"So, what do you do?"

For those who have set out on a year-long lunch break (or indeed a lunch-break of any longer than about two days) this question is a minefield, cunningly disguised behind a plate of something rather nice, being proffered in your direction by someone who, and this is the master-stroke, is otherwise perfectly friendly and pleasant. In a previous recession I happened to be at a party in which nearly everyone I asked, replied in the past tense: "I was a (fill in incomprehensible job title in the finance industry here)". After three or four of these it became evident that it was much more fun to ask people if they were into Heavy Metal.

But supposing that, rather than being at a party, you find yourself catapulted into fame in the local paper, by some random misfortune like a gas explosion, or by coming first in the local fun-run or winning the lottery. How is the reporter going to describe you?

If you've just finished studies, this is dead easy: An (insert interesting topic here) graduate. Perhaps this is why gap-years are usually done at this time in life. At the other end of the scale, if you know you've finished with the wonderful world of work for good you are of course a retired (insert fascinating career choice here). However to pull off this stunt you need to look reassuringly old and wise: this is not a popular tactic with about 51% of the population. But what if you have just lost your job? Or supposing you left it because it was unbearable, unethical, or you just couldn’t face another day working for an enterprise whose management, in their wisdom, had seen fit to re-brand it “WIMP” because it made it sound more Client-Focussed? Will our newspaper reporter be happy with the answer: "I'm a Heavy Metal fan", or indeed with information about any other activity, no matter how fascinating or unusual? Well, no. The guy wants to know your profession, because the means by which you acquire money, for some reason, is supposed to reveal something deep and meaningful about the real you.

Of course in most cases this is a pile of tosh. The vast majority of jobs (really, apart from Doctors and Lawyers, who has a profession these days?) are far too boring to reveal anything at all about the type of people who do them. What's more, recent research has revealed that three quarters of working people in the UK are in occupations which are completely incompatible with their type of character.

This means our reporter might as well describe you using your star sign. This may or may not tell their readers more about you than the epithet "unemployed". But sadly, "unemployed" it will be.

Unless, of course, you have a Plan.

First, the party line (or the paper epithet) is "I gave up my boring/stressful/unethical/too-far-away job to go and do Y"

Central to the plan is a "Y".

And that is what The Year-Long Lunch Break is all about.