I'm reading
Do Not Pass Go by Tim Moore. It's a London travel guide, approaching the city's geography and history through the streets, stations, and districts found on a Monopoly board. Moore is hilarious; his style being very similar to Bill Bryson. The most recent chapter concerned Monopoly's "Free Parking" space, approached from the perspective of how expensive car parking is in London. Most of the chapter concerns Moore's hilarious adventure test-driving an electric vehicle. Not for the environmental benefit, but to test Westminster council's policy of free street parking for electric vehicles. The free parking policy holds true, but comes at the cost of driving a vehicle whose horn sounds like "someone down the road receiving a text message".
But surely the funniest revelation in the chapter is a quote from Margaret Thatcher. London's bus services were deregulated in 1986. More concerned with freeing up road space for gas-guzzling Bentleys than reducing road traffic, and demonstrating a remarkable lack of insight into the lives of everyday people, the Prime Minister declared in a House of Commons debate, "A man who, beyond the age of 26, finds himself on a bus can count himself as a failure." Now that is funny.
