W is for wasted youth

Naming capital cities. Times tables. The past participle. Burning peanuts and then weighing them. Naming cloud formations. Holding a netball for 3 seconds only, whilst travelling no more than 1 1/2 steps. Working out how many square tiles to put around an oval pool. Swimming whilst wearing pjamas.

All of the above are 'skills' that teachers assured us we would be using every day of our lives. However, apart from basic literacy and numeracy, the one school days task that a librarian or archivist uses more than any other is putting things into alphabetical order.

How completely unexpected. Of all the tedious exercises that we were given to complete, the lists of words that were provided every day from primaries 4-7 to alphabetise seemed like the biggest waste of time. Burning stuff was part of our leisure activities anyway and one day we just might own an oval pool. If retired and left with absolutely nothing else to do, joining a netball team might be an option and pub quizzes could account for the rest; but shuffling words around endlessly was the dark horse.

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

Like Bowie, Will Young and Ozzy with Kelly we have been going through some changes today in the archive.

Desks are being replaced (good), heavy boxes are being moved back to almost the exact location we moved them from nine months ago (boo) and new shelf units have arrived (hurray! Nothing is more exciting in an archive than extra shelf space.)

We are all trying to forget the fact that the boxes will be moved back again in about six months time and the new shelves will be heaving with books and papers before we know it...