My Story
I started my working career, way back in 1976, clearing offices in London for a property management company, which paid well for a young 17-year-old, and lasted the whole of that very hot summer. It was however, short lived and by Christmas of the same year, I was broke and still living at home with my mother, so my father who had left our home for some years earlier in pursuit of a happier life, found me an apprenticeship with a company called Carter Pocock, which entailed becoming a shoe wholesale representative! This role started off in the warehouse, which I had to endure for 6 months, to then progress into the office and learn about sales ledgers, which ultimately led to the inputting data into the newest of technical equipment, a computer; not one that you would recognise today, but one that would calculate and co-ordinate both sales and purchases, all of which was presented on a massive roll of perforated paper, which was spat out with all the relevant customers and costs details, which then had to be checked manually in order to confirm that the right items had indeed been ordered for the right shoe store outlet. It was mind numbing work, but ironically it was my first introduction to the pre-digital age! However, I was not happy with the role, so I decided to look for something different.
I have always loved cars and motorbikes, so I found an opening with a motor sport company called Fourways Engineering, (which is still going today), located in the small village of Borough Green, Kent, where I worked with two partners, John and Geoff. John was into production sports cars, which entailed modifying E type jaguars and later on Datsun 240z, which were often tested at Brans Hatch racing circuit. Geoff, who still runs the company today was into rallying, and raced Mk2 Escorts at that time, and I can remember changing gearboxes and suspension units during stages of the race. It was a great experience but the pay was poor, so I took a job working for Ford Engineering in Mitcham, Surrey, which lasted two years, and taught me a lot about the motor trade, and spurred me on to start my own business.
My first business
You might be thinking what kind of motor business was I going to start; well it was nothing to do with cars or motorbikes! In fact, having met up with my old school chum Andy, who was into landscaping, we started, yes, you’ve guessed it, a Landscape company call H&WB (Hancock & Woodley-Beattie), which seemed like a good idea at the time. This however, transcended into a landscape/building company, which involved Andrews Brother Mike, as Andy wanted to immigrate to Australia, which we then called Empire Landscapes. This business ran until 1982, but we found it difficult to produce enough work to cover the outgoings, so it was decided to close the book on this particular chapter in my early life.
All was not what it seemed
However, during this time, I had met my first wife, with the idea of working together on a country estate in Ascot, bordering on the edge of the Queens Royal estate for a property developer and his wife by the name of Richmond Dodd. I was to be the estate manager while my wife looked after their two children as the nanny. It seemed to be the dream job, as we were given a large cottage on the vast estate, rent free, and it involved very little travelling to start work, as the main house was no more than 500 metres from the cottage. Unfortunately, the job was not all it appeared to be, and neither of us were happy with the work as time unfolded, so we decided to move down to my wife’s home county of Dorset, which we did in the spring of 1984. We got married in 1985 and I started working for the local borough council in Christchurch, which led me into civil engineering, and a future that I saw as a perfect opportunity to start my next business; but first I needed some experience, so I contracted to another friend of ours, who ran a civil engineering service, which involved land surveys, with subsequent engineering jobs such as the setting out of roads, houses and industrial estates. This work continued for a number of years during which time it developed into a construction company, building rest home extensions and new bespoke homes around Bournemouth and took on the name of SIS Contractors. The work was hard but the company grew until the early nineties, when the UK went into a depression and interest rates reached high into double figures; this coupled with falling orders led to the collapse of the business. I lost everything including my home.