On librarians

On librarians

We've all done it. We've all had a clear-out, moved house or something and found an overdue library book. From 1986.

In a recent spring clean, I found an A-Level Chemistry text book I borrowed from Bracknell College library in 1983, and alcohol being what it is, I somehow neglected to return.

I blame them entirely – they never asked for it back, and I was so busy skiving off lectures and getting a Grade E in my exams, that the bloody thing got buried and forgotten about. Buried and forgotten through 25 years and three house moves.

If I was diligent enough, I could have ripped off the entire college library, and they would have been none the wiser. The curse of student slacking, I am afraid.

This sort of thing, I suppose, is one of the occupational hazards in the high-risk world of librarianship, right up there with having to wake up the tramps at chucking-out time.

But no. Libarianianing is no longer the art it once was, and these poor, put-upon people need our help.

Ever since they were classified as Information Dissemination Officers under the Local Government Act of 2003, their professional lives has been an endless drudge of form-filling, risk assessments, Tramp Handling Courses and a page-by-page audit of their entire book stock to weed out pornographic, seditious, harmful and terrorist related literature to protect vulnerable customers from having to think.

Also, they've become pretty adept at spotting tiny mirrors superglued to your shoes to …err… enable you to read the book titles on the bottom shelf.

So, I've decided to give something back to the profession.

Paint Ball.

They love it.

Face it: There's loads of places to hide in your local public library, especially if it's one of those Victorian buildings filled with balconies and little nooks and crannies, perfect for leaping out and shooting your …err… spoodge all over a sweaty middle-aged woman who has spent her life ignoring the design-for-life that is the entire canon of Jackie Collins.

Better still, the Not-To-Be-Removed books in the Reference Section are just the right size and weight to build a little castle in the middle of the floor, enabling the occupant to cover all angles as the battle rages around them.

For, and let's be perfectly frank here, there's nothing Miss Peabody, who has sat meekly behind the counter for 27 years wants more than to rampage through the Dewey Decimal System screaming "DIEDIEDIEYOUFUCKER Shhhhhhhhhhh!" whilst pumping red-hot paint blobs at the inert and partially-clothed body of a colleague who once filed Charles Darwin under 'Fiction'.

Hell on Earth, I think you'll agree. But pure naked heaven for these poor, tortured souls.

And then, when it's all over: the baby oil, and the eventual release of the home-produced DVD classic "Librarians Gone Wild"

Oh. Have I been typing out loud again?