hi-tech equipment for fixing trains

So it’s snowy and it’s icy, and the whole of the UK has tried not to grind to a shuddering halt, but is soldiering bravely on through the winter weather.


From Essex CC’s website: IMPORTANT: Essex is suffering from severe weather conditions. (This made me think of the county as some sort of distressed damsel in a story, lying in a darkened room hoping for

Over the tannoy on my train this morning, after a lengthy wait for it to couple to the train in front of it: “Good morning, I’m so sorry for the delay to your train service today, this was caused by compacted snow and ice on this technologically wonderful machine. The problem was solved in a delicate operation with high-tech special equipment – a kettle of boiling water and a screwdriver.”

refgrunt from a different hour today

Sage & Microsoft Great Plains (which is apparently accounting software)


“Resolution” by C J Sanson – is either “Dissolution” or “Revelation” by CJ Sansom

List of Rosamunde Pilcher books

Various back issues of newspapers

Workshop manual for a Yamaha motorbike

Can I book number 3 for 11am tomorrow?

I need to print a tax return form, can I use one of your computers?

Why is the table so much higher, is it for disabled access? Look, all the others are the same height, why is this one higher?

Can I check which computer I’m on?

Are you able to help me find whereabouts to look for a book?

Do you have sheet music?

More back copies of newspapers

refgrunt from one hour on the desk today

How to look after an African pygmy hedgehog (quite possibly the cutest animal I've ever set eyes on)


Moira Kerr cds

Metropolis dvd, remastered & reconstructed

Criminology books

On messages list: romance book called Forbidden or For Bedding (I swear these get more ridiculous by the week)

Do you do courses on Publisher?

Eye health & potential problems

This evening I took someone up to the microfilm machines, he said he was looking at something sneakily, outside of work time (but presumably work-related). When we got up there, there was already a man on one of our machines. By the time I'd got the keys out and discovered the years my customer wanted weren't in the drawer,  they were sheepishly shaking hands - working sneakily after hours on the same thing for the same place, by the looks of things. Hilarious... I made my excuses and left them to it.

where we belong? I think not..

Man interrupting his wife’s enquiry (she ignored it and carried on with her own, serenely): Oh, I see, your library’s at the bottom of County Hall – where it belongs.

Me: Actually I prefer to think of it as the foundation upon which the county rests…

A colleague & friend: Without us, County Hall would fall down.
 
 
I also walked in this morning to find a man vacuuming our photocopier... for a moment I honestly thought I was in some kind of parallel universe.

fireworks

Today we had a lady who wanted “that children’s poem about fireworks that has 54321 in it and might be about a rocket”.

the Quest for Books

I do love the part of my job where I get to disappear in among the stacks, steal noiselessly between the shelves and emerge, triumphantly, clutching whichever book the customer’s asked for.


The downside, of course (or perhaps it’s an upside) is that in the quest for one book for someone else, I inevitably spot at least four I’d like to read myself, and add them to the ever-growing list of Books I Must Read One Day.