I decided...

...that I was going to have a good day today.

So I went to Wetherspoons for a breakfast and one of their refillable coffees.
I sat down and began eating and sipping my coffee. But then everyone suddenly began running out. Then a member of staff escorted me out. I couldn't hear it with being deaf but the fire alarm was going off.
So my breakfast got left and coffee undrunk and no refillables of coffee...I waited a few moments but we were all locked outside of Wetherspoons so I left.

I went to the library because at the book club the librarian who came just to our first meeting explained that we could could borrow e-books online and magazines and loads more stuff and use our tablets and phones to read them on. Libraries are exciting places now she said...
But, she did admit to being a real book person herself and didn't read online. Anyway she got us all fired up to try the libraries again.

So I decided to go today, this morning and see what delights the library has to offer me....

Two librarians were in there on duty and they both looked older than me and I am mid 60's. I have never seen any young ones there yet. The first lady I asked looked blankly at me when I mentioned borrowing e-books on my device...

She has no idea what I am talking about so I explain about the bookclub which was attended by a librarian. And that this librarian had said we could get all these exciting things from the library. Still she looks at me blankly... then says she will ask the other lady.

The other lady comes over and I explain again...and that I would like to use their Wi-FI and borrow e-books and online magazines...she looks at me blankly too and says she has no idea how to do any of this. (Last November I went in to ask to use their Wi-Fi and they were clueless then and couldn't connect me up, so with the book club lady librarian, a week ago, saying we could do all this stuff now I thought I would at least have some success this morning.)

This saga went on for over two and a half hours. She rang other branches and printed off some sheets for me at their suggestion saying I am sure you can work it out from this. She said she didn't have a clue. But still no way of actually getting into the Wi-Fi. So I had to ask for help again and she admitted she couldn't help as she didn't have a clue. She had never been asked or told how to do this stuff.

So more ringing around branches by her and she printed me another couple of pages. I was ready to walk out. But I thought it shouldn't take too much longer. Eventually I got in on their Wi-Fi system with the second lot of sheets of paper.

My problems were only just beginning at this point...I shall spare you the details of the next hour and a half. Their site was atrocious to navigate. And when I did finally figure out how to get some books it wanted my Adobe ID before it could proceed any further. Luckily I had it with me. But it insisted my Adobe ID was not valid. But it was because I had checked that out yesterday on all three devices I have just in case I needed it today.

So finally I created another Adobe ID with another email addy and it was accepted. But obviously it wanted you to download an app to put the books on. So did this. But although it started the downloads, they failed. It wouldn't download any books. Tried three different apps of their suggestion on the site, but none worked.

I walked out at this point. Blinking useless. I am not wasting my time on this. No staff know what they are doing there. Give them the old fashioned library tickets and filing systems and they are in their element, but none have actively embraced the computer age. They are too old and I am not being rude.

But if I can do computer stuff at my age and I only embraced computer stuff a few years ago. No one has trained me. And I know they have had computer training, because I spoke to a librarian a couple of years ago and she said they didn't have a clue what they were teaching her, and had said she didn't want to know.

So I walked out as I said and went to the fish and chip shop because I was starving at this point having had no breakfast due to blooming fire alarms or the chef burning toast or whatever it was....

There were a couple of nice pieces of fish that had just been cooked so I asked for one of them, the girl wrote my order down and put it on the counter as they do here (and all orders are served in their respective order) but she turned round to do something and in that moment three customers came in and asked another person serving for the fish so they got vinnegared before I could say I was first. (This server didn't even write their order down.) Then the girl who was serving me turned round and looked surprised and said something sharply in Chinese to the other server, and then turned to me and said I would have to wait 15 minutes now. I told her not likely and told her to forget it as I was walking out...

I'd had enough. I came home and went in my potting shed but nothing restored my peace of mind. I felt had wasted the morning and the early part of afternoon.

What is the point in libraries having facilities if no one understands them to be able to explain or help the customer to be able to use them. I did ask if another library would have someone who knew but she said my only chance was someone in the library in the main town might have someone who knew but she wasn't sure. I am not doing a 14 mile round trip on that off chance.

So I will be going back to downloading books off the Gutenberg Project and other sites. And getting my books from charity shops and the Oxfam books shops and then other places I wander around. However this means that the author of the books won't be getting their royalties by me not using the library e-book system because I cannot access their system and download because no one there has the expertise to show me how to do so.


Okay rant over...almost...I should have done this rant and grumbling when I came in a few hours ago but I thought it was a weakness having this rant and was just going to meditate myself calm. I was just getting more frustrated about wasting time today. I feel better now after this wee grumble....