The Heft Of Cathedral Tunes

Talking of singing, I forgot to mention the new community singing sessions at Catty Library every Monday afternoon.

The more forward-thinking of our staff have suggested that they should start practicing for a performance of "Nearer My God," to be sung as the library slides under it's own weight into the local river.

Suspended animation

Bad news: the lift's stuck with someone in it.

Good news: Seth knows how to bring the lift down manually.

Bad news: it's Seth who's stuck in the lift.

Going down with all hands

The bad news is that Carbootsale Swimming Baths is to close due to council efficiencies.

The good news is that the community room at Catty Library is the length of an Olympic size swimming pool.

We just need to move the photocopier from the shallow end.

Mister Volta's dancing frogs

Milton's spent the morning wondering why Dutch Bend Library's electricity meter is his problem, in between finally getting through to the direct works department's emergency voicemail.

The good news is that the fuses that have blown only connect up all the public workstations and the communications box for the library so we can pretend that it's business as usual as far as the customers are concerned.

Sacre flippin' blue

More fun at Catty Library.

The building works which were designed to stop the front falling off has done the trick all right. So much so that the additional weight to the building is too much for the foundations in the cellar and the whole kit and caboodle is now starting to slide downhill.

A member of the Sealed Knot Society pitched into life-and-death struggle with a division of tanks

Kind friends have asked about the state of Helminthdale's libraries during the current unpleasantness. The truth of the matter is that by any objective measure the general lack of devastatingly bad news would be a good thing if we were not in the fantasy world of Helminthdale, where a lack of bad news generally means that it's being stacked up for the holiday season. The one cast-iron guaranteed for certain absolute truth available to us is that the council will not be closing any libraries.

The buildings that host some of our libraries are going to be closed, but that's another thing entirely...

Ovaltine was a blessing

Half the staff are just getting over the lurgi and the other half are knee-deep in cough drops. Even Lucy, who takes stoicism and self-denial to extreme lengths, has had to admit defeat and go home to a hot bath and industrial strength Covonia.

The effect on public service goes further than our struggling to staff the counters and presenting the service as a collection of red-cheeked shivering wrecks. A customer came into Gypsy Lane Library this afternoon and put her scarf and gloves right back on.

"Eee... It's cowd in here!" she said.

"Is it?" asked Pansy.

Pansy's been running such a high temperature that she hadn't realised that the heating had tripped off at half ten this morning.

You'll never marry that to the engine

Good news: the insurance company's engineer has braved the elements to check out that it's OK for us to be using the lift.

Bad news: he's broken the lift and doesn't know how to fix it. We'll have to get the maintenance engineer out to fix it and then charge the insurance company for the repair.

Seth has made it clear that we aren't to ask about the well-being of our no claims bonus.

This chemical has been shown to cause sarcasm in mice

Verity is in lumber. The shutters to the main door at Roadkill Library wouldn't open so they've had to open them manually. The problem is that they don't close manually so unless it's fixed by close of play she'll either have to leave the place wide open (the door doesn't lock if the shutter mechanism isn't engaged) or else camp out in the library overnight. She followed the set procedure and reported the repair to Maisie who then reported it to Building Services. Verity then tried to contact Julia, who's in charge of that library, inter alia. Julia was in a meeting. Over the next twenty minutes, which tells you more than you want to know about our telephone systems, interpersonal communications and practical application of knowledge management techniques, Verity spoke to Doreen, Milton, Sybil and Noreen to try to get the budget codes necessary to authorise the repairs. (Sybil and Noreen don't have access to the budget codes but at least they will answer the 'phone.)

A couple of hours later, Julia decides to give Verity a dressing down.

"You shouldn't have done anything until you'd spoken to me," says Julia.

"I rang and you were in a meeting. So I sent you an email marked urgent explaining what had happened so that you'd be able to pick it up when you got out of your meeting," explained Verity.

"I went straight from that meeting into another one."

"I know. Then when I rang you for the third time you were on your way over to Dutch Bend. So I asked Milton if he could sort things out because we were getting a bit worried about it."

"You'll never be able to get an electrician at this time in the afternoon."

"He's here at the moment. Do you want a word with him?" asked Verity.

Cast he that is stoned without sin

The good thing about having a mezzanine floor to a library is that a customer can be sick over the parapet and have it land on one of his mates as he walks down the stairs.

Height restrictions apply

As I mentioned the other day, the first and foremost priority for the library service is the number of visitors a-coming through the doors.

Time was we'd employ small youths and pensioners to sit by the teapot for a week making five-, six- and nine- barred gates to record the number of people that might have come in when they were talking to a friend who'd popped in to return their library book. These days we're much more scientific, with the white-hot heat of technology employed to record our visitors with pinpoint accuracy.

Roadkill Library is next door to a children's centre with a busy day nursery and a couple of doors down from a primary school. It's the sort of area where the children get by as best they can during the day (what we used to call 'latchkey children'), using the library as a refuge and stopping place where they can read a book or play on the computers or generally just do what small children are wont to do.

So the device that records the visitors at Roadkill Library doesn't record anybody less than five feet tall...

There's enough there for a potato each

Another day another gaggle of superannuated yahoos traipsing through the office brandishing tape measures.

It turns out that this group is doing an audit of the council's storage space. I suppose it's lucky that we'd just received this month's meagre ration of new books plus another batch of "Book Off" books for to be distributed around the schools of the borough.

If you learn nothing else today, learn this: if you ever go backstage at a bookshop or a printer's or a library, don't say: "Ooh, what a lot of books!"

And whatever you do, don't say: "I'd be spending all my time reading the books!" You won't be getting the response you'd get from the publican you accused of drinking all their stock, but you won't be expecting it!

Time and motion

There's no money about.

Which is why the council's been installing energy-saving motion sensors in Tench Road Community School so that the lights go out when nobody's in the building.

The school is going to be demolished next Easter when the new library building's commissioned.

Twilight in the tropics

The new energy-saving motion sensors in Noddy Library are a huge success. A huge success. Every so often there'll be a shriek in the reading room when the lights go out on some unwary reader.

Make a juggler drop his clubs

We thought it was the air-conditioning.

It turned out to be a beefburger in a box in the staff room.

A million and one maybes

That's depressing: travelling through a neighbouring borough to a meeting we pass what used to be a nice little community library. It's now a "Prime Regeneration Site."

Helpfully, the road sign still says "Library."

Undetectable in normal everyday use

The staff gents' toilet hasn't had a working extractor fan for the past fourteen years. With the current round of cuts and austerity measures it's unlikely that it's going to be fixed any time soon.

Even the cleanest bathroom hangs onto its devils, which is how we've discovered that the combination of Glade Fresh and Glade Apple & Cinnamon sprayed in a 2:1 ratio creates exactly the smell of Bazooka Joe bubble gum.

We are investigating the possibilities of tapping into the nostalgia wave as an income generator.

Nature red in tooth and carpets

For the second year running, peregrine falcons have successfully nested on the old Town hall at Umpty.

"That's splendid news!" said Frog to the Countryside Officer.

It's not so splendid when you get half a pigeon dropped on your head as you're clocking in for work."

Cloud computing

There's no money about. The architects are presenting the new Town Hall at Umpty, which will also be housing the council's IT Section. All goes well until someone from the IT Section puts his hand up.

"Where are the servers going?"

Yup. There's no room at the inn for the council's IT infrastructure.

Plan B now involves a loft conversion.

Solstice

Ah well...

At least we know the heating still works in this building.