An old school friend of mine has written a novel, due to be published in March. From the synopsis it appears to be random enough to hold my attention so I’ve pre-ordered a copy. By pre-ordering you are helping to support the publication, and as an interesting by-product of the pre-order process you force Ruth to sign the book before it’s delivered - imaginative comedy dedications only please 
. If you’d like to pre-order your copy too, visit: http://hirstbooks.com/ruth.htm and in the meantime, here’s a quick summary:
“Young, polite and intelligent Tom Bowler has barely ever ventured out of the small English town where he grew up. So when he applies for a job in a fast food restaurant at a “local” service station during his gap year he is rather surprised to discover that the vacancy is in fact based on Truxxe, a planetoid stationed between local galaxies Triangulum and Andromeda. He’s surprised further to find himself becoming friends with a purple alien and that he has strange feelings for his android supervisor, Miss Lola. Tom soon discovers that Truxxe has many hidden secrets – just what makes it so special and why is its terrain so rich and varied that it can be used for fuelling such a diverse variety of intergalactic spacecraft? What are the Glorbian space pirate brothers Schlomm and Hannond plotting? The one thing that Tom is certain of, however, is that all aliens like burgers.”
Sounds very much like the ramblings of a galactic hitchhiker a la Douggie Adams – classic. Gonna pre-order a copy based purely on your recommendation…. Don’t let me down….