Stephen King

     Back behind the wheel of P00 7 Bond afforded himself a satisfied smile as he realised that all the padding had been dispensed with in one fell swoop. He hated all the padding you get in books, and particularly the Bond Books, which contained at the very least their share. There were far worse examples though. Bond had once read a Stephen King novel in which the famed writer of horror stories had taken five pages to describe the father of a minor character only to kill him off on the very next page. He was quite determined then that whatever padding there would be in his Stockport Is Too Much assignment would be minimal, so had proceeded to dispense with it in one great wadge. That done he had driven the mile or so to Stockport town centre, parked up on the Merseyway car park, and was now outside the nearby Air Raid Shelters complex.
     It turned out to be much easier to discover what the air raid shelters were all about than it had been to discover any secret the Façade factory might hold for they did guided tours. Bond paid for his ticket and waited for the next tour to start in ten minutes time. As he waited he took in an audio visual presentation that ‘helped to provided first hand experience of what life was liked in 1940’s war-torn Britain’, and very good it was too.
     When the tour started Bond found the shelters were even more extensive than he had imagined. The largest of them, the Chestergate Hotel as it was affectionately known, because it lay under the Chestergate area of the town, could accommodate five thousand people, the guide had informed Bond’s party. He went on to tell them that it had been fully equipped with electric lighting, plumbed-in toilets, bunks, benches, a first aid station and a canteen, many of which still remained, a veritable underground small town in fact. And absolutely ideal for a power base, Bond thought.
     “Today, you can step back in time and experience the sights and sounds of Britain’s Home Front as you wander around a core area of authentically reconstructed tunnels.” said the guide, concluding the tour.
     As they made their way back down the main tunnel to the start point Bond fell into conversation with the guide, a sprightly seventy-year-old who may very well have taken refuge in the shelters as a boy when the Luftwaffe was doing its worst. “So how long have you been doing this?” Bond asked.
     The guide thought for a moment. “Must be ten years now.” Then he added, sadly. “Not for much longer though.”
     “Retiring?”