Bear blog

Our library has a Short Loan collection made up of all the stuff that's in high demand. Stuff we like to keep close tabs on. So we keep it all behind the issue desk and if you want to take something from it, it has to go on your card. You can't just randomly peruse it in the library. And even then you only get it for four hours. If you bring it back late it's a £1 fine for every hour or part hour it's gone. We don't like to mess around.

This afternoon, a young lady came up to me and asked for five Short Loan items. After telling her that she could only take three at a time anyway, and her explaining that she didn't want to take them away she just wanted to leaf through them at the issue desk, I rather reluctantly went and got them off the shelves. Then I explained to her, very slowly and deliberately, that she was just to look at them at the issue desk and not to take them anywhere else. She nodded encouragingly at all this as if in acceptance. Then I told her that she should move up to another terminal so that I could serve the people behind her whilst she read. Which she did.

However, when I looked up from serving the next customer a couple of minutes later both young lady and five Short Loan items had vanished without a trace.

And an angry, scowling lap of the library, telling-off finger waggling in earnest, yielded neither.

The cheeky cow. She's in here somewhere because the Short Loans would have set off the alarm if she'd tried to get out. But God only knows where she's hiding. It's put me in a bad mood for the rest of the day.