Rooney / The Nice Bloke - Catherine Cookson

ROONEY
He was the only one of the dustbin gang who was as yet unmarried. He''d worked for the Corporation as a dustman for fifteen of his thirty-five years, and his mates all agreed he was too canny to be caught, having avoided four widows and two spinsters in ten years. Rooney liked life to follow a pattern - that and his independence was what made him tick.

But it all went flying out of the window when he moved into Ma Howlett''s place. And once the rug of his comfortable old habits had been yanked from under him, Rooney found that life was much more complicated than he had imagined!


THE NICE BLOKE
Harry Blenheim had always been known as ''the nice bloke'' an inoffensive man whose existence many thought was as dull as ditchwater. But then, at the office Christmas party, he gave in to the demands of the vivacious Betty Ray, and the scandal that followed not only split up his family but ruined his career.

Harry reasoned that, with luck, he could have avoided it all, but the roots of the problem lay much deeper. There was his rapidly cooling marriage, and his hatred of his unscrupulous father-in-law. Now Harry was in real trouble, and it would take all the efforts of his dearly-loved daughter Gail and his staunch friends Janet and Robbie Dunn to help him pick up the pieces and start to live again...