Visit today from a couple of our 'colloborative partners' at a college a couple of hours drive away. H and I gave them a tour and showed them the electronic side of things which they can access (and show their students how to access).

Very sociable.

Followed immediately by a birthday lunch for a couple of colleagues and fortunately just enough alcohol to get me through some humiliation in the afternoon.

I managed to not only answer a student enquiry completely incorrectly, but was then told by R - one of our loans team - the correct answer. That would have been fine only I didn't know about a peculiar 'quirk' of the database involved and told R what I thought was the 'correct' answer.

Fortunately, I didn't actually give up at that point, discovered my mistake and was graciously received when I went to grovel in apology. But maybe we could just switch jobs and I could be spared being stressed about all the email that's piling up while I show people round, take 90 minute lunches and also fit in another visitor who'd dropped in for something else entirely but by chance I could introduce to our map librarian who shares a common interest.

At least today I had nothing happening in the evening so I could stay late and work in the relative peace of just the rain tapping on the window and dripping in the newly acquired bucket.

Yes, I'm now the proud owner of one of the leaks that the old part of the building is renowned for. I don't know why it's suddenly manifesting itself now, but I shall make sure the University Librarian gets some of the water damaged paperwork just to make the point.