Internet Police in Retreat

The excellent Rapidly Diminishing Ken Clare rang me the other day to tell me about Websense. I'd have reported it at the time just to cheer up librarywebbie but I guess he's been out in his lycra on his bike listening to some free form jazz, unfortunately it's been catalogue-a-go-go round our place and I forgot. More interestingly I had a chat with the internet police originators the other day about Cairs (I ring them Monday bout the web version of Fade) and they forgot to mention it.

No Logo's and Stupid Belief

Logo magazine have been positive about '3 Songs From Liverpool' the Ella Guru single saying ' it�s impressive Full Stop and deserves every iota of your attention', they aren't kidding. It's even No.5 on the Chain with No Name's single chart and in very august company too. On the stupid belief fron, Callum is convinced that I can solve everything. On seeing a nasty bruise on his Mum's leg he declared that it was a nasty bruise and that I should fix it with some sellotape. Boy is he going to be dissapointed in later life when not only does he learn I have no such abilities but also that sellotape was put on this earth to kill books.....

Prawn to be Mild

Sat with a couple of cans of Cains Dark Mild mainly because I went to a dodgy offy and it was about the best they had to offer. It's not bad and better for the fact I'm meant to be tidying the kitchen and I'm avoiding it. As long as it's done by the morning Monst ain't going to be any the wiser.

Doing the Doo

Blogger seems to be down. Blogspot seems to be dead. I want to scream, not because I have anything particular to say at the moment but I just find the whole thing incredibly frustrating. Cal is sat infront of 'Scooby Doo and the Boo Brothers' which I'm boycotting on the basis it contains the abomination that is Scrappy Doo. So I'm sat listening to The Coral's 'Magic and Medicine' which has a bit of a Seeds like feel to it somehow, throw in a bit of Bunnymen and you have a beguiling mix. All this because we went to see if we could score a free Frost DVD at Asda. We failed miserably on that front and the place was mobbed. ...but now Blogger seems to be back so I can relax....

Jinkys It's Scooby Doo

Callum continues his obsession with Scooby Doo eating the cereal (which incidently tells me Velma Dinkley is 15 'er dodgy searches and Velma finding this place kind of take on a new complexion). He'll also be please that Scooby Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed is being made. Still at least he's eating something. I've just experienced the alarm clock I bought the other day, noisy bloody thing it needs a good kicking...... better go and fetch Monst from work.

Posters

A weekend designing posters to fill the space that we get at the AGM is coming my way. Adam gave me useful information about resolutions required by the printers. Now to wack something together. Chat briefly with Val, run to the printers, get it sorted and make ourselves look reasonable. I'd whinge if I didn't enjoy this kind of shit. It lets me indulge my gig flyer wish thing.....

Taty Bread

Got some spare mash so it's time to make some taty bread. Recipe below.... 2 lb/ 1 kg/ 2 cups mashed potatoes 4 oz/ 125 g/ 1 cup plain flour 2 tbsp butter salt Melt the butter and mix into the potatoes with the salt. Work in the flour quickly but thoroughly and knead lightly. Divide in two and roll out each half on a floured board to form a circle about the size of a large dinner plate. Cut in quarters (farls) and cook for about 3 minutes on each side in a heavy frying pan in a little bacon fat.

Postman Pat and Other Stories

Much hilarity as we catalogue a Postman Pat book as part of the Margaret Thomson Medical Centre gig, or should that be Dorothy Thompson for those of you who know yer Pat. Another box down and we look like we're getting on top of the thing. Alastair is busy processing like mad. Looks like we might have our own stand at the AGM. This means lots of work getting stuff together for it. Adam came down concerned I intended to use Kristen to fill it. Touched by his concern for her, I had no intention of asking for her help beyond maybe a bit of information on the printers they are using. Need to check with HCLU on the bug front.

Crunchy Crustacean's

According to The Truth Laid Bear this blog is a Crunchy Crustacean... cool can't get more Hitchcock than that! I guess their ecosystem is based on evolution seing as top of the scale is a human bean, still it leaves me something to aspire too I guess. Just about to begin todays cataloguing hall. First though the BMX Bandits are slipping into the machine...

Rock'n'Roll

Order '3 Songs From Liverpool' at Amazon, man, this Ella Guru thing is flying. It ain't harming the rock claims of the kids at Fade....

The Secret of a Good Pint Is.........Timing

Post cataloguing nipped to Shenanigans for a pint of Guinness, it was a thing of great beauty and slipped down my neck in a way that left me gasping for more. Unfortunately I had to get home and one was enough. Back home to news of Cal's first day at the Speech and Language Unit. Nobody seems to have warned Cal that school dinners are shite. He even had seconds of his peaches and cream... the kid's sick, won't eat for us and then eats loads at school. I'm sending him in over the weekend. I find it interesting that the Guinness site needs to know how old I am before it'll let me in. I ran out of fingers and toes while I was trying to work it out. More to the pint what stops me from lying, mind you I probably do that with my poor maths anyway. I was relatively young when '30 Something' was popular on Channel 4 and didn't get it. It now makes horrible sense, I'm too senile to remember.

The Box is Dead, Long Live the Box

Sally is cataloguing the last book from the green box we aimed to clear today. Top job. Feel like a beer. News from Cal is that today went well. Good bit of communication from Northern Primary so perhaps things won't be as bad as I fear. 16 New Associate Nurses, enrolled and indoctrinated today. Knackered but it feels good. Then tomorrow we do it all again....

Ella Guru

Sorry better explain the Ella Guru stuff, John Yates one of the geezers behind the band came to Fade as a student on placement while we moved the library. He was fun to have here, much chat about music, did some top work for me around the Primary Care Core List mainly around journals. I went to see him and the band support The Frames and witnessed a set of great beauty despite the nasty cold John had at the time. As a result I've kept a weather eye on the band and now the seem to be taking off big style....

School Holidays Almost Over - Hooray!

Cal starts at Northern Primary in the Speech and Language Unit or 'Sparrows' today. This is the long fought for 20 week placement. I still have some misgivings but bottom line is we need to give it a go. Anyway the taxi that drags him off to the wilds of Kirkby picks him up at 8.20 so I expect a tearful Monst on the phone around then. In the meanwhile in the real world of Loopy Librarianship the Margaret Thomson Medical Centre Library is here and needs to be back there by next Friday. As a consequence there is manic cataloguing happening and that's what I should be up to now. Aaaaaaaaargh! More rave on goes on about..... ELLA GURU "their work is one of simple beauty which hints at an evocative dreamscapes with the odd country tinged guitar work.the sound is dense and dark.this is the start of something special" Art Rocker "The slow-motion wispiness of this Liverpool band recalls both Richard Hawley's dead-of-night musings and the relentless melancholy of Eric Andersen's Blue River. Toss in a steel guitar, an oboe and the Captain Beefheart-inspired name, and this may well be the most intriguing act to come of the UK this year" The Anti-Hit List "If Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood lived in Bootle instead of Boot Hill, they would sound like this. Head straight for track 2, 'On A Boat' - it's absolutely gorgeous, every note a cascading tear, him'n'her vocalists sighing like long-lost lovers planted by some malevolent god on opposite sides of a vast impenetrable glass screen. Well you would sigh wouldn't you?" NME Wow... this is looking really good for John, got to be pleased for him.

On A Boat

Found the following in the Sunday Times, things really seem to be picking up for Ella Guru...... reproduced before it goes into their archive, sorry Rupert but you're a greedy bastard.... Pop: New Kids in Town: Ella Guru DAN CAIRNS Who are they? John Yates (vocals/guitar/clarinet/piano/ harmonica), Christian Burwood (guitar/keyboards), Nik Kavanagh (bass), Kate Walsh (vocals), Nick Kellington (cornet/ukulele), Scott Marmion (pedal steel), Bob Pickin (double bass) and Bren Moore (drums) are, as that list suggests, a handful, which makes fitting on stage in the tiny venues they play a problem. After 3 Songs from Liverpool, elbow room shouldn�t be an issue for long. The greatest single released this year is already causing ears to prick up: big-money offers can�t be far behind. Who do they sound like? They don�t; at least, not like any other music currently being made in Liverpool. Yates�s voice contains echoes of Neil Young, Davey Jones and that man who sang Seasons in the Sun. Musically, there are (very) faint traces of Low and Simon and Garfunkel. But as Yates and Walsh spar on the bleak�n�blissed-out On a Boat, and a �resting� thespian nag drowns his sorrows on Strugglin� Horse in Hollywood, you realise this is music of a type that doesn �t just defy labels but laughs, or possibly whinnies, in their faces. What exactly was Yates on that led him to write about an equine luvvie? �It�s a metaphor for the music, really,� he suggests, valiantly. �You get a horse and it does well and becomes a major player, and it might go, �This is not me.�� Uh-huh. When�s the record out? 3 Songs from Liverpool is out tomorrow on Banana. Can I see them live? Joseph�s Well, Leeds (Tue, Sept 16); Water Rats, WC1 (17); Barfly, Liverpool (18); Fez Club, Sheffield (21); Rescue Rooms, Nottingham (22).

Nobody Expects the Spanish Inquisition

....then why do I insist on using it when cataloguing?

I Can't Go Forward

BMX Bandits in the library....... what joy to catalogue to......

This Is Worrying

Partly because I completed the quiz, partly because this is where I ended up!
"99 Red Balloons" (by Nena) 99 Decision Street. 99 ministers meet. To worry, worry, super-scurry. Call the troops out in a hurry. This is what we've waited for. This is it boys, this is war. The president is on the line As 99 red balloons go by.

Which 80's Song Fits You?
brought to you by Quizilla

The RW Experience

Dragged Sally poor girl up to a LIHNN/HCLU briefing and exposed her to the full horror of the region�s health librarians. As ever an opportunity to catch up with a few people. Good to see Shan, Liz, Mic, Gill, Rach, Leo and a whole host of others. Stupidity hit me while introducing Chris H my mind went complete and I had to �fess up. Still these things happen. Reasonable giggle in coffee but the main meeting had bits that were RW in interest. Infocandy gave a quick presentation. The stuff he�s peddling may be worth looking at. Need to do some work around it. Lunch on HCLU and into a Cheshire and Mersey meeting. Got a bit gobby on the basis it stopped me from getting bored but we almost had Michael kipping. RW moments to the fore then.

Back at the library messages to phone Jan about the Associate Nurses and doing a library intro. Good gig, we like spreading the gospel of library according to Fade. Tina M. had called from Middlesbrough way because they�d heard from somewhere I�d done a heap of costing work and wanted to know what I knew about projected costs. This is spooky one week I get a call from the smoke about FOI the next week I get a call about costing. Put Tina onto the Merseycare crew for some stats on demand....

Nipped into see Ken on the way back. Cool to see him and good chat and information exchange. Brief complaint about the lack of mention of the Gastroenterology and Stoma care Nurse of the Year award from Blue Jeans, sorry Nursing Standard. Mind you you could tell the jubilation with the award in the fact I've been threatening all and sundry with news of it as a good bit of goss. Trouble is we don't take Blue Jeans so need to look it out on the 5th of November... Don't bother with the jokes about lighting bonfires we've been through 'em all. Planning on spending three ton on obesity material wanted to run the notion by the Rapidly Dimininshing One first and now I've scrawled it here need to do it.....

Back home to find Monst had sorted the trip to school. Bolshie mare wins out and Marie a neighbour has given birth to a little Evertonian called Danny. Cool, Terry may be misguided on the footie front but I�m pleased for them.

LKDN Helicon etc

LKDN offer a virtually empty site. Scooted there to see if they had more information on Helicon activity than Helicon. They didn't.

Margaret Thompson Medical Centre

From a month to two weeks to catalogue the lot. Provide a catalogue, shelve it, label it etc. Aaaaargh! Fling on the Flogging Molly and let the fun begin...... Talking music I see a cool review of Ella Guru's '3 Songs from Liverpool' from Leeds Music Scene.

The Publication Scheme has Arrived

Your item with reference SU859537581GB was delivered in WILMSLOW before 10:15 on 01/09/03. It's still a day late though. Word is the INformation Commissioner was ringing round at 4.00 p.m. on Friday chasing them. I doubt ours is alone in arriving today....

Sally Was a Legend

Sally kicks off with a virtually empty library. Nik is stuck in the smoke because some selfish bastard jumped in front of a tube train so she didn't make her bus. I still have a residual bitterness towards jumpers as a result of my time in the smoke, they always seemed to pick the place they could cause maximal inconvenience to everyone else. Tracy is meeting bound am and pm with a training sesssion in the use of the delightful Proquest over with the Mancs at Manchester University and is then over here for a chartership gig which I'm avoiding. The lovely Val is starting her teacher training this week. Which means the poor girl enters a lads paradise with just the funky Dutch Swing College Band Alastair (retro revival or what) and the old Lopy one here. Not helped by the fact that by the time she's in I'll have had a health dose of Robyn Hitchcock pumped at me because I'm rocking out to 'Jewels for Sophia' hence the title at the top..... Just running through the induction setlist now.... boy looks like a busy day where I'll achieve bugger all. "I can probably carry on like this until I drop dead, especially if I'm not part of a band. We're not all there on stage making each other look older." Robyn.

Parents 'not preparing children for school'

Got a bit pissed off over the David Bell statement suggesting that behavioural and verbal skills of children starting school were at an all-time low, with many unable to settle and not ready to learn. Having struggled to get Knowsley LEA to accept there responsibility in supporting us as parents in developing Cal who has speech and language problems, and believe me it was a struggle (it took the threat of a SENDIST appeal to get the message through that we weren't mucking about), it seems a bit rich to have the geezer blame me. It's a shared responsibility and LEA's are patchy, some excellent some failing. I can't even email the bloke with anything other than a guess at his address. Mind you I've tried, we wait and see!

Lockheed....NHS Bomber (oops that should be Bummer)

Lockheed drop out of the race to be the NHS IT provider. Looks like the whole things in chaos then. Another normal day for NHS IT....

Safe Hands

Going to be weird today with old Safe Hands Seaman at the other end of the pitch playing for Man City. Intresting article with Primrose Wilson revealing the odd difference with Arsene. Hadn't realised for years the club had paid him with four tickets and expenses. Man that's mean! Got to hope old safe hands has a mare. In the meanwhile in a bid to please his paternal grandfather Callum has picked up a hockey stick and has been scooting around the place hitting a ball and me. The latter has led to me removing the stick from his person and a spirited protest from the man with the iron lungs that has led to me escaping into a set of cans and him to his room to play with his railway. Sunday's huh! Don't you just love 'em. While on the subject of Hockey, I see Wallingford HC a club for whom I was the youngest 37 year old at 14 has a page. It's a bit boring mind.... Still come on you green and whites... In the meanwhile the auld fella is now involved with the side from virginity city so you can find out nothing about Maidenhead Hockey Club who are redeveloping not only their astroturf but website.