A new government has been elected and, as usual, savings must be made in the public service. Some individuals in the Department of Multifarious, Extraneous and Artistic Affairs will go to any lengths to be made redundant and to leave with lucre, but Alan Mewling is not one of them; he is unashamedly desperate to avoid bureaucratic irrelevance. At the very time, though, when he needs to demonstrate his indispensability to senior management, his domestic life descends into chaos, his work...
