2) The Scheme for Full Employment, by Magnus Mills

I’ve been feeling a bit off-colour all day (and it’s a public holiday too) so had time to read this while writing article for and looking after Bridget as rest of family went to the zoo. It’s a short book, written very lightly and so I finished it in a couple of hours. A firm of lorry-drivers whose only task is basically to service their own lorries as part of a nationwide scheme for full employment is hit by industrial action. It’s supposed to be funny but to be honest I didn’t really get it; who exactly is being satirised? Academics? The NHS? The pre-Thatcher nationalised industries? The last of these seems the most likely but hey man, that was over two decades ago. Or was it really the Soviet Union? For that matter, does Moby-Dick represent the Republic of Ireland? (I did once read an academic article arguing precisely that.) All a bit pointless really.