Reblogged from Geoffrey David West:

“I’m a murderer, see?”

“Wasn’t it manslaughter?”

“Well. . .”

Gigantic Tony Clifford certainly looked like a murderer, with his huge muscular torso, shaven head and massive frame. The old-fashioned tattoo on his arm of a large anchor seemed somehow in keeping with our gloomy Victorian surroundings.

Murderer or not, I found myself liking Tony more and more. The phrase ‘gentle giant’ seemed to have been tailor-made for him.

We were walking along the long dark echoing corridors of what had once been Brierley town’s General Hospital, built in 1839. There was sludge-green linoleum on the floors, cracked yellowing paintwork on the walls and the smells and aura of centuries of human suffering seemed to be etched into the fabric of the awful place. Tony’s employer, AAA Demolition, had the contract to raze the building to the ground, and the derelict place had been an eyesore for five years now. As we walked I saw broken pipes sticking out of the ceiling, and nests of electrical wiring sprouting from plug sockets and green mildew climbing the walls. We turned left into the next section of seemingly endless corridors, and above an entrance it said ‘Halifax Ward’. Beyond the filthy pane of glass in the doors, the spider balanced in its web seemed to be laughing at us.

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