You have to know exactly where to bash it

We're fiddling about slightly with the layout at Dutch Bend Library. Part of the process involves moving the photocopier from the reference library into lending. Actually, what's really happening is that the new copier's been installed in lending. When the lease on the old one runs out then there'll be a jiggle round to make some learning space in ref. There's also the prospect of developing a closer correlation between the number of copies made and the derived income but we won't dwell on that. Nor the letters from the local literati who've been getting photocopies buckshee for the past twenty years on the quiet.

All is well until today when the lending library's short-staffed and struggling and a lady comes in wanting to zoom-copy a long and complicated document. The customer's in a hurry so the Library Assistant suggests that if she really can't wait a couple of minutes she could always try the reference library's copier (because, despite their protestations, the reference library isn't busy by any objective measure). Which idea she took in the spirit in which is was given and she went off to the reference library.

Flexible use of resource opportunities to enhance the customer experience, eh, what? Cue blistering email from Daisy Dormouse, the Reference Librarian, to all members of Policy Team, copied to lending library staff.

When are lending staff going to be trained properly to use the photocopier so that they're not always sending customers to the reference library?

This has not gone down well.

Posterns of fate

Aye up... We've to make ourselves available tomorrow for a presentation to the Library Service by the director of Sheep City. Given that there have been months of rumours of us and the Parks Department being taken over by them we're all a little antsy at the prospect. Especially as the state of their books is common knowledge.

Hey ho. Another festival week of surprise and delight.

We'd need more than our current allowance of organisational and managerial expertise to raise ourselves to the status of utter shambles

You might have heard or read that from today if you join a library anywhere in the country you'll be able to borrow books from any other library in the country.

You might wonder what type of preparations we make to join in with an important national initiative like this.

Semi-charmed life

It's been a swine of a week. I couldn't tell you very much of it without slapping the real Helminthdale logo up on the title. Suffice to say that we haven't been overwhelmed with awe at any pyrotechnics of planning, management or leadership. Even the Ouija board has given up trying to communicate with Policy Team. Stone me, what a life.

The Corporate Bobbing Up And Down Like This Team have been a loudly self-advertising component of the council for this past twenty months now. Its one and only public delivery has been the new "Laid-back Tuesday" nonsense. Sybil considers this such a rip-roaring success that she is spurred to suggest a new refinement.

"Let's have Wicker Man Wednesday!" she cries. "We could get a couple of sheep and a cow and then we could set fire to the council offices. The only thing we'd need to do is organise a vote on who would be the human sacrifice."

The front-runner at this early stage is the Cabinet Chair of Human Resources. Or perhaps a double-header with the Chief Personnel Officer.


STOP PRESS

Frog insists that he wants to be Britt Ekland.

It has been an awful week.

Remember 'Mind my bike?'

The new health centre and council office just down the road from Tench Lane Library is ready to open to the public. I can't help thinking they'll have a few complaints about the access to the council reception point. There's a ramp up to the door, which is plenty wide enough for a motorbility scooter to scuttle through.

But somebody will need to explain why there's a big sign saying "unsuitable for wheelchairs" at the bottom of the ramp.

We all smiled and said cheese

"Why isn't there a new display in the window in Lending?" T.Aldous asks Bronwyn.

"I think a couple of Library Assistants are putting something together for Black History Month. I'm sure I saw Bessie and Chrissie putting together a display board yesterday," replies Bronwyn.

"Can you make sure that they do," is the master's Parthian shot.

Bronwyn is fizzing.

"Does Doreen take no responsibility for what happens in her library?" she asks us.

"Is Doreen a member of Policy Team?" we ask.

"Yes..."

"Do any of them take responsibility for anything? Ever?"

"Oh, fuck the lot of them!"

This job's expanding Bronwyn's vocabulary no end.

You should never vex a stranger

'Phone call. From Catty Library.

"A lady's come in to complain that somebody's set up a false Facebook account. Can we find out who it is and put a stop to it?"

"No," I explained.

This was just me and my woodpecker

I point out that Hetty's the only person who's responded to my emails about the new library service point. I eventually get emails from the two Assistant Librarians saying that they've not been able to do anything because there's not enough staff at Catty Library.

I can't imagine how many members of staff they think I am.

Arse biscuits

It is decreed from on high in the Town Hall that once a month it shall be "Laid-back Tuesday" in Helminthdale Council and that all staff may come into work dressed casually. Except for those staff in services that operate a dress code. Staff taking advantage of this maginficent offer are invited to contribute a little something to the Council's Community Chest.

For most of us this is an irrelevant load of old cock. The staff in the one-stop-shops, who are required to wear a uniform (all polyester and Bri Nylon) are getting mighty fed up of the twice-a-day emails from the corporate Bobbing Up And Down Like This Team. Yesterday they all had the subject line

Are you ready for a dressing-down this Tuesday?

Which explains why Oggie Emsworth turned up to work this morning wearing his dressing gown with a teddy bear tucked under his arm.

Bang and blame

T. Aldous accosts Bronwyn.

"The displays of new books in lending are empty."

Quite why this is Bronwyn's fault puzzles us. The Lending Library has a three-tier management structure including a Group Librarian, the Assistant Librarians and the Counter Supervisors, any one of whom could and should be capable of asking the Library Assistants to do the job of replenishing the display. A job that they do unbidden when they're on their own in the branch libraries not worrying about being told off by three tiers of management...

No rind or gristle

We're all getting a bit jaded. Witness T.Aldous, looking at a picture of cows contentedly chewing their cuds.

"There's the council's vision of customer service," he remarks, quietly.

Hi there flappers and bobbysoxers!

Being for the benefit of the public

For the benefit of you and me
The folks at Helminthdale B.C.
Reorganise.
The random mix of old and new
Will like as not bamboozle you.
What a surprise!
What's opened close,
For these read those,
And nothing's ever really what it seems
'Cos they're running contradictory regimes.
In these ways
Helminthdale says
We'll challenge the world!


Helminthdale's disguise with dog ends

Imagine yourself in a box by a river
With trampled-down dreams and blinkered red eyes
Somebody calls you, they speak awful slowly
And tell you the usual lies.
"Yes sir, this council's concerned for the best
"And the best, sir, is ready to come.
"Watch as we weave our mysterious ends."
And he's gone.
Helminthdale's disguise with dog ends.

Follow him through to a thinly-staffed counter
To care-less execs
Who have rocking-horse brains.
Try to get hold of reforms or resources
From people who like giving pains.
Newspaper stories will tax you to hell
You'll want them to take you away
But if you climb back and you do as you're told
Then you're gone.
Helminthdale's disguise with dog ends.

Ooh! He’s chokin’ on ‘is Werthers!

Henry's having a bit of a barney with one of the doyens of the Dutch Bend Heritage Association.

Henry recently took delivery of the archives of the Dutch Bend Express And Star for 1920 to 1978. The Express And Star donated the earlier archives to Dutch Bend Library about forty years ago. These got shifted out into store in the front room at Raccoonville Library. Three years ago they got moved over to the Archives Room at Sheep City for to make way for the new toilet in the library. One of the questions Henry asked upon delivery was: "where are 1905 and 1912?" We had no answer. He's happy that this time he's getting delivery straight from source.

Part of the deal is that the archives now become available to the public, which is entirely right and proper. Henry's had them copied onto fiche and is haggling over the digitising of them, which means that the public get access and the originals are kept safe and sound in controlled conditions so that the newsprint doesn't deteriorate any further.

This isn't good enough for one of the local luminaries of Dutch Bend. Garfield Pendersbury is the author of seminal works of local study such as "The Traffic Lights of Dutch Bend," "More Traffic Lights of Dutch Bend," and "Belisha Beacons I Have Known." He demands to be allowed to borrow some of the original volumes from the archives for his next work. Henry has said no. The archives are available for use in the library, not for loan. (Especially as we know Garfield used to borrow volumes from the Express And Star and kept them in his greenhouse for fear of bookworms). He is Not Happy. His parting shot is:

"I'll just have to tell the Express And Star to get them for me and then re-donate them when I've finished with them."

Henry summed up Garfield's best qualities in one beautifully-honed word.

Crepuscular

OK. Now this is weird, even for us...

Maisie's trying to get hold of a screen filter for one of the PCs down on our floor which gets a lot of reflected glare from the Town Hall windows across the road. Corporate Purchasing have been not useful so she can't buy a new one. Luckily, she remembered that Wendy at Umpty Library has one and that somebody's said that it wasn't on the PC in the Reference Library any more.

Maisie rang Wendy to see if she could cadge it off her.

"Oh, it's not here," said Wendy. "It's on the PC at Helminthdale."

Wendy works a couple of days a week in the Reference Library upstairs.

"Oh, that's good," said Maisie. "I'll go and get it now."

"No!" cried Wendy. "I need it."

"I thought you didn't need it any more."

"They don't let you switch the lights off at Helminthdale."

One of my new Winter goals is to visit the Twilight Library of Umpty.

The chill cold night made fools of our senses

I go into the staff room to get a cup of tea and find it in darkness. Four people are sitting round the table, looking at the ceiling. I'm feeling heavily jocular.

"Holding a seance?" I ask.

"Hush! It's a Team Briefing. We're trying to channel communication from the other side to see if Policy Team has anything they should be telling us."

Were the rabbits cursed?

I can barely reach the clock machine for a roll of astroturf squatting on the floor.

I hope to God we're not laying that down in one of our libraries!

I want to give it you babe but I can't get it down from the wardrobe

Month seventeen in the Big Brother House and things have gone a bit quiet on the rearranging the furniture front...

It has been noted that there are still boxes in the way of the sofas we haven't bought yet. Which is just as well as they couldn't go there anyway because Maudie and Maisie haven't been able to move their desks to the alloted space because that bit of room is still chock full of the desk that's been appropriated for piling up the spare paper left lying about by Mary and T.Aldous. Oh, and the correspondence trays. And the boxes of paper. And... oh you get the idea.

We still have a pile of old new stock in boxes that haven't seen the light of library. There are constant complaints from Librarians that there is "too much stock." Some of the same Librarians are blocking attempts by Mary, Frog and Bronwyn to allow loan packs to teachers. And there are stirrings that "we need to stock edit" the stock that Mary, Frog and Bronwyn are trying to loan to teachers.

Noreen says:

"I don't know why they don't just cut out the middle man and have us rip the title page out and put the stock straight into book sale as soon as we've received and paid for it."

The only act that was paid off from Fantasy Island

"That's my ladylike reputation blown out of the water," says Salome.

"How's that?" I ask.

"T.Aldous just walked into the staff room while me and Lippy were having a belching contest."

Not in the mood

There's a new council/health service/voluntary sector all-singing all-dancing civic centre opening on the site of the old Catty Town Hall at the end of next month. This particular one has been on the cards for a couple of years but the concept in general has been approved locally for a while longer than that and it's planned that each of the old County Boroughs will have one.

One of the services that's going to be provided is a small library - in effect an outlier of Catty Library. They'll be using a small deposit collection and they'll be issuing and returning on our library management system. Again, this has been on the cards for the past couple of years and on the rare occasions that Policy Team tell the common horde what they've been doing to earn their corn this has always featured in third place behind "meeting performance standards" and "filling vacancies."

For the past few months I've been asking how this new library is going to work so that I can set them up accordingly on the system. And so that I can work out the complementary human systems and training resources. Will we expect them to behave just like any of the branch libraries and have all the consequence processes and workloads or are we going to be more selective? How do we want other libraries to work with this one, and vice versa? Simple stuff, so long as somebody makes timely decisions.

Ha ha ha ha.

Anyway. I've asked. And I've been asking more urgently the closer we get to opening time. And I've finally got an answer late yesterday afternoon. My response to the answer was to ask a pile of new questions so that I could try to make sure I was going to come close-ish to what Julia thinks she wants this library to do (Julia being the Group Librarian taking a lead on this project). The more questions I've asked the more it becomes apparent that, for all the talk of this being a work strand that Policy Team has been tackling with all the deliberation one would expect from a team of highly-paid Professionals, she's making it up as she's going along. She has no more idea than me what the Library Service wants to do with this centre.

In times past I would have been sympathetic and made the effort to give her a bit of a steer towards something we could both defend. In times past. To be honest I've lost patience big time with Policy Team and this is just another reason to be annoyed with them. The most professional thing I can find it in myself to do is to ask the questions and explain why I'm asking them. Rather despite myself I think I've got the technical issues ironed out so that they'll work whichever way she jumps - I've been worrying about this so long I've subconsciously gone through a few dozen contingencies and work-throughs and three of them can be used off-the-peg. Which is just as well as it doesn't look like Milton's input on the project, which he hasn't involved me in, is delivering not a right lot either.

To cap it all, I've just had another email from Julia asking me if I want to go and talk to other libraries that are doing this so that I can determine what services we should be providing and how they should be provided.

I graciously declined the invitation.

Lovely audience

How remiss of me: I haven't mentioned our new arrivals.

Posy Slaithwaite is our new Assistant Librarian, filling Bronwyn's old post, which has only been vacant for more than a year. She seems OK, a little young and very noisy but OK. To be honest, I think she's trying too hard but that's understandable: it's her first post since qualifying as a librarian and she's coming from a library authority which treats its Library Assistants as something a little lower than slime moulds in the food chain. Consequently I'm overlooking the constant references to "being a professional" for now. When I get to know her better I'll drop her the hint. In my experience most people who do the transition from Library Assistant to Librarian are pretty level-headed about the "I am a Professional" thing but have to go through a period of self-affirmation in the process. Every so often you'll get a one who goes over to the dark side but usually they remember how shitty some people can be treated.

Jack Harry Timpson takes over Jim's old job. I've had dealings with Jack Harry in various situations in the past and he's always been a good egg, which is good news. He can be a bit uncommunicative, which is a bit of a worry in our organisation. Let's be honest, communication isn't high on the list of our achievements. With a bit of luck his wanting to get things done will override any possibilities of going native any time too soon.

It'll be interesting to see how they knit with their compadres.

Always wash your brushes and put the ladders away

Sundry muck-ups and duplications in projects and programmes within the council are tripping people up left, right and centre. If there aren't three groups of highly-paid jackanapes doing a children's web site that never happens there's two groups building a staff consultation system that isn't delivered. If it's not an expensive online forms system that isn't implemented because the IT section say it isn't a priority it's a personnel system that can't tell you how many vacant posts you've got in your service and which says that the bloke who's been sitting next to you all week has been off sick for the past month.

There is always room for such things in any organisation. However, it is getting much, much worse of late. Largely because everybody's beavering away in their own little boxes and nobody's talking to anybody else.

This wasn't always the case.

Time was we had access to the services of Ulmsley Warton, the Team Leader of the old Policy & Research Team. Ulmsley's particular genius was that he could not only remember names he could remember what people did or were doing. As head of the P&R Team he attended all the usual panoply of high-level gabfests, as you'd expect. But then he'd go away and have a think about who he knew was doing something that would either benefit from a particular project, or could contribute something useful to it. And who he knew had some expert knowledge that might be useful. As such he was often the matchmaker or midwife for a lot of useful work.

Oh, to be sure, there'd be all the usual cobblers going on at a high level but at the sharp end of things there'd be unlikely synergies and sharings of ideas and practices and things would happen in their own quiet way. People starting a project would be told as a matter of routine: "go and have a chat with Ulmsley," and he would spare them an odd ten minutes to give them nods and pointers and a collection of useful contacts. Many's the time I'd get a 'phone call from somebody saying: "I've just had a chat with Ulmsley Warton and he said I should talk to you about..." And I have reason to be grateful to him a few times too: "I've just had a chat with Ulmsley Warton and he says that you could use..."

Ah, we don't work that way any more. Ulmsley's retired, I hope his health allows him many active years. And we have a whole bunch of new processes and procedures to make everything utterly impenetrable. When I start chafing at being demoted to lowly serf status in the Library Service (I'm still doing the same job, we just have a different management culture) I'm consoled by the thought that I'm probably well out of it these days.

Do moths whistle?

Bronwyn spent yesterday at Umpty Library, catching up with the stock-editing that the librarians should have done. Again. My innocent "how did it go yesterday" prompted a tirade of Anglo-Saxon splenetics including a couple of words I hardly ever use, even when provoked.

Wendy, one of the Reference Librarians, has got right up Bronwyn's nose.

"I wish I could get paid for pissing around the library doing sod all except walk around with a biro in my hand and being so fucking patronising, so very, very fucking patronising."

Was one of the gentler passages.

"How the library assistants don't kill her I do not know."

I learn later that, amongst other things, as fast as Bronwyn was taking tatty cookery books out of lending stock Wendy was trying to accession them into reference library stock.

100 years ago today...

Plus ca change...

My very good friend...

(After Waller)
(A long way after...)

My very good friend the timesheet says
He doesn't like the hours I keep
He says he thinks I should get sleep
And he suggests I quit the library.

My very good friend the laptop says
He's feeling somehow quite bemused
The work I've done that isn't used
And he suggests I quit the library.

And there's a very friendly fellow who prints
All the news about this joint
And now and then he sends me blueprints
Of projects that might have some point.

My very good friends and neighbours say:
"Is this a job you want to keep?
"Rewards are few and cuts are deep
"And we suggest you quit the library."

And they sang "Shangalang"

The topic of conversation for "the girls" today is the Bay City Rollers.

"Before my time loves," I say.

"Fuck off," say the ladies.

Act nice and gentle

A busman's huzzah from Ken Barmy, who's on a sort of holiday at the moment. This seems to consist of his finding every thunderstorm Britain has to offer and standing in puddles a lot.

He asks about the attentions of the management of Sheep City, our arm's-length, not-part-of-the-council-for-VAT-purposes lesiure, arts. culture and dried sandwiches centre. When it was set up it was made abundantly clear to anybody who would listen that the Library Service wasn't wanted on board. Now we're led to believe that 'exploratory talks' are in the offing. Ken scoffs at this, reckoning that any time there are 'exploratory talks' there's a done deal under the table.

"When our leisure trust was set up they couldn't do enough to keep their distance from us," he tells me. "Now the council's spent a pile of money doing up the library buildings we're suddenly attractive. We've been getting good performance figures, too, and that's got everything to do with the fact we're not constantly bleeding resources to prop up the leisure services any more.

"It's no coincidence, of course, that the latest takeover manoeuvres are happening at the same time as the budget reports suggest you'd get the same income stream as the golf club if you spent the weekend flushing £50 notes down the lavatory."

I do hope he's wrong. There aren't many examples of this being put into practice and I'd hate for us to be one of them. I don't see any great merit in our moving from a failed service delivery model to one that ensures the destruction of the service.

My brothers and sisters all hated me because I was an only child

Frog's feeling like he's not really got a future in the service. We all have days like that here: this isn't a workplace that makes you feel invested-in and valued.

Noreen flourishes some cheer:

"Well, at least somebody's trying their best to keep you in work!"

About as much use as a cordless nunchuk

The Counter Supervisors have just had a meeting with the Group Librarians to go through a whole slew of issues about front-line service delivery, staffing, etc. Leastways, that's what they try and go through.

"Did somebody say that there was some discussion about whether or not we should be moving into the same section as Sheep City and the slipper baths?" asked Maybelle.

"Warner went to a meeting to discuss this a few weeks ago," replied Julia.

"Do we know the outcomes?"

"We don't want to know the outcome so we're not asking him."

The rocking chairs are singing in the twilight

It can't be good that half the staff in the Library Service has signed up for an early retirement seminar.

Nor that half the people who aren't eligible are still wanting to go.

Maybe it's mystery meat

Sibyl's having fun with a customer of the Regional Library Service. After much kerfuffle and prolonged hassle she procured a copy of the title he asked for. This wasn't good enough.

"I wanted the copy from Borsetshire," he said.

"We couldn't get the copy from Borsetshire," replied Sybil.

"I looked it up on the web and Borsetshire has a copy."

"Borsetshire are replacing their systems and they're not doing regional loans at the moment so we can't get copies from Borsetshire."

"Well, I don't want this one."

"If you're willing to wait until Borsetshire comes back onto the regional loans system I can try and get their copy if they're willing to loan it."

"That's good. Why didn't you say so in the first place?"

And Raymond returned to the ballroom

"It's Jeremy Kyle Day in the library today," mutters Sammi at tea break.

Apparently, all the local nutters (and there are so very many!) have been in this morning. Top of the list has to be the very, very inebriated lady who rolled in at half-eleven, shouted:

"I've never been in a library in my bleedin' life!"

and asked who she needed to give her job application form to.

Better read the label

We're having networked printer problems yet again. I send out an email to all staff to warn them and this is the result...

To: All staff
From: Kevin
Subject: printers
All the networked printers are offline at the moment so you won't be able to print anything. No sensible prediction of if/when they're going to be working.

To: Kevin
From: Catty Library
Subject: re: printers
Kevin,
The printers aren't working.
Hetty.

To: Catty Library
From: Kevin
Subject: re: re: printers
Hetty, I know: I told you.

To Kevin
From: Catty Library
Subject: re: re: re: printers
Kevin,
I know you did. I thought you'd want to know.
Hetty.

Meme

I've been and gone and been memed by that Madame DeFarge, which is nice of her. I think. Knowing her wicked sense of humour...

The rules of the game are that I have to admit to seven quirky personality traits that are evidenced in this blog and I have to pass it on to seven other bloggers who, I hope, will have a bit of fun with the idea.

Finding seven quirky personality traits is difficult as I'm not sure I have even three, even before I have to find any evidence for them.

1. I actually do have a public service work ethic. I really do believe that the end products of what I'm trying to do are important. I have this mad idea that we are in the business of handing the keys of the world to the masses.
2. I am infinitely impatient. This gives people the impression that I am extremely patient. As it is, if waiting for a minute feels like waiting for a year then it's easy to maintain a uniform composure.
3. When the mood is on me I can be extremely logorrhoic.
4. I have very visual thinking processes. I am told that the scribbles I do when I'm explaining anything complicated are "terrifying."
5. I hate computers. I like the stuff you can do with them, but I hate computers. And gadgets in general.
6. I don't have or use a mobile 'phone. A thing of the devil. Besides, if I had one the buggers would be on at me 24x7.
7. I'm seriously torn between walking away from the whole sorry mess and sitting back and enjoying having one of the best seats at the circus.

It's difficult to know who to choose to nominate, there are a lot of fun and interesting bloggers out there. If I haven't selected you here and you want to be nominated consider it done; this is a particularly arbitary septet.

• Gadjo Dilo, who can always be counted on to come up with something I wasn't expecting.
• The Topiary Cow, who provides a nice haven of mostly-calm.
• Pat, who constantly delights.
• Pearl, who reminds me that commuting by public transport isn't just a lunacy of the English.
• Ladybird World Mother, who's always good for a sly giggle.
• Wendy, who constantly delights in her observation.
• Scarlet-Blue, who is probably too busy moving to do this at the moment but who needs to have something to do while she's baking housewarming brownies for us all.

I was tempted also to nominate Mrs. Pouncer precisely because she doesn't do memes.

There's never a labrador puppy when you really need one

Bronwyn's covering at Umpty today. There's been the usual trouble with vandals there lately so they have to keep the toilet doors locked and customers have to ask for the key. A little old lady asked for the key, which Bronwyn duly proffered.

After a while Bronwyn started to worry.

"Oh shit. She'll have forgotten and put the key in her pocket and wandered off and I don't know if there's a spare anywhere."

Unfortunately she was on her own and the library was busy so she couldn't nip over to investigate.

After a few minutes another little old lady wandered up to the counter.

"Excuse me, do you have any paper?"

"There's some scrap here if you're wanting to make a note of anything."

"No, I mean toilet paper."

"Toilet paper?"

"My friend's using your loo and she's just texted me to say there's no paper and please could I get her some."

Blaze away

We've had another fire inspection and Seth's been appraised of the changes we need to make. He's also been told about the shopping centre's new fire procedures that were required to bring everything in line with the new regulations. It all sounds a lot more straightforward than the old procedures and we've been issued with new equipment to help make sure that everybody's evacuated quickly and safely and to make sure that the Fire Brigade knows the state of play when it arrives.

It seems like a good idea to make sure that all staff know the new procedures so Doreen and Seth set up some meetings for him to give everyone the gen.

Then Doreen makes her fatal error...

"I'll just tell T.Aldous so that he's kept in the loop."

T.Aldous tells them that he'll tell staff about the new procedures and that it'll have to wait four weeks as he's busy until the end of September.

"It'll be an interesting talk 'cos I'm telling him nowt," says Seth.

"We're not planning on having a fire any time in the next month then?" asks Betty.

People in glass housesShouldn't.

Oh, this is intolerable.

You can barely move in Meeting Room One because it's full of chairs, all samples from the furniture company that's hoping for the business of kitting out the revamped Carbootsale Library.

Now we find that you can't use the table in Meeting Room One (one of the other ones) because it's piled high with glass bricks.

I shall plant a union jack

Noreen surveys the serried ranks of boxes in the fire escape corridor with some dismay. There are eighty-four of them. At the beginning of the week there were only sixty-eight.

She beats herself up for no especially good reason. The Acquisitions Team are a pretty efficient machine given half a chance and their throughput is quite impressive. Unfortunately, they're under-strength at the moment and for the foreseeable (for reasons we won't go into but prayers have been said for the person involved) and we're now well into the special bulk-buys for the new school term season.

The situation has been ameliorated more than a little by Frog and Bronwyn cooking up a little wheeze whereby all the "Book That!" books went directly from the Acq. Team to the intended children's centres in the Catty area, completely bypassing all the usual bottle-necks and boomerangs in one fell swoop.

I'm going down to Smithfield to get some sand on my shoes

Verity, who runs Carbootsale Library, has yet to see how it looks after refurbishment.

She's been past it a few times but the shutters have been down so she's not been able to look inside. And she's not been invited to any of the on-site meetings that T.Aldous and Julia have been having with the men from the furniture shop.

She's been getting updates from the locals who pop in to see her at her place of exile just to make sure she's coping.

Just to rub her nose in it, Julia gets back to Catty Library after the latest on-site conflab, wanders over to Verity, who's been covering the enquiry desk, and says:

"It's a pity you couldn't go to that meeting."

You can tell it’s real by the teethmarks

We are a typical cross-section of the population in that we have had quite a few people have have been quite seriously ill and, while we have lost too many recently, a good number have recovered and are in complete remission, touch wood. Though not entirely unscathed.

Sybil's quite ribald about her surgical intervention. This conversation all started when Noreen read out a newspaper article about a woman who'd been on a crash diet and had to have all the spare skin removed. Unfortunately, in the process her navel disappeared.

"They'll have to tattoo her one back on, just like they do nipples," said Sybil.

"What?" we asked, despite ourselves.

"Oh aye. When they do the trimming off they like to leave things a bit tidy, like. You might be a bit lop-sided but they want you to look a bit normal so they tattoo a nipple on there for you. They're really good, they match the colour up and everything."

We didn't ask for proof.

"The only problem is, like I told him, I've lost me ping."

"What?" we chorused again.

"Well, in the cold weather a girl likes to be sure to have a ping about her. I've not got much to begin with so anything that makes a dent in me blouse I'm having!"

"Couldn't you use a midget gem?" asked somebody.

"Aye, you'll be OK with one them."

"Oh aye, I'm full of daft tricks like that."

"Well, they'd be easy enough to stick on. You just lick the bottom of the midget gem and jam in on there."

"If I had a whole packet of them I could have a different flavour every day of the week."

"You'd be OK on a Saturday night, sat watching "Match of the Day" with him. You could lean over, give him a dig in the ribs and a beery leer and say:

'You're in luck tonight, lad, I've got me blackcurrant one on!'"

Dracula has his cloak and you have your cardigan

The staff in Helminthdale Central Library don't have the time to make notes in the day book about whether or not someone's reported problems — nor, indeed, the nature of the problem — but they do have time to make notes like:

"Challenged two children in the library to find out why they were looking in adult non-fiction. They were looking at books about cars."

and

"Challenged lady using a computer in the children's library. She claimed she was OK to use it as she had a child with her in the library."

[Note: all our computer sessions are staff-mediated, so anybody using one of them will have had prior permission from a member of staff.]

Dancing in the dark

We're going to Hell in a handcart. It's not like we've not got the people, or the resources, or the commitment to our service. It's just that we don't know what the blue blazes we're doing or why.

So we struggle to make sure that the doors stay open because the opening hours were established quarter of a century ago and nothing's been done to either recruit to these peculiar hours or reorganise the hours to try to match staffing resources to market demand. We have the time-and-motion people in to check us out on the day when we're double-staffed upstairs (due to our also having the staff from the branches that had that day cut from their opening hours in the eighties) and every Tuesday morning there's a Borough-wide panic because there'll be one person on holiday and there's nobody to provide cover.

When we're not pratting about with the timetables we're skittering off in all directions doing things that we hope will improve services, or ameliorate known deficiencies, or meet new agendas that we've heard about by circuitous means or because they're interesting or fun things to do.

And what of our senior managers? They're sulking in their tent, stewing while we caper and lark and generally take the piss out them. I've never worked anywhere that is so openly derisive of its management. Or a management that has so deserved it. Which is a shame as they're not stupid, they're not evil, they really do want to do a good job of things. I just can't understand why they can't see that if they don't engage positively with their staff they can't get the buy-in they keep talking about. Or that saying "thank you" collectively and publicly is worth a million vacuous statements about valuing their staff. Or...

Oh what's the point? We are where we are and the prospects are only gloomier.

Frog, who has a madly idealistic commitment to providing the best services for children that he could possibly manage, summed it up as we left the premises.

"It's an awful thing to have to admit: these days I'm only coming into work for the craic."

Cryptozoology

Every week on a Monday morning, unless it's Friday, or not at all, Mary gathers her underlings together for what we are to stop calling her catchy-uppy-skippy-jumpy meetings. The burning question of the day is notable for its absence from the agenda. Or would be if there was an agenda, but you get the idea.

Frog and Maybelle emerge from the meeting with secret smiles.

"What's up?" I ask.

"Well, you know how we've been wondering who our line manager is in the half of the week when Mary's not working?" says Frog. "And how we're wondering who'll be taking over when she eventually goes?"

"You've not asked her again?" I scoff.

"Better stiil," replied Maybelle with savage glee, "Nancy did!"

Nancy, while being a lovely lady, isn't one of our more dynamic players. If you get to the point where even she is losing patience with a situation there really must be an issue.

"Did you get to find out then?" I ask.

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

The key is there to open the tinThe tin is there to keep the Spam in

Between us Frog, Milton and I have determined that there are three council projects on the go to provide "a children's web site." None of us are involved in these projects and we're not sorry either.

The projects are run by the usual suspects. To my certain knowledge there have been eight projects "to create a children's web site" in the past ten years. All of them have been a dead waste of time and money. What happens is:

• A bunch of highly-paid senior manager get together to talk about "the need for a children's web site."
• They meet again a bit later to confirm what they said the first time.
• They meet again to talk about all the things they could do, usually referencing Nickelodeon and the BBC children's web sites of the day.
• In meeting four or five this morphs into a discussion for the need for a directory of children's services so that they can make sure they're all included in the site.
• By meeting eight a spreadsheet will have been created that will be circulated to all services asking them to provide the necessary information in the cells indicated.
• Meetings nine and ten involve paying a consultant to come in to see how the spreadsheet could be turned into searchable web content.
• Meeting eleven is the discussion about content delivery sites.
• Meeting twelve, if the project gets that far, gives the OK for a site to be set up some time, funding permitting.
• Meeting thirteen never happens because it's unlucky.

A couple of times the web directory has actually been published on the web. And that was the end of it. You couldn't find them but they were out there somewhere. Of course, the directory isn't a children's directory, nor a children's web site, or even anything remotely useful by the general public. The big deliverable output is just a user-unfriendly snapshot of services that could, and should, have been listed on the Council web site. Especially as they just used the Local Government Service List as their template. After a year each web site disappeared from view and the cycle began anew.

Back in the old days, in a previous incarnation, I was involved in a few print versions of this game. My protestations that they needed to build an updating mechanism into the process fell on deaf ears. "This is just a one-off publication."

People could never understand how I delivered the second and third versions of the directory in half the time it took to do the first.

Either that, or the bacon’s dropped off

Some days it's a bit of a struggle at the front line. Lending have taken delivery of a new dump bin for a pile of books that have been dumped on us gifted to us by another agency. A conversation I overhear demonstrates the breathless excitement involved.

"What are you going to do with it?"

"I'll put it in a glass case and throw sugar at it."

You can’t speak without tripping over it!

Staff Room complaint. One Lady Of A Certain Age shouts over to another:

"Can you shut your locker door 'cos Daniel Craig is distracting me!"

Balancing acts

Fred Anonymous writes:

"Have been trying to balance the budget for the Reference Library today, an impossible task as before I got to managing this budget somebody transferred the newspapers and periodicals to this heading, without the funds. Of course it is now impossible to rid ourselves of this, and unless any shortfall comes out of the ref book fund we are stumped. That said ref book fund is also covering overspend on microfilming, which goes up every year in cost, but budget gets reduced proportionally; and on-line services for which there was never a budget in the first place, but there is increasing demand for such.

"Effectively the ref book fund is down to not very much at all of which half, I kid you not, is spent on Halsbury’s which no one ever uses. Head of Service tells me Halsbury’s is an essential reference tool, and therefore I can’t cancel it. Thus we have just about enough and falling to buy a few Whitaker’s Almanacs, a couple of Wisden’s and not a lot else!"

Some things are the same the whole world over.

Wisdom

Daisy Duck's on the 'phone about a problem at Ducth Bend. We get it sorted as far as we ever get things sorted round here (which is to say that if we can't sort it out ourselves, or think of a way of working round the problem, we give up in despair). As it happens, we get it sorted.

"How's things with you?" I ask.

"Keeping me head down, just keeping me head down," she replies.

"That good?"

"Oh yes. That good."

I don't enquire. It's not like we haven't got a million-and-one flashpoints scattered around the borough. The only wonder is that they don't all go off in one big bang. Still, there's time, I guess.

Workin' at a desk with a dumb little placard

Is that the eighth or ninth 'phone call I've taken for T.Aldous and/or Julia about the shelving at Carbootsale Library? I don't know how Maisie stands it, she's had days of it.

Fry's delight

I bumped into Ken Barmy again at Victoria Station.

"How's by you?" I asked.

"It would be just my luck for some bloody fool to offer me the kingdom of Albania," he replied.

The first cuckoo

I go into Meeting Room one and find it's full of new chairs.

"It's not March already is it?" I ask Maisie.

"It wouldn't bloody surprise me," she replies.

Retirement

There's a budget crisis at Helminthdale and the council is trying to cut costs. Actually, that's not strictly true: the council is trying to save money at all costs. Head count is always a substantial cost - the council is far and away the biggest employer in the borough - so the council is looking to get it trimmed down so that it can afford to fund the Regeneration Programme For Jobs.

We've had the bit where they cut everyone's pay; and the bit where taking the time back for involuntary unpaid out-of-hours working is treated as a benefit-in-kind; now we're at the bit where the council asks if anybody's interested in early retirement.

Bronwyn and I are gutted: we're of the same age and just slightly too young to qualify. A mutual friend in the council offices over in Catty has applied and almost by return of post he received a letter telling him that on no account is the council prepared to allow him early retirement as he is "a very-much valued employee whose skills we are not prepared to lose at this time. He's planning on getting it framed and put on the wall so that he can point to it next time he gets a bollocking for being bolshie.

Stock footage

T.Aldous is in a bate about boxes again. Largely because they're in the space where he wants to have two sofas and a coffee table so that people waiting to see him can feel nice and comfy.

The boxes "belong" to the Assistant Librarians and they're full of books that either need transferring to another library, transferring into the reserve stock collection, replacing with new copies or removing from the catalogue completely. T.Aldous is annoyed that they've been there for months. This isn't strictly true: there have been boxes in that area for months but they've not been the same boxes throughout. T.Aldous, like most of the rest of our management team, has no concept of dynamic process or throughput.

For years we didn't stock-edit our shelves. In part this was because the Stock Editor, Monsieur Eddie Gravy, didn't get on with the Assistant Librarians. But mostly it was because T.Aldous' predecessor saw the inability to jam another book onto the shelves as a signal to his professional virility. (The remaining stock we have from his time all have broken spines.) When Eddie left there wasn't anybody around to officially stock-edit any more. Some of the library assistants took it on themselves to do the necessary, weeding the lame and unloved out from the overstocked shelves. They got a bollocking for their trouble and went back into their box.

Of course, while all this was going on T.Aldous negotiated a rise in the book fund. Which should be A Good Thing in a public library. Unfortunately, while we were meeting our performance target of 50,000 new books per annum we weren't doing anything about either removing 50,000 items off the shelves or getting additional shelf space. Quite the reverse, in fact. We clung onto the old stock and reduced the amount of shelving in nearly all our libraries.

Which is why Windscape Library didn't have any children's books less than three years old on their shelves. All the new stuff was in boxes in the back room.

Bronwyn has been in post a year now and she is starting to see some headway in all this. Unfortunately, a massive stock-edit of our libraries means that there is a hell of a lot of stock to transfer to another library, transfer to reserve stock, or get rid off. And this takes time. Especially when the Assistant Librarians at Catty Library send their stock over to Helminthdale to be sorted because they "are too busy to do it."

Oh, and when the Chief Librarian insists on vetting the stock to be chucked out and put into book sale.

"You can't put that into book sale. We bought it in 2001 and it's never been issued. What will people say if they see that?"

Perhaps they'd say it's precisely the stock that hasn't issued in eight years that should be removed from the lending library stock.

Déjà vu

I wandered over to apologise to Bronwyn.

"You needed that stock usage analysis this week didn't you? Sorry about that. I got completely side-tracked. Will they be OK tomorrow?"

"You gave them me three weeks ago."

The biggest, wettest and scariest rides in town

It's been a lousy day and it's not even scream at the lunchtime network failure time yet.

The train into Manchester was down to two carriages again, twice this week. It's normally standing room only on the four-carriage train so you can guess how much fun this was. Luckily it was one of the newer stock, circa 1984, so you had something to hang onto other than the adjoining passengers. In my case it was the overhead lightbulb. A traipse across town, where the trams are providing "excellent service" by having all the track this side of the Great Barrier Reef dug up for the summer, or the whole of human history, whichever turns out to be the longer. Then onto the new train service into Helminthdale, which is served by a fleet of things which appear to be nothing so much as a bunch of old shopping trolleys loosely bound onto bogeys. These provide a filling rattler of a ride at the best of times, which means that I have to sit at 45º from the vertical with my arm stretched horizontally and bent back such that I can drink my cup of coffee by craning my neck and pursing my lips to catch the liquid as it flails around in the air while we negotiate the points in the track. All the while hoping not to catch the eye of any of the tattooed bruisers travelling with me on the train. Or their gentlemen friends. Today wasn't the best of times and the spasm that rocked the carriage as we passed the vinegar works resulted in my having a lap full of scaldingly hot coffee. With my social life any thoughts of serious damage are purely academic, which is just as well as there was no polite way of running through the inventory at the time.

Getting into the office was the usual treat. The first thing to hit you on a cold wet day is the hot dry atmosphere. Today's a hot wet day so the office is hotter and drier than usual. The second thing to hit you is the day's list of new problems to be solved.

• I wait fifteen minutes for my PC to boot up. I'm lucky: I've got one of the old ones so it's not got as much time-wasting crap loaded onto the logging-in script and the security settings let me log on, eventually, at the first time of asking. (It does take three of four goes to get it to log off, but that's a different issue entirely.)
• For the umpteenth time there's a message from Catty Library. Can they have a list of all the talking books? Customers want to know what they have in stock. For the umpteenth time I say no, they can't. If customers want to know what's in stock they can look on the shelves; look on the catalogue; or ask a member if staff if the talking book they couldn't find on the shelves or on the catalogue is going to be available any time. To be fair, they've only been live on the catalogue for twenty years.
• Two printers have died. As have the two PCs at Raccoonville that were only fixed last week. I log the problems with the helpdesk.
• Somebody in the IT section has obviously been fiddling round with user network policies again. Three people can't access their email any more and Salome can only get access to the internet by filling in an online form that only access the password before the last one that expired. I log these with the helpdesk.
• Bronwyn asks if we can run a YouTube video to support tomorrow's author visit. The answer is yes. Sort of. We can't use a staff PC because staff aren't allowed access to YouTube and staff PCs have the soundcards disabled for no apparent reason. We could do it with the public PCs, so long as people don't mind sharing headphones. Or we could... Anyway, the answer's really no but we can fudge something and if we feed the audience up with enough tea and biscuits they'll scarcely notice.
• I talk two people at Umpty Library through the process of reinstalling the network printer on their PCs after it unaccountably disppeared after somebody in the IT section didn't make any changes to user policies, absolutely not, oh no. These are logged with the helpdesk.
• I log a call with our filtering service to ask why Delicious is today blocked as being a pornographic chat site...
• ..and why the pornographic chat sites that customers are regularly checking up at Gypsy Lane Library aren't being blocked despite being reported last week.
• And dealing with a request from Catty Library for a list of talking books at the library. I point out that there's no use in my selecting the stock from the catalogue and printing it off for them as they'll be getting at least twenty new titles a month because they're on standing order from the supplier. I don't point out that it's futile to expect them to keep this list up to date by themselves as they're always "far too busy" for any piece of work floating their way.
• The circulation system tells me that four non-existant books have been issued to borrowers. A little detective work reconnects the lending logs to physical operational reality.
• Three people complain that they've been removed from the corporate address book. Which is a puzzle because I can find them clearly enough. It takes me and the helpdesk a few minutes to realise that we're working with older PCs that the plaintiffs and they're only missing from the address books of Outlook 2007 users.

Actually, now I come to write it down it's not so bad really. It's just the usual routine. I must be getting old.

Free flow

The Milkbeck Road's badly congested due to roadworks at the roundabout at Windscape Lane. The roadworks are a trench seven foot long. The congestion is caused by the traffic lights regulating the traffic flow around the roadworks. When the lights are on green to allow the Milkbeck Road traffic through the roadabout it's green in both directions. Which means that the priority traffic, nearly all of which is turning right onto Windscape Lane, is allowed through first. And the traffic heading for Becup stays stock still while it waits for the gap in the right-turning traffic which never happens.

It takes a special sort of genius to engineer that.

He walks as if he's carrying two sheep

I bump into Ken Barmy at Victoria Station. He has a pronounced limp (pronounced "Limp").

"What's up with thee?" I ask.

"We're playing silly games at work again," he explained.

"Not clock card rugby again!?"

"No, we had to knock that on the head."

"What then?"

"If you need to speak to a colleague in the office you have to skip to their desk, singing a song. I'm the wrong age and shape for skipping round the office twenty times a day."

May be Vader some day later now he's just a small fry

Staff room conversation:

"I'm going to have to stop calling the management suite Neverland. One of these days I'll be saying it to one of them."

"Oh, they already know we call it Neverland."

"Really? What's the reaction?"

"Winds them up something rotten."

"That's good. I don't feel so bad about it now."

Gone are the lavatories in the back yard

Maisie's been presented with a water bill for the old Roadkill Library site. The one we vacated a couple of years back. She queried this with United Utilities, explaining that we wouldn't be paying it.

"If you don't pay the bill we'll have to come out and cut the water off at the premises."

"Well, the best of luck: they've knocked it down and there's a bloody great road on top of it."

It's all about the Pentiums

The joy of networked printing...

Towards the end of last week Nancy sent a print job to the printer. For some reason it failed, so the job's just sat there at the head of the queue blocking the way. None of us can kill it because none of us have the network permissions to do so. Nor, it turns out, does the Helpdesk.

"When's Nancy back?" asks the techie.

"Thursday."

"You're better off waiting for her to come back in and then ask her to delete the print job. It'll take longer than that to get System Support to get the job done.

Busy, busy, busy!

Lippy gets a 'phone call. It's Frog, who is sitting all of ten yards away from her.

"Hi Lippy! Sorry, I'm too busy to talk to you at the moment. I'll ring you later when I've more time."

Hist!

I'm talking to Mary Ferbellow in the lift lobby when she stops in mid sentence, stiffens and grabs my arm.

"Listen!" she hissed.

I listened. Not a thing.

"I can't hear a thing," I said.

"Leadership," stated Mary in hushed tones.

Then she walked away.

This library is being remade in mine own image and I'm not convinced it's an entirely healthy thing.

Every night he had a dream Where he was wearing lederhosen in a vat of sour cream

It's been one of those days...

As Betty Comstock left the building I heard myself shout:

"Have a good weekend!"

Talking to the wall

We've been having a staff consultation, one of those "where do you think this library will be in five years' time?" efforts. This is to feed into a corporate Transformational Government Local Plan, which in turn will, if my experience of the past two decades in Helminthdale is anything to go by, feed into a flurry of vicious inactivity. The Library Service component seems to be determined to get its ineffectuality in early.

"We" started off by deciding that the visioning board was to be cleared of its old set-dressings and put to work collecting staff suggestions. And lo, it was cleared and a piece of A4 paper labelled "IDEAS" was stuck on on there.

Two week later we got a collective bollocking for not contributing any ideas.

"Couldn't Policy Team perhaps give us a clue as to what you want us to suggest?" I ask Milton later.

"We've got lots of ideas but if we put them up then people would complain that we're dictating the agenda," he replied.

I bridled. "There's a world of difference between telling people the rules of the game and playing it for them."

About a week later T.Aldous asked Noreen if she'd like to tell staff what was needed for to input to The Vision. Noreen replied that she'd rather not, thank you.

Maybelle was then given the job of decorating the visioning board with bits of Vision.

"What do you want me to do?" she asked.

"Oh, just stick some pictures up of modern libraries."

"Anything in particular?"

"Something that shows how libraries are becoming more modern."

"Such as...?"

"A few pictures will do for now."

So Maybelle set upon the task with the energy only given to angry Yorkshirewomen and filled it with pictures of modern libraries showing how libraries are becoming more modern. I'm not sure why there was a picture of a gas meter and I'm not the one who's going to be asking her.

Staff made suggestions. Tentatively at first, just in case we were making the wrong suggestions. Just to test the water, so to speak, Frog and I deliberately made a few wrong suggestions. Nothing exploded so people gained a little confidence and over the next few weeks they came up with quite a useful list of ideas.

And then...

And then...

And then...

Well, nothing.

"What's happening with The Vision?" I ask Milton.

"It's gone to the Change Team for them to do whatever they're going to do with it. They were supposed to have sent some type of response by now but they haven't."

"Couldn't you let staff know that's where we're up to?"

"There's nothing to say. The Change Team hasn't got back to us yet."

"Perhaps a thank you to the troops for their input?"

I suggested. What was I thinking? This is why they're senior managers and I'm just a toiler in the vinyard.

Just a minute

We're in the midst of an insurrection. The Branch Managers on this side of the borough are making tiny fists in their pockets. The reason? They've been told that they'll have to take their own minutes for their quarterly meeting. You might imagine that they had been told they were having their first-born on the barbie. Salome and Lola are having to Be Firm.

"I'm not doing the minutes! I'm not a secretary," says Norma.

"Everyone else in every other meeting takes their own minutes. Why should you be any different?"

"Why can't Maudie take the minutes for us?"

"Maudie's busy enough as it is. There are minute-taking courses you can go on if you're worried about it."

"We don't have time to do the minutes," says Hedi.

"You'll have to write the minutes for the meeting once every twenty-seven months. It's not a big deal."

"Well, I don't have the time to do the minutes," insists Norma.

"You could do it when you're on the enquiry desk. Perhaps instead of spending all your time emailing your family and booking holidays."

There was considerably more along this line. In the end...

"OK, that's enough. No minutes, no meetings. Full stop. End of. Now let's move on to the next part of this meeting's agenda shall we?"

The Branch Managers are threatening to take this dispute to the court of T.Aldous. One of the reasons why T.Aldous has his 'phone through to Maisie is so that Norma can't try and have a hotline to his highness.

The darling of the Two Turtles

Despite our best attempts to thwart the inevitable, we have managed to get a few young people working at the front line. A few of them went out for a drink last night and were annoyed to have been ID'ed to show proof that they wereover 18.

"I mean: when I was under-age they never ID'ed me."

"Well if they had have done you wouldn't have bought all that drink off them."

"I'll tell you what pissed me off the other night. You'll never guess what. I got ID'ed for taking a 12 [certificate] DVD to the counter. Imagine that. I mean, it's bad enough getting ID'ed for drink. I said to him [cupping ample bosoms in her hands] 'Do these look twelve to you?'"

The whole wide world is on your side

Pansy's in the doghouse. It has been decreed that all the Branch Managers will be responsible for Tiny Tots Story Time at their own libraries. The prospect of doing Tiny Tots Story Time scares Pansy to death. To the point where she was seriously considering having to jack the job in because she was stressing herself out. She had a chat with her line manager, who hasn't done a children's story time since Adam was a lad, and her response was useful, practical, supportive and innovative in its approach to problem-solving.

"Well, you'll just have to do it."

Given a more practical bent than is wanted on board the good ship library service, Pansy chatted up some of the folk at the local children's centre who were more than happy to come and do regular story times at Gypsy Cream Library so that they could get their outreach ticks in the boxes in their performance tables.

So it is that instead of presenting the tiny tots with a story teller who really, really didn't want to do the story telling they're being given an extended session with somebody who is both practised and enthusiastic; and we're not losing a Branch Manager at a time when we really can't risk having any vacancies. Win-win I would say. The more so as this arrangement means that this is the only library providing Tiny Tots Story Time throughout the summer holidays.

Plaudits and medals all round you might think.

Not a bit of it.

"We can't let Pansy get away with not doing story time. What would happen if we let everybody do this?" asks Julia.

We'd have a fucking good service, I would think. But then, what would I know about these things.

Paperweight

I notice that the report I've just printed out is on 90 gramme pure white paper.

"Since when are we using posh paper?" I ask Maudie.

"Since we found out that we have to use expensive paper because the cheap paper's too expensive," she replies.

It turns out that the cheap paper we are required to buy by corporate dictate is only available at the permissible price if bought in quantities that exceed the maximum permissible order. Procurement won't allow us to buy this product at the higher price for smaller amounts so we can't order it. But we can order smaller quantities of the expensive paper at nearly twice the price of the cheap stuff without any discount.

This council is having a budgetary crisis. I really can't imagine why.

Live from Milkbeck

It's useful, once in a while, to have your own problems put into perspective. Quite often it turns out that things which you see as Very Important turn out to be nothing at all.

And so it is that while we've closed Milkbeck Library because the fuse box has fallen off the wall above the public entrance and is doing its best to look like a hanging basket full of pendant stems the building repairs service "can't guarantee that we can get an electrician out today."

"Listen," says Maisie, "you've got a Priority One Plus level service that you say guarantees someone on site in an emergency within an hour. This is an emergency and I expect somebody there within an hour."

"I'll see what I can do."

It turned out that what he could do was go for his lunch. When Maisie rang back after an hour to ask what progress had been made she was told that he'd gone and that nobody else at the call centre did building repairs.

I shudder to think what we're being charged for this service. You can bet your life it won't be getting any cheaper in the light of both recession and council budget crisis.

Dynamic tension

I like to imagine that I've never met an idea I couldn't get my head around. Every so often this place reminds me just how wrong I am.

Doreen's asked Frog to do a major stock-edit of the early years collections. She reckons that there's twice as much stock on those shelves as there should be and so half should come off.

"The nurseries and children's centres are gagging for board books and picture books. Wouldn't it be a better idea for us to let them borrow thirty or so of them at a time?" asks Frog. "We'd get the issue figures, we'd get the good PR and partnership ticks and they'd get a service."

"No, I don't think that would be a good idea at all. If we let them borrow those books we wouldn't have any left on the shelves. It's best that you stock-edit them."

So there we have it: if you're massively overstocked with books in a public library, don't loan them out to people who want them on an ongoing basis, chuck them out.