Book excerpt: It is 1957. The Suez Crisis has been and gone. Henry Pratt has completed his National Service and is putting his unsuccessful career as Thurmarsh's cub journalist behind him. Leaving Yorkshire, he's taking on a new role and a new challenge - working for the Cucumber Marketing Board in Leeds. Stumbling through the fifties, sixties, seventies and eighties, Henry Pratt accumulates jobs, marriages and children on the way as he embarks on a touching, painful and hilarious switchback ride through a divided Britain.