Monday Blog – Charlierobinsonbooks

Where It All Began 30

If you’ve never worked on a construction site I can definitely recommend it. The camardarie and the tough physical challenge is amazing. We had moved house to a sleepy village called Over Wallop, Hampshire. I had to travel quite a lot. Two of the best sites I worked on Kiddington Hall where we were sub-contracted to do a refurb. Jemima Khan nee Goldsmith had just bought it for £15 million. It was to be a weekend retreat for her and her new beau Russell Brand. Although it was 136 mile round trip, it was worth it.

The site I really enjoyed was Lygon Place in Belgravia. It had been used by the Spanish Embassy for years. The eight houses had been sold for renovation and we secured the contract. This entailed catching the 5:20am train into Clapham Junction and the tube to Victoria with a short walk to the site, usually arriving back home around 7pm for 18 months, but once again it was worth the travel. In 2010/11 the cheapest house was £17 million and the most expensive £21 million. All our cutting was done in the underground carpark. I recall one day Roger Moore was due to view a property and we were told we all had to stay underground while he was there. Obviously James Bond would be nervous around a bunch of construction workers. 😂

These were good contracts, because with Tony Blair leaving office in 2007, suddenly there were no hospitals or schools to build. We were so successful we had a 5% pay increase every year. We had escaped the great recession of 2008/9 because of those contracts. But as Bizzare Inc, sang in 1992 Why waste your time? You know you’re gonna be mine…”(I’m gonna get you, baby) I’m gonna get you” In late 2011 after struggling to find more work for some time we had gone from 35 carpenters and 3 foremen… to 3 foremen. My boss had us cutting his hedge, mowing his lawn, painting his fence… anything as long as he didn’t have to lay us off. But I had an idea! 😂

Even though I had enjoyed my time on site it looked like it might be coming to an end. There was still a niggle to do something… “good” I dunno what else you would call it. I had seen an advert in a local paper for teaching courses in colleges. So, in January 2012 I did a short evening course. My neighbour expressed his concern that at 55 years-old maybe it was too late to start another career.😂 By June I had a part time job covering someone’s sick leave, teaching Carpentry at Brockenhurst College. I also started volunteering at a place called Enham Trust that supported disabled people, mainly with Cerebal Palsy. That was such great fun and I met a lot of lovely people. We did three pantomimes while I was there and as you already know I do like a dressing up box. 😂

During the summer recess a job was advertised at Fareham College for a full time Carpentry Lecturer. I read everything I could about teaching in a college, made a model door and frame for my practical lesson test in front of the panel. I winged the interview relying on improvisation rather than experience. They decided I was the best candidate, mainly because of my model and explanation of how to fit a door. So began five years of achieving more qualifications, teaching kids how to saw a straight line and assessing apprentices in the workplace.

I got awards for using IT Innovation in Teaching and was now a fully qualified Lecturer, Assessor, and Internal Verifier. Life was great, but I swear Gillian and I must have Gypsy blood 😂

Happy trails, Folks x

Where It All Began 29

Prison

Sometimes in life you just get a hankering to do some good. In 2003 I decided to become a prison officer at Feltham Young Offenders. The advert said I would be helping to rehabilitate young men aged between 17 and 21. Yeah, that sounded like a good idea. After completing written and role play tests and an interview I was in, and began a twelve week training programme. It went well apart from one day. In a pretend senario I had to enter a room where an officer was supposedly unconcious, his keys missing and the prisoners gone. I radioed it in, but I then saw someone skulking in a cupboard. I was quick off the mark, kicking the door open, and shouted, “Show yourself. Now!” A female officer with a clipboard in one hand and holding her nose with the other hand appeared. My radio crackled and the test examiner said. “Mr Robinson, she’s an observer!”

There isn’t much I can say about the next twelve months, it was a prison. I had a great rapport with the inmates and got some good results. There was a fancy dress graduation ball, I refrained from picking anyone up and carrying them out though.😂

BUT… There was a lot of stuff happened. Lets just say I wasn’t happy with some people’s behaviour which made it increasingly difficult to do my job. I became frustrated with some superiors and other officers. I found out later, some had been sacked. Now prison inmates at that age are not very clever, lets face it if they were, they wouldn’t be there. I remember two in particular. They had robbed a Marks & Spencer payroll office, thrown their masks, shotguns, and loot into the boot of the getaway car and were homefree. Half a mile away a police car came up behind them and pulled them over. They were baffled, it had only been 5 mins since the robbery, but they stopped the car and ran. The police caught them, returned them to the car and opened the boot. They were arrested on the spot. Does that make them dumb? Certainly the getaway driver was, the reason they were stopped is because he forgot to put the car lights on. 😂

One day I was chatting to those two lads and they asked me what I did before. I told them I was a site carpenter and when they asked what I built? I said mainly hospitals and schools (it was the Tony Blair years) They replied. “Building hospitals and schools is more important than this, Guv. You’re wasting your skills babysitting us. We’ll never change.” That was the beginning of the end. At the time I had a new senior officer and we had been doing a lot of good work, but he was replaced by another chap. A martial arts expert and he undid everything we’d achieved. The governors weren’t really interested and after a long chat with my wife and my old boss. I went back to building hospitals and schools. It was 2004. Times were booming, including me there were foremen with a construction site each and thirty five carpenters working for us. I’d found my place at last. What could possibly go wrong?

Happy Trails, Folks x

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 26

Our new home was a field. It was an apple farm after all. We were the first to arrive, and the boss told us it would be few days before we would start work. Funds were low, so we had jam sandwiches for lunch and salad every day for dinner. Luckily the blackberries were ripe so a late summer evening walk provided us with a pudding. Eventually the field filled with prospective apple pickers and we started work. He paid £40 for every crate you filled and I was managing four per day. Sadly it started to rain on the first day and continued for over three weeks, the cheap Argos tent leaked and we had to put the duvet in the hop house to dry each day.

There was a great mixture of people, Scots, English, and an Italian lad. When you pick an apple you can’t dig your fingers in, you must use the palm of your and gently twist it off. When you drop the apples into the crate it has to be done gently. These are key rules to prevent bruising. Everyday an inspector picks three apples from your crate, ripens them overnight and if you have bruised apples three days on the trot you’re fired. The young Italian sang. He sang all day as he tugged the fruit from the tree and slammed it into the crates. The inspector returned every morning and gave him a warning. As entertaining as it was, I tried to tell my Italian friend, but in return he would say. “Va tutto bene, è tutto bellissimo,” and smile. They fired him on the third day. Because of the continuing damp weather Sally’s asthma got worse and she became quite ill. I looked in the local paper and found a proper tent for £30. I picked it up and erected it the same night. It was larger and older than I had anticipated and the next day the farmer enquired as to who had built a house in his field.

At least Sally was dry and she took a few days off. The two Scottish lads were the next to be fired. On their last night they told me they had sneaked into the barn and urinated on the crates in retaliation. I’ve never eaten a Cox’s Pippin since.😂 The apples you pick in September are stored and go on sale the following year, just in case you wonder why fresh apples go off so quickly. By the end of September there were only two of us left. It rained on our final morning as we attacked the last remaing trees. The farmer paid us and we retired to the pub for a hearty meal. I’d made just short of £700, but it had rained everyday. We sat by the fire and chatted as we ate. As the sweet arrived the sun broke out across the countryside. 😂

It was time to say goodbye. I had an idea to drive down to Greece and pick oranges, but the winter harvest was in full swing from November to January and offered the highest number of available jobs. What to do until November? I knew something would pop up. After all it always did, didn’t it?

Happy Trails, Folks x

Where It All Began 25

Torquay was a beautiful town, but we arrived in 1993 with £25 to our name. I thought (foolishy) if I went to the Social Security I might get some help. But without an address it was unlikely, also I’d need one to get a job. So by the end of the day I’d sold the van for £300, bought a newspaper, picked the cheapest bedsit on offer, and I was in the office of Alfred Marks recruitment agency being interviewed for a job at the NHS Hospital laundry in Newton Abbott. The problem was it was shift work and I had no transport. The lady told me her daughter was selling her bicycle for £30, sorted. The day after, I was cycling an 18 mile round trip up and down seven hills to start work at 6am.

Early starts meant early finishes so I could be in the gym by 3pm and get a run in before teatime. The laundry was entertaining, no disrepect to the residents of Newton Abbot but it was a little ‘run down’ As an example: one day as we put sheets through the drier a chap said, “These don’t have a label, write the name of where it’s going on some paper. You’ll have to write it and take it to Raymond.” He was taking the laundry off at the other end. “You write it because I can’t write.” As I set off with said paper he shouted after me. “You’ll have to read it out, Raymond can’t read!” It was a hard winter cycling with plastic bags over my feet and hands and a binliner over my shoulders. Yup, hospital launderies didn’t pay much 😂 Sally landed a job as assistant manager at a hotel, Frognell Hall and by Spring of 1994 life was ok. I enrolled in a Karate class and took up a Combat Course on Sundays

The hospital laundry agency job came to an end and I was offered a job as breakfast waiter and barman at Frognell Hall by the owner Lynne. This suited me, as I got to run after breakfast and spend the rest of the day on the beach. We’d rented a cottage not far from the hotel and had no need for a vehicle. Torquay had small buses called Hoppers. They ran every 7 mins and it was £1 to go anywhere. But alas, all things must come to an end. After a falling out with the husband of the hotel owner. I guess not everyone can like you… that’s a clowns job. I decided to move on and there was good money to be made apple picking in Kent, but that didn’t start until September, I needed something for 6 weeks. I had been in contact with my sister, they had just moved to a new farm and there was a lot of work needed doing. So it was agreed in return for food and lodgings, Sally and I would travel up to Yorkshire and work on the farm. Time passed quickly and September soon arrived. It was time to head to Kent I had three addresses of farmers who employed apple pickers, an old Hillman Hunter Estate and a two man tent from Argos.

This looked like fun. But you never really know until you get there? Happy Trails, Folks x

Where It All Began 24

The wind whistled through the narrow arrow slits, and the crows cawed as they circled above. My eyes are locked upon the empty space between the inner and outer walls below, where men must have bled out in battle centuries ago. I was deep in thought when she slapped a hand on my shoulder. “There you are! I was looking everywhere!” To say I was startled is a huge understatement, but she thought it was funny. Carcassone 1992.

After Paris I decided to head south. Fruit picking seemed the obvious choice for work, after all I was an accomplished grape harvester, and I figured there’d be more work in the south. We visited Carcassonne because it’s a famous castle, and it was used for the movie Robin Hood Prince of Thieves. We all like a bit of Costner don’t we? And who can forget Alan Rickman?

But it was time to make some money. Now, at the time my French was pretty good, at least speaking it was. We camped in a field owned by Fred and Elsie, they might have been called Raphaël and Geneviève, but I thought Fred and Elsie suited them far better. They told me to go to the market at 5am and speak to les producteurs. For those of you who aren’t fluent in the language these are the producters 😂 In other words Growers. Upon arrival I headed directly for the cafe and asked the owner, in my best French, where I could find les producters . He kinda shouted about three sentences. This was my first inkling that speaking French and understanding French are actually two different things. I gave him a smile, in truth I probably looked ‘gaumless’ and left. We asked a few producters if they had any work but to no avail. A few days later I called in on a farm, the farmers wife leaned from the window and I asked if there was any work. She spoke for about five minutes, as I listened attentively. I thanked her and returned to the van. Sally asked me what she had said. I looked at her and said. “I haven’t the faintest idea.” 😂 Without labouring the story this was the overriding theme for the next four months.

One day we had a crash. Who puts traffic lights behind a tree? Later, after we had swopped details, I realised my insurance had run out. Luckily I had a friend back in England who could be described as ‘Shonky’ Liz Makenzie describes the word very well on her blog Mywordshare. He sent me a backdated insurance certificate three days later. Shortly after that the van was broken into, strangely all they stole was my income tax documents which I had intended to complete, en route. I’m not sure if that would make my tax debt null and void, but at least I had a witness in Sally. 😉

After four months it began to dawn on me that this wasn’t Gran Canaria, we couldn’t go fishing, and Sally wasn’t Peter, although she was having fun (stop it! we’ll keep this a family show 😂) she was getting a little fed up. Decent amenities were rare, plus we were running out of money. So my offer to return to England was well recieved. But I couldn’t go back to where I’d come from. I looked at a map and decided that Torquay, Devon had a certain attraction. After all, in 1815 Napoleon Bonarparte gazed from HMS Bellerphon at the Torbay coastline and said “Quel bon pays,” comparing it to Porto Ferrajo on the island of Elba. Hence the term, The English Riviera. If It was good enough for the little corporal, it was good enough for me. I was sure some form of adventure could be extracted from the place. 😉

Happy Trails, Folks x

Where It All Began 23

I had two weeks before we were due at the ferry terminal in Hull and decided a rest would be in order. I booked a week in Gambia for Sally and myself. I’d never had a holiday but now, years later, I’m told my life has been one big holiday. Gambia in 1993 was one of the poorest African nations with a small tourist industry. We were instructed to never leave the hotel compound. A young man, Ebrahim, who squeezed and sold grapefruit juice on the beach, offered to take us out and show me around. So we sneaked out, hopped on a bus and went for a look round.

It was obvious there was a rising tension, the place had an atmosphere, and subsequently there was a military coup a year later. We visited his family home and met Charlie the crocodile at the Kachikally Crocodile Pool. Another boy, Cultural, worked the beach selling cannabis. These boys, or “bumsters” as they were called had a scam going. Ebrahim warned me about the scam, but made me promise to tell no one that I was aware or that he had told me, otherwise he would be beaten. The “bumsters” would sell you the cannabis and immediately afterwards signal a corrupt policeman. He would then threaten you with the infamous Mile 2 Prison, the Gambia’s notoriously grim maximum, security jail unless you paid a fine. You would then be marched to your hotel safe and he would take all the money you had. Drugs were never my thing anyway but I had some very interesting chats with Cultural, during his various sale pitches. These ranged from Bob Marley, Rastafarianism, to Nelson Mandela, as he claimed he was South African with a Jamaican accent. Ebrahim later told me he was from a local village. 😂

We returned home and I began to get rid of everything that wouldn’t fit in my camper van. Finally, all I had left was my Snap-On tool chest, weights and diving gear. I dropped them off in a secondhand shop for a half decent price. When I laid everything out the bloke asked. “Who are you? Rambo?” 😂

The following day we docked in Zeebruggue and drove straight to Paris. It was rush hour and driving around and around the Arc de Triomphe trying to find the correct exit was so much fun, some very angry drivers over there! There was an amzing restaurant I needed to visit, Nos Ancêtres les Gaulois, you paid 18francs, which covered your meal and unlimited wine. At the end of the evening each table broke into song. One table began to sing “On Ilkley Moor Baht ‘at, its an old Yorkshire song that tells of advice given to a young man who courts Mary Jane on Ilkley Moor without his hat. I asked if they were from Yorkshire ? But it turned they were from Holland, go figure.

We had an enjoyable five days exploring, but then it was time to move on and find some work! I needed to head south. Next stop Carcassone…

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