Heavy rain lashed against the derelict building causing cascades of water to fall from off the roof and onto the ground three stories below.

The wind kept whipping open one of the double wooden doors almost taking it from off its hinges and every so often it would swing round and hit the wall with such force that it was liable to break in two.

The following day came round all to quick. The sun was high in the sky and beating it's rays down hard onto Ben's head as he found himself about to enter this dreaded place again. As he entered he remembered just in time to step to his right in order to miss that big hole just at the entrance which he had paid a visit too just last night. Sharon had missed it and as he watched her face he could see the excitement in her eyes, they were sharp and bright, it reminded him of how a child looks when given the chance to take a day trip to the beech or a pleasure park somewhere!

"Ben love, come upstairs."

Next morning came and work began very early and it was also very noisy and extremely dirty. Skips were placed out onto the main road which caused a little chaos at rush hour, but still nothing that the average London motorist driving through Camden could not handle. It was the unsuspecting cyclist who was concentrating on not getting run over that failed to look ahead and see the bright yellow skip, he crashed into it and did a beautiful summersault that young budding gymnasts would have been proud of to have preformed. He ended up landing head first into a pile of dirt and rubble. That caused the biggest concern of the early morning. As the morning progressed on, the skips started to get filled up at an alarming rate and many times collections were made to take the full ones away and bring in fresh empty ones.

The very next morning Ben was woken by a feeling of being wet which made him yell out, "Whaaa!" Then as he opened his eyes he was caused to yell out "Whaaa!" Yet again as a cascade of water fell from the sky to drench him!

A voice shouted down to him, "Time to get up and go to work!" It was his wife yelling down to him from their bedroom window from where the two buckets full of water had come from.

Even though he had just come round and even though his head was not too cleaver, he could still tell that she was none too pleased with him and that he would remain in the dog house all day.

Ben once again found a nice little spot in which he felt he could turn a good little profit. Pulling out the mini blind first before openeing up the small steel shutter then walking round the back to open the back door, he now stepped in using the mini metal step at the rear of the van just below the door. He walked into the back and immediately fell over a rather large obstacle to land flat on his face by this thing before feeling the all too familiar feeling of loads upon loads of crisp packets and drink cans landing on his back, yes the impact of his fall had set that dodgy shelf off again, "Ouch! Bloomin shelves!" He shouted whilst wondering why they never toppled all their stuff while he was driving along going up and down over all those pot hole infested streets which frequented this side of London.

Sharon and Gordon walked in unison out of the back of the club to be faced with a square hole with about a dozen workmen bent over digging. The digging was fine, it was the builders! Nearly all of them were displaying a hefty lot of bum cleavage.

Gordon felt compelled for some reason to shout whilst clapping his hands together, "Oh I do love a good bum cleavage inspection!"

It didn't take long for them to arrive around Sharon's auntie's place. Once at the door Shaz pressed the buzzer, it was one of those intercom ones, the type that you speak in to when someone answers.

"This is Auntie Joan who is it?" A tinny voice asked through the comm.

"It's Sharon and Ben, can we come in?"

The place turned out to be a simple two up, two down. It had two bedrooms, a small kitchen, toilet and bathroom along with one box room of a lounge. Inside the lounge it had four arm chairs covered over with green covers with large brown flowers on, looked like old curtains from the nineteen seventies transformed for the ready for the new millennium. In one corner stood an old looking television that had clearly seen better days because every so often the picture would roll and the sound would fade in and out. In one of the chairs sat her uncle Martin, he hadn't said a word since they arrived, he was either asleep or was dead but after seeing him twitch Ben knew he was still in the living world. In another corner sat a large bird cage with one parrot watching the quests like a hawk just in case Ben or Shaz decided to swipe a brown stained pair of dentures which sat on a small coffee table which graced the middle of this room. There was a gas fire on even though it was the height of summer and this just added to the hot claustrophobic feeling both of them were already experiencing. Sharon's auntie possessed a little Yorkshire terrier which loved to come into the room and just bark at you all the time. This went on until uncle Martin shouted out in his sleep, "Shut it you tiny little rat!"

Clive and Bernard had between them stitched poor Gordon up well. Clive won about one hundred and fifty pounds from him and Bernard had won at least two weeks worth of rent at this Coffee shop stroke hotel. Every so often to keep the poor guy interested they allowed him to win a few small pots and for good measure they allowed him a slightly bigger pot before they stung him again. Little Gordon had got a little too excited after winning and was now off down stairs to use one of the toilets. He didn't want to use Miss Sharon's, he viewed that as an insult to his bosses privacy. Both Bernard and Clive didn't understand this small man's view, but heck as long as they are winning who cares! Anyway nature was calling and to no surprise! They had consumed a couple bottles of wine and whole twenty four pack of mini lager bottles. Clive had been a couple of times, he needed to take another trip and while he was at it he would check up on Gordon who had been gone for ten minutes and the big guy had been almost as long. What were they doing? Maybe they had popped down to the off license? Clive found himself staggering down the steps and onto the floor where he was going to live. The room he had didn't posses a toilet, in fact only four of the rooms did. The others had to visit the communal toilets at the end. Making his way into the well used large bathroom he shouted out, "Hey Gordon what?s keeping you man?"

Morning broke too soon. Sharon was up with the larks making breakfast for the new lodgers and of course herself. Entering her bedroom she took a long tall fizzing glass full of water and laid it on the little table by her husband's head as he lay motionless in the bed. He wouldn't stay motionless for long. Leaning over him she shook him violently whilst shouting in his ear, "Time to get up boozy boy," before moving off towards the en-suite bathroom to freshen up.

Both walked into the courts and up to the reception in full flowing conversation.

"So how did Clive take it?"

"Well, actually he decided he still needed help, so he collared Bernard and took him out."

"Oh yeah?" Sharon wasn't convinced that the big man would willingly give up a day of his holiday to work in a small van selling greasy chips.

Clive and Bernard were in the van, everything was going real fine until it started to pour down with rain with loud claps of thunder ringing out and echoing off the buildings close by. There Bernard stood looking out of the service hatch window watching the rain running from off the canopy. "Oh great, its raining so hard now that I can't even see Big Ben."

Clive sat on a deck chair reading a daily tabloid, "Big deal man! Its only a gigantic grand father clock!"

Bernard raised his eyebrows before protesting, "How can you say that? This clock is a part of our history."

Walking in to the Skull and Crossbones and making your way over to the bar you find the landlord Dave listening in to a conversation being conducted between a well spoken chap and a Jamaican man with a large black beard, all dressed in black and holding a thick book. The other is in a blue pin striped suit and Dave is in his pirates uniform as per usual trying to keep the image of the pub alive.

The blond man continues with this conversation, "Equality among the sexes? Yeah right! I'm an air steward, and on our last flight there was a punch up between three drunk men. Instead of the women sorting it out they said I had to! So muggings here did it and the only reason why the women wouldn't do it was because I am a man! Now that?s sexism for you!" he almost shouted while pointing a finger to the man in black.

Three or was it four weeks past and the Coffee Club became a complete state of mind, so said Gordon in a philosophical mood. There the three stood staring at the place which had already made a big dent in Sharon?s inheritance. Ben, Shaz and Gordon just looked at this big room with it?s gleaming marble pillars, floor and it?s décor. The stage had proper curtains, the spotlights were all functioning along with the aesthetic lighting, no burnouts, no fuses blowing in the night and no fire evacuations which had reaped havoc for a couple of weeks at awkward times. The bar stood proudly all decked out with many varieties of drink and polished glasses. Televisions hung from the ceiling showing the stage or anything you cared to run through the DVD if required. The state of the art sound equipment was installed and playing Sharon?s favourite artist Clannad, which Ben hated as he viewed a lot of their songs as something to commit suicide to, a point he was told to keep quiet about, as that was a sick frame of mind, or something.

It was eight thirty in the morning as big Bernard rolled out of bed landing with a crash onto the floor. He picked himself up with extreme ease and after taking a note of the time whilst rubbing his eyes, he set out across his new room towards his wardrobe. As he walked over you could only admire the sheer size of this person as all he was dressed in was a pair of boxer shorts. Now this wardrobe was a big double one and had two full size mirrors on the doors, obviously designed for the fashion conscious who wanted to look good all the time. Bernard made it and decided to look in the right mirror. Standing in front of it he admired the wonderful fine shape his body was in these days. All those muscles primed for action?hold on all we can see is his head, his body was obscured by a life size cardboard cut-out of none other than Arnold Swartznigger! This only served to give Bernard the illusion that he was for a few seconds in the morning a mister universe. It was he that had beat Arnie to that title all those years ago before, oh, as he slipped past that mirror onto the one that had no optical illusions; his fat self.

By the time Ben and Sharon got upstairs along with Gordon and Bernard waiting for the dynamic duo, the rooms outside had been filled with prospective candidates. Ben and Shaz took room seven while a sore stomached Bernard with dwarf-like friend Gordon had number fourteen.

In Ben and Sharon?s room sat a man who wore a silvery suit with a bright white shirt, dark glasses with dark wavy hair. He looked much like a young Billy Joel to Sharon.

"Sorry to have kept you," Shaz apologised and got a flash of his pearly white teeth,

The sun broke through the curtains with a fiery brilliance to signal to Ben that another day was starting and the weekend of peace had slipped away. Was it really just three days ago they had finished the interviews and phoned the successful candidates? It?s really been a weekend of running about getting this and that for this very day; our staff were arriving at nine thirty sharp." He said out loud receiving no response from his half-dead wife as she lay sleeping. It was only five thirty, he still had another hour and a half before having to get up.

The two large black doors opened up and a fresh red carpet un-rolled itself in spectacular fashion to stop right at the mayor?s feet as he stepped onto it. From inside Ben would be the first to greet the man and his family, followed by his nervous wife.

"Damn, I can?t shake the mayor?s hands like this, my hands are all sweaty."

Bernardo who was next in line muttered something in his own language and produced from under his white jacket a tea towel.

For the second night in a row Sharon had little sleep. It had taken three hours of constant crying in which she could have filled a small lake with her tears. For Ben it had been a mixed day of up?s and down?s much like a fiddler?s elbow. First the exposure incident was a low before Tiffany produced the high. Low again round Sharon?s so called in-laws with an image which will never be forgotten as long as he walked this earth. The high of being a dad was something he?d forgotten. Ben thought along those lines of all the responsibilities what went with this before another low hit his head, the low Sharon was on and had been all night. Chino?s takeover of his wife?s dream.

There Chang stood in Chino?s office just waiting for the man to arrive. He had been man handled all the way down to the bowels of this establishment. There had been a few subtle changes to the room. A hint of green with a few plants and a pink thing going on, why? He couldn?t possibly answer.

"Welcome my son."

"Father?" Chang questioned as he took in the colour of the room as the lights went up. There was even a few book cases and a carpet.

"I had that Gordon decorator man do the room. He said green helps one to relax and it does. I find life more easier to cope with when relaxed."