Ello! This chapter is different, I like to refer to it as “Ben and Paul do Butlins” I absolutely love the idea, however I will confess that I didn’t spend as long writing it as I could have done and therefore it’s probably not quite as fantastic as it could have been! Sorry guys.  I still love it … but only cos the original idea is in my mind and its rather different to this.  Hope you still manage to get the gist of it!

 

Chapter 33

 

“SHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!” Ben whispered as Paul stepped right into the corner of the sofa and nearly fell over.

 

“Its dark,” he defended himself, quietly stepping right away from the sofa and towards the door, “don’t see why we have to be so quiet anyway, shouldn’t people be up, it is 9.00 in the morning.”

 

“I know, but I don’t want to face the wrath of a grumpy Mark,” Ben reasoned, eyeing the sleeping figure on the sofa cautiously.

 

“Why on earth is he on the sofa anyway?”

 

Ben shrugged in reply as they reached the door and quietly clicked it open to step out into the cool fresh air.

 

“Do you ever get the feeling that we’re not told things?” Paul muttered to his friend as they walked down the path towards the Sky Pavilion.

 

“What you mean?”

 

“Like what happened back there,”

 

“What happened back there?”

 

Paul looked up at his friend, squinting into the sunlight that had directly hit his eyes, “I mean, like Mark being asleep on the sofa.”

 

Ben shrugged his shoulders in confusion, still not entirely understanding what his friend was trying to get at.

 

“Well I bet everyone else knows why Mark is on the sofa.” Paul retorted huffily.

 

Not understanding the fuss, Ben ignored his friend, instead choosing to slip his sunglasses onto his head and have a quick look round the complex.

 

“What shall we do first?” Paul asked, immediately snapping out of his mood as he noticed all the things spread out in front of them.

 

“I think we should go in one of those photo booths,” Ben decided.

 

“Oooooh we can have our photos taken with the Baywatch girls.”

 

“We can?” Ben asked in confusion, he had to admit he’d never seen any Baywatch girls at Butlins, let alone ones that were willing to go into a photo booth with two strange men.

 

“Oh mi god,” Paul muttered, “you are being about as slow as Chris.”

 

Grabbing his arm Paul pulled him towards the photo booth, pushing some money into the slot before Ben had a chance to see what the machine was all about.

 

Two minutes later Ben and Paul were the proud owners of a strip of photos, a strip of photos of them with a1.

 

Ben laughed as soon as he saw it, their heads had been pasted onto an image of the band and for some reason the sight of two Pauls and two Bens amused him highly.

 

“OK what can we do next?” Paul asked.

 

“Dance machine?” Ben offered, knowing that this was one of Paul’s very favourite arcade activities.

 

“Yessssssss!” Paul replied like a child, rushing ahead of Ben to get on the machine first.

 

“Do we have to play against each other?”

 

“Yep,” Paul said, “and the looser has to be a wheelbarrow.”

 

“You what?” Ben asked, as he climbed onto the left hand side of the machine and began scrolling through the song menu.

 

“Whoever wins gets to push the other one around Butlins like a wheelbarrow, you know like you used to do at school.”

 

Ben wasn’t sure what school Paul had gone to, but he was pretty certain that at his school, he had never used anyone as a wheelbarrow.  Deciding to worry about it later he took his jumper off and braced himself for the challenge ahead.

 

They had selected a European dance track, not exactly the easiest thing to dance too seeing as the computer had them jumping in several different directions at once.  For some reason Ben always found that when he jumped to the side he nearly always fell off the machine, or knocked Paul off his markers, something that Paul seemed to think he was doing on purpose.

 

After an exhausting three minutes of hurling themselves around Paul was announced as the obvious winner.

 

“Right, we are going to go and play mini golf now – and I shall use you as a wheelbarrow to get there.”

 

Ben gave him a quizzical look.

 

“Lie on the floor,” Paul instructed.

 

Ben did as he was told and lay face down on the ground, despite feeling a little nervous about what Paul was about to do to him.

 

He felt Paul pick his feet up off the ground and hold his legs high up in the air.

 

“You are supposed to balance on your hands,” he heard Paul mutter from somewhere behind him.

 

Reluctantly Ben put both of his hands on the ground and hoisted himself up so he was off the floor and slanting downwards.

 

“Now you can move yourself along,” Paul said proudly and Ben began to pick his hands up off the floor as Paul pushed him forwards.

 

“And this is a wheelbarrow why?” Ben asked.

 

“Cos you look like a wheelbarrow you idiot.” Paul replied.

 

“Oh”

 

“We can go faster if you like,” and Paul began to walk quicker, forcing Ben to move his arms to keep up.

 

They’d only managed to get half way across the Pavilion before they both collapsed on the floor in fits of giggles.

 

“That was fun,” Ben commented as he picked himself up off the floor.

 

“Yeah, was cool, especially when all the kids started copying us.”

 

“Still mad about Mark and the sofa then?”

 

“Not at all,” Paul replied, “we all know that Christian and Mark have very boring lives, and they’re probably doing something very very dull at this very moment.”

 

Happy that his friend had snapped himself out of his mood Ben lead him towards the mini golf course.