Thank you of all the comments. I really appreciate it. Apologies for the spelling of "centres" but I live in South Africa where we have adopted the U.K. spelling of words. I will have to "Americanise" my text for the Renderosity market. As for the other suggestions Jon, I have reworked the text so the points you raise should be vastly improved in the final version. Since this is my first attempt at writing fiction, I am a bit hesitant on expanding the vignettes into a full-blown short story but am willing to try. Crescent, you are correct (as always). I will need to do quite (wink) a bit of work on the sentence structures. There is a distinct lack of rhythm in this piece as opposed to my previous posting. As far as the typo is concerned, I can't believe I let that slip through. It is one of my pet hates (that's probably why it got through). All the best and keep them comments coming, Iwan