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.

We've got two taps marked "Hot" and "Cold" but one of them's a liar

Well, that's a novelty. There's now a confidential waste bin in the gents' lavatory.

Rebellious as ever, I choose to employ the usual facilities.

By the way, how is your ping-pong?

Fun at Senebene Library. A lady comes in to use the toilet (according to the district auditors this is the primary function of a public library service). Lucy explains that the light's on a sensor and comes on automatically when somebody goes in.

"Oooh! I can't be doing with that! I'll have to leave the door open just in case."

Lucy manages to persuade the lady that the door needs to be pulled to, for modesty's sake. And for everybody else's sake too, judging by the five minutes of prolonged grunting and straining that follow.

Then the lady starts screaming. Lucy rushes to the door.

"Are you OK?" she asks.

"You think I'm crazy, don't you?"

"Not at all. I'm just worried that you might need help. Are you OK?"

"I am crazy, you know..."

The singing toilet bowl

Much tumult and noise from the ladies' toilets, and the library not even open yet.

Salome spotted Lippy heading that way, sneaked in, switched off the light and hid behind the stall door. As Lippy entered and switched on the light Salome jumped out and shouted "Boo!"

Cue hysteria, screams of "I'm a ghostie!" and five minutes' worth of rude posterior noises made with the mouth.

Neither of these ladies is going to be seeing their fortieth birthday again. I don't know what the young ones make of it.

There's never a labrador puppy when you really need one

Bronwyn's covering at Umpty today. There's been the usual trouble with vandals there lately so they have to keep the toilet doors locked and customers have to ask for the key. A little old lady asked for the key, which Bronwyn duly proffered.

After a while Bronwyn started to worry.

"Oh shit. She'll have forgotten and put the key in her pocket and wandered off and I don't know if there's a spare anywhere."

Unfortunately she was on her own and the library was busy so she couldn't nip over to investigate.

After a few minutes another little old lady wandered up to the counter.

"Excuse me, do you have any paper?"

"There's some scrap here if you're wanting to make a note of anything."

"No, I mean toilet paper."

"Toilet paper?"

"My friend's using your loo and she's just texted me to say there's no paper and please could I get her some."

Let's go and have tea in my chambers

Still no lights in the gent's lavatory. It makes life interesting. The Davy lamp that was in my old office has gone walkabout so we're still in the dark: we couldn't take in candles (ooh matron!) or, indeed, light our farts as this would trigger the over-sensitive fire alarm.

It wouldn't look good in the papers:

HELMINTHDALE SHOPPING CENTRE EVACUATED BECAUSE LIBRARIAN NEEDED A CRAP

Diapery of the Gods(ta Lavinia!)

I'm trying not to wonder why there's a paper recycling bin in the staff toilet.

I want my Dada

Some clown has decided to empty his bowels in the hand basin in the gents on the lending floor. At least, that's the story as we first heard it. Sybil explains to the staff room:

"A group of lads went into the gents and watched each other crapping in the sink. We didn't know they were in until they came out."

"We'll have to put a CCTV camera in there."

"Have you considered that it might have been a bit of performance art? We should have a webcam in there."

"Well, whatever it is, Seth's had to clean it up."

Let's hope the Catty Examiner doesn't get to hear about it. All Hell will break loose once they find out we've been at an important art installation with a bottle of Max Strength Bleach.

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.

Madame Rowley's Toilet Mask

A recent comment by Lavinia reminded me of something that happened here about six years ago. After thirty years of trying we'd finally been given the OK to close Tarpaulin Grove Library. No great loss: its monthly visitor count was just under the weekly count at Umpty, which wasn't exactly setting the world alight any at the time. Add to that the leaky roof, the drug den next door and a sudden five-figure cut in the staffing budget and the place was on the critical list. What finally did for it was the local councillor's becoming the leader of the opposition. The party in charge at the time saw their chance and ordered the library closed. Just like Helminthdale: the right result for all the very wrong reasons.

Clearing out the library was interesting. Not least because we found four gross of toilet rolls in the back work room.

It turned out that early in the nineties library staff were told that they would have to indent for toilet rolls for their libraries and that usage and supply were both being monitored for to save money. (Not that they actually needed to save any more money at the time but the Chief Librarian of the time came from Yorkshire and was regarded as tight-fisted even by the natives of that area.) The branch manager had indented for four toilet rolls and, after three days' worth of interrogation by telephone the order was duly permitted. Unfortunately, somebody slipped up and ordered four gross instead of four rolls.

Luckily, only use and supply were being monitored by the Chief Librarian, not expenditure, so all concerned decided that the wisest course of events was to pretend that four rolls were ordered and four were received. The rest was archaeology.

Po

A customer rushes to the lending enquiry desk.

"I think you need to go and have a look at what's going on in the children's library."

Maybelle went over to check it out. A lady had emptied all the picture books out of one of the kinderboxes and sat her child in there. Said child was emptying his bladder as Maybelle arrived.

"I'm potty-training him," explained the lady.

Still on the trail of the whistling mouse-nobbler

When Bronwyn cam down half an hour ago she was accompanied by a little old man who'd wandered into the lift as she set off. She sent it back up to the lending library floor. Thelma's just come down.

"There's an old man in the lift. I've just sent him up to lending."

Bronwyn decided to investigate. It turned out to be the same chap.

"Nay, lass, I'm in t'right place. I only nipped in to use the lavatory."

Does anybody want to see a tiny hedgehog?

Good news! The gentleman that keeps looking at porn on the PCs in the children's library won't be gracing our doors for quite some time. This will come as a huge relief to staff who keep having to keep an eye on him and keep having to abruptly terminate his computer sessions ("The filtering software seems to have closed the session down. We'll have to investigate this to see why it keeps doing it to you. What site were you on at the time, sir?")

We've been trying to ban him from using the PCs for years but T.Aldous requires degrees of forensic proof of delinquency that would defeat Batman. Fortunately, the shopping centre is private premises and it has banned him from the building after finding him indulging in inappropriate degrees of attentiveness in the public toilets by the coffee shop. Good job he chose those bogs to go-a-cruising rather than ours otherwise we'd still be servicing the bugger.

Sultans of swig

In the little boys' room, watering the petunias, I notice a sign on the ceiling of the men's toilets.

IF YOU CAN READ THIS
YOUR SHOES ARE WET

Apparently, it's from one of the books of Nostradamus.

The front of me sings tenor, the rest sings baritone

Some disquiet about the progress on the building works at Epiphany Library. Bronwyn and Doreen are uneasy about the disabled toilets as it seems that the only support given to a user trying to get up off the bog is the sink. It strikes them that this isn't entirely ideal.

The building project manager disagrees and proceeds to give them a demonstration.

"...now just suppose that I've soiled myself."

Brief encounter

There's a touch of scandal in the air in the lending library. A young couple sneaked into the "mother and baby" toilets (the one with the changing table) and stayed in there for fifteen minutes. Much tutting and similar all round.

Me, I was impressed by fifteen minutes in the circumstances. Other than that, so long as they left the premises as they would wish to find them I'd rather they were in there than in the carpark or the fire escape stairs.

"After all, everybody's had adolescent sexual experiences in a library, haven't they?"

Apparently not.

The return of the Bog Roll Fairy

Seth takes a 'phone call from Pansy at Gypsy Lane, wanting lavatory requisites.

"I'll put some bog rolls on the van for you," he says.

"No, we can't have bog rolls."

"Why not?"

"We've got one of those new disabled toilets and we're not allowed to use bog rolls with it. We've got to use antiseptic wipes."

If we can find enough nails to pegs the sheets onto we may well find a use for the paper we can't recycle after all.

The Bog Roll Fairy cometh

Bronwyn's back from the latest expedition to Epiphany Library. The library's closed while they put a new floor and walls in and T.Aldous wants it clearing out by the end of the week so that the building contractors can start promptly on Monday.

We had all thought that the place had been cleared out but this morning your man declared that Seth and Bronwyn had to nip over to retrieve all the kitchen and cleaning gear, with especial emphasis on spoons and Windolene. And so it was that they've spent the past couple of hours loading the library van with cardboard boxes full of old mop heads, Vim and paper towels. Then they had to jam in the vacuum cleaners, brushes and big-sticks-with-a-hook-on-the-end-for-opening-high-windows-with.

"Coming back from Epiphany we must have looked like the Clampetts," said Bronwyn.

A line has been drawn, though:

"I know he told us to bring back all the toilet rolls but I've left a couple behind," says Bronwyn. "The builders need to be able to go to the toilet. In fact, I feel a bit mean about this; if I'm still feeling guilty about it in a few weeks' time I'll pop in and leave a couple more. I'll be like the Toilet Roll Fairy."

Pillar to post

Having a look at the proposed plans for the refurbished Catty Library. The only new feature appears to be a new disabled toilet, replacing the staff room (which moves up into the attic, with the pigeons). Why no change in layout? The council's Heritage Planning Officer has forbidden any changes.

Service delivery in Helminthdale Council is always compromised by unnacountable Town Hall noddies.

If it were down to me we'd clear out completely, extend Carbootsale Library, which is ten minutes' walk down the Penkage Road, and have that as the main library for the Catty area. The Heritage Planning Officer could then have the old Catty Library as a late Xmas present.

A recently detonated circus

Raccoonville and Roadkill libraries are closing for a while at the end of the month. Raccoonville's the latest library to be getting a new toilet (they've had to shift half a ton of Dutch Bend Bystanders in preparation). Roadkill's moving to new premises next door.

I circulate an email telling staff about the closures and the arrangements we're making concerning due dates, reservations, etc. I get an emailed reply from Jim:

I didn't know about this. Then again, I am just a member of Policy Team. (-: