The Geordie blokes, zombies with voices so slurred and/or accented that you think for a moment they might be German, and in any case still pissed from last night, are cast asunder in the lobby in a state of mesmerised pseudo-alertness, eyes wide and staring the room down, looking the bastard of florescent nothingness directly in the face, as if to pick a fight with architecture or air. From their slumped vantage point beneath the flat screen suspended tv - from which at high volume pumps the aural Guantanamo of Formula One Racing - they keep track on the room, the sound clattering around them and ricocheting from the glass and white tiles of this 'reception area', check-in 3pm, early check-in from mid-day at a £10 surplus/extra charge.

The whole hotel is fucked up anyway. Not for the location (stupid), not for the design (awful) and not even for the inedible breakfast but because of the fact that late last night someone hexed the place to a border zone psychic ruin, a site of coming urban doom. Take a look for yourself. Out there past reception a heavy curse has been laid in the elevator, the chewed and blunt bones of Kentucky Fried chicken (or lesser known, less hygenic competitors) arranged one-in-each-corner of the lifts' gray carpet, the bones still lain there this breakfast-time, cold, darkening and probably bacterial, one at each compass point on the dirt toughened floor, the dead bones working together to spin a web of dark influence not just on those who use this elevator - the hangovered wedding guests, the business travelers rushing to bleary checkout, lovers on the run - but also spreading their curse and power outwards, broadcasting deep unease to the building and the neighborhood entire as the elevator ascends. Going up. Yes, and going down, right down, going all the way down.