2 treasures for the price of 1!
While working for the military a few years ago in Berlin, I was given the task of cleaning out some of the barracks clubhouses prior to the military pull out and handover to the Germans.

One such Club had a cellar that had been used in the 70s, then closed up due to safety reasons. I was given a broom, sacks and a mop and asked to clean it out.

Stepping into there was literally like going back in time - grafitti on the walls "T Rex forever", "David Bowie I love you", etc and psychedelic paint on the walls.. fantastic.

In this cellar was a door that was locked - I asked the manager for the key and he said it was "lost", giving me a wry smile. Reason he "lost" the key is that we had to hand back everything in a clean state, and this room was right underneath the kitchens, where they had previously discovered that the fryers had been leaking for the past 10 - 15 years. After much begging, he said he would try and find the key, which he did.

We unlocked the door and opened it, to be met with the gut churning sight of a blackened filthy room with sagging greasy ceiling, full of scary ancient defunct kitchen equipment. As the room's centrepiece stood a 4 foot high 10 foot across dark brown lard stalagmite full of millions of dead flies, several dead rodents and a bucketfull of assorted dead beetles and spiders.

We closed the door and threw the key into the forest.

apologies for hairyness of arse.
( Dixipoos Bye Bye Blackbird, Sun 3 Jul 2005, 13:33, Reply)