I can see that I'm going to have to watch myself round here

"I'm starting to get cynical," I admitted.

"Get cynical?" snorted Lippy.

"What do you mean?"

"You've not got a good word for the Lunatic Legion."

"I have several good words for them, I just choose not to use them at the moment."

"You see!"

"I have complete faith in them."

"You what?"

"I know that they are completely business-focussed and that they can be relied upon to have planned each and every step of the way, including factoring in all the contingencies that may befall us, and that those same preparations will make it easy for us to just seamlessly engage with the business development process to an inevitably successful conclusion."

"You are such a liar!"

Pictures at an exhibition

I bump into Ken Barmy bulk-buying WD40 for the weekend.

"How's things?" I ask.

"It's like the last days of the Stasi....

"I was nipping out to see a brown friend off to the sea when I found the caretakers in the corridor, shredding the paperwork from the files that had been stored in the ladies' toilet. How fucking disgraceful is that?

"If we were being ecologically sound they'd have cut them into squares and hung them on a nail in the bog. There's not a lot in the management minutes of 1991 to startle the needy arsehole."

Written in the old money by unfortunates

There is a bit of a domestic going on at the moment, with no-holds-barred intergalactic sulking going on between Julia and Doreen on the one hand and Norma on the other. It's a finely-balanced battle with dishonours equal to date.

Objectively the argument has to go in Doreen's favour. She's Norma's boss and has told her that a couple of things need doing at Windscape Library because, well they've needed doing for years. Norma has decided that This Is Not Necessary, like the Health & Safety Risk Assessments. Doreen has issued an almost "Just Fucking Do It," which prompted Norma to go whingeing to Julia.

This is where it all goes pear-shaped. Julia decided that this was an opportunity to Show Who Is The Boss.

Norma's counter-offensive is based on "I've been doing this job for years." Which is true enough: Norma's contract of employment is etched in Ogham script on the lintel of the porch to the library.

It looks to be getting nasty, with loads of opportunity for widespread collateral damage. Tin hats at the ready everyone!

The Quintessence of Parochialism

We're doing some stock development work with a few other library authorities and to help it along some of us have bought into an online service that does a lot of the hard work for us. One of our colleagues wants to join in the purchase but is having problems caused by their Executive Procurement Unit, who says:

"Council policy is that we do not purchase directly from companies based in foreign countries."

The company's head office is in Glasgow.

Imagination is intelligence with an erection.

I am discussing a couple of Things To Be Done with Maybelle, who has drawn the short straw and has become Policy Team (this week)'s designated Person What Does Things. Part way through she suddenly made a couple of connections between ideas and came up with Something That Should Be Done If We Had The Sense We Were Born With.

"That's a bloody good idea," I concede, "should we ask the Lunatic Legion if we can push it through?"

"Let's not," replies Maybelle firmly. "It's a very nice idea. Why would I want to watch somebody kill it?"

As worn as the palms of a bored monkey

I've spent the morning in a meeting about a programme that's none of my business. (Well, you know how it is when you're bored and you find a party you can gate-crash.) I left it feeling old and dejected.

It's a subject I know a bit about and have practical experience with and I used to care about it deeply. Ten years ago I would have been chipping in there like a terrier, chasing every key issue like it was a rat smeared with aniseed. I would have had a note book filled with ideas and cross-references to pieces of work we were already doing, with notes to try and connect the players involved. My notes for the morning are:

Possibly? See if Jim knows about this one.
Argh!!!!
no, but we should
bollocks to that one matey
check emails from C___________
not
the next person who mentions 'channel shift' will be required to provide a definition

Which isn't inspiring.

Looking round the table I felt yet more old and tired and jaded. There were but a couple of us left in middle age. We nodded over coffee and compared battle scars. The enthusiasm of youth around the table was uninfectious. Earnest and knowledgeable enough, all freshly-scrubbed and with clean collars and brand new Helix pencil cases (though I noticed that one girl from the Strategic Management Support Team had 'I love PRINCE2' scrawled in biro on hers). I wondered if I weren't becoming even more jaded than I pretend to be. Perhaps I am. Perhaps. More dispiriting is the realisation that for all the talk about customer engagement and performance and delivery the major change in local government over the past twenty years has been a shift of focus away from the services we provide towards the processes of the ticking of boxes. All the talk this morning was about the machinery of bureaucracy and the needs of the machine.

You might like to bear this in mind some time when you're really in a hurry and the person serving you has to break off, answer the 'phone and ignore you awhile so as to meet the council's mystery shopper response time targets.

All over bar the pouting

All the votes have been counted and every ward accounted for, we now have the official results for both our national and local political representatives and everything's now the same but different.

In many respects the general election is the less important locally. Helminthdale has failed to prosper under governments of so many stripes and ambitions as to make no difference in that respect. The passing of the baton from home party to another just means that one faction in the local media will divert its bile from the council to the MP, while the other faction moves its darker attentions onto the council. In times gone past, councillors who were making a nuisance of themselves by "growing too big for the council" would be shunted off out of the way to Westminster but that sort of thing has gone the way of so many fine old English traditions.

Just as locally this is a three-way marginal, all three parties are involved in close-fought battles for the parliamentary constituencies. The Green Party once flirted with standing for Helminthdale Central & Catty but felt a deep sense of redundancy on finding the town centre already reverting to its wilderness state. It is heartening, though, to discover that the chappie who stood as an "Independent English Nationalist" because "the BNP is too mainstream these days" lost his deposit. There is some hope in the world after all.

Locally there is a shift in power, though we're not sure where it's going. Any combination of political groups could, and have over the years, get together as a "this is not a coalition, we are just working together for the good of the borough," the key dependency being "which leader of which party is the most hated?" If enough elected members hate you then they'll band together and run the council for a bit. Of course, given the fluid nature of the local politic, plus factionalism and a tendency to be "independent minded," all bets are off as to whether or not anything gets voted through.

One thing's for sure: there isn't any money about and there won't be any extra coming in, regardless of who gets into Number 10. The council's credit rating is right up there with Greece and we have a business income stream that makes Tristan da Cuhna look like Las Vegas on a roll. Cue lots more consultants' reports, strategic meetings and job cuts in front-line services.

Business as usual really.

Pip pip!

They'll have to decommission handbags

A week without T.Aldous confirms our worst fears.

He's been the only management presence in this office for months.

A garden of troubadours

Not for the first time I wonder if we had the Chuckle Brothers in as consultants to do our management process modelling.

This question is rhetorical

What sort of person leaves a turd on the back seat of a bus?





On the plus side, it engendered a robust sense of community amongst the passengers crowded at the front of the bus.

We don't do sarcasm...

Overheard:

"There's nowt like being a valued cog in the machinery of the library service."

"Aye. You can't walk but three steps without tripping over some bit of positive reinforcement."

Leader-of-men-type fanny

A correspondent writes:

I've just had the 'the time to tell me what Year End statistics you want collecting and how is March, not the end of April' conversation with a senior manager. He flummoxed me by exclaiming:

"I'm not a mind-reader. How was I to know you didn't know what I wanted you to do?"

It's topsy-turvey day

In the course of a short chat between me and Maybelle to try and rescue a project of hers I said:

"We need to keep focused on this project and not get side-tracked by the possibilities."

and she said:

"We haven't defined the parameters of this piece of work yet."

One, other, or both of us needs a holiday.

Clouds of blue and skies of white

Those of you who work in large organisations will know what fresh hells lurk in the words "senior management away day."

• On the plus side those of us left behind can get on with our work unruffled by being on the receiving end of any sort of leadership. Or business as usual if you will.
• On the minus side there's nobody around who can sign invoices, authorise orders or take responsibility for the goings on of the place. Or business as usual.

But far, far worse: they will be doing some Blue Skies Thinking and conjuring up a few Quick Wins.

Were Joyce Grenfell alive today she would be doing monologues in the role of workshop facilitator...

"Well now, boys and girls, what shall we do today? No, Marjorie, we did the seven hats game yesterday. And do you remember what we did with the green one? That's right. And we did Forming Storming Norming Performing didn't we? Yes, Jessica, I know you've still got the bruises. I don't think George meant to be quite so rough, did you George? Well you shouldn't have. Because I say so. I'm not going to argue with you about it. Because.

"Today we're going to come up with some quick wins for service development. Won't that be jolly? Yes it will Jessica. It will be awfully jolly. Oh, Jessica, don't be such a crosspatch; you like being a team player. Well you did yesterday. That was before George stormed into you. I know dear, he can be a bit boisterous but you... no you don't need to, no don't. I think it might be an idea if you were to sit over here with Marjorie and Dennis and George can sit over here with Tarquin and Emily. Because I say so. George... don't do that.

"So now we're going to come up with some quick wins for service development. I want each of you to have a think and say the first thing that comes into your head..."

Which is all well and good in the workshop environment. It doesn't matter that the quickness of the win is untested in terms of legality, the availability of resources or the fact that the person who says that "there's an app for that" is the person who blows all the fuses in the building every time they switch their PC on. It's a thinking process exercise.

Except they never are. They bundle back, all enthusiastic and full of biscuits with the one, fixed, firm notion: the quick win must be delivered. Regardless of whatever else is going on; the business priorities of the moment; or the availability or not of the people assumed to be the ones who'll deliver on it (quick wins are never to be delivered by the people who dream them up, strange that). "We said we would deliver the quick win."

Sigh...

With any luck they'll have had a row about who gets to sort out T.Aldous' filing cabinet and won't have had any time to get to the quick fix round of the game before going home time.

Speleology

"Why are you wearing a hard hat?" I ask Noreen.

"I'm going to get some date labels out of the stationery cupboard.

Like a duck complaining about webbed feet

We are becoming convinced that Tuesday was hisself's last day at work.

On Monday, having already been in once since his last last day at work, he turned up as usual and spent a long, long time handing over The Keys to the Empire, or at least the paperwork in his desk, to Julia.

On Tuesday he told us all, individually and severally, that it was his last day and that we must do lunch and all the usual. At end of play he said to me:

"I'll miss working with you. I know we've had our rows but at least you make me think. It's funny what you find you'll miss. This is my last day you know."

"You've said that before. I won't believe a word until I see it."

"No, it really is. I've had as much satisfaction as I'm going to get out of annoying Julia. It's served her right, too."

I expect so. It's been a textbook Julia performance: every time T.Aldous came in, she'd stomp out of her office and fume and ask why nobody was doing anything about it (erm... because you're in charge, Julia?) and then she'd stalk away to go and kick an underling or do something to undermine Doreen.

"Ah well," says T.Aldous. "If I were you I'd get out of here before it gets as bad is it's going to."

Like the man said: sometimes the next thing you've got to a friend is an enemy who understands you.

A Watteau fairyland

I'm attending a meeting at the community centre in Milkbeck. While we're getting ourselves ready to go in there's a visitation by The Business-Changing Solutions Team.

This turns out to be three blokes moving desks into a pantechnicon.

Bodice ripping

There's a young lad come in to sort out Nancy's wonky desk. It turns out that he's a college friend of Lippy's daughter. She says.

"You're all over that poor lad like a rash."

"No I'm not. I can't just ignore him, I've known him for years. You've got to say hello, even in here."

"What are you like?"

"I'm not! Pack it in, you'll embarass him."

"If we're embarassing him why are you the one going pink?"

"Stop it!"

"We'll have to get a sweat shirt made for you: 'Library Cougar'"

The sheer preposterousness of this part of the quest

I promise you that this is true.

From: Kevin
To: IT Support

PC tt551 in the lending library won't log onto the network. We get a false domain message. We have checked all the cabling and have switched keyboards to make sure there's no rubbishy input. Still not logging on. I suspect this is the same BIOS problem as we had with all those PCs at Raccoonville Library the other week.


From IT Support
To: Kevin
We're having problems connecting to this PC remotely. Can you log on and get the IP address for us.

Breathtaking

Where else would a recently-retired paramedic be told that he's not a qualified first aider?

What kind of spirits insist on communicating through a Morris Minor hubcap?

I'm chatting with a colleague who's having problems with the serried ranks of his council's Human Resources Department.

"I have someone on long term “sick” leave who is healthier than I am but I got told off when I suggested I couldn’t affect the date of her return as she would return when she wanted to and not before and that would be just after the bank holiday when she was due to go on half pay. Our HR “Advisor” uttered a sentence prone to get anyone heading for the roof:

'Why would going down to half pay after six months off be a factor in her coming back to work? Surely she will come back when she is better and not before.”

Astonishing. Our HR department reckons that death and cremation is only a marginally-acceptable excuse for absence.

Mrs Alice Hartley performs The Dance of the Seven Veils.

The old dears who are on the door-to-door library run like a bit of smut. Which is just as well really when one of today's incoming novels tells us the doings of Professor Charles Hartley. In large print. On page one.

"He was not aroused. Deep in the recesses of his baggy boxer shorts The Phallus - the proud symbol of the Professor's innate superiority over half the population of the world - lay quiescent, a dozing puppy."

Lippy's been convulsed with laughter this past ten minutes.

It's no wonder they need large print.

Haven't we been here before?

"It's his last day today," says Maisie.

"It was his last day on Friday," I objected. "That's why he had lunch with his cronies from the Human Resources department."

"It was his last day on Friday. But he had to come in on Saturday and he's just rung me to tell me to ask Julia if it's OK for him to come in today to finish emptying his filing cabinet."

"And what's she said?"

"She said she wishes somebody would do something about this situation."

"So she didn't go as far as to say no, then?"

"What do you think?"

I spent the first twenty minutes of 'The Singing Nun' booing Debbie Reynolds

I've been hitting-and-running the blogosphere lately and I apologise to any of you who feel I've been short-changing you a bit.

Part of it is down to pressure of work - there are a few big projects on the boil which depend on me not being so disastrously out-of-touch with the needs of the modern world as I am now (and it's no consolation to say that while I feel I'm two or three years behind the technical requirements of our customers the library service is ten or fifteen years behind me). I'm running hard and getting nowhere and wondering if there's anywhere there anyway.

Part of it is that after five years and two-and-a-half thousand posts of adolescent whingeing I've raised the bar of abject idiocy pretty high. Where once I could witter on about the dodgy lift or statutory returns; milk a few sarky comments out of the high standards of the council's building projects or fulminate about the piles of old crap littering the place I can't really any more. It's all just part of the wallpaper. We expect there to be forty boxes in the fire escape corridor, the same way as we expect Frog's first exposure to the council's Young Person's Reading Strategy to be on one of the library discussions lists or for us to be in month twenty-four of an office move-around that revolves around making space for a non-existent coffee table. It comes as no shock to find out what we're doing this summer from contacts in the housing benefits section or from library authorities in the south-east or from customers of Gypsy Lane and Spadespit libraries. It hardly at all needs mentioning.

I'm struggling to much care.

Don't worry, I'll do what I'll need to do: some half-baked bit of magic which delivers the required illusions and misses a world of possibilities which would only frighten the tiny tots.

And I expect I'll need to carry on venting in this blog.

I never realised how much I'd miss the irresponsibility and bad language

It's difficult to conceive of our workplace's being in a post-T.Aldousian phase but technically it is true. And a primrose path it is not...

email from Maybelle to Julia:

Julia,

I've had a series of meetings with the St. Botolph's Women's Reading Group and they'd like to use the library to work with their toddlers' groups. They'd like the group leaders to be able to borrow books for use by the toddlers' groups without their having to take them all out on their personal library cards. I've talked to Frog about this and he's happy for it to go ahead and we've thought of ways of doing this that would work in practice and give us a new batch of guaranteed custom.

Is this OK with you? What would be your desired outcomes for this project?

email to Maybelle from Julia:

Maybelle,

Policy Team will have to have a think about this. In the mean time, could you have a think about the outcomes?

Parked

On the way into work I noticed that they're doing a traffic census on Clemenceau Road.

Clemenceau Road has been closed for two months for sewer replacement.

One hundred years ago today

How times change...

Not quite

Either they're getting worse or I haven't been paying attention lately. Overheard in the staffroom:

"We're doing a lot with the Wii these days."

"When we were kids they made us stand in it to cure the chillblains."

Match of the day

Overheard:

"The rotten sod. He'd put a blindfold on me and tied me to the bed then he went downstairs to watch the football on the telly."

You bet your life we are

I shouldn't like you to imagine that I'm ignoring the house ghost. T.Aldous wasn't in yesterday but he's come in today "to finish off the tidying up."

The precedent that's worrying us is old Gordon Trembly down at Umpty Library...

British pluck

The council is starting to struggle as the combination of cutbacks, redundancies, unfilled vacancies and staff stranded overseas starts to bite.

There is the inevitable corporate invocation of The Dunkirk Spirit.

The welkin rings with hoots of derision and all is well with the world.

Among my souvenirs

An occasional series: titles really to be found on our reference library shelves.

• Man Makes Hole: A Brief History Of Boring Tools
• The Internal Purchasing Power Of The Pound 1989
• Summary Of Bar Council's Response To The Humber Bridge Commission
• Reorganisation Of Public Elementary Schools In England And Wales 1937-38
• Electing The American President (1960)
• How Americans Elect Their President (1968)
• What Is The British Council? (1967)
• England's Mountain Motorway: The Lancashire/Yorkshire Motorway - M62 (1966)
• A Policy For The Arts(The First Steps.) Cmnd. Paper 2601 (1965)
• Reform Of Local Government In England (Cmnd 4584) (1970)
• Channel Tunnel Project: October 1973 To November 1974
• After Four Years, A Practical Guide To The Race Relations Act (1972)
• A National Minimum Wage: Report Of An Inter Departmental Working Party (1969)
• Strategy For Pensions; The Future Development Of State And Occupational Provision (1971)
• Who Publishes Official Information For Business And Industry? Proceedings Of A One-Day Seminar 20 Sept 1988
• First Report From The Social Services Committee Session 1985-86: Reform Of Social Security

I wish I could say these were exceptional.

Clouds of glory

Helminthdale Library Service is not unaffected by the Icelandic volcano. Half a dozen of the staff who should be in this week are stuck in various parts of the Mediterranean. As this is an Act Of God there is every likelihood that the time spent trying to get back will be taking off their annual leave. Arguments that the council has a long-standing commitment to mobile working were dismissed out of hand.

All this makes life interesting in our libraries. We struggle to keep the doors open at the best of times; between the people who are leave this week and the people who were on leave last week and are marooned in a foreign land we're pretty much stretched too thin for words. The only question is: will the breaking point be somebody going off sick with food poisoning or will it be somebody being taken off the front line to go and staff something or other that Policy Team has cooked up at a moment's notice with no thought whatsoever?

Sitting lifeless in a sea of Mustn't Grumble

All last week we had no end of bitching about the new clocking-in processes. Which is fair enough as the new clocking-in processes are fantastically cack-handed, as you would expect from any process invented by a Policy Team that is ignorant of the practicalities and uncaring of their effects.

We have a rare staff meeting this morning (the occasion being that we all need to be told the new rules on election purdah and are required to sign a sheet of paper to say We Were There). Julia takes the opportunity to remind everyone of the new clocking-in process and asks if anybody has any problems with it.

Not a word.

I've already said plenty in another meeting so I hold my piece. Julia asks again, to confirm. Not a word again.

It's only when she's talking about absence monitoring later on in the meeting that anybody asks any questions about the new clocking-in process, and then not very much.

I shall remember this next time somebody bleats: "they should ask us what we think about things."

Haunt

Posy's spooked and a bit stressed-out. At first we take no notice, this being our usual Monday morning state of grace after all.

"I think my flat's haunted," she says at last.

"Haunted?"

"By my grandfather's ghost."

"You've only just moved in; why would he haunt your flat?"

"I've got his old photograph album. He keeps switching the lights on and off."

"That doesn't strike me as much of an afterlife, switching lights on and off. I'd want something more interesting than that if I was a ghost."

His head's too far from his blood supply

As T.Aldous and Julia faff their way round the offices like some low-rent Brian Rix Farce the man himself is overheard to wail querulously:

"My problem is I didn't do it in the first place."

Up the poll

We've got election fever and politics, as always, is the great divider in our society.

Sybil is telling jokes about Henry Campbell-Bannermann and the rest of the office is staring back at her blankly.

Stap me vittles, we're back on the merry-go-round!

We gather that the Reference Librarians are having a meeting.

"Are they doing anything good?" I ask.

"They're coming up with a list of standing orders," says Noreen.

"Haven't they already given you a list of standing orders?" I ask.

"Yes."

"That they rewrote in February?"

"Yes."

"And that you've sent to the suppliers...?"

"Yes."

A glimmer:

"They can't remember what was on the list, can they?"

"No."

Stretch goals

"I've heard it all now," says Betty. "He's in the staff room telling somebody that next Monday's definitely his last day in."

Lit only by a guttering candle

There's been a rash of "Psychic Evenings" in the pubs round Helminthdale lately. I noticed the first advert on The Duck and Pullet, but thought no more about it: nothing would surprise me in that end of town. Now I've seen adverts up at both The Red Castle and The Trembly Arms.

Given the rate that pubs are closing in this area we'll probably soon need a medium for to buy a round of drinks.

Three blind jellyfish

I bump into Ken Barmy in the pick 'n' mix section of Hannigan's Truss Boutique.

"What's it like now they've finally gone?" I ask him.

"Finally gone?"

"Your old chief..."

"Oh! They were still in when I left the office last night."

"Was Friday their last last day?"

"Oh aye. They were in Saturday, too."

"Which bit of 'last day' don't they get?"

"Which bit of 'Chief Librarian' don't you get?"

The very hungry caterpillar

Frog's doing the storytime at Umpty Library. He's halfway through "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" when a small voice shouts:

"Look mummy, the caterpillar's come here for the story!"

Yes, you've guessed it: another dead pigeon in the air vent.

"Even the bloody maggots are drama queens," mutters Frog.

Orchids for Miss Blandish

It's been pointed out that although we've quite a few books on breast cancer and cervical cancer in our Healthy Living Collections there aren't any on testicular cancer and none on prostate cancer less than five years old.

"Ooh," says Kitty, "if they're checking themselves there I hope we're going to be issuing them with rubber gloves as well."

Many happy returns

Milton's first day back from leave. The first thing he sees as he comes through the door is T.Aldous taking three sheets of paper out to the recycled paper bin.

"O fuck," he says quietly.

Lippy's feeding him strong coffee and Victoria sponge.

Security is our watchword

Saturday's our busiest day so we hire extra staff to act as counter fodder (this isn't a sudden conversion to the principle of the application of resources to the demands of the market: it's been going on since Adam was a lad).

Of course, only logging onto the network once a week, and sometimes not even that, they may forget their passwords. And the IT Section aren't available on Saturdays so we can't ring them then to ask for the password to be reset. So we ask them today and find that the rules have changed.

If the person involved can't/won't ring the IT Section to get their own password reset we have to get the head of service to fill in a form authorising it.

The future belongs those that believe the beauty of its dreams

I receive a missive or epistle from Ken Barmy. It is not encouraging.

Hello old bird,

Us is doing well us is. Our chief, having retired at New Year, has been more in evidence now than they were when they were on the payroll. So far we have had six (count them: six) farewell parties. Maundy Thursday was the final and absolute last day, marked by a celebration lunch with a few cronies.

I had bet the caretaker a pound that we'd have fourteen last days this month. Utter, utter folly: we've had five so far and it's only the 9th. This is the conversation we had on Thursday afternoon:

"This is my last day in. I can't keep coming back here to finish sorting things out."

"And how many times have I heard that before?"

"I mean it: this is my last day in."

"Good. You wash your hands of it and leave them to it."

"Yes, I'll be glad to. See you tomorrow."

I promise you on my mother's harmonica that this is true.

In my experience there is an element of the irrational in all librarians. Logic would dictate that this would reach its greatest expression of lunacy in their chieftains.

Whirligig

"Did you get a record of the number of eight-year old children on 1st April?" asks Jack Harry.

"Did you ask me to?" I ask in reply.

That reminds me, I must get some rhubarb on the way home

"I thought you were on a retirement course today," says Maudie, despite herself.

"I needed to email somebody in Building Services to chase them about that burglar alarm at Spadespit."

I'll have you not bandy my loins about

Like myself, Frog is downhearted at work. Actually, pretty much like everyone really.


He's been a bit cheered because today's performance poet has told him that he should do a bit of moonlighting himself and has offered to put him in touch with a few useful people. It's a beguiling prospect and I think he'd do quite well at it.


"Sounds good," I say.


"Yes. I should give it a go, shouldn't I?"


"Yes. Even if it's just the occasional performance on a day off, it'll be another bow in your quiver."


"And it'll be nice to do something for an appreciative audience. That's why I'm still doing the occasional story time for the schools. It's nice to feel appreciated once every so often. You know yourself, do anything here and it doesn't matter how good a job you do of it it's like pissing yourself in a dark suit. You know all about it and nobody else notices."


He's quite right. I had to admit it: these days a lot of my motivation for writing is the need for the occcasional kind word from strangers.

Bob's your teapot

"You won't be seeing me tomorrow," says T. Aldous...



"...I'll be at a pre-retirement course."

Pull up a chip butty and sit down

Today is the day of T.Aldous' latest farewell luncheon. The community room is filled with food and mostly-warmish bodies and the man himself is holding court. The caterer has laid on a good spread. Well done, congratulations, splendid.

I've tried not to be churlish about this but having seen the amount of staff time that's been invested in this, and not for the first time, at a difficult time of year in uncertain organisational circumstances I really can't approve of it. I politely made my excuses and declined my invitation (I didn't want to spoil things so I claimed pressure of work).

Although the caterer has set everything up T.Aldous has insisted that Maisie and Maudie act as waitresses. Having been given no orders to the contrary they do so.

And where are Strike Force Library Management when all this is going on? Well, Julia elected to go on leave this week. Milton and Jack Harry have arranged to be at a series of all-day meetings in Umpty. Which leaves Doreen holding the baby. As Doreen isn't brim full of self-confidence and is treated by the rest of the managers very much as the junior partner in the team, she feels stuffed and just has to lump the situation like the rest of us. All morning we've been serenaded by the grinding of her teeth.

Staff who did attend the bunfight report that T.Aldous has been telling people that he'll be looking into a couple of hot topics when he's got some time in the office next week. He's a bit busy this week emptying his filing cabinet.

Chatting satirically as he drank soup out of a tin

Distance lends enchantment, which only goes to prove that I need to move house. A couple of days away from the relentless grind of the nothing in particular has given me the chance to lick my wounds (some folk can afford to pay other people to do that for them) and review the landscape. And pretty grim it looks, too.

We're currently in election lockdown, an annual treat for those of us working in local government. Basically, throughout the months of March and April we can't do anything or be thought to be doing anything that promotes the interest of any particular councillor, candidate, cause or party prior to the May elections. Of course, an official edict to do nothing is like manna from Heaven to the Library Service but we still have to be careful not to let anyone use us for photo calls, publicity stunts, etc. It will, as usual, be a closely-fought three-way match will no clear winner at the end of it all, the same as the past nearly forty years. If history is any guide, whichever party/parties do take up the reins of power will then spend the rest of the year dismantling the plans of the current lot out of sheer cussedness. Unless the current lot is re-elected, in which case they'll dismantle them because whoever wins the general election will be pulling the plug on the spending anyway.

There will be big changes in the Library Service, mainly because despite all the stalling over the past few years there will be Big Changes in Helminthdale Council caused by the raft of edicts and orders that have come down to us from the Westminster Village and even the Library Service cannot be immune from all the shaking about. In this respect we've been rather cossetted by the presence of T.Aldous who has acted as both lightning rod for anger and baffle against jigging things round for the sake of it for the past couple of decades. (I should also point out here that he's also been a baffle against a whole slew of entirely desirable and necessary reforms that we would have been better doing ourselves on our terms rather than having some half-baked versions of them wished upon us from on high.) Oh, and there is a new Review of the National Library Service by the Department of London White Elephants.

Besides that where are we? Well, we're now seeing more of T.Aldous in the office than we ever did when he worked for us. Management Group (this week) have retreated to their lair, emerging every so often to go to the lavatory or get a cup of coffee and the occasional sortie to drop a piece of work into someone's lap and then run away. The lower ranks complain, rightly, about a lack of communication but then spoil it on the rare occasions that somebody bothers by complaining about having to take the time to read or listen to the news. Especially with some people's creative ideas as to what in the world 'isn't anything to do with me.'

And then there's:

"They don't have the first idea of what we do. They imagine it's all done by magic."

"Well, why not let's suggest that they do a bit of work-shadowing so that they get some idea of what needs doing and how you have to do it?"

"Oh, we're not having them hanging round here!"

It's a strange thing, just at the point where I've half-persuaded Milton that we need to try and force people to take a bit of responsibility for themselves I've started to come to the conclusion that he was dead right in a brown study he had before Xmas.

For all their moaning and groaning about wanting to stop pratting about and pissing opportunity up the wall most of the Library Service is happy to moulder unhappily in the status quo.

Foolish

Dagmar is kicking off because the bins at Raccoonville Library haven't been emptied since the caretaker retired last week. This is because somebody needs to unlock the back gates to let the bin men get the bins and the new temporary caretaker doesn't have the key. So Dagmar has rung Maisie to tell her it needs sorting out.

This is Maisie, who's responsible for all the finance and admin in the whole library service and is up to her neck in Year End Horror. (Including tidying up the consequences of the librarians and branch managers in two of our areas not doing the 2009/10 cashing up until yesterday after accounts were closed despite being told every day for the past four weeks that Monday was the cut-off day.)

So Dagmar rings to complain about the bins.

"Didn't the caretaker give you all his keys, including the ones for the back gates?" asks Maisie.

"Yes."

"Well, why don't you give the new caretaker the keys off that bunch?"

"I've not got time for that, I'm too busy."

With plastic spaceguns every breakfast, good enough to eat

T.Aldous has been sitting in what used to be his office ringing round people he's been inviting to his next farewell party. He's telling them that he's making sure that they've got their invitations because the people who have been making the arrangements have been getting things wrong.

Probably getting things wrong like imagining that they've come in to work for the library service, not as personal assistants to a pensioner.

Follow your saxophone till you get to the Y-fronts

Some days it becomes apparent that my job is to stack dominoes and to hope for the best.

That's definitely a racing driver's pinny is that

Give Noreen her due: despite the ten a.m. arrival of those boxes of books from the last-minute raid on the suppliers' warehouse she's managed to get the orders and invoices done and dusted in time for Maudie to run over to the Treasurer's Department in time to meet the end-of-year deadline.

Insured for a vast sum in Green Shield stamps

Like some glacier retreating from the warmth of summer T.Aldous has left the following deposits around the library:

• Assorted copies of the Library Association Record featuring mobile libraries and trailer library services, none of them younger than 1994, on Nancy's desk.
• Three copies of The Rose Grower's Annual that were issued to him in 1998 and never renewed, left on the lending library trolley.
• Assorted pictures of the old Umpty Library, double-exposed with photos of a story time event at Castlebury Avenue Play Centre, left on the photocopier.
• Almost-mint copies of Books For Keeps dating from the early 1990s, left on Frog's desk.
• A bag of perished rubber bands left on Maudie's desk.
• Assorted, mostly rusty, paper clips, drawing pins, and bulldog clips, left on top of the stationery cupboard.
• Staple removers; the plastic spirals from a few dozen spiral-bound volumes; some springs; plastic crystal tab file tabs; umpteen boxes of cardboard labels for crystal tab file tabs; some wire, we know not why; fifteen bashed-about but now empty lever arch files; and a box of ballpoint pens that don't work, all on Maisie's desk.
• A copy of the Library Association's proposal to the Major Government for a new library network providing free Internet access to the masses and Pardendale Council's Telematic Strategy 1994, both left in Milton's in-tray.
• A filing cabinet full of God-knows-what, wished upon Julia.
• The keys to the old reference library store cupboard that was thrown away in 1999, bequeathed to Doreen.
• The Helminthdale Edition of the Dewey Decimal System, now with Noreen.
• A box of 1980s mind exercise paperbacks that were property of Catty General Hospital, found by the confidential waste bins.

"There's no point in hanging onto things for the sake of it," T.Aldous tells Maisie.

Sigh...

I think that, even more than the irritation spectacle of the movement of bits of paper or the daily illustration of the ineffectuality of our managers, the single biggest cause of upset regarding T.Aldous' daily doings is the sheer bloody cruelty of it. He means well, and has meant well, and for all his faults and foibles he doesn't really deserve this protracted tragicomedy.

Well, he's back in again today. Let's hope it's just a quickie.

Top Gear

Billy Meredith is in a meeting with Jack Harry and Nancy. They've decided he's taking the Mobile Library out to next Saturday's Urban Village Fête at Pottersbury Road.

"So you're OK for taking the Mobile out on Saturday then, Billy?"

"I guess so. What do you want me to do?"

"How do you mean?"

"What are my aims and objectives?"

.....

"They just stared at me," he told us later in the staff room. "They hadn't thought about that."

"Fancy saying 'aims and objectives' to librarians!"

"I know, but it's nice to know what they think you're supposed to be doing."

"Do you work Saturdays?"

"Only Saturday mornings."

"So what's happening on Saturday afternoon?"

"Nancy says she's busy."

"So it's your problem now?"

"Apparently so. They're dead handy at dropping hot potatoes in your lap and walking away."

There's a lot to be said at our age for a plain matt finish

I'm talking to Lippy when a customer pokes her head through the doorway.

"Are they in yet?" she shouts.

"No, love!" shouts back Lippy.

"I'm 79!" shouts the lady.

"You're looking good on it," shouts back Lippy.

I'm baffled.

"Do you know," says Lippy, "I've known Mrs. Uttercliffe for fifteen years and all that time she's been 79. According to her date of birth she's 72. Bless her."

The vicar's mini-skirt was in the wrong tartan

I walked in at the end of this conversation and so have no idea what on Earth they were talking about. God's good like that sometimes.

"Is there a lot of sheep-rustling round there?"

"Only when they wear tafetta nightdresses."

A loser is not a winner and never will be unless there's a draw

A customer is not happy that we told her that her books were ten days overdue. She's a pensioner and so doesn't pay fines on overdue loans but is still not happy that we told her.

"I want to speak to somebody with a degree," she declares.

Sammi, who is brilliant with customers, tries her best but the lady is determined.

"Have you got a degree? No. I want to talk to somebody with a degree."

Luckily, Maybelle has a degree in Big Hulking Men from the University of Hull Kingston Rovers so she was able to mollify the customer by saying: "I have a degree, do you want to talk to me?"

All of which leaves us in a taradiddle

The week before the end of the financial year is a splendid moment for the council to decide that we could have spent the book fund after all, it having been frozen since the beginning of November. This is the nightmare scenario: if we don't spend it it's an underspend, which affects next year's budget (despite that having been set in stone in December) but we can't actually spend it in the time available to us. Even as a rush job, given that we're down on staff to do the selection, ordering and paying off the invoices, the suppliers are swamped at this time of the year by library authorities dumping last-minute panic buying sprees on them.

"We'll have to do a couple of visits," says Julia.

This is the preferred option of people who won't be having to do three times as much work as usual in a rush to buy in the bin-ends from the supplier's warehouse for to sit around in boxes for months on end while somebody decides where they're going.

Luckily, there aren't enough staff available to keep the doors open without a lot of goodwill over staggered lunch breaks so there's no question whatever of getting a bunch of librarians in a charabanc for a supermarket sweep.

As if grasped by an alien force

T.Aldous' gala dinner is in a couple of weeks. I feel churlish, it is well-meant after all. But having watched Maisie and Maudie spend most of the day making 'phone calls and sending out formal invitations I'm not happy with the situation.

• Maisie and Maudie are phenomenally overworked as it is;
• The council is cutting costs left, right and centre and actively looking for evidence that services have got slack that can be cut (even when there isn't any!);
• T.Aldous has been retired how long?

Ah, let's not be churlish: this is a service we provide for all the senior citizens in our community.

829

On the shelves by the Acq. Team I spy a copy of The Helminthdale Library Edition Of The Dewey Decimal System. Typed up on a sit-up-and-beg probably thirty years or more ago and bound in stapled sugar paper. And, typically of work by librarians, no publication date or citation of sources. At a glance (and I am no expert) it's the 16th edition with local "improvements." It is in mint condition.

"Am I to guess where this gem has come from?" I ask Noreen.

"You can tell where it's come from by the use it's been put to," she replies.

A most peculiar day

It had been a really odd day. Even by the standards of the age.

I can't tell you about a lot of it because of my self-denying ordnance against discussing personnel issues. I will say that it's a toss-up which is the more mind-bogglingly inept: the intervention by the manager who has retired or the intervention by the manager still on the payroll.

And there's no point in mithering on about the communication issues or the responsibility issues or the resources issues or the staffing issues because they've been kicked around the park quite a bit lately and I've every intention of doing so again at some length during the course of this week given what's going on.

No more than six times I have sat back in my chair and asked myself what the fuck I imagine I'm trying to achieve by any of the work I'm trying to force myself to do.

No more than three times have Noreen and I stared into the abyss that is the end of the financial year and all that entails and consoled each other with the words: "never mind, there's only thee and me cares about any of this until the auditors come round and sets them all off into a panic."

T.Aldous has only told us that he's the only person who takes the paper clips off the waste paper oh, what, about twenty times. Members of Policy Team have only wandered out, stared over to his office and said to us: "why doesn't somebody do something about him?" five times.

Leaving the office I was between trains so decided to get the bus into Manchester. Foolish. The drunk who pinned the youths to their seats and gave them a twenty minute monologue was a treat. I was impressed that somebody's still selling spirits in brown paper bags. It started off innocently enough:

"It's a real ticket you know. It's not just a piece of white paper. The driver knows it's a real ticket. I'm not going to jail for the World Cup, no matter what they do, so I'm going to plead not guilty at the magistrates'. I'm good for forty quid you know. No, sixty. But he'll tell you straight, it could be a hundred. I'm not going to jail for the World Cup..."

His Parthian shot as the lads got off the bus was:

"Watch yourself boys! I've got it on good authority that the Tories are coming back in on 28th May!"

He should have been the star turn. He wasn't. If there's anything worse than a driver's mate travelling on the bus platform it's another bloody driver travelling on the bus platform. Especially when he spends quarter of an hour telling the driver about his laser eye surgery. In a very loud voice. Step by step by step. He only told the driver, and the rest of us, three times that the really scary bit is when you see the needle approaching your eye as they give you the anaesthetic. And the bit about watching the scalpel pierce the veil was well worth the repetition. After a mile of this I was ready to jump out of the window. We all breathed such a huge sigh of relief when it came to his stop and he pissed off out of our lives.

"I'll be seeing you again Fonteyn!"

Walking across town to try and catch the bus home I was accosted by an elderly chap offering passers-by religious tracts.

"Jesus loves you my boy!" he yelled.

I promise you, he really did then start singing "Jesus wants me as a sunbeam."

I missed my bus. I could wait another half an hour for the next one and then another three-quarters for it to get me home. Or I could wait another fifty minutes for a train which should take ten, fifteen minutes tops. Sod it, I got a taxi. Sigh. In Manchester these days you have to give taxi drivers directions. Made the harder when the driver's got his earpiece in and he's having a long, interminably long conversation with his mate with no stops for breath. We overshot my house by ten houses because he was so intent on his conversation and trying to speed over the speed humps he couldn't here me saying: "you can stop here please."

I don't know why people need mind-altering drugs. If you live right and work in the public sector you can have your consciousness smashed to bits without popping a single pill.

Liebensraum

There are things you don't ever want a system administrator say to you.

I bump into Jim Lettuce, who's mildly boggled.

"We've just had a training session on our new performance management system," he tells me.

"How'd it go?"

"OK I guess. But the bloke doing it said something very odd. He said: 'you really have to admire Hitler for his ruthless efficiency.'"

"Was he being inappropriately ironic?" I ask, from experience.

"No. At least not judging by the emails he keeps sending us."

Vittles

Madame De Farge's discourse on office lunchtimes reminds me that I've been meaning to explain our mid-day régime...

The first, and some days only, priority is to get out of the damned building, even only for ten minutes. This is easier said than done:

• "I know you're just going on your lunch but..."
• "You'll have to take the back stairs, the lift's broken again."
• "Can you be sure to be back for one? We need someone to cover the 'phones."

And then there's the business of actually getting out of the building, which is built like a maze. It's generally easiest to escape via the fire escape onto Abattoir Lane but this is generally frowned upon. So that's what we do.

There are still a few butty shops left in the town centre and they're generally very good (the girl in the shop on the corner has the nicest eyes but the bread's better at the shop on Jimpo Road). These are all well and good but you then end up having to go back to the staff room for to eat them (the company's good and the banter's fun but you're still in the building and available for interrupting).

There is a staff canteen in the Town Hall. The food's OK, a bit school dinners but OK. Very few council staff actually eat in the staff canteen. By the time they get out of the office at twelve o'clock all the good stuff's been devoured by the pensioners who've been to the morning tea dance and the remainders have been prodded heavily by passing councillors.

So we scuttle off to one or other pub or tea room. For many years the favourite bolt-hole was 'The Dreaded Tankard' on Hilpot Lane. The food was cheap and excellent and the landlady, a madly-energetic little bird of a woman, fussed over us like a mother hen. We very seriously tried to make the bottle room an official meeting room but were heavily overruled by Mary.

These days we split our time between 'The Duck & Pullet,' 'The Liberty Horse' and Nancy's Tea Room. It's important to get that time out of the building.

The Rough Guide To Ways Of Avoiding Sleeping With Sheep

"It seems strange being in the midst of March and having the fire exit corridor empty," I say to Noreen.

"Have you not been in there today?" she asks.

So I had a look.

"What is it?" I ask.

"We're hoping it's a piece of furniture."

Comrades of the Khyber

We are trying to pull together various pieces of work that Our Lords And Masters have wished upon us in dribs and drabs over the past few weeks. We have learned over the years the value of getting round a pot of tea every so often and sifting through the jigsaw puzzles. It takes us no great time at all to discover that three of us have been asked to do the same piece of work in different ways and that Frog's been asked to run an event at Milkbeck Library (because "they've not had one lately) on the same day as has Bronwyn (because "they've not had one lately"). There are a few others in a similar vein. We do what we can to disentangle the mess without actually laying ourselves open to charges of insubordination. A review of the resources being made available to us for the delivery of these activities (to wit: none) is quick and dispiriting.

"I keep being told by Policy Team that we need to be taking more responsibility," I mention in passing.

"Strange that. I keep being told that," says Maybelle.

That noise you're hearing is a group of people sitting round a table not asking out loud if Policy Team is planning on taking a lead on taking any responsibility any time soon.

It's all done with nostril control

The world has turned upside down and Sibyl is burning feathers under Noreen's nose to try and bring her back to her senses.

The Reference Librarians have cancelled a standing order.

God bless all policemen and fighters of crime

We are having a problem with a hooligan element at Epiphany Library, which this time isn't the staff.

"They're a real pain in the arse and they just won't leave the library, even when the police tell them to go away and leave our customers alone. Just what are we supposed to do?"

"You could pretend they're retired Chief Librarians."

Swinging my malacca

I bump into Ken Barmy buying wine gums in the snug of The Duck & Pullet.

"Got rid of yours yet?" I ask.

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

He hands me a greasy red lozenge uncertainly stamped PU\T.

"Salad Days and The Mousetrap," he toasts.

Upon hearing the first cuckoo of Spring

We were told about this by a colleague at a training seminar this morning. It's an email sent by their council's IT section.

From March 01 2010 do not send emails to colleagues for immediate messages. Telephone them or arrange to have a meeting. This council promotes conversation.

We every one of us insisted that they forward us a copy of the offending email, simultaneously giving us all a laugh and compromising a ripe bit of corporate idiocy.

Cancel the milk and you're away!

News from Year Fifty of the Time Team dig of T.Aldous' office. The man himself brings a crystal file to the recycling bin.

"This is taking forever. I mean: you'd be surprised at the rubbish that people hoard for no apparent reason. Look at all this: Arthur Pemberton [T.Aldous' predecessor-but-one who retired in 1986] even kept a receipt for every car mileage claim his staff made, he never threw them away. Look at them all here! What anyone would want to keep that for I do not know."

Science illuminates womankind

We'll have no sense out of the girls today. They're all Wembley at the knees and full of talk of Professor Brian Cox.

Picnic - Problem in Chair, Not In Computer

"I begin to understand your pain," says Frog.

He has sent an email to staff asking them to have a look at a new reading programme web site. He has had some replies, such as:

Frog, does this work?

Mimsie

I sent you a letter a long time ago...

T.Aldous flourishes the latest finds from the dig:

"Do you know, there's stuff in my files that Reggie Clockwatcher had kept since 1997! What's the point of his hoarding stuff like that?"

Reggie Clockwatcher has been retired four years.

Huge amounts of territory dedicated to doing nothing

Frog's turn to be pissed off about holiday interruptions. He can't have a long weekend because he's needed to provide lunchtime cover upstairs in the Lending Library on Saturday so that Lola can go over and provide lunchtime cover at Catty Library.

Catty Library is closed at lunchtime.

Wilting like a geordie watching Shakespeare

Posy is seething. She's been on holiday this week. On Monday she got a 'phone call, while she was on the beach in a far away place, telling her that she needs to cover the enquiry desk at Milkbeck Library this afternoon.

"It wouldn't have killed them to have waited until I came in this morning."

The well-tempered liver sausage

I bump into Ken Barmy on the way home. He is extremely grumpy, even by his standards.

"I've spent the day looking at the sunshine on the windows and thinking that I could have had the whole week off."

"Why didn't you?"

"I decided only to have a couple of days because there was a meeting that my managers insisted we had to be at and there's quite a lot of stuff needs doing."

"That's a pain."

"I'll say. Especially after the buggers changed the date of the meeting to the end of last week and didn't tell any of us."

Drive-by

Bad news:
Due to the poor financial position of the council it has cut the car mileage allowances of staff.

Good news:
Staff with essential driver status are being sent on a course on how to use less petrol when you drive.

Drowning the Buttercup Queen

The Bobbing Up And Down Team broadcasts another inanity.

Brighten Up The Borough!
We are promoting a positive image of Helminthdale to the world. What would you say to somebody who wanted to know about your Helminthdale?

We might not be in the mood for it.

"Imagine the Black Death without the feelgood factor," suggests Sybil.

Class image

A teacher rings Senebene Library with a complaint. They are very irate because the library has sent a letter to a parent telling them that their child had written in some books they had borrowed from us.

"How dare you do that! She had not written in those books. I had written in those books."

"I'm sorry. We weren't to know that you were at fault and not her. Please could you remember not to do it again."

"But I always write in books."

"Please don't write in our books."

"I shall. I always write in books."

"But these aren't your to write in."

The last exchange was repeated ad nauseam.

It's no wonder modern youth has so little respect for other people's property.

Pull up a tin of pineapple chunksthey're playing our song, Matilda

Phone call to Noreen from the Land Beyond The Veil:

"We don't seem to have received this year's edition of Proctor's Directory of Assemblages. Could you chase it up for us please?"

"You've not got it because it's not on your standing order list."

No problem, monkeysocks

I really, really shouldn't do this. Not at all. I shouldn't. No.

I pick up a 'phone that's ringing unattended.

"Can I speak to T.Aldous please?"

"I'm sorry, he retired last month."

"But he just rang, leaving a message asking to ring him back."

"Ooh. I wonder if the Communications Team are still having problems with the response times on the voice over internet telephones."

Breaking news

There's no easy way of saying this. You might want to sit down.

Harold MacMillan is dead.


(Sorry about that. Some time soon somebody's going to have to tell the lotophagi in the Reference Library that the 1950s are dead and gone. I'm just getting some practice in, in case it turns out to be my job to do it.)

This is your leader speaking

Maisie has an idea:

"If I lend you my hearing aids you could switch them over to Induction Loop and then neither of us would be able to hear what he was saying to us."

Many exciting happenings to titillate the casual visitor

We're feeling better about our corporate IT bods. We've just found out that colleagues in a neighbouring library authority can't access The Bookseller's web site because their council deems it to be an entertainment site and have blocked it.

Ask not what your library can do for you

It's Friday morning and two members of staff have been sent downstairs for a two minute giggle break. They have now managed to compose themselves and can go back upstairs to look the part of sober-sided public library staff.

The customer's enquiry at the counter was: "Have you any books on how to stop me being a tosser?"

Apparently they kept a straight face for the whole of the transaction.

I want you out of town on the first stagecoach out of Elstree

A Manichean view of the library world would have it that there are people who take themselves very seriously, to the detriment of the service, and people who take the service seriously, to the detriment of themselves. I suspect I lie in the latter group.

We know one of the things that reference library staff do in the back room. Quarter of an hour before end of play you will notice Winnie leave the desk, go into the office, put her coat on and get ready to leave.

It's all from the learning tree

How modern reference librarianship works:

• The Reference Librarian rings the Regional Loans Assistant to say that we don't have a copy of the council's Unitary Development Plan.
• The Regional Loans Assistant finds the UDP on the council's web site.
• The Systems Librarian creates a catalogue entry for this online document, including the URL in the appropriate MARC tag.
• The Regional Loans Assistant sends the URL to the Reference Librarian and tells them that the customer can also look it up on the online catalogue.
• The Reference Librarian asks the Regional Loans Assistant if she can obtain a printed copy of the UDP.
• The Regional Loans Assistant suggests the Reference Librarian tries the "print" icon on the computer screen.
• The Regional Loans Assistant and the Systems Librarian wonder what the Reference Librarian is doing in that back office all day.

That's the reason why mankind was buried in ignorance for hundreds of years

I'm having a review meeting with Milton. Ever since we both concluded that we can't do anything because the IT section's put the blocks on all technical development work and the Library Service can't free up any staff to help with any of the project work on our schedules these meetings have been quite fun.

"We've done a lot of work on improving communications," says Milton.

"Have we?" I ask.

"Well, communications have improved."

"Have they?"

"Yes, of course they have."

"In Policy Team's last set of minutes it gave a list of Easter Holiday activities at Raccoonville Library. What was that about?"

"I've no idea. I don't know where that came from, it certainly wasn't discussed in the meeting."

"And that email I sent to Policy Team asking whether we were ever going to have librarians providing active input to the options available on the public PCs. How did that become Jack Harry emailing Frog to tell him that I was going to build a web site for teenagers and please could he ask them to tell me if they liked how it looked?"

"But communications are improving really, aren't they? They're just glitches. Has Jack Harry got back to you to let you know how many people will be in the training session next week?"

"No."

"Has anyone got back to you with anything for the web site about World Book Day?"

"No."

"I don't want to ask a third question do I?"

Plead the headaches

One of my colleagues in another place has just forwarded this e-mail to me, he is somewhat at a loss as to how to rectify it, particularly as they have five public and one staff PC at this branch.

"We are having complaints about the slowness of the computer, especially from one user. Please could you explain it, and try and speed it up, he says that it has been like this for a week and a half!! I know when I have been off the system crashed and Deidre said that two of you have been rectifying the problem. I have to report this as the gentleman is by my side.

"I have noticed for several weeks when I start this computer that it takes ages to get going, to the point where I think I am doing it wrong.

"Please can you assist and calm this user down.

"Thank you."

No, don't show us, just tell us

No.
No no no no no.
No.
No.
No no no.
NO.
No.
No...
No.
No.
No.

You don't need the other half of the conversation.

When people start calling you gentlemen it's time to go

I could spend quite some weeks telling you about the upgrade to our public computers, scheduled for two years ago.

Seeing as we're now into the business of having to wait until the IT guys have evaluated the impact of running the new version of Windows on the network; the evaluation work is scheduled for this Summer and that this is the third new version they've delayed the project for to evaluate I think I would lose the will to live.

We are going to mark this very special day by doing the same old rubbish we do all the rest of the year

I know one thing we're doing for World Book Day this year. We're not buying any new books.