A Day Out

Bea and I left the building on time, ready for our exciting jaunt to the Library Exhibition in Birmingham. (The very apex of excitement!) We ambled out the building, expecting to find our small-ish bus across the road outside the back of the public library. Instead, we found quite a large bus on our side of the road, in our bus lay-by, rapidly filling up with passengers. Thoughtful of them to park on this side of the road, we thought, as we made our way towards it. Mind you, there do seem to be rather a lot of people on board. You wouldn’t have thought there were that many people interested in the library exhibition in the whole world, let along in little Sheffield. And they don’t exactly look like librarians. In fact, they seem a bit young. I suspect them of being students! And lo! There is our bus across the road in its proper place. With librarians aboard. Mind you, would have been more exciting going with the students. Rumour has it that they were off to the Dales for a tour around the Theakstons Brewery!

So. Off we trundled, in our little Librarian bus, towards Birmingham, Bea, Heidi (from Psalter Lane) and me. It was a lovely day for a trip out in the country, even if it was down the motorway. And the traffic wasn’t too bad – especially since none of us was driving and didn’t need to worry about what the traffic was doing. We left at 09:10 and got there at 10:45 or so. A long-ish walk to the Exhibition Centre in the cool wind, and then time for a loo stop, coffee and a visit to the cash machine. While we were accomplishing all this, we ran across one of the subject specialists from work who is there not for the exhibition but for the simultaneous conference. At least now no one can doubt we were there!! (Though they scanned our badges every time we went into anything so there is ample evidence we were there, really!)

The exhibition was quite interesting, in its way. Would have been more interesting if we actually had a budget to play with! I collected a few pens, a fluffy pen, a magnifying glass, a tiny, tiny book on my fundamental rights, a ruler, lots of useful things. And a bag of marbles. Not sure about the relevance of the marbles, and the exhibitor wouldn’t tell me. He said that if I worked it out and emailed them, I would go in a draw for a prize. And what is this prize? A Kerplunk game, apparently. I’d rather have another bag of marbles, myself. I also collected lots and lots and lots of leaflets for Peter, just to prove that I really, really did go to the library exhibition and not to Masham to the Brewery!!

Actually, it had its points of use. Bea, Heidi and I are all on a working group looking at integrating all the various service points we have in the Adsetts Centre and at Collegiate. I realise we can’t actually buy anything, but it was informative to see what kind of library furniture, software, paraphernalia is available. But it really didn’t need a whole day. We went to listen to David Nobbs (author of the Reginald Perrin novels, and the books about the wonderful Henry Pratt, along with various television series) speak (very droll) and had a magnificent lunch, went for a wander outside. Then we lost Heidi – and never saw her again :-S (She wasn’t coming back on the bus; she was off to Shrewsbury for a long weekend. But it was surprising not to run across her at some point during the afternoon.) We went for another amble around the exhibition then decided that we didn’t particularly need to see anything else; we didn’t want to go to the professionally based talks (for we get the opportunity to hear lots of talks and seminars about information literacy and the future of librarianship etc back in the office); the one talk we would have liked to go to finished after the bus left … So we repaired to the bar and ate cake and drank beer (Bea) and wine (me) until it was time to go back and find the bus. If we come again, and I expect we will, I shall bring the car. Then we wouldn’t need to kill over an hour just to fill in time until the bus leaves.

Still, not a bad way to pass a day at work!

So. Back to Sheffield. Bea and I passed the time talking about gardens and allotments and fruit trees and this and that. Then I realised that, instead of heading back up the M1 to the turn off to the Sheffield City Centre, the driver had turned off down the Chesterfield by-pass. I wonder if he is planning a stop in Chesterfield? That would be very useful. Alas, no. Could he drop me off somewhere? Well, perhaps. But where? How about in that lay-by that’s coming up. The one from which you can practically see the poplar trees around the school in Grassmoor, about two miles away. Leave you in the lay-by? Are you mad? How will you get home from there? I shall summon The Builder. Have I already rung him? Well, of course not – I didn’t realise you were coming this way. With great reluctance, the driver pulled over and cast me out of the bus, into the lay-by, with the closed sandwich van, the rubbish bin and not much else. But really, I couldn’t see any point in driving past the turnoff to home, only to head 20 odd miles into Sheffield, just to turn round and come right back again. And in fact, I could probably have walked it. There is a track at the back of the verge, well away from the traffic. Though it would have taken some time. Home might have been 2.5 miles from where I was, but not by road!

It took The Builder fully 12 minutes to arrive in the lay-by after I rang him. Only read about 3 pages of my book. I thought he was going to drive past, though he knew which lay-by I was in. He says my green jacket camouflaged me, for I was leaning against the green closed sandwich van and couldn’t be seen. So, safe from mad axe murderers, then. And 15 minutes later I was at home, changed, and out in the garden sowing pea seeds and sipping wine. Long, long before the bus got back into Sheffield.

Bea says the traffic was dreadful. The driver stopped at Meadowhead to let more people off then announced that he wasn’t stopping again until he got back to the public library, which meant that Bea went right past her street into town and had to turn around and come back again. If he had only made the announcement at Meadowhead she could have hopped off and taken the bus, or even walked home from there.

Was a bit of a struggle to stay awake to talk to Tony at 10, though. Had to prop my eyelids open with matchsticks!

The family has been taken over by SKYPE. It’s very exciting. I have had a conference call with Tabitha and Freyja. I’ve spoken to Tony, Ian and Simon. I’ve seen Julia but haven’t yet managed to attract her attention. If you use SKYPE and want to talk to me, you will find me with my SHU email. Bear in mind, though, if you are not in my time zone, I can’t actually talk from work, though I can type.

I’m on the evening duty today, so there was no mad rush to get up and dash about this morning. So I lazed about in m’bed while The Builder went and got us a cup of tea at around 7. I became aware that there was a blue tit fluttering about around the bathroom roof, on the odd bits and pieces that protrude from the house, and around the window. I assumed it was looking for insects. Then it came and sat on the bar thing that runs across the window towards the top and stared inside. Then it sort of fell off, fluttered about a bit and came back and looked in some more. Eventually, I became curious about what on earth it was doing and got up, looked out the window – and found that the area where I put seed for the little birds was completely bare. Sigh. It comes to something when you are shouted at for lying about lazily in bed by a blue tit!!!!!!!