I have therefore decided to return to pointless griping.
Yesterday, in a fit of productivity, I looked through the Saturday Recruit, and last Saturday's too, for good measure. Employers are looking for, in descending order, one, scientific/engineering/technical types, for cars, pharmaceuticals, biotech stuff, paint, construction - anything to do with a codifiable and recognizable form of knowledge; two, human resource types; three, marketing types; and four, accounting types. I fall into none of these categories. I'm not sure, because I have not quite given up entirely, I want to fall into any of these categories. (I have instead acquired, slowly and haphazardly, a little snowdrift of unfiltered names and phrases and ideas, mostly from the eighteenth century, but fading pleasantly into antiquity.) This may take a little longer than anticipated.