The world would be a birthday cake

We are told that the big priority for the library service is to increase the number of visitors to our libraries. We are told that the most important thing we can possibly do is to increase the number of visitors to our libraries. I am told that we should not be providing services only because if people can get services online they won't visit our libraries (this is cock, of course, but this is what I am told; governments of all stripes tell me different so I have an excuse to do what needs doing).

So, as you can imagine, it's important for us to increase the number of visitors to our libraries.

Spadespit Library's charity afternoon tea yesterday was a rip-roaring success. Over the course of three and a half hours they had hundreds of additional visitors. Lots of money has been raised for charity and the staff, who'd prepared everything in their own time and bought all the goodies themselves, were thanked profusely by their customers.

They've been told not to do it again as it's too disruptive to the everyday business of the library.

Clouds made out of angel spit

It's like Nob Hill here this morning. There's sneezing and coughing and spluttering and the welkin rings with moans and groans and guttural oaths and that's just Frog. Some of the others are in an even worse state. Luckily, you can always count on the sympathy of your co-workers in this place.

Sami is looking and sounding delicate:

"I feel awful. My throat's red-raw."

"That'll be the ribbed condoms."

"No, I mean it. I've got swollen glands."

It's been a long time since Sami was Junior Miss size.

Two years later he became the racing correspondent of The War Cry

An epiphany...

Have had lunch with an old colleague. On my arrival he looked at me, scowled and said:

"These days you're dressing like the foreign correspondent of some antediluvian broadsheet."

It suddenly occurs to me what I've been doing here all these years.

Curiosity is the wick in the candle of learning

Doreen, sitting in her office downstairs in Helminthdale Central Library, rang upstairs to talk to somebody in the Lending Library.

The Lending Library, being just one person today (in our flagship main library in the borough) was busy serving a queue of customers.

Doreen is in charge of Helminthdale Central Library.

What would you do chums?

...

Doreen rang BT to see if there was a fault on the line.

If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one

I've given more diplomatic answers...

Julia's just come back from a meeting of Librarians What Talk At Tables.

"Leamholt's got a really active Facebook page. Why aren't we engaging with social networking like that?" she asks me.

I hear myself say:

"Strictly speaking, you're not even engaging with the World Wide Web."

There's enough there for a potato each

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

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

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

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

The passers-by see only a wisp of smoke

Councillor Dogberry turned up unannounced at Windscape Library yesterday evening, told the Library Assistant that he was on The Committee at Sheep City and proceeded to interrogate her about the state and performance of the library. Which is very inquisitive of him as he represents a ward fifteen miles away. Having no standing orders to the contrary, or even any standing orders whatsoever, and The Elemental Masters Of Reality being incommunicado as per bloody usual, and not having been required to sign the Official Secrets Act, she answered as best she could.

Once the inquisition abated she had a question for him: "Why have you come here and why are you asking all these questions?"

"Because I'm entitled to," he snapped as he made his exit.

A visit to a sausage rehabilitation centre in Wiltshire

I have recently been preoccupied with establishing a Plan B for when everything goes pear-shaped (eighteen days and counting). Of course, the major problem at a time like this when everyone is waiting to see if they'll still have a job after Xmas is that everyone is waiting to see if they'll still have a job after Xmas. And that includes the people who have just changed jobs or are applying for new ones which may or may not still exist after Xmas...

So I spent a bit of time researching consultancy. Part of the appeal is that it doesn't necessarily require you to immediately jump from the existing ship to make a start of it. And I do quite a lot of informal consultancy work in the course of the job and it's the part I actually find the most rewarding and productive.

In my experience there are two worthwhile types of consultant:

• generalists who help you realise what you know and what to do with it; and
• specialists who are there to provide specific expert knowledge.

(I'm not interested in the types that aren't worthwhile; especially not the "percentage slicers" from the big management consultancy corporations.)

Thinking about it objectively my knowledge isn't especially specific or particularly expert, especially when viewed from the world outside Helminthdale. So I'd have to try to sell myself as the helpful generalist I can be when the mood takes me. Which is where I would frankly struggle. What would be my selling point? I'm an excellent listener and know how to ask questions that can lead people to answers they need rather than answers they want. Some of that comes from the days when I did advice work: more often than not the presenting problem wasn't the reason for seeking advice and you had to learn the ways of getting to the nub without either scaring off or antagonising the client. (Besides, it's down to my basic wiring: if somebody says: "I want to get there" my first inclination is to ask why.) Which is all well and good but is a difficult thing to sell to a stranger. And that's what I'm really bad at. I can talk up the good points (there are many!) of our services. I can help friends and colleagues identify and even buy into their strengths and experiences. But myself? Nah... Which makes for an important handicap in entering any competitive market.

Furthermore, I'd need to get my act together rather better than I have these days. Organisationally I'm currently a shambles almost on a par with the library service. A catastrophic impediment to the jobbing consultant I'd think.

Finally, there's all those people waiting to see if they're going to be having to walk the plank next year. The market will be saturated with wannabe consultants of one stripe or another. Yeah, I know there's always room at the top but you still need to force your way through the crowds to get to base camp in the first place. At this stage of my life I don't think I have the confidence or gumption to do that effectively. So it looks like I'm going to have to do something about that.

In the mean time it looks like consultancy isn't my Plan B. A world breathes a sigh of relief.

For now.

On a clear night with that I can see the end of the bed

I suppose that the Sunday morning dream where I find myself fighting my way through a packed convention centre trying to find out who's pinched my computer screen after finding that

• The server room's been bricked up by senior librarians;
• My desk's been replaced by a coffee table and three sofabeds complete with pre-installed hippies with guitars; and
• I can't shout because my throat is filled with my own vomit

means that I'll be taking a few anxiety issues to work with me Monday morning.

It is, of course, a British Rail sausage, built in 1954

Seth's got his work cut out for him over the weekend: he's cleaning out the fridge in the staff room. He decided it needed doing after he found a bag of meat that had become liquid.

Past times

One hundred years ago today...

A repetition of fingers

Verity's got some interesting news:

"Councillor Mountebank was at the Action Area Committee meeting last night. He was telling them all that there are plans to close all the libraries and turn them into housing offices. Which is odd because they've closed all the housing offices: the tenants have to get the bus into Catty to report repairs nowadays. But he insisted it was true."

"I wonder where he got that idea from."

"You know what he's like. There's no love lost between him and the Chairman of the Committee. He said that he wasn't having that news adding to the minutes just on Councillor Mountebank's say-so. They spent the rest of the meeting squabbling about the new school playground."

There's more smoke than mirrors around these parts.

Robin Hood's Bicycle Division

Some more midget gems of current thinking from the reference library shelves:

• Great Britain: House Of Commons: Employment Commitee :Youth Employment and Training: New Training Initiative (June 1982)
• Reorganisation Of Public Elementary Schools In England And Wales 1937-38
• Better Schools (1985)
• The Internal Purchasing Power Of The Pound (1989)
• Who Publishes Official Information For Business And Industry? Proceedings Of A One-Day Seminar 20 Sept 1988
• Financial Services In The United Kingdom: A New Framework For Investor Protection (White Paper) (1985)
• Employment For The 1990's (White Paper)
• Commercial Property Development (1975)
• Broadcasting In The '90s
• 2nd Report Of The Committee: A Comparison Of Transition Temperatures Determined By Small And Large Scale Tests On Five Steels (1960)
• A Simple Guide To Basic Processes In The Iron And Steel Industry (1964)
• The Queen's Award To Industry. Report Of The 1970 Review Committee
• Session 1987-88 Fifth Report The Future Of The National Health ServiceFirst Report From The Social Services Committee Session 1985-86: Reform Of Social Security
• The Artificial Kidney... What It Is And How It Works (1965)
• Europe: A Time To Choose, Elections June 1984
• More Examples Of English Handwriting With Essex Parish Records Of 13th - 18th Centuries (1950)
• Aids To Identification Of Flying Objects (1968)
• Collectable Silver (1963)
• A Policy For The Arts (The First Steps.) Cmnd. Paper 2601 (1965)
• A Brief History Of The National Gallery Of Scotland (1961)
• Local Government Reform: Short Version Of The Report (1969)
• Battle For The Counties: Guide To The County Council Elections May 1977

There'll be a little more stock-editing going on this Autumn, I think!

Every man is divinity in disguise ...it is God playing the fool

A colleague writes:

"When the phone call starts “this is Andrew”, it is the start of what can only be a period of serious misery. (Andrew is affectionately referred to hereabouts as Ernst Stavro Blofeld.)

"Anyway, the left hand counter PC had somehow, and mysteriously, got itself in a state whereby it wouldn’t reboot. Quite how it had got there is a mystery which would baffle Mr. Morse, Mr. Homes and Mr. Fu Manchu, as Mr. Blofeld wasn’t for letting on as to how it had become so afflicted. He did say however that efforts to reboot had involved pressing F2s and F12s, which was somewhat worrying as messing around with such is a typical, nasty trick at this library.

"However having visited and rebooted, resaved stuff they may have F2 ed off, and F4 ed a couple of times things seem ok, well all except my temperate demeanour and stress levels. I suppose it could have been worse as Mr. Blofeld was elsewhere, probably plotting to take over the world beyond with Mr Scaramanga, and his faithful assistant was, hopefully, heading into the sea, not out of it. "

These days I don't think I'd have the patience for that sort of nonsense: if they've fucked the PC they can fix it would be my response. Stories like this from colleagues in other library services remind me how lucky I've been with most of our front-line staff over the years.

Elephants never forget

It was my fault. I had warned about the onset of barbarism...

It wasn't as bad as that afternoon we lost to the Moomins but it was quite bad enough.

My head's completely curly-wurly

Conversation with Milton:

"You know that web stuff you've been working on? Well, I've been talking to some people about a product that does pretty much the same thing. They've been using it in other libraries and they reckon it'll do the job. I'm seeing them tomorrow. You can come along if you want."

I can come along if I want? Three months' work potentially down the toilet and I can come along if I want.

Pictures at an exhibition

A couple of the Counter Assistants had too merry a Sunday lunchtime and went home with tattoos. "What did you get?" we ask them.

"I don't know what it's supposed to be," says Cora.

"It's a Chinese lucky charm symbol," insists Sue.

"It's a Chinese lucky charm symbol," says Cora.

We're obviously not convinced.

"Well, I'm not showing you mine," says Cora. "Not where I've got it."

We all boggle slightly.

"Here, I'll show you mine,"

says Sue, who's obviously said that before to a group in a closed room. It turns out to be just below her collarbone. The gentlemen decline the offer. Lippy checks it out.

"Is this supposed to be a Chinese lucky charm symbol then?" she asks.

"Yes," replies Sue.

"Why's it say 'Milk Marketing Board' then?"

Field-dressing a moose

Thelma is fed up.

Epiphany Library is closed on Fridays so she has to come in to Helminthdale to provide a spare body in the lending library.

"Every time I come in something else has been changed and the people who know anything about it aren't in. It's embarrassing watching people floundering, trying to find out where something's been moved to this time while the customer's stood there tutting and drumming their fingers."

It's true enough: it's falling apart upstairs. You can never guess from one day to the next which staff are going to be in. No sooner do they get their coats off they've got to rush out to cover an unexpected hole in one library or another. It's been months since they've had a staff meeting with more than two people in it. It's a constant wonder they know which town they're in, let alone where the library cards have moved to this week. Frog and Bronwyn have given up asking for anything to be done up there unless they're doing it themselves. That's my working relationship with most of the library service this days.

Unfortunately I don't see it getting any better.

Quite the reverse, in fact.

Human flowers

We're struggling a bit so now is the time for firm and decisive leadership to steer the library service through hard times.

Library Strategy Group (this week) is pulling together to reach new lows of teamwork and dependability:

• Doreen isn't talking to Milton.
• Doreen and Julia are sometimes talking to each other.
• Nobody's talking to Jack Harry.
• None of them are talking to the rest of the staff.

Things have become a little more fraught since the announcement of a series of Service Efficiency Reviews.

• Julia and Doreen are pissed off because they've been included in the Buildings Management Review and Jack Harry and Milton haven't. Jack Harry and Milton don't manage any buildings but that doesn't come into it.
• Jack Harry finds himself included in the Transformational Management Review, which isn't as exciting as it sounds and thrills him no end as it's become painfully apparent that whoever's scoped this particular review just looked at the lists of people who attend (or, more strictly, get sent to) half a dozen of the council's Policy Development Meetings and decided that these are Transformation Managers, efficiencies for the use of, regardless of what any of them actually do for a living.
• Milton's not embroiled in any of the corporate senior management reviews, which rankles with Julia and Doreen, who would have a lot to say about it if they hadn't already fallen out with him about something else entirely.
• For some reason none of them are involved in the Regeneration & Strategic Planning Review.
• The results of a review of the management of the library service will be available next month.

To add to the fun, Warner, who has been the council's main troubleshooter over the past twenty years, has had another service added to his empire with directions from the Chief Executive to Turn It Round and let his deputies run the rest of the business. The idea that any other service in the council could be a bigger problem than the library service affords us a heady mixture of relief and blank horror.

Elsewhere in the universe some of the rest of us look like being affected by the Service Efficiency Reviews just as much as the Olympians:

• Maisie and Maudie are to be included in the Financial Support Services Audit, the stated objective of which is the creation of a central Financial Support Services Team, to be located in the Town Hall Annexe. Only by the grace of God and our managers not having the first idea of what they do did the Acquisitions Team avoid getting dragged into this scrape.
• I was damnably lucky to have escaped getting entangled with the IT outsourcing, thanks in part to a magnificent bit of circumlocutory lunacy by T.Aldous at the time. I doubt I'll be so lucky when it comes to the Information Support Services Audit that's being talked about at the moment. Strange that the reference library doesn't figure in this...
• The Fleet Disposition Analysis is going to make life just as awkward for the mobile library as it is for the library courier van and the housebound library service.
• One of the results of the Office Space Rationalisation Programme looks like our having to make space for Library Strategy Group (this week) some time this Autumn as they will be having to budge up so that the social workers from Ted Kavanagh House can move in. We suspect that this is what all the tape measures were really about early in the summer.
• Something is brewing in Sheep City which might drag in at least Dutch Bend and Catty libraries, if not all of them.
• And we'll all have to have our advocacy trousers on when the Customer Support Services Audit kicks in at the end of the year.

Happy days. And this is before we have to start worrying about Dave's Big Society, councils sharing services or whatever the DCMS has in mind for delivering library services in supermarkets (or in Helminthdale's case, vacant retail spaces; oh no, we're already doing that).

The Paris Zoo looks forward to the Franco-Prussian War

A couple of boxes of books arrive for the Acquisitions Team. Huzzah! All is not lost!

Alas, it's just a pile of old books from Umpty Library, each labelled: "For Recataloguing." Half are stamped "Withdrawn from stock. For Sale." The other half look as if they could have walked here themselves.

Noreen and Bronwyn agree that although times are hard they aren't quite that hard and aren't likely to become so any time in the near future. It is decided that we should dispose of the books.

There is a lengthy discussion as to who should nip out for the holy water and sharpened stake, just in case.

A mist of grease vapour

As part of the council's new healthy living initiative library staff have taken to eurythmic dancing in the staff canteen.

Asking Liberace to powder his own piano

A 'phone call from the Reference Library.

"The new PC in the Ref. office isn't printing," says Eileen.

"Are you getting any error messages or anything?" I ask.

"No, it just says 'Printer can't be found.'"

"Which printer is it set up to use?"

"I don't know."

"Which one should it be using?"

After a full minute's silence I blink first.

"I'll come up and have a look at it."

(The techies amongst you will have guessed that it's the printer on the Ref. desk and that for some reason somebody had changed the PC's settings to print to a non-existant printer.)

Braised fruit in trousers smoulder

A few people have asked about progress with last year's Transformational Exercise.

As, indeed, did we.

Time and motion

There's no money about.

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

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

A Hobson's choice of dooms

Chatting to someone from the IT Department we get to talking about all the talking about cuts.

"How's your business affected?" I ask her.

"Oh, twenty-five per cent cuts, same as everyone else."

"How's that work? They outsourced you and sold you to the lowest bidder so you're not a council department any more."

"That's true. We're not council workers any more. They've changed the pension and redundancy agreements and they regraded down all our salaries. But when the council's trying to save money we still get our share of the cuts."

"They can't do that, can they?"

Evidently they can.

Pointing at darkness

Being a servant of the people I am not allowed to say anything that may be construed as being politically partisan. I suspect that I am allowed to be alarmed a tad at the onward rush of the New Age Of Austerity and the strategic leaks about the council's financial position that each add thirty million to the figure leaked five weeks previously. In ordinary circumstances one would suspect that these are a softening-up exercise so that when we discover that we are only to have two limbs surgically-removed and not three we'll be overcome by relief and grateful for the last-minute rescue by sundry financial wizards.

Last week, looking at the cardboard cut-outs of shop interiors gracing the shop windows of Inkerman Street and the latest closing down sale of a charity shop in The Arcade, I wasn't so sure. I'm even less sure on sober reflection.

The Machiavellian in me wonders if the ruling parties have decided that they're going to get a kicking in the next municipal elections so they're going to leave scorched earth for the incoming administration.

The observational scientist in me wonders how Helminthdale Council will manage to make the cuts without the savings.

The rationalist in me thinks I should start buying Lottery tickets.

It's not just doorknobs that come off in your hand

If I had a pound for every time someone said: "I almost wish T.Aldous was back in charge of this place" this week I'd have a smashing weekend.

(Just for the record, I said it the once.)

Commonwealth Senna Pod Day

The consensus of opinion in the office is that I am clutching at straws. I've spent the past few weeks trying to accentuate the positive and persuade people that they aren't necessarily doomed. Most of the time I can wear them down enough to pretend they've almost been persuaded but today they're not having any.

"Look at the advantages we've got over the rest of the council," I said.

"What advantages?" they asked.

"It's utter chaos out there. Nobody's got the first idea what the hell is going on and can't plan ahead from one day to the next."

"So?"

"That's how we've always worked. We're used to it. And what's more, we actually still manage to deliver services that the public like and appreciate and say nice things about in government surveys. While they're all wandering around all dazed and confused we could be nipping in there, nobbling the councillors."

Squib

One corner of the office is having a touch of the Cyndi Laupers:

"Come to work in the morning light.

No idea if I'm doing anything right.

I'll soon know if I get it wrong.

Librarians having fun.

Librarians having fun."

Advice to live by

"You can't go to the hairdresser's with a full bladder," says Lippy.

How true those words are, even today.

Any other attention-seeking squirrels in the news this week?

Do we really need to explain to a senior manager that if you keep stock in boxes in a back room in one of their libraries then it won't be heavily-used by our customers?

Apparently we do.

Bronwyn decides she's going to do it as she's more tactful than me.

It's an interesting situation. It's not often I hear her say "fuck."

Kismet has had a hand in it

Frog is dead nosy, which is just as well really as that envelope in the dispatch room addressed "Helminthdale Library" is actually a pile of colouring competition entries from one of our libraries that should have been marked: "Urgent: for attention Frog. Colouring competition."

The juggler got six months and the dog got its licence endorsed

I bump into Ken Barmy, who's taking the black dog for a walk. He is more than usually impressed by the standard of their local leadership.

"We have no strategy for survival but we know what to do if we see a dog having a shit."

Good luck with your OFSTED, Mr. Chips

"I had an awful morning at Pottersbury Road," Deirdre moans, "the kids were running amuck."

"Did you tell them to pack it in?" asks Thelma.

"Well, no."

"I think that might be why."

Which one do you think was a teacher?

Tonight, Matthew, I shall be Edmund, Earl of Warwick

A guest entry to the songbook, with apologies to Innes

Listen to the calendar,

It's getting way past April.

We don't know what we're doing or what for.

How can we get away with

Shambling day to day?

We don't have clouds and smokescreens any more.

You know that thing that you've been doing?

Well, it's not important.

Although everything's a top priority.

And everything is all-fire urgent,

Needed yesterday.

But will we ever use it? Well, we'll see...

Reality is scratching on our doorstep.

The bogeyman breathes on the window pane.

The year half gone it finally dawns on us

It's library business planning time again.

So will we know what's needing doing

And just how to do it?

It is assumed but really I'm just not so sure.

Planning how to talk about it

Is a plan too far.

Seems we're not business planning any more.

The cold winds blow and we lie unprotected.

Rudderless, we float the stormy tide.

Overstretched staff, we see strains are showing

And managers just in it for the ride.

Listen to the tolling bell, it tells of cuts approaching.

What should we keep? What can safely let go?

What priorities to work to?

How are they resourced?

If we don't know by now we'll never know.

If we don't know by now we'll never know...

Pissing on somebody else's chips

One of the higher-ups in the council is having an "on the shop floor" day in one of our libraries.

"What do you see yourself doing in a couple of years' time?" he asked one of the assistants.

"I'd hope I'd have been given a redundancy pay-off by then," she replied.

You're never alone with a pilchard

Had to nip out to Umpty Library. For some reason the bus smells of fish paste.

I don't know why.

I'm happier not knowing.

All day long the sky is blue and no one has a lot to do in Shangri-La

Walking in to work is a dismal affair. As I walk through the derelict bus station and past the boarded-up shops I see old allies and adversaries, tired pensioners in polo shirts and tracksuit bottoms shuffling their way to nothing in particular.

I'm really not in the mood for this.

Ancestral voices

A colleague writes:

"One of the users has been giving staff a rare old run around while trying to trace her family tree. Thing is the same woman claims to be a medium, so as quite rightly the Family History Librarian points out, if she was any good as a medium she could just ask her ancestors and do her tree that way without bothering them."

Twilight in the tropics

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

Make a juggler drop his clubs

We thought it was the air-conditioning.

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

Consequences

A conversation between Jack Harry and Bronwyn:

"Bronwyn, we're getting a lot of complaints about the state of the biographies at Catty Library. They could do with some new stock."

"Yes, I know. I think I've worked out which libraries I need to swap with so that they all get a decent lot of fresh books."

"Why don't we just order a pile from the non-fiction budget?"

"There's no money in it now it's been cut."

A question of roughage

Maybell is a bit worried.

"You're losing your touch," she says. "I was talking to Julia and Doreen and mentioned something and they said: 'That's come from someone else.' Just thought you'd need to know."

I'm actually not fussed. I'm deliberately making it obvious what I'm doing. I'm even going out of my way to tell people that I'm pulling their strings. I'm an old man in a hurry and the time for subtlety, if it ever existed, has long gone. I've spent years trying to avoid playing office politics games, now they're unavoidable if there's to be much chance of safeguarding jobs and services. There are mutterings from Catty Library that I'm empire-building. I suggested that if I were really into empire-building I wouldn't have wasted the better part of two decades in this shambles.

I've been trying for so long to make a name in this business that I've forgotten what it is

We live in interesting times, as the old curse has it. We are thrice-cursed by:

• The routine disarray of Helminthdale Library Service, particularly its management lapses;
• The routine disarray of Helminthdale Council, compounded by the sudden need to fix a humongous gap in the finances (it is entirely untrue to suggest that one of the departmental budgets fell at Kempton Park, though it's a fun anecdote); and
• The government's impending imposition of austerity economics, including the commissioning of Utility siren suits for senior members of the banking fraternity.

A few suggestions have now been put on the table. It would be naive to expect there to be any good news. It would be nice to have any news that wasn't actually baffling. All the current proposals are predicated on savings generated by shared services and partnership working. Which is great so long as you don't go looking at the details. For instance, the impact of the cuts in the careers services are to be obviated by the youth service's taking on more of their role; and the impact of the cuts in the youth service are to be obviated by...

Friday afternoon's staff briefing wasn't especially illuminating. For the most part it's good news for the library service as the song is: "we'll have a think about this later." Which may be a stay of execution or not but at the very least it isn't a bonfire of our particular vanities just yet. Library Policy & Strategic Management Team (this week) are justifiably antsy because it heralds yet another re-jig of their jobs with no guarantee that any of them will be safe. Those rest of us who provide support services to the library service but don't have the word 'Librarian' in our job description are also looking a bit vulnerable.

I get the distinct impression that my job's there to fight for should I put the effort in for it. The irony doesn't escape me (they seldom do). I don't know if I'm up for yet another fight or not. What with one thing or another I'm feeling pretty burnt out and jaded at the moment.

I've spent a long time telling people that there's still all to play for. I just need to manage to convince myself some time.

A million miles from the Ovaltine

Going through the library I pass by Frog's Summer Stories Session. He's using one of those Nick Sharratt books that are split down the middle so that you can play mix and match with the pictures ("Exquisite Corpse" as the Dadaists would say).

"A bath full of custard!" he said. "Have you ever had a bath full of custard? How do you think it got there? Do you think it came through the taps? Cold custard through that one and hot custard through that one? Perhaps it's all cold custard - ewww! I bet that would clog up the plugs!"

I listened to this and looked at the faces of the children and wondered what the fuck we were doing making him sit in meetings listening to gobshites telling us how clever they are at engaging with the community.

There's posh: he's got trousers

Yet another procession. Yet again the Olympians struggle to say what we are and who we do.

As they wander off to do whatever it is that they do Sybil can be heart to mutter:

"No fecking idea..."

Do you think he's crazy, skipper?No, just enthusiastic

A visitor was enthusing about the furniture in the Reading Room.

"You can feel the philosophy oozing out of those sofas"

Is this the movie picture ship?

Yet another procession of people unknown to us coming through the library, the fourth in three days. It's Doreen's turn to act as hostess with the mostess this time. She points out the salient points of the personnel sitting round the office:

"That's the Acquisitions Team and they do... well, it's really important work they do for us. And that's Sybil, who does the Regional Loans. And that's Frog, he runs our children's library services..."

As usual, the introductions aren't reciprocated so we have no idea who any of them are, or why.

We're going to get some gingham table cloths and a teapot. We've spent the rest of the morning pracising picking fleas off each other.

Underwear for the hard of hearing

Jack Harry has decided that as of this week we are no longer accepting paper stock suggestion forms.

"Have you told the branch libraries that we're not taking paper forms?" asks Noreen.

"I'd assume that they're already sending them in by email," he replies.

"Err no. They're not."

"It's easy enough for them to do."

"I know it's easy enough for them to do but have you told them they've got to do it."

We have concluded that the answer is "no."

How efficiency works

Telephones.

We have refined the current arrangements.

Instead of the bad old days when we spent half our lives answering the 'phone for T.Aldous we spend at least half our lives answering every beggar's 'phone.

• Some people put their 'phones through to Maisie's 'phone. They don't tell her, of course until after she's spent hours fielding their calls.
• The 'phones upstairs are set so that if they aren't answered within four rings they come downstairs to Maisie's 'phone. If that's not available they go to Maudie's 'phone.
• The 'phones down here are set so that if they aren't answered within four rings they get sent into a hunt group.

This last is a barrel of laughs. If you're not paying attention your incoming 'phone call automatically gets switched to somebody else's 'phone. So you try to retrieve your call by trying to pick it up. And pick up the call that rang just the once on somebody else's 'phone.

Say, just as an example of course, that somebody upstairs rings downstairs to tell somebody down here there's a 'phone call from a relative. And that somebody decides to ignore their 'phone because they want to hear more about somebody's holiday. And that it the comes to your 'phone. And you try to put the call through to the person who's been ignoring it. But their 'phone has been put through to the lending office 'phone...

Hilarious consequences.

This morning's capper? Noreen gets a 'phone call. It's somebody ringing somebody in the library, they don't know who as they've just picked up the telephone number from their answerphone. Noreen does a tour of the floor asking if anybody knows him. Nobody in our office has heard of him so we're baffled. An attempt to ring upstairs to see if anyone up there wants this chappie leads to that call coming back down here. In the end, all Noreen can do is take his name and number and apologise for wasting his time.

I look forward to somebody apologising for wasting ours.

Walking through an empty house

The office is like the Mary Celeste without the crowd scenes.

• Maudie and Maisie are attending a meeting about the future of their jobs
• Library Policy & Strategic Management Team (this week) are wherever they are today. Somebody rather tactlessly wrote "Missing In Action" on the staff notice board and there was a bit of a to-do as to whether or not there was a space between n and A.
• The Acquisitions Team (both of them) are in a meeting with Bronwyn to try and work out what on earth is going on with one of the new collections that somebody higher up is supposed to have sorted out.
• Frog is out doing a summer story session with some blind children in Umpty.

So it looks like I'm in charge. That being the case, I wonder if it would be an abuse of executive power to tell the lending library to stop diverting all their 'phones down here.

Hats and rabbits

I've just had a long chat with Maybelle at the end of which she said:

"I'm puzzled by this meeting. You asked for a chat to go through something you wanted me to help you with but as far as I can see you're the one who's taken on all the work."

I was a bit puzzled too. And a little nervous: had she decided that I had really designs on her body she would have kicked my head in. As it was, we decided to give up and stalk the kettle without getting to the bottom of the puzzle.

Of course, I can leave no scab unpicked so I've been mulling this over. Actually, it turns out to be key to the way that Maybelle and I work together. Milton reckons its a good partnership because we both plan ahead and that while I'm good at seeing how best to do things she's good at getting them done. There's a lot to that but I think there's something else in the mix, too.

The bit of my job that's not explicitly in my job description is talking and listening to people. You need to know what people want to do and why before you can try to apply a systemic solution to it. (A systemic solution may be: "it works as it is, why monkey with it?") Very broadly, we have three groups of people I need to talk to:

• The lacking in confidence. I have to go into sheepdog mode: "I know you don't think you're capable of doing this but look at this, that and that: you're doing it all the time and doing a good job of it. What do you mean, you can't do that? Just look at this that you've done. Honestly, come on you can do it!"
• The lacking in will. I go into sheepdog mode again: "We both know you can do this; and we both know that you want me to do this for you so that you don't have to and you can bitch about it afterwards if anything goes wrong. Now we both know that where are you going to go now?"
• The lacking in restraint. I go into sheepdog mode yet again: "Yes, they're all brilliant ideas and we could do that, that, that, that, that, that and that but we haven't yet worked out how to do this, which is what we got together to decide in the first place."

This is all well and good, and I can do this to a lesser or greater extent. But I am not a natural sheepdog. By all that is natural I am one of those elderly, plodding, golden retrievers that can spend hours staring at Belisha beacons. I've trained myself so that I can do all that mental running around and chasing and chivvying to help other people get started with a piece of work or to help them marshal their thoughts. Unfortunately, I can't do it very well for myself and just lately I've been running myself ragged trying to help other people deal with an explosion of Stuff To Deal With.

It used to work quite well back when I shared an office with Jimmy Huddersfield because he, being resolutely not a theorist and being very practically-minded, was an ideal sounding board for me to get my thoughts in order. I've really missed that since he retired. Thinking it through, I think this is what I'm getting out of chatting with Maybelle. The dynamic's different because they're different thinkers but the function's the same.

It'll probably be safer if I tell her I'm after her body.

Not so much as a tartiflette

Kevin the van driver has thrown a wobbly (there was one hanging round in the dispatch room).

It was presented as a kick-off about taking a pile of summer reading game stuff over to Grimley Community Centre but really it's a reaction to his having spent the whole of Friday taking vanloads of assorted tat and breakages over to the old Roadkill Library (which should have been demolished this time last year BTW) only to come back here to be asked where he'd been all afternoon because there was something needing going over to the new Roadkill Library.

Maudie and Brownyn can usually filter nonsense like that out of his work schedule but every so often one of other brighter sparks goes direct to the delivery.

And some of the children's librarians even remember Ted Ray

OK. The good news is that Helminthdale Central Library is running a regular Monday morning Tiny Tots Tales Time throughout the school holidays so we that keep on supporting pre-school children and their families during the usual frenetics.

The bad news is that the librarians of Helminthdale Central Library have decided that their weekly team meeting is going to be every Monday morning. So once a week, five minutes before the doors open, one or other of them will go up to Frog and say:

"Frog, we're struggling a bit this morning. Can you do Tiny Tots for us, just for this morning?"

It's taken him a month to realise what they're doing and he isn't overly impressed.

The loofah snapped but the rubber duck came out unscathed

"I think I'm a jaguar," says Maybelle.

"Eh?" asks Frog.

"I think it's a jaguar. Or a puma or something."

"A cougar?"

"That's it! I think I'm turning in a cougar!"

"Oh yes?"

Apparently she'd spent all yesterday afternoon overlooking a gym and struggling not to be distracted by hunky young men.

A field of frozen lettuce

The lists, twits and inboxes are full of talk of this, that or another bit of proposed reorganisation, rejigging, reconfiguring, etc. etc. etc. of the public library service at one level or another.

There's talk of wholesale cuts; replacing staff with volunteers and sundry other scaries. Will we stay as we are? Will we be chopped to bits? Will we be hived off to a charitable trust? Will we be scrunched together with the library services of Pardendale or Bencup, or even embroiled in whatever is to go on in Greater Manchester or the North-West Region, or the whole North of England?

And on top of that, of course, no sensible person would put five bob on Helminthdale Council still existing in five years' time (we're due another bout of municipal reorganisations nationally).

Latest news is that the soon-to-be-defunct MLA is funding feasibility studies for very large scale joint-authority efficiency programmes across the country. I mentioned this in passing to Ken Barmy as we chatted on the 'phone about a problem with a bibliographic database we both use.

"There's already a lot of unseemly jostling for position amongst the Chief Librarians," I observed.

"Mensheviks fighting over the window seat in the back rooms of the Duma," he replied.

Don't blow it too much or it'll look like Jimmy Edwards

Posy's a bit wound up by things, convinced that "they" (she's already picked up that habit) know more than they're letting on about cuts, reorganisations, efficiencies and sundry gremlins, hobgoblins and calamities of moment.

I've tried to explain:

"It's much, much worse than that: they seriously don't have an idea from one day to the next. It's all being made up on backs of fag packets one daft decision at a time, each with no reference to the last decision or the next, and managers too often finding out what's going on from their underlings."

The truly awful thing is that we both find this a comforting thought.

A million and one maybes

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

Helpfully, the road sign still says "Library."

I'll have none of that language, not even through a brown paper parcel

A strange day. For once I've been crosser with the staff than the managers. To explain I must make something clear from the onset:

No job cuts have been announced yet in the library service; council has said they want to keep all the libraries open and none of our staff has yet been told they will be being made redundant.

I'll repeat that:

No job cuts have been announced yet in the library service; council has said they want to keep all the libraries open and none of our staff has yet been told they will be being made redundant.

The scythes are flashing round parts of Helminthdale Council and have been doing for months but

No job cuts have been announced yet in the library service; council has said they want to keep all the libraries open and none of our staff has yet been told they will be being made redundant.

So we have a touch of the dooms. Not helped by what few words filter out from The Bunker: nothing can be done because "they" (it's always "they") will "probably decide to cut" whatever is under discussion. And Doreen has spent the past two months telling anyone who'll listen (and many who won't) that she's not long for this world.

Milton, to his credit, is at least going out and about trying to start new things going and encouraging staff to take any opportunities going for personal or professional development. He drives me barmy because we're supposed to be working as a team and I'm finding out too much of this as an afterthought but at least he's doing something constructive most of the time. Other than that, the word is that we are doomed.

Staff are naturally dismayed and worried. Which is fair enough. I'm not, which is also fair enough. It could be my Quixotic nature, it could be sheer bloody-mindedness or it could be that I think if something's worth fighting for when the things are relatively easy it's worth fighting for when the shit hits the fan. But I entirely accept that people are going to be dismayed and worried, especially when what passes for leadership is as feckless and supine as ours as been lately. T.Aldous, and to a far lesser extent Mary, would at least have been arguing the case for the library service long and loud, however ill-advisedly or ineptly. Even dear old Reggie Clockwatcher, who was a lovely man but a shockingly weak manager, would have been making the effort. But... But... And so staff are dismayed and worried.

I do draw the line when they decide that despite the lack of objective evidence they are actually doomed and there is nothing that anybody will or can say that they will listen to that will contradict this.

No. We're not doing that. We don't have the spare time, space or energy for that.

So I got cross. And pinned their ears back. Which they didn't like. Nor would I have done in their shoes if I'm being honest but I'm not letting them do it. If senior managers decide that they are doomed, that's up to them. If senior managers try to sell staff down the river to buy their own safety, that's despicable and I'll say so and I'll fight it. But I am not having staff undermining themselves and their colleagues and, effectively, selling themselves down the river.

And I said so.

We'll all calm down, because we do in the end, and we'll see what we can do despite the organisational culture, because that's also what we do. And if things do get really bloody we'll do what we can and we'll care and we'll support and we'll hope for the best because that's what we would want to do if it came to that. But if it really does come to that I don't want people compounding their injuries by already having undervalued themselves and their contribution to the service.

A serious bit

I was sorry to hear of the death of Bob McKee, the Chief Executive of CILIP, over the weekend. I never met him but we'd exchanged emails a few times and during his time in charge he'd managed to turn CILIP away from its prissy navel-gazing and into an organisation I've recently been seriously tempted to join (you'd have put good money on my never writing that sentence!)

A serious loss to the national public library service at a time when too many of the people we rely on locally for advocacy have decided that we're all already doomed and we should be turning customers away from the doors in case we get too busy.

The turnip: it's place in nudism

I bump into Ken Barmy. To say that he is disconsolate is to understate immensely. He has just emerged, blinking, from a meeting with his management board.

"How goes it old fruit," say I.

"It's all rotifers and Volvox," he replied, which bode ill.

"As bad as that?"

"We were discussing staffing our libraries..."

"Yes..." this is currently The Discussion That Anybody In The Public Sector Would Prefer To Sidle Away From.

"One of our senior managers reckoned that we have too many staff in our libraries."

I know for a fact they're even worse placed than us for being able to open the doors each morning.

"How do they reckon that?"

"She reckons that they only need so many staff because the libraries get busy with customers."

"Oh Hell. She's not decided that you can dispense with staff and do it all online has she?"

"Oh no. She's dead against online because we must get our visitor figures up."

My brain was already starting to hurt. I asked a question I shouldn't.

"So what does she mean then."

"She reckons that we need to manage customer throughput. She suggested that we give customers red bracelets, like they do in busy nightclubs, and ask them to come back later."

"Kenneth, please tell me you are taking the piss."

He wasn't.

"You poor dear fellow."

It was all I could do not to put a white fiver in his hand and tell him to buy himself a cup of tea.

We look after your circle of water

Not another bloody project without aims, resources, priorities, success factors or exit strategy.

Can you hear me, mother?

News of Bronwyn's Digby Moment has spread around the more irreverent pastures of the library service.

"I don't see why you couldn't get Rudyard Kipling, or W.E. Johns," says Frog.

"Or Enid Blyton," suggests Sybil.

"We could have a dead authors' evening at Dutch Bend Library!"

"I'm getting a message from the other side... Does the name Biggles mean anything to anybody? Ginger? Algy?"

"Mrs. Johnstone... I'm getting a message from Robert Louis Stevenson... He says that your cat Tiddles is happy on the other side..."

"You can laugh!" muttered Bronwyn. "You watch: he'll try to stop you putting on the puppet show in Spadespit because it's not David Blaine."

"That's alright. We can put a big box in the library and tell them that that's him."

"Now then, Mrs. Johnstone, it's up to you now. Are you going to take the money or will you open the box?"

Never trust a plumber who turns up wearing armbands

Digby's playing a blinder this week; someone will have to put something into his coffee. Or at least remind him that he is the council's Press Officer, not God.

Bronwyn's arranged an author visit for Glass Road Library. Said chappy writes gritty, very noir thrillers with enough of a body count to satisfy even the blood lusts of that library's pensionable ladies. So it's quite a coup and needs a bit of publicity in celebration.

"Oh, we can't publicise that," says Digby, "it's so gloomy. Can't she get Dan Brown instead?"

Jack Harry passes the news on to Bronwyn.

"Oh yes," she says, "is he paying for him then?"

"You don't sound very impressed with the idea," says Jack Harry.

"Oh, I'm very impressed," lied Bronwyn.

Over Pascagoula by the sea

"It's strangely liberating," says Bronwyn.

"What is?" I ask, suspiciously.

"That feeling that you don't give a flying fuck any more because they've stamped your card regardless."

"Welcome to my world," I replied.

Hob-nobbing with the stars

A Celebrity We All Know And Love has been and gone, in less time than was planned but still successfully. The girls in lending managed the class of kids and the schedule such that nobody felt short-changed. The Celebrity was a delight, not a diva and Digby didn't get too much underfoot.

A nice experience for the library and its customers.

Supermarket trolley by a keep-left sign

We, and a classful of kids, eagerly await the arrival of A Celebrity Most Of Us Have Actually Heard Of. They are running late because Digby Deadpan gave them the wrong directions and the poor devil has been driving round the town centre twice trying to find the library.

Actual, real and proper directions have been issued and we are all hopeful of a speedy arrival.

Victorious failures and successful suicides

Helminthdale, like other councils across the country, are pulling together cuts packages to try and pre-empt the inevitable horrors to come with the government's autumn spending plans. This evening's news doesn't bode well.

The staff in the works department have been fighting a four-year battle with the council over the consequences of the equal pay evaluation fiasco. Just before m'learned friends got involved in earnest the council owned up that they'd screwed up on a couple of key measures and that the team leaders were entitled to remain at grade six. Last week they received their first pay packet at the re-established grade.

Today they were told that as part of the council's efficiency savings the works department posts at this grade are to be scrapped. They're well impressed at the news.

The land that time put in a safe place

"I think this counts as a stock-editing fail," says Sammi as she emerges from the technology section of the non-fiction shelves.

"Oh dear, yes," agrees Frog.

The book was: 'Drive The Jim Clark Way.'

Just a debate to say they can start talking about these things

Doreen is the lead officer on the new reading project. She controls the budget; it's to be delivered in one of her libraries and her staff will be doing the necessary.

Bronwyn's job is to buy the books selected for the reading project and pass them on to the library.

"What's going on with the project?" asks Bronwyn.

"I assumed you were sorting it out," replied Doreen.

"Well. I'd best get on with it, hadn't I?" retorted Bronwyn, tartly.

Tiny, oak-beamed suppositories

Every day, Posy gets a flurry of electronic missives or epistles from Digby Deadpan concerning the visit of A Celebrity Some Of Us Have Heard Of. We didn't have this much fuss when royalty came to visit (Ex-King Zog of Albania came in to use the reference library, for old times' sake).

Posy explodes at the latest one.

"He wants to know if the library's got a nice table The Celebrity can sit at!"

"If he shifted his arse rather than talking through it he might come over the road and have a look for himself," suggests Maybelle.

Europe's largest domestic herd of bald badgers

There are days when I think I'm in training for the care home. This is a transcript of what passed for a conversation over the staff room table. I've not embellished it any, I hope I've managed to get most of it written down. I dare say I'll have to explain why I've run into the gents with a notebook.

Sybil: "So how's wha'zname doing?"

Frog: "Which one?"

Sybil: "You know, the one with the doo-dah."

Frog: "Oh! That wha'sname. Ooh, well... Luckily I had me little drum with me."

Sybil: "Did you beat a retreat?"

Frog: "Beat! Retreat! Peat!"

Sybil: "Feet!"

Frog: "Ooh, now I'm all of a doo-dah."

Sybil: "You'll just have to let it dangle like the rest of them."

Frog: "Is that a chocolate biscuit?"

Sybil: "It was."

Posy: "If I cut my boyfriend's head off, do you think he'd grow another one?"

Sybil: "Hey, think on: it could be a whatsit."

Frog: "We had fish pie for supper last night."

Sybil: "Talk about braces..."

Frog "One of them's a donkey."

Sybil: "Hey! Hey! You know what? Talking about donkeys..."

Frog: "You'll have to lie back and think of England."

Posy: "Kenneth Williams?"

All these people have the vote. Ain't democracy grand?

Attractive property gains for meek forecast

You can tell the success of a town's regeneration strategy by the charity shops that shut down due to lack of trade.

Using your puckish epigrams to their best advantage

It occurred to me the other day that this blog's lost half its material since T.Aldous finally let go and retired properly. There are reasons for this:

• Most of what's going on I've written about before ad nauseam. There are only so many ways that a stream of water can pour through the roof at Catty Library before the story wears thin.
• There are quite a lot of personnel issues that ethically I can't write about, astonishing though one or two are.
• There are some things so very, very particular to our place that it would blow my anonymity were I to write about them. This is a dangerous time for anybody's anonymity to be blown so I'll save them all up for after I get the axe. Like as not there'll be five or six years' worth of stories to pass on if they make me redundant.
• Except as alluded to above our managers are being very boring. Well, not boring so much as tiresome. Since T.Aldous officially retired the top table have been closeted in their bunker, coming out periodically to throw a hissy fit then scuttle back again. It's beyond my literary powers to make half a year's sulking sound remotely interesting.

Anyway, we're getting by, thanks for asking, on a diet of uncertainty and gloom. We're surviving thanks to large doses of rank insolence sugared with hoots of derision. I'm enjoying every minute.

Drive-by soft furnishing

There's no money about. Two new, expensive-looking velvet sofas have appeared in the fire exit corridor.

"What are those sofas for?"

I asked Seth. Hopefully. (I had visions of us being able to spend the day sitting comfortably in the corridor waiting for the fire alarm to go off).

"It's for that new reading thing," he said.

We've got funding for a reading programme. So we've bought two sofas.

The next contestant will now do her mime

Frog points towards one of the customers in the library.

"What do you think that lady does for a living?" he asks me.

This is Helminthdale, I daren't guess. Least of all in public.

"She drives a thirty-six ton truck," he tells me.

I look at her again. She's a small bird-like creature. I'm astonished that she can climb up into the cabin, let alone drive one.

"She used to come into Spadespit Library at first. That's when her first three were still young enough to come to under-fives'. Let's see... That was Eoin, Calum and... Timothy?"

"No, Timothy was the fifth one. It was Eoin, Callum and Arthur. Then she had Pat and then Timothy," said Bronwyn.

"So is that Pat and Timothy with her now?" I asked.

"No... Pat was a little girl," said Bronwyn.

"That's Brian and Donal," said Frog.

"How many are there?" I asked.

"Is it eight?" asked Bronwyn.

"No, it's nine. Her sister's looking after the baby."

I'm astonished she can find the time to drive a truck, let alone the energy.