SUNDAY IN MEMORY LANE (Episode 22)

One success after another!

The last major gig I saw before moving to Scotland was Knebworth Festival in August of 1979. A bunch of us borrowed a removal van and piled into it. There was a dozen of us at least, and we travelled illegally in the back. Knebworth is a huge event every year in the UK but missing this one, headlined by Led Zeppelin, would have been crazy.

I bought a t-shirt for Dan but when I gave it to him he was very angry with me. “Why didn’t you take me?” he wailed. “I love Led Zeppelin!” I explained that the travelling and sleeping circumstances were not ideal but he never forgave me…. still hasn’t! I had to sleep under the van because the smell of alcohol and sweaty guys inside was overwhelming! I woke up very cold and immediately spotted that we had a flat tyre…. but we were incredibly lucky. A roadside assistance vehicle was available to help us get on our way and he did not charge us for the work.

The house in Clacton sold fairly quickly and the long boring wait for solicitors to do their thing crept by like a tortoise. All the work on the house was completed and I amused myself with the thought that I had lived with it as a semi building site for so many years and now that it was all lovely I was leaving!
Am I my own worst enemy or is it itchy gypsy feet?

Apex Roofing, still being run by Tony and I, was ‘given’ to my brother, Roy for his 25th birthday present. He was thrilled and took on all the paperwork and responsibility with pleasure. He stopped working on the roofs himself and dedicating his time to expanding the business. He set about looking for a property to buy where he could live and run the business in one place. He chose an old, run down nursery in Colchester with a good house, rows of neglected glass houses and several garages on a large plot of land.

Apex Roofing had a strong reputation and Roy employed more and more sub-contracting roofers while he worked as hard as he could to ensure that they had work to go to every day. He also employed some horticulturists to repair and make use of the glass houses as a side line. Our father helped Roy by financing this sudden expansion, providing essential business advice and useful contacts. Roy took himself very seriously from then on. He cut his long blonde hair, usually wore smart suits and met and married a sweet girl called Cathy who was the manageress of a Colchester boutique. She provided him with a baby daughter, Gemma. Roy became very successful and proud. He was happy, which was important too!

We planned a huge farewell party at Reg Brown's function room and Reg refused to charge us for it. Reg was always a really lovely guy, but he too was getting jaded with Clacton and he admitted that he was tired of the hard publican lifestyle. He seemed to understand that I wanted to leave for a great many reasons and both he and his wife certainly made a big fuss of us with their goodbyes. The party was absolutely brilliant.

There was one odd moment when Lorraine approached me during the party at Reg’s to beg that she be allowed to come back to the house with everyone else. I wanted to refuse but didn't. I have no idea why. Maybe I was just being nice? Anyway, we had one last crack at upsetting the neighbours and, after helping tidy up at Reg’s, I was last to get back to my house. I could not get in. It was so full of people!

The party continued until dawn and my soul was already going north.
A great friend had a small removals business. He employed other friends of ours, so we gave them the business of storing our stuff until we were ready to move into our brand new house.

We drove to Aberdeenshire to begin a new life. Thanks to the terrific deal from BP, we stayed in a smart hotel in Dyce, close to the airport for the first two weeks. We toured the shops choosing carpets and colours for the interior paintwork. We bought a new couch and I ordered a huge bale of the upholstery fabric to make matching covers for big floor cushions which I intended to recycle from our old ones, as soon as we arrived.

The whole thing went remarkably smoothly and we actually moved into the new house just a day or two before Tony had to go offshore again. Our stored furniture arrived and was scattered about this astonishingly beautiful house like homeless orphans.

Slowly over the following fortnight I assembled our home. I made all the curtains and adapted the old cushion foam into new shapes. When Tony returned from the rig, Dan and I had it sorted out reasonably well and he boasted to the new neighbours that "Fran does everything!" which I overheard and found a bit bothersome. He could have started on the back garden, which was ugly and bare mud, as can be seen in this photo which Dan took of me trying to brave goose bumps on a rare sunny and windy day. But Tony showed no interest in fixing up the garden.

I had a plan, on my back burner.
It was not a perfect plan, but it was the outline of a plan that just might work if I could persuade Tony to take it on board. I waited for an opportunity to spend a fair bit of time outlining the ideas that I had been hatching and I was very nervous that he would do his usual trick of talking a good ball game but later, failing to play it.

We had been in the new house mere weeks when I skinned up one evening and told Tony in no uncertain terms that I had known all along about his relationship with Lorraine. I added a fair run down of my own unfaithfulness and he did not seem at all surprised. I explained that I wanted to try being actually married.
Not just me to him.
No.
Him to me, was a crucially important aspect of the deal I was offering. I was acutely aware that we knew nobody in Newmachar and that suited my plans very well. I wanted us to be the family that Dan had begged for when he was only four years old but, up until now, that ‘family’ was just a sham, a charade of appearances, a huge act.
"From now on," I reiterated, "we can put the past behind us and rebuild our marriage anew. Nobody here knows us or what a mess we have made of things so far, do they?"

Tony was not giving me any clues about how he felt at all. It seemed as if I was asking for an impossible dream. But he suddenly admitted that he was completely surprised that I had gone through with the move to Scotland.
"What did you think I would do?" I asked, confused.
"I thought you were intending to wait until we had the money from the house sale and then you would take your half and leave me!"

It had never occurred to me to do such a thing. I was fully committed to giving Dan two decent, hardworking, loving parents even if it meant trying to rekindle feelings within myself that were long since damaged. Tony and I discussed all this as openly as we could and he promised that he would give it a chance.

Within a month of being in Newmachar I was bored to tears and very homesick.
I mean, I was wandering around this big beautiful house with absolutely nothing whatever to do! It did not get messy, because we had no friends visiting every day and night. It did not get dusty like the old Victorian house had done. Everything was brand new and the only really hard labour that was required was to straighten out the gardens.

Once Dan started school my days seemed interminable, especially while Tony was away on the rig. One lunchtime, I was in the local Post Office, when I spotted an advertisement in the window. The pub across the road, trading under the name Beekies Neuk, needed a lunchtime barmaid. I went straight over there to apply for the job. I needed a social life badly and so did Tony. I thought that this opportunity would help us get to know other people in the village.

I was successful. I got the job and started immediately. The hours fitted well with school and, although I was not earning very much, that wasn't the reason for me being there.

After only a few weeks, the Manageress announced that there had been a change of management and my services were no longer required! It came as a total shock and I was really upset because so far, at least, I was really enjoying meeting the local people and figuring out their strange lingo, while they were having great fun jibing me for being a Londoner and a lily-livered Sassenach. If you do not know the expression, it means a Saxon or an English person. It is usually intended as an insult, but I did not take offence. I understood that history could not be erased and the Scots have plenty to gripe about in that department.

I grumpily went back to finding things to do, all day at home by myself. I taught myself macramé, under the guidance of a new neighbour. I did a lot of reading and was continuing with my studies of Chinese philosophy.

From my vantage point at the head of the cul-de-sac, I could see all the new families moving into their new homes as they were each completed. For a time, the street was a mud bath until the council got around to making up the road. Slowly we recognised new faces and always made a point of trying to be very friendly.

After a period of no more than a month, I got my job back at Beekies Neuk. It seems that there had been some sort of misunderstanding between the new owners, a consortium of four young men, and the old manageress. She had presumed that when they dispensed with her services, they had also intended to replace the staff! This was quickly corrected when the customers demanded that I should return to serve them. I was very flattered that they liked me, in spite of my lily liver and cockney accent!

When I met the new manager, George, I did not get the impression that he was particularly experienced at running bars, but he was a musician and did have a lot of connections within the local music scene. He was full of great intentions to open up the large mothballed lounge bar and create a new music venue from it.

Tony hit it off with George so well that he forgave me for being a barmaid again and even came to the pub to be sociable while I was working. Tony and George had a lot in common. They both played guitar, liked to drink and, above all, indulge in recreational drugs. George lived alone in the flat above the pub and occasionally one of the owners, a guy called Gus, would stay over for a weekend. He was a strange one. All he wanted to do was drink and watch porn films all day long! I found him creepy.

George praised me for keeping the regulars happy at lunchtime, while he scoured the pubs in other villages for another barmaid who would work in the evenings. One day he told me that he had found the perfect glamorous person for the job and that he would be showing her around Beekies Neuk later that day. Lyndia turned out to be absolutely drop dead gorgeous, very sweet natured and smitten with George. I liked her immediately. She was a very experienced and confident barmaid, but George tended to leave us running the pub while he would disappear for many of our opening hours. Lyndia impressed me by scolding George over this habit.

Eventually George managed to set up the disused lounge, which was four times the size of the cosy public bar we were running for the locals. He opened the lounge with a great gig. He and his friends were in a band and they were the entertainment. It was a terrific success and I was quite happy to work weekend evenings with Lyndia. We attracted a lot of people from all around Aberdeenshire with this new music venue. It became very popular, very quickly.

Dan wanted to go to the local youth club one evening per week, but was a little reticent to begin with. He was experiencing some bullying at school, purely because he had an English accent. I volunteered to work at the youth club, teaching girls about make up and hairdressing and this helped Dan to be accepted. I made friends with a group of older local teenagers who loved computers. One of them, a very intelligent sixteen year old called Jim, offered to teach Dan about computers and to babysit for me, freeing me to work in the evenings. This was marvellous for Dan, who was only eight years old at the time and very keen to learn how to programme a computer.

Jim was a patient and kind teacher, ideal in fact. When he heard about the daily fights that Dan was facing, he took me aside one day and told me to check out the fees at the private school he attended in Aberdeen city centre. Robert Gordon’s College was expensive but impressive. It had strong ties to the oil industry and a focus on all things technological. It seemed perfect for Dan but our budget, good though it was, would not stretch quite that far. Many students lived in, but day students were welcomed too.

There was only one answer to resolve this problem. I had to find a well paid job to cover the school fees and expenses.

I scoured the Aberdeen press for an office job and came across a very interesting position in a small office close to the airport. It was as administrator of a new interior design company. I would be organising and promoting two recently qualified young architects. They were great at drawing and designing, but hopeless at business management and marketing. We hit it off immediately and, due to my experience of running a roofing company, I negotiated a salary which closely matched the school fees at Robert Gordon’s College. I started work after serving notice at Beekies Neuk and I absolutely loved my new job.

At first it was hectic. The office needed a lot of organising. There was no real filing system, no marketing strategy, no professional image at all. I took charge of everything from making the coffee to applying for contracts and employing contractors. I barely had time to run to the bathroom, but I turned that little business into a very successful enterprise in less than a month.

It seemed as though everything I touched turned to gold. We won so many contracts that we employed a team of shop fitters from Glasgow to work full time for us. They were perfectionists and their boss was the kind of guy who solved every problem without making a big fuss. He thought nothing of working overnight Saturdays and Sundays to get a shop fitted by Monday morning, thus saving our clients from having to close their businesses for even one day during the refits. That team of workmen could also turn their hands to any private house design we came up with and they never let us down, performing miracles over and over, building our reputation for speed, efficiency and innovation. We had an amazing team and we were the only interior design company in oil-rich Aberdeen at that time. A monopoly that reaped fast rewards!

We were riding a wave and we crested it by taking on some of the most exciting contracts for incoming businesses and especially restoring older properties in the private sector. Oil workers and executives don’t have time to decorate their homes…. but they do have the money to pay for someone else to design and do it for them!

My love and experience of interior design was stretched to the limits. I remember spending a lot of time visiting Aberdeen library for inspiration when I was asked by clients to research certain styles from Scotland’s history. We created some gorgeous period interiors in even more gorgeous buildings. Some of the contracts were worth more than my house! When we won a contract to refit a chain of chemist shops all over Scotland, I was searching for an adaptable shop fitting system which was modern and easily assembled. With the help and advice of our shop fitting team, we selected an Italian system which was not cheap but was beautiful. In those days, before the internet, it wasn’t so easy to check out the market and import from Europe, but we did it and both the client and the work force were very happy with the results. There were about thirty shops in the chain so we fitted a shop every weekend from then on.

I took Dan to his inauguration day at Robert Gordon’s College and he was massively impressed. He couldn’t wait to begin studying there and within weeks, insisted that he would travel to Aberdeen City Centre on the bus alone, rather than be dropped off by me and collected every evening. This meant that he could go into school very early in the mornings and spend quality time with Mr Sutherland, his favourite teacher, who lived on the school grounds. It also meant that he would be able to use the computers at school after hours, before catching the bus to meet up with me at my office around 6pm. He was out of the door by 6am most mornings and he loved every minute of his time at Robert Gordon’s College.

Dan so impressed me at that time. He treasured his independence and he gave school work his fullest attention. He played rugby rather than football, which disappointed his football-crazy father, but Dan loved the rough and tumble of the sport. I attended his Saturday morning games and could hardly work out what was going on! It was so sweet and hilarious to watch all those kids running up and down getting covered in mud in the freezing Aberdeen weather.

Dan was toughening up and very proud of himself. His weekends were busy too. He had two friends who lived on a large farm near our village. Cameron and Campbell were robust kids who gave Dan the opportunity to ride horses, muck out pigs, toboggan down steep snow covered hills and generally enjoy farm life. When we were snowed into the village, the kids were out playing all day and Dan would come home at dusk, with cheeks glowing bright red from the extreme weather and exertion. I could not keep him indoors!

I will never forget the beauty of Aberdeenshire in the depths of winter. It was thickly coated with snow and every house gutter was ornamented with huge icicles. The absolute silence, the clear blue skies….. the mounds of snow with unused cars hidden beneath. The pub, open 24/7 and drank dry; the lorry drivers stranded and accommodated by friendly villagers. Trying to walk to the local shop and Beekies Neuk when the snow was knee deep! Such a trial! I had never experienced anything like it - being such a soft ‘Sassenach’!

Of course, I still helped out at Beekies Neuk when they were short staffed in the evenings or weekends. Lyndia and George became a couple, which was pretty much inevitable at the time. The pub became the best music venue in Aberdeenshire and we had lots of really good bands playing every Friday and Saturday night. On Sundays, George, Lyndia, Tony and I would take the kids to the Skean Dhu Hotel where we had membership of a ‘country club’ arrangement. We could dine, swim and enjoy the spa while the kids were entertained with film shows and games.

One day, when Tony was offshore, I got an unexpected phone call from one of his rig mates. He had been summarily dismissed, helicoptered off the rig and needed a bed for the night! Roger and his wife lived near Edinburgh and had visited us for weekends a couple of times. I did not hesitate to drive into Aberdeen to pick him up. I had no idea what he might have done to cause his dismissal from BP.

I was about to find out…..