Before I retired in 2014, I was a school librarian for many years, with seven years “off” bringing up our two lads. My old Librain blog was all about the wonderful profession of school librarianship, but ill-health, both physical and mental, wreaked havoc with my ability to even think about my beloved career, never mind be the feisty, battling and probably annoying Librain who campaigned for better school library provision. These days, I can just about manage to enter a public library (even that was almost impossible when I first left work), and I am sometimes able to read professional articles posted by my friends and former colleagues. But the fight has gone out of me, or perhaps it has gone dormant for a while.

Putting the first book on the shelf – new Dixie Grammar School Library 2009

When I relaunched as The Librain…… retired, I intended this blog to avoid the controversial in the main and concentrate on the more trivial aspects of my current lifestyle – fashion and accessories – with a bit of a diary thrown in. I cannot avoid, however, thinking about what I considered to be my vocation. Well, it was actually my Mum who called it that, many years ago!

So, for now, I will put back a couple of pages on this blog, showing my career, and may occasionally manage to post something pertinent. But that will not happen often, unless my mental health improves or a Labour Government is elected!

Anyway, as I will always be a Librarian at heart, and one of our roles is information management, I decided to spend part of this afternoon and evening overhauling this blog and, hopefully, making it easier to navigate.

The menus at the top are a bit different:

1) About me leads to an introduction to me and this blog, then listed underneath are:

Living with ASD is a story I wrote many years ago to help people understand more about autism. Elder Son, who is in his twenties, has autism, as I have mentioned several times, and he is happy for me to upload this story.

Tributes to my Dad and my Mum are pretty self-explanatory. These are poems that I read out at their funerals in 2003 and 2012, respectively.

2) Reading gathers all of the blog posts where I have mentioned books and reading together in one list – it will end up being a long one!

3) School libraries leads to an introduction, which is basically a repeat of the first few paragraphs of this post, then to:

Advice for new school librarians – some ideas and tips gathered over the years which may still be useful for those starting out.

My career, which gives an overview of my career from 1981 until retirement in 2014.

SLA School Librarian of the Year 2005 – I was the inaugural winner of this award and must admit that I am still pretty chuffed about it all these years later!

4) Scarf of the moment gathers all of the posts on this topic under one menu heading so that they are easy to find.

5) Wardrobe planning gathers all of the posts on this topic under one menu heading so that they are easy to find.

I have also played around a bit with the widgets in the right-hand sidebar and hope that this also helps with navigation. Please let me know if any links or navigation elements don’t work and I will try to sort things out.

Hoping all readers have a happy weekend!

💜❤️💚💙