This morning's collection of telephonic entertainments included the brief return of the loud but baffling Mrs K.:

Mrs K: [breathless and shouting] Do you know ArabicName, he's a student there?
Me: Well, not personally. What it is concerning please?
Mrs K: he lives with me.
Me: [deja vu] ...right.
Mrs K: and I've asked him to leave!
Me: ok then, let me just transfer you to our accommodation officer [transferring call with record speed before she can embroil me in whatever thrilling tale is behind this contretemps]

Accommodation officer is one job here I NEVER want to be promoted to.

Oh, and it's TV Turnoff Week again this week. You know it makes sense! (If only I could institute Phone Unplug Week too.)

Tags: work gripes TV Turnoff Week

14:36

. . .

Words: 20,045. Woo!

Tags: dissertation

13:58

. . .

I often think what a big market there would be for psychic librarians. There could be one in each library, ready to step in at the enquiry/reference desk whenever the telltale blank look creeps over the enquirer's face and they start gesturing 'helpfully' with their hands. Mind you, maybe ALL librarians learn to be be a bit psychic after long experience of these encounters. I just had a student tell me that he was looking for a film and couldn't find it - I thought he knew the name of it but couldn't see it on the shelf, and got up ready to help locate it. But no. He just stared at me hopefully and started mumbling 'it's something to do with the war I think... a love story..?' Now we have about 300 films in our collection and even I am not THAT good. Fortunately, he then remembered something else: 'I think part of it might be set around here?' This narrowed it down a bit obviously, but we do have a lot of local interest film. My psychic-librarian (psybrarian?) senses were tingling, however, and I immediately suggested The End of the Affair. Bingo.

Tags: information retrieval

11:08

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