One word? When seven would do…

Yesterday. Ah yes, yesterday. Hmmm.

I was on a full day training course at Worthing library about Children’s services. I’d allowed half an hour for driving into town, parking and then walking to the library. I’d thought I’d park in the carpark next to the library but on checking the details of the carpark on the internet the night before I realised it was short stay only (maximum 4 hours) so that was out. I’d also looked at going into town on the train but the course was supposed to end at 430pm which was always going to mean getting home and getting Davies back out again for Badgers at 545pm would be a tall order so I knew the train wouldn’t be any good. So I revised my plan to the slightly further away (about 5 minute fast pace walk) long stay car park instead (bargain at £1.50 for all day). Which meant, by my precision timing I had 15 minutes to drive to the car park, five minutes to park, five minutes to walk to the library and five minutes for composing myself / going to the loo / contingency fund.

The drive took slightly longer than planned, eating a good two minutes into my contingency fund and then I pulled up to the car park behind a man leaning out of his car arguing (quite literally, he was actually shouting at it) with the pay and display machine. Odd set up – you pay as you go in and then display the ticket in your car but there was no barrier. So he started gesticulating to me that the machine wasn’t working and then his reverse lights came on. I duly reversed back out too, then he seemed to change his mind and went in anyway. I didn’t bother with the machine as by now I had used up a further minute of my contingency fund and I thought I’d park near him and see what he was going to do about the broken machine. He was super speedy though and had disappeared down the steps before I’d got out of my car. So I went and checked to see if he’d left a note in his car only to find he’d got a ticket after all and was proudly displaying it on his dashboard. Trickin’ cheatin’ no good man! By now I had seven minutes to get to the library – and I was on floor 6 of the car park. Deciding it would be quicker to run than get back in the car and drive I dashed down the stairs, bunged money in the machine (much to the confusion of people coming in in their cars – clearly the machine brings out the loony in people!) got a ticket and ran back up the stairs again. I now had four minutes to get to the library. So I did that hurrying sort of semi run that people do when they are late but don’t want to / frankly are physically incapable of running. Should probably mention that I was wearing shoes I’ve not worn for ages yesterday. I normally wear boots if I’m wearing a skirt and some flat black shoes if I’m wearing trousers to work, but with the sunnier days on the way I decided to dig out some different footwear and found a pair of cute mary jane style black shoes. They are flat, black with a t-bar style front. Only trouble is they are a little on the narrow side and when my feet get hot and swell slightly bits of flesh poke out of the space either side of the t-bar. They are sitting down in cool conditions type shoes really. Not semi-running in warm weather type shoes.

I got to the library with seconds to spare. I was purple of face, mottled of cleavage, wheezing and panting (forgot my inhaler :roll:) with a feminine glow and puffy bits of my feet poking through the cute bits on my shoes. Clearly my colleagues couldn’t help but be impressed 😆

There were 8 attendees on the course – 2 of whom were on the last one (one of which impressively remembered my name, rather less impressively remembered the wrong name and called me Nikki all day :roll:), a youngish girl with very odd ringletted hair, a girl who sounded exactly like Tara Palmer Tompkinson with a very husky voice but had this weird habit of pulling lots of faces and laughing too long after every sentence she said. A woman who worked at Lancing for the first week or two I was there but then moved to another library, a couple of nice women and then this utter cow of a woman who seems to have been demoted in the recent reshuffle and clearly felt she shouldn’t be there for ‘refresher training’ as she sneeringly refered to it. She was really rude to all the rest of us and clearly felt we were too lowly for her to talk to.

The course was terrible. Really, really boring. Clearly there was a lot of information to impart but it was like attending a lecture and we just sat there being talked at for hours. And hours. In a hot room in the basement with no air and no windows and no natural light. Delivered by people who I’m sure are very nice but had no passion for what they were talking about, no enthusiasm for their jobs, clearly a lot of resentment for the changes and restructuring that’s recently happened throughout the local area and adhered to all the stereotypical ideas of what librarians might be like.

We were talked at about Every Child Matters (oh did that put my back up!) and how our work fits into such government initiatives and ideas. Very at odds with many of my personal beliefs lots of that so I really struggled not to sneer in places and to remain looking interested and nodding in agreement. Then we heard about Bookstart and similar schemes – again something I can see all the reasons and benefit to but delivered in such a way to feel patronising, prescriptive and so bloody contrived – here is what you should be doing with your baby aged 0-1, here are the books to read – it’s like the whole country’s being run by Gina Ford! Things like bookstart are great initiatives but should be rolled out with passion, vigour and a belief in free books and invitations to join the library for everyone in a positive, attractive way rather than the big brother style of ‘every child shall receive these books and be read to by their parent’. Probably not making any sense here but somehow it annoyed me.

We were shown how school project loans are put together from the schools library service library and then we looked at some book selection, which was easily the best part of the day. We all got to look at a load of childrens’ books and decide whether we’d buy them for the library or not. That was fun 🙂 I think I’d like to be a book buyer for a living, well anything that involved shopping really 😆

During the lunch break I wandered down into town. I’ve not been into Worthing for ages and despite it being my home town and having worked in the town centre for several years a while ago I felt like a total stranger. I had really itchy feet yesterday I think (aswell as painful feet from the pokey out bits in the cute shoes 😉 ) and would happily have come home and packed us all up to leave for somewhere else. Just as well we’re on holiday next week I think, I was pretty disillusioned with everything yesterday.

In the afternoon while we were looking at the schools library area the snooty woman managed to knock a metal shelf down that was propped up against the side and I didn’t notice it falling until it landed on my foot – nicely pushing the pokey out bits back in again true, but not doing a great deal for me otherwise. And she didn’t say sorry. Cow 🙁

The course finished early so I was home at 4.30pm, as was Ady having been prewarned that I’d be pushed for time to get home and feed Davies before Badgers. So Dad was let off childcare very early indeed 🙂 and Davies got to eat a proper dinner rather than have sandwiches shoved down his throat while we drove to Badgers. And I got to sit in the car and eat humbugs and listen to the radio for an hour, so that was nice 🙂

Will be back to blog today a bit later.