Money well spent

In the absence of Tilly, who retired last Friday, T.Aldous has just spent two hours doing the post.

This is the man who told Seth that the good thing about finally filling the management group posts is that he can now spend time doing the job he's paid for.

The feet of Ozymandias

We've just overheard T.Aldous' vision for the library service:

"I'll be leaving the libraries in a better state than they were when I started."

Smells like forward planning

T.Aldous has just realised that Tilly retired on Friday:

"How will I get my printing done now that Tilly's retired?" he asks.

It's my own damn fool fault for staying in late. The Tammany Tigers are playing at home and I wanted to avoid the football traffic.

Hm? Oh, he'll do it by pressing the print button.

You can see this one coming a mile off

Frog decides to confront Mr. Positive with an uncomfortable truth.

"Staff morale's really low at the moment."

T.Aldous bridles:

"Well my morale isn't low."

So that's OK then.

A machinery whose only purpose is to be its own sweet self

T.Aldous has the hump after some comments were made at a meeting last week.

"They said that I'm negative. I'm not negative. I'll have to wear a T-shirt saying 'I am negative please come and cheer me up.'"

A world of total predictability

"T.Aldous has asked me to check with you to see if all the furniture from the old Noddy Library could go in your office," says Milton.

"What did you say to that?"

"I said I'd ask you," grins Milton.

Like most everyone else I'm climbing over boxes to get to my desk these days.

"I suppose I could make room for a couple of desks by getting rid of those two ratty old bookcases that he dumped on me five years ago when he was clearing out the cellar at Sheep City."

"I said you'd say no."

It's just one epiphany after another

I'm pointed to a document on the library intranet: policy and procedure on what to do should somebody break our acceptable use policy, dated March 2003. I've only been responsible for this area of our service since 2001 and this document is news to me (we tried to get a couple of draughts passed by Management Group in 2002/3 but got stonewalled). It's a relief to know that we have a policy and procedure, even if I have accidentally ridden roughshod over it.

It's also a relief to know that some people still haven't cottoned on to the fact that files are automatically date-stamped when saved.

Justice once

I'm visited by P.C. Ned Strangelove who tells me that the council's IT Security people have reported our hacking friend to the police and have supplied enough screen grabs of his activities to warrant their taking it seriously. Enough so for them to pop round and tell him he's not to use our PCs. And now I'm being told he's not to use our PCs. So I send a message to all staff not to let him use our PCs. Which prompts this:

Kevin,
Why was I not told about this?
T.Aldous

You were. I told you that IT would probably report this to the police and that they'd take whatever action they thought appropriate.

Why did I not see the police?

They came to see me.

They spoke to lending staff. They should also have spoken to me.

Could you have provided any useful information about this customer's use of the library?

You are missing the point.

I don't see any problem. Unless you're suggesting that I can't receive any visitors with their being vetted by you beforehand.

The point really being that once Doreen and T.Aldous passed this idiot's emails on to me to sort out they washed their hands of the whole affair and gave no thought as to what would happen if he was caught. Not that I would trust them to do anything about it anyway, not after the case of the man caught doing naughty things in the children's library at Dutch Bend.

Waste management

The bin's not been emptied for two weeks at Gypsy Cream Library. Pansy rang up to find out why not.

"Our contract with the council ended at the beginning of March."

"Oh. Sorry to bother you."

She mentioned this to Julia.

"Oh yes, T.Aldous mentioned something about that. I can't remember who we contact now."

The satisfaction of a job well done

I never thought we'd manage it but we've successfully negotiated year end on the stock ordering and receipt system, all the invoices have been reconciled, budgets closed, outstanding orders rolled over and standing orders renewed. Noreen's copped for most of the work herself as Betty's been off sick after getting a gyppy tummy on holiday (a present to herself for successfully completing two months' orders in the last two weeks of the financial year). I offer to help and am reminded how little I know of the invoicing process.

But 'tis done: save for twelve problem records all is well with the world.

Turns out that these problems are (hopefully!) the last of the ones caused by someone in IT deleting the programme files for the system one day last autumn. The subsequent disruption of live transactions broke some of the connections between the orders and the invoices and I'll have to manually edit the records and reindex them. We could safely leave them alone as they're not doing any harm but as we're crawled over twice a year by auditors it's as well to fix the links. It would be just our luck for those twelve to be picked out of the quarter of a million on the system. Not that we'll be telling the auditors than I can do this: that opens a storeful of cans of worms.

T.Aldous is overheard telling somebody that year end went very smoothly this year. Damned if I can imagine how he'd know one way or another. His understanding of the workload is immense:

"Why did it take three weeks to process these items?"

"Why has it taken three years to fill our vacancies?"

Pro bono public houseo

Tilly's just back from her latest "goodbye" lunch: she's having more farewell performances than Frank Sinatra. There's a strict hierarchy to these lunches and nobody's allowed to go to the "wrong" lunch, whatever the excuse.

It's all building up to a Friday climax when she's invited everyone and his mother in law to come for a buffet lunch at the library.

"Can you bring in a tray of sandwiches?" she asks Noreen.

Apparently she's been asking lots of people to bring stuff in:

"I could do some baking I suppose," says Noreen.

"Oh no, Lippy's doing the baking."

Empathy II

Daisy's not the only one having problems with T.Aldous...

Amy's parents are getting on a bit now and both have been very unwell lately. So much so that she's only been going home for a change of clothes and to check the post before going over to their house to look after them. She told T.Aldous all about this and he set the sympathetic machinery of the council's human resources systems into motion.

Three months on and he's now kindly allowed her to take half a week's unpaid leave ("you can't have the whole week, we need you to cover the enquiry desk on Friday.")

Empathy

I'm in Dutch Bend to check out a couple of things. Half the staff have colds and the other half have sore throats. A 'phone call Daisy takes from our fearless leader doesn't help any...

"The first thing out of his mouth was 'Hello Daisy, it's T.Aldous. First of all can I just say that I can tell by the strange tone of your voice that you're not happy.'

What I should have said was 'Oh T.Aldous how very perceptive of you.' What I actually said was 'The reason my voice sounds strange is that I am streaming with a cold. Marcy answered the phone and I didn't know it was you, so that's why I sounded a bit distant when the call was put through.'"

No hiding place

Seeing a brown friend to the sea I overhear T.Aldous showing a workman the cracked lino in the gents' (caretakers are for staffing the issue counter).

"Why's this light on?" he asks.

"Because somebody's in here," I reply.

He turns the light out anyway. He'll only be happy when we're pissing out of the staff room window.

Oh it's nice to be back

Deep joy at being back in this rat's nest of a dump. Everyone's come in early, to get it over and done with I suppose. At least that was my motivation. And indeed my only motivation: the combination of the utter despair of trying to get anything achieved remotely properly here and the effects of the antidepressants I have to take to survive being here pretty much do for what little get-up-and-go that this old fart had left. I deeply resent having to take the antidepressants but seeing as the day I forgot to take them I was literally weeping with relief at getting home in the evening I suppose they're a necessary evil.

I expect I had this in mind when I was making myself a cup of coffee in the staff room. Otherwise I probably wouldn't have twigged the significance of the conversations around the table. Two people were debating the pros and cons of having a fanciable counsellor (pro: having someone you fancy hanging on your every word for an hour has to be good for your self-esteem; con: if you start drooling and babbling inconsequentially you could get sectioned). Someone else was telling a story about the dreadful effects of forgetting the doctor's advice about mixing alcohol with their prescription (two glasses of wine and she was singing Tina Turner songs in the car park). Others were comparing their IBS symptoms, the pains in their chests and/or the number of times they threw up before setting off for work this morning. I didn't join in, I'm a rank tyro in comparison. Besides, I was too busy being shocked: this isn't an out-patients' waiting room, a field of war or a high-octane emergency service, it's a public library service and it's taking this sort of toll on the people working in it.

I know that none of this is new but it still comes as an unpleasant surprise when I get my nose rubbed in it.

The voice of doom

Oh I suppose we were due it sometime but I'm really not in the mood at the moment. We've just had an email from a would-be hacker telling us that he knows all our passwords, has complete control of our network, yadda yadda yadda.

You have a network you'll get this sort of nonsense, as sure as day. My instinctive dismay at being on the receiving end of a threat from an anonymous miscreant is tempered by the anonymous miscreant's having left his name and address on his email signature.

The editor's decision is final

One of the rare joys of working in the public library sector is the opportunity to meet colleagues from other library authorities and share working experiences. On the one hand it's a relief to find you're not alone in having to deal with workaday stupidities. On the other it's thoroughly depressing to see how rife workaday stupidity is these days. I've just been in a meeting with colleagues looking at how our library management systems could cope with the MLA acquisitions offer. (I'm not getting started on that subject, I'll be here for years).My counterpart from Pardendale is looking a bit frazzled.

"It's our library review. It's putting years on me."

"I thought you'd finished it," said Fred from Bencup.

"Oh I have, it's just that my boss keeps insisting on my doing a rewrite of it."

"Nothing like that ever happens to us," I grinned mendaciously.

"I'll just have to rewrite it in the style of Jackie Collins, see if that works."

"I shudder to think what would be on the cover," says Fred.

Whose party?

T.Aldous approaches Tilly:

"I think you should invite Marjie Salian [one of our retired librarians] to your leaving do."

(As it happens, she already had her on her list, together with folk that T.Aldous will be less happy to see like Reggie Clockwatcher.)

Aaaaaaaaagh!!!

CIPFA stats, end of year accounts management and the public library management environment do not go well together. I've just spent the past three hours unpicking all the mistakes I'd made this afternoon while I was trying to work with T.Aldous yabbering around the office.

Sigh...

Communication block

Tilly's preparing for her retirement lunch. She approaches Noreen:

"I want to ask Jimmy Huddersfield to come along."

"That's nice."

"Have you got his address?"

"Yes. I've got his 'phone number, too, if you want to ring him."

"No, I don't like to ring."

"Or his email address."

"No, I don't like sending emails."

Tilly is the library secretary.

Nursery slopes

It turns out that we've got until 30th April to submit a bid for funding to rebuild one of our libraries.

"We'll be able to do a proper rebuild and refurb of a library and get a learning suite and community room in the bargain," he says.

It'll be either Carbootsale or Panama Road. The former would make more sense as we'd be able to pull in the health promotion centre and the children's centre, both of which are on the same block and both of which are subject to bids for regeneration money. We'll see how it goes.

"Starting early," I say.

"Can get it done by the end of next week," says Jim.

I can but smile.

"How often has he told you that he usually ends up running to the post office at five o'clock on the afternoon before the deadline?"

His look said the lot.

You'd slap children's legs for this

Email exchange:

Date: 24 March
To: All library staff
Subject: Easter colouring pictures
Easter picture colouring sheets have been printed and sent out to all libraries.
Frog


Date: 2nd April
To: Frog Dropmore
Subject: Re: Easter colouring pictures

Frog

Why have I not been told about this?

T.Aldous

A magnet for pests and diseases

As some of you will be only too aware it is difficult to do anything at this time which is not related to year end, stat gathering, but that doesn't stop folk trying.

I've just been presented with a malfuctioning laptop with the usual "please fix" note. I haven't managed to fix it yet, but have harvested a fair stock of finger nail clippings from beneath the keys!

Useful

Email from Doreen:

I've had a message from Windscape saying that the computer isn't working. Can you do something about it?

I'll give Windscape a ring later to find out which of the six computers isn't working and what it is it isn't doing.

Hidey hole

There's a note on one of the new cupboards cluttering up the fire exit

No entry.

I'm puzzled. I ask Seth and Lemuel if anyone's been found hiding in one of the cupboard yet.

"Not yet but it's only a matter of time."

You learn something new and dumb every day

Oh goody. An email from the MLA telling us that we need to run the reports for this year's CIPFA statistics tomorrow. What a very timely reminder of something we've all been gearing up for for weeks. They make T.Aldous' working practices look like the Five Year Plan.

Blossom time

A table has appeared, propped up against some of the boxes by the reserve stock stacks. It has a note attached to it.

"This is from the old Noddy Library. Any suggestions what to do with it?"

The twenty box trick

Frog came in to find a note stuck to the screen of his PC:

"Twenty boxes of children's books have arrived from the old site at Noddy. These need to be transferred by the end of 31st March."

So instead of working up his Easter holiday events he's spending the day transferring elderly stock from the old site -- which would be unavailable and so wouldn't count in our CIPFA figures or stock replenishment indicators -- to libraries around the borough, where they will now be available and will count against us.

Impending gloom

"There's fifty boxes of booksale books coming in from Doggedly," says Seth.

"Ooh good," says I, "we've not had one for a bit."

"Sod off," says he.

Flying as high as a bird in the sky is my idea of nothing to do

For the past few weeks we've been having problems with the heating and air conditioning backstage in Helminthdale. Which is to say that one one has run amock and the other has gone home to live with its mother, and we're averaging temperatures just under thirty centigrade most days. Except last Thursday when it was eight degrees centigrade and none of us knew how or why. The insulating effects of the hundreds of cardboard boxes adds to the experience, as does the suspiciously musty smell from a couple of the boxes that have come home after a year long tour of the provinces' book sales. Today the atmosphere is imbued with an entirely new flavour as half a gallon of carpet glue is poured onto the floor by the lift lobby only for the workman to find that he didn't have enough carpet tiles to do that bit.

Doing the sums 2

Daisy is doing her nut: she's just back from leave today and she's found that nobody's done the cashing up at Dutch Bend while she was away. She's spent most of the day doing it and she can't reconcile it: it's just over ten quid adrift.

"I'm going to get a bollocking and a half off T.Aldous for this."

"Can't you say that you were on leave that week?"

Apparently that alibi only holds for Chief Librarians.

Doing the sums 1

Overheard:

"Why is there only one member of staff on the counter upstairs?"

"Two people are off sick and three are on leave."

"Why on earth have you let three people take leave?"

"They're taking the leave you didn't let them have last year because we were short-staffed and you've told them that they can't roll over any unused leave into the next financial year."

"Why are we short staffed?"

"Because we've got eight vacancies that you haven't let us fill and we're covering the vacancies at Grimley and Umpty."

"You really need to sort that rota out."

Groundhog decade

I don't know what the boxes of 1996 calendars are about.

I don't want to know what the boxes of 1996 calendars are about.

If we're going to reprise the past eleven years in this hell hole I'll be the one in the corner slitting his wrists.

Box For Keeps

It has been arranged for a supplier to provide us with some book approvals to look at. Unfortunately, all the places where the approvals should go are taken up with tatty piles of tatty old boxes of things that should be elsewhere. Like landfill sites and underneath car parks. So it is decided that the approvals shall go on trolleys just outside the door to my office so that once I've negotiated the boxes to get into the building and walked the labyrinth of boxes into my corner of the universe I then have to execute a series of shift-thrust-tilt manoeuvres of trolleys, boxes, chairs and desks such as to open a passage into my office long enough for me to get in before gravity takes its toll and the whole kit and caboodle retreats into its Aristotlean ideal of cats cradle impenetrability. At some stage in the near future (perhaps when the story sacks turn up) this will become impossible. Which will suit me: I'll just fuck off and leave them to it.

Business flow

This is, of course, that time of the year when all that money that we were told wasn't available to be spent on things we needed throughout the financial year has to be spent any old how in the two weeks before the end of March. So as well as the contents of the old Noddy Library, plus odd bits and bobs from hither and tither, and the seeds of a new grand book sale made up of the remnants of all the old grand book sales running back to 1974, we're taking lots of deliveries of boxes of new stock, stationery, furniture and equipment.

Which makes it a splendid time for somebody to arrange for the carpet to be replaced in the corridor leading to the delivery door.

Inner beauty

For reasons which defy objective analysis, save that this is a jerry-built shopping centre in Helminthdale, we have a new phenomenon in the staff ladies' toilets. At irregular intervals a rush of hot, soapy water gushes up into the bowl of the toilet on the left. Usually this just means that the floor gets flooded and this spills out into the outer corridor. Every so often there's a piercing shriek as some unfortunate finds a gust of sudsy hotness rushing up her fundament.

The menfolk are up in arms. How come we don't have bidet and soapy enema facilities in the gents?

Surface tension

T.Aldous, having the same qualifications as a civil engineer that he brings to his rôle as inspirational manager, inspects the work that's been done on the new tarmac in the car park at Senebene Library. He is not impressed and says so:

"It's a bit coarse. I should have thought they'd have used a finer grade than that so that we had a really smooth finish to make the tarmac look good."

The staff and the public can't see a problem, though it is suggested that the workmen might have had a problem with the hardcore as somebody had stolen all the old bricks from the car park.

It might be worth pointing out at this stage that this is the man who's too busy to answer important questions because "there's too much to do, it's end of year you know."

Blockage

Lemuel's first day back after a fortnight's holiday. He walks in, opens the door what what used to be the caretaker's broom cupboard and finds seventy cardboard boxes full of old books.

"Fuck me!"

He says and he goes for a cup of hot, sweet tea.

We're Going To Hang Out The Washing On The Siegfried Line

The situation in the trenches at Catty Library is desperate: the enquiry desk has been condemned by Health and Safety; half the library has been cordoned off as hazardous (unfortunately it's the middle half, with the two end quarters available for use, which means that if anyone wants to go from the staff room to the counter, or from gardening to cookery in non-fiction, they have to leave the library and go round to the other entrance to get there); the People's Network clients are all covered with a tarpaulin; the windows are all boarded up; and the day is punctuated by an incessant banging as hairy-arsed workmen do their level best to bring all the plaster crashing down from the ceiling. Oh, and the back of the building's falling off but we're now assured that it isn't and that the fact the cracks are getting bigger is a sign that the fabric of the building is holding together beautifully.

And the library's still open.

The spirit of the Blitz has taken over the staff as they issue and return books in their war surplus tin hats. "Okay, girls, let's show Jerry that we can take all he can throw at us!" Tommy Hanley should be alive this day.

How great ideas are born

We're in the midst of leaving do's: Tilly has decided to retire early rather than endure another six months of T.Aldousery; Delphine Hackett is retiring on her 60th; and we've lost Wendell Hall and Gibbons Carroll to jobs with better prospects. Besides these, over the next two months we'll be losing between one and eight people to better jobs that I'm not supposed to know about. Frog and I join a bitter little group: not only do these buggers get to escape, they have parties and we have to buy them presents.

"We should have a 'Still bloody here' do."

"That's a good idea. It'll need a theme."

"How about the Titanic?"

"Everybody does the Titanic. Pompeii?"

"Krakatoa."

"The Hindenberg!"

"Great! When was it?"

"Not sure. May or September."

"We could ask T.Aldous to be the star guest."

"We could set fire to him!"

"Dress kilts shall be worn."

"What's worn beneath the kilt?"

"Nothing, it's all in perfect working order."

It's going to be another of them weeks

The caretakers are busy so I answer the door to the delivery van that calls at the back door.

And take collection of, and sign for, a large, upholstered pouffe.

The Last Remake of Beau Geste

Another blast of working reality. I pop into Helminthdale, our "flagship library" (as stated in our Best Value Fundamental Service Review). In lending there's one temporary member of staff on the issue counter, Seth the caretaker on returns and Frog on the enquiry desk. The Reference Library is manned by one untrained library assistant.

Never mind the quality, look at the open hours.

Tell me when we get to the bit that's surprising

Three lots of Audit Commission inspectors have commented to the effect that our income targets have nothing to do with the Library Service's ability to achieve the targets and everything to do with providing a balanced forecast budget at the beginning of the financial year. T.Aldous is having a major panic because we're not meeting the income targets for 2006/7.

Why is this a surprise?

Isn't week 51 of the financial year a bit late to start worrying about it?

Box numbers

The week before I'm doing the CIPFA statistics isn't a good time for me to discover that according to the system a good number of the books in tatty old boxes lurking in odd corners in the Borough are on the shelves in Helminthdale Library.

Or that some of the books missing at Pottersbury Road actually are on the shelves in Helminthdale.

Speaking in tongues

It takes a lot for Billy Meredith to get really annoyed so this counts as a red-letter day.

He's just come back from a special event on the Mobile Library. Nancy Bickerdike arranged for a class of asylum-seekers' children to visit the Mobile, join the library and take some books out. You or I might have given the teacher the application forms beforehand so that they could fill them in during one of their English classes or something so they'd get some help with the forms. That didn't happen so Billy had to deal with thirty-odd enthusiastic young kids shouting fifteen to the dozen in whichever mother tongue(s) while the teacher who was supposed to be acting as interpreter and minder sat at the back of the bus having a nice cup of coffee and a bit of a gossip with Nancy. By the end of the session he was completely worn out and not entirely convinced that all the kids had been enrolled or got the books or information that they wanted but had no way of knowing one way or another.

"How did it go?" asks Mary.

"Really well," answers Nancy, "there were lots of kids and they were very enthusiastic. We should do it again some time."

Billy went livid white and stayed very quiet for the rest of the morning.

It's no use stroking them and saying: "puss, puss, puss"

A friend in the States asks why Catty is so-named. It goes back to the times when they were all chapel-going mining fowk and the stools in halls and inns were the old-fashioned type with the holes in the middle of the seat (no, I've never known what for either). Local tradition had it that because the fowk in "Catty Town" all had tails they needed the holes in the stools. Hence Catty.

Other northern towns have similar traditions about monkeys and pigs. To judge by the people you see on buses.

Damp squib

The Catty Examiner asks me when the public will be able to use the PCs at Catty Library.

"Could you say when they'll be back up and running?"

"I could but it would be bullshit."

"What's the problem?"

"I have an aversion to people standing in puddles while they use electrical equipment."

Tales from Atlantis

Just what we needed to put the icing on the cake: last night's showers went straight through the leaky colander that is Catty Library's roof and took out all the People's Network PCs and the counter terminals. The enquiry desk and the network hub, for once, are unscathed, sort of: when I arrived to survey the damage the librarian at the desk was sat on a chair in the middle of a puddle with rubber matting under the computer processor.

It was a truly depressing sight. All the mad talk in this plan or another about how wonderful our services are going to be: this is our working reality. All the windows have been boarded up since Xmas while the workmen work on the roof and the lights have all been shorted out, so staff were issuing books to customers who chose them in the dark. The smell of damp and old pigeon shit; the plaster crumbling from the walls, and the ever-present buckets in the middle of the floor for catching the water. Wonderful.

What makes this even more distressing is that the network connection to this library is hopeless but we're not able to upgrade it because the heritage officer tells us we can't put a network connection on the roof because it would clash with the anti-vandal railings. It's OK for the working interior to be like a derelict pissoir but let's not have a box the size of a biscuit tin on the back of the building.

Boxing clever (not)

Oh I am really browned off. Every library you go to in the borough is chock-full of tatty old boxes full of tatty old shit, most of it booksale books on their sixth circle to Heaven. Coming back here to Helminthdale I have to pick my way through booksale boxes, children's furniture, three months' worth of incoming stock that's all finally arrived this week and assorted bits of old tat that's been sent over from the old site at Noddy.

"We need to bring back all the chairs and tables. And the boxes of stock that got left behind," says T.Aldous.

"Where's all that going then?" asks Seth.

"It's got to come back here. I need to go through it to see what needs to go into the booksale at Dutch Bend."

"Couldn't it go straight there?"

"No, I need to check it out first."

"Where's it all going?"

"There's some room in Kevin's office, it can go there."

"Can I get rid of the bricks then?"

"No, the police may want them for evidence."

You know it makes absolutely no sense

There are times when I'm forced to realise that I'm not singing from the same songsheet as some of our managers. This time it's Doreen:

"I'm told that you've set the lending stock at Dutch Bend to 'being stocktaken.' That means we won't know whether or not they're really in at the library."

"We didn't anyway: that's why we're doing a stock take."

Sincerity of purpose

True-life customer interaction:

"Can I use a computer?"

"There's one free in ten minutes, I'll book you on it."

"While I'm waiting, have you any books on hacking?"

Breathing again

Well, Noddy's new library opened safely in the end and it seems to be a pretty positive result thanks to a hell of a hard work by the staff there last week. In the end the only down points were two PCs not working and the printer dying a death. The Friends of Noddy Library holding a silent vigil (or sulk) at the old site just provided a bit of comic relief.

Time for reflection

More than high time we pondered the important question:

If you managed a library service that was falling to bits what would you do first?
	Suck your teeth
	Put your socks back on
	Have a book sale
	Freeze all vacancies and complain that there aren't enough staff
	Try to spend all your budget in the last week in March
	Underspend your budgets by 32% and complain that you're underfunded
	Clean some tea spoons
	Count the bog rolls
	Tell everybody that you were on leave that week
pollcode.com free polls

I hear your tambourines in my head

Up trots Doreen:

"Why is there a user manual for the old dumb terminal OPACs out for public use in Helminthdale Lending?"

"Excellent question. Those OPACs were removed a couple of years ago."

"I'm going to remove it."

"Good."

"I can't understand the point of having it out there."

"No."

"Let's not have it happen again."

From the above conversation try to work out which of us is responsible for Helminthdale Lending Library.

A series of catastrophes that results in a victory

We're surprisingly close to completion at Noddy, in time for the opening of the new library on Monday. Somebody being in meetings all yesterday can't have hurt. We're mostly OK with the computers though two of the new PCs that we've bought to swell the numbers are a bit flakier than any of us like, something to do with a brand new build that IT have imposed. I suggest that we whip them out for now and re-install them some time after next week so that we don't have any potential negatives on the first day. I'm told I'm over-cautious and we'll give it a go. I probably am being over-cautious but given all the brouhaha there's been about this move over the past couple of years I don't want to give the moaning minnies any excuses for picking faults.

A more pressing issue is the counter, which is lacking a portion of the worktop.

"They're coming in tomorrow to do it," says Hettie in between chocolate bars.

I tell her and Julia that in all sincerity and despite all the hassles and aggrevations it actually looks pretty damned good.

Just being brave

I pass Seth in the corridor. He's sat unpacking and assembling a brand new set of children's furniture in the corner opposite the pile of children's furniture that arrived last April and still hasn't gone anywhere.

"Where's that going?" I ask.

"I can make a suggestion," he replies through gritted teeth.

Here to offend against reason

We've decided to buy some more barcode scanners with some of the IT money; there's always a need for barcode scanners and they always go wrong just at the point when there's no spares left (Milton's being coy about the amount of money that's turned up in that budget but my guess is that we could buy a couple of hundred barcode scanners and still have change). Easy peasy as we only bought a couple at Christmas so we know the cost, supplier, etc.

Not so easy peasy: the council's changed its financial system (at the dog end of the financial year, yes I know) and we've hit a snag. To save project time they didn't export the database of existing approved suppliers into the new system. Consequently, all the suppliers are being put onto the system on a need-to-order basis. And having been on the old list of approved suppliers isn't good enough for inclusion on the new system: we have to start from scratch, submitting all the required data and having central procurement check out the company and give them their seal of approval before the request gets passed on to finance for the supplier's record to be created and activated so that we can then quote the approved supplier number so that the order can be sent.

Working smarter not harder.

They'd put a smile on anyone's eek

"Let's try and spend some of this IT money," suggests Milton and I agree. We've got to the end of the week to place orders with IT, who have to OK and order all computer purchases. This turns out to be even less straightforward than it used to be.

"What laser printer should we be ordering?"

"Have a look on the HP site and tell us which one you want."

"So you'll support any printer on the HP site?"

"It depends on which one you choose, we won't know until you tell us."

Drowning by numbers

Milton's been going through the budget figures. Better him than me, I get depressed too easily. We both knew that despite T.Aldous' constant protestations of poverty the library service consistently underspends its budget; he's shocked to find out just by how much.

"I won't tell you all the details," he says.

"I especially don't want to know about the six-figure underspend in staffing," I reply.

"How do you know about that?"

"Simple mathematics: leaving aside all the confusion as to how many library assistants posts are vacant or are being filled by temps there are six senior posts that were left open for more than two years up to last autumn and three posts still vacant that have been left open more than a year."

"You really don't want to know about the underspend in the IT budget either, do you?"

"No. Especially as over the past decade I've been led to believe there isn't a budget."

"It isn't as big as the staffing underspend."

"That's reassuring."

"I don't understand why the central servicing charge is so enormous, though."

"Ah, that comes from the decision to make the direct labour organisation an arms-length company. In its first operating year it made a two million pound loss, which rather defeated the object, so to avoid a repetition all the client departments' charges went up to make up the shortfall, with yearly incremental increases to keep pace with inflation."

"That would explain it. I wondered why we were paying more to administer the contract than we were on contracted services. Here's one you'll like: there's sixty thousand pounds in one staff budget heading that's there solely to be presented as a saving at the end of the financial year: every year sixty thousand goes in, every year that sixty thousand is taken off us. It's actually headed 'projected saving.'"

"What's the point of that? Why don't they just not give us that sixty thousand in the first place?"

"The danger is that if they did that, next year they'd still take sixty thousand off us but we wouldn't have that money to give up."

"You've been working here too long already: you're starting to understand how the buggers think."

"Well, you can't be too careful. I think the point is that they can use this figure to demonstrate that we're spending enough on staff to satisfy the Audit Commission."

"Ever wonder why our cost per issue is so much higher than Bencup's or Pardendale's?"

"Makes you think."

"This is it..."

Plea

I've done as much as I can do now at Noddy and I'm now just getting in the way. Me back off to the broken biscuit factory methinks. As I put my coat on Julia catches my eye:

"Can't you take him away with you? Please?"

All but one face in the room sings out a mute appeal so I steel myself and shout over to T.Aldous:

"Did you say that you needed to sort something out back at Helminthdale before your meeting with Warner this afternoon?"

"Oh yes, thanks. I've got to ring John Fishley about Cattermole Street and I need to check with Lola what's happening about the parking at Windscape. Do you want a lift back."

"That would be good, thanks," I lied.

Well, what would you do, chums?

Tick tick tick...

At long last the counter at Noddy's ready for the PCs to be installed on them. So long as we don't try and use the foot-wide stretch of the worktop that doesn't have any worktop on it or try to thread cables through the holes in the corner unit that open onto the cross struts holding the thing together. Or try to sit the processors on any of the shelves under the counter. Or try and plug the right-hand one in without the use of an extension lead.

It's good to know that this is bespoke furniture designed and built to our specified needs.

Elephants drinking to forget

T.Aldous is having his usual end-of-year panic about performance figures again. Those of us who have paid attention to performance figures throughout the year and taken whatever measures are available (officially or unofficially) to address them don't do any of this nonsense: what can be done has been done, what can't be won't be and it's a tad late in the day to be panicking about it all now. This year I resolve to give the idiot only the end figures and none of the working out: he doesn't understand it, makes something up and passes this on to auditors as gospel, which leads them to query the returns.

"What's being done about the stock check at Pottersbury Road? The auditors were very critical of the stock figures there."

The auditors were very critical of the stock figures there because somebody told them that we didn't know that the stock that's "in" on the Catalogue are actually on the shelves because we'd only just put that library onto the system. The auditors neither knew nor cared until the point at which gobby chipped in with that little snippet of information.

"What are you doing about Pottersbury Road?"

I don't ask why the Systems Librarian is responsible for stocktaking in branch libraries, any more than why I'm responsible for stock withdrawals or visitor figures.

"It's all in train."

"Well, what's being done?"

"We're organising a stock take over the next couple of weeks and I'm doing a bit of work there and at Dutch Bend on the lending stock, similar to what we've done at Noddy and Gypsy Cream."

"I don't want problems with auditors like I had last year."

I don't tell him to keep his mouth shut then.

Suddenly it's high summer and your banana's all gone

Well, the counter's now been uninstalled in the new Noddy Library and we're wondering when it's getting put back in. Not any time today I think, though I'm told I'm being overly pessimistic. It's been a performance so far. Luckily I'm not wasting my time too much hanging around as there's always the need for a spot of help with unpacking and shelving. Especially as "somebody" has decided that the biographies need to go over here not over there, necessitating the complete reshelving of all the fiction that was done yesterday.

"We need to do something about all those empty boxes piled up over there," says T.Aldous.

"Just bend over," somebody mutters.

Less lucky is the guy from IT who was led to expect (not by me!!!) that the counter would be ready this lunchtime and has just arrived ready and eager to get on with the installations. Ah well, at least we can get the public workstations installed as far as we can without access to the staff PC that's going to be controlling the booking and printing systems.

Going dizzy with pleasure

Noddy Library. It's been "going to move" for the best part of three years and there have been more management meetings allegedly to discuss this than soft mick and yet we are where we are. It's day one of the move and things are not going well. Hetty Mistletoe, the librarian in charge there, is trying to oversee the orderly unpacking of the stock that's already on the new site while also overseeing the packing up of the last dregs from the old one. That bit's going well. Not so everything else:

• The counter's being ripped out tomorrow, together with the part of the shelving that T.Aldous has decided is six inches too wide.
• It turns out that the shelving is actually two inches too low. Hetty and her team have had to remove a shelf from each bay so that they can shuffle all the pegs and shelves so that the books can stand upright. This means that they've lost 20% of the expected shelving.
• Julia came in at start of play and decided that the non-fiction would go on the shelves over here instead of over there.
• Mary came in an hour later and said that if the non-fiction's going over there then it would probably be best not to interfile adult and junior non-fiction as planned because it wouldn't all fit on those shelves.
• T.Aldous came in ten minutes later and asked why all the junior non-fiction had been stacked up on the shelves out of sequence. (Answer: they'd been put there out of the way to be sorted out later.)
• He then asked why none of the books have been put on the shelves in face display (Answer: they've only been unpacking for an hour and weren't even thinking about displaying anything at this stage.)
• He then asked why the staff PCs haven't been put on the counter yet (because we hadn't moved any of the computers yet and he's having the counter ripped out tomorrow.)
• And why aren't the kinderboxes arranged properly (Unspoken answer: why don't you just go away and leave us alone to get on with our work?)

I popped in to check where we're dumping the computers when we move them tomorrow afternoon. Hettie's just back from her sixth fag break of the morning but still looking frazzled. I decide to cut the tension with a bit of flirting:

"My God but you're lovely when you're angry."

"Fuck off."

"Oh shit, he's been in already hasn't he?"

"Yes."

Less than a morning is a new record, even for T.Aldous.

Predictable

I'm trying to set up a training session for some new equipment so I check up the availability of rooms.

"You can't use the training room," says Tilly, "T.Aldous is thinking of having a book sale."

Playthings of providence

Seth and Lemuel are Not Happy. After packing up all the New Year Book Sale and lugging it downstairs and piling it in the corner with all the children's furniture that was bought last April they've been told that they need to make arrangements for picking up all the old stock and furniture from Noddy Library so that the place is clear for sale once it's moved home at the end of next week.

"Where's it going?" asks Seth.

"It'll have to come back here," says T.Aldous.

"Where's it going here?"

"There's some room where you cleared those boxes last week."

"We had to clear those boxes because that is a fire escape and people need to be able to escape the building if there's a fire."

"Well, it'll have to go there then."

"But that's a fire escape, it can't go there."

"Well, it'll just have to go there."

"But what if there's a fire?"

"You're fire warden. You'll be able to get everyone out."

We've only been moving Noddy Library for the best part of three years. If this is an example of the pre-planning for the event it's going to be a torrid week!

Milton and I have already roped off the toilet cubicle we're going to be using for storing the new PCs we're ordering for the new learning centres.

This one doesn't look like Shirley Temple

Dillie's helping Frog with the decorations for tomorrow's Family Fun Day.

"Can you do me a favour," he asks her, "can you nip out and buy a pump for this balloon?"

She looked at him pityingly.

"Three blows and I'll have it sorted."

We both of us suddenly felt quite old and inadequate.

Let's wear that pullover we got at Narkover

Some people are better at absorbing ideas than others. Mildred, one of our new library assistants, isn't the type to be told what to do and how to do it. Pansy was struggling to explain the library management system to her. It very quickly became apparent that Mildred wasn't that bothered about policy or process:

"Oh it's near enough."

"Near enough doesn't really cut it, does it?"

"I can't be arsed. I've only another eight years to go."

Title of the Year

An early contendor comes in with the children's visit.

"Let's Explore Uranus: Blast Off"

Never underestimate the power of shaving stubble

"Bloody hell!" cries Lippy, "me thong's snapped!"

She demonstrated the effects of the calamity by pulling her thong up to her chest. The trick would have been more impressive twenty years ago.

Changing rooms

Cattermole Street Library was knocked about a bit this time last year and still looks a state. The problem started when it was decided from on high that there needed to be disabled access to the boiler (we still don't know how many wheelchair-bound heating engineers are engaged by the council and they'll have a job of it anyway as the boiler's still six foot up on the wall). This involved knocking out a partition wall and moving it a yard into the library, which in turn involved taking an old three-bay set of bookshelves off the wall. Unfortunately, the council's architect's project plan costed in replacing the partition wall but didn't include making good. Which means that we've got a bare wall complete with cracked plaster and unplugged plugholes as the main feature as you enter the library.

T.Aldous has tried and failed to get this rectified but is starting to believe that the council's finance department has him beat this time. It turns out that he can't pay for it out of the capital budget because it isn't a refurbishment. And he can't pay for it out of revenue budget because it's building work not redecoration.
The best suggestion so far is that we should kill two birds with one stone by getting our engaging with youth in the community tick in the box by asking the local yobbos to set about the wall with seldgehammers so we can get the builders in to repair the damage and make good.

With our luck they'll make too good a job of it and some clown will decide to declare it a drive-in access point for disabled drivers.

Elvis has not yet left the building

Lemuel was a bit late out last night, leaving at half eight. As he went through the security gates of the shopping centre he shouted over:

"You may as well leave them open. The Queen Mother's still in."

"No surprise there, mate. He's in till ten o'clock every night."

Those of us not wondering about his home life are left bewildered: what's he actually doing?

Time travel

Every so often (three or four times a day) I wonder what job I'm really supposed to be doing. I think I'm systems librarian but I appear to be mistaken.

This lunchtime's "why me?" question:

"Why on earth have we got the 1988 Berlitz Guide to Yugoslavia?"

"I guess it might come in handy if 1988 comes back again."

Well, a stupid question deserves a stupid answer.

Flogging a dead horse

What an afternoon! I only work here for all the intellectual chat.

Yuk yuk! (TM Baby Face Finlayson)

Probably understandably, Daisy's obsessing a bit about this Jim Corbett Grill business and is havering between wanting a full CSI-style investigation of the case and running off to throw up in a corner. We've established that we're not going there but she's still wanting proofs of the matter. Helpfully, I suggest that she asks the Local History Library to do a search of the Catty Examiner microfiles to get the reports on the matter. It wouldn't be the maddest request for information that Henry's had from Dutch Bend. I don't think I'll tell him that I suggested it, though.

Yuk!

Just when I thought I'd heard every stupid curry house rumour ever... Daisy's organising a birthday do for one of her library assistants and suggested the Jim Corbett Grill in Catty.

"Ooh no, I wouldn't go there. That's the one that got closed down because the cooks were coming in the curry."

"What?!? Have you any proof of this?"

"I haven't got pictures. It's true, though, it was in the Catty Examiner."

So it must be true then. The mind boggles.

What can you say in the circumstances?

T.Aldous is, quite fairly, irritated by a squib that appears to have been published by the friends of Noddy Library and pushed through all the local letterboxes (it's bravely anonymous and devoid of printer's details). One point in particular upsets him:

"They call me patronising. Me! Patronising? I think you'll agree with me that I may be many things but not patronising."

My poker face has deserted me of late, I hope it behaved itself this time.

Methodology part II

More from the Stanley Slavsky School of Library Management:

Responding to initiative

Recognising success

Spoons!

"Watch out if you go into the cutlery draw," says Tilly, "T.Aldous is going to be taking all the spoons home tonight to give them a clean. He's got them counted and he'll want to know why any have gone missing."

Sleepwalking into danger

Preparations for moving Noddy Library into new premises a hundred yards down the road have started at last after nearly three years' mucking about. The shelves are in at last and we've started moving the new stock from storage into the new site. We're doing a stock check as we go along using hand-held scanners to make sure that anything accidentally left behind isn't recorded as being on the shelves and it's working pretty well. Which might explain why my guard was down when I was approached by T.Aldous.

"Are those hand-held sets working OK at Noddy?"

"Yes, it's working really well and they're steaming ahead with the job."

"So we could do the same thing at Glass Road when that moves?"

"Absolutely."

"Could we use it at Pottersbury Road as well?"

"Don't see why not."

"So we'd give the teachers the hand-held sets and they'd be able to issue books to their classes..."

"Ah... no. If you want to do self-service at those libraries we really need to put in self-service."

Exit systems librarian with soiled trousers!

There he goes with his eye out

How have I not just slapped T.Aldous? I was down at Noddy earlier this afternoon talking to Julia about the impending move when in trots The Man. He trotted straight over to the encyclopedias, feigned surprise, tut-tutted and called Julia over.

"These encyclopedias look a bit old, Julia," he said.

He then opened a volume of Britannica and said: "good grief! This is the 1996 edition!"

Which he's known since Tuesday afternoon when I gave him a print out of the publication dates of all the encyclopedias in the borough.

Taking a step back

I've come to the conclusion that I've been overplaying the "I am a loony" card lately and that I'll have to start behaving myself. It has to be admitted that when you're working in an environment where half the people you deal with on a regular basis could do with somebody looking after them this unique selling point starts to lose its cachet.

Motivation

How to get the best out of your staff: T.Aldous has just been in at Dutch Bend for something or other (who knows?) and, as usual, he had to have his Parthian shot. As he was going out he stopped at the counter, turned to Daisy and said:

"It's about damned time you sorted out all those donations in the back office, it's a disgrace."

This is doubly unfair as all staff have been instructed that while they must accept donations nothing can be done with them due to pressure of work caused by staff vacancies (in one case the post's been vacant three years); and as last year T.Aldous swore blind to a Pay and Review Evaluation Panel that Daisy didn't have anything to do with processing donations.

The icing on the cake came as one of the customers witnessing the incident approached the counter, winked at Daisy and said:

"I guess that's you told, then."

Once more on the merry-go-round

It must be spring: T.Aldous has asked me for a print-out of all the copies of Encyclopedia Britannica in our libraries and their age. This will turn into "I don't know why we've got all these old encyclopedias in stock," followed by "we shouldn't have the 1991 edition on the shelves at Dutch Bend," and ultimately "we must do something about getting rid of all these old encyclopedias and ordering some new ones."

I have a lot of sympathy with this point of view. But rather less than I had ten years ago when we first started this dance.

Pong

"I don't see why Noddy Library has to move out of the existing building," a correspondent writes in the Helminthdale Clarion.

The chemical toilet may provide a clue.

Pulling the plug

Network down at Cattermole Street Library. It turns out that all the council buildings in the area are offline. Someone from corporate comms goes over to the education office to check out the local hub. Where he finds that someone decided to do a PowerPoint presentation in that office and they unplugged the hub so that they could plug in the projector.

"I'm glad you're here, mate, I'm supposed to be demonstrating how this product works and we can't get an internet connection."

Their relief at his renewing the connection was tempered by his cutting the plug off the projector.

Yoyo

We had a promotion day in January in an effort to boost library membership, it produced 50 new members of which only 20 actually borrowed anything. One of our senior managers asked if I could produce a list of those who joined.

"Do you want anything other than names and addresses?"

"No."

List produced, no problem.

"Can you let me have the number of times they've borrowed anything?"

"You mean the use count?"

"Yes, I suppose so."

"Are you sure there is nothing else you want?"

"That should do."

List produced, no problem.

"Can you put in there the last time they used the library?"

No, I don't think so.

Madness in their method

A colleague tells me that staff at their library authority have taken up "The Method," as taught by the well-known northern acting guru Stanley Slavsky. They demonstrate a couple of key emotes:

Encouraging staff input

Forward planning

Keep young and beautiful

The Town Hall's gone mad: biscuits are banned at meetings and it's fruit and nuts instead. One principal officers' meeting started with a bout of tai chi. The basement of the building will be getting a treadmill installed. This is a bit stalinist. They don't have a room for supervisions, nor one for first aid, but they make space for a treadmill room and a prayer room. A plaintive note appears in an email:

"Maybe we could get a rationality room?"

Praise from Caesar is praise indeed

We've done well in the customer survey asking if if they found the books they wanted. They say yes, overwhelmingly. T.Aldous takes the opportunity to pass on some good news for once and flunks it. "This is down to front-line staff and nobody else," he tells an audience which includes half the acquisitions team that have been killing themselves to get 48,000 items ordered, catalogued, received and distributed in between doing every other shit job that needs doing backstage when they're not covering vacancies. This does not go down well.

"We'll have to wait to the end of the financial year to get our thank you. They'll tell us how much they value us and they'll promise to do something about filling the vacancies, then they'll wander off and nothing will change" they mutter.

Why he couldn't have taken the opportunity to emphasise the value of the teamwork involving all the people, front- and backstage, who provide the books that our customers want I do not know. Actually, that's not true, I do know: we have a deeply-entrenched silo mentality that cripples a lot of our potential.

Mary pointed out the error to T.Aldous, who decided to make an apology to the acquisitions team. This is almost unprecedented. Having overheard the conversation I'd advise him not to bother in future. It all started okay with him saying that he hadn't meant to overlook the team, he was just wanting to make sure that people realised that the praise wasn't due to anything that management had done, it was a reflection of the work done by the staff who get their hands dirty. They explained to him that they understood what his intentions were but that it hurt to be sidelined yet again as they feel that their hard work is undervalued, especially given that one post's been vacant a year, another for two years and another for three years and not only have they taken up the slack, they've increased productivity and are expected to cover posts elsewhere backstage as and when they arise.

"We just don't think that anyone takes the work that we do seriously and nobody cares how much pressure we're under until something goes wrong or one or other of you starts panicking because we're falling behind on targets or the boxes are stacking up in the corner."

"Well, you have a think about what we can do to take some of the pressure off you."

"You can fill some of the vacancies."

"Mary and I need to get together to plan what we're doing with those posts. I'll get back to you on that. In the mean time, bear in mind that it'll soon be the end of March. I'll be thanking you for all your work then."

Ouch. When you're in a hole, stop digging.

Klonk

The Money Advice Team is being "enterprised." My friend tells me that she's been told that she's "transitionally thick." Like an idiot I forget that she's got a mean left hook.

Hearts and flowers

"Are we doing anything for St. Valentine's Day?" I ask innocently.

"Don't kid yourself, sugarbutty."

Bite

Tilly's annoyed by somebody at Catty Library.

"When they answered the 'phone they didn't say who there were, where they were or anything. They just said: 'hello.' Mind you, I did wonder whether they were going to answer the 'phone at all. Just imagine what would happen if I didn't answer the 'phone: that's my whole job."

I nearly bit through my lip.

Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity

As if the transmigration of Noddy Library isn't a prolonged catastrophe as it is, T.Aldous and Julia have put a new spanner in the works. The counter's been in place at the new site for the past couple of months. Only now, two weeks before the proposed move, do they decide that it needs to be modified with a new unit including a fines drawer.

"Audit won't allow staff to handle the fines money: the customers have to put the money in the slot themselves. We're not allowed to put money in cash tins,"

says himself, which I expect would come as a surprise to both the auditors and the thirteen libraries (including Noddy) that do put the fines cash into tins. Anyway, we've got to dismantle the counter, put in a new bit and then reassemble the whole shebang. Which involves getting the electrician and the network contractors in to uninstall all the wiring in the counter prior to its being dismantled and install a whole new fresh lot post-rebuilding.

Deep joy.

Pinch

It's that time of year again when the Acquisitions Team (both of them) do their damnedest to order, receive and invoice half the year's stock in five weeks flat. As we don't have electronic ordering all the orders have to be printed (besides which, the auditors require that a printed and signed copy of every order be placed in a filing cabinet upstairs).

Imagine, then, their surprise when Tilly potters up and removes the ink cartridge from their printer. "They need it upstairs," she says.

It is quickly made clear to her that she should put it back.

Apparently there are no ink cartridges in stock. Which prompts us to wonder just what it is she's doing when she's spending hours at a time locked in the stationery cupboard. I'm not sure I'm willing to speculate on the subject.

The sound of one hand clapping

Tilly has taken to spending most of her time sitting at the only desk anywhere on the floor without a telephone. Functionally this might be a disadvantage to a Library Secretary but suits Tily down to the ground. This has not gone unnoticed. A telephone rings stridently.

On the eleventh ring Tilly shouts out: "Is that my 'phone?"

"Yes," responds a chorus of people making no move whatsoever to pick up the call.

"I'd best answer it then," shouts Tilly, making a show of running slowly to her desk. A good twenty yards away from the desk next to the one she was sat at, which has a 'phone that could have easily picked up the call.

Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake

Some folk have all the luck. One of my colleagues is upgrading his library management system this week and the system's down for the next two days. His boss has obviously taken this on board:

Have you got ten minutes this morning? I need some information for a meeting this pm.
I need a list of all the names and addresses of borrowers who have not borrowed any books for the past twelve months and/or owe fines or charges and also those who will become "inactive" in February or March 2007.
You can see where I'm going here.

My colleague has a few suggestions. Naturally he is crushed that he is unable to accommodate.

The Franz Kafka Roadshow

Jim's in lumber. T.Aldous having told him to get staff input on the draft library business plan he dutifully emailed a copy to selected members of staff. Himself is now giving him a bollocking:

"You had no right to circulate that document, it's only a draft."

Gardener's world

All the windows in Catty Library are boarded up to stop them getting broken by the workmen who have been swarming around the roof for the past month. Staff are working with miners' helmets. The roof is in bits. The plaster inside the library has been cracked to buggery for years. The floor sags. The walls drip water. The electrics aren't clever. The network is buggered because the Heritage Officer won't let us connect the library to the building next door. And bits of old pigeon drip onto the enquiry desk.

For the third time this week a lady from the Leisure Trust Committee comes in to complain that there's a dandelion growing in the gutter on the front.

Is it deja vu again already?

Himself pokes his head into the office. "Can you get me the current cost of..."