The year in pieces

I'm not re-animating this blog. This is a coda or end-piece, or codpiece if you will, to explain why I feel that we have come to a close.

The world of Helminthdale Libraries is become a darker, more savage one than the one I had been chronicling. To be sure, there was always that cruel feral streak of the girls' playground about the place and there were always too many smiling assassins but things have grown appreciably worse as Call Me Dave's austerity measures have hit what was already a basket case of a local economy.

I was having a drink at Bronwyn's leaving do — the latest of many and only the last of this year's — and it was depressing to realise looking around that nearly all the people in the room were historical footnotes, at best, as far as the Library Service was concerned. Including myself.

And the real bloodbath has hardly started: next year, although no libraries are closing there'll be a major cull of front-line staff, books and other resources. Caretaking is already a thing of the past so God alone knows how the buildings will be staying open, what with hardly anyone to staff them and roofs held on with sticky-backed plastic.

For all his many and various faults it's hard to escape the nagging confirmation that the idiot T.Aldous presided over a Golden Age. Sadly, so much of the managed change that could have eased the pain of the new horrors, or even forestalled some of them, were blocked as efficiently and ruthlessly as were all the other grim realities of the new millennium.

But that's all history now.

I can't really bring myself to write about what's happening here. I'd feel like a hospital orderly describing the last days of a dying vagrant. And I'm not up for that.

It's been a great ride and it's given me the opportunity to chat with some lovely people. May Providence look after you. Thank you and goodnight.

I think I'll go home now.

Forever is composed of now

Yet another meeting where librarians tell me that they're too busy to put information on the web.

"It's easier if more than one of you are doing the job," I explain again, "that way you can divvy it up into more manageable workloads."

"But how will we know who's doing which bit?"

"if that's a problem you could always divide the work up thematically."

"That won't do: some themes overlap and some won't fit into the themes."

"Is it really that much of a problem?" I ask.

"The problem is that we won't know if somebody else has already done the job."

And there, ladies and gentlemen, is as clear a statement as to how we got up shit creek as you are likely to read.

Ever notice that 'what the hell' is always the right decision

A sign of the times: Maisie, who is one of the gentlest of creatures, has been on the warpath this week because Jack Harry and Milton did some clever last-minute ordering and then made themselves scarce when the time came to authorise the payments. I take a 'phone call from her:

"Are they in?" she asks.

"No," I reply, "can I help?"

"No, it's about that frigging, frigging, frigging, frigging, frigging invoice."

Vernalities

You can always tell the approach of the end of the financial year as all the managers disappear like the last of winter's bramblings.

Consequently, there's nobody around to countersign any of the invoice slips for the as-per-bloody-usual last-minute spendings. And nobody to authorise the orders in the first place.

The good news is that this means that the year end process is a doddle because they say so and have never seen any proof to the contrary.

And to be fair, it mostly is. Because they're not involved.

Spirit messages

I get a 'phone call from Milkbeck Library:

"I'm calling on behalf of the volunteer who's doing the family history session. He can't get any of the People's Network PCs to log onto the network."

Two points here: the person ringing was the member of staff responsible for that day's running of the library, including providing access to the Internet for the public; and it's their job to have logged those PCs on at start of play,

Sigh...

Infinite similarity

I really am sick and tired of this fucking place.

Trips around the lighthouse

It's going to be an interesting week. Julia's demob happy as it's her last working week before taking the remainder of her annual leave then early retirement. Her resentment at feeling that she was not wanted on voyage is more than tempered by the relief she's feeling now she's had sight of the iceberg.

Most of the rest of the nonsense is ladies sharpening their elbows.

I'll have a P please, Bob

Today's word is Logorrhoea. Logorrhoea.

Milton has just spent 82 minutes of a meeting saying: "I'm not bovvered."

The crew shot an albatross for luck

Jack Harry has asked Posy to put together some project proposals for some funding he'll decide we can't get anyway so he won't bother. Posy, being young and still almost enthusiastic at times despite everything, has put in a load of work to do the necessary.

"Here you are," she says as she hands the work over to Jack Harry. "But I'm sure I've forgotten something important."

"I shouldn't worry about it," says Jack Harry, "I probably won't read it anyway."

The anesthetizing security of being identified with the majority

Posy's just been dealing with a customer who's a distance learner doing her degree online. Posy, who's fresh out of library school, told her about a lot of the free academic library resources you can find on the web; talked her through signing up for a few free e-journals; and sent her away with a spring in her step.

So of course somebody has to take her to one side to tell her that she "pitched that too high."

I despair.

There are parts of this service that imagine that every enquiry can be answered with:

• "It's on that shelf over there."
• "There's a PC over there, you can look it up on Google."

or

• "Not today, thank you."

Damsels of the octagonal stool

"How's things?" I ask Daisy Duck.

"I haven't actually killed anybody yet," she replies. Quietly.

She says it like this is a good thing.

An undisciplined impersonation of Edmundo Ros

"I'm going to have to be more careful," says Bronwyn. "I'm going to be done for insolence."

Ordinarily this would be laughable but these aren't ordinary times. This week, Bronwyn's body language is far more eloquent, and a damned sight ruder, than anything I could ever say.

Imaginary numbers

I am chatting with a colleague from another place about another subject when we get to comparing cuts in the book fund.

"We're getting a cut of £400,000," he tells me.

"Ouch," I winced. "Mind you, you'd done well to have had that big a book fund after all that business last year."

"Oh, we haven't. The book fund budget's now -£120,000. But the accountants are happy and that's the main thing isn't it?"

It makes you wonder what the enemy clothes horses were like

I bump into Ken Barmy, who is throwing pineapples at a lamppost in Market Street. He is in a bate.

"You'll never believe the latest proposal," he says.

Given that everyone I'm speaking to these days have either been sent letters asking if they want to take voluntary redundancy; letters telling them that they are at risk of redundancy; letters telling them that they are being made redundant; or all of the above, I shudder to think.

"We're going to Hell in a handcart. They're cutting staff and services and threatening to sell us down the river to a bad master. And all the while our library managers having been wringing their hands and telling us that nothing can be done, but take heart! because they have made sure that the power of the library service strategy stays in their hands.

"And do you know what the end product of a year's high-powered heavy-breathing strategic thinking turns out to be? Do you?"

I confessed I didn't.

"They're going to slap a lick of paint on the fucking wall and change the fucking name of the main fucking library. That's what."

"You don't sound impressed, Ken," I ventured.

"I am sore vexed," he admitted.

The public library service is safe in the hands of people who went to library school.

Fairies beware: this year you may be strung up by the Cherokees

You can always tell it's coming up to Xmas because Kitty and Norma start scrapping like Kilkenny cats. This time they're fighting over whose posters get put up on the noticeboard.

It's good to keep a sense of perspective.

Yesterday's lozenge

Frog is not unduly impressed.

The week before the half-term holiday he sent a set of children's activity sheets and posters to every library in the borough. And as per usual the set that went upstairs to the lending library went straight into the office and have remained there all week.

He confronted the lending library's librarians about it.

"Oh well. Maybelle's been on leave most of this week," they said. "She should have done it when she was in on Tuesday."

I've suggested that come Xmas he doesn't bother sending anything upstairs and that he should wait and see if they bleat about it.

The part of The British Library was played by Norman Shelley and not Shirley Bassey as advertised

"You seem to have a difficult relationship with your management team," says a passing stranger.

It isn't difficult at all. It's rather easy really: they think I'm a gobshite and I think they're irresponsible idiots.

Lurching to its breathless conclusion on page 19 just under the corset adverts

I bump into Ken Barmy, having his socks darned at the milk bar in Hannigan's Truss Boutique. We swap the usual tales of disaster.

"The contempt and hatred that our library managers have for our library staff is only matched by the contempt and hatred that our library staff have for our library managers," he tells me.

All in this together...

The international language of cramp

The only thing more dispiriting than having your managers refuse to communicate with you is having one of them actually answer a question that you have asked...

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.