THE AMBIDEXTROUS LIBRARIAN

Sometimes you read a book, and it really inspires you. I'm sure you've had the feeling.  It's like when you read a book on a new health fad and you're thinking - my GOD, all the answers to my health problems and weight issues and ageing fears will all be fixed by this wonderful new eating regime!  It's so obvious!!  I will start it immediately and I will be SO HEALTHY. And so you start down the track of religiously following all the ideas and themes laid out in the book.  Then a couple of weeks go by and some old habits start sneaking in, just here and there.  Then it's a month and there are whole days where you forget the book and its life-changing ideas (mainly because, well, maybe your life hasn't changed as much as you would have hoped).  A year later, the book and it's ideas are at the Op Shop. This trajectory of events happens with fiction books as well.  A story grabs you by the shirt and drags you through its emotional depths and giddy he...

It's Saturday.  I'm at work. I work Saturdays - Saturday is my permanent shift and I gotta say I am used to working them now, it also helps that I don't have any other family routines to conflict with the concept of the weekend.  I used to think that one day was pretty much like the other.  The sun rises, you do stuff, the sun sets.  Turns out though the cultural attitudes and expectations that are associated with certain days (Monday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday), still linger quite strongly, even if your schedule is no longer based upon the routines that give these days their flavour. So now my Saturday is like my....  Tuesday.  Kind of.  Friday is Monday.  Monday is Friday.  Does that make sense?  Probably not.  Either way, working in an institution that is open every day is a little weird (and I'm also talking Christmas Day, Boxing Day and New Years, even if it just for chute clearing).  The entire year just morphs into a ...