Lunch Hour by Carl Jones

 I'm progressing well with Conversations with Tom. A long way to go, but 8.000 words already written in Word and more on scraps of paper and in my head.
You may know I work at Nice airport. Even though the number of flights has increased and the number of passengers probably doubled in the last month, my work place is still very quiet. I work in a tiny last minute boutique in the non-schengen lounge. Most passengers (or PAX as we call them in the trade) have done their shopping before they come through passport control and into the lounge. So between flights and pax, I write ideas down and get a lot of thinking done. Once at home I just have to sit down and key it all in. Like the review below that was the result of lull between British Airways flights.

Lunch Hour by Carl Jones
Lunch Hour has like any great sitcom a great cast of characters. There is Christian who is the intellectual big fish in a small pond of inane lunch time banter. He secretly enjoys this even though he knows he bores the pants of his colleagues with his lectures on, well pretty much anything. Barry, his bigoted confrontational counterpart can be found in any work place. (I certainly had a few run ins with the Barry’s of this world. Then there is John who’s input mostly stuns the room into an incredulous silence. He is the bloke you dread being drawn into a conversation with. Saul is the youngest of the odd group, that is thrown together each day twice during their lunch breaks at the night shift of a DIY store. Saul manages to amuse his co-workers quite unintentionally with his naive statements. These are just a few of the skilfully created cast members.
The book is not what I initially expected but all the better for it. Apart from a witty comedy about colleagues chewing the fat during their lunch time break, it is also a sharp and very well informed critique of the 20th century and an even better snapshot of Britain in 2013/14.
The book is written from Christian’s perspective and it’s his opinions and observations that provide many of the laugh out loud moments. We get a hint of his troubled home life when he goes from the guy who usually sits quietly in the corner and on the fence, to taking part in the conversation and spouting opinions. Even though we got hints that all was not well, the ending of this book will guaranty that this is one read I will remember.
So who should read this book? I think Americans and UKIP voters will be befuddled and annoyed by Mr Jones, possibly both. I would recommend this to anyone with a good understanding of British contemporary culture and a love of satire. Go read it now before we forget who Cheryl Cole (or Tweedy?) is.