Spinning blancmange on a nail in the ceiling

Let the welkin ring! The staff newsletter has finally been published and circulated. (This is issue one of the regular monthly newsletter that's been published since December). It's OK-ish up to the point where T.Aldous' responses to the long-abandoned staff suggestion scheme appears in print.

There is spin and there is spin. Even the questions are rewritten to fit T.Aldous' peculiar mindset. My suggestion that we put the stock in the reserve stacks to use in displays and historically-themed stock promotions is turned into: "What's the point of having reserve stock? Let's get rid of it all."

It looks like I'm not alone. A zamizdat version of T.Aldous' responses is now doing the rounds. Starting off with:

Staff ask:
"When are you going to fill the staff vacancies in the branch libraries?"

Management hears:
"Well done you for managing the service so well."

T.Aldous replies:
"At the turn of the century, explorers regarded the North Pole as the last prize in the Northern Hemisphere. The quest for the Pole turned into an international race with teams from Britain, Norway and America vying for the distinction of reaching it first. Robert Peary, a Commander in the U.S. Navy, made his first attempt to reach the Pole in 1893. Two more expeditions followed (1898-1902 and 1905-1906). Both fell short of the mark, but the efforts propelled Peary to the distinction of America's foremost Arctic explorer. "

We all know where this is going. The next time we get inspected, Himself will be asked about staff consultation and he'll say:

"We have a staff suggestion programme but staff don't use it."

Servus interruptus

I'm trying to set up a vote of no confidence motion with regard to our IT section. They have spent thousands on the room housing servers etc, only for the air conditioning to blow on Saturday and take five servers with it, and last night a power cut took out the lot.

I innocently asked what happened to the UPS, "Oh, that must have failed as well".

Marshalling resources

"We need to get the Library Service Strategic Plan onto the web," says Milton. "Jim's going to send you the document."

"It should be easy enough. We just need to find someone with a pdf writer so that we can convert it," I answer.

"I've got one on my PC. I got it installed when I got my PC. I got Visio, Photoshop and a few other things as well while I was at it."

...

I confined myself to mentioning that it's always useful to know what resources are available to the Library Service.

Another of life's mysteries

Something catches my eye as I read some auditors' notes on the CIPFA stats collection:

"...In the event of system failure these data are secured by the implementation of the Business Continuity Plan."

This is news to me. I ask Jim if we do have a Business Continuity Plan.

"Oh yes, we wrote it a while back."

I'm not impressed. I'm even less impressed when I read it. I manage to persuade myself that I really do need to make the effort to get this revised into something that might actually work.

Marching backwards to a brave new tomorrow

A colleague writes:

Much to my delight I find that our council has a Maximising The Potential Of Our People Project Board, charged with creating a culture with a "can do" attitude, which is flexible, nimble, inspirational and focussed on making things happen.

So yah boo, sucks to Helminthdale! We got there first.

And damn me, he's right: we have no such thing. I intend writing a stiff memo to our Performance Team telling them that I'm worried that we may be quartile dipping on our non-deliverable bullshit outputs.

Tomato! Thou art like the mind

Our Corporate IT Newsletter comes a-pinging into our Outtake mailboxes, sandwiched in between the offers of cheap Rolex watches; offers of cheap v!agra and "press releases" from some bunch of rogues determined to have us believe that Helminthdale appeared in the top quartile for customer satisfaction in the last perfomance cycle.

"Investing for a better infrastructure!" proclaims the screaming headline. Actually reading the article (I know, I know) it turns out that the sole strategy for transforming our network architecture is "we will be attaching our Outlook server to a spam filter."

The Michigan Insane AsylumIs up on the top of the hill

Some more of the furniture's arrived for the new Glass Road Library, round the back of St. Barrabas' Primary School, but it can't be delivered. The school's commandeered the library to provide office space for the OFSTED inspectors who are in this week and they won't let us in.

The new library opens at the end of the month.

We've been paying rent on this place for the past two and a half years.

Doesn't bode well for the future.

A noble structure which has many charms

Jim's been working out the floor areas of libraries for the performance reports. Much to my surprise it turns out that public floorspace only accounts for 52% of Catty Library. Surprising because there's nowhere for staff to work at Catty, the workrooms barely having room to swing a cat. We think it through: the 48% staff area has to include the five small rooms off the entrance hall (each the size of a broom closet); perhaps the entrance hall itself (it accounts for a good third of the building) and the attic.

Catty Library: a great façade on a derelict bike shed.

Why, is it possible that 'tis the same!

By one of those coincidences beyond the nerve of creative writers, Daisy tells me that she's spent all morning looking stuff up for one of the planners at Dutch Bend.

"I told him that he could do it on the web but he said that the connection in the planning office is so slow that he can't do anything on the web without it timing out on him."

Some rare bits of brain lie here

We're having a problem with one of the library portals. It worked fine yesterday. It works fine on public PCs in the library. It works fine when someone logs in at home. It is completely inaccessible on library staff PCs. We're used to it timing out on our PCs — everything on the internet times out on the corporate network at one time or another because it's so damned slow — but this is a new wrinkle.

I log the call with the corporate helpdesk. They proxy into my PC and see for themselves. After twenty minutes' worth of trial and error they find that if you search for the server's name and then enter the IP address as the URL then it'll open up a session on the portal. Which stays open until you change pages. This is peculiar on so many levels I'm boggled. But not any more so than when I'm told:

"It's an application problem. You'll have to contact the supplier."

Err...

"How is it an application problem? It's working for the public but not for us. What's changed overnight? I'm not allowed on the server. The supplier's not been allowed on the server since the software was installed."

"Well it can't be a network problem. It must be an application problem."

I do as I'm told and report it to the supplier. My account manager 'phones me up:

"This isn't so much passing the buck as throwing it bodily out of the window."

"Can you tell them that? They won't believe me."

They might throw pennies

Compare and contrast, from the world of the Department of Culture, Media and Sport:

Cost of execrable 2012 logo for the London Olympics: £400,000, cash on the nail

Budget for the national Framework for the Future Library Improvement programme: £4,000,000, to be paid in instalments

One to bear in mind the next time some politician starts banging on about the return of investment of the public library sector.

Skip

Lemuel's off sick (he's been looking peaky for weeks), so it's down to Seth to look after the ship single-handed. This doesn't stop T.Aldous' providing him with more things to do elsewhere. Today it's shifting a pile of crap down to the old Noddy Library site (it's some of the crap that was brought back the other week and it's the old Noddy Library site that should have been cleared out by the end of April). T.Aldous has hired a skip for an hour and Seth's to fill it up with the aid of Kevin the van driver. If they've the sense they were born with they'll make a day of it.

Dust and yesterday's greasepaint

An odd morning for posters...

There's a new one at the railway station saying: "Go back in time... ...Travel with Northern Rail." I thought this was very appropriate as I decamped from my 1985 Sprinter and got onto the Transpennine Express (like the Pony Express but slower and less reliable), built in 1988.

Walking down from Helminthdale Station there's a new one put up by the Regeneration Unit:

Put on your dancing trousers and boogie on down
To the bars, pubs and clubs
In Helminthdale Town Centre

As the local nightlife is made up of The Monkey's; The Duck & Pullet and O'Rafferty's Catholic Ukrainian Club I can't imagine John Travolta strutting his stuff of a Wednesday evening.

Library –2.0.1

Investigations show that the corporate ban on blogging sites only covers those sites with the character string 'blog' somewhere in their URL. The only thing more fun than an irrational ban on online resources is a lazy irrational ban on online resources.

Library –2.0

Picking up a reference about online learning resources for public library staff on a site in the States I make the mistake of trying to check it out at work. Access denied By Order Of The Management. I log a call with the corporate IT helpdesk asking for access to this site.

Sorry, this site's blocked because it's a blogging site.

It pays to talk

T.Aldous is disputing the architects' costs for the move to the new Noddy Library. He insists on an itemised bill.

By far the biggest item on the bill turns out to be "telephone conversations with T.Aldous Huxtable."

You really don't want to read this one

One of the cleaners, a lady in her sixties, has just come back from her holidays in Blackpool.

"My daughter bought me a vibrator for me holidays. Does anyone want it? I've only used it once."

To sunshine and song I but just awaken

A wave of optimism surges round the staff room table. And hits a breakwater.

"When's T.Aldous going on his holidays?"

"End of the month."

"Ooh, I can't wait: three weeks' bliss and getting stuff done."

"He's only going away for two weeks."

"Shit... Ah well, at least it'll be two weeks without his meddling interference."

"Nobody's told you the story about the postcards from China, have they?"

Uh?

Noreen comes back from leave to find a note on her desk:

Half a bottle of milk was thrown away last Thursday because it has gone off.

Perhaps we should hold a wake.

He tried to become a hypnotist but gave up when a vicar told him that his mouth was the wrong shape

The art of précis:

"Can you summarise the library service's long-term business plan?"

"One hundred and thirty people praying for T.Aldous to retire."

Men of muscle mystery

Maybelle Googly's lending a hand cataloguing a pile of non-fiction that's been bought on a visit for the Prison Library. [In case of confusion it needs to be said that no stock's been bought for the staff library since 1983.]

"How should I classify this?" she asks.

It's a coffee-table book of art studies of muscular men with oiled pecs and thighs like small emergent nations. We spend twenty minutes running through the schedules but we can't find a Dewey number for "gay porn."

All these things are soul

"What time are you going home tonight?" asks T.Aldous. Troubled by experience and paranoia I ask:

"Why?"

"I need to check the CIPFA figures with you. Will you be around?"

"Possibly..."

"I should have been in a meeting two hours ago. When I get back can we just get together to go through the statistics?"

"When are you getting back."

"Oh it should be about half-three."

He arrived back ten minutes ago and shot off for a lightning inspection of the new Glass Road library site at St. Barrabas.

Me for buggering off. I'm not hanging round here for to look at CIPFA stats in the Friday evening twilight before bank holiday weekend.

Smoke signals

Daisy's turn to try and give up smoking again, the forthcoming ban on smoking in public being a big incentive. It goes without saying that support is fothcoming.

"God, this is hell. I don't know what to do without a cigarette in my hand sometimes."

"You'll have to take up masturbation or knitting."

"I'd take up knitting if I were you. You're less likely to get into lumber for doing it on the enquiry desk."

Thirty minutes' worth of implausible claptrap

Bronwyn's going to be a film star! The council, in its infinite wisdom, has commissioned a film showing what a splendid place is Helminthdale, full of vim and verve and wonder, a joy for investors and a fully-oiled machine of capitalist growth. Part of the film is a series of interviews with council staff and customers telling the world that the council is responsive to the needs of its customers, values its employees and listens to both. It's Bronwyn's job to lie on film for the sake of her council. For half an hour. We can't imagine how she'll keep a straight face.

They'll probably have to use tranquiliser darts.

Siege mentality

They've been having problems with hoodies in the car park at the new Noddy Library. Today's escapade takes the problem to a new level: they've barricaded the doors to the library so that nobody could get out. In the end Hettie had to kick the door open with a martial arts kick.

Julia insisted that Flossie Meredith go down from Dutch Bend to provide moral support. Quite apart from leaving Dutch Bend short-staffed yet again it's difficult to see what sort of moral support Flossie could be providing. Mind you, if Hettie gets provoked into putting aside her pacifist leanings it would take two of them to stop her killing the buggers.

Along the wires the electric message came

Julia rings Dutch Bend:

"Good news: we'll be closing Glass Road on the eighteenth of June and opening at the new site a week after. Make sure that nobody books leave that week."

We'll be spending the rest of the day wondering which bit of this is good news.

Some turned up to say they couldn't come

OK, so I was wrong. Not all Management Group's on the away day.

They should be, but T.Aldous is still floating around here with a jar of coffee under his arm, demonstrating his commitment to teamwork.

It may seem like a bit of a cliché

Management Group are having an away day to look at one of the key threads of the annual plan. As it happens, I know about it because Milton and Jim have both told me about it and asked for background information. It turns out that I'm on my own. An uncharacteristic burst of diplomacy has me rubbing out the "Wot no management group?" cartoons on the whiteboard (the one that was put on the wall so's we can say where we are) and replace it with a message: "MG out all day: all-day meeting."

The last away day was devoted to Management Group's communications strategy.

The ducks said "quack" and flung them back

I feel a bit mean about this. Pauline's just asked me if I can email her the issue figures for April. I said no. It's actually Pauline's job to collect and collate the issue stats but she still doesn't know how to do it. I spent a couple of months asking her when it would be convenient to show her how to do it but every time she was too busy. That was before Tilly retired and Pauline's even busier now, doing her job as well as her own.

So why am I being awkward? Well, it finally dawned on me that I shouldn't be begging someone to give me the opportunity to train them how to do their job. Especially not with the coda "but don't worry if it's not convenient, I'll do your job for you." That's just silly.

Off us trolley

The Acquisitions Team (both of 'em) are processing a pile of incoming story boxes for the Bookstart project. The rest is inevitable...

"Where's the flatbed trolley gone? We need it for the story boxes."

"Mary sent it to Milkbeck on Monday; they needed a trolley."

Let's blame the blue tits

Overheard but not believed:

"Is T.Aldous around?"

"No."

"Is Mary?"

"They're all in a management group meeting. Why?"

"They've run out of milk upstairs."

Dunsinane walks!

"Good news!" says Frog, "we're going to set up a library wood."

"Where?" I ask.

"Dunno. It's something being arranged with the countryside and parks department."

If it's anything like anything else round here in a few years' time someone will be asking: "what's them trees doing over there by those boxes?"

Escape committee news part 97

Bad news: Hettie Mistletoe at Noddy Library's the latest for the escape tunnel, having secured a job elsewhere in the council with career prospects and a real salary structure.

That means I'll be the only eye candy left. I hope there's enough of me to go around.

The electric throbbing twang their heartstrings

The town centre's festooned with posters proclaiming that "Helminthdale is a happening place."

It would explain a lot to find that this town's just a psychadelic event that somehow got out of hand.

Boomerang!

All the old crap that got shipped out to the old Noddy Library for to be picked up when it's being cleared out is to come back because the buyer wants it cleared out by 30th April. The boys are delighted. Even more so when it becomes apparent that they can't take it to the tip because T.Aldous won't pay for it to go.

Where's the fire inspector when you need him?

An exquisite odour of leave-taking

"If T.Aldous is on leave," says Milton, "what's he doing in this morning, ringing people up and telling them to ring him back?"

"I keep forgetting you're new round here," I repy.

Bringing forth this vast leviathan

Milton's turn to find himself the senior officer of the service and up Shit Creek. The boiler at Dutch Bend has started leaking badly and they've rung in here to get it reported for repair. We have no idea what the hell we do in the circumstances, and neither does anyone else, it's another of T.Aldous' secret procedures.

Much to my surprise T.Aldous strolls in (most of us were expecting to see him yesterday, seeing as he's on leave this week). His conversation with Milton is a classic of its kind.

"The boiler at Dutch Bend's got a leak, how do they report it for repairs?"

"They can't. They have to give a cost code and they can't do that."

"So what do they do?"

"They ring in here and report it to Tilly."

"But Tilly's been and gone and retired."

"Then I'll deal with it."

"But you're on leave."

"Well I'm here now."

"Wouldn't it be a good idea to have the procedure written down so that we know what to do if something happens and you're not around?"

"There's no need, it's not as if it's going to happen."

Max Bygraves sings the decimalisation song

A puzzle.

How come the Reference Librarians insist on stock being classified to six decimal places on the Dewey Number and then they shelve the stock in an order only navigable by reference to a title key on the window ledge?

Green parties

The council's green credentials are brought into question: the lady mayoress isn't allowed to travel in the official civic car with her baby (in case she decides to breastfeed it) so the car's just used to take the mayoral chain to events and she follows behind in her own car.

Coming to a doorstep near you

We don't have all the nutters. One of the guys in Housing Repairs is very fond of dressing up. Very fond. When he went to see Spider-Man at the pictures he dressed his son up as Spider-Man and he went as the Green Goblin (it was a mid-run Saturday matinee). All last week he came to work dressed up as a cowboy, including stetson and six-guns. He was doing repairs in the sheltered housing on the Kilbey Estate near Milkbeck; I can just imagine some old dear opening the door to find a cowboy builder come to mend the windows. Mind you, the six-guns would come in useful on the Kilbey Estate.

Drill

Unannounced fire drill. It might not be a coincidence that the Fire Inspector called last week and T.Aldous is on holiday this week.

Up the Scrubs

These days half of us are rattling like Smarties Easter eggs. It's Frog's turn this time: he's had a massive allergic reaction to something or other and is on big white pills to control the itching. We're putting it about that he's got the clap and he's quite happy about this as it suggests that he's got a racier lifestyle than he's up to these days.

A few of us were sitting around comparing the side-effect warnings on our medications. My tablets have a great long list of close-typed terrors. I generally never read this bit but my doctor insisted that I do so: "once you realise that have have nearly none of the side-effects you'll feel so much better." (Note from one who knows: you don't ever want to hear your doctor say: "you'll have nearly none of the side-effects.") My pills "may induce yawning." Someone else's warns: "if blistering occurs discontinue use." Everyone's includes: "may cause drowsiness." But then again all medication "may cause drowsiness," Nitty Biffen in the Benefits Office is on stimulants and even they say "may cause drowsiness."

Smearing doves' wings with clay whilst singing to a troupe of frolicking beetles

They've just finished knocking down the offices at Riverside after a few weeks' delay caused by the higher façade falling into the road instead of the dirty big hole in the back. There's a bit of a row about it because the sandstone facings were supposed to be being sold for reclamation but went to landfill instead (we're told).

This is the first phase of town centre redevelopment (how the waters freeze at those words). Riverside is to be the site for the new town hall and council offices. Typically for Helminthdale ambition overstretches reality: the site's about the size of a football pitch and is to hold the new council offices, a bus station, a tram terminal, an extension to the shopping centre and a plaza with trees and fountain-adorned rills. I expect we'll end up with an Anderson shelter and a bus stop.

A colleague (he knows who he is) tells me that his council's town hall was Hitler's favourite English building and that the council was so flattered by his approval that they've worked against the best interests of the nation ever since.

What horrors rise,were nauseous to relate

Another reason why public library staff aren't as keen on providing public toilet facilities as are Audit Commission inspectors... Three brand new books have been found torn to pieces and wodged down the pan in the gents' in lending.

Even if we left a supply of Rizlas on the side of the sink they'd still bloody do it.

Not the usual cover problem

We're getting a new, green, carpet in the lending library, T.Aldous tells us. We ask how we're going to be organising the closed days. To our surprise he tells us that the library isn't going to close. He really thinks that we'll be able to rope off part of the library whilst workmen dismantle all the shelves and counters in the area, shift it all to one side (where?), roll out and lay that bit of the carpet, shift all the furniture back and put it back together, rope off the next part of the library and repeat, rolling the carpet along as they go and slicing off the margins as necessary, all the time having the public at large on the other side of the ropes. You might like to have a go at this game in your back parlour.

Seth and I have visions of the fitters taking the carpet over to the car park so that they can cut it to shape, cutting out counter- and shelving-base-shaped holes in appropriate places so that they can leave the old as is and just overlay with the new.

Egress

This is the tidiest that this place has been for years (at face value anyway, it's as bad as ever if you open any doors). Even so, the fire inspector is grim faced and spends the best part of an hour pointing out the obstacles that get in the way of anybody trying to leave the building in an orderly fashion for their lunch. The set of his jaw suggests that he doesn't fancy our chances in the event of fire. I won't have any problems, I'll be too busy trying to overcome the barricade of trolleys and boxes of CDs that Mary routinely leaves across my doorway.

Seth tries to relay the results to T.Aldous who, in typical fashion, blanks it completely:

"Have you made room in that corridor for those noticeboards?"

Itchycoo

Frog's had to go to the doctor's first thing. Lippy, who took the call, has told everybody that he's down at the clinic with a funny rash. Frog, in turn, is telling everyone that he's been prescribed viagara (he says it doesn't help with the rash but it makes it easier to scratch). The pity is that T.Aldous hadn't noticed that Frog wasn't in: we were looking forward to answering the inevitable query with the response "he's at the doctor's with an itchy dick."

Ah well, perhaps next time.

Antici——pation

Seth's wearing a beatific smile as he strolls along our box-ridden corridor.

"Fire inspection tomorrow," he explains.

Grind

My turn to answer T.Aldous' 'phone.

"I'm just checking the insurance details for the model of Milkbeck Industrial Estate. Is there security in the shopping centre?"

"Yes, the shopping centre has 24-hour on-site security guards."

"Thank you."

Ten minutes later...

"I'm just checking the insurance details for the model of Milkbeck Industrial Estate."

"I know. We just spoke."

"Ah yes. Is the library alarmed?"

"Nervous about the future but not necessarily alarmed."

"Does it have a burglar alarm?"

"Yes."

"Thank you."

Two minutes later...

"Has the burglar alarm got 24-hour response?"

"Yes, by the 24-hour security in the shopping centre."

"Thank you."

Uh? Who'd steal the bloody thing? And how???

I mention this to Seth.

"You'd have thought they'd have checked the security beforehand. I wonder what would have happened if I'd said no."

"I wish they had. Himself won't let me switch on the burglar alarm. Not since he cocked it up and we had to pay the call-out fee to get it reset."

Throughput

"Business a bit slack?" I ask Noreen. It turns out that they're waiting for Mary to sign the orders.

"We usually keep things ticking over with the large print standing orders but we've not had any for a couple of months because we're waiting for her to sign the form."

It's an odd thing but when Noreen was soldiering on by herself last month (Betty being off sick) there was no sign of Mary from one day to the next. Just lately, with both of them being in and with a couple of people working extra hours to do some of the cataloguing, Mary's all over them like a rash.

But not so much as to sign the order forms.

As if by magic

"What the hell's that?" I ask Seth, pointing at a huge glass box in the reference library.

"It's Milkbeck Industrial Estate."

"All of it?"

"No, just a model."

"How on earth did you get it in here?"

"We brought it up the shopping centre's service lift, then through into the car park then through the fire exit and down the stairs. We were told we weren't allowed to up-end it but that was the only way it was getting through the fire exit."

I studied it at length for a minute or two, taking care not to lean on the box, seeing as it was on a couple of dodgy tables pending the arrival of some sort of plinth. For the life of me I can't work out where it is: there's a hill in one corner and a motorway in another but no other geographical indicators whatsoever.

I decide not to care.

All the news that fits we don't print either

Maisie's been given the job of putting together the regularly monthly staff newsletter that's been being published since Xmas. Staff provided enough copy for several newsletters last November and the little that is left after it's passed the T.Aldous vetting process and is still of other than Local Studies historical interest has been sitting on he PC since Easter. Every so often one or other of us will ask her:

"How's the regular monthly staff newsletter?"

And every so often she'll tell us to sod off.

What's the problem. Here's a hint, just overheard. No clues as to the speaker...

"There, you see, that's a much nicer font...
...I thought you said that this was a four-page document. Can I leave you to sort out that problem?"

We look forward to the newsletter's being launched in one of our regular monthly staff meetings that we haven't had since October.

Hands up if you work for the library service!

Jim's trying to build a staff training matrix. The main stumbling block is that he can't get a list of staff, let alone what their training and developmental needs may be. He sent a note out to Management Group asking if they could have a look at the list that Human Resources had provided and make any necessary amendments. That's when T.Aldous stuck his oar in:

"This is the list I have tried to amend several times and it is still wrong in many places. Many of these errors are of long standing and will not be understood by most of Management Group. I need to check the final version."

This puts my ongoing inability to get anyone to tell me when staff need to be added to or removed from the systems in the shade.

It must be the numbers

You know how it is, you produce some stats and they then become the basis for negotiations to start and claims that they must be wrong...

We installed three self-service online renewal terminals upstairs in lending just after Xmas. The service target is that these will account for 60% of all renewals at this library (God knows where the number came from). In the event we're struggling to reach 4%, not least because we're so under-staffed that we struggle to have enough people to open the door, let alone sell a new process to a very conservative clientele.

Needless to say, I've been told to find out "why the equipment is badly under-reporting."

Harry Potter and the Deadline of Doom

Like most everyone else we're all agog at the forthcoming Harry Potter book. The pressure on all libraries will be to make sure that we have copies available on the day of publication and for special events. So we've all been sent notifications of the suppliers' processes. In essence it's no different to last time: orders will be dealt with on a first-come, first-served basis; orders for delivery before publication date need to be in by the deadline accompanied by a signed form agreeing to the embargo conditions; and the stock will be supplied a couple of days early so that we have time to distribute to our libraries.

From our perspective there are a couple of logistical issues which are easy to deal with and a technical issue which needs a bit of thinking about: ordinarily we encourage customers' reserving titles on order but the combination of pre-publication hype and long lead-in means that there'd be so many pre-publication reservations as to play hob with our performance targets so we need to close the window a bit. Had anyone asked me my solution would have been to create a non-reservable item loan type for these books and then, at the given moment, I could switch them to the ordinary loan type ready for business as usual. Pretty easy really.

Mary's solution is to lose the order form that Frog filled in a couple of months ago. She'd originally hung onto it because she wanted to modify the distribution (sigh...) Every time that Noreen asks if they send out the order Mary says that she needs to find the form and amend the distribution (about ten minutes' work on the system).

So rather than making sure that the order's in and we're OK for stock and then deciding where they're going we're risking missing the deadline.

Building death camps for our dreams

A true tale of the Systems Librarian's lot; a 'phone call from the Reference Library:

"Hi, we've got a lady up here who wants to print back-to-front."

"Printing the back page first or printing a mirror image?"

"Printing a mirror image."

"What's she using?"

"Can I put her on to you so that she can tell you?"

"No. You find out then I'll explain it to you so that if you get asked again you'll know what to do. Is she trying to print a web page or a Word document?"

"...I think she's using Word."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes, she's using Word."

"OK... Ctrl and P to get the print menu [our security settings lock out the File Menu], then click on 'options'..."

"Here's Mary, she says she knows about this, I'll pass you on to her."

"Hello? Hello?"

"Kevin, it's Mary. I can do this on my printer at home."

"Each printer does it slightly differently. Can you see the 'options' button?"

"On my printer at home I just click on a button that says 'Mirror.'"

"That's what we're looking for. If it's available it might be in a different place to..."

"I can't find what I'm looking for. I can do this on my printer at home."

"Each printer does it slightly differently. What are you looking at at the moment?"

"I'm looking at the printer properties."

"Is it the laser printer that's on the desk?"

"It probably is."

"Is it? If we're looking at the wrong printer we're wasting our..."

"I can do this at home."

"I know. Each printer does things differently."

And so on for ten minutes. Sigh...

Any time you hear the person on the other end of a support call say:

"It's going to be somewhere around there someplace. I'll leave you to it then."

You'll know what you've been guilty of.

Picomanagement (when micromanagement is just too hands-off)

Julia's upset, and rightly, with T.Aldous. She's just been on the receiving end of a bollocking because he didn't know that Daisy's chairing the interview panel for the Relief Assistants and he hasn't seen a copy of the interview questions. If anyone asks why we don't fill vacancies for years on end it's nothing to do with him but every jot and tittle of the interview has to go through his mill for approval.

T.Aldous has told Seth to expect eight large notice boards that were accidentally sent to Roadkill Library. Seth, who should know better, asks where they're going.

"They're going out to libraries but they'll have to stay here until I get back from holiday so that I can tell you where they're to go."

...so they put a monocle on the chicken

Overheard in the staff room:

Mizzi: "Why have you got a rubber chicken in your locker?"

Lippy: "Because I can!"

Moving Earth

T.Aldous accepts an offer to host a model of the new industrial estate just outside Milkbeck. Seth is delighted to hear the news.

"How big is it?"

"It's about six feet square."

"Where are we putting it?"

"I thought we could move the newspapers out of the reading room and put it there."

"How on earth are we getting it up there?"

"You're just being difficult because you don't want to do the work."

The open road and the wind in our heads

We're having a little local difficulty with some of our friends in the Town Hall. I'm all for nipping round with a baseball bat but Milton thinks this is a bit extreme.

"We can't expect their undivided attention, they're going though another restructure. They don't know whether or not they'll be having jobs, let alone which jobs they'll be having."

"If you take the money you should be doing the job. How would it be if we all downed tools just because we're going through job uncertainties? Nobody in this council would do anything..."

By golly, I think he's onto something!

Gone

"What's missing from this room?" I ask Seth.

"Nothing," he replies.

"Where's all this room come from then?"

"Nothing's gone."

"Where are the bricks?"

"They haven't gone anywhere."

"So...?"

"They haven't gone anywhere."

"I hope you've saved copies of all the fingerprints."

Making little fists in the pocket

A colleague is in a bate: they've seen yet another newspaper article making reference to librarians' being quiet and mousy and they've taken umbrage. You know the sort of thing: "this is a tired old stereotype," "an offence to our professionalism," yadda yadda yadda.

Oh do get a grip. Of course it's a tired old stereotype, our culture depends on tired old stereotypes: milkmen are randy, accountants are boring, politicians are self-serving hypocrites, Errol Flynn beat the Japanese single-handed in Burma and London is made up of the supercilious rich mooching around in thick pea-soupers and the downtrodden poor living in abject poverty (this last one's true). Why on earth bother reacting to it? It's obviously yet another symptom of the congenital insecurity of the "profession" (it they weren't insecure they wouldn't need to keep telling you that they're professionals).

The sensible thing for them to do is to take the bull by the horns and burlesque the stereotype into oblivion. I was quite taken by the librarian doll that appeared on the market last year (ooh the fuss!) CILIP should create its own version for the local market. Perhaps with a transformer element, switching the doll from twin set and pearls to ninja outfit in an instant. I'm not sure which would make your average miscreant soil their underwear the quicker: a lady of uncertain age brandishing a samurai sword or a ninja with a date stamp.

The wisdom of ages

Customer comment forwarded to Systems Librarian:

How come every time I try to use your computers in Milkbeck Library there's a problem. The network's slow or we can't open attachments or printing's not working and we can never save files on a memory stick. When I lived in Penkage my village library never had any of these problems. Why do you?

Draft response by Systems Librarian:

Because everything this council touches turns to shit; the IT Department tells us what services we're allowed to provide to our customers and the Systems Librarian has the same permissions as the public on these computers.

Taste

I see in the paper that somebody's invented beef-flavoured Prozac. That's no good for the vegetarians on the council's payroll in need of chemical support. I'd start a lobby now for something flavoured with char-grilled serrano peppers, or perhaps artichoke hearts with a drizzle of truffle oil but I expect there'd be some pharmaceutical reason why it would be a no-go, like grapefruits interfering with blood pressure tablets.

Forty shades of green

A chappie from Building Services pops in with a swatch of carpet samples.

"Any colour so long as it's green," says Seth with an evil wink.

"What do you mean?" asks the carpet bloke.

"You'll see."

T.Aldous views the samples and selects half a dozen for staff to have a look at with a view to selecting one for the lending library.

And sure enough, every one was green.

Preserving the incognitos

IT have been "tidying up the user account database." This turns out to be deleting anybody whose name begins with A who happened to be on holiday last week. Which means that I now have to submit a form to create a new user account, another to create a mailbox and another to give them Internet access.

All the forms are on the intranet. Somewhere. I would use the search facility but that's been "coming soon" since 1999.

The good news is that it's still possible to email Shagger Noakes even though he left the council years ago.

Plans

"I've found some plans for the library," says Seth. This isn't devastating news: we've got more library service plans than soft Mick, it's just planning we're short of.

My mistake: it turns out that it's a big box full of architect's plans of the library. Seth's unearthed it in his bid to finally dispose of the radiator that's been cluttering the dispatch room (it should have been installed in the lift lobby before we moved in years ago but the Ringo Kid Building Company lost interest in that sort of thing once it had been paid off). The box is covered in almost as much dust as the radiator so it's obviously been there a while.

"Who put that there? I've been looking all over for that, I needed it for last year's inspection audit," says T.Aldous. "I wish people would leave my things alone."

Seth mentions this to Lemuel when he comes in at lunchtime...

"Who put it there? He bloody did, that's who! 'Put that box in the dispatch room so I know where to find it,' he bloody says and I've been barking me knee on it ever since. As God's my witness he put that bloody thing there last year."

Seth's all for confronting T.Aldous with the truth but decided better after seeing that Lemuel was getting worked up about it. Besides, what's the point: the truth's whatever T.Aldous decides it is on any given day.

The record time for demolishing an upright piano and passing the entire wreckage through a ring six inches in diameter

So we cleared the space in my room and we've filled it with stuff from Noddy. Elsewhere is as bad. We've just had some incoming for T.Aldous' latest booksale. And a pile of book trolleys from branch libraries incoming for the chucking-out of. And a load of Bookstart stuff that can't go to the Bookstart centre because it's full of Bookstart stuff that's not been distributed. And some new children's library furniture. And a pile of new Chinese and Vietnamese language children's books that we think were probably new when they came here a few years back. And a pile of BBC RaW bookmarks. And some RaW publicity materiel with Larry Grayson on it (he's been dead nearly as long as we've been in here). And publicity for SureStart Day 2006. And some superannuated microfiche readers. And a huge box of fluorescent light bulbs that don't fit any light fittings anywhere. And a horse blanket.

Do we want to get involved in the new government initative to give every schoolchild a book to encourage reading? The idea is that participating library services will get a pile of books dumped on them and then they've got to persuade the participating schools to let us ferry them round for them to give to the kids. I've no idea why the books can't be delivered to education departments, which are better-resourced than us and have their own distribution systems, and let us provide a support, back-up and cheerleading role. What will happen (if we go for it, as we probably will) is that we'll have these books cluttering the place up for a couple of centuries, just like all those Italian books that time.

New shit for old

Seth, Milton and I have just mucked out the computer room anew, having finally got permission to get shut of the old rubbish from Catty and Dutch Bend that came my way earlier in the year. We still await the verdict on the tatty old bookshelves that got dumped in there years ago: "we can't throw them out, they belong to the art gallery," says T.Aldous.

Our delight is tempered by the fact that we're just making room for a pile of old tat from the old Noddy Library site.

The caretakers are getting increasingly weary of being treated as cheap removals men. Once every so often is sort-of fair enough but once or twice a week, at least, is a lot above and beyond.

"I wouldn't mind but we're just moving the same old shit from one place to another. How often have we moved those old paperback spinners from Epiphany? They've been here, then out to the cellar at Noddy, then back here again, up in the attic at Milkbeck, back here again and where is it going this time? Back to bloody Noddy, that's where. If we don't want the bloody things why don't we just sling them?" rants Lemuel.

"Just go with the flow," says Seth. "You know and I know that they need slinging but it isn't going to happen so we just do as we're told, take the money and go home. If you start trying to make sense of what they think they're doing you'll just wind yourself up."

Wise words which we've all said to ourselves at one time or another and not really been able to take on board. I hope Lemuel can this time: he's looking a bit grey around the gills and obviously needs his next holiday.

Hey ho

Good news: the PC at Windscape that's been struggling to switch on and stay on has been fixed after a month's waiting and three days' not working at all.

Bad news: it turns out that the repair man came on Monday and was told to come back another time because they were busy.

Lovely

'Phone call down from Doreen the Group Librarian responsible for Helminthdale Library:

"We've just had a 'phone call from a customer who says that the person using the PC next to them was saying personal things to her and gave her his mobile number."

"Yes...?"

"We should do something about that shouldn't we?"

"What do you want doing?"

"Is there anything you can do about finding out who it was?"

"And...?"

"We need a policy on this."

Good job this: I'm responsible for the public systems but have the same systems permissions as the public; I'm not allowed to tell staff that the police say that a customer can't use our PCs because he's been a naughty lad but I am somehow responsible for customers' chatting up other customers.

"Well he was using a PC," says Doreen.

Security

We had some PCs stolen from Senebene Library a couple of months ago and ordered some new ones. We took great pains to check whether or not we are getting towers or desktops and the dimensions of the processors so that we could get the right security cases for them. I asked, Milton asked, then Milton asked again and we consulted the web sites and then we ordered the cases. Five cases for towers fifteen inches tall and seven inches wide. So a couple of months later we get desktops ten inches wide and six inches tall that slide into the security cases without my having to bother the locks at all. Splendid.

No news is good news

This is good. I've had my latest update of the library service's web pages rejected by the communications team because there's more than two pieces of news on the front page.

Whenever we get inspectors in to tell us that we're not modern enough it's me or T.Aldous who get the grilling and have to account for this failure. Meanwhile there's a town hall full of unaccountable noddies coming up with this sort of nonsense.

Jolly

It'll be a relatively quiet day today: most of Management Group has decamped to the LIS in Birmingham. The staff left behind generally fall into two groups: those who see it as a management jolly and those who are annoyed at not being allowed the opportunity to go. Amongst the latter are some people who included this in their wish-lists in their one-to-ones last autumn (the ones that staff had the week before the corporate staff satisfaction survey that asked if they'd had a one-to-one). T.Aldous' explanation as to why nobody else could go varied with the audience...

• "It's not as good as it used to be."
  i.e. it's not full of furniture and freebies from children's book publishers


• "It's very technical these days."
  As every inspection we've had in the past five years has berated us for not having a good grasp of new technologies that's not necessarily a bad thing.


• "We have to go by train, it's a long way to drive."
  Spot the librarian who can't catch a train because he thinks the world should wait for him and who made damned sure we missed the train last time because he had to stop at every stall to tell people who didn't care less that he didn't have time to talk to them.
  

Parking

Custom and practice has it that council staff can park in the car park at the King Cole in Dutch Bend. The council owns the land and has leased it to the pub for 99 years and things have generally pootled along OK this way for the past three decades. This week the pub's landlords decide to stick a sign up and get the clampers in. The first that most of us know is when Polly comes in from her blind readers' club session at Dutch Bend.

"It's a good job that I managed to find some space in the car park at the library otherwise I'd have been clamped!"

Frog decides to send a message out to all staff warning them not to park at the King Cole. He mentions it to T.Aldous.

"Yes, Julia told me about it last week, we're trying to find out the legal position about it."

"Wouldn't it have been a good idea to tell people this was going on?"

"Yes, I don't know why Julia hasn't sent a memo to staff about it."

Caffeine blast

'Phone call down from lending. Can somebody make some coffee for the people who are using the meeting room? The staff down here in the Mary Celeste Suite are me, Noreen and and Pauline, all of whom are up to the gills in year-beginning work on top of our everyday work and the work of people who have retired or who are off sick and none of whom are disposed to add "Nippy" to our job descriptions.

"They don't pay for the use of the room so why can't we just say 'sorry no can do?'"

Pauline makes the mistake of bearding T.Aldous in his lair to ask what to do. And ends up making coffee...

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.