So during the Eighties we grew but quietly - in our little Caversham backwater. I guess that we, during the boom years of Mrs T, actually marked time. So much to do and no time to think about planning.
Wasn't intentional. And we had setbacks.
We got a bigger computer which the salesman said was a 'Turnkey' solution. 'Turn the key and it works'!
The man should've been shot. It was anything but 'turnkey'. 'Turkey' maybe. We had no idea how to control the thing. And it started eating our money. By which I mean we fed customers cheques and credit card payments into it but it then refused to send the money on to the bank … or anywhere.
That was tricky. One Friday, the bank threatened to foreclose. That weekend I went screaming around the country and finally found the girl who had installed the brute and dragged her off her horse. By Monday she'd started to get the machine to cough some cash. She was a game girl; stayed days in our offices - in her jodhpurs - 'til we were safe.
Business is full of these sorts of things but we don't like to dwell on them.
There are worse things.
One early summer morning in Spain, 1988, after a long drive, Tim Bleach our first employee, my buyer 'shadow', and drinking mate, had a head-on smash and subsequently died.
We lost two other friends and suppliers the same summer.
So I then had a heart attack. "Sell your Business and Retire" the Cardiologist said. "Retire and take a touring holiday in the South of France". I said that was more or less my job anyway, so maybe I thought I'd carry on. But no longer with just Mom and Pop running the whole show. We'd finally understood we needed help.
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