Tales from the CDG Tardis

Just docking back with the mothership following a midweek jaunt down to Nottingham. Nice city: lots of green spaces, all the shops you could want, friendly taxi drivers and proper pubs.

Was joining in with East Midlands Division and EMBOC in their afternoon of AGMs and assorted entertainment. Great to see partnership working, enthusiatic professionals from different sectors in the area. Venue was Djanogly City Academy School, a big name for a high-ceilinged venue, rather like an aircraft hangar I thought! Alarmingly quiet without pupils but I can imagine how noisy and hectic it must be on a ‘working’ day. Our main venue was the drama studio, had to suppress instinct to start my Lady Macbeth or Much Ado routines…

Had encouraging thoughts from Joan Bray, EMBOC, who had had a difficult morning with flooded electrics and whatnot at Nottingham Central Lib, but still managed to show great passion for the profession and its future. Madeline Cox reported on a study visit to the British Library where she researched some Nottinghamshire astronomers. Turns out they all thought the sun was inhabited back then by a ‘differently organised race’ - I thought it was librarians who were ‘differently organised’! Alison Barlow shared her experience of IFLA In Durban, including some evocative photos and a moving video of one of the speakers recounting a saty in solitary confinement in which books (and especially Moby Dick) became a lifeline.

I joined this random cast with my own stories and snaps under the heading of ‘kissing with confidence’ - thinking about performance anxieties and how professional involvement can boost confidence and extend your skills. Not sure I was very coherent but hopefully the message came across that professionals should be proud of their achievements and that it’s easy and fun and worthwhile to get involved in the wider profession.

Not sure I’m very proud of the backlog on my work desk, though I’m trying to beat the mess and made some physics book vanish quite successfully this morning.

Tonight it’s packing for a few days in Spain visiting family - plus I have to plant some strawberry plants which chose exactly the wrtong day to be delivered!

It’s not a day for work or even for professional development; it’s a day for the LIFE bit of work-life balance. Why is it we feel guilty when we’re working and guity when we’re relaxing? Or is that just me? It’s been a great day so far. Blazing sunshine this morning (yes, really, in spite of the cold wind!) and I potted up two new patio roses and gave my Cordyline a haircut. Went to church and led part of the service. Joyous hymns but too many high notes! Cooked a roast dinner with Easter eggs to follow. Martyn has a Dalek Easter egg that goes ‘Exterminate’ . It’s a thing of wonder. Domestic dabbling this afternoon and some more holiday packing before the evening service. Saving a glass of wine to enjoy when watching TV adaptation of The colour of magic tonight. Martyn and I like to joke that rare unsigned copies of Pratchett books cost double the signed ones. He does get around, bless him.

Saturday - no work, no visitors, no job applications to write. In fact I get to have some free time! Go to the garden centre and buy compost and pots to pot up the patio roses my inlaws gave me. I am a real newbie to gardening - it’s the one thing I do where it really doesn’t matter if I totally screw it up, and that makes it therapeutic. I’m constantly amazed by stuff that manages to grow in spite of my mauling and drowning it.

Also hop on to good old LibraryThing, fabulous web 2.0 amateur cataloguing tool (I can hear you raising your hands in horror). Check out my complete library here. I add a new book to my personal special collection. This is a small but growing collection of first edition children’s books from the 1970s and 1980s. A little indulgence to remind me, in this age of e-everything, that a book is a Precious Thing. My new book is a copy of The golden key by Victorian writer George MacDonald, beautifully illustrated by Maurice Sendak. Sendak is so much more than just Where the wild things are - not that ‘wild things’ isn’t fantastic. I used to work with someone who is an expert on George MacDonald. Incredible how talented librarians are, and how generally interested in life and stuff.

Continue writing and mailing my reception invitations. It’s not really the upfront stuff that makes me nervous; it’s more the thought of keeping tabs on the many and varied activities of the group, scanning the political landscape and so on. Daunting. But it’s a team effort, right?

Warriors of the deep really IS a turkey. The Myrka is a hopeless lumbering thing that can’t seem to even break through polystyrene. The whole thing feels like a home video of kids in a school playground. Sigh. If CDG was a sci-fi monster, I hope it would be something infinitely more charming and effectual.