The next three years I spent building my boss’s disco business. We had a major recession which started in 1989. I pointed out that in Chinese, crisis can mean opportunity. I embarked upon a major sales campaign, visiting every hotel in the area, taking coffee with hotel banqueting manageress’. They had resident disco’s but these guys could be a little unreliable, so I gave them a backup option. To be honest that wasn’t really work 😂By 1991 the recession lifted a little and the seeds I had sown matured, we had gone from 10 disco units to 30, and had claimed 20 hotel residencies. The concept was, we installed the units, paid a DJ for the gig and collected the units afterwards. Plus we’d employed someone to help with installations and collections. By this time we were the largest operators in the north of England. I had a few relationships, but girls generally want someone who isn’t out most nights until the early hours, so they didn’t last long. One pleasure I took was that I had no T.V for four years.
I was still running and I’d done the York and several other Half Marathons in 90mins. I was a DJ in demand myself by now. Mainly because I played music from the 50’s to the 90’s I also used Barn Dancing as an icebreaker, and had a collection of ballroom LPs. I prefered the upmarket marquee gigs which usually finished at 5am. I could also be a bit cheeky, but one evening my mouth got me into a little trouble. I was doing a private girls school dance for the 6th formers and they’d asked for some Barn dances. I announced a dance called Strip The Willow. Before my brain engaged my mouth, I asked “And who wants to be Willow?” The principle wasn’t over joyed.
But, as always I had the wandering bear someway deep, down inside. I decided it was time to travel. I informed my employers I would be leaving a year later. This may sound like a long notice period but by now I was running everything, they were lovely people, I needed time to plan, and I didn’t want all my hard work to go to rack and ruin. A year soon passes, we had found someone to take over, he was one of the more mature DJ’s, and seemed very keen. I had decided I was going to go wherever my fancy took me, first stop would be France. I had bought a Volkswagon Camper. And I was finalsing my plans when I met Sally (real name but she won’t mind) We hit it off from the word go, and when she informed me she had always wanted to travel it seemed I had a travelling companion.
Not a very exciting post this week, but there’s a change coming 😂
Happy Trails, Folks x
Charlierobinsonbooks 