Gallic flavour

We none of us trust the Direct Works Buttermilk soap in the gent's toilets so we bring in our own antiseptic handwash. Which explains why we've had the same cake of soap in there for two years. I hadn't realised it was so long. Frog reckons we'll have to buy another cake of soap so that people don't mistake us for Frenchmen.

It's hard to tell the difference when they take their hats off

Like me, you may wonder why we've got so many boxes full of books hanging around backstage for years on end. Here's a clue or two:

• Over there's a trolley full of books. It's the same trolley full of the same books that's been lurking round the place since April. It's stock from the old Roadkill Library site to be transferred to other libraries. It's all newish paperback fiction that wouldn't fit on the shelves when they moved house and a pile of non-fiction that they didn't fancy (they're coffee table books about living in the Victorian age, the Tudors, Ancient Egypt, tropical rainforests, global warming, walks around the Lake Distrct, real obscure-niche material that there would be no demand for in a public library). This stock was sent here to be dealt with because Daisy, who's responsible for Roadkill, said she didn't have time to deal with them. Seeing as there wasn't anybody here at the time to deal with them (literally: Salome was the only remaining full-time Assitant Librarian but was on leave and Lola was on maternity leave) the stuff stayed in boxes. Eventually, Seth kicked off about the number of boxes lying about and Andi was given the job of sorting a dozen of them out. She did this by putting a couple of boxes' worth onto trolleys which she'd leave lurking about the building "being worked on" for weeks or months on end. This is the last of those trolleys (Lola and Bronwyn got shut of the others).
• Another strategy for dealing with the boxes is to put somebody else's name on them. Lola's come back from maternity leave to find seven boxes of stock for transfer jammed under her desk. Each is labelled: Dutch Bend Helminthdale Salome Andi Posy Andi Posy Andi Salome Lola.

I've lost patience with the bloody trolley. I've just done the lot and it took me fifty minutes.

Give it a dose of Quaker oats

I ring Catty to try and find out whether or not anybody there knows where they've decided they want their PCs to go. Hetty answers and is annoyed to find out why they've not been set up yet.

"Just out of morbid curiosity... what's the current delay in reopening the library?"

"The tables aren't high enough."

"Tell me no more, I'm frightened to learn it."

Nowt but a dishcloth and a sugar bag

Lupin went over to Catty Library yesterday to set up the computers. We've no idea when the library's going to be reopening for business (we've been reshelving it for the past month) but he's determined that this time he's not going to be doing everything at the last minute. It won't be easy. He didn't manage to finish the job yesterday...

"Do you know where the computers are going?" he asks me.

"Roughly. Generally speaking, we're putting them where the people at Catty told Milton they had to go."

"That's good. I was tripping over the things and when I asked them where they were going they said they didn't know."

This doesn't bode well for the way the place is going to work when it's open.

Looking for a nine-foot square Monopoly board

Visiting Ken Barmy in his lair I am astonished to find that he's got a whiteboard the size of a wall behind his desk.

"Who's got the world's biggest whiteboard now?"

he crows. I can only gape.

"Isn't it brilliant? I'm astonished I've got away with it."

"How...?"

"They asked me if I wanted anything. I said I'd like a whiteboard please. They said to measure it up and get it ordered. And so... Well, here it is."

"What are you going to do with it now you've got it?"

"I shall draw pictures of Susannah York running barefoot through dewy meadows."

"They'll not be pleased with you for doing that."

"Don't see why not. It would be one of the more constructive things going on round here at the moment."

It's all I can do to hide my envy.

Ecstasy, Bruce, ecstasy

Mary's going over to a presentation at the Fire Station.

"If anyone asks, I'm just getting changed and putting on some perfume," she tells me.

I thought she was kidding right up to the point when she walked past me on her way out. Well, at least there'll be no naked flames.

The tragedy of a man with an absent mind

Milton's got his coat on.

"Run for the hills!"

he tells me and Mary

"T.Aldous is working on a document and I just heard him tell Maudie that he doesn't know how to cut and paste!"

Brooding on the infinite

As part of our ongoing change process we have set up a Champions For Change Group. One of Jim's last acts before scuttling off for the Swiss border was to ask for volunteers for the group. Gratifyingly enough, a good sized number volunteered and they represent every tier in the hierarchy and every section in the service. This is really good news and they're all really enthusiastic and everything.

So this is, of course, a problem.

Milton has been asked the killer questions:

"It isn't fair: why do they get to be in the group? How do we make sure that other people get their turn?"

"It isn't fair: why should the people who want to volunteer to be champions for change be allowed to be champions for change?" Childish nonsense. What the hell is the point of conscripting somebody to be an advocate for something? "It isn't fair!" Poppycock.

Milton is trying to frame a suitable response to the question. Mine would be two words.

Ladies and gentlemen, and Tiddles the cat

Kitty O'Shaunessy's been working in the Local Studies Library since Dan Leno was a lad. She's retiring next month so we're having a collection for her retirement present.

Imagine the consternation when it is discovered that the tin that had been labelled for this collection has been re-labelled by T.Aldous for the collection for to pay for the wine and nutes he bought the convalescent Warner. We now debate whether or not to carbon-date the fingerprints on the coins to determine which collection they were for.

Son of Splat!!!

What is it with this place? A young lad (OK, a yoof) has just wandered into the lending library, sat down at a table and started doing some coursework. He was doing no harm to anyone whatsoever, and was obviously of a polite disposition as he asked a passing member of staff:

"It is OK for me to sit here and do my coursework isn't it?"

"Ooh, I don't know. I'll have to check."

.....

"Sorry, they say you've got to go upstairs to the reference library."

I'm sure I read something about Policy Team writing a Customer Welcome Strategy recently...

Twerpsichory

We currently don't require that customers using the People's Network computers are members of the library, though we would like them to join and gain the many benefits therefrom. Our reference librarians can make people members of the library as they do so once in a while so that they can issue one or other obscenely-expensive reference book to People In The Know. (Yes, these are the reference librarians who hide the newspapers under the enquiry desk so that customers can't steal them).

T.Aldous bumped into a couple struggling to get a pram and two babies up the stairs to the library because they wanted to use a computer to check their emails. He guided them to the lift, made sure it was going up to the reference library and told them to ask for a computer at the enquiry desk.

A few minutes later, he was passing the lift and the family was coming out. He was, naturally, a bit surprised and asked if all the computers were busy.

No. They'd been told that they "needed to go downstairs to join the library" before they could use a computer.

To his immense credit, T.Aldous took them back up to the library, got them onto a PC and gave them a membership form, a new user pack and a lot of spin about the services in our libraries.

I can't help thinking that a hard core of our staff wouldn't be happy unless customers weren't allowed on the computers or borrow books at all, just so that they could make sure that we could guarantee to be able to meet demand should it arise (but obviously not guarantee to actually meet it).

Alcohol is not allowed on the fairground ride

Poor old Warner Baxter's laid up after an operation. We quite like him as he's a decent sort and he makes Policy Team say nice things to us when we deserve them. So we were all very happy to sign and send a card and Frog included some suitably doggerelly get-well verse.

Warner's emailed T.Aldous asking him to pass on his thanks to all concerned. Which is really nice.

The gilt is scraped off the gingerbread quite considerably by T.Aldous' hand-written coda:

"Policy Team bought Warner some wine and nuts as a present for when we went round to visit the other day. We didn't have time to put out a tin for staff donations but if you would like to contribute something towards the £14.97 cost of the gift please put it in the tin provided."

"The poor devils must be on their uppers," mutters Sybil.

Can you hear the Trappists sing?

'Phone call from Julia, who's busy lurking at Catty Library well out of the way of T.Aldous.

"I've had a telephone call from the Catty Examiner. How many items do we have in stock here?"

"I'll just check the figures... here we go it's... hello? Is anyone there? Hello? Hello? Is there anybody there? ..."

I can hear the noises off of Julia wandering round the library messing round with shelves and telling people which boxes to unpack.

I shouted the number.

(eventually) "I can't hear you, what did you say?"

On balance I decided to just repeat the number.

No looking for lamp-posts that aren't there

I'm not even as far as the bloody building before it starts today. I'm just crossing the road when I'm accosted by Ned Grangemouth from Corporate Audit.

"Has Mary asked you about this year's CIPFA figures?"

"Last April, when I did them, yes, why?"

"The Audit Commission's got the numbers from CIPFA and sent them back to us for us to confirm that the numbers are correct before they become set in aspic. I passed on the library figures to Mary and asked her to check that they were OK. She was supposed to be getting back to me but she hasn't yet and I'm getting nervous 'cos tomorrow's the deadline for any queries or appeals."

"Not a sausage."

"If I send you a copy can you have a look?"

"I'll try my best."

So he has and I've had a look and I can't see where some of the numbers are coming from: they're certainly not the numbers I passed on to Jim and Mary in April. Unfortunately, I don't know what numbers were sent to CIPFA in the end as those files aren't in the folders accessible to us other ranks.

I mention the conversation to Mary.

"Oh... I've not had an email about that, I'm sure. I'll log on and check and see if it's come through."

I expect it's in her unread emails folder. All I can do is wash my hands of the affair and wait for the tortuous progress of the auditors next spring.

The Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald of the telecommunications world

A colleague writes:

"Can anybody, even Helminthdale, match a telephone bill 823 pages long? We have just received one. It's for our computerised energy line. A fault on the heating system triggers off a 'phone message to the computer centre who should then deal with the fault. Unfortunately, a second fault at the computer centre means their computer is unaware of the message. So for three long months our heating system has sent a 20 second call to the computer every 10 minutes and for three long months it has been ignored. Unfortunately, no-one can yet trace the cause and so our bill is already mounting. Will it top 823 pages? See next months thrilling installment!

"P.S. We have our phone bills in triplicate for administrative purposes!"

Welcome back for the first time

They're unpacking boxes at Catty and in the process left the front door open while a trolley-load of books was taken out of the library. Sure as eggs, a customer walks into the library. There are two possible scenarios:

1. Welcome the customer. Explain that the library's not open yet but we're well on the way to getting ready and we hope that he'll find it's been worth the wait. It's going to look good when we've got all the stock on the shelves and done the last of the tidying up. And we're a bit fed up because we wanted to be open well before now but we hit a problem with the floor, which has been resolved and doesn't it look a treat now? remember that awful triple-edged camber? and we're waiting for the builders to sort out the roofing problem over there in the corner where we've been planning to put all the computers. Still, we're getting there and it does look pretty good, doesn't it? And don't forget, Carbootsale Library's just down the road and they're open six days a week while Catty Library's closed. We look forward to seeing you when we're officially open!
2. Sorry, we're closed. Could you close the door on your way out. Thanks.

Guess which approach was chosen.

Years have rolled on

There is a seasonal element in play here. There is a staffing crisis at Dutch Bend. Catty Library is closed but there are staff in there unpacking boxes ready for an unspecified opening day which is almost certainly going to be postponed because all the putty's fallen out of one of the new windows. You or I, being unthinking amateurs in the ways of the public library, would send one of the staff from Catty to Dutch Bend. Especially if we were Julia, who is both on site at Catty and responsible for both libraries.

Unfortunately for Frog, he's the one who's picked up the message and relayed it to Julia. Who tells him to ring personnel for the 'phone numbers of any staff who may not be working today so that he can ring round for cover.

Mary rescued him in the end: Lippy's going to work extra hours and do the necessary.

Unhand me, Colonel Brandyballs!

Seth and Alwyn have been issued with new walkie-talkies and, as suggested by the health & safety inspectors, we also have spares scattered strategically about the building so that people can be contacted in the event of an emergency or when the kettle's boiled. We're not sure of the coverage, though, so Seth's spent half an hour first thing testing them in different parts of the building.

I'd completely forgotten about this. And that one of the beasts was sitting on top of my in-tray. Imagine my surprise when a voice by my ear says:

"This is Funf speaking..."

It turns out that we share a frequency with the security guards in one of the big shops in the shopping centre. They think it's hilarious, which is probably why every so often you'll hear a voice from some distant part of the room saying:

"Luke, I am your father."

Share and share alike

I mentioned job-sharing the other day. I thought it might be useful to explain how we do job-sharing in Helminthdale Library Service.

Elsewhere in the world, including Helminthdale Council, of which we are part, job-sharing is two or more people doing the one and the same job. One job, two or more people. I won't labour this further. In the Library Service, job-sharing is a bit more complicated than this.

For instance, Katie and Lola are both job-shares. But they each have a non-existant job-share partner because those halves of the posts have been allowed to wither unfilled on the vine. So, in effect, they are each doing a full-time job in half a week.

On the other hand, Daisy Dormouse and Wendy Muffplaster job-share the same post. Except that Daisy is responsible for Roadkill Library and Wendy is responsible for Noddy Library. In Daisy's half of the week Noddy is left to fend. And in Wendy's half of the week, Roadkill is left to fend.

And at Catty, Posy and Andi job-share the same post. Except that Posy is responsible for adult lending and Andi is responsible for children's.

So it's all dead easy really.

When mistletoe was one and six a yard

I told Frog about last night's home-time conversation. He reminds me why I'm glad I'm not a teacher or a children's librarian.

"I was walking down the road about a month ago when I noticed that an attractive young girl had stopped and was smiling at me.

"'Hello,' she said, 'you're Frog aren't you?'

"I was dead chuffed that she was interested enough to find out my name. Then came the killer blow:

"'I used to go to the story times you used to do at Senebene Library.'"