Imelda wasn’t a happy bunny. It didn’t take much reading between the lines on her email of instructions for my fortnight covering her annual leave. The last two years she has entrusted her beloved mobile library unit to Alex as driver and me as librarian, but with Alex away in London, she had compromised on her dream team and wasn’t delighted with the idea.

Imelda needed to take a hard look in the mirror. She counts herself as Alex’s mentor and has fully supported his dream of upgrading from Inter Library Loan Guy to an archivist or document curator at a different, perhaps national, institution. She really only had herself to blame for his absence on his training course. Thankfully she resisted the urge in the email to advise me on my relationship with Alex. She encouraged him to vanish t...

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