90% Ovaltine

By way of being a hymn to the librarians in one of our main libraries...

Now we're fully automated
We don't need all them there cards,
Kept in date and surname order
Stuck in trays in serried yards.
What? You wouldn't want to lose them?
"They may fill some unknown void."
If you've time for real-time update
Could be you're under-employed.

The froth-blower's anthem

Overheard:

"I've often wondered what Doreen actually does... Turns out she can sink a lot of wine at people's leaving do's."

Nymphs and shepherds

Jim's last day and he's demob-happy.

"Are you sure the tunnel's ready? I've got my acorn coffee and my forged passport."

He's spent this week putting all his files in order and making sure that Policy Team have got notes about all the projects and programmes currently on the go and the current state of play with all the performance indicators. Sure in the knowledge that they won't pay any attention whatsoever.

I'll miss him, it was nice to have somebody on the books who understands performance management.

Your moment of slight nasal congestion is at hand

Mary's asked me if I'm around next week because she wants to talk to me about the children's audiobooks she's put the blocks on. She wants to know how the system would deal with fines and charges for these things and the loan rules that Bronwyn and I cobbled together earlier. To be fair, she's got some good points about the implications of imposing replacement charges on children when items can cost thirty pounds or more, for instance.

At some point one hopes that Julia and Mary have a chat about all this some time soon. In a sensible environment they'd have gotten their heads together a few months ago to plan the new stock profile for Catty Library. As it is, the two of the sit six feet away in the Management Suite so communication is impossible.

Sideshows in the circus of human suffering

I bump into Henry Irving, who's spent this week dividing his time between Sheep City story times, meetings with Sports Development about the current financial crisis in the Lido and meetings with the museums staff about their actually providing some input to the museum cataloguing system some time before the sun goes out.

"What-o, old fruit!" I cry, "how's things?"

"War is Hell," he replies.

Do not drive into smoke

Catty Library's been closed all year while they put new walls, ceiling and floors onto the building. Rumour has it that it'll soon be re-opening (possibly the same rumour that had it re-opening in May, June, July and August). So now Julia's starting to think about getting something different stock-wise for the library's opening. Like the unlicensed DVDs that were bought for Roadkill or the e-books that are still in Doreen's office. Noreen was delighted to find that she's got to order a pile of children's MP4 audiobooks "urgently." Bronwyn spent an hour turning the marked-up supplier's catalogue into a list that could actually be used to create an order (including finding the ISBNs of the items that had been obliterated by the 'buy this' ticks). Even so, Noreen's still a bit brittle about it all (too much experience), so it came as no surprise to find her going through the worry list.

"What collection are we buying them for? I'll need that for the order."

Luckily enough, Bronwyn had the sense to ask me what we needed to do so that we could decide on the collection and loan rules for these items. Luckily she's not afraid of making decisions so it only took us five minutes to sort. In any other walk of life this would be an asset to her career development but hereabouts she's labouring with a disability.

"I just wanted to check this with you; you don't have to do it now."

"No, no, now's the time to do it. Noreen and Betty will be relieved at only having to do the cataloguing once this time. Instead of the usual rigmarole with Mary."

All was plain sailing until Noreen asked:

"Which budget are we paying for these from?"

Bronwyn's got authority over the stock but not the budgets, so she had to ask Mary. Who threw her toys out of the pram because she didn't know anything about it. She's put the blocks on the order until she's had a chat about it with T.Aldous.

The one sure bet is that this urgent order's going to be phenomenally more urgent by the time it comes to being sent!

Good enough for now

"How did the re-opening go?" I asked Thelma.

"I was very lucky: three minutes after T.Aldous turned up the Health & Safety man came to check the fire escapes."

This story shall the good man teach his son

Frog's working with local schools and playgroups on a project to provide children with positive role models. He's been doing a few story times in the hope of being a positive role model despite being, as he says, "a tired old git."

The staff demographic for the Library Service is disproportionately female and the demographic for "The Professionals" is overwhelmingly ladies-of-a-certain-age.

Over the past year Frog's been working with the Assistant Librarians to train Library Assistants ("non-professionals" in the public library sector jargon)(no comment at this moment in time) so that they can be coerced into doing provide story times in the branch libraries, freeing the Assistant Librarians up to do other things.

Frog suggested that seeing as how Elmo's had the training and is interested in doing something with it he could be involved in the male role model project. No can do, said Doreen, the staffing situation's not good. Now that the staffing situation is slightly less bad he suggested it again. This time he was told that Elmo didn't have enough experience to do it. Frog pointed out that he wouldn't get the experience without getting the experience, to no avail.

In response to some strangely intemperate language, Mary and Doreen collared him by the photocopier.

"Why can't one of the Assistant Librarians do this?"

"They're all female."

"So why does it have to be you or Elmo? All the Assistant Librarians can do storytimes, so there's no need for you or him to get involved."

"This is about male role models. They can't do it."

"Well, I can't see why not."

"None of them are equipped for the job."

"You're just being difficult."

I thought he was very good. I'd have been drawing diagrams by that point.

All among the girls and boys

Frog and I were discussing a few projects that loom on the horizon.

"We've been discussing these in Mary's Monday Morning Meetings," he says. "It's a shame you can't come to these."

"She asked Milton if I could come to them and I said yes."

"..."

"She's not told you that, has she?"

No.

I took a 'phone call for Bronwyn, who's off-site arranging a reading event for next week. It's Dagmar from Raccoonville.

"Is Bronwyn in?"

"No, sorry."

"Is there anyone else who knows about the 'Prescribed Books' collection?"

Like many other authorities we're now working with the Health Service to provide collections of books that doctors can prescribe to patients as part of the therapeutic process. About half are about the effects of particular physical diseases and how to live with them, including information about lifestyle and dietary changes that can make a difference. The rest deal with mental health issues and include a lot of self-help books about dealing with anxiety, depression, self-harm and eating disorders. The idea is that the doctor prescribes the book, the customer goes to their local library and we let them have the book without requiring them to volunteer so much as their name (they're issued to an anonymous 'Prescribe Books' borrower). That way, patient confidentiality is assured.

This is the conversation I had with Dagmar, who was speaking from the public counter...

"Mary knows about it best but she's not in. Can I take a message?"

"No. I need to speak with somebody about this collection."

"I might be able to help. What's the question?"

"I've got a customer here who's been prescribed one of these books and they've brought in the wrong part of the prescription. Can I let them have it?"

"Given the circumstances it wouldn't be altogether surprising if they've brought the wrong bit of paper. Issue the book to them."

"So it's OK to let them have it?"

"Yes. Yes it is."

I like Dagmar but something happens to her when she gets behind that counter.

Too honest

I must behave myself:

From:
To: Kevin Musgrove
Date: 11 September 2008, 09:25am
Subject: Communications training for library staff
---
Kevin,
I've been trying to contact your management group to find out what they need me to bring to the training session I'm doing for staff next month. I've not had any replies. Are any of them available this week do you know?



From: Kevin Musgrove
To:
Date: 11 September 2008, 09:31am
Subject: Re: Communications training for library staff
---
Have you tried a seance?

His moustache was nicely waxed and one foot long

Henry Irving's in a bate, and not without reason. A couple of months ago he arranged with Mary for Frog to do some story events as part of this year's Step Into September At Sheep City programme. The first Frog knew about it was when he bumped into somebody in Sainsbury's and they asked: "looking forward to coming to see us next week?" Needless to say, Mary hadn't told Frog that this had been arranged.

Hurried consultations and diary-checkings on Monday led to arrangements being made whereby Frog does a couple of sessions when he's free and Henry does the ones that he can't make because of prior engagements. There is an entertaining flurry of emails between the two as they cobble together a selection of stories and activities appropriate for the billed themes (the swinging sixties and the First World War, not necessarily in that order). This morning Henry hurries over to collect the stories and props for the first session (he reckons it's 'Lulu sings Wilfred Owen').

"Have you seen a copy of the whole programme yet?" he asks Frog.

"Only the one you emailed to me on Monday."

"It'll still be in that woman's sodding 'unread emails' folder."

And thus is partnership working effected.

The humanity of the native peoples

Had lunch with Ken Barmy (he was en route to somewhere or other and stopped for a butty and a cup of tea). We shared impressions of our colonial cousins: he's just back from a fortnight's worth of what he calls "taking the magic of rain to the dought-ridden prairie." One of the things that impressed us both is that even small towns have good-sized libraries and that even if the book stock is often weak there's nearly some reader development activity or computer literacy programme going on.

"I look at what they're doing with what they've got and I think to myself: 'we should be able to do better than that, we've got much more resources than them.' But we don't," he says.

"I wonder why we don't," I muse.

"I think it's a cultural thing. It's dead easy to be cynical, and I am, but if your constitution says that you've got a God-given right to the pursuit of happiness it probably pre-disposes you to thinking that things can be done, whereas we're constantly having to fight the mindset that says that nothing can be done unless you provide five proofs of evidence and a watertight answer to the response that 'ah yes, but they don't have the problems we have...'

"Doesn't matter how good your people are, and we've got some good 'uns (don't tell them I said that, mind, they'd only worry), if that's the prevailing culture you're setting them up to fail."

By gum, I think he may be right. Or else the sun has gotten to us both.

Wobbly fun not withstanding

As I'm coming out of the butty shop I bump into Lindie Minto, one of our Library Assistants, almost literally. She's on crutches, having ruptured her Achilles tendon falling off her husband.

"I'm dead bored. I want to be back at work," she says.

She's on crutches, not entirely incapable. Yet again I wonder about our sickness levels and how our management style massages the figures up to unsustainable awfulness.

Basically, because our managers can't be arsed with the business of personnel management you're either in work and fit to carry bales of cotton all day every day and more besides or you're off sick. So, for instance, if someone had been off on long-term sick any other place, they'd arrange for a period of part-time work and rehabilitation as part of the coming-back-to-work process. We have our "I know you're trying to catch up with your work but can you just..." effort. Similarly, if a senior manager any place else broke her non-writing arm they'd be in work but not doing any lifting activity, or at least offered that option, not off sick for a few weeks. And then they chase people up because they've had a day off with food poisioning! I can't fathom it at all.

Pink belt in butterfly-wrestling

With Jim going at the end of this week and his work being taken over by Policy Team it's suddenly dawned on them that they've committed to an Autumn Staff Training & Development Day and he won't be around to do the arrangements. Somehow or other they've decided that Maybelle's going to do the job.

"How did you cop for that job?" I asked.

"I've no idea. Mary just said to me: 'I understand that you're arranging the training day.'"

It's going well so far: of the three emails she's sent asking what's going to be in the training day she's had the one answer, this one from Julia:

I don't think we need to go into details at this stage.

At least she could be bothered to answer!

Groan...

This sort of thing drives me barmy...

Betty's picked up a call from Maudie's 'phone. It's Julia wanting T.Aldous. Rather than waiting for Betty to get him she tells her:

"I won't hang on. Can you ask him to ring me on my mobile 'phone. I'm at Catty and need to speak to him in the next five minutes."

So far, so bad. Unfortunately it turns out that T.Aldous is gone.

"I didn't even see him go out," says Betty who's got plenty enough work to do without acting as Checkpoint Charlie. "What shall I do? I don't know her mobile 'phone number so I can't ring her to tell her he's not in."

"All you can do is make a note of the message and stick it on his door so that he'll see it when he comes back."

Oh no. This isn't all Betty can do. She spends the next ten minutes ringing round libraries trying to get hold of anyone who might know Julia's mobile 'phone number. In the end she gets hold of Doreen, who promises to ring Julia to let her know he's not in.

It's a good job Noreen's at home waiting for the gas man. She's got even less patience for this type of nonsense than I have. Unfortunately, this behaviour's been countenanced (and even encouraged) for so long that it's not worth the tears before bedtime involved in trying to challenge it.

Exterminate

Ken Barmy's been telling me about a Doctor Who event in one of his libraries. "More daleks than Doctor Zhivago!" he says.

We used to have a big dalek in the foyer at Grimley Library. It was useful for keeping the rough trade out of the library (staff would hide inside and say 'Ex-term-in-ate!'). I wonder whatever happened to that.

Adventures in communication

Where else could the draft communication strategy be a secret because nobody will make a decision about letting staff see it?

Get thee!

It's Sybil's fifty-oompth birthday today so she's sat at her desk dressed as a nun, like you do.

"Hey! This would be a good disguise when I get out through the tunnel!" she says.

"They'll stop you at the Swiss border 'cos they'll think you're a German paratrooper," says Frog.

I had to ask...

"How many boxes of book sale were there at Roadkill?" I ask Seth.

"Only forty," he replies.

"You could have fitted them in your car then."

"Yeah, right!"

Lowestoft offers the best skiing facilities in Suffolk

Epiphany Library re-opens tomorrow. I ask Thelma how things are going and she replies that the computers are working, touch wood, and she's got enough the stock on the shelves to look respectable despite the fact that she's had to do it nearly all by herself when she wasn't been called back to cover the enquiry desk at Helminthdale (Elmo was allowed out for an afternoon to help; what happens when Epiphany's open and they aren't available to cover for vacancies remains to be seen). I reckon they've done a bloody good job of it. She's a bit pissed off, though.

"All this time with no help whatsoever and then two carloads of people turn up unannounced and expect me to drop everything so that I can give them a tour of the premises. And do you know what the first thing Mary said to me was? 'You've not got any displays up.' Well, sorry, Mary, I thought that getting the place cleaned up and getting the stock out on the shelves was the first priority. If she's so worried about the displays she could have come over and lent a hand or something."

You can always count on Mary to put a damp flannel on any glimmerings of job satisfaction.

Firm

It's too often assumed that we have the memory of a goldfish. A case in point:

"We'll need you to help move some things over to Catty Library now that it's ready for us to move back in," says Julia.

"Not me," says Seth.

"I thought that you'd be doing it for us."

"Oh no."

"So you're not going to do it?"

"No. You'll have to make your own arrangements. When are you planning on re-opening anyway?"

"Mid October."

"Good. I'm on leave then."

How long have you been a kamikaze pilot?

Seth's going over to the old Roadkill Library to measure the shelves to see if they'll fit the new staff room at Catty Library. Problem number one being that he doesn't know how much space there is in the staff room at Catty. And T.Aldous and Julia, who have given him the job to do, don't know either. So he's going to Catty Library first.

"While you're going to Catty I'll come with you, there's something I need to check there," says Julia.

"Oh," adds T.Aldous, "while you're going to Roadkill could you bring some booksale back?"

"No," says Seth.

"You don't have to bring it all back."

"No. I'm only going in the car, there's no room for any boxes of book sale."

"If you take the trolley you could do it."

"If I take the trolley I'll have even less space. I'm not doing it."

"Well it needs to come back here. How's it getting here?"

...pause...

"You could ask the van driver to pick it up," suggests Seth.

Coming soon to this embarassing technical hold-up

Lupin pops over from IT.

"I've a job note here saying that there's a printer to be installed."

"Is there?"

"It says here that it's still in the box and awaiting installation."

The only boxed-up printer I know of is the one that's been sitting in the toilets for the past fifteen months. I go to get it and it's gone.

"It might have gone to Epiphany with the rest of the old stuff," suggests Lupin.

"What old stuff? I thought we were getting new stuff."

"So did I but there seems to have been a bit of a communications failure somewhere along the line between Milton and the project managers. I've got the new PCs and I've set them up but I've set them up for your new booking system not the old one. But the new one's not ready yet."

"Ah."

"Nobody's told you this have they?"

"Let's pretend that they have and I just seeking confirmation."

"It's a bit of a muck up really. But I've got it all up and running on the old kit so they're ready for opening."

And so they are. So long as the hard drives in the staff PCs don't crash again.

I'm now hoping that Catty Library stays shut even longer than expected: all its newer equipment's now at Epiphany. If it opens any time soon staff and public will be sharing the one seven-year-old laptop.

The stained finger

Well that's a relief. Sort of. Apparently Milton had Seth take all the hardware off to the knacker's yard last week.

It would have been nice to have known about it.

All blind alleys lead to their door

Frog is hopping mad. He'd had an enquiry from a boy scout troop who wanted to bring some scouts into the library to have a look around and to look up some things on the internet. No problem, he suggested that they needed to book a few of the PCs to make sure they'd be available at the appropriate moment and he passed the query upstairs to the lending library. There were a couple of problems at that point so the library assistant took the details and told them that it would be sorted in readiness. She was finishing at lunchtime and so couldn't get the booking placed so she gave the details to Doreen and asked her to sort the necessary.

Doreen has passed the query back to Frog for him to sort out. He doesn't have access to the booking system so he's had to go upstairs to lending to do it.

Every other library in the borough is able to deal with its own customers directly. Why Helminthdale Central has to consistently pass them on to backstage staff to deal with is beyond me.

Hitch-hikers may be escaped convicts

Jim's looking too smug for words.

"Just one week now."

Lucky sod. His joy is only diminished by one thing:

"You know what they're going to do with my job, don't you?"

"My working assumption is that they're going to leave the vacancy to mature a few years like they always do."

"Oh no, it's better than that. They're not going to replace me. Policy Team reckon that between them they can cover all my work."

"Don't take the piss, it's not nice."

"It's true! It's true!"

And it is.

Team work: how to ensure that a colleague feels that his contribution has been valued.

Running like a rabbit or a frisky poodle

Bless. Bronwyn picked up a call from Maudie's 'phone. It turns out to be for T.Aldous (Maudie is on leave this week so T.Aldous has his 'phone redirected to an empty office). Bronwyn managed, eventually, to find a 'phone that T.Aldous hadn't redirected to Maudie's so that your man could take the call. Which consisted mostly of him saying: "just a minute" and running over to his office to get one or other piece of paper that he needed to refer to or to print out an email he needed to confirm with his caller.

Even a blind pig can find an acorn

When I went on leave the computer room was so full of bits of hardware that I couldn't safely walk in there. I've come in today and it's empty. Epiphany Library reopens later this week but we're getting new computers for in there so that can't account for the desolation. No notes anywhere to say what's happened so I'm at a loss to account for any of this equipment.

Shit.

Yet another secret gig

Apparently it was Roadkill Library's official opening last week but you'd never know it from anything issued to staff by the Library Service. I found out because I bumped into a couple of pictures of the event on the network. My excuse is that I was on leave last week.

Surprisingly enough, Frog did know about it.

"I was just putting my coat on to go out for lunch when T.Aldous asked me if I was going to the buffet lunch at Roadkill."

The lights are going out all over Europe

Bugger. There goes the telephone exchange at the council's call centre. At this rate communications will be reduced to gaslit homing pigeons.

I suppose it's reassuring that where the library service leads the rest of the council follows.

When shadows fall

Back at the coalface and reality bites already. A complete electricity failure at Dutch Bend means that all the computers, light and land-line 'phones are out of order.

Lotus eaters

Staying with friends in the Fort Baxter area affords me the opportunity to take up The Major's invitation to have a look around the Sheboygan Library, Sauna & Wet Room. It is exactly as advertised: a palladian splendour with malachite urinals and rosewood handles to the birch twigs. The main lending library is a gobsmacker: it's so high that none of the walls quite reach the ceiling and there are shelves upon shelves upon shelves. They even have books on the shelves. I'm suitably impressed.

Repairing to the Major's place in downtown Australopithecine we sit on the porch sipping tea and sharing a chocolate hobnob (the local store sells them at a price slightly short of the cost of an Aston Martin). Lolling in the sunshine, watching the vultures circling overhead, I listen to the urgent threnody of miscellaneous Insecta in the shrubbery and the barking calls of the sambar and langur (or is that lumbar and Shergar?)

"By gad, Carruthers, it's not like the old place!"

"Nay lad," he replies, "who'd a thowt it?"

Now see, here comes Jumbo the elephant!

It's a funny old world.

This weekend I flew out to Fort Baxter to visit old friends. They, like me, are in the public library trade. So what do we do, in between wolfing down ginormous meals and roaming the vast hinterlands of the American dream?

We visit other people's libraries to see what ideas we can pinch. That's what library people do.

Yet another reason to thank God I never became a proctologist.

And at a crisis, notch a score

You do have to wonder some days...

I've just been checking the online support for our library management system. It's one of those that "invites" you to check out the resolutions of existing calls before logging one afresh, which lets me see this gem:

Log #1597
Please re-open log #1575. This problem is not resolved.

I wonder what percentage of problems logged on this system are really just people saying: "Don't close this call, this problem is not resolved?" And I wonder what's best: "95% of our logged problems are closed within a day" or "90% of our problems generate more than two complaints from customers."

The goat would be Socrates

At least we don't have this problem:

Have had a meeting with colleagues from elsewhere and we've been discussing the options for our library management systems. The problem we've all got is that we've either got old systems that are starting to show their age; newer systems that have been iced suddenly because the companies concerned have been taken over by others; or newer systems that are just plain crap. We're in the happy position of being able to get by as we are for a year or so, which means that we've got to be taking a good hard look at the market at a time when the market's all over the place.

One colleague's just bought a new system and they're doing the project planning for the installation. This is always a tricky time — library management systems are necessarily complex because the whole business of the library is going through it; and very contentious because the whole business of the library is going through it. This case isn't helped by the library director's off-the-cuff announcement in a meeting the other day:

"This maintenance bill's a bit expensive. We'll let them do the installation then when everything's up and running we'll just cancel the maintenance contract and save us some money."

Some days you can see the car crash from miles away.

Laughing all day

It's times like this that all those years of hardware maintenance training I've never had become so very, very worthwhile...

"The People's Network printer's been out of order for the past four days. Can you fix it?"

"What's it not doing?"

"Nothing."

"No error messages?"

"No."

"What happens when you try to print?"

"Nothing."

"OK, then. I'll have a look at it."

Luckily, it worked fine once I put the paper in the tray.

Virtual unreality

Milton's being modern again.

"We should set up a Helminthdale Library on Second Life."

"A sort of fantasy library existing in a world completely divorced from reality where we can provide whatever services are required regardless of available resources?"

"Pretty much, yes."

"Just like the real one?"

"We might be able to staff it properly."

When Time of all our flannelled hostsLeaves only the renown

I'm desperately hanging onto the fact that I've just got to see this week out and then I've got a week out of this mad house. Unfortunately, I'm going to have my work cut out trying to catch up with all the things being put onto the conveyor belt (fondue set... a canteen of cutlery... signed photograph of Henry Campbell-Bannermann... cuddly toy...). Apologies to anybody getting tardy responses off me this week.

Now who said something about a cup of tea?

A hundred years ago...

Dearie me.

How very different it all is these days.

Seeing a troubled vet

Frog's turn again to be senior chief in the Library Service. At twenty-five past five he gets a 'phone call from Kelsey at Spadespit Library.

"Could I have tomorrow morning off?"

It's five minutes before end of play and Frog's trying to get Helminthdale Lending sorted, cash disposed off and then himself ready for tomorrow morning's children's holiday event at Umpty. Quite sensibly, he doesn't feel inclined to dig out tomorrow's rota, check out the availability of cover and then ring round to try and catch somebody who could go out first thing.

"Is it an emergency?"

"No. I was just thinking it would be nice to have the morning off."

Luckily, Kelsey's a fairly laid-back sort and doesn't take it amiss when the answer's no.

If the asphodel had made the wicket bumpy

Thelma's worrying, not without reason, about getting all the stock that's on boxes onto the shelves if there's only three-quarters of the planned shelving.

"You could get shut of all that old rubbish in the reference section," I suggest. "There's stuff in the booksale that's younger than that."

"Yeah but I'm not allowed to do stock-editing* so I'm stuck with it."

"Have a chat with Milton about it."

"OK."

"And don't worry about the other stuff. Get what you can onto the shelves and hold the rest back in reserve. With a bit of luck you're going to need to replenish the stock a few weeks after you've opened and people have denuded the shelves. And if not, well for once we actually know the true status of the stock so we know where it is and why. Given that more of Helminthdale Central's stock was in boxes than on loan when I did the CIPFA stats in April I shouldn't worry overly much about up to a dozen boxes."

Of course, some idiot will make a big deal of it, just before the library opens, but we'll ignore that bridge when we come to it.

* This is a story for another day, possibly nearer to Christmas when the dust has settled across the Borough. Possibly.

Lint in your navel and sand in your tea

Poor old Norma's had a bad journey back from her holiday in Batavia. By one of those eerie coincidences that suggest that God's a bit of a bastard really when the mood's on him the person sat next to her all the way back on the plane was the council's Chief Executive, J.Arthur Blenkenstein.

At no point in the flight did Norma say that she worked for Helminthdale Council.

Pile 'em high!

The dozen chairs that were littering our workplace have disappeared.

"They've been sent to Epiphany," says Maisie.

"But there was a couple of dozen chairs there already."

"Well they've got three dozen now. And nine extra shelf units because T.Aldous doesn't like the colour of the first nine because he reckons they're beech not maple."

Toothless people

There are a lot of very picturesque people in Helminthdale town centre this morning. I'm not sure if the weather's brought them out or just that I'm in the mood to notice them.

There are three Captain Bird's-Eye looky-likeys in the bus station. Two are wearing thick fisherman's sweaters. One character is actually wearing a fisherman's smock! They'll be up for to linger round Marks & Spencers this lunchtime.

An interesting old couple were walking down the Pardendale Road. She was wearing a thick woolly decorated with pictures of timber wolves. He was wearing German Army issue Norway Campaign snow camouflage gear, which went very well with his magnificent white beard.

Sumer is icumen in, lhude sing cuccu!

Dirty snail teenagers

After Mary's second foray of the day around Needy Corner to see if there's anything further that she can filch from our desks besides cups, pens, teddy bears and bookmarks we start to get a bit fractious.

Even so, Betty and Noreen tell me not to put up a notice on the wall saying:

Please come over here and steal things

Reluctantly, I behave myself.

Hanging nicely

We always have fun with furniture. Predictably enough, this time it's Epiphany Library. The shelving that's been delivered and installed are a bit of a botch job really: the backing's the wrong colour and the first set that was delivered was not as described -- if you ask for a set of shelves that hang from a suspended brace on the walls you don't expect to get some stand-alone shelving with interesting pedestal feet. The Buildings Project Manager was miffed when Thelma told him that he had to get them replaced.

"You've added £600 to my project cost."

"You should have ordered what we asked for and made sure that that was what they delivered then,"

replied Thelma in her best "in twenty years' time I'm going to be a right stroppy old cow" voice.

Anyway, they're in and they're up and they look very nice. Unfortunately, having started unpacking some of the fiction and putting it on the shelves there's an urgent message. Despite the fact that the specification was for four shelves per unit; and the fact that each unit has four shelves; the loading braces can only take the weight of three shelves' worth of books.

Oopsie.

Up for the cup

Mary's scavenging.

"You don't mind me taking your cup, do you? Maybelle's giving out cups for completing the six-book challenge and I didn't buy enough.

I just catch myself in time before I suggest that she could give them the Easter eggs that were never bought for the children's competition.

Lost in the outback

Talking to Nugent, who works in the council one-stop-shop over on The Strand in Senebene, he tells me of an incident they had yesterday.

"We had these two Aussies come in. They'd travelled over from Leicester because they needed to go to the Australian Embassy. They'd walked all around the housing estate but couldn't find it."

It's a measure of the fearsome reputation of the average Australian that they'd wandered round Senebene unmolested. Nugent gently pointed them London way.

For you, Tommy, ze rehearsals are over

It had to happen: the World War II vibe and the Stanley Slavski Method School have conjoined and the lunatic fringes amongst the staff (i.e. most of us) are living with the bastard offspring. There are people in this building who are Being RAF officers imprisoned by the Wehrmacht practising being Belgian migrant workers from Blackpudden in Brabant off to work in munitions factories near the Swiss border. I actually heard this exchange in the lift lobby:

"Wotcha, Wingco!"

"Dammit, man! What have I told you? That's just how Jerry will catch you out if you're not careful!"

The speakers were two middle-aged ladies.

I apologise in advance to any of you who ring our Regional Library Service and get the reply:

"Ich bin auslander, nicht verstahen."

A ladies' choir from the local building site

I mention to Thelma that I've just nipped down to Epiphany.

"It's a right mess..."

"It's the tidiest I've ever seen it," I reply.

For once I'm not taking the piss. OK, it's a building site. But it isn't a building site with a disintegrated floor and a threadbare carpet (imagine putting a ropy bit of thin hessian matting on a sand dune and you'd have it exactly right), nor a load of derelict steel and mahongany-style-deal-offcuts shelving leaning at 5° towards the sunlight.

Sweetie

Maybelle's leaving the building looking very smug.

"And where are you off to, little girl?"

"I'm buying sweeties in works time."

"How so?"

"The family literacy group's coming in tomorrow and I'll be giving them sweeties with their certificates for completing the six-book challenge."

Well done all. And best of luck getting the petty cash form signed by Mary!

The half-timbered librarian

I had thought that the new chairs littering our workplace are destined for the spruced-up edition of Epiphany Library. This turns out to be mistaken, I think. Leastways, when Milton and I visit the place to check out the wiring there's a couple of dozen chairs there already.

We find a plan of the furniture to be installed. One of the many puzzles of the place is: how come we have half an acre of library building yet the console for the public catalogue terminal obstructs the walkway into the counter?

The counter itself has a few surprises, too. For once the cable management system seems to include holes in the partitions for the cables to go through (this is a first). We just need some ports drilling in the top and we're then theoretically OK. Though there is one port already: slap-bang in the middle of the counter, well away from any of the cable management and dead centre in plan view.

Teamwork

Frog asks Mary a question:

"Who's doing the cashing up in Lending this afternoon? Bronwyn went up and did it this morning before she went out to the storytime at Senebene and she doesn't want to have to hang on to end of play today. I could do it, I suppose, but I'm trying to get my flexi-time down to single figures."

"Well it isn't my job," says Mary, "and I'm trying to get my own hours down, too... I suppose I'll have to do it."

Mary, Frog and Bronwyn are all entirely justified in being pissed off about this. Bronwyn the more so because she also had to go up and sort out today's rota for this half of the Borough before she went out.

Oh, and in between covering events at Raccoonville and Grimley libraries, Frog's spending lunchtime covering the enquiry desk.

There are three layers of operational management upstairs in Lending:

• The Counter Supervisor vacancy created when Maybelle got her new job;
• Two and a half Assistant Librarians, including the vacancy created when Bronwyn got her new job and the one caused by Lola's maternity leave; and
• The Group Librarian, Doreen.

Salome, the sole remaining Assistant Librarian for this half of the Borough, doesn't work today and nothing's been done by Doreen to make sure that there are enough bodies to keep the doors open and that they have change for the till, which moneys will be put away safely at the end of the day.

Chairs XI

T.Aldous has been moaning about all the boxes piled up by the staff room door. They contain the residue of the stock from Noddy and Glass Road that couldn't fit into the new libraries, waiting for a non-existant Assistant Librarian to do something about it.

Imagine my surprise, then, to find that twelve new chairs, in their wrapping, joining the throng. No idea where they're going.

Or when.

Livres

We've received some nice children's books in French, which will be going in the Junior collection upstairs. Unfortunately, we've had to hold one back, which is a shame as it's a copy of one of the Mr. Men & Little Misses series, which pretty much market themselves. In the end, though, the French edition of Little Miss Late will not adorn the Junior Catalogue.

There's no way we could have "Little Miss Retard" on our shelves. It's not worth the complaints.

Jiffy

Sybil's sent out an urgent message to all libraries asking for Jiffy bags for the Regional Library Service. Given that I'm told she's the quartermaster for the Escape Committee, I shudder to think what plans she has for them.

The war against terror

Perhaps the most blood-curdling news of the year comes this week: there amongst the adverts in the librarians' jobs list is one from MI5, advertising for spooks.

Like Mark E. Smith said of the modern music scene: "God help us if there's another war."

Skulking in a corner, scowling and burping immoderate

You're away from the office for a couple of days' training and what happens?

You miss out on Mary spending all day trying to get the right-shade-of-pink ribbon for her daughter's hair for a wedding she's going to this weekend, involving the Acq. Team's being on the receiving end of four 'phone calls on the subject from said child (who's pushing 30).

And the Acq. Team's picking up two 'phone calls for T.Aldous from "Joan the Infidel," who in the end turns out to be T.Aldous' wife (who knows what evil lurks in the heart of men?)

But I've not missed out on everything. Rosy Denshaw has just come in to show off her new child.

"He's a bit big isn't he?" I ask.

"I'm coming back off maternity leave next month."

The little mite crawls his way into my office for a look round and promptly throws up on the floor. He shows some sense, then.

Distressed orphans keeping horses in the woods in secret

We've bought into "Boys Into Books," one of the endless array of Reading Agency programmes this summer, this time aimed at encouraging early teen boys to continue reading as an occasional relief from the nursery slopes of self-abuse. Thinking on, we might want to provide Wet Wipes with each book.

We've already had a backlash from the training bra commandos:

"What do you mean, 'Boys Into Books?'"

"It's to encourage boys to read more."

"You should buy more books for girls if they read more. There's no point buying books for boys 'cos they're too thick to read."

They get even more terrifying once they're old enough to get tattoos.

The opposite of truth in the cause of verisimilitude

The Reference Librarians have been asked to put together a staff training package for library assistants who may be called upon to cover the reference libraries at Dutch Bend or Umpty.

Daisy Dormouse replies that there isn't any point as the library assistants would only be covering in the company of Daisy or Wendy, though "we can't do our jobs and always be in the reference library." Daisy's suggestion is that instead of training staff a brand new post should be created to do the job.

I don't know what colour their clouds are over there.

Perspective

What usually happens round here is that T.Aldous and Mary spend all year saying that we haven't got any money for buying anything useful and then all the way through March they spend money like water buying any old crap that can be delivered before the finance system's closed down for year end. We still haven't found uses for all the dirty great big metal cupboards yet (there's only so many pre-owned envelopes that any organisation can accumulate).

Bronwyn bumped into the early days of a "leave it with me," the strategem I forgot when I was cataloguing the long grass gambits. Her response was lovely.

"This will cost as much as any one of the reference books we buy for upstairs and that nobody actually ever looks at."

Take your hand off me knee, vicar, I'm trying to play the piano

It's Jelly Tots all round as Frog celebrates getting shut of the last of the Book Off books.

Mad fool.

We just know there'll be an administrative snafu and another one hundred and fifty boxes will turn up tomorrow morning.

Some of the branch libraries are already complaining that they've got too many new books. And we haven't hardly started spending this year's book fund yet!

News from the Empire

A correspondent writes:

Another gem from our IT section. This morning I rang to ask if they could reboot one of our servers for me. I have been told I can't ring someone directly down there who might understand what I want and simply go and perform such a straightforward task, I have to ring the unhelpful desk or whatever they are calling themselves this week. Of course they had to make out a "ticket", or work out how to make a "ticket" as they didn't seem to know. Sort of got a bit exasperated when they asked me for the badge number of the server, "it is down there, how do I know?"

Protestations to the effect that if I was near enough to read the badge number I was certainly near enough, and able enough, to reboot the thing fell on deaf ears. Having then pointed out I could have walked down there and rebooted it myself in the time it was taking to complete the "ticket" eventually he went away to find out how to reboot said server.

Quite efficiently once they had rebooted server I got an e-mail asking for feedback. THEY WANT FEEDBACK ON HOW WELL THEY PERFORMED IN REBOOTING A SERVER.

Some people just won't be told

Gordon, one of the library assistants upstairs in lending, is in a bate.

"I noticed that one of the books in the book sale was a signed copy from one of the author events a few years ago. I told them: 'this is a signed copy and there are people who collect this author. You want to make sure that it's not defaced before going into the booksale so that it's a more attractive proposition.'

"And do you know what? They stamped 'WITHDRAWN FROM STOCK' right over the fucking signature. That's what. How can they do that?!?"

I have no answer save the blindingly obvious.

Never give a sucker an even break

I've bet Thelma £2 that T.Aldous and/or Doreen has the booksale wheeled out into the entrance of Epiphany Library within a month of the place re-opening.

Seems to be the best offer

Just when you think you've heard the lot...

I'm at Epiphany to deliver some equipment and get a sense of what needs doing next from my perspective (and to give a sense of how likely I am to do it). Luckily, Thelma's fairly level-headed, if a bit wayward with her cultural references*. Which is just as well, given her baptism of fire with Helminthdale Council's Buildings Project Management Team, the bane of T.Aldous' life.

"Have you seen this?"

"What is it?"

"I asked the Buildings Project Manager for a whiteboard. This is what he sent me."

"What is it?"

"It's a board painted white."

And so it is.

---

* we are not naming the computers after 1990s grunge bands

Somewhere upon Elysian swards

Thelma's been allowed out for the day to start getting some of the stuff unpacked at Epiphany Library. The only reason she's been allowed out is that somebody needs to let the network guys into the building. She's been told that there's no chance of her and Epiphany's Library Assistant getting out again this week.

This is library project management at its best: the library's finally handed over, two months late, and the library's staff aren't allowed to ready it for opening because they've got to provide cover at Helminthdale Central. Any other place, the question would be: can we free up some staff to provide an extra hand or two in getting things sorted? Apparently it doesn't occur to anybody to wonder how Helminthdale Central would be keeping its doors open if Epiphany wasn't closed for building work. Or, indeed, how anywhere would be open if the central library at Catty wasn't also closed fo repairs. So much for all the loose talk we had at the beginning of the summer about taking steps to free up staff for service development projects.

Riders of the purple sage

The Stanley Slavsky method school are all in cowboy mode today. We discover that Sybil in the Regional Library Service does a very passable impersonation of Gabby Hayes (it would have been even better if she hadn't shaved today).

The saloon bar singalong in the staff room was a bit much, though.

Sisyphus

Between them, Frog and the Acq. Team have steamed through about eleven thousand kids' books for the never-ending sequence of national reading projects in the past couple of weeks. And yet again, just as it starts to look like we might see the back wall again another forty boxes of the sodding things turn up.

"Not another Horrid Henry!"

The rules of the game

As if it's not bad enough that we leave our vacancies for years to mature before advertising them we've now got a block on recruitment imposed by Human Resources. The cause is a complaint by a serial applicant.

"I sent in exactly the same application as the previous twelve times. I got an interview each time but this time I was told that I was unsuccessful. I was told that I had not addressed the job specification."

And so he had. Each time, he stuck a photocopy of his original application to his form and wrote: "see attached." Unfortunately, this time he didn't notice that the job specification had been rewritten to reflect recent changes in the service.

A lesson for us all: always read the instructions.

Co-operation

I mentioned yesterday's story to colleagues in the staff room.

They suggest that we should offer them our booksale books. If they ask nicely we could leave the date labels and barcodes in for them.

One day, five and twenty convicts...

There's a problem with the visitor counter and it's decided it's my problem.

"It's stuck. It won't move past '21'"

I have a look at the counter. It says 5221. I do my quick impression of the Trooping of the Colour and yes, it still says 21: 8221.

I take it off the wall and put it back on the right way up: 1228

From our own correspondent

A reader writes:

Our 3rd largest branch library recently moved to a temporary location while the original building was refurbished, lift out in and generally DDAed. The temporary location is smaller thus they couldn’t fit all the stock on the shelves, so in highly scientific fashion whichever box they unpacked first went on the shelves, none of this we need some 641s as they get borrowed, if there were no 641s in the boxes they opened there were no 641s put on the shelves.

"What do we do with the stuff which we haven’t room for?" They inevitably asked.

I advised that they transfer them to one of our redundant locations so it wouldn’t show on the catalogue, and then store it somewhere.

This apparently involved too much effort, so they decided without consultation with anyone that they would distribute it around other branches in the group AND withdraw stock to make room for it.

The slight flaw in this solution seems to have escaped them, as now it is coming time to move back they have realised they haven’t enough stock to fill the shelves, that they can’t empty the shelves of the branches they sent the stuff to as the items they unnecessarily withdrew aren’t available to go back, and they haven’t a cue what the stock gaps are, the ones they caused by being so unscientific about what they unpacked in the first place.

Apparently, and this is the best bit, they have now decided it is someone else’s problem to sort.

Gone! Gone! And never called me mother!

I've only just noticed...

Some bugger's been away with The World' Biggest Whiteboard!!!

What will we hide behind the big metal cupboards now?

Where shadowy crowds will watch the strife,And cheer the deeds of wonder

There are occasional advantages to "not really being part of the Library Service." Not being involved in meetings like this, for one...

Mary had collected together her lieutenants - Bronwyn, Maybelle, Nancy and Frog - to review workloads and projects for the next couple of weeks. Starting off with a quick review of what they're doing at the moment:

• Bronwyn - umpteen reading activities, four author visits, getting five trolleyloads of donations onto the catalogue and distributed, and giving Frog and the Acq. Team a hand with the latest batch Book Off books (a doddle this week, just the thirty boxes), and helping Maybelle with a couple of family literacy events with the local Asian community.
• Maybelle - the above-mentioned family literacy events, a couple of presentations and membership recruitment sessions to families of asylum seekers, a stock-edit of the Portuguese books in the outreach collection, and giving Frog a hand with the materials for a poetry event at Dutch Bend.
• Frog - the summer reading game, the summer holiday events and activities programme, BookStart, SureStart, Book Off, Book You, Booking Hell, et al.
• Nancy - "nowt really."

This was the day after Mary sprung the Sheep City poetry day on Frog. He brought along the mock-up of the activities he planned on delivering, including drafts of the material he was going to use with the children.

Mary could scarcely contain her indifference.

Maybelle, who usually presents as being very laid-back and easy-going (she isn't, but she presents as such very convincingly) was bouncing off the walls afterwards. It's difficult to know if she's the more pissed off with Mary or nancy.

But for an hour to watch them play,Those heroes dead and gone

Over the past week I've visited every library in the Borough with Milton. We're scoping out a couple of fairly big projects which I'm not looking forward to but should do a lot of good. It's been depressing but instructive.

The good news is that we still have very committed staff out there in the branch libraries. Absolutely shattered, but committed. Only one branch library was less busy than the main libraries, and we arrived there at the end of a very long day. Kids were drawing, reading, writing, talking, making things and having their faces painted. Grown-ups were reading, writing, talking, using the computers, helping the kids, helping the staff. And the staff were running round like blue-arsed flies making sure that everyone was being looked after and trying to provide as good a service as you can when you're out-numbered by customers twenty-to-one.

Which makes me wonder how on earth we would have coped had we not a main library and a full-time branch library closed for building works.

One of the Branch Managers mentioned, in passing, that this summer's holiday activities are a bit on the thin side. I pointed out that there are good reasons for this:

• Frog's working alone, with the same budget as in 1993 when six people were involved in the planning and delivery of the summer holiday programme.
• There weren't any planning meetings this year because Julia didn't see why two of the Assitant Librarians from her side of the borough were involved but none from Doreen's side of the borough. Julia has five Assistant Librarians. Doreen has one Assistant Librarian, another on Maternity, a vacancy and a vacant post that has been axed to save a bit of money.
• When Frog asked Doreen and Julia to make sure that staff would be available to support activities. He was told: "don't assume that staff will be available."
• Mary's signed us up to six or seven Reading Agency programmes (we're not sure which, they're a blur) which involve our getting something like eleven thousand books for kids all at once, to be distributed in set ways in set blocks and with stickies and stuff.
• And since T.Aldous and Mary let the funding for the BookStart project manager lapse all the administration and distribution work of getting umpteen hundred BookStart Treasure Boxes out to the deserving public has gone his way. But there's no administrative work involved in BookStart, oh no...
• And then there's the project T.Aldous accidentally signed us up for to encourage young men to read books...
• And Sheep City's summer holiday events brochure includes Frog's doing a day-long poetry workshop, which came as a shock because they forgot to ask him to do it.

Cattermole Street Library came as a hell of a shock.

Normally it looks the very picture of a cheerful disorganisation of activity. The other day it looked like a place under siege. Everything: trollies full of returned books, dump bins, boxes of new stock, craft materials for kids and Team Read materiel, was pulled together at the counter like a motte-and-bailey castle. The end of a long day of holiday activities, reading groups and workaday stuff in a busy, single-staffed library. Lily, the Branch Manager, gamely waves a white hankie and asks for fainites.

Milton's almost as shocked as me and resolves to have a quiet word with somebody about giving Lily a hand some time.

He'll probably be told "not to assume that staff are available."

Our cracks, perhaps, may join the ghosts

The council's Clerk of Works has handed Epiphany Library back to the Library Service. T.Aldous and Seth are not keen...

For some reason, when the contractors relaid the concrete floor they left a one-foot square rough patch.

"It was there before we came,"

the Clerk of Works tells T.Aldous. What he doesn't say is that there was also umpteen hundred square feet of rotted, sandy concrete but they covered that over.

Equally inexplicitly, the building's handed over without having had the gas meter installed. Doreen and Thelma were on site all Monday to wait for the gas man, taking the opportunity to start tidying things up a bit. The gas man duly arrived.

And went.

He'd forgotten to bring the gas meter.

Back on Tuesday ("some time between 8am and 6pm," as we all know and love). Seth's turn to hang about. The Clerk of Works popped in his head through the door (to check out the concrete footings which already look a bit iffy)(and to ignore the paint spillages in the entrance to the library).

"Can I borrow your mobile?" he asks.

"What for?"

"So's I can ring the gas man to let me know when he's coming. I'm just working up the road."

"Why aren't you waiting here for him then?"

"I've got work to do."

"So have I, mate."

"That's your job mate."

Imagine Seth's delight a couple of hours later when he noticed the Clerk of Works and the gas man, parked up in their vans in the car park, talking to each other on their mobiles. He suggested that they might want to get the job done and dusted.

Looking good so far.

Some freaks are burning crosses on my front lawn

These days I'm disliking work so much that I'm coming in as late as possible. The fact that this allows me to go for the sequence of train connections that give me the quickest commuting journey with the space and time to pick up copies of three free newspapers and a cup of coffee and a croissant from the nice Polish girls in the station forecourt is neither here nor there. Even so, I'm still working over my alloted hours (not including work done at home).

Unfortunately, this does mean that Betty and Noreen end up taking the occasional peculiar 'phone call from our occasional peculiar librarians. The council's increasingly flaky internet connection fell over earlier than usual this morning, leading to this conversation between Noreen and Lettie at Dutch Bend:

"Is Kevin in?"

"He'll be in in about ten minutes. Do you want me to take a message?"

"I was on the internet when I clicked a link and the screen said I wasn't allowed to access this web site because it was deemed unsuitable by the IT Section. So I tried going back and I got the same message. Who are these people to say that I'm not allowed on the internet."

"Oh dear. I know this one. It's what usually happens when the internet connection goes down at lunchtime."

"But it says I'm not allowed on the internet."

"Do you want me to take a message and get Kevin to get back to you?"

"Why have they banned me from using the internet?"

"The connection's gone down. I could get Kevin to report it to the help desk if you want."

"Can't I report it to the help desk."

"If you want. Or, you could wait ten minutes and have Kevin do it for you."

"Are you telling me I can't report it to the help desk myself?"

"No. I'm just saying that if you don't want to, you can wait ten minutes and talk to Kevin about it."

"So I am able to report it to the help desk."

"If you want to."

"Well, what should I do then?"

"Perhaps you want to report it to the help desk."

"Are you saying I'm allowed to do that?"

"If that's what you decide you want to do..."

It amuses me to hear librarians moaning that they're not allowed to take authority and make decisions.

Japanese fighting tortoises

Poor old Henry Irving buzzes in for a quick visit to pick up some stuff for an event they're having at Sheep City. He's particularly frazzled after having spent all morning in a Recreation & Culture Trust Management Team meeting (they seem to have stopped being SPLAT, I seem to have missed that one).

"My God. Given the choice between spending a day talking management bullshit with librarians and ten minutes with people from the sports centres, I'd take the librarians every time. Utter, utter shite. They keep banging on about addressing the needs of the customers and being customer-oriented and all that bullshit, all the time making damned sure that they don't go anywhere near anyone or anything actually providing a service to the poor bloody public. What a bunch of tossers!"

"Are they doing the numbers?"

"I'll say. And they've half an eye on getting the council to move the Library Service into the Trust."

"We weren't good enough for them before. I dare say we're good enough now that the golf club's made yet another big hole in the budget. I am right in thinking that the golf club's in the red again?"

"I couldn't possibly comment."

"It was the pavillion last year. An 'accounting anomaly' the year before. What's this year's?"

"I could't possibly comment."

"I'll bet it's half a million."

"I'll have to go now. Have fun."

That's all we need: getting manœuvered into becoming the financial milch-cows for the council's crappy leisure services again, just when we're finally recovered from years of that nonsense.

Keeping an elephant under his tarpaulin

Bad enough that the lift lobbies have been looking like minor adjuncts of Kew for the past half year. Now we find that we can't get into the First Aid Room to go and have a lie down in the sink because it's full of large pot plants, rescued at the nick of time from the old Roadkill Library site.

They've survived months of neglect only to end their lives in darkness.

Round and round the same old ground

Late yesterday afternoon, Mary collared me by the photocopier.

"What time are you going home? I need to talk to you about the DVDs."

I confess I laughed.

The Library Pig

We got talking about rationing, Dig For Victory and the like the other day at work, like you do when you've got photos of John Mills and Field Marshall Montgomery on your staff noticeboard. Someone wondered how we'd fare. We decided that we wouldn't prosper.

Take, for instance, the example of a community pig being fed scraps for to be fattened up for slaughter...

"The poor bugger wouldn't last a week. It would starve to death before our managers decided what type of swill we would buy."

"Then we'd have to send it back because it was the wrong side of brown."

"Yeah, like we'd be that organised."

"How do you mean?"

"What would really happen is that we'd be going about our business when somebody'd come along and say: 'Drop everything and rush through an urgent order for a pig. The slaughterman's waiting outside."

Rôle models

Thursday's children's library event at Umpty Library was a visit by "Harry and his Box of Spiders." We put posters up advertising "Harry and his Box of Spiders." And sure enough, parents and carers brought their children in to see "Harry and his Box of Spiders." The kids loved it. What marred things a bit was when Harry took some of the spiders out of his box and some of the grown-ups literally ran screaming from the room.

They must have thought they were going to see some boxes. Perhaps from a place called Spiders.

Frog was asked to investigate the health and safety risks involved in the incident.

"Round objects,"

was the stern reply.

Are you sitting comfortably?

Let's make a start with the catching up...

I've been thinking about Ken Barmy's saying that he still wants to change the world. I see his point about changing the world. I mentioned this to my counsellor the other day and she asked me if I wasn't just setting myself impossible goals. I heard myself reply:

"There isn't a lot in this world that really is impossible, if you think about it."

Which is true enough. Think about it: people are turning water into wine every day of the week; they're using vines and vats and time to make the miracle but the miracle they make. And we all of us change the world, all the time, for good or bad. It's all a matter of scale and time and expectation.

I can change the world, and I can change the Library Service. I'm just going about it the wrong way. I've come to the conclusion that I can't do it by being 'nice,' though I'd hope I wouldn't stoop to some of the nonsense that goes on.

In the midst of my mulling this over, Jim took me to one side.

"I've news for you..."

"Oh yes?"

"I've got another job. I've just put in my notice."

"Oh fuck."

"Funnily enough, that's what Milton said."

"Have you told T.Aldous."

"Funnily enough he helped me with the application form."

We'll have to have a sweepstakes on when, if ever, his job gets advertised. There's a whole future ahead of us; we could do with disinterring the world's biggest whiteboard to do the honours.

Apology

I know I've been quiet the past few days, apologies to those of you waiting for me to moderate your comments. It's been an interesting week and to be honest by the time I've got home, had the aspirins and camomile tea and climbed back down from the ceiling I really, really haven't had the heart to upgrade my anti-virus software, which ran out on Wednesday. Anyway, I've done the deed and I'm back, but knackered. I was doing OK right up until the fourth installation reboot when I was completely stumped by the requirement to represent the square root of minus one in base seven (the answer's 2√Rumplestiltskin).

There's a hell of a lot to be catching up with over the weekend...

Have fun yourselves.