Blowing the budget!

Well despite the doom and gloom about budget cuts, I had a rare treat yesterday when I got to spend the last of the book fund for this year. We tootled off to our favourite warehouse and grabbed our trolleys, and filled them with shiny new paperbacks ready for our borrowers - it is always a double edged pleasure for a librarian - on the one hand lovely new books, and those issue figures climbing higher as we actually have something people want to read. On the other hand, imagining those books in six months time, slightly grubby and curled, with unnamed stains on page 304, and the corners occasionally turned down. A plea from librarians everywhere - use a bookmark!
I've not been on a buy for a while, and it is interesting to see the changing fashions - lots of manga, lots of vampires, not so many classics, no Wodehouse at all. I was armed with a list of borrower requests which we had not fulfilled and gaps to plug - everything from John Sandford to the latest Jasper Fforde, and some oddities too, 1970's crime novels and Barbara Cartland. I couldn't find the latter. Thankfully.
Still, I shall look forward to my next few deliveries, and seeing my newly bought books fly off the shelves as they always do, and this year I will wonder whether the sight is ever to be repeated, and if my purse is to be sewn shut forever.