Commonplaces

ROUSED out of pre‐breakfast tea‐gulping torpor recently by hearing on Radio London the confident assertion, ‘Oh yes, there's a great shortage of librarians throughout the country…’ No Rip Van Winkle beard, wasn't April 1 and no echo of the Last Trump. It was all about a book called Work after work by Judy Kirby and REACH—Retired Executives Action Clearing House, which seeks to relieve the withdrawal symptoms of the retired by finding outlets for their skills in work for voluntary organisations. These withdrawal symptoms in librarians are easily recognised and include immediate and compulsive reading of everything in the Record, a tendency to beam for the first time at young people at conferences, and a not always suppressed urge to write rude letters to the professional press or to the LA. Editing the professional press is not recommended as nostrum for those old retirement blues.