A very bad poem about stock management, with apologies to real poets

Oh books, in cardboard boxes,
What hopes must you have had?
What dreams may you have dreamed
That now will never come to pass?

Of influencing minds of men
And changing history
Of scholarship and pleasure
That never now shall be

Your lonely lives have run their course
And no more will you live
No one will learn the secret things
That you were born to give

But, yet, yet, hope may shine for you
In the gloom of library land
For if you catch librarians’ eyes
You may yet withstand

The onslaught that is policy
Stock management for you and me
And books, which in their hundreds lay
Untouched on shelves until today,

Are now to be destroyed, alas
Are now to be destroyed.

The students return

A colleague said to me yesterday, "You've been looking more and more stressed all week", which wasn't very reassuring, but didn't really surprise me. Nothing particuarly stressful happened this week, I think it was just a lot busier than previous weeks. It was one of those weeks where I had a list of things to do, and did some of them, but the last few things never got done because either something beyond my control stopped me from completing the task or something (or many things) cropped up and I never got round to finishing the thing I started doing. [Whoops that was a bit of a long sentence!] I realise this doesn't say much for my time management skills, which are something I should work on.

We were without a printer in our office for half the week, due to me thinking we had a spare cartridge ready and waiting, but this turned out to be an old cartridge wrapped up in a box. Oops. Totally my fault and very annoying, because we then had to walk halfway round the library (well, nearly) to collect our printing. Still, at least we could print to somewhere.

I had some appraiser training yesterday, which was helpful, but domintated by an academic member of staff who kept bringing round the discussion to suit his agenda. On the one hand, this was an interesting insight into the working practices and attitudes of academics, but on the other it was a waste of time when we were already trying to fit in six hours of training into a two hour session, and I was really anxious to learn what to do, as I've never appraised anyone before.

I have my own appraisal sometime next week (?), with our line manager who doesn't like doing appraisals and apparantly doesn't follow the proper procedure - despite being quite pedantic about following proper procedure to the point of annoyance at most other times. So, I'm not sure how much use my appraisal will be, but I'll fill the forms in and take them to him anyway, whether or not he wants to use them.

On a more enjoyable note, the office was alive with the sound of music this week - even more so than usual, I thought. We also had some ad hoc 'entertainment' from the garden outside, when a few students were gathered for an impromptu guitar/singing session. This varied in terms of levels of annoyance depending on what type of music was being played. I was quite irritated at first, but then mellowed when he changed from rock to folk and stopped yelling so much. My librarian tendencies were urging me to go outside and tell him to shut up, but I resisted.

Writing of unwelcome musical accompaniment (the student, not my colleagues), the most maddening thing about travelling on the train at the moment (even more so than the overcrowding, which is increasingly bad and getting to dangerous levels) is people who play their mp3 players/mobile phone out loud, so that we are all subjected to their taste in (mostly awful) 'music'. I don't know how can people be so inconsiderate. I have asked some lads to turn their music off before, and they asked, "Why?". Maybe that says it all.

A post that, despite its length, doesn't say much

Today, I was supposed to go into the city in which I work, and do several things, such as return library books, get my bag mended and take some unwanted books to the Oxfam (or similar) shop. However, I have not gone. There are a few reasons for this, shown here in no particular order:

• It's raining
• I go there every day to work
• It's a 45 minute train journey
• I am too lazy
• I know that if I go I'll do what I have to do and then mooch about aimlessly and possibly buy an item of clothing that I'll never wear

I will do the things I have to do in my lunch hour one day this week. Actually, in reality, I probably won't. The bag that needs to be mended has been loitering in the office for weeks, waiting for me to take it to the repair place. The books (or at least one of them) have been languishing in my desk drawer, also at work, waiting to be returned to the library.

I have just finished, and hence want to return to the library, Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell. It took a while to get into, and I wasn't sure I was going to make it to the end of its 900 or so pages, but it was worth the effort, and I enjoyed it.

Mr C has gone to London to see a friend and go to a wargames shop, which might be detrimental to his bank account.

I keep dreaming about the Library of Doom: even in my sleep I cannot escape. I wasn't feeling too bad about work this week, mainly because I wasn't there very much, had more important things to think about, plus Enemy Number One was away this week. Actually her absence wasn't entirely a good thing, as something has gone wrong with the Inter-Library Loan reports and, due to the distribution of power (or lack of it) in the Library of Doom, she is the only person who can potentially sort this out. I felt very sorry for the Singing Librarian this week, as, due to the ILL problem, he spent two days re-doing work he had already done.

Anyway, as I said, I wasn't feeling too bad about work, that was until Friday night, on the train home would you believe, when I was talking to two colleagues, and of course, we 'had' to talk about work, and the dreaded permissions came up in the conversation. I am having an ongoing 'guilt' phase regarding my part in the reduction of permissions on the issue desk computers. I won't go into the whys and wherefores of why the permissions have been reduced because they're boring. In fact, this whole paragraph is boring, but I will plough on until I get to the point...

Which is that this issue is a good example of me being weak and also not thinking things through. Both of these failings are common in my life, in fact they probably occur on a daily basis. Every [working] day I do something that makes me think that I'm rubbish at my job. It doesn't have to be anything very big or very wrong, just something.

Then I think, 'why do I worry so much about my job?'. It's not life and death, I work in a library, for goodness' sake! But it's my job, and I want to do it well, and I especially don't want my failings to make everyone else's lives difficult. It does make me a bit cross, though, that it makes me feel bad. This morning I woke up thinking about work, and, as I said, I even dreamt about it last night. This is not on! I don't want to waste my time away from work thinking and worrying about it. Surely my brain could find something better to do?

I have been thinking recently about my future career, and about what I really want to do. Starting the chartership process has helped me a bit with this, as I'm supposed to be setting goals and then planning how I'm going to achieve them. Of course, the problem is that I'm not really sure what I want. I'm not particularly enjoying work at the moment, and term hasn't even started yet! But I think this is due to too much worrying. I don't know whether I want to work as a Reader Services person forever - the complaining students/staff get very irritating/depressing after a [short] while. I said to Mr C last night that if I didn't like the people I work with so much I would probably not want to do my current job. Hopefully I will feel better soon.

So, maybe I could be an academic librarian/faculty liason librarian. This was my original plan after my trainee year, and it's still something I would still like to try. It does involve budgets, which involve numbers, but hopefully I could get some training in this. Well, I will see. Sometimes I think I might like to be something other than I librarian, but I'm not sure what that is, apart from bestelling author, academic, jazz singing sensation, teacher, prime minister, ballerina, doctor, or songwriter. Only one (maybe two) of these is actually achievable within the realms of reality, however.

Reality = I will stay where I am until it becomes financially unviable/I get sacked/Michael Buble (sorry I can't do the accent on the e) asks me to be his singing partner.

I just visited the Lipstick Librarian (I was searching for other blogging librarians) and it seems I cannot be a Lipstick Librarian, as I am currently wearing an item of clothing with a duck on it. Two ducks, in fact. Perhaps I wouldn't want to be one anyway.

I apologise for the length and whingy nature of this post.

Noise

Today I was doing some training for new Issue Desk staff and my colleagues in the adjoining office were so noisy that I had to shut the door. I'm not sure what they were doing, but they were louder than usual - or maybe I just noticed it more because I was trying to explain things to someone.

Now I'm on my lunch break and being annoyed by children outside my window making lots of noise. Gosh, I am beginning to sound like a cantankerous, miserable old librarian. Oh, hang on... Scrap the old, though (for now).

I am having an annoyed day for some reason. I think it may be because I had a meeting with the Sharks this morning. Such meetings, I feel, are always predestined to be irritating due to (a) the subject matter, and (b) who attends them. Having said that, today's meeting wasn't too bad, and we did (potentially) get a new shelver out of it, so I can't really complain. I just approach the meetings with a feeling of dread because most of the time I don't win, and I end up having to go back to other library staff and tell them that this or that permission has been taken away, or they're going to have more work to do, or something else that's not very good.

Yesterday, I had a meeting with a senior member of staff. I waited for five minutes, and then ten minutes, and then I went back to my office. At 35 minutes past the hour I telephoned her. I think she had forgotten, but she did say we could meet then (wow, such generosity) and we did sort out the issue in question.

I feel like there are not enough hours in the day, and not enough days in this week to fit everything into. But I'm sure it will be ok in the end.

Whenever I sing Can't help lovin' that man in my head, I always get the words the wrong way round and end up with swimming birds and flying fish.

Teach First, acquire manners later?

Today, I went shelving several times, which is good for me as I think I've probably only done about 6 hours shelving in the year and a bit since I've been working at the Library of Doom (apologies colleagues). My first attempt was fairly successful, i.e. I could see desk space where there had only been books before, but I did have a minor incident involving me bleeding over some books, myself and the shelving trolley due to a particularly vicious social work book. Two more attempts followed and more table space appeared (hooray!), but then more books arrived...

Anyway, I must get to the point of this entry...

I was getting rid of some 700s, trying to squeeze them into L-space, when some young men came by, talking loudly, so I asked them to please be quiet and they did reduce the volume, but also thought it was amusing and worthy of a mocking "shhhh". This is quite normal student behaviour, but it was made worse by the fact that the young men in question are Teach First students, and thus are supposed to be 'the cream' of British graduates and 'academic' - so you would think that they would appreciate and respect their library staff. I should have known better I suppose. I may be being over sensitive (as I often am), but it worries me that people who are supposed to make excellent teachers and set an example to children and young people have such a lack of respect for library staff. Their motto (yes, they have a motto) is "learning to lead". I'm not sure whether this is the kind of person I would want my children (if I had any) to follow.

I suspect my ranting might sound like an over-reaction, but I think you can tell a lot about a person, student or otherwise, by the way they treat library staff. But then I would say that.

Changing rooms

I have just looked at my profile and it says that I enjoy learning Hebrew, playing the flute and singing. I think I should change this as I haven't done any proper Hebrew learning for about a year, which is pretty bad really. It's not that I don't have the time, I'm just lazy. Playing the flute and singing are also mentioned, and, whilst it is true that I enjoy these activities I only play my flute about once a month for family service at church, and singing is restricted to Sundays at that same venue. I will change the profile, but I'm not sure what to put in instead.

That wasn't what this post was supposed to be about. It was just going to say that we performed the Great Office Move yesterday. I didn't think it went too badly, considering what could have gone wrong, although the conditions were not ideal - very hot, with a distinct lack of fans.

In other, but still work-related, news, we talked about shelving and stock management, and the potential hazards thereof. Or rather the hazards of not having enough staff or time to do either of these things sufficiently quickly or well. It's worrying, but we will have to do the best we can and see what happens, and then if it all goes awry maybe the Sharks will finally do something to help us. I realise that this may not be the best way forward but we weren't sure what else to do in the circumstances.

Yesterday, on my way in to work I had just entered the campus when I was accosted by a student who wanted to know whether I'd contacted someone about the periodical he wants the library to subscribe to. I hadn't even got to the library yet, and it was before 9.00am! Agghhhhhhh.

Meanwhile, in the Library of Doom...

We are moving offices imminently, i.e. tomorrow, so there has been quite an "aggghhhhh!" sort of feel in the air this week. Especially as previously we were told that we wouldn't be moving until the end of the month, for which we had a Plan (A), and now we're moving tomorrow and have a Plan (B), which was only thought of yesterday.

We thought our Plan (A) was perfectly acceptable - we had even discussed it, and I'd gone to the extremes of doing a statistical analysis thingy in order to be able to justify our decision. But, alas, Plan A was not to be. I had a meeting with the Sharks yesterday and told them Plan A, and lo, the Sharks were not happy with said Plan. Yea, they did beseech me to change yon Plan, and therefore did I become most unhappy, and didst say unto them: Wherefore ist this plan not good? And they did say unto me: didst thee think it through most carefully, and I did say: yea, I didst. Aber jezt was das Plan nicht recht, und so sagte ich, "Was mochten sie? Warum konnen sie nicht es zu mir sagen?" Und sie sagten: "Es ist nicht was wir wunschen, aber was besten fur das Bibliothek ist. And so, she wondered what to do. She wandered into the library, and went to visit the office of one of the Sharks. She pondered hard but was none the wiser, so she thought, I will try to accomodate the wishes of the Sharks. She thought on this and discussed with several people. And so Plan B came into being. And she wasn't sure that it was good.

Not sure what happened there. The German is schlecht (terrible) by the way. My apologies to anyone reading this who knows, or (double apologies) is, German.

Anyway, after persuasion I did try and get Plan A back, but to no avail. I'm sure reading Riddley Walker is doing bad things to my spelling. It's slow going but very interesting and intriguing and inciting me to read more things by Russell Hoban. I only put that last one in because I wanted to use another word beginning with 'in', and I couldn't think of anything else. It is true though. RW definitely reminds me of a couple of sections of Cloud Atlas "Sloosha's crossin' and evr'ythin' after", especially the sort of language used, as well as some of the ideas. Maybe David Mitchell read it at some point, and used it as inspiration for that part of his book.

I wonder if it is dangerous to write about the Library of Doom? It might come and bite me (not literally).

Basket weaving under water in Malaysia

I wasn't sure whether to hyphenate basket-weaving and under-water, so if you are a hyphenate/or I apologise.

The title of the post is a direct qute from our line manager, who was talking about the sorts of mad courses academics dream up when they've eaten too much cheese before bedtime. He was making a good point about people deciding they are going to run courses without actually knowing whether anyone will want to enrole on them. The library has to buy stock for the course, which can turn out to be a huge waste of time and money if no one turns up. Even more bizarrely, some Universities start running courses at locations that don't yet exist. The poor students then have to take their classes etc somewhere else, and then move to their 'proper' location when it is available. Very odd.

Take me to your leader

I am supposed to be a team leader/supervisor. I say supposed to be, because most of the time I don't feel like one, or at least not an effective one. It is difficult being a supervisor when you are not a particularly assertive person. On top of this, I find it really hard to make decisions when it's not a clear cut case, and particularly when people's feelings could be hurt if I make the wrong decision. You can tell I'm not exactly ideal management material! The weird thing is, I actually enjoy being a supervisor and having a group of people to look after. It helps that my team are very well behaved 99.9% of the time. I'm not sure what I would do if they suddenly stopped working hard and started being rude!

We (two senior library assistants (SLAs) and I) were talking yesterday about having to justify our higher pay scales to the library assistants [we decided having more meetings on our own might do it - not entirely seriously], and I was then thinking well, how do I justify getting paid more than the SLAs? What do I actually do that's harder work than what they do? I suppose I (at the moment) have to do rotas, and I have to speak to and deal with bad students, which isn't very nice sometimes, and of course I am supposed to supervise the office. However, I'm pretty sure either of the SLAs could do this at least equally well. [One of the SLAs may well read this so I should add that I'm not trying to flatter people, I'm just giving my true opinion]. I think the supervisor side of my job will come out more next term, when we will be doing more stuff with fewer people, thus increasing the need for prioritising and 'control' of tasks and workloads. I'm quite looking forward to the challenge. It will be interesting - hopefully in a good way!

I feel that I need to prove myself to some extent, because I feel like I'm a bit of a 'Weak King' a lot of the time at the moment, like I'm sort of floundering along hoping it'll be ok in the end. My memory is quite bad, which doesn't help when it's Thursday night (or whichever day) and I've forgotten I need an extra person for the rota, for example. The decision making thing is a Thing as well. I wish I could be less emotional about these things. [Overuse of the word 'thing', I fear]. Some managers seem to be adept at making decisions which are pretty much bound to upset people and not minding. How do they do that? Maybe it's better for the soul not to be able to, although I don't know any managers who are really bad people. I suppose they're just more pragmatic than I am.

I've found that it's quite easy to be paranoid when you start supervising people. When I'm having a paranoid moment (usually after I've done something wrong) I think, 'what if they think I'm rubbish and a bad supervisor, they must think that because I know I am, what if they all secretly hate me, I bet they wish they hadn't given me the job, I bet X thinks they could do a better job, etc, etc'. I do, in dark moments, feel like most of my team could do my job and that it's only my library qualification that warrants me doing it.

This year (it's nearly a year since I started my current job) has definitely been a fairly steep learning curve. Sometimes it has been difficult, and library politics haven't helped. However, I'm a lot happier in my work now than I was a year ago, and I'm looking forward to what's going to happen next. For helping me through this year I'd like to thank my agent [non-existent], my lovely Reader Services team, my family and friends, the Academy [University] and of course my dear husband who has always been sympathetic when I've whinged. I'll keep my Oscar in the bathroom...or maybe the kitchen.

A calmer day

After the stress of yesterday today was very calm, and people were happier. We had our team meeting and discussed things, and learnt some stuff about future developments. We found out officially where S and I are going to move to when we move offices, so that was good.

Yesterday, in between everything else, I had my second session of recruitment and selection training. Like the first session, it was very interesting and useful - more interesting that I expected before I started the training! You can read about it on my other blog, if you're interested.

I've written to my mentor, following my attendance at the chartership training, but no reply yet, which is a bit worrying. I will find it annoying if she is someone who takes ages to reply to emails.

In other news, I've been asked to write an article for the CILIP Gazette, and the deadline is next week, so I'd better get on with it!

Sigh

Urgh. Today has been one of those days when people have been upset over something relatively trivial, but which has ripples of repercussion that slop out and upset people. To cut a long story short, lots of people got upset because of lack of communication. Again. I hold myself [in]directly responsible for people being cross/upset, but it is too complicated to try to explain.

I went to see the Big Boss, and was upset in his office, which is very embarrassing in hindsight, but I couldn't help it at the time. He said I made the right decision in the circumstances, and that I shouldn't have been asked to do it, but I still wish I hadn't done it.

The problem (and adding to my guilt) is that I could see the potential consequences to a certain extent. I just hoped they wouldn't happen and was trying to do the right thing at the time.

People are unhappy and we are having a meeting tomorrow, so we'll see what happens then.

I don't know what the point of writing this is. It just looks like a load of cryptic nonsense.

I hate library politics.

Monday, Monday

Today at work was quite Mondayish.

New experiences are on the horizon. I am going to have training in recruitment and selection next week, and then I'm going to be helping recruit and select new desk staff. I am a bit scared, as it is not something I have ever done before, but it will be really good experience and interesting, I expect. Hopefully I will feel more confident once I have had the training.

The Big Boss is currently thinking about how jobs in our team are going to be redistributed once the integration has happened. He told me about his ideas so far, which sound reasonable. I'm going to a meeting about it on Wednesday with the Librarians. This is good as at least I will be able to imput into the decision making process (aghh management-squeak alert) on behalf of the team. D, if you are reading this, yes he did say we would all meet as a team to discuss the plans before anything is definitely decided!

I hope I'm never going to turn into a manager who uses management words (although I fear I probably already use them, and I'm not even a real manager). When I was doing my library course I was really against learning about management because I wanted to be a traditional librarian (whatever one of those is - probably non-existent!). However, we had to take management as a core course, and despite my protestations it actually became my favourite module, mainly because the lecturer was excellent. It also gave me my best marks, which helped me like it I suppose! I enjoyed the psychology side of it, but I still hate the language and the thing about seeing people as resources and treating them accordingly. I know people are a resource, in the sense that they are necessary to the workings of an organisation, but they're not a resource like a computer or a table. This may sound obvious to you, but I don't think it is so evident to some people in the higher echelons of some organisations. [NB this does not refer to the organisations I currently work in. I refer to my envelope opening days only].

Please don't sack me I like my job. I just learnt how to spell echelon. I am so pleased.

Back to work

It wasn't too bad, going back to work after the weekend. I actually like the routine of workdays, and feel a bit at a loss on odd days off, such as Bank Holidays. I have started cataloguing my book collection on LibraryThing (see sidebar). It is fun, but maybe only for those who have a librarian-like mind.

Had another email from my mentor, so that was good.

The swing gate on the desk has been replaced. It had fallen off, after D walked through it. Ironically, it had previously survived him vaulting over it and attempting to squeeze under it, but gave up the ghost when he just strolled through normally. The cause of fall was given as 'not screwed in properly'. Apparantly the workmen had said they would be back to screw it on with electric screwdrivers, but this never happened. Whether they have done this now remains to be seen.

I wonder how long it will take me to catalogue all my books...

Meetings and a mentor

Today I got an email from a lady saying she would be my mentor for my chartership, so there's some good news. Hopefully things can now get going a bit more.

Last week was fairly busy - a couple of meetings and a few interesting incidents. We had the meeting for the evening and weekend team people. This went quite well, considering that they had somewhat of a right to be grumpy. I just came out and said that I abdicated responsibility for the mess-up with the rota (which had led to them having to make up their hours) because I wasn't even in employment at the time the decisions were made. Anyway, everything seems to be sorted out now, although there are still discussions to be had about changes to opening and working hours next academic year.

The university has gone through the HERA (Higher Education Role Analysis) process, and people's pay has been re-evaluated. It's supposed to make the pay scales clearer so that we will all be on grades and not spinal points. To be honest, I'm not all that sure how it works, as I hadn't joined the university when it was started. The new scales come into play on 1st August.

The university are also making changes to the way the working week is structured for support staff. We are going to be working '5 out of 7' days, which means that we can be asked to work any 5 out of 7 days, including Saturday and Sunday. Apparantly academic staff are already doing this. We're going to have meetings (yet more meetings) about this over the next few weeks, where we can ask questions of the people who made the decisions. I would like to know what happens if you say you can't work on a Saturday (or Sunday, or any other day I suppose) for religious reasons. I would have thought this would be contrary to legislation about religious discrimination. Maybe I should look it up.

We also had a meeting about the changes within Library Services since ISS has come into existence and about changes that are going to take place in the near future. We didn't really find out much information, except that the remaining library people in our office will have to move rooms before the beginning of August.

Our neighbours seem to have suddenly increased the volume of their TV over the last week. I have no idea why this should be, but I hope they turn it down again soon. Maybe I will have to write them a note. Aggh.

Webbing

Yesterday was full of annoying people, disputing fines, loans etc. Also a meeting about library documentation and webpages. I went on a course about authoring university web pages on Tuesday, which was interesting and useful. Learning how to use FrontPage. I think I might buy it to put on my own computer, but it will depend on how much it is. We're re-designing the library web pages at the moment, because the uni web pages are now created to a new template, and our pages aren't in the new template yet. Apparently we have 363 pages of stuff on our current site, so some (lots) of this needs to go! Lots of it is duplicae information, so we can get rid of it. I'm looking forward to getting the new site up and running - it will look a lot better and hopefully be much easier to use. This week we just looked at the main headings for the homepages - the side menu headings and the short cut links. We're hoping to have images for the short cut links. It was actually quite difficult to decide what to have as the main menu headings, and as the quick links. Some things were obvious, but it was hard not want to put everything as either a quick link or a menu heading!

It's quite a slow process, and we don't really have very long to do it, given the amount of work there is to do. The site has to be up and running by September, when the new academic year begins. I have the second and last session of the course this coming week. I think I'm the only person in the group that has edited a page in the new template (even if the page was only a trainng page), so I had better pay attention! I think some others in the group have done more web editing in general though, so hopefully between us we should be ok.

No plans yet for this weekend, apart from the usual housework excitement. Currently watching Season 3 of 24.

This week at work...

I was working Friday night and Saturday morning this week, which wasn't good. We sent the letters about changes in hours and the end of term out to the part-time staff this week. The whole situation with people's hours is so complicated that I get confused when I try explaining it to people. We have a meeting about it all next week, which I am not looking forward to at all.

Otherwise, things are ok. People got their letters confirming their positions. Got to know the desk staff a bit better, due to the fact that I was on the desk a lot at the end of last week. They are all nice, which is a good job really! I think things will be a lot easier when we (the helpdesk and the library desks) are properly integrated and open at the same times, all staff dealing with all enquiries (library and computing) etc. At the moment it is quite confusing, for us and the students. We should be integrated on 1st August, but until then...confusion reigns!

Another Sunday

Which means, alas, that it is nearly Monday. But that's ok. I don't hate my work. Of course, things annoy me, but it could be a lot worse.

Last week was quite exciting, because the new desk was finally finished and up and running. At present we are at the "co-location" stage, as opposed to full integration, so library and computing people are working side by side on the desk, but not together as such. Does that make sense? That's what we wondered. It's working, but we felt a bit sorry for the computing people, who weren't introduced to anyone and had no idea who we are, who does what and how our rotas work. They only have slightly more idea now, thanks to library staff introducing themselves when they had the chance, and an 'impromptu' chocolate sharing session in our office. I expect the communication side of things will get better. Hopefully the computing people will get some sort of induction soon.

Meanwhile, still no news on what is going to happen to RS - how jobs are going to be divided up etc - or how they are going to work the staffing situation. It would be nice for those that applied to new jobs to actually know officially whether they have been accepted or not. We always seem to be waiting for information. Communication is not the institution's strong point. Or rather, it's not the strong point of the people in it, I expect the institution is crying out to communicate...but what could it be saying?!

I am getting a bit fed up of people thinking that I know all the answers to problems that have nothing to do with me, and the people in question should be asking management staff, whose job it is to sort these particular things out! Maybe I am just the nearest 'management' person, even though I am not a manager at all! In theory, I just "oversee" the office. This is according to my job description, which is not realistic anymore, however. Maybe I have missed something?

Mr C has disappeared into the attic. Hopefully he will be back in time for tea. I don't know what I'm going to make...

Must get back to Hebrew soon. I have probably forgotten everything I learnt before. Aggh.

At the Zoo: Simon and Garfunkel

Someone told me

It’s all happening at the zoo.

I do believe it, I do believe it’s true.

It’s a light and tumble journey

From the east side to the park;

Just a fine and fancy ramble

To the zoo.

But you can take the crosstown bus

If it’s raining or it’s cold,

And the animals will love it

If you do.

Somethin’ tells me

It’s all happening at the zoo.

The monkeys stand for honesty,

Giraffes are insincere,

And the elephants are kindly but

They’re dumb.

Orangutans are skeptical

Of changes in their cages,

And the zookeeper is very fond of rum.

Zebras are reactionaries,

Antelopes are missionaries,

Pigeons plot in secrecy,

And hamsters turn on frequently.

What a gas! you gotta come and see

At the zoo.

Film 2006

Today we had the discussion about me not having watched various classic films, which is now a standard office conversation. I don't know how I did it, but I managed to grow up without watching ET, any of the original Star Wars trilogy all the way through, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, any of the Jaws films, etc. Maybe I just missed all the Spielberg ones! No, that's not true because I have seen all three Indiana Jones films, Schindler's List and...hmm that's about it. (Not for all the films I've seen, just for the Spielberg ones.)

Anyway, S says I have to go and watch them round her house one day. This discussion stemmed from one I started about which film was people's least favourite, and then which was people's favourite. S's least favourite was Journey to Shiloh, an early Harrison Ford movie about the American Civil War, which also starred James Caan apparently. E went for Pearl Harbor [sic], which is probably on a lot of people's list of least favourite/worst films. Needless to say, I haven't seen either!

Today I spent some time (not work time of course) looking at the Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy pages on the BBC website. This particular site, known as h2g2, is a guide created by members of the public. You can log in as a 'researcher' and write your own guide entry. There are loads of entries about anything and everything. I'm planning to write some on various obscure/not so obscure medical conditions, but a lot of the entries are much more light-hearted. For example, there is one about "The Mystery of the Sweet Potato".

Hmm it is late, time for bed.

Bee

Things have been really busy here recently....just general business - lots to do but nothing really exciting. Just things like cleaning, doing the garden, writing thank you letters, going to work etc. I have done quite a few late nights recently, as I had to swap some when I went away. Work has been quite stressful this week, as we have been short staffed and very busy at the same time - never a good combiation. Oh dear, my compy is crying for its battery...Fear not, it is ok now. Anyway, yes short staffed we were, due to illness and also people being in amateur operatics productions! I'm going to see one of them tomorrow night. As well as these, shelvers have been off and the shelving had got out of hand and was looking rather horrendous. However, everyone has mucked in to shelve and things are now looking better. Had to negotiate with D for people from his team to help on desk. He said no but said he would ask them to shelve, which did help. Politics. Hmm. Things are also a bit stressful because of uncertainty (still) about The Integration, aka ISS. Still no job descriptions and apparantly They want people to make a decision by Easter.

Enough about work, but what else is there to write about? What did I do at the weekend? Cleaned house, bought CD rack, which A put together. Put CDs into CD rack. Ohh I know, we watched all three episodes of the original Star Wars, which I had never seen in their entirity before, much to the horror of my husband and colleagues. Amusing thing of the week last week: E at work doing his impersonation of Admiral Ackbar: "It's a trap!" Hmm, ok this doesn't work so well in print. Enjoyed SW, especially the aforementioned AA, who of course I looked forward to throughout the whole series, and Yoda and the 'man' himself Darth Vadar. Poor DV.

Why do I abbreviate so much? Because I am lazy.

So now I have officially joined the cultured ones I can talk about SW with my colleagues instead of thinking about what to say to Ms Bloggs who doesn't want to pay her fines why should she she should of [sic] been sent a notice she relies on them why should she take responsibility for her own books/degree/life when there are librarians to do it for her? Oops did I mention work again? I am obsessed, I apologise. In fact, I am so obsessed that I checked my work email from Changi airport in Singapore while on honeymoon. The shame.

Maybe I just worry too much.

H is visiting this weekend and the house is not clean. Hate house not being clean when we have visitors but not sure when I am going to clean unless I do it Saturday morning before she and T get here. However, on Sat. a.m. I also have to get back from work and get a day's parking permit, in order to avoid H getting a potential £60 parking fine. Have bought bird feeder for garden. We cut down the budleia (not sure how to spell this, sorry) the other Sunday, and now have about 1o black sacks full of branches to get rid off. N offered to take them to the tip for us, before we asked (although I would have done if he hadn't offered, such is my keenness to get rid of the bags). We tried putting the bags out for the bin men, but they didn't take them because they weren't in the requisite brown sacks. I was not amused, although we should have known better than to try to gain their sympathy with a note explaining our lack of brown sacks.

Watched The Office the other night. The best bits of that are the shots of the office and the sounds of the noises people make when they are pretending to work, even though everyone knows they're not working and are doing an equal amount of non-work themselves. Been there, done that. Genius.

Better slope off, sloth-like, to bed.