same list of suggestions three times; and I'm fed up of listening to the same old waffle over and over again. Now it's a matter of urgency.

To compound the felony, he spends the next hour popping his head round the door with sundry inanities just to make sure I can't concentrate on the job to hand. Three times he comes in to tell me exactly the same story, word for word, demonstrating the stupidity of the person he spoke to in the IT section about these PCs. When it isn't that one it's the story about the central heating at Dutch Bend and the architect's concerns that rodents may make nests in the pipework. At the best of times I wouldn't be best interested in potential vermin in the imaginations of the Borough's architects department. At present, it's all I can do not to throw the damned 'phone at him.

As much fun as you can have without actually being sick

Enter Lemuel the caretaker in high dudgeon. He's spent all morning dismantling and packing up trestle tables upstair in the community room. Then T.Aldous comes along and tells him that half of them are needed for some event this afternoon at 2pm. T.Aldous comes along and tells him at half-past one, while Lemuel's having his lunch.

My, how he laughed.

The bag meows

I get a 'phone call from a colleague in IT. "I've got a councillor on the 'phone trying to ring Warner Baxter." ...the telephone system's no better... "He wants to get more details on the closure of Raccoonville Library. Who should he be speaking to?"

I take the call and drag T.Aldous away from his latest inability to cope with his email to talk to the councillor. Judiciously, I claim that I don't know what he wants to talk to T.Aldous about.

Raccoonville! I must dig out my tin hat.

Logic

Lola Ptitsa, our sole remaining librarian in half the Borough is back from long-term sick. At half nine, Human Resources rang up to ask why she hadn't submitted her staff's sickness monitoring forms for the past nine weeks. "I've been off sick," she sighed. "You might have noticed my name on Julia's sickness monitoring forms."

Going nowhere real slow

Still internal-only calls on the telephones, which is a major pain in the arse when your working day is dominated by trying to sort out problems in twenty libraries without the permissions to proxy into their PCs and do it myself.

The utter awfulness of the situation is only compounded by the arrival of the new telephones. "We had a problem with the telephones that were first supplied so we have been provided with these higher specification models at no extra cost," says the Chief Executive's global email. First order of the day is how to turn off the sodding loudspeaker so that the whole library doesn't hear every conversation in glorious megaphone. ("Hello Mr. Smedley, this is the clap clinic about your appointment.")

Being technically-minded (i.e. by pure dumb luck) I work out how to do it at the fifth attempt. We then spend half an hour trying to repeat the success on the Acquisitions Team's 'phone. Only to find out that my particular solution doesn't work because they found out how to stop their 'phone ringing any time any other 'phone on the floor rang. A solution was found. We're now wondering how to stop it picking up T.Aldous' 'phone if he doesn't answer on the third ring.

Detail of Painting by An Unknown Artist Depicting Unconditional Surrender at the Battle of Helminthdale

Well, good on T.Aldous! We're no nearer getting Arthur Sixpence to let us near the money we've been allocated for buying online resources and the deadline for the MLA's first national offer is breathing down our necks. Faced with missing out yet again and having to put up with more snide comments from the Audit Commission, not to mention staff and customers, T. Aldous has played a blinder and has managed to persuade the accountants to let us use some of another capital budget for this purpose.

The trick now is to take advantage of this offer without letting Arthur off the hook (I'm damned if he's getting away with hanging onto that money without a fight).

The Order of the Lack of Vivid Imagination

For some reason, Human Resources take it on themselves to ring me up to find out why Jimmy Huddersfield hasn't sent in his staff sickness returns. I tell them that I've lost track how long Jimmy's been retired and ask why nobody had run up to ask why Mary had been including his staff in her monitoring returns lo these many months. Helminthdale Council's got one of the worst staff sickness records in the country. If Human Resources are always as on the ball as this I'm not bloody surprised.

Incommunicado

Helminthdale's now got a new telephone system and as bad luck would have it Helminthdale Library's included in the system. The immediate consequence is that no external callers can get through to the council. The public ring us up, the 'phone apparently rings, and rings... and rings... but the person on the receiving end hears nothing. Brilliant.

Thud

There are times when I'm really sorry for T.Aldous. He's just had a 'phone call from Land & Properties to tell him that they've decided to replace the heating system in Catty Library at the beginning of March so he'll need to close the library for a few weeks.

How the hell can you run a service like this? Dutch Bend was scheduled to be closed for a new roof at the turn of the year and it hasn't happened. We got three week's notice to close Tench Lane and now barely a month's notice of this one. We never know how many of our libraries are going to be open next month, let alone next year. Plays hob with service planning.

Still, it's good for the cardboard box and packing tape industries.

Nod

Not just me: just had lunch with a friend who tells me another story about Arthur Sixpence...

He's involved in a big project my friend's responsible for. Things were getting sticky and unpleasant so my friend needed to talk to Arthur in the hopes that he might actually do something he'd been assigned to do about nine months previously. Eventually the shit hit the fan and Arthur rang my friend:

"We need to have a meeting."

My friend dutifully toddles along, thinking dark thoughts along the lines of "about bloody time, too." He sits down.

"What's the problem?"

asks Arthur. My friend starts explaining the general situation, working from notes to make sure he's not forgotten anything. Two minutes into this he turns to Arthur and asks a question. No answer.

Arthur was fast asleep.

Any colour so long as it's green

I've been trying to avoid getting involved in the decor for the new library at Noddy and the children's library in Milkbeck. I'm cornered by T.Aldous as I sneak past the photocopier. Carpets. He wants me to disagree with the choice of the staff at Noddy (which is easy: browny-puce. Blech!) I refuse to volunteer an alternative because

1. The staff at Noddy are going to be the ones working in there.


2. They'd crucify me.

I wriggle like a worm on a hook but I will not suggest sea green. Just at the point where I am weakening I've saved by a telephone call. I've no idea why I'm inflicted with this particular problem but this time I'm grateful:

"Can you come up and bring the caretaker with you?"

"Why? What's happening?"

"A lad's been sick in the reference library again."

"Again? What's going on up there? This is the second lad who's been sick this lunchtime."

"Oh no, it's the same lad. He enjoyed the experience so much the first time that he came back to do it again."