Yesterday's playthings

More mutterings in the Acq Team. They've been trying and failing to get a meeting with Mary about the Pay & Grading Review before next week's deadline for response to the response. A meeting in this context means her being in the same place as them for more than five minutes and talking with them about the Review results and what, if anything they need to do about it, as opposed to talking about sweeties, squirrels, class numbers and pencils. Every day they ask: "are we going to talk about this today?" And every day they're told: "well, I'm busy today but I've got a meeting tomorrow morning so we could get together before that."

In lieu of a meeting she's had them cutting out sections of the responses and sticking them onto sheets of A3 paper "to make it easier for me to see what's what." This beggars belief.

T.Aldous negotiated an extension to the process to next week. In this service an extension provides an opportunity to put off till tomorrow what you could have put off yesterday but put it off a bit. Still, it's only people's livelihoods isn't it? Not like it's anything important.

He laughs at scars who never felt a wound

Frog and I have arranged to set some time aside to work on some children's interactives on the web and setting up some publishing space for reports, statistics and peer-to-peer conversations about the services we're providing for children in our libraries (which is something we do surprisingly well in the circumstances). We both need something positive to do: he's knackered after the usual gruelling and gruesome summer holiday programme and I'm in one of my "the web catalogue's the second-biggest source of issue figures in the Borough and nobody gives a flying fuck" moods. This is something positive and it's something we'd have done a long time ago if it hadn't been for a few corporate problems which still haven't been resolved.

As a courtesy Frog tells Mary what we're planning to do.

"Just so long as it's a children's interactive area and not a Frog and Kevin interactive area."

This is her one and only input to our web presence in the twelve years we've had it. I feel like telling her to shove it up her arse.

Gurgling, gargling, belching and leaking while the world tidies up its image

Toilets feature distressingly often in this blog, which I had hoped would be a haven of organisational analysis and literary appreciation.

Out of the blue we're told that Senebene and Gypsy Lane are going to be closed for a fortnight while disabled toilets are installed. (I'm assuming that these are toilets for disabled people and not toilets that have been disabled. Or at least not yet awhile.) We'll have to shift furniture, computers and bookstock out of the way of gentleman builders at the same time as we'll be shifting Roadkill Library to its new home, leaving half its chattels behind it, and probably coinciding with the panic clear out of the old Glass Road site. Oh joy. Typically, the time frame's dictated by the builders' windows of opportunity rather than the diktats of service provision.

The work will take a month at each site. In weeks three and four the builders will be covering the work with a tarpaulin ("can you tell what it is yet?") and staff will be using chemical toilets for their motions. We've suggested that we string banners across the fronts of the libraries stating

Committed to excellence.

We'd sooner shit in a bucket than close the library doors!

Any colour so long as it's blue

There's always someone worse off than yourself. One of my colleagues has just received a circular memorandum from his director telling all staff that from now on there'll only be blue pens available in the stationery supplies. He tells them that it's a wasteful duplication to be stocking both black and blue pens. By my reckoning, even taking into account any price differentials and increased discounts for volume the annual saving couldn't be much more than half the cost of his time in thinking up this nonsense.

This isn't normal behaviour. Even by my jaded experience this isn't natural. There's probably some evil bastard somewhere including this sort of thing in their library management courses. The UN War Crimes Committee should be scouring the library schools of the world to put a stop to it.

And what would we then do with the poor damaged creatures left behind to fend in the wild with nothing more than a library manager's salary to support them? I suggest that they could undergo a comprehensive course of retraining by smacking them about the back of the head with a plank. Or they could be humanely euthanised by smacking them about the back of the head with a plank. Whatever course of action is chosen, smacking them about the back of the head with a plank looks like a sound option.

Je suis un exhibition et non une artiste

Frog's wading his way through the number-crunching for the Big Wild Read, Bookstart and one or other of the bewildering variety of new give-a-schoolchild-a-book initiatives when Mary comes along.

"While you're not doing anything, could you have a look at some of the boxes that have come in from Glass Road?"

Library management in a nutshell: sitting for an afternoon cutting ribbons into 2cm lengths is work; statistics and reports necessary to justify funding streams is 'not doing anything.'

Gah...

Some trains of thought shouldn't ever leave the station

I'm assured that this is a true tale of telephone calling people:

"Acquisitions Team, Noreen speaking, how can I help you?"

"Do you play dominoes?"

"Err... no."

"I'm ringing to chase up an invoice."

Another for the spotter's book

eBay Man has thrown another wobbler at Milkbeck Library. This time it's because he's missed out on the camera he was bidding for because the staff wouldn't close any of the other customers' sessions so that he could get on and put on his killer last-minute bid. Tosspot.

Monkey magic

T.Aldous popped his head round the doorway half an hour ago.

"I need a full analysis of the stock at Catty and Carbootsale libraries this morning for a meeting I'm having this afternoon. I need the amount of stock, the age, and so on so that we can have a look at completely reviving the stock in the new year. Can I leave it with you?"

Okay, okay, yes I can do it, but that's not the point. I've run the report, using some code I wrote for some analyses I did a few weeks back, and it won't take more than ten minutes to pull it into a spreadsheet and tart it up. Then I'll go for my lunch. When I come back I'll send him the analysis.

Nondescript or Imperfectly Known Animals

Democracy's all well and good but look at the type of people who have the vote...

A chap's just popped into Milkbeck Library to apologise for his behaviour this morning. This morning's conversation with Molly went like this:

"Can I help you?"

"I'm ordering some things on the internet and they're asking me for an email address. Can I have yours?"

"You don't want to give them ours. They want your email address so that they can send you a receipt and if anything goes wrong you've got something to work from."

"No, I want to give them your email address."

"Honestly, you have to give them your address."

"I don't have an email address, I don't hold with them. I don't trust computers, people get all your details and pretend that they're you. That's why I shred everything at home." [Bear in mind that he's paying for this online order with his credit card!]

"Well, I'm not letting you have our email address."

"I'm not going to do anything untoward with it. I'm just ordering some underpants from a shop in Manchester."

"You're not having our email address."

Exit customer in high dudgeon. Anyway, he cam back to apologise:

"I'm really sorry about my behaviour this morning. I lost my rag for no good reason. I think you misunderstood what I was asking for. Can I have your email address..."

Molly reckons they'll be seeing him again. I told her to give him the Chief Exec's email address.

Opening a can of worms

A note from Jim:

"You know all that stuff on lis-pub-libs about open source library management systems? Does that mean the MLA is going to be giving every library service a new, free LMS to fit in with all the new programmes we're supposed to be following?"

"No," I explained.

Isn't it just the most amazing thing?

Poppy at Catty Library has had a bit of a shock. Looking at the rota it turns out that she's running the library on her own all day Saturday with two Relief Assistants. To add piquancy to the mix it's the first day for both of them.

Hettie's desperately trying to persuade people to re-jig their home lives to do a few extra hours to help out. Not for the first time I can't help wondering if it would be more cost-effective and efficient to get vacancies filled (and with permanent staff, not temps from the agency) rather than having supervisory staff spending at least five hours a week juggling time tables and ringing round to try and get enough bodies in the right-ish places at the right-ish times.

The early worm gets eaten

I noticed that Daisy was logged on just after eight this morning.

"I thought you don't start work till nine?"

"I don't but I've got a new girl starting today and there's only three of us in all day so I thought I'd best get in early to do the timesheets, sick returns, petty cash and the monitoring returns before she got in so's I can give her some time for introductions and a bit of induction and she doesn't walk into some big panic or other because I've not done some admin. work in time for himself or the people in the Town Hall. I want to give her a few days before she realises we're a shambles."

Sounds fair enough to me. But what do I know? Julia noticed the time on the monitoring returns emails and gave Daisy a bollocking for starting work outside her set hours.

Forgotten canyons

"There's thirty boxes of books in the cellar at the old Glass Road library," Seth tells me. "The heating's not on and the weather's been awful so it'll all be sodden damp."

"Nil desp," I tell him. "In a few month's time we'll be able to sell them to gardens for mulching their garden beds."

eBay gum

We've found out why we're not allowed to sell booksale stock on eBay. The council's worried that if we get a PayPal account we'll be flogging off the old buildings, too.

Just walk on by...

Conversation:

"Jim's looking a bit pissed off."

"He'd arranged a Management Group meeting about stock management targets and stock selection policy so that he can do the report to committee about the MLA performance indicators."

"Yes, that'd piss me off, too."

"That's not what did it. When it came to the meeting Jim and Doreen were sat there for half an hour wondering where the others had gotten to."

"Typical. If Management Group doesn't want to manage stock, and I know they don't want anything to do with personnel management, what exactly are they managing?"

"The colour of carpets and the disposal of sanitary towels."

Summer stock

Another day, another non-delivery of stock. Like the rest of us the suppliers have been trying to cut costs by outsourcing functions, in this case the delivery drivers. What happens now is that instead of the suppliers "inefficiently" packing the books up, putting them on a van and getting them to us in manageable batches within a day or so they now pack them off to a delivery company's warehouse where they wait their turn and come to us in huge doses in between famines. Noreen's taken the day off and Betty's leaving early to wander around the garden centre but they're still scratching for work. When the log jam finally fails there'll be another delivery of seventy-plus boxes and T.Aldous whinging about there not being enough room for him to arrange to bring back all the shit from one or another far-flung outpost of the empire.

This, apparently, is the MLA's preferred model of stock delivery to one-man-and-his-dog branch libraries in small country towns.

Paint your wagon

One of the girls has had another tattoo for her birthday and has sent a photo of it to Frog on his mobile 'phone. An audience clusters about his shoulders.

"Where's she had it done then?"

"At the tattooists."

"No... whereabouts on her body?"

"I don't know. It looks ominously white."

"Is that shaving stubble?"

"It'll be her back then."

The patience of Jobs

More mutterings in the staff room about the pay & grading review. I've not heard mine yet but I was late doing the paperwork as I held out as long as possible on the not-unreasonable grounds that I have no idea what my job is any more. The acq team is doubly pissed off because they're still waiting for their grades to be reassessed from before the millenium (it's hanging about pending review, delayed by our implementing automated ordering (1999), the retirement of van driver (2000), the first Best Value review (2002) and sundry other factors, like T. Aldous "has ideas about restructuring how the team works", and is now further in abeyance while the library service decides how the MLA stock procurement plans affect what we're doing, or not).

The sense of resentment is further heightened because Betty's been waiting all this time to have her job title changed from "Clerk Typist" to "Acq. Assistant." This entails no change in status or pay but confers on Betty the recognition that she does, indeed, order, receive and invoice stock and it isn't just some strange, exotic dream. In the mean time the members of Management Group have been re-titled twice and had two substantial upward regrades. There is a truly peculiar attitude to job titles here: Jimmy Huddersfield was Acquisitions Librarian for twenty years and ran the Procurement Team (as was) for twelve of them before they finally relented and changed his job title from "Catalogue Librarian."

We're being good and not telling the ludo joke

Seth and Kevin aren't having the best of days. Mary had arranged for the SureStart Centre at Sorry to take delivery of a palette of bookstart freebies and one of our unused desks. (The desk's unused because we've not been filling some of our vacancies for years and it's to go to the Centre because it's in the way of a pile of boxes due to arrive from the old Glass Road site.) So the boys load the van and tool over to Sorry. "Pile it all up against the grey wall," Mary tells them.

When they get there it's not plain sailing:

• The people there know nothing about it.
• They say there's no room at the inn.
• There isn't a grey wall there.
• "While you're here, can you move all those Bookstart packs from over there?"

They ring Mary, who rings the bloke who was supposed to be making the arrangements at the Sorry end.

"Where should these Bookstart packs go?"

"I'm not bothered."

So they come back with more than they went away with.

In too many respects this place reminds me of the blind, stupid bureaucratic processes in "The Good Soldier Švejk" (no, of course we've not got it in stock: it's a classic of European literature).

The pursuit of the twelve-pound bluebottle

As I come into work I notice some prat fly-fishing in the River Helminth as it passes in between the NCP car park and the skinners' depot. The river at this point is six inches deep, save in those occasional dam pools created by shopping trolleys, condoms and old dog shit. I can't imagine he'd be catching anything save cholera.

The bears survived but were shot on reaching landfall

Oh what's the point?

You might want to mill about a bit to make up numbers

All the main libraries in this Borough is being staffed by three people each. Bear in mind that that's to provide lending and reference functions and school holiday activities, summer reading game and the such. Backstage is no better: aside from the vacancies we've got one person on leave so we're struggling to keep up with taking T.Aldous' 'phone calls.

Just around the corner there'll be blue skies ahead

Pottersbury Road Library was interesting: they're having disabled access doors installed and, as the school caretaker refuses to allow them to use the school entrance or the new doorway (the workmen having engineered a corridor of safety for customers which might have involved people walking in some brick dust) customers have to go around the back of the building and go in via the fire exit. Unfortunately there is no hand hold on the exterior of the fire exit door so they can't get in without banging on the door. I managed to get in by using my screwdriver as a jemmy. Hedi tried propping the door open with the only heavy-enough object available — a pedestal drawer unit — but people with trolleys couldn't get in. I'd say that this must be a killer for the visitor figures but we discovered that somebody's covered the counter sensors with blu-tack.

Just see what cultural influences you'll get out of that then

Henry's pissed off. He's just had a 'phone call from Dutch Bend:

"Is it OK for this customer to photocopy a chapter from this document? She wrote this chapter herself."

"The college owns the copyright but I don't think they'll kick up a fuss in the circumstances."

"Should I give her a discount on the photocopying?"

"Why on earth would you give her a discount?"

"Leave it with me, I'll sort out some arrangement."

Without justice, what are kingdoms but great robberies?

"Maximising the potential of the workforce" is evidently the latest local government vogue, as the latest "Bobbing Up: An Excellence Toolkit" bumpf is jam-packed with it. Sadly, the sincerity of its impact may have been compromised slightly by Human Resources' sending all staff the results of the Pay & Grading Review, which (due to financial constraints) has led the assessors to declare that it doesn't matter if you and your boss both agree that you're doing a piece of work you can't possibly be doing it on your scale and you may be dropped a scale or two for unfounded boasted. (I paraphrase slightly). To add insult to injury, people were sent each other's results.

This is particularly hard on our Library Assistants, who get a lot of responsibility dumped on them for some of the worst pay in the council. There are times when some of them drive me crackers but I can unequivocably say that they're worth the money, and most of them are worth considerably more than that if only they'd realise it. And because they don't realise it and don't play up their positives they get treated like crap.

They don't all do themselves a favour. Dagmar at Doggedly will run through all the worst-case scenarios possible to the point where you're just ready to give up completely but when you get there and start preparing an activity or event you'll find that she's done as much preparation as you could hope for and is keen to make sure that it goes as well as possible. We were doing some publicity materials for branches as asked around for information about what's going on when Maureen at Roadkill told us "I can't think of anything really." Besides the fact the library's moving house soon, it turns out (after ten minutes' conversation) that she's got a reading group going; a monthly writing group; twice-weekly art and craft activities; home safety sessions with the local gendarmes, etc. etc. etc. And Hedi at Pottersbury Road can paint a long picture of despair about her library which is entirely at odds with the picture you see when you're spending an hour sorting out some of the hardware problems: there she is, cutting out pictures of butterflies, helping small children make bookmarks and making a miserably wet summer holiday afternoon quite a nice experience for them.

Why on earth do they persist in underselling themselves and everything they do? I suppose part of it is that so much local service development has to be done under the management radar. (The week T.Aldous was trooping himself round the libraries saying that visitor counts were dangerously low and we should do things like have reading groups and the such he was also telling somebody on no account should she start a reading group as it wasn't her place to do so.) (And somebody else did get a bollocking for letting somebody start a reading group who "didn't have a good degree.") And so much of what passes for management in this service is devoted to making sure that people know their place. I suppose we're all just cowed into submission. Which might be our maximised potential. (sigh)

Snippety snippety snip

Frog's sat sitting at his desk cutting two-inch-long strips of ribbon. Lots and lots of two-inch-long strips of ribbon: he's got to convert a five metre length of the stuff into bits. And he's not happy about it. So why is he doing it?

"It's for this week's craft events in the libraries."

"Why not just send them a length of ribbon each?"

"It takes as long for me to do this as it does to answer all the 'phone calls asking how long the pieces need to be; what happens if there's a bit left over; who gets to use the scissors; etc. etc. etc. and so on. And they would. You know they would. Remember what happened about the face masks. Never again."

It's true. Every library was sent a batch of photocopied face masks to cut out as required during one of the early summer events. The 'phones were red hot: who does the cutting out? what happens if they want to colour them in? "I spent three hours straight cutting these out and now I've got RSI" (Frog's nicer than me: I'd have used the word 'pillock' in response to that one).

A place belonging to nowhere

Millie took her mum to the bingo last night, parking in the municipal car park in the centre of Catty. As they were getting out of the car her mum pointed at the building next door, covered in scaffolding and with all its windows boarded up.

"What an awful building. When are they finally pulling it down?"

"That's the library I work in, mum."

Escape Committee update

We've had a message from Lemuel: he's been told to retire due to ill-health. It's a shame, really, as he's a nice bloke but he's much better off not getting wound up here. Especially with the upcoming carpet drama.

Almost all that separates us from the barbarians

There are some consolations. If CILIP wasn't so damned useless at public relations we might have to suffer drivel like this.

A monograph on a difficult order

Urgent 'phone call from Doggedly: having agreed with Dagmar as to where we should put the new printer, which she insists has to be under the counter, she's kicking off about it. Poor old Lupin from IT has been getting a major earache about it; he just thought he was going over to install the printer and is regretting it massively.

The problem is that although the printer needs to go under the desk Dagmar doesn't want to have to kneel down for the paper. I'm not sure how that works.

"Any inspirations as to where to put the printer?" I ask Lupin.

"Oh yes."

In the end we jerry-rig a network point and move the printer from any of the previously objectionable locations. To my utter relief and amazement Dagmar is happy about it. Job done. Is it time to go home yet?

We may begin where we please,We shall never come to an end;

We have a new set of very large boxes cluttering the Acq. Team's corner. The waves of resentment seething between the team and these boxes can be seen shimmering in the half light. I should know better than to do this:

"Which are these?"

"Books for Sharing," replies Noreen. "Urgent job we had to do for Mary."

"Where for?"

"That box is for Helminthdale. That's for Roadkill. That's for Noddy. Or at least that's what they were bought for. They'll be down here until it's time to withdraw them."

"Haven't we just got the display stands for these?"

"Yes, but we can't send the stuff upstairs because Doreen doesn't know where they're going and she thinks it won't be worth putting them out if the carpet's going to be replaced this November."

"And we're supposed to be moving Roadkill some time in the next few months..."

"And we can't send them out to Noddy because they can't put the stand out because of the photocopier."

"But there isn't a photocopier at Noddy. T.Aldous kiboshed it.... Yes, yes, I know, I know, I'm sorry."

"We had to drop everything to get them ordered and invoiced and processed. Dead waste of time that was."

"Is there any way for me to retreat gracefully from this conversation?"

"Not gracefully, no. You should know better."

Eternity in an hour

Bronwyn's pulling her hair out trying to work out the leave entitlement for one of the new Relief Assistants. She asks me for help (desperate woman). The problem lies in the model examples provided by Human Resources:

Jane works 20 hours per week. Her entitlement is:

20 / 37.5 x 140
= 74.6666 hours' holiday
= 75 hours 6 minutes

Between us it took us ten minutes to realise just what the problem is here. And another ten to believe it had become official mathematics.

*(To spare you our agonies: .66 of an hour is not sixty six minutes)

And here's a list of missing persons

Nipping into Dutch Bend I find things a bit spare. Jessie was scheduled to be lending a hand with the Big Wild Read Big Wild thingy at Catty but has ended up staying at Dutch Bend where Daisy and Bunty are otherwise holding the fort all day.

"I told Julia that we'd be struggling today. Do you know what she said? 'Well I'm on leave on Tuesday.'"

Sounds like someone aspires to T.Aldous' dizzying heights.

Ah yes...

"You know how you finish a conversation with somebody and then five minutes later you realise that it made no sense whatsoever?" asks Milton.

"All the time," I confess.

"I've just been talking to Dagmar at Doggedly. She's read that report in the Daily Mail about laser printers giving you cancer."

"Oh yes, another one..."

"She was telling me how she was having trouble breathing and kept catching her breath. So I promised I check up on it with Health and Safety."

I knew what was coming.

"It was only when I put the 'phone down that I remembered that it hadn't been installed yet and was still in the box in the back room."

It's all in the label

Jim's been co-opted onto the council's new Bobbing Up: An Excellence Toolkit Implementation Plan Working Party. His initial enthusiasm is soon dashed.

"Our first meeting was to decide on some outline aims for the Implementation Plan Working Party. I suggested that we should include 'Encouraging a can-do culture within the council.' In the end they decided on 'Looking at ways of encouraging greater involvement in implementation plans.'"

An audience with The Bash Street Kids

Frog can at last bear to talk about yesterday's frightfulness at Senebene. He turned up with the poet who was going to be doing the event to find that Beryl and Deidre had spent a couple of hours having to cope with a bunch of lads who probably could have done with a bit of a poke with a cattle prod. They settled down for all of ten seconds before playing up again. Eventually, Frog had to play the heavy and tell them that if they didn't settle down a bit they'd have to go away. Which is what had to happen. And lo it was that there wasn't anyone else left (they'd pigged off any less raucous kids).

"I've been doing this for twenty-three years and never lost an audience before," says Frog.

Sad to say, in real life there are always some people we're not going to reach, no matter how much we try.

Objet trouvée

Jollop vapour

One of the computer screens at Gypsy Lane has gone up in flames. Pansy sees the bright side:

"I'll tell you what, the smell of it's great for getting you to cough up a pile of catarrh."

Mulch

Frog's pissed off. He's come back in from a particularly fraught children's event at Senebene Library to find that his desk is covered in nearly-empty bags of compost. They've been sent in by branches who've been doing seed-planting activities for The Big Wild Read.

In any ordinary organisation they'd hang onto the stuff or chuck it out or something. Not here: everyone's so worried that they'll be held to account for every pennyweight of dirt and the bags besides that they've sent it back to Helminthdale to be on the safe side.

Just at this point I pop my head over the filing cabinet.

"Haven't you got this place cleared out for T.Aldous' sofas yet?"

"Don't talk to me about bloody sofas."

I think he needs his lunch.

Anon.

Popping into the Millipede and Clogger I bump into the Chair of the local Unison branch.

"I had two meetings with that bloody idiot last week," is his opening conversational gambit.

It's a while later before it occurs to me I didn't ask who we were talking about.

Spot checks

Helminthdale Council's started a series of spot-checks to make sure that nobody's found smoking in any of its public buildings, as per the recent change in law. It's our turn today. The chappie came in and let on to the counter staff as a courtesy. They rang down to let T.Aldous know, also as a courtesy. T.Aldous storms upstairs and upbraids the inspector:

"If you want to come and check the library you should have made an appointment."

The response was magisterial:

"I don't have to make appointments."

Grace under pressure

T.Aldous is just going into his meeting about the Children's Centre Bookdrop Project. He's decided to drag Lola along for the ride so that he's got someone to blame if he makes a tit of himself.

Lola's told both Frog and Mary about the meeting and they're not wholly impressed with the fact T.Aldous hadn't deigned to do so. Mary decides to be a bit firm about this one. T.Aldous concedes the point:

"You're not invited but you can come in if you want."

We've had the pixies in

Seth invites us to test our forensic skills.

"When I left last night everywhere was spick and span and the workroom was tidy, with just a couple of dozen boxes of booksale stock stacked up in the corner. This morning there's nothing stacked up in the corner of the workroom and there's empty cardboard boxes littering the lending library."

The work of a moment. We wonder what time Elvis left the building last night.

Knowledge workers

Bear this in mind...

1. Lola is leading the children's centre bookdrop project.
2. Frog is temporarily line-managing Lola and is responsible for the children's centre bookdrop project, together with all the rest of the children's library services.
3. Mary line-manages Frog and is responsible for children's library services, inter alia and is the signing-off officer for the children's centre bookdrop project.
4. T.Aldous is Chief Librarian and his only input on the children's centre bookdrop project was to hold up Lola's appointment for six of the twelve months of the life of the project.

T.Aldous is having a Children's Centre Bookdrop Project meeting with the regional organisers tomorrow morning.

1. He's told Lola to collate all the statistics this evening so that he can answer any questions that may arise.
2. Frog knows nothing about this meeting.
3. Mary knows nothing about this meeting.

T.Aldous' parting shot to Lola:

"Make sure that you show that the statistics can be audited if necessary. I don't want to look a fool in this meeting."

It's to be hoped he keeps his mouth shut then.

The uttermost coil of her bowels

Poppy Cloverdale's the latest with the lurgy. She was sick a few times before coming in to work at Catty Library and she's not too clever at the moment. Luckily, her shade of green doesn't clash with that of the carpet. A few of us have asked her why on earth she's dragged herself in (the answer, predictably, is because they're so short-staffed there'll be nobody to cover for lunchtime)(and of course we can't close for an hour because of staff sickness)(nor could we actually staff our libraries adequately in the first place). Eventually, she gives in to her illness and tells Julia that she needs to retreat home. Julia's response bears all the hallmarks of our human resource support strategies.

"Tell you what. If you work through your lunchtime you can go home at three o'clock."

Be Prepared 2

Probably not the same group's just turned up at Helminthdale unannounced. A panicky 'phone call tears Frog away from his preparing this afternoon's event at Gypsy Lane to talk to the group leader. He quickly improvises some things for them to do with the Big Wild Read craft tables and shows them where to find books and story discs suitable for this age group.

"Can somebody do a couple of hours' storytime for us, too?"

Frog made his excuses and left.

Be Prepared 1

Someone from one of the SureStart projects rang Thelma at Epiphany Library on Tuesday:

"We'll be bringing our SureStart group to the Library tomorrow afternoon. It'll be about twenty children, plus a few parents."

"You won't, you know. The library's not open on Wednesdays."

"It must be: we've sent letters out to parents and everything."

Green dilemma

Frog's having a crisis of ethics about servicing the next batch of Big Wild Read Wild Happenings: should he buy another bag of compost or should we start strip-mining the peat deposits in T.Aldous' office?

Every customer this morning has asked: "What about that old Bubonic Plague?"

Things are a bit fraught. We've all gone down with bad colds, that is to say half of us are suffering and knowing the vagaries of our air-conditioning system the rest will follow in three days' time. The good news is that we've found that a combination of Flu Strength Doctor Collis' Horse Jollop, licorice and hot, sweet tea zonks us out completely: they could drop an atom bomb on us and we'd not notice.

Alas, not all are so comforted. Bronwyn comes down from lending, bringing back the debris of the latest Big Wild Read Wild Happening and news of shortages on the front line.

"We're quarter-staffed due to school holidays, sickness and covering for vacancies in branches. We've got leaves and compost all over the children's library. We're drawing straws to see who's going to cover in ref. And two of the PCs have stopped working.

"But we've rearranged all the books in the book sale so all's right in the world."

Observations on the spontaneous motions

Helminthdale Reference Library is not the haven of quiet, donnish research that you might imagine, nor that the Reference Librarians might claim when justifying their stock selections. Some right yobs come in to use the computers or, worse, read the papers (in my experience some of the people who read The Investors' Chronicle have the manners of pigs).

Dora's covering up there this morning. One of the customers recognises her:

"Oh I wasn't expecting you up here. Shouldn't you be at Gypsy Lane?"

"Not any more. I'm having to work up here these days."

"How are you liking it?"

"I'm not really. There's some very ignorant people up here."

"Yes, and I expect you find that some of the public aren't much better."

Jaw-droppingly lacking in self-awareness

I swear this is true. T.Aldous approaches Noreen:

"I've just put my 'phone through to your desk because you're the only person who answers my 'phone when it's ringing. Will that be a nuisance? People keep interrupting me with 'phone calls while I'm working."

Noreen was too gobsmacked to give any of the long list of entirely sensible responses that came to her five minutes later.

Enterprise

As part of The Big Wild Read Frog's organised a bunch of seed-sowing and plant-growing activities for the kids last week.

Maureen at Roadkill Library has already had one kid trying to sell her the seeds back for 20p.

Art imitates life

This is spooky. The great Winsor McKay, he who did "Little Nemo In Slumberland," drew this cartoon almost exactly one hundred years ago. How could he have predicted Helminthdale's customer transaction processes so uncannily?

Got my feet on the ground

Milton looks out of the staff room window at the sheets of water passing for a light shower.

"What do you reckon? If we get flooded out would it be worth putting all the crappy old equipment into the waters so that we could get replacements on the insurance?"

"Probably not. Knowing our luck we'd get like-for-like."

Chivalry, if not dead, is unwell

"We've not had a pile of new boxes littering the place this week," I mention in passing to Noreen, thinking this is a good thing too.

"We should have had twenty-five boxes of incoming books. They were to be delivered this morning."

"Where they?" I asked.

"They arrived OK: I answered the door when the delivery man rang. 'Twenty-five boxes,' he said. And he expected me to unload them from the van and bring them in myself! I got the trolley and asked him to lift the boxes down for me. He refused: 'I've not got time for that,' he said. So I told him that in that case he may as well go away again. I've complained to the supplier about him."

Noreen is a not tall lady in her fifties.

To a young ass, its mother being tethered

I have had this conversation three times so far this week, with slight variations in vocabulary.

"What does it mean when it says that an item at Glass Road is marked: 'Unavailable for reservation; at old site.'?"

"It means that the item is unavailable for reservation because it's been left behind at the old site."

"So we can't reserve that item?"

"No. It's unavailable for reservation."

"Why is it unavailable for reservation?"

"Because it's been packed away in one of the boxes piled up at the old Glass Road site. It'll probably be coming back here, everything else does."

"So I could place a reservation on it and then when the boxes are sent to Helminthdale someone could look for it in the boxes and then send it to us."

"No. These items are not available for reservation."

"So what happens if a borrower wants to reserve it?"

"If you choose to borrow a set of keys, go over to the old site, open up, rummage through the boxes, take the book back to your library -- having tidied up and locked up behind you -- then discharge the book on the circulation system and thus make it available for reservation then I can't see that there's anything I could do about it."

"I can't understand why we can't reserve these items."
The answer to this last is either "because you're too stupid for words" or "yes you can but you don't like the answer." I should let gentler souls than mine decide on which.

The boundaries of epistomology

"Why are we still carrying so many vacancies on the front line?" asks Jim.

"We need to keep the posts vacant so that we can pay for the temporary staff needed to fill the vacancies," replies T.Aldous.

Whiling away the time

I had a go at a few of the quizzes in Blogthings. You know the type of thing: "Who would direct the movie of your life?" (Ingmar Bergman) "What colour are you?" (Dark grey) "What type of animal are you?" (Dead rabbit) Then I did "Should you quit your job?"

Your Job Dissatisfaction Level is 76%

Your job is a total bummer, and probably the worst job you've ever had.
Your boss is a jerk. And your company is probably in trouble.
Think about finding a new job quickly, even if it's just a not-so-great transition job.
You've got to get out of there as quickly as you can!

Should You Quit Your Job?

Kettle:Pot

"You're too cynical," complains T.Aldous.

It always amuses me that the people who complain the most about me being cynical are the ones most happy to tread on the faces of their fellow man.

You'll never guess what!

"You'll never guess," says Frog.

"What now?" I ask.

"We're having another Big Book Sale."

I am frankly puzzled.

"How's that different from the Big Book Sale we've been having up here for the past three months?"

"That's Helminthdale Library's Big Book Sale, organised by Doreen. The new one's going to be Helminthdale Library Service's Big Book Sale, organised by T.Aldous."

"You're taking the piss."

He wasn't.

Prayers for the faithful

What a thoroughly depressing afternoon.

I've just had a meeting with colleagues from elsewhere in the north of England. This is generally a good thing: they're a nice bunch of people; we have interesting discussions; and it's always consoling to know that we share common problems and aren't just festering in our own private hells.

Unfortunately, things are bloody awful all round. We all have to deal with our local lunatics (for some of us it's chiefs and/or reference librarians; for others it's chiefs and children's; or chiefs and branches)(it's odd how often chiefs feature). This is mostly OK, it's part of the game and adds to the gaiety of nations. The new elements of awfulness are part of a wider, nastier picture. We had our blood-letting last year and still have the gaps in provision and vacancies to show for it. One of our colleagues has had three of his colleagues offered early retirement and is covering for his line manager (sounds familiar!); another finds that their new reorganisation means that there aren't any jobs left for 75% of the librarians but those who choose to remain may be eligible to apply for six posts which might arise from phase three of the restructure. One of our colleagues has been retired early along with his line manager and his line manager's line manager and the people who are standing in for him aren't allowed to go to external meetings in case they compromise local confidentiality issues. We're moving libraries into shared premises in the name of co-location but in reality just finding uses for spare capacity in council buildings regardless of suitability of premises or location. Most colleagues have been doing similarly lately. In one case they've reopened as a Community Information Point; in another as a Learning and Information Centre; another as a Community Learning Centre; another as a Community Reading & Learning Centre; in fact anything other than "library." At one library staff are now generic council workers "doing housing enquiries in between stamping out books," something which sounds horribly like something I successfully argued against in other circumstances fifteen years ago.

The discussion lists this week are full of librarians boasting about not getting their hands dirty with stock selection or stock promotion ("we don't need a local library catalogue"). I can't help wondering how successful Tesco or Wal-Mart would be if they gave up bothering about stock selection. And given the central government push of customer choice (however spurious that choice actually is), I can't see the sense in not promoting local stock locally using web catalogues and web sites as aggressively as possible. Mind you, given the choice between a librarian who can't be bothered doing decent stock selection and leaving the job to a supplier I'd go for the supplier every time. And too many librarians don't give two hoots about the quality or accuracy of their catalogue. Perhaps I've been naive all along.

All in all, I'm not convinced I see much of a future for the public library service in all this.

Spontaneous generation

Seven new boxes in the corridor that ought to be the fire escape. Nothing new there but these are humongous, the size and roughly the shape, of roll-top desks.

"What the hell are these?" I ask Seth.

"I know where five of them are going but not the others," he replies.

"That's not the question I asked."

"I know, but that's the question I'm worrying about."

It turns out that they're display stands for the Books For Sharing collections, of which we have four. A fifth is going to the new Noddy Library as part of the development of this site, so Mary ordered five stands. Somebody amended the order and added the other two. Only one person has the authority to amend an order once Mary's signed it.

"What on earth is she going to do with those two stands?" asks T.Aldous.

What a shocking bad hat!

An overheard classic. T.Aldous ambushing a colleague on his last day before three weeks' leave:

"I know you're getting ready to go home and that you're going to be on leave for the next three weeks -- lucky you, I can't remember my leave -- but could you give me the current stock figures for Roadkill Library? I know it's not moving until this autumn but I'm worried that we won't be able to fit all the existing stock in the new library so I need to know how much of each type of stock we're likely to be dealing with. I know it's not ideal asking you now but we need it before you go on leave."

Serves the poor sod right for not buggering off mid-afternoon. Strangely he's not that pissed off, which makes me suspicious.

"You've already got those figures prepared haven't you?"

"The secret of magic is the art of preparation," he replied smugly.

"Is that why you asked me for the under-fives statistics?"

"End of July, you wait," he winked.

The Diary and Doings of a Moist Visitor

Working as we all do backstage in a darkened cellar we generally have no idea of the doings of the weather of the day except when we come in, when we nip out for lunch and when we go home. Our body clocks are all to cock and seasonality has withered on the vine. As, indeed, have we by and large. The good news is that we're less badly affected by the vile weather of the past few weeks than most folk.

Of course we're not entirely ignorant: if we be bothered to care enough we can divine the weather from the signs about us:

Staff room full of open umbrellas
Either it's been raining or it's an art installation.
Not to be confused with: open umbrella in staff toilet, which suggests an unpleasant medical condition.

"Good weather for ducks!"
It's raining.

"Turned out nice again!"
It's raining.

"God, this weather!"
It's raining.

"Isn't it warm today?"
It's raining.

"They said it would be fine today."
It's raining.

"What's it been like round your way?"
It's raining.

"Will you just look at it!"
If said by someone staring out of the staff room window: it's raining.
In any other context: you really don't want to know.

Questions, questions

"We need to set up a staff questionnaire that we can keep on running to demonstrate that we're responsive to ideas and suggestions," I'm told. "Can you set something up like that?"

Oh I think so.

Pottering about

There was a bit on the 'Today' programme about a row between Asda and Bloomsbury about the price of the latest Harry Potter book. No doubt we'll soon be getting another "why have you bought all those copies of the book at suppliers' discount when you could have popped round to the supermarket and got them cheaper?" or "why didn't you buy them off Amazon and get them a bit cheaper" letters from a councillor or one of the council's accountants.

The answer to the Amazon question's quite tricky to explain if the person asking the question isn't much fussed about the impact of supply times on CPA-related performance indicators and the potential costs of part-order deliveries. Councillors and council accountants should be much fussed about both these things. (Notice the use of the conditional tense there!)

The supermarket one's easy: you're not going to see 95% of the titles we've got on our shelves in the supermarket, they're not high-volume sellers and so can't compete with tins of beans for shelf space. Of course, if we were only buying occasional bulk orders of best-selling titles then that's precisely what we should be doing (and off-setting the processing costs with the discount). But we're a public library and we don't, which is why we negotiate contracts with book suppliers.

The perils of reading

There's always someone worse off than yourself. I guess there are some compensations in having a Chief Librarian who refuses to read things.

An articulator of bones

I'm being provocative:

"So tell me, Frog old fellow me lad, you know how Glass Road's being moved into the school and any library manager you bump into will spontaneously tell you all the plans they have for working with the school: 'We'll get the kids to do this,' 'We'll have to organise some after-school activities,' etc. etc. etc."

"Yes..."

"Have any of them actually spoken to you about doing anything with the school and the kids there?"

"Don't take the piss, it's not nice."

Party animals

The girls at Dutch Bend had another Anne Summers party in the weekend. This is a terrifying prospect for those of us with weak stomachs. One of the participants is Elsie Bradlow, one of the Reference Assistants who retired last year. Elsie is a lovely lady but is extremely away with the fairies. Lucy Raindrop, who's covering at Noddy, hosted the party and told me all about it.

"How's Elsie these days?" I asked.

"She's getting worse. She brought me a birthday cake."

"Was it your birthday?"

"No. But she told us to pretend that it was and we ended up having to humour her. We sat around my living room with glasses of wine and boxes of things you don't want to know about singing 'Happy birthday' while she insisted I blow out the candles."

Singing in the rain

It's my own fault, I've no one else to blame. I was reading yet another newspaper article about corporate bonding exercises and I wondered out loud what our corporate song would be.

When I left the staff room there were three people doing Leonard Cohen impressions, singing "We're h-a-p-p-y."

Designs for living

It's the end of another crappy week at work so of course something like this has to pop up in my inbox at 5pm.

More than sense can scan or imagination attain

"I think we should take Lola off the project she's working on and get her to organise the Big Wild Read," says T.Aldous.

"Bronwyn's already got that sorted," says Frog. "And the Big Wild Read started two weeks ago."

The epidermis of poetry

To be a library (trad.)

"You might have read," T.Aldous said
In some untimbered barn,
"It is your fate to relocate
And all that sort of yarn.
With moonlight flits such stock that fits
Will move quite seamlessly.
Then off we'll go and hey presto!
We'll have a library."
He told us. "We'll have a library."

Such stock unfoxed we found we boxed
And labelled each in turn.
Propped up on planks in serried ranks
For whom it may concern.
They stayed that way for many a day.
They festered fruitlessly.
When people say: "Lord, what are they?"
"They're for the library,"
We tell them. "They're for the library."

The ages pass: hay turns to grass
And pigs fly south to nest.
After this wait they set a date:
"Next Tuesday would be best."
So's not to waste any undue haste
They dither endlessly:
"Now, what goes where?" "Not that, not there."
Around the library,
They dicker round the library.

Despite it all it's a close call
With shelved books of a kind.
A slight snafu means we've no clue
As to which stayed behind.
(We later learned when backs were turned
T.Aldous heedlessly
Shuffled the pack and took some back
To the old library
Or Helminthdale, at least some library.)

Hip hip hooray it's opening day
And you know what that means.
A bunch of toffs who soon sod off
And not a hill of beans.
They'll politesse the local press
But as for thee and me
They'll give short shrift. But once adrift
We'll be a library,
Despite it all, we'll be a library.

(A recording of this song is available on the MLA Victor label)

Time was, that when the brains were out, the man would die

Seth's lending me a hand with some of the People's Network workstations: it takes two to shift the study carels so that I can access the PC processors and the network points. Along comes T.Aldous.

"So that's where you are! What do you think you'e doing? I want you to move some boxes in Noddy Library."

Then he stalks off. I turn to Seth:

"Just remind me: you are caretaker at Helminthdale Library aren't you? Not Borough-wide shit-shifter?"

"Oh yes," he says with feeling. "And if he's not careful he's going to be shifting Glass Road by himself."

Cooee Mister Shifter!

Seth's not happy. T.Aldous has decided that he wants everything shifting out of Glass Road next week after the old site closes its doors for the last time and everything shifting to the new site. Three problems:

For the past decade Glass Road has been the repository for the old crap that didn't take root at Helminthdale.

The new Glass Road site has no storage space and has two-thirds the shelving capacity of the old site.

T.Aldous is expecting Seth to do it all in one afternoon.

You have to bear in mind that we've only had two-and-a-half years to plan and prepare for this so we're badly taken off guard. I decide not to wind Seth up any, I don't want him going the way of Lemuel.

Every so often I can keep a straight face.

"You know that application problem with your web catalogue?"

"Yes...."

"Well the supplier's got in touch with us and he's made some suggestions."

I bet he has.

Unhinged

"What on earth are all these boxes doing here?" shrieks T.Aldous. "I expected them to be out of the way by the time I got back off leave. We need to reorganise this workspace."

"We need to reorganise this workspace," is code for: "I want to budge Frog into the middle of the office so that I can have a waiting area outside my office so that anyone visiting me can sit on settees and have a cup of coffee while they're waiting."

Where are these settees coming from and what budget are they being paid out of?

If people have come over to have a pre-arranged meeting with T.Aldous then he should damn well have the courtesy not to keep them hanging around for half an hour while he prattles on the 'phone with his back to the world.

If we're reorganising this workspace there are a whole heap of higher priorities than his sodding waiting area. Like perhaps somewhere for the Branch Librarians to work, or perhaps something that ensured that Management Group wasn't split over four locations and three floors of this library (teamwork anyone?)

Given his prediliction for commandeering staffrooms and workrooms for private meetings because he can't have them in his office as it looks like a remainder sale in a carrier bag factory how soon before we're all ordered out of the building so's he can have a private meeting on his sofas?

Who's going to be making this coffee then? It was bad enough when he had a secretary but now she's retired and the post gone into T.Aldous' Vacancy Limbo there's nobody left to do it. Clever money's on his asking the Finance Officer to do it because she's not doing anything important like pricing up Book Sale items.

And that's before we even start asking ourselves the question "what on earth are all these boxes doing here?"

Morse code melodies

Jim's getting a bollocking off T.Aldous for all to see and hear in the middle of the open-plan office. He's taking it quite well really, though there were a couple of moments where I noticed his right hand balling up into a fist and the effort of will involved in unclenching and turning the movement into a discursive gesture. In the circumstances it's impossible not to hear the conversation.

"You had no right to do that. I needed to see what you were planning before anything like that could be done."

"But we went through it all in a Management Group meeting before Xmas and we agreed that that's what I should do. It's in the minutes, I'm not making it up."

"Well I don't remember agreeing to it."

"It's in the minutes. And I've been sending you weekly emails giving you and the rest of Management Group details of progress and asking for feedback."

"You should know by now that I only ever read emails with red exclamation marks on them. I'm far too busy for the others."

Jim didn't know that, of course. It'll be interesting to see what he does with the knowledge. Some of us have an archive of hundreds of emails giving T.Aldous exclusive knowledge of what we intend doing whether he like it or not, each one ending

"Please let me know if you wish any variation on this plan."

But the folks are not all of them crazy

Not just us then...

A Librarian's Guide To Etiquette

Motive power

Apparently one of the emails waiting for T.Aldous on his return from Amazonia was one from the Chief Executive asking how many buildings had been released as a result of the library co-location programme that's been running for the past three years. The answer is, of course, none: although we finally decamped from the old place at Noddy and went live in the community centre in March we only finally cleared it out yesterday, despite our being contractually obliged to be out of the place by 30th April. I can't imagine these are related facts.

And there's certainly no truth in the rumour that T.Aldous knew nothing about it until Warner rang him up to ask why he hadn't been reading his emails.

Tote that barge

Seth's been all day shifting shit at the old Noddy Library. This is the stuff that had been sent here then out to Noddy then back again and then back here and finally shifted out again just before T.Aldous went on leave. The library's got to be cleared out (the deadline for clearance was a couple of months ago) so Seth's been given the use of a van and one of the chaps from the council's shifting gang to get the job done.

A nice complication to the job is that we can't afford to take all this gear to Helminthdale's council dump as it's far too expensive so they having to drive over to Pardendale, adding seven miles to each of the eight journeys involved. Not helped by the roadworks: Helminthdale has roadworks simultaneously at each and every junction on the outer ring road at the moment.

Upon his arrival he's met by T.Aldous.

"You've been a long time about it haven't you?"

The power of positive thinking

Bronwyn and Salome have been doing online book selection since they started their jobs as Branch Librarians in the east side of the Borough. Nancy and Flossie refuse to do online book selection, which means that the Branch Librarians for two-thirds of the west side of the Borough aren't selecting any new stock. When challenged they fall back on the good old

"We've not had any training."

The solution is to tell Bronwyn and Salome to do the book selection for those libraries, too.

The irony is that Bronwyn and Salome haven't had any training and just got on with it. While Flossie and Nancy were in the same training session as Lola this time last year and have conveniently forgotten it.

Poll

I've just had my first look at the new Glass Road Library, up round the back of St. Barrabas' Primary School.

Sigh...

Your library authority moves your library to a new shared location. What will be its unique selling point?
	Having the entrance around the back of the building.
	Hiding the entrance behind the dustbins.
	Blocking the entrance by having service vehicles parked there.
	Providing no customer parking whatsoever.
	Having no signage saying that this is a library.
	Being located at the top of the only hill in the village.
	Having the spring for the local beck arise just above the entrance.
	Having to close the library for to accommodate OFSTED inspectors.
	All of the above.
pollcode.com free polls

I don't want that image for my band

Ah well. The good news is that Readers' Digest have written to say that I may have won a prize.

More customer feedback

T.Aldous comes in, flourishing a copy of a letter that's been sent to Warner Baxter.

"Mr. Jenkinson's sent Warner another letter thanking Lippy for the good work she does for his mother who's housebound,"

says T.Aldous as if he were passing drawing pins.

"How many's that he's sent?" asks Frog later.

"Three now," replies Lippy.

"How much does he charge?"

The return of the native

T.Aldous arrives back from leave the worse for wear for jet-lag. Most of us pretend we haven't noticed he's back. It's probably a forlorn effort to prolong the dream but it's worth a go.

A rule for sisters

A plea to the ladies: any time an innocent male asks you why you've got a turkey baster on your desk don't answer the question! Please.

There are no illusions left for some of us

Reference and misinformation

Milton turns up at my doorway.

"Sanctuary! Sanctuary!"

He's just been having one of his occasional forays into understanding Helminthdale's reference stock policies and needs a wet flannel on his forehead.

The trouble started when he got a 'phone call from Dutch Bend complaining that they hadn't had an update of their "Jane's Fighting Sailors." He said he'd look into it, secretly balking at paying that much unless there was a damned good reason for it.

"Is there a copy of Jane's Fighting Sailors here at Helminthdale?" he asked Eileen.

"Yes," she replies, "but it's an old one. It's not being updated here."

"Why is Dutch Bend getting an up-to-date copy but not Helminthdale if Helminthdale's the main reference library in the borough?"

"I don't know; the Acq. team decide on the updates."
[bollocks said I]

"When was your last update?"

"Two years ago."

"So you've not had a copy on the shelves for two years?"

"Oh no, it's still there."

"Hasn't anyone complained about its being out of date?"

"Oh no. I don't think anyone's noticed."

"Why on earth is it on the shelf if it's out of date?"

"Oh, it's used all the time."

This is wrong on so many levels I can only commiserate and reassure him that the rules of information librarianship seem to have evaded Helminthdale somehow.

Just fade away

Having established that we can regain access to our web catalogue on staff PCs by being naughty I now find that some of the pictures on it are missing. I check our Flickr account: all the files are there. It turns out that they're being blocked by the council's Internet Frivolity Filter.

What I can't understand is why half the images and why those ones in particular. King Kong in drag, posted in March, is OK as is a picture of a courting couple posted in January. A picture of Lord Kitchener, posted on the same day as the courting couple, is blocked, as is a picture of a pencil.

Someone in the Town Hall has a peculiar idea of frivolity.

Delusions of adequacy

Amid great fanfare we are presented with the successor to "Scoring Points By Ticking Boxes" (a thrilling yarn, soon to be a major motion picture). The council's Excellence And Expediency Directorate proudly presents "Bobbing Up: An Excellence Toolkit." I grit my teeth and get to slide 78: "Can we do it? Yes we can!" (oh come on, who's going to invent anything as unbelievable as an eighty-four slide PowerPoint presentation?) Anyway, I got as far as slide 78 before I started rocking to and fro and moaning. My neighbours had curled up into balls on their chairs. Three people at the front (including one of the presenters) fell asleep and a lady at the back had to be given air. All in all a rousing success.

I get back to the office and dig out my Scoring Points by Ticking Boxes" mantra card. To my utter lack of astonishment I find that the summary of points is exactly the same as the "key outcomes" list in slide 65.

So at least we'll all be consistent non-achievers then.

Quick! We must find a library!

I've spent the day trawling round libraries in the rain. All for to make one simple change to the desktop at each library, a job that would take literally a minute each time were I allowed to proxy into them from my office. No chance of that as not even the IT helpdesk are allowed that.

Sodly massed

"How's Lemuel doing?" we ask Seth. Seth tells us he's doing fine and he'll be out of hospital at the end of the week. Very good, we say:

"Tell him we've got some boxes for him to shift."