Raising the Roof

International show jumper, Tom West recognised the look on his wife Samantha's face only too well. She was obviously planning something big. Sam was affectionately known by her many friends in the village of Massenden as ‘Property Expert Extraordinaire.' That morning she had just got wind of an extremely exciting proposition. She had overheard a conversation between two of the local gossips. ‘I ‘ears that ‘ole manor ‘ouse up on the ‘ill what ‘ad that terrible fire nigh on fifty year ago is going to be auctioned for re-development,' Bobby Browning, the local chimney sweep was telling all and sundry who were standing at the queue in the local store. Sam pricked her ears as she watched Mike Lewis, wrapping the rasher of bacon she had just purchased in greaseproof paper. Samantha West's long suffering but adoring husband was not wrong - a hugely ambitious idea was already forming in the ever-active brain of Mrs Thomas West.