Hawkesy and me

This is essentially for all my friends back home in Christchurch and Bournemouth(none of whom know I have a blog) but I'm hoping that all who read this sympathise and understand my misery.
My Dads hotel has been sold to property developers and will be flattened by the middle of 2005. Although much ridiculed, that place has been my home since the tender age of 14 and has served up both funny and sad moments, all of which will remain in my memory (though faded) until the day I leave this mortal coil.
As I said, I was 14 when my pa (my dad doesn't like me calling him Dad or pa for that matter, but has insisted I call him Daddy. Probably something to do with my grandparents) and my step mother (not an alien) purchased a small hotel in the suburbs of Bournemouth. This place, when we moved in, was trully laughable. It was so bad that it had one of those crap signs. You know, the ones that say "Free beer tomorrow". In addition , the bedrooms looked like they were stuck in a 70's time warp. Oranges and greens covered the walls and the beds rather like an episode of Starsky and Hutch where they meet up with Huggy bear. It was bad , but at least there wasn't a stag beetle nest in the garden whose inhabitants didn't terrorise my little sisters.
After moving in, my dad set about improving this sorry excuse for a hotel. He's no handyman and so it took him forever. However, over the years , he and my step mother transformed this hole of a hotel into a decent place to live and probably a reasonable place to holiday too.
Now, I don't want to go about it anymore coz for the majority of people (everyone except me) it's boring. What I've decided to write about (hopefully it will work in print although I suspect otherwise) are the "best of" moments. It's going to be like a mini series with cliff hangers and everything. So stay tuned for the ride of a lifetime.