Discos – Charlierobinsonbooks

Where It All Began 28

Sally and I had been running Night Owls, the largest Mobile Disco company in Yorkshire for five years. In the December of 2000 we had thirty mobile rigs in the store and had hired thirty five DJ’s. Christmas parties were at an all time high and we did 308 functions that December. We’d managed to get away a few times, visiting Kenya and Sri Lanka, but they were brief visits and I always felt disappointed when we left.

I was still running, completing several half marathons in a time of one and a half hours. I’d joined the local gym and taken up Kickboxing, but after two years, and in my forties, it was getting tough. One night I broke three ribs, which kinda hampered installing disco rigs, so I called it a day. The next challenge was to climb the National Three peaks in 36 hours with the boxing club.

We had a great time, but it got me to thinking. There was more to life.

Sally and I were at loggerheads, she fancied selling up and settling down with ordinary jobs. So inevitably we sold the business, paid my old bosses off and went our seperate ways, all very amicable and everyone happy. But I needed a plan, so as breather, I rented a small flat in Boston Spa and worked the night shifts for my old kickboxing instructor who owned a security business. That was fun, especially one night when I came across a guy in a lorry park, slitting open the side of a lorry with a knife. Sadly he managed to get away. I’d been single for a while and had two ideas for the future. One – Buy a smallholding in France from where I could get anywhere in Europe. Two – Rejoin the Foreign Legion if I could get away with lying about my age 😂 It was around this time I reconnected with Gillian. We’d met in 1990. I’d made a few moves on her at the time, but she was engaged and I was rebuffed 😂. After she married and Sally and I became an item, we all became close friends, but she’d divorced in 2000, and moved to Bracknell as Operation Manager of Oakley Court Hotel, which had been used for the Hammer House of Horrors back in the day. We got on famously, even though we were in different parts of the country. Eventually I moved to Bracknell and as a stopgap took a job as a Carpenters hand (labourer)

Surprisingly I enjoyed having a proper job and working on a constuction site. After six months I qualified as a Level 2 Site carpenter, a year later I took my Level 3 and the boss made me a foreman with my own site. Gillian and I married, and everything was hunky dory.

But there was something niggling at me and one day I saw an advert for Prison Officers to train and work at Feltham Young Offenders prison. TBC 😂

Happy Trails, Folks x.

Where It All Began 27

When the apple picking ended I needed something to occupy me until December. And then? I hear you ask. The plan was to head to Greece for some orange picking. I got a message from my niece remember her?

She was now married with three children, just moved into a house in Lincoln, and needed a bathroom tiling, a patio laying and rooms decorated. So in exchange for food and board we travelled to Lincoln, and I began work. Oh! Did I mention I built a rabbit ramp and taught them to climb? 😂The time passsed very quickly and it was great to catch up. But a circular patio, a bit of painting, and tiling doesn’t take long.

By November I needed to crack on, but it was too early for Greece so I contacted my old disco boss. Christmas parties were looming and I knew he’d be desparate for DJ’s. I was right, he immediately offered his caravan at his base for Sally and myself. I could do as many disco’s as I wanted, and he’d pay me to help install the rigs. We arrived on 20th November at 4pm. The first thing he said was. “Take my business off me, please!” They had had enough. The new manager hadn’t worked out, and believe it or not, it was a stressfull business. Especially in December when we would be expected to carry out over 200 events. The venues I had secured during the recession would possibly give you one wedding a week. But in December they could have up five function rooms operating every night, full with Christmas parties, and as the resident disco company you were expected to supply the entertainment for all of them. By 7pm Sally and I were in the pub discussing the logistics. We decided it was an interesting offer, there was only one problem, we didn’t have any money 😂.

We went back and I offered them a deal. I would pay them a certain amount each year for ten years. I would get a mortgage through the business and move the entire operation away. In other words they could retire. I got us through that December “94” (Could be a song there 😂) And the following Spring we found a house with a huge workshop and a swimming pool attached. The only problem was the huge garden, but hey! I could get a gardener to sort that😂

I had ideas for the pool. I knocked a door through from the workshop to allow for loading, and boarded the pool over to make a store. And voila! From humble apple picker six months ago, I was now the owner of the largest disco business in the North of England 😂

What could go wrong?

Happy Trails, Folks x

Where It All Began 22

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

Where It All Began 21

So here I was in 1985, a farmworker for my sister on £10 a week. My nephew and I worked from 5:30am until around 9:30pm Monday to Friday that summer. It was a cattle farm with a few milking cows. We bought stirks. A stirk is either male or female, and we bought them between 6 months old and 18 months old, fattened them up and sold them at market. Life was simple, and I managed to fly my eldest son over for all the school holidays, the youngest was not allowed. On Saturdays and Sundays we showed cattle at Country Shows. That year we won nineteen Championships. Many years later, in the nineties, his son, my great nephew carried on the tradition from an early age.

I did this for two years, believing I had found a vocation. I was still running, often rising at 4am to get a long run in. But there was a bear in me somewhere, and restlessness began to eat away. Saturday nights we always went out, roaming from one country inn to another, there were a few scrapes😂But, there were also mobile DJ’s operating in some of them. Yup, you know what’s coming! My brother-in-law borrowed £800 for me and I purchased an old van, some disco gear, and Dial A Disco was born. By driving around the area touting for work I got two regular gigs a week, a heavy rock night for bikers on Thursdays and a dance night every Friday. It involved two types of dress code. The landlady on Friday’s nicknamed me Miami Vice 😂

My sisters husband was now working on the farm, finances had improved and I wasn’t in as much demand. I took a flat in York and went to work for an agency, Nightowls, who gave me as many gigs as I wanted. Their dress code was a little different to what I was used to.

I remember one particular night I was doing the after party for Bramham Horse Trials in a huge marquee. Late in the evening, on a packed dance floor people began to run, there was screaming. The crowd parted to reveal a young man with a chainsaw attacking the centre post. He had been refused entry, gone home got his chainsaw, and climbed under the tent to wreak his revenge. Such is country life 😂 He was talked down eventually and the marquee remained standing. Six months later the couple who owned the Disco Agency offered me a full time job as manager. It looked like life was about to take yet another turn.

Happy Trails, Folks x