The Spirit of Christmas is Truly Rum (Mountgay for Preference)

So having woken, blogged the news, put a link here for me to investigate more fully later in the day, I get to dash for the 7.04 that heads for Warrington Central (how that generates a wry smile of amusement everytime I encounter it rather than the guffaw generated by Milton Keynes Central). When there I transfer to the Scarborough train which goes direct to Manchester Picadilly. See I even know what I'm doing on the way here now.

Bump into the lovely Liz O'Neill on the platform. Chat as we head to Gateway (she's now an inmate of the gaff). Exciting day (well depends on your definition of exciting and when it comes to dealing with this lots files I have a low excitement threshold) because I enter the second archive today. I have been told it is better than the last one, the Blackhole of Gateway House. Eddie kindly lets me in. On the plus side it it brighter and seems more spacious than the Blackhole. The downside is there is still a jumble of archive boxes in the place and a large number of unboxed files. To get at the racking I will need to move a slew of boxes and then return them from whence they came. So what in my mind was a simple room to deal with is is turning into the 'Blackhole of Gateway House II: The Revenge'. the other downside in the place is that there has obviously been a need to adapt the plumbing of Gateway House (which has left heaps of concrete dust and revealed the woderful 60's concrete reinforcement to me), and it has a couple of pipes that gurgle with water (and one has a slight drip from it) and are gonna make me wanna pee all day, I can tell. This in itself is an issue because the lavatory arrangements in Gateway House surround the lift shafts and I'm the other side of a door with swipe control for which I have no swipe card from the toilets. Throw into the mix a general level of hypochondria as a result of Cal's lurg and I can tell it's gonna be a fun day. Luckily I'm on the right side of the swipe to have the escape switch and a well placed nove keeps the door open so I can get back the other side.

Never mind I dig into recording the boxes of crap in the first set of racking and filing cabinets and make rapid progress. It helps that only four of the eight filing cabinets have things in them. Plan is to get another rack of records sorted before jacking for the day. Still that will require the afternoon because here is still no power in this blackhole so I need to recharge the laptop. So off into the heart of the Land of Manc I wander. Nip into an easy Internetcafe and blog. Before I do thi grab some paper and a pen for some reason. Plan is to head from here to some lunch somewhere and then back to finish the days listing. In the near distance I can hear the plaintive wail of a Sally Army Brass Band playing 'In the Deep Midwinter'. By 'eck I'll have to trample on any notion of Crimble spirit in myself sharpish....

Tracy rings at some point to let me know it looks like the library in full has been assimilated according to Agenda for Chaos. Deep joy, it didn't take them long to do........ Usual NHS moans, grons and general whinge on the subject, you can inser them yourselves. Which reminds me positive vibes to Julie over at Life in the NHS who is suffering our latest wave of reform with considerably more grace than I could muster in similar circumstances.

Lemmy's Mum was a Librarian

Voicemail tag - I get some voicemail from someone, I call them and leave voicemail, they call me and leave voicemail so I leave voicemail in return. Would I give anything for the voicemail system to have the conversation and then let us know what the hell it had decided.... it'd be so much simpler! Delve into the BMA site guided ably by someone from the library looking for resolutions from their Annual Representative Meeting, so much easier when you're told where they live! Once you find it though what simple thing to search.

FoI stuff happens, couple of searches happen. Odd nurse practitioner search, I keep it extremely tight, first time I've had a search result that only returns full text without me specifying it. OK it was only four articles but I sent them along with the search to the user. Freaky!

Assimilation happens which provides me with ample excuse to call Sally and Christina. Good to talk to them both.

Sort the Christmas goose, pick it up on the 23^rd. Congratulating myself on sorting that I then hit a problem on returning home, I have a puncture. Now the Touran fails to supply a spare, instead there is a bottle of gunk and a compressor. So risking life and limb and squatting inches from the traffic I fill the tyre with the gunk and use the compressor. The compressor should work in 6 minutes, it' don't. Luckily I'm close to home. Call the RAC (my membership has lapsed and is renewed, sort it so I get a tow in the morning to the nearest Kwic Fit). Deep joy, I'm gonna be late at Arrowe, need to call them first thing to warn them.

Jim the Post

Positives:

• The whiteboard gets put up by a geezer that's almost as mad as us
• Lit searches are run and sent
• News flows and is out of the way fastish

Negatives

• NHSnet continues to slow down like a snail on valium at lunchtime
• Agenda for Chaos means that we still owe poor Christina dosh