They left when my dog got drunk

It is with great sadness that I hear that they've closed the jazz club next to Sheep City. Whilst not being up to much musically it featured in more divorce cases than any other building in town, including the Town Hall and the knocking shop on Creamery Lane. It's best remembered as being the best way of finding out who Shagger Noakes was jiggling about with lately. Famously, one night a certain lady, the worse for drink, staggered to her feet and addressed the crowd:

"I thought I'd best make it clear, for all of you who listen to gossip, that I am Shagger Noakes' mistress!"

There was an astonished hush, which was broken by a voice from the crowd:

"No you're not! I'm his mistress!"

"No! I am!"

"What's going on here? I thought I was!"

My informant laughed himself silly when he told me about it.

"Imagine 'Spartacus' in action slacks!"

The naming of parts

A colleague sends me an interesting link to a report about a library that's selling naming rights to rooms, etc. to sponsors.
http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2006608090365

This appeals very much to us. Already there have been four suggestions as to The Paxo Room, with suggestions that the occupant could be sponsored by Preparation H.

Playing the loyalty card 2

T.Aldous to new bod:

"You'll find that Helminthdale Library Service is a good jumping-off point to better things."

Standing on a peak in Dariae

Staff at Milkbeck Library are peeved: T.Aldous has decided that they can't use the newly-refurbished upstairs community room for children's events. "There have been fatalities," he tells them.

"Have there been fatalities?" I ask them.

"Next time he goes up them stairs."

You always pass failure on the way to success

T.Aldous is having one of his habitual panics about issue figures. There's legitimate cause for concern: the figures in some libraries are alarming. Unfortunately, T.Aldous' preferred method of addressing the crisis is to go round to libraries and say: "you need to improve your issue figures, they're awful," then he pisses off. As you can see, his motivational models lean heavily towards constructive development and positive reinforcement of rewarding behaviours. Attempts to increase issue by simple means like: "before we put these CDs in the book sale can we put them out for free loan," and "is it OK for me to set up a reading group?" are generally frustrated. Which is why some of the cannier/bolshier staff just do things and wait for the flak if and when Our Beloved Leader finds out about it, by which time any attempts to revert back to the status quo result in Letters Of Complaint by the public which are A Bad Thing. This, of course, is a mixed blessing as it's a bugger to try and provide any standardised services across the Borough. "Why don't staff consult the Staff Manual?" asks the unwary reader. "Go and sit in a corner with a wet flannel on your neck," is the considered response.

Anyway up, back to issue figures. Being a team player I suggested that we need to be more aggressive in our marketing of the Lending Library services in the Borough. For some reason my suggestion wasn't viewed favourably...

Dress for success

Norbert Spudulike is sporting his "Most Disgruntled Staff Member" T-shirt. He's working up to wearing it to one of T.Aldous' staff meetings.

Both Frog and I have been having to address alarums and excursions at home lately otherwise we'd have finished creating and distributing the "I was on leave that week" badges to all staff.

Providence protects children and idiots

Frog's in a hurry: he's just been told that he needs to be in Preston for a meeting about meeting the needs of teenagers in care.

"T.Aldous has signed us up for meeting the proposed new standard on service delivery," he tells us.

"That's surprisingly ambitious of him. It's not like him to be held to account for anything," I replied.

"He thought it was a training course."

I'm almost as surprised to find T.Aldous arranging training for anybody.

A bell rings in the back of my head:

"Shouldn't you be finalising the arrangements for tomorrow's 'Back to School Day'?"

The wan smile I got in reply tells us everything we could need to know.

Quackers

Pub lunch at The Millipede & Clogger to celebrate Lippy's birthday. It isn't Lippy's birthday but we needed the excuse to escape the confines of our captivity. We'd arranged beforehand for the landlady to make us a cheese & onion pie (it's an occasional special that's not been on the blackboard for a while). As a thank you present we bought her a wooden duck to add to her vast collection (the snug's officially called "The Duck Room"). She was moved and touched and has decided to call it Rommel in our honour.

Let the good times roll

It's distressing to think how many of the entries in this blog involve toilet functions. Here's another one...

They've replaced the bog-standard (pun intended) toilet rolls in the staff toilets with a new-fangled thing that looks like a wall-mounted dalek that takes a roll of tissue the size of a small pouffe (no names, no pack drill). The idea is that the ginormous rolls provide a considerable economy of scale, such as to delight the council tax payers of the borough.

I would hope that the cost-benefit analysis would include the cost of the new kit in comparison with the old nail on a stick. And the fact that you end up folding the tissue four-fold to account for the fact that it's about as durable as wet rice paper. Oh, and the staff time involved in blindly groping around with your arm up the orifice while you try and find the end of the roll. I'm told this last is exactly like the first gynæcology practical at medical school. I'm happy to take my informant's word for it.

Go out and buy proper prunes

Tales from the staff room. Lippy's annoyed:

"There I was, stark naked and doing my yoga exercises in the bedroom when he walks in, slaps me on the arse and says whatever it is I'm wearing, it needs ironing.

Grrr...

This is good. The Reference Library's now passing difficult enquiries down to the acquisitions team to deal with. I take over one of the 'phone calls and discover that the customer just wants to make sure that she's filled in the Community Organisation Database form correctly and would we want some copies of the Natural History Society's Autumn Programme for the reference library?

Obviously far too difficult for the beggars.

Looking five pounds lighter in his Cyril Lord wig

About ninety percent of the incoming "work" email is spam and phishing messages. I find it distressing to keep getting email messages asking me if I need gentlemen's medications to solve erection problems and give me a manhood that "she" would thank me for.

I find it distressing because my memory's so bad these days I can't remember whether or not I have a problem.


[Editor's note: "She" = the cat's mother.]

What's another year?

Staff at Dutch Bend tell me that poor old Mr. Bunskins is extremely ill.

"We're hoping that T.Aldous replies to his nice letter while he's still alive," I'm told.

If I'm so bad why don't they just take me away?

A comment from one of the IT guys:

"Your problem, Kevin, is that you're too damned polite."

Interesting. His boss made an official complaint about my being aggressive.

You can't do the things with a goat that you can with a Sopwith Camel

My turn to do stock selection (everyone else is on holiday or off sick). I buy a copy of a book on body-piercing for Noddy Library. It'll give the old biddies on the committee something to think about!

The stuff that dreams are made on

There must be a charabanc arrived...

Frog's on the enquiry desk. He's just had a rather rough-looking customer come in with a question. [A quick note here: the rough-looking folk are usually really pleasant customers. If you ever see a club blazer or a pearl brooch you just know you're in for a shit time of it.] Anyway, this chap's question:

"I keep having these dreams about teeth. I keep dreaming they're falling out. What does it mean? What does it mean?"

Frog takes him over to the section in non-fiction where they find the books on dreams and dream analysis. He picks one up, checks to see that "teeth" are included and passes it to the chap.

"Here you are."

"I'm not so good with me reading. Can you read it out for us?"

"Err.. OK. It says here that dreaming about your teeth falling out is a sign that you're worrying about impotence and a loss of virility."

"By gum! That's exactly right, that's me to a 'T.' Thanks mate, that's brilliant!"

And off he toddled.

We've 'ad 'em all here you know

Lippy's on the enquiry desk (she's usually on the Housebound van). Her first customer sets the tone for the rest of the day:

"Have you got Big Breasts And Wide Hips?"

"Not since me diet, no."

It turns out that the customer was a "student of biology" and that there was a book of that name in the library catalogue. Checking to be on the safe side, Lippy found out that there really was, but unfortunately it was in adult fiction, not non-fiction.

I shouldn't be surprised by anything that's on the shelves of public libraries. Especially after the Regional Library Assistant successfully got hold of a copy of the book about the chap who wraps himself up in clingfilm for sexual excitement.

With pictures.

And a bad tattoo.

I want to be a cowboy's sweetheart

Felicity's been covering at Helminthdale for a few days and has been receiving nothing but grief from T.Aldous since she started. She finally snapped this morning and cornered him by the photocopier:

"I've been having nothing but snide remarks off you all week. What have I managed to do so wrong so quickly?"

"You're too sensitive Felicity. But seeing as you're asking, I've not been impressed by your attitude, You didn't even look at me in the staff room, let alone smile."

Felicity's face was a picture.

"Must be love," I said.

She went white:

"Not even in jest," she hissed.

I wonder if every library authority uses back-copies of the "Bunty" comic as a human resource manual.

Have you had an accident in your underpants and it wasn't your fault?

Poor old Frog. Up to his gills and he gets stuff like this...

This morning T.Aldous told him that he'd just had an urgent job sprung on him. (Public service notice: every job T.Aldous dumps on people has been sprung on him at the last minute. By people who have spent weeks ringing him or emailing him and leaving messages asking him to ring back. We know: we're the people who have to answer T.Aldous' 'phone.)

"The council's having a "back to school" day next week and we've been asked to do something for it. Can we?"

"I can certainly do a display in the window. We've got posters and things and I can put together a "these are what your parents read in their schooldays" display with some of the junior reserve stock."

"Good. I'll leave it with you then."

Imagine his surprise when he found out this afternoon that he's also doing a storytime, a word search and a competition with prizes. He was slightly bitter:

"The winners can have the book tokens for the Easter Egg competition. If I'm allowed to buy them."

Keep your sunny side up

T.Aldous tells us that Tench Lane will be re-opening for business next week "come Hell or high water."

So naturally it pisses down for three days straight and the rain shorts out the telephone...