I used to be a babysitter but there's not much call for squashed babies these days

The people counter dash takes me to Noddy, first of four stops for the day. It doesn't go well. To begin with, the equipment for transferring the data from the counter to the staff PC, where it is turned into a useful spreadsheet, is missing. No big deal, the kit was installed in the midst of last autumn's mad extravaganza and like as not has been tidied away somewhere fatal. Happens all the time: the way things drag on around here it's a constant wonder that we ever find anything. As it happened I had another library's kit on me so's I could demonstrate how to do the monthly count. It goes downhill from here...

"Isn't it wireless? What's the point of that? I may as well just make a note of the number on the counter."

is the opening conversational gambit. I tried to explain that the data is a lot more detailed than that and tried to demonstrate this by downloading the data and opening the spreadsheet. My audience wasn't with me. I'm used to having to break off things like this so that staff can deal with customers -- we have to have our priorities right -- but I started to lose patience when the staff clutsered at one end of the counter while I was stood at the other end.

"Have I finished here?"

"Yes, you've finished."

I don't know what I've done to warrant all this, I'm just the guy who's had this dumped on him at the last minute and is wasting time he's not got trying to demonstrate something that's actually extremely important to them. Whatever.

As I'm packing up the caretaker starts up:

"They keep saying they've got no money but they can find it to waste on things like that."

I explain that as she knows fine well there's more goes on in the library than just the issuing of books and it's important that we can demonstrate that the library's earning its keep.

"It's just so that the council can economise isn't it? How come my council tax has gone up so much this year?"

Perhaps because people like you don't like the idea of the council economising love. Like an idiot I try to explain that the Rate Support Grant's not clever to begin with and that the government keeps foisting new services and targets on councils without providing the money to cover them; and that Helminthdale in particular is bad at performance monitoring and so misses out on some additional funding.

"Are you saying that some councils down south get more money than Helminthdale?"

"Yes."

"It snows in Dorset you know. You can't beat me in an argument. You can't win."

"I don't give a stuff. I don't have to win anything. You asked me a question, I gave you an answer."

At which point it occurred to me to wonder what the Hell I thought I was doing wasting my time standing at a public counter having this conversation. Irritated beyond measure and filled with self-disgust at the whole waste of time that was this visit I made my exit.

Gug nunc

A worrying conversation with a supplier prompts this correspondence:

4:32pm 6th March 2006

Hi Arthur,
You know those online reference subscriptions that I had to select and cost for you to order at the last minute the other week? Were they actually ordered?
Kevin


10:25 07 March 2006

Hi Kevin,

No, but they could be tomorrow if we still have the funding.

Arthur

I suppose it's better than "next week," but tomorrow never comes.

Restless legs

Yet another last-minute dash: this time to fit electronic people counters in all our libraries by 1st April. The equipment was fitted in most libraries at Xmas, I'm now running round to install the software that downloads the data and converts it into useful spreadsheets. The kit works on an electric beam: it counts the number of interruptions then divides the result by four (a two-legged person going in and coming out). T.Aldous told everyone who would listen, and many who had no such intention, that someone walking past with a ladder would count as a dozen people. The Chief Executive told Warner Baxter that he needs to schedule regular inspections of the ceiling and lights in all our libraries.

I've just downloaded the data for Epiphany Library. Epiphany is halfway between Helminthdale town centre and the head of the u-shaped glacial valley that forms the eastern end of the Borough. The library building sits on the main road into town forming a sort of protecting barrier between the local shopping centre and a four-lane highway. The bleak winds off the Pennines are funnelled down the valley and pick up speed down the road before hitting Epiphany admidships. Being built by an Helminthdale Council architect, the leeward side of the library is made of solid brick and the windward side is glass and steel struts. In the merest breeze the building shivers like a cat stalking a bird. In any sort of a wind the whole place hums like a glass harmonica. This has obviously influenced the results of the people counter: according to the results the library was at its busiest just after midnight last Friday when 64,000 visitors came in during the howling gail and hailstorm they had that night.

"We'll have to find some way of stopping the people counter from wobbling about," I'm told. Me, I can't see any problem: that's one public library standard sorted.

Any news of the iceberg?

It always amazes me what people will get away with in the name of charity. This story is wrong on so many levels it's delightful...

Frog Dropmore is chair of the local chapter of the RNLI. In the event of emergency it would have to be a damned powerful distress flare: we're forty miles from the sea.

The Dutch Bend Players are an amateur dramatic group that does a lot of charity matinees. This weekend they're doing "Titanic: The Musical." Frog's persuaded them to have a charity collection for the RNLI during the interval.

Déjà vu all over again

Human Resources ring me up again to ask why Jimmy Huddersfield hasn't sent in his sickness returns. I tell them again that Jimmy retired lo, these many moons ago.

The Wheel of Life sure turns quick around these parts!

Florence Nightingale should live this day

More PCs arrive. Seth and I feel duty bound to leave one toilet stall free so we commandeer the sick room and pile the boxes in there. Thus killing two birds with one stone. For some reason (i.e. Reggie Clockwatcher was the project manager when the library was built) the sick room had a sink unit fitted in where a camp bed or something should have gone. So for the last thirteen years, if you were taken ill you either lay down at your station or else went into the sick room and had a lie down in the sink. Relief at last: Seth has arranged the boxes such that the invalid just needs a leg up and they can have a nice lie down, the layers of cardboard boxes and styrofoam padding providing comfort scarcely exceeded by a goose feather bed.

Oh calamity

The only thing that's been keeping some staff going has been the thought that T.Aldous has been dropping hints for ages that he'll retire when he reaches 60 in May. (The older generation, they don't know they're born: free school milk; student grants; old age pensions...)

Their (probably entirely illusory) hopes have come crashing down. Lemuel the caretaker asked out right and was told that much though he'd love to, T.Aldous doesn't feel it's right to retire in May as "there's so much to do."

Block

One reason why staff in this library have so much leave to take before the end of the financial year is that the Group Librarian blocked all leave in October as her new granddaughter was due that month and she wasn't sure which days she'd be taking off for to join the happy family.

Frog suggests that this is not unrelated to the reason why the Saturday worked by the Group Librarian has 11 members of staff available and the Saturday worked by Frog and Lola has six.

Things to do when waking up screaming in the night is not enough

No matter where Hetty moves the PCs at Catty the leaks in the roof follow like ants at a picnic. One of the lads from PC Support went over and between them they've jerry-rigged a sort-of-working set up. An utter credit to their ingenuity and bloody-mindedness they've got the enquiry desk set up: a replacement PC on a sideboard under the staircase.

It's a brilliant set-up in the circumstances but I've still insisted that if anyone's standing in a puddle they're not using any electrical equipment.

This derelict shed is the one that the council's conservation officer insists can't have a wireless network connection.

The stuff that dreams are made on

Tench Road and Dutch Bend are closed for refurbishments and their staff are available to help provide cover at other libraries. Which is why we've got one member of staff on the counter in the main library at Helminthdale.

The reason? Staffing's been so tight over the past year that people haven't been able to take leave so they're trying to catch up with it. Sheesh.

Live from the bathysphere

Today's leak at Catty Library has taken out the entire enquiry desk including the PC and printer. Unfortunately, this PC is the one running the booking system for the People's Network. Hetty Bowling tried her damnedest but even she had to concede defeat when she realised that she was trying to reboot a PC whilst standing in three inches of water. Ctrl-Alt-Del caused a fine spray of water!

A northener surveys his roots

It's disheartening to find that toilets feature so heavily in my nice little blog on public library automation.

I begin to see where the Audit Commission inspectors' obsession with the subject arises.

Corks!

It wouldn't do to be caught short in Helminthdale Library. The PCs have arrived and I've run out of room in my office. We've had to commandeer one of the stalls in the lavatory and store them there.

All we need now is a dysentry outbreak.

Three thousand burning joss sticks sing "Happy Birthday" to Queen Juliana of the Netherlands

T. Aldous approaches Lola Ptitsa, our sole remaining librarian in half the Borough, doing two and a half librarians' work in half a week and fresh back from long-term sick due to stress.

"What are all these books on your desk?"

"I'm supposed to be checking them to see if they need replacing or transferring."

"Can you get them done today?"

"No. I'm on the enquiry desk all morning and then I've got next week's timetables to sort out and I'm supposed to be shortlisting for the Saturday cadets' posts."

"Well get them cleared quickly, they're in the way."

Says the man who commandeers the training room whenever he's got paperwork to do because his office is like Krakatoa.

All the little birds go whistle and tweet

No comment...

11.05am 21st Feb 06

Arthur,
Does today's conversation mean that the ten grand for reference subscriptions is now available to spend too?
Kevin


1312 21 February 2006

Kevin,
Is that the management system software?
Arthur


1:16pm 21 Feb 06

No. If you remember, it's the money for online subscriptions that I was begging for the other week when I was trying to take advantage of the MLA's negotitated price for Oxford Online.
Kevin


1003 22 February 2006

Oh yes. My apologies. I'd put that up as a budget saving. If you still want to use it you'll need to get the orders in today.
Arthur


10:21am 22 Feb 06

It's a tall order. I'll get the details of the stuff we need to you a.s.a.p.
Kevin


1137 22 February 2006

Cheers Kevin.
Does Warner Baxter know about all this from your point of view?
Arthur


11:37 22 Feb 06

Not yet but he will.


1145 22 February 2006

Thanks Kevin
Arthur

Twang

'Phone call from Arthur Sixpence, of blessed memory:

"Do you still want that software you asked for the money for last year?"

YES!!!!!!!! Dammit.

"Can you get me the details. I need to order it this week."

I obtain the fifth quote and sixth order form for him and hope for the best.

Every day's a re-run and the laughter's always canned

Like the turds returning on the tide at Brighton the paperwork for those damned PCs comes back to haunt me. I can't blame T.Aldous (except perhaps for his lousy timing in deciding to try and order any computer kit this time of the financial year). The poor sod spent two working days getting the run around from assorted bods last week. The upshot is that we (I) have to fill in a new form and -- get this! -- supply layout plans for the PCs on order.

I can just about understand the need for plans for installing PCs onto the network; at the project phase not the ordering phase. Why the hell we have to supply plans for stand alone PCs I do not know. By this stage I'd filled in eighteen three-page forms and was mightily hacked off with the whole gig. I drew detailed floor plans of the libraries involved and added the label: "this Pc to go wherever we feel like in this library."

The idyll passes

Have crept in early in the hopes of getting my head around the "to-do" list before it all starts going ape. To let myself in lightly I treated myself to a quick browse of the incoming non-fiction waiting to be catalogued by my non-existant deputy. I pick up a copy of "Sexual Signs," which turns out to be a British Sign Language manual. No imagination necessary: the sign for "penis" appears to be vaguely boastful; that for "vagina" quite disconcerting (perhaps that's the romantic in me).

And to think there were comments when I bought that book of football jokes for some of our branch libraries!

Doomed

Happy holiday...

Just had a 'phone call from T.Aldous. The call was to find out what type of PC we should be buying. On the requisition form I'd specified a desktop. T.Aldous had checked with Pookie Schnakenberger in IT to get the price and he was told:

It's the wrong form, we don't use this one any more.

You have to supply plans showing the precise positions of the PCs in the libraries.

You can't have desktops, only towers.

My response was:

I spent half an hour searching the intranet for a more up-to-date form without success. That's primarily because since 1999 the search facility has been "coming soon." That's the work of the guys who reckon that we should let them create the web interface to the library catalogue and not buy something in that's working in over a hundred libraries across the world.

To be fair to T.Aldous, he doesn't give a monkey's what form we use. Such is the animosity between him and Pookie that he'd be happy for the requisition to be written on bog paper, wrapped around a brick and lobbed through her window.

Conkers. T.Aldous agreed.

The desktops have a smaller footprint: the screens can sit on the processor, they can't on a tower. T.Aldous seized upon this with some glee and rang off.

I've managed to keep my telephone number a secret from him for seven years; he's somehow managed to wheedle it from somebody. Sigh...

When Alexander the Great was my age he'd been dead twelve years

Escape at last. The last lot of ersatz alarums and excursions involved performance indicators. Earlier this week I'd made the mistake of noticing that we'd actually achieved a public library standard. This set T.Aldous and Mary to the task of debunking the figures so as to prove that the services we provide aren't any good. For the fourth time in two days I find myself explaining: "those figures are the number of items added to stock this financial year and these figures are the number paid for out of this year's funds. Bear in mind that we spent two weeks in April desperately trying to spend up last year's book fund because you put the blocks on any spending the previous summer because you wanted 'to review the way we're targetting our stock buying.'"

Key to this is a fundamental gulf in the mindsets of myself and my managers. I will quite cheerfully tell any man and his dog just how bad we are organisationally while marvelling at the daily miracle of our not just getting the doors open but also providing a wide range of surprisingly well-delivered services to an unsuspecting public. My managers will tell anybody who'll listen — and many who won't — how bad our services are whilst claiming it's all somebody else's fault and nothing to do with the fact that they won't spend the money we're given and won't fill vacancies.

In the dark hours of the night I'm haunted by the thought that perhaps there is a management strategy in play in the library service after all. And its keystone is a scorched earth policy.

Eeek!

Utter shock!

For the first time in I don't know how long the telephone rings. It's an old dear wanting the housing office at Bencup.

I should have thrown the bloody thing at T.Aldous after all.

A mayfly dreams of eternity

It's my turn now. I'm having the next few days off so I'm desperately trying to get the urgents tied up before I go home. So at three o'clock T.Aldous trolls up and demands that I put together the requisitions for the fifteen extra PCs we need to meet the public library standard as a matter of urgency. This has been too-ing and fro-ing for about eight weeks now; I've provided the same list of suggestions three times; and I'm fed up of listening to the same old waffle over and over again. Now it's a matter of urgency.

To compound the felony, he spends the next hour popping his head round the door with sundry inanities just to make sure I can't concentrate on the job to hand. Three times he comes in to tell me exactly the same story, word for word, demonstrating the stupidity of the person he spoke to in the IT section about these PCs. When it isn't that one it's the story about the central heating at Dutch Bend and the architect's concerns that rodents may make nests in the pipework. At the best of times I wouldn't be best interested in potential vermin in the imaginations of the Borough's architects department. At present, it's all I can do not to throw the damned 'phone at him.

As much fun as you can have without actually being sick

Enter Lemuel the caretaker in high dudgeon. He's spent all morning dismantling and packing up trestle tables upstair in the community room. Then T.Aldous comes along and tells him that half of them are needed for some event this afternoon at 2pm. T.Aldous comes along and tells him at half-past one, while Lemuel's having his lunch.

My, how he laughed.

The bag meows

I get a 'phone call from a colleague in IT. "I've got a councillor on the 'phone trying to ring Warner Baxter." ...the telephone system's no better... "He wants to get more details on the closure of Raccoonville Library. Who should he be speaking to?"

I take the call and drag T.Aldous away from his latest inability to cope with his email to talk to the councillor. Judiciously, I claim that I don't know what he wants to talk to T.Aldous about.

Raccoonville! I must dig out my tin hat.

Logic

Lola Ptitsa, our sole remaining librarian in half the Borough is back from long-term sick. At half nine, Human Resources rang up to ask why she hadn't submitted her staff's sickness monitoring forms for the past nine weeks. "I've been off sick," she sighed. "You might have noticed my name on Julia's sickness monitoring forms."

Going nowhere real slow

Still internal-only calls on the telephones, which is a major pain in the arse when your working day is dominated by trying to sort out problems in twenty libraries without the permissions to proxy into their PCs and do it myself.

The utter awfulness of the situation is only compounded by the arrival of the new telephones. "We had a problem with the telephones that were first supplied so we have been provided with these higher specification models at no extra cost," says the Chief Executive's global email. First order of the day is how to turn off the sodding loudspeaker so that the whole library doesn't hear every conversation in glorious megaphone. ("Hello Mr. Smedley, this is the clap clinic about your appointment.")

Being technically-minded (i.e. by pure dumb luck) I work out how to do it at the fifth attempt. We then spend half an hour trying to repeat the success on the Acquisitions Team's 'phone. Only to find out that my particular solution doesn't work because they found out how to stop their 'phone ringing any time any other 'phone on the floor rang. A solution was found. We're now wondering how to stop it picking up T.Aldous' 'phone if he doesn't answer on the third ring.

Detail of Painting by An Unknown Artist Depicting Unconditional Surrender at the Battle of Helminthdale

Well, good on T.Aldous! We're no nearer getting Arthur Sixpence to let us near the money we've been allocated for buying online resources and the deadline for the MLA's first national offer is breathing down our necks. Faced with missing out yet again and having to put up with more snide comments from the Audit Commission, not to mention staff and customers, T. Aldous has played a blinder and has managed to persuade the accountants to let us use some of another capital budget for this purpose.

The trick now is to take advantage of this offer without letting Arthur off the hook (I'm damned if he's getting away with hanging onto that money without a fight).

The Order of the Lack of Vivid Imagination

For some reason, Human Resources take it on themselves to ring me up to find out why Jimmy Huddersfield hasn't sent in his staff sickness returns. I tell them that I've lost track how long Jimmy's been retired and ask why nobody had run up to ask why Mary had been including his staff in her monitoring returns lo these many months. Helminthdale Council's got one of the worst staff sickness records in the country. If Human Resources are always as on the ball as this I'm not bloody surprised.

Incommunicado

Helminthdale's now got a new telephone system and as bad luck would have it Helminthdale Library's included in the system. The immediate consequence is that no external callers can get through to the council. The public ring us up, the 'phone apparently rings, and rings... and rings... but the person on the receiving end hears nothing. Brilliant.

Thud

There are times when I'm really sorry for T.Aldous. He's just had a 'phone call from Land & Properties to tell him that they've decided to replace the heating system in Catty Library at the beginning of March so he'll need to close the library for a few weeks.

How the hell can you run a service like this? Dutch Bend was scheduled to be closed for a new roof at the turn of the year and it hasn't happened. We got three week's notice to close Tench Lane and now barely a month's notice of this one. We never know how many of our libraries are going to be open next month, let alone next year. Plays hob with service planning.

Still, it's good for the cardboard box and packing tape industries.

Nod

Not just me: just had lunch with a friend who tells me another story about Arthur Sixpence...

He's involved in a big project my friend's responsible for. Things were getting sticky and unpleasant so my friend needed to talk to Arthur in the hopes that he might actually do something he'd been assigned to do about nine months previously. Eventually the shit hit the fan and Arthur rang my friend:

"We need to have a meeting."

My friend dutifully toddles along, thinking dark thoughts along the lines of "about bloody time, too." He sits down.

"What's the problem?"

asks Arthur. My friend starts explaining the general situation, working from notes to make sure he's not forgotten anything. Two minutes into this he turns to Arthur and asks a question. No answer.

Arthur was fast asleep.

Any colour so long as it's green

I've been trying to avoid getting involved in the decor for the new library at Noddy and the children's library in Milkbeck. I'm cornered by T.Aldous as I sneak past the photocopier. Carpets. He wants me to disagree with the choice of the staff at Noddy (which is easy: browny-puce. Blech!) I refuse to volunteer an alternative because

1. The staff at Noddy are going to be the ones working in there.


2. They'd crucify me.

I wriggle like a worm on a hook but I will not suggest sea green. Just at the point where I am weakening I've saved by a telephone call. I've no idea why I'm inflicted with this particular problem but this time I'm grateful:

"Can you come up and bring the caretaker with you?"

"Why? What's happening?"

"A lad's been sick in the reference library again."

"Again? What's going on up there? This is the second lad who's been sick this lunchtime."

"Oh no, it's the same lad. He enjoyed the experience so much the first time that he came back to do it again."

It was hell in the jungle. Couldn't get the custard.

It's been a brave cultural experiment, but I think Helminthdale's demonstrated that you can't run a local authority along the lines of the Dada Manifesto.

The first cuckoo of spring

A bloke from the Residents' Association popped into Panama Street Library this morning and told them that they're going to be closed. This is an annual event: every year the council decides it's going to close a few libraries. Every year Panama Street is in the frame. This guy's popping in to tell them is one of the signs and portents of spring, like snowdrops and singing wood pigeons.

Every year the black spot is flaunted. Every year everyone gets up in arms. The service is put into stasis — no development is allowed "because it might close this year." Senior management gets tied up in meetings with community groups, councillors, Uncle Tom Cobley and all to justify a decision that's been made on the back of an envelope by a director or a cabinet member. There'll be the usual press campaigns. Staff will be disrupted. Customers will be disrupted. Trade will be disrupted.

Then, four months later, nothing will happen.

Why put off today something that you can put off again tomorrow?

The MLA has negotiated a national offer for some key online resources, making them as affordable to us as they are desirable. We have the money. We want to buy them. Unfortunately, that particular budget, too, is controlled by Arthur Sixpence. A week to the deadline and I'm being stonewalled on this one as well:

"Kevin,
This will be coming up in discussion next week. I'll get back to you.
Arthur."

At least the bugger's consistent.

Patience

Just spent half an hour dealing with a customer (it turned out I was the senior member of staff at the time). "I've told him and told him, but he won't take no for an answer," explains Vera, sotto voce. This guy lost his mobile 'phone some time last week and wanted to go through the security camera tapes to see if he dropped it in the library either on Monday when he was in for a couple of hours or else Wednesday when he was in all morning. I explain at length that he's not seeing the tape, adding that under Data Protection regulations we would be criminally liable if we were to let him see the tapes as that would be infringing the statutory rights of the other people in the library. And besides which, as a matter of principle he's not. Seth the caretaker joins me and eventually we get him to agree that Seth will check the tapes and let him know if he spots anything.

"Well, I suppose. But I don't know why you won't let me look at the tapes."

I don't tell him it's because it's a dummy camera put there by Reggie Clockwatcher.

Keep on washing those hands, folks!

Helminthdale Children's Library sends a book back to Frog because "it's faulty and needs replacing." Apparently, a customer complained because an illiterate troll who makes an appearance in the story says: "Dis am a really nice cave!" Which is not proper English so the book needs replacing...

Gallows humour

For some reason a couple of people were doing impersonations of Hutch in the staff room this lunchtime. It occurs to me that this might be a reason why our categories for pop & rock CDs are:

• Pop Group
• Pop Instrumental
• Pop Singer

(If you insist on pretending you're too young to remember him, have a look at http://www.tales.ndirect.co.uk/HUTCH2.HTML but do remember to come back.)

Somebody tells me a story: T. Aldous is packing his car in Tesco's car park when he spots an old lady struggling with a pile of carrier bags.

"Can you manage?"

He shouts. She turns to him in scorn and replies:

"Sod off. You made the mess you can sort it out."

Pedestrian cross

The gas board is digging up Milkbeck Road so it's closed for the next six months. I don't know why they don't just pedestrianise it: it's been closed for six months while utilities dig holes three times in the past two years. Bit of a nuisance as this is the main road into Helminthdale. Traffic gets twenty yards away from High Street — which has the Town Hall, the bus station and the car park for the shops — and then gets funnelled down Maisie Avenue, round the back of Dishevelled Lane and thence onto the bottom of Catty Road. In order to reinforce the council's commitment to healthy living and meeting carbon targets, the council has switched off all the pedestrian crossings on Maisie Avenue so as make the traffic flow the easier.

Holy socks Batman!

There's always someone worse off than yourself. The Leisure Trust has just been renamed Sports, Parks & Leisure Action Trust. I've no evidence for this but I suspect the same fertile mind was behind the Community Unity Neighbourhood Team at Dutch Bend.

Poking a stick into the pick & mix

Jim Lettuce pops round to check some numbers with me. He's doing an exercise to see what happens to key performance indicators if libraries are closed.

"Which libraries are we going to be looking at?" I ask.

"Probably be best if we have a look at all of them, to be on the safe side."

"So we're not building a business case for closing five particular libraries?"

No, we're not. Shall we look at Pottersbury Road first and get it over and done with? No, let's not, there's no point. Everything in Jim's manner points to one conclusion: somebody's already decided which five and Jim's been given the job of making the evidence fit the conclusion. "Which five, Jim?"

"If I tell you I'll have to kill you."

Whichever libraries are on the hit list, three eternal verities will apply:

1. The choice will be irrational: there will be no service-based business case for the chosen;


2. The process will drag on for months, raising the utmost disruption and upset; and


3. Five libraries won't close.

Water torture

"The waste disposal van will be calling for all the discarded equipment today," T.Aldous tells me. "Are you sure we should be throwing away that screen?"

Moving around the deckchairs on the Titanic

Jim Lettuce rings: "Can I come round a check some figures with you? Corporate Directorate have decided that we need to close five libraries and I've got to do the workings-out to show what happens to the public library standards if we take particular libraries out of commission. I asked T.Aldous what the effect would be if we closed five libraries and he said: 'We'd have to have a book sale.'"

So we're having a one-to-one meeting tomorrow. In some respects it's a shame to think of closing libraries, although most of the sound and fury you hear on the subject is focussed on the buildings, not the services. For the past twenty-five years Helminthdale has been running twenty libraries on the resources fit for twelve and it shows badly. It wouldn't be difficult to make a business case for closing five libraries: four virtually choose themselves (Pottersbury Road, for instance, wouldn't cause any ripples in issue or visitor figures and would be a huge saving on building costs, especially after the school recently raised the rent by five grand). The fifth would be any one of about five libraries. It'll be interesting to find out more.

An information professional at work

"I can't make head nor tail of this," T.Aldous tells Seth. Seth has made the mistake of giving him the lists of equipment in the throwing-out pile and in the computer room towards the end of an extremely trying day.

"That's the equipment that's being thrown out. And that's the equipment that was in the computer room that's being kept."

"But what about all these?" asks T.Aldous, referring to what appears to be the fifth or sixth generation two or three times removed arising from his orginal asset list.

"That's stuff that wasn't in the computer room."

"Well, where is it?"

"I don't know."

Seth recounts this to me and I weaken and have a look at T.Aldous' list. The original was obviously a corporate asset list not just confined to the library service. The PCs in question belong to the Environmental Health department.

The wheels fall off the cycle of life

In my lunch break (what T.Aldous calls my lunch hour and my clock card calls twenty one minutes) I nip out and buy a couple of bottles for Seth in appreciation of the work he's done on the computer room and the prolonged aggrivation he's had from T.Aldous today. I'd have killed the man, and may well yet do so.

"He's asked me about that bloody screen again," says Seth.

"Courage, mon brave," I say as I clasp his shoulder. "This cannot be forever."

We both know better. This is one of Hell's waiting rooms.

How come there's never a whacking big stick with a nail stuck in it when you really need one?

Seth is knee-deep in electronic archaeology when T.Aldous butts in.

"What's that screen?"

"I don't know."

"Why aren't we keeping that?"

"Because Kevin says it's broken and should be chucked out."

"Put it to one side, I'll check with him."

And so he toddles into my office. I'm knee-deep in the Library Service's contribution to the corporate specification for an online bookings system, in which Library Management Group is actively involved in pretty much the same way as the dead tree at the bottom of my garden is contributing to the London Olympics.

"What's that screen in the pile over there?"

"Which one? There are four."

"The black one."

"It's a black broken screen."

"If it's broken why is it here?"

"Because it's broken, I replaced it with a spare and I didn't know I was allowed to dispose of broken equipment."

"Why are we throwing it away?"

"Because it's broken."

"I think we should keep it, just in case we need to account for it."

"Isn't that why you've got Seth making a list of equipment that's being disposed of?"

"Are you sure it's broken?"

"Quite sure. If you shake it about it makes an interesting rattling noise and when you plug it into the mains it fizzes."

"So it needs to be thrown away then?"

"Yes, honestly."

Chasing rainbows

"Good news," emails Arthur Sixpence.

"We've been a bit busy lately but we're now able to do something about the software you wanted ordering. We'll be discussing it next week."

We've been "doing something about it next week" since November. It's good to see that in these turbulent times there are still some things that never change.

Rubbing salt in it

I've rescued what equipment I can from the chucking-out pile. A dozen items in all: a PC screen; an inkjet printer; a Braille embosser and some barcode scanners. Only the screen and printer are on the asset register: barcode scanners are treated as consumables by our IT section and they wouldn't know a Braille embosser from a badger's arse (I'm the local expert on them, which shows how bad things are). There might be some more "spares" that I could rescue but I can't be bothered. What's the point?

In flounces T.Aldous to ask whether I've taken the details of all the equipment in the chucking-out pile.

"No. You had Seth do that when he was clearing the place out on Saturday."

"But that was before you took some of the equipment out and put it back in the computer room."

"The stuff I'm keeping's in the computer room. There's only a screen and a printer that you need to keep on the asset register."

"So you've not made a list of all the serial numbers of the equipment that's to be thrown out?"

"No. You've already got that. You just need to cross out the screen and the printer from that list."

"So I can leave you to go through that equipment then? I'll leave the list with you."

"You can take the list away with you. I'm not going to do anything with it."

Half an hour later, Seth tells me that he's been instructed to go through the equipment in the chucking-out pile, taking the serial numbers. He suggested that he could just take a note of the kit that was being kept and cross it off Saturday's list. Not good enough. T.Aldous wants to see him checking all the numbers.

Emptying the rummage cupboard

On Friday afternoon, T.Aldous told me that he wanted the equipment in the computer room checking against the inventory. This consists of a few bits in the network cabinet; a few working spares and a load of kit that's broken but which I've not been allowed to throw away because "we may need to account for it."

"I don't know why you're holding onto equipment that's broken, what's the point?"

Says the man who I asked precisely the same question six years ago when he insisted that I find room in the computer room for twenty-seven defunct dumb terminals and three bookcases full of old Latin dictionaries.

I arranged with Seth the caretaker that we'd spend this morning clearing the room out, making a pile of the stuff that's being chucked out (having taken the details of those bits of equipment that should/would have been on the asset register at some time or another) and taking the asset details of the kit I'd be keeping.

Alas! T.Aldous was in on Saturday and decided that this wasn't good enough, insisting that Seth clear out the computer room that afternoon. So, this morning I'm rummaging through the pile trying to rescue the kit that I want to keep.

Seth's quite embarassed and upset by it. I don't know why, he's not to blame and he's made a splendid job of tidying up the computer room. T.Aldous, on the other hand, is a time-wasting prat.

Statesmanlike

Having a drink in "The Monkey's" with a council colleague to celebrate his retirement. The Leader of the Council, Councillor Oblong, enters the pub, sees Warner Baxter standing at the bar and shouts across:

"Oi you! Have you closed that fucking library yet?"

"What's that about?" I ask my friend later.

"Didn't you know?" he replied. "He's got a down on one of your libraries because the librarian there sent their kid to private school."

Rattle of pebbles in a potted meat tin

3.15pm: after eight months' of trying, the network team get the OK from the planners to put a wireless link on the back end of Grimly Library between the burglar alarm and the anti-vandal fencing

3.40pm: the planners change their mind and decide that they need planning permission and the equipment needs to be painted brick red

A sailor's farewell to his horse

Someone here has realised we are not going to hit our targets for stock replenishment. Oh dear that bad. The action plan which was floating around last week, which I haven't seen, suggests I will confirm by last Friday the number of withdrawals from stock we have made this financial year. As I don't know I am supposed to be doing this I haven't done it.

Somehow the solution to the problem is to withdraw material like it is going out of fashion. Someone has come up with the glorious solution that if we get rid of 20,000 items before March 31st we might have a chance. Where the 20,000 has come from I don't know, as if you don't know how many you have got rid of up to now — and I know they don't as no one has asked for the figure — how do you know this action will get you where you think you ought to be?

Being the helpful sort I am I have offered alternative solution. I will buy, for the princely sum of one new penny, the entire stock of Pottersbury Road Library, total 11,510. (This figure has to be treated with a little caution as some of it was counted by the Pottersbury Road Library staff.) I will then sell my entire purchase back to the library service for 1p, thus creating a turnover of 2 x 11,510. (At this stage I am still working on the small print of purchase/sales contract, though writing into the terms and conditions a line that none of the stuff can be used for Pottersbury Road branch library seems like a very good idea to me.)

Oddly, and I don't know why as I can't see a hole in my logic, initial reaction to my proposal hasn't been well received.

Geography for the damned

email exchange between Frog and t. Aldous:

"The storysacks and the storysack racks have arrived. The latest are for Catty and Dutch Bend libraries (bought from Surestart money - so have to be housed in Surestart areas) The racks have been assembled and will be delivered shortly. "

"Where is the SureStart area in Catty Library ? "

"There isn't. I was meaning Surestart areas in the geographical sense as in Catty, Dutch Bend, Sorry & Oblivion, etc. "

Ain't it grand to be bloomin' well dead?

People's Network. This time it's the Reference Library. They wanted a scanner, so I arranged for someone to put in all the electrics, I ordered scanner, took it and box up to the Reference Library, unpacked it, installed it, went away.

"We can't have that," they screamed, "someone might pinch it."

Put scanner back in box, went away.

Customer complained about lack of scanner. I quote Reference Librarian via reliable witness: "We did have one, but the IT guy took it away".

Now it seems I have to reply to official complaint. Bless.

Life can be a dream

A couple of months ago one of the library assistants successfully applied for the job running the branch library at Oblivion. I asked her if she's got a start date yet.

"God no. I'm beginning to think it was all just a strange, exotic dream."

Pathetic point scoring

Up in the reference library to sort a problem created by Reggie Clockwatcher. He tells his customers: "I've asked the technician to have a look at the problem. Here he is now."

A few minutes later a customer asks me where to find one of the directories. I point to Reggie:

"Ask the receptionist over there. I'm sure he'll be able to help."

And now a day in the farmyard...

Global corporate email:

Please be aware that some people are receiving emails that include a potential virus threat. These emails have the subject "Re:[]"

Do not open the attachment in these emails. The anti-virus software on the network should block any problems but it is sensible not to take any risks. It is best all round if you just delete emails with this subject heading without reading them.

Please make sure that colleagues without access to email see this message.

Why?

Post haste

There goes T. Aldous, running up the hill to the post office to get a statutory submission in the mail by the alloted deadline. If a thing's worth doing it's worth doing on the back of an envelope at the very last minute.

Sitting on us assets

T. Aldous is still tinkering with the asset registry entry for the libraries. Had he left it for me to do once I was back from Xmas leave on the 3rd I'd have had it done and dusted in a week (albeit with a lot of bitching and bad language). He's got three different versions on the go and, as he doesn't understand the concept of version control, he's made different notes and alterations on each in turn and made different generations of corrections on different sheets such that it is impossible to correlate the data. He then compounds it by hovering over the shoulder of Nettie the secretary as she amends the spreadsheet, gets her to print out the results and then that becomes version four to be scribbled on. Except he loses that and reverts to making corrections on version two. He's confused the hell out of every library in town and I can't find any of the "grubby spares" equipment that I keep hold of for emergency.

Keeps him out of mischief I guess.

Dressing up

For reasons we won't go into here, we've been given a couple of tiny teddy bears to help promote romantic fiction. Having a bit of time on our hands while the world goes to hell in a handcart, Frog and I set to dressing them up suitably. Mills and Boon, the Bondage Bears, have black leatherette jackets and thighboots (we cut up a bin bag), string vests (I'd just bought some satsumas) and spiked dog collars (black masking tape and drawing pins). They look very fetching, though their initial appearance on the children's librarians' bookshelf was controversial and had to be toned down for the audience.

I'm really worried that

1. We found the time to do this; and


2. We both turn out to be so knowledgeable about bondage gear.

Frog's now making a cat o'nine tails out of an old drinking straw. I think I should leave him to it.

The equipment has the best tunes

The lift is broken (again!) Some wag sticks a note on the door:

This Otis regrets it cannot come down today

Oh yes it can!

"Ah well, at least it can't get any worse," they say. And then it bloody well does. In a bid to kill the jinx I've instituted a rule in my office that anyone saying "It can't get any worse" has to put 10p in the cocoa tin by the door. I've just checked the current state of play: since the beginning of December we've collected £3.40 for charity.

Puzzle

"What do you do for a living?" asks Warner Baxter.

Do you know, I had no idea either.

Life imitates art II

My colleague has given me the OK so here's the picture I referred to a while back.

Now will you stop nagging?

(The note was thrown away, but not the flipchart despite it being a risk to life and limb. I'm not aware that the note itself was broken. Probably a misunderstanding.)

Terror

Oh hell. This is enough to freeze your waters... T. Aldous has just popped his head through the doorway and said:

I think we need to prioritise your workload.

This means that any attempt on my part to do absolutely anything except, perhaps, go to the lavatory will be stymied for the forseeable. "Don't do that just yet, we need to review whether or not it's a high priority," they'll say. But you can bet your bippy that I'll be held personally accountable for anything that's not done.

Boxing clever

Last Thursday, Seth the caretaker approached T. Aldous:

"I've got a pile of flattened cardboard boxes in the back there. Are you going to be needing them for Tench Lane?"

"No, I've sorted out what we're doing about moving the books away from the building work."

"So is it OK for me to chuck them then?"

"Oh yes, we need the space."

Today T. Aldous approaches Seth:

"Do we have any cardboard boxes? We need about thirty or forty of them for moving the stock at Tench Lane."

He then scoured the building looking for likely boxes. He spotted a pile in the acquisitions team's corner.

"What are these boxes?"

"They're new books that have arrived from the suppliers this morning."

"Can you unpack them now? I need the boxes."

"No. Each box includes the invoice and delivery note and we need to be able the check the boxes' contents against the paperwork."

"Can't you pile the books in the corner over there, using the invoices to separate each box?"

"Is that your 'phone ringing?"

A mismatch of realities

T.Aldous, having been frightened by news about the council's strategy for transforming e-government, comes in for a chat.

"It's a pity that you told us to kill that project last month. That would have been our contribution to the strategy and we'd be sweet with Warner Baxter."

Me kill that project?!? http://helminthdale.blogspot.com/2005/12/sprint-finish.html

Nobody would convict me.

Mañana is a bit frenetic for some people

Time's a-wasting, we have some outstanding projects that have to be completed by the end of March and the hand at the tiller is Arthur Sixpence's. God help us. I chase him up again...

Hi Arthur,
For a couple of months I've been asking how we get to spend the money on the online services agreed in March. As you know, this project's a bit urgent now, especially after the comments by the inspection team and the Chief Exec's response to them. We need to get this moving a.s.a.p. Can we make a start soon?

Response:

Kevin,
I'll check what we're doing about this and I'll get back to you next week.

An utter waste of time and effort

Email exchange...

From T. Aldous:

Is it possible to have the statistics for new borrowers collected and reported on a monthly basis?

My reply:

Yes it is possible and I've been emailing the figures to you at the beginning of each month for the past three years.

Reverb

Public spat:

"Who told you to send those boxes out to Catty?" demands T. Aldous.

"You did," chorus Seth and Lemuel the caretakers.

"I did no such thing. Mary and Reginald have no right telling you to send boxes all over town. Where will it end? We won't know where anything is."

"We don't know where anything is anyway," retorts Seth, stopping short of saying the L word.

"Those boxes need to be over here so that we know where they are. I'll leave you to make the arrangements."

One day someone will open one of these boxes and find out that something important's inside. Frog's running a book on the contents. I'm a bit put off that the five favourites are all body parts.

Oopsie daisie!

Another year another directorate. Warner Baxter, our new director, comes along for a hastily-convened Management Group meeting.

Apparently, at the end he said: "that was a useful introduction, thank you. I'll come along to the next meeting so that I can get a feel as to how things are progressing. When's your next meeting? How often do you meet?"

Nobody could tell him.

Static libraries

Our beleaguered and decimated acquisitions team are swamped with boxes. It's a bit early for the usual end-of-year panic buy. It turns out that those first signs of spring have been augmented by yet another pile of boxes of booksale; a pile of books from Tench Lane, which is about to be closed for a few weeks to have a new lavatory (I must have missed the announcement that this was European Year of the Lavatory); and a pile of boxes of books that have been bouncing between Catty and Milkbeck for years for no apparent reason.

"Good news!" cries Seth the caretaker, "himself has told us to send these boxes back over to Catty."

The acq. team loosen their stays a little and breathe out. Out of sympathy I lend a hand loading the Big Berha trolley.

"What's these boxes?" I ask.

"Leave them, they're fixtures."

Being dead nosy I have a look in one of them. Italian children's books.

"A present from the twin town visitors. They've been processed but they're not on the catalogue because T.Aldous wants to look at them first."

"When did they visit?"

"1997"

I look around. "Are all these boxes Italian books?"

"Oh no. Those over there are circulating collections, we're waiting for Mary to decide where they're circulating to. Those six are waiting for the children's librarians to allocate to libraries. That lot on the wall are Richard & Judy collections waiting for someone to decide how we're going to issue them - they aren't sure whether they're normal fiction stock or whether they should be short loans. Oh, and that lot's for Reading Groups. Which Reading Groups, where, and why we're lumbered I don't know and I don't care any more, I retire in eight years and they'll all still be here when I go."

I feel that I have stumbled against an open wound. I come back later and leave behind some chocolate.

Care in the community

"What do you think we should do about that PC in Noddy?" asks T. Aldous.

"Can't we postpone the move until the centre management's died?" I suggest.

Big Brother is up your nose

Invited to Noddy Community Centre for a site meeting. The centre management is the usual collection of elderly volunteers that you'd expect to meet on a workday morning. They seem OK on the whole, expect for one latecomer who casts a pall on all the others and spends the meeting lobbing in crabby comments like: "Can't we close the football pitch? That would stop the young lads using the car park," and "who's paying for the carpet in the corridor outside the library?" I think I can guess who doesn't want library users coming into the centre in case they turn out to be paedophiles.

T.Aldous broaches the subject of service level agreements. This is surprisingly sensible of him. And very naughty, as all around the table know the council rule that service level agreements can only be negotiated after the library has moved in and the old library building is sold. (Please could any passing Audit Commission inspectors wondering why Helminthdale's service charges are four times those of comparison authorities forget they read this paragraph).

We pop into the library-to-be, full of workmen and painters. Slap bang in the doorway is a PC sitting precariously on a Homebase pine bracket shelf five feet above the ground.

"What on earth is that?" I ask.

"It's the PC for the CCTV. We've just bought a camera so that we can have security footage of the car park."

"Why's it there?"

"It's the most convenient place."

"Convenient? It's the entrance to a public library. You can't put it there!"

"Why not? What's wrong with it?"

"Well, for a start it looks horrible. For next it's unsafe. And for finals it's insecure."

"Well, we can't move it. It has to be there."

I spend an hour trying to explain the folly of having an unsecured PC perched on a shelf in the entrance to a public library. I make noises about security, health and safety, maintenence and replacement insurance. They think I'm being awkward. Finally, old crabby asks: "Are you going to pay for it to be moved?"

I shrug and give up. I won't pretend to be sympathetic when they come along bleating that somebody's either stolen or broken the processor.

I had the last laugh. Just before I left it dawned on the centre management that the equipment wasn't plugged in.

"No it's not, love," said the sparks, "we're rewiring the room."

Merry Christmas to all our readers

T. Aldous approaches me as I hunt a kettle for my caffeine fix. "I've had a memo from IT. Apparently there's a row because the tender for outsourcing said that the council's got 400 PCs and there's actually 600. They're reviewing the asset register."

Big shock. For the past decade somebody over there's been deleting items from the asset register without doing anything about either telling the people using the equipment or arranging for replacement. Presumably it's to hit some performance target or other. I know I'm not the only person to have reported a problem with a PC only to be told: "that PC was replaced two years ago." And you can never find out who replaced it and what with.

"They've sent a form over. We need to do an audit of all our equipment in all our libraries and complete the form so that they can update the asset register. It needs to be done by January 4th."

It's the season of goodwill so I just smile and walk away.

The man without a cork leg

Over to Sheep City for a chat with Bosko Landscape in Archives about some work on the local history portal. Deep gloom. Sheep City's part of Helminthdale Leisure Trust, an arm's length company set up so that instead of being a constant drain on the corporation's finances it'll be a nice little earner with the capacity to obtain finance from external sources. Reality bites and the cost of emergency repairs to the roof of Dutch Bend Lido and the new signs at Catty Golf Club have bitten hard. Savings must be made. It is proposed that Sheep City closes for an afternoon a week. God alone knows what savings that'll make, but there we go.

Sheep City's manager, Maurice Batchelor, was at an event in the Town Hall this morning when he was approached by Councillor Mountebank, a long-term opponent of the place.

"We'll be closing you down soon, Batchelor," says the councillor.

"How many customers are registered at the leisure centre in your ward?" asked Maurice.

"Eh?"

"Two hundred and thirty two. We had eighteen thousand visit us last month."

Crouching tiger, springing limpet

One of our IT guys takes agin the new library management system. Arthur Sixpence sends me this email:

I really don't think that this system is appropriate for use here. Why do they need it to do all these things? We could, and should, have been allowed to write something to do this job.
Marc

Kevin,
Can you contact the company and sort this out. Thanks.
Arthur

I have absolutely no idea what the problem is. Certainly not one that the Library Service or its customers have encountered. Nor do I have any patience with the idea that these guys could write, let alone support, a viable library management system for the later 20th Century. I'm being asked to contact the company who had to wait two years for the system to be installed and paid for to sort out an unspecified problem.

I take the opportunity to put the recent lessons learned into practice and like the dashing gazelle I act.

I do absolutely nothing and get on with the rest of my life.

Kicking the ball into the long grass: a masterclass

Having spent hours watching the masters at work lately, together with the usual impulse for an end-of-year review, I suddenly feel enlightened as to the workings of our organisation. I offer this insight as a public service...

Want to do something? Achieve something? Make something happen? Ah well...

"I'm a bit busy at the moment"
This is Reggie Clockwatcher's favourite put-off. It's utter drivel, of course, and he knows that we know that he knows we don't believe him because for Reggie "busy" is not having the time to spend a couple of hours on the 'phone negotiating an inflated deal for business directories we don't need. It doesn't stop anything happening but you know Reggie won't get himself involved.

But you knew he wouldn't anyway.

"It'll be done next week"
This is our friends in IT. The cheque's in the mail. Have your girl talk to my girl. It doesn't taste of anything. Conkers.

"What do other libraries do?"
The instruction is to ring around and ask if anyone else is doing what you suggest, with the implication being that if it's a novelty it's not on. What the uninitiated don't realise is that if anyone else is doing it it still might not be on. No decision has been made one way or another, it's a stall.

This is Mary's favourite mode of prevarication. It's pretty much nursery slope stuff in the scheme of things but it can be profoundly irritating when effectively deployed.

"We need to discuss this"
This is a low-level T. Aldous stall. He has no intention of ever discussing it, whatever it is. This leads on to...

"We need to have a meeting about this"
He has no intention of having a meeting, either. This can go on for months. Unless you're really unlucky and it becomes...

"I think we need to review this now that ..."
Now you're screwed and may as well pack up and go home. The van driver's post has been vacant for six years because T. Aldous wants to review the delivery route.

Cheese & onion

We've had the pie lunch and for the life of me I don't know how many cheese and onion pies we had in the end.

Poetry corner

Xmas lunch at Dutch Bend. I popped in towards the end just to let on and say hello to everyone, including a few retirees. Just in time to catch the cabaret: Nancy Screech strolls in dolled up as T. Aldous Huxtable, complete with ginger fright wig and a furry caterpillar on a stick acting as the trademark eyebrows. "He" proceeded to recite a poem. I won't weary you with all twelve verses, but one in particular stood out:

"Sometimes things go very wrong;
Things often go that way.
But you know that I'm not to blame
I was on leave that day."

A la recherche de posts perdu

I'm technically on leave for most of this week. Except that I'm running system back-ups on a laptop on my bedroom floor because there's no one to do it in my absence. Except that there is: Jimmy Huddersfield's replacement. Except that Jimmy's been retired for months and his replacement's no nearer being appointed.

Reason? "Now that Jimmy's retired we can review his post. There are a few other functions that might be taken over by whoever's doing that job."

They couldn't possibly have reviewed his post during the year's notice he gave them of his retirement.

The ultimate non-communication strategy

A colleague shares this, in the hopes that his organisation may compete managerially with Helminthdale...

"Just as we were leaving for lunch a police van came roaring down the street and into the side street by the library, closely followed by a Paramedic Ambulance. Apparently their destination was the library.

"The paramedics turned up at the Reference desk saying 'Where's the guy having the heart attack?' and no-one knew what they were talking about - they hadn't called an ambulance, so they rang Betty (Bob's PA) to find out - and Bob himself answered the phone: 'What are they doing there? I told them to come to the back door - they're for me.'

"Bloody marvellous - they obviously went to the back door and couldn't get in so they came round the front - and no-one knew. Could he tell anyone? Nah.

"As yet we still don't know what's the matter with Bob but it'd be all the same if the stupid old sod had died in the back room. There's more...

"Apparently Betty went with him to the hospital (so why didn't she tell the front desk anything or open the f***ing back door? oh well) so all the phone calls for Bob and Betty were coming through to Lending. Susan asked Cynthia (head of Reference) what was happening about Bob's calls because staff were saying 'He's just gone off with some paramedics.'

"Cynthia told Susan: 'you'll have to put them through to Betty' and Susan replied: 'didn't you just tell me Betty had gone to the hospital with Bob?' 'Oh, yes.'

"About 2 hours later we've just had an email from Betty saying Bob's in hospital.

"Aagh."

There's a happy ending...

"In the end, he was off for a few days but it transpires it wasn't a heart attack. When they took him in they said he had very low blood pressure. They have no idea what caused it. No more has been said since."

Hello?

T. Aldous has just spent two hours trying to convince me that the BBC's Read & Write initiative is a major problem that we couldn't work with. At one point I heard me tell him that if we weren't in the business of promoting literacy and weren't prepared to try and help customers find reading material that met their needs then we had no business calling ourselves public libraries.

He came back into my office a few times with "proof" of the BBC's perfidy: "look, they sent this email at eight o'clock!" (eh?)

In the end even he realised he'd gone too far and kept out of my way when Mary suggested it might be prudent. I'd told her that I would kill Huxtable if he came within three yards of me.

Well worth it

I've spent my weekend working on IEG5 stats and BVPI157. Important e-government stats that determine how much money the council gets and in which the Library Service's senior management show no interest whatsoever, no matter how much I mither them.

Bless.

The veriest bliss

T. Aldous takes a few of us to one side to brief us on the council's new job evaluation programme. Very useful:

"I really don't know anything about it but we must all do it and it's important because it could affect your pensions."

Still none the wiser.

Raw nerves

T. Aldous has just belatedly woken up to the BBC's RaW campaign to encourage reading and writing. The BBC wants to work with public libraries to further this cause and they're providing lots of publicity materials, etc. for it. Unlike some other BBC campaigns there aren't any strings and lots and lots of positives. Here's how he brings it to the staff meeting:

"This is a pain but I guess we have to do it, we can't avoid it. The BBC have sent out lots of these packs. They promised us stickers but they've not arrived yet. It's just typical isn't it? The stickers were supposed to have arrived last week."

The latest in the cheese & onion stakes

Two weeks to go and three portions still to be claimed. A nation trembles in anticipation.

Olympian table tennis

The first of a brace of meetings with Arthur Sixpence, one of our friends in IT. As expected, it's bad-tempered and functionally useless to anyone wanting to actually get something (anything!) done but a fascinating terpsichore for the disinterested observer. People who know me are amazed when I claim that I don't contribute to the bad temper of these meetings. This isn't because I'm not very, very annoyed. It is because I'm very, very annoyed with both parties to the arguments -- I think they're both feckless, useless lumps -- and to get involved in the rows is to have one or other claiming me as their champion and expecting me to get them out of the latest fix they've got themselves into. Ah, no, learnt that lesson early on. This meeting revolved around a project for automating the various notices we send to borrowers, including telephone and text contact. We were told rather late in the day that we had the funding for it and that we had four months in which to have it all done and dusted and paid for. Two obstacles: we'll be relying on the guy in IT who's been "ordering that software next week" for another project for 25 months; and there's no way I can this project on my own. I've told T. Aldous that I need help with it. T. Aldous responded by running out of my office and refusing the discuss the matter further. These are the people having the meeting.

It really is impressive, truly. Forcing myself to take a step back and not get involved, lest I kill one or both, I suddenly realised just how good these guys are at what they do. What they do is their utmost to avoid being held accountable for anything. Anything that happens is a result of somebody else deciding on a course of action and imposing their will upon the blameless waif. Watching one or other on their own is infuriating. Watching the two in mortal combat is fascinating, like watching two chess grandmasters at the peak of their powers with games lost or won by sequences of apparently minor nuances. Or two ghosts trying to nail blancmanges into each other's backs.

Forty-five minutes later, the meeting adjourns with honours equal and each convinced that the ensuing stalemate is a resounding personal victory.

Chimps off the old block

Bless.

I'm asked to a meeting with T. Aldous and Arthur Sixpence to discuss getting IT into the "new" library at Noddy. Arthur brings along Bill Nedlow, who's appalled to hear how far things have got with the building without notifying IT. "It'll take BT at least six months to get a line out to the new place," he warns. We had hoped that whoever was doing the project management in Property Services had mentioned that they were doing this. I don't mention that I happen to know that Bill knows all about it because he signed the petition against moving Noddy Library back in August.

Arthur takes the opportunity to ask about the project I'm worrying about.

"Have you decided what you're doing about this project? Can we write it off and put the money in as a saving?"

"What are we doing about this Kevin?"

"You and the others are discussing it to see whether or not the library service can deliver on this project."

"We'll have to get back to you on this Arthur, we're trying to find out whether or not we can deliver on this project."

And so it goes. Like ping pong, Arthur desperate to kill the project and save the money, so long as he can say that the Library Service killed it; T. Aldous desperate not to commit himself to any course of action and desperate to blame IT for non-delivery; both desperate for me to say anything that gets them off the hook; me saying nowt, just in case. As appropriate a finale to the year's achievements as I can think of.

Sprint finish

T. Aldous swears that he's not been told anything about the successful IT bid. It's remarkable how many such things he's not told about. Perhaps because of things like this...

There's one project I can't do by March on my own. Absolutely not a chance. This makes me physically sick as I've been trying to get funding for it for five years. It's important for e-government. It's important for our meeting standards that determine how much money the council gets from the government. Much, much more importantly, it improves the service we're providing to our customers by leaps and bounds. I am depressed and heartsick. Still, nil desperandum, there may be some way to retrieve the situation. With a bit of will and ingenuity we may be able to pull together and make things happen. I try to talk to management team. Who don't want to talk to me about it.

The closest I get is when T. Aldous comes in to witter about a letter he has to write ("is 'e-government' hyphenated?") I tell him that we need to discuss what we're doing about this project as a matter of urgency. I stress the importance. I stress that I can't do it on my own. I stress that I need the help of management team. The 'phone rings. In the time it takes me to turn, pick up the receiver and turn back, the bugger has escaped.

While it's quite sweet that a man of his age has such a turn of speed, it's dispiriting to know that the one time I ask for help he runs out of my office.

Opportunity kicks the door in

'Phone call from Arthur Sixpence, our IT liaison bod. The guy who's been "just about to order" a key piece of software for us for the past twenty five months. Apparently, the bid for funding I submitted in September 2004 for a bunch of projects were approved in March and why haven't I done anything about them? First I know about it, that's why. It's urgent that things get in train as if the money's not spent by March it's lost.

One of the projects involves the software he should have ordered two years ago.

"Can you get that ordered a.s.a.p. Arthur?"

"I'll send you an email about it next week."

Just like my socks, they are neglected

Interesting gossip about Harry Presto's leaving do. Apparently, he wanted to invite any and all library staff who could get away for a bit that afternoon, so he asked T. Aldous for a list of all staff. And asked. And asked.

Surprisingly enough, T. Aldous himself managed to get to the do and had a nice time.

Looking after pennies

It's axiomatic that the further up the greasy pole one goes the more careful one gets with one's money. Case in point: each week staff put 30p into the tea money kitty to pay for milk. Library Assistants do this without demur, depsite knowing full well that the likelihood of their getting through the week without being shipped out to provide emergency cover somewhere or another is vanishingly slight. One senior manager puts in 20p because she's stopped having tea at lunchtime. Another has taken to putting in 27p because she doesn't get a Monday evening cup of tea.