View From the West

OK, hands up – who is heartily sick of the election? Yes, thought so. By the time you read this, Thursday 6th May will probably have come and gone. Whether the outcome will be decisive in anyone’s favour is hard to tell – it’s the classic “too close to call” scenario – but whoever wins, there’s not much doubt that a general belt-tightening will be in order. How much, of course, is anyone’s guess. I have got one of those fancy gadgets that makes holes in belts – do you think I could hire it out?

Where will public and school libraries be in a year’s time? If you are to believe the reports in the papers, we’ll all be tied to one or maybe two suppliers – who will be able to give us whatever levels of customer service they feel like, knowing that we can’t take our business elsewhere. “Elsewhere” is of course, where all our money will end up – or at least south of the border – since the general consensus is that there aren’t any Scottish based suppliers who could handle such a contract. Yes, yes, CILIPS / SLIC have made some conciliatory noises about this only being a discussion document – but I’m not too sure. When I first heard about it, I thought it was a joke – but, as we all know, the problem with political jokes is that they sometimes get elected…

Not much humour around here these days – S4 pupils are muttering in corners about Standard Grades, and I’m trying to put some pressure on the S5/S6 gang by having a huge countdown notice in the Library – 8 days to highers, and counting down fast! I had a long discussion with our depute Head Boy about revision – he claimed that he had got his timetable all wrong, and had slipped from “Too early to learn this, I’ll only forget it” to “To late to cram all this in now” without a suitable period in between, when revision would actually have been of some use. It could have been me talking, all those years ago!

I did have to smile on Saturday morning, though. Driving past my local public library at 0855 I saw an amazing sight – people queuing to get in. “That’s a turn up for the books”, I thought to myself…

Yours literally
Lomax Allwood