Pastoral idyll Aberdeen style

I am sitting in my office looking out at what can only be described as a very dreich Aberdeen morning; the fog which seems to have enveloped the north-east for the last three weeks is as thick as ever and it is drizzling persistently. Added to this, I have diggers, drills and lorries making a noise below my window as building contractors do work on our car park. Altogether, therefore, it is a pastoral idyll that I am looking out at. Not.

It has been a while since I last posted mostly because I've been caught up in the day-job and it has been a hectic two weeks and I see time slipping through my hands ahead of my holidays at the end of next week. Normally, I'd be saying roll-on the holidays but this year I'm wondering how I can fit in a couple of extra days to get various things done ahead of my leave.

I have, amidst this frenetic fortnight, managed to achieve something immeasurably satisfying, namely a major clear-out of the office with stacks of stuff put into recylcing and a good tidy-up. My office now looks respectable again (but I fear it won't last once I come back from holidays). I am rather delighted to have fallen heir to a complete run of the Library Association yearbooks which are now very neatly arranged in my office (I know, I am showing how sad I am).

One other thing that I did during this fortnight was have lunch with two people that many readers of this blog will recall with great affection, Douglas Anderson and Mike Head. Doug and Mike were, for quarter of century and more, the backbone of the library school at RGIT and many of you were doubtless taught by them and, of course, Mike was President of the Scottish Library Association in 1984. What we all describe as "the old gang" Mike, Doug, Dorothy Williams, Robert Newton, Rita Marcella, Liz Davidson (our school administrator in the 1990s) meet up a couple of times a year to reminisce over lunch about Dewey Decimal, Ranganathan, AACR2 and other such cerebral matters. I should add that is not "old" as in age.

In about an hour, I am heading off down to Bridge of Allan for the official reopening of the library there and I am very much looking forward to it. Avid readers will recall that I was down there in April for the Central Branch "Meet the President" which I much enjoyed and I am looking forward again to seeing all my friends in Stirling Libraries. And, then, after that I have an evening meeting in Stirling itself at which the Immediate Past President His Excellency Mr Alan Reid will be present. I know Alan is having a tour of the new library in Dunbar and the John Gray Centre in Haddington today and, as you know, I was so impressed by these the other week. I look forward to hearing Alan's take on them this evening.

Tomorrow is also a busy day. Not only do we have a visitor to the Department from Austria but then, at lunchtime, it is the celebration of 120 years of Aberdeen Central Library and I am looking forward to this very much and I have my speech all prepared. I do fear, however, that as in Dundee, the Lord Provost's chain will out-do my one. I really think CILIPS should get something more like the Order of the Garter ;o) for the President. Funny how this job turns every president into a connoisseur of regalia.

I will be posting up details of both the Bridge of Allan visit and the Aberdeen Central Library event towards the end of the week.