Truth Attempted: Indecisive Greg and the Hotel of Doom

After waking up and battering the ginger kids during a passionate session on the Wii, Maria and I set off for the bright lights of London.... after she puts on her hat, scarf, sunglasses, coat, gloves, wrap, shawl, jumper and waterproofs.

We leave the car in a lovely suburb of Croydon and then descend into the dark and festering pits of hell... or so we thought. For an hour later we find ourselves standing in a very posh part of London, surrounded by old and lavish homes with railed gardens and orchards. Women with poodles walk past us, sneering through their sunglasses, whilst businessmen in coats glance at us and dial two 9s on their mobile phones.

I am half-expecting Hugh Grant to throw boiling coffee over me then invite me back to his place for socially-controversial sodomy.

But all is well - we have simply gone the wrong way. We backtrack and find ourselves moving into the decaying underbelly of the Earl's Court area. The poodles become rats, the white men become Asian, the businessmen have two 9s tattooed to their heads, denoting their killcount.

At last we are stood in the Crown Hotel, seeking entrance to the hallowed crypts of leisure's antiquity. The generic receptionist stares at us with hollow eyes and hands over the key, jabbering about the legends of Breakfast.

I forge ahead, the carpets throwing up white powder around my every footstep. The floorboards creak, the wallpaper peels aggressively to left and right. There are booby-traps on every corner. I grip Maria's hand as she trembles beneath her padded layers. Wrenching her from the dying elevator we stumble through the twisting hallways, ethnic minorities jabbering from the alcoves like harbingers of doom.

Finally, room 214. I jam the key into the lock and utter the sacred verse of optimism.

"I'm sure it won't be that bad. I'm sure it won't be that bad."

Curses! We are undone! They have lured us into a trap - a chamber where the walls close in upon us!

No, I am mistaken. It's just a very small room. We set our cases down between the walls and gaze upon the face of decay.

"It'll do." mumbles Maria.

I open my laptop and start hacking into their network.