Paul looked around the carriage and wondered how many of the other people on the train were unemployed. It was not as though he was actually unemployable, he was in fact only technically unemployed, so he was one of the ‘stealth unemployed’ who don’t show up in the figures, who don’t draw benefit, who are not impoverished by their status.

It was the Monday after Glastonbury; many of the people on this particular train were in fact on their way home from Pilton, and so with the cost of tickets and living at the Festival for three or four days being so high most of them had to be employed in some sense. Either that or were indescribably wealthy and so formed the third kind of unemployed; do not need to work.

The interview that he had just attended was still playing on his mind – that was why he was toying with himself in this way, calling himself unemployed. It had not gone as well as he wanted it to and he was needling himself, both out of disappointment and his need to remain focused on other opportunities.