You may find it useful to wind up a speech in your next temperance debate

Beryl's retirement day. She's thrilled to bits to be kicking the dust of this place from her feet. Doreen asks her the obvious question.

"Will you be coming back to do some volunteer work in the library?"

"Will I buggery!"

Two custard tarts, a sliced loaf and a tin of corned beef

We haven't been over-run by boxes of incoming new stock lately. If anyone asks we tell them it's because the Acq. Team are a well-oiled engine of accessionary zeal and then they go away. We don't tell them that it's a combination of some of the Assistant Librarians not putting in their orders; Mary not signing the orders; and the supplier suspending the orders for a fortnight due to some communication glitch.

This all puts the fear of God into the Acq. Team. They know all too well the thrill of drought-and-flood stock management. They also worry that some idiot will take this as a useful moment to do some time-and-motion studies of the team's throughput. Bronwyn's trying her best: she sorted out the supplier snafu and some of us have good reason to think she's doing a lot of unpaid overtime at home, ordering the stock the Assistant Librarians should have chosen. She's also actively asking front-line staff to submit wish-lists. The bad news is that she's having to do most of this surreptitiously so as not to give certain members of Policy Team the opportunity to put a stop to it.

We can all breathe a little easier today as sixty boxes of new stock have arrived. Well, all except Seth, who has to lug them all about and stack them in the fire exit corridor while they're waiting to be invoiced.

When you're up to the neck in hot water, be like the kettle and sing

Something's brewing: the Escape Committee has started singing "Mama Mia!" Very loudly.

God knows what the software engineer on the other end of my telephone made of it.

Ready for decanting

Maybelle is in Full Naval Figurehead mood.

"I am determined that they make some kind of binding decision about those battries so we can get that stuff out of the boxes and onto the shelves, available for the public."

I have mad unrealistics dreams, too. Some days I fantasise about being faster than a speeding bullet and leaping over buildings in one bound.

Topsy turvey talk

Fancy putting a health and safety noticeboard behind an inward-opening door in the staff room...

PC

A colleague is dead browned off. He's in trouble because he's just bought three replacement PCs.

"I didn't fill in the Equal Opportunities Impact Form."

Moon mist

We've been having a trying time of it with our betters and venting about it in the staff room.

"When you think about it..."

"Yes..."

"If Policy Team aren't around, does it have any impact on the service we provide to the public?"

"Not a jot."

"This is true."

"And... They all bugger for the whole of March but we still get year end sorted. Every year."

"Not an a'porth of difference."

"So what's the point of Policy Team? Purely in terms of their impact on customer service?"

"They're the only ones authorised to sign the orders."

When I count three, go for your banjo

Frog's finished the schedule of summer holiday activities for kids and mapped it out against The Dreaded Summer Reading Game and sent everything off to the printers and to the lady who puts together the council's summer holidays magazine. There's no time for complacency as there's a humongous pile of other stuff to do, including catching up with sorting out all the problems about the delivery of BookStart boxes to health visitors and the glitch about the day nurseries. There is no administrative overhead to the BookStart programme. Except when T.Aldous or Mary have to spend ten minutes filling in a form with the data that Frog has to amass each week in between arranging van deliveries of materiel and then rearranging them because Mary's decided to save some money on the agency driver by not having them come in that day; or else T.Aldous and Julia have got him ferrying boxes of God Knows What between libraries; or bringing back boxes of old newspapers to put in our bin.

In the midst of all this Joy, T.Aldous brings customer feedback from the non-existant library at Mattressbrook.

"They say that they had a juggler come to the library last year, so why have you booked a juggler again this year? They're fed up with jugglers and want a change."

They're getting a juggler because he's cheap and Frog's budget for delivering two months' worth of events over a couple of dozen locations is the same as it was in 1993.

Flexitime

Mary should have been working the first three days this week and having Thursday and today off. On Wednesday morning she rang in first thing and said that she was having that day off. Fair enough, sort of (we'd get a bollocking for it, mind).

Frog was getting on with some work for the summer holiday activities when Mary came over to him and said:

"Frog, I want to have a quick meeting with you and Bronwyn to see where we're up to with things."

"I thought you were on leave today?"

"I had Wednesday off so I thought I'd come in today
instead."

I can see us having fun with Mary's diary this summer.

Drip

Another day, another leaking roof, with water pouring down the walls again in Roadkill Library (one of our new builds). Maisie is relieved that this is a shared building and not our responsibility, we're just paying lodgers.

Altiphobia

Milkbeck Library needs a lick of anti-vandalism paint on a drainpipe to stop kids playing on the flat roof next door. Maisie tries to report this to the new building services service. It gets no better:

"They say it won't be this week as 'the bloke what goes up ladders is on leave.'"

Enthused

Enthusiastic young member of staff:

"I've managed to get Scaryworld to give us two free admission tickets as prizes for the summer competition."

Senior member of staff pretending to leadership:

"We usually ask the Parks Department for some Grazy Golf tickets."

Prospects

There's probably a good reason why the Reference Librarians have transferred copies of a 2003 Careers Directory into Lending Library stock.

I can't see it myself, though.

Amongst the milk bottles

I arrive at Spadespit Library.

One of the library assistants is sitting by the front door singing "Postman Pat" through the letterbox.

I have an uneasy feeling that this is officially sanctioned.

I move swiftly on.

I came here to read the unicorn's posterior and somebody stole me ladder

How to make your staff feel good about having gone away for a couple of days' training and earning a useful certificate of prowess.

Sybil's been and gone and completed a course. It's been the work of years: the course itself took three days but it took Policy Team fifteen years to move from "somebody should take this course" to "somebody will take this course," then another two to get to "please could we have volunteers to take this course" and six months to "the volunteer will go on this course." Unfortunately, the first senior manager she sees on her return is Mary.

"Hello Sybil. How was your course?"

"Really good, I really enjoyed it. There are a few things I need to do to follow things up. Do I need to talk to you or T.Aldous?"

"Oh, there's no need to do anything with it."

Millions of years of human evolution went into this

email from Catty Library:

Hi,

Printing isn't behaving itself. Sometimes it prints and sometimes it doesn't.

Thought you might want to know.

Paperchase II

Regular readers (care of Dobbiroids Horse Rejuvenators) will recall that we're now transporting all the waste paper from the far reaches of the empire back here for us to put into our one, single waste paper recycling bin. Maisie takes a call from Gypsy Lane.

"I've been away a few days and I've come back to find that somebody's been actively collecting newspapers to be sent down to Helminthdale Library for recycling. There's a big pile of the things. I know it's a major pain but is it OK for me to send them in on the van?"

"Hide them in a box and send it here marked for my attention," advises Maisie. "I'll sort it out when it arrives."

Every so often I have to go upstairs and look at the bookshelves just to remind myself we're providing a library service.

Planning ahead

Mary is now officially of pensionable age and has a bus pass to prove it. For the past year she's been dropping hints that she'd be jumping ship when the time came. And she has, indeed, been pretty semi-detached for the past eighteen months. A couple of weeks ago she finally announced that she would be retiring in a couple of months' time.

Frog's currently bogged down with preparations for the summer holidays including the dreaded Summer Reading Game (the game's a great idea but the administration overhead's always a ball-acher and there's always some issue about the accompanying web site). As a jolly add-on he's also having to prep an event this autumn for promoting one of The Reading Agency's programmes (I've lost track: I don't know if this is Book You, Book Off, Booked Up or Book This For A Game Of Soldiers). Mary, as is her wont, started wittering about this when she was holding court in the staff room.

"I don't know why you're worrying about it Mary," said Noreen. "It's not like you'll be here for it so you can wash your hands of it all."

"What do you mean?" asked Mary.

"Well, you'll have retired by then."

"Who said I'd have retired by then?" yelled Mary indignantly.

"You did. The other week."

"I may stay on until well past Christmas," stated Mary, sailing off in High Dudgeon (sulking for the use of).

Electrifying!

I made the mistake of asking a colleague how a new library build is going on.

"Before we can do anything a power cable and telegraph pole have to be moved. Npower say they can't dig the hole to move the cable as if they do the telegraph pole will fall over, BT say they can't dig their hole to move the pole for fear of digging into the power cable! "

I like bananas (because they have no bones)

Things can't be so bad when I get an email from a Branch Manager asking: "what are we doing for Love A Melon Day?"