The weathermen keep threatening downpours, they keep on showing amber triangles on the television news, but every day just lately (apart from one exception) starts out fine and sunny. Like today for instance, though that has meant I had to pull the blinds down at the library so that I can actually see what's on the computor monitor.

Pull the blinds down? Lucky for me Dragon Lady wasn't on duty, especially since I'm sat ten feet in front of the helpdesk. That did however provide me with a grandstand view of one elderly woman who needed help. Apparently she's on some university course or other, and required detailed information about some specific flower or other.

I do sympathise to some extent. In general the staff of my local library do a great job helping you find information, and they've done me favours more than once, including a search for a mislaid book that bordered on a quest of heroic proportions.

The poor bemused librarian manning the desk tried her best. She really did. But the customer was insistent and kept repeating her demand for information. It's very important, she told the librarian again and again.

Meanwhile the queue of library goers seeking a little help of their own began to grow. Most needed some guidance on how to use the bookin g system. Some needed to understand why they only had two minutes available. Some wanted to chat to the librarian if I were honest, especially the older customers for whom library access is a whole world of social contact (including me, I have to say - Ohmygawd - I'm getting old), but no, this lady needed to know the correct rationalisation of genus and sub-species for her particular flower, and no-one, not even the queue of frustrated geriatric socialites, was going to stop her.

The Season For Frights and Fireworks

This week is Ghostfest Swindon 2010. Not sure why exactly, probably something to do with Halloween (just a guess), but the library are staging events related to Swindons rich history of hauntings. There see? I told you the library was a social experience.

A part of me wonders if all this ghostly stuff is exaggerated. There's an odd sort of local pride in English communities to educate the rest of the unhaunted world that their particular town has more wayward spirits than anyone else. Swindon is no different.

We're also approaching the time when we celebrate Guy Fawkes failure to blow up the Houses of Parliament. Seems a bit strange in this day and age that we do that for what was a terrorist strike in Tudor times. By a Spanish sympathiser no less. Doomed to failure then. Too busy with his siesta to assassinate the English government.

I have to say there's a few politicians who deserve a keg of gunpowder up their backsides today, some of whom are lighting the fuse underneath my benefit payments. For most of us, it's just a chance to stand in the cold evening air and make lots of noise setting off fireworks without being arrested.