Lucy and Gary were the first to move out of the family home and eventually Kelly did too when she started studying at Aberdeen University. Kelly had/has a very independent spirit and she didn't want to commute from Banchory everyday, so she chose to move in to a series of flats in Aberdeen - initially on campus in student quarters but eventually in to private lets. This, of course, left just Ross at home and it was quite a change for him, going from a house where he was surrounded by big sisters and a big brother to one where he was literally and metaphorically home alone at times.
To support herself and pay the rent, Kelly took a variety of waitressing jobs - at times, as many as 3 at a time - and this heralded the end of her darker, grungey period, as evidenced by this snap of her and Ross, taken some time in 1998, I believe:
Jo, too, faced a similar "empty nest" dilemma - what to do when the family have all left home? She eventually decided she would need to go back to teaching, but first of all, some refresher work would be required. Eventually, she was ready to face the world and started to do some supply teaching. It was probably good experience, but Jo never liked the last minute nature of it. Often she would get calls at 8 am in the morning asking her to be somewhere within the hour. Panic!
After some time, Jo managed to get a regular part-time position at St. Joseph's school in Aberdeen, job-sharing with her good friend Johanne Kilgour, who, although only still in her 40's, was already displaying symptoms of Parkinson's. Johanne's gradual deterioration from that point on put a bit of a strain on their friendship for a little while, as Jo was often left to deal with the tasks that poor Johanne found increasingly difficult to do.
Eventually, Johanne had to succumb to the inevitable and retire completely due to her ill health, and Jo took on the role full-time. One problem solved but another one just beginning - although little did Jo know about it at this stage. It was to be the beginning of a dozen or so years of increasing torture for Jo until she eventually retired later in the noughties, by which time she was on a treadmill of up early, in to school to prepare, teach, rush home, prepare tea and then upstairs to mark homework, deal with all the forward plans and admin now involved in teaching, then off to bed and start all over again. She was ready to break - but I'm getting ahead of myself again.
On a more cheerful note, our holiday schedule was building up. We were tied, of course, to the school holidays now, but we took as many chances as we could to get away, with USA in the summer the main one. I mentioned in a previous posting that we went on two couples' golf holidays to Portugal and the second time to the Costa del Sol - a place we were comfortable in, having acquired our first timeshare near Marbella.
On one of those Spanish trips, we decided to take a trip over the border to Gibraltar. There was a long queue of cars to cross the border on to the Rock. Spanish politicians don't like the fact that Gib remains British and they make sure the whole Customs crossing process is as painful as possible. We were waiting in line and were eventually approached by an official looking guy with a uniform on, asking for the "import tax" or something. I should have smelled a rat, but didn't and just paid up. He stuck some kind of stamp on our windscreen - but, of course, we couldn't read it from inside the car. When we eventually got to the official point of entry, the officer there looked scornfully at our windscreen and asked what "that" was? His look said it all - stupid Brit.
Another time, we took a drive inland up to the beautiful town of Ronda. To this day, a large poster, subsequently framed, hangs in our house. We also went to Granada to see the Alhambra and pretty little Mijas also impressed.
At work, an acquisition opportunity came our way towards the end of 1996. Neptune (Fish Exports) was being sold by their Dutch parent and we were interested, particularly as much of their business was in smoked pelagic fish and we had a similar, smaller operation (Cromack) in Fraserburgh. Money wasn't a problem - we had the resources, but we had lots of other businesses to manage, including a veritable fleet of vessels, in addition to the canning plant and our international trading businesses. There was one other interested party - Nor-Sea Foods. They, too, were in the smoking business but their problem was the opposite of ours - they had plenty of time, but not the cash. We resolved the matter by buying half of Nor-Sea Foods and then using that business to acquire Neptune.
The negotiations - and subsequent agreements - were fairly protracted and complicated and it was nearing the Christmas holiday period when all of the Clarks disappeared to foreign parts, leaving me to handle everything. To be fair, "the Doc" called me every day from Florida to see how I was getting on and we got through it all OK in the end. This deal was to turn out to be the best thing that ever happened, as this part of the business subsequently grew substantially in both size and profits to become the mainstay of the business today.
Approaching my half century, I had long since given up running (check some of my medals below), but I was still very active:
Football and squash, however, didn't seem then like long-term propositions and I figured I needed to do something else apart from golf. My interest in music had been further stimulated by our by now regular Headbanger sessions and eventually Colin Kilgour and I talked each other in to going for guitar lessons. Ruthrieston College - no longer there - was where we started our Beginners courses. It was a one hour session in midweek and, at the time, both Colin and I had busy full-time jobs, with us both doing a lot of miles in our cars.
A liking for, and interest in, music doth not a great guitar player make. Raw talent helps of course, but there was nothing much we could do about our lack of that, but we could have - and should have - at least applied a bit more application. I lost count of the number of weeks I would show up at class, not having picked up my guitar since the previous week's lesson. We were given "homework" to practice on each week, but I seldom seemed to find the time to do it.
Whilst on the subject of music, remember (my) Grannie Stewart's old piano, which sat in our back room for many years?:
Lucy had played it a bit in earlier years but she was now away and the piano needed tuned and maintained and there seemed little prospect of anybody else getting much use out of it, so we decided it had served its purpose and it was time for it to go. This corner of the room was now being used for other things anyway:
Ross - the start of the computer years.
Another diversion/potential hobby/business opportunity that arose about this time was the idea of starting our own brewery. The microbrewing revolution had barely got off the ground in those days and although there were new breweries in such relatively remote areas as Skye, Orkney, Shetland etc, the whole of the large Grampian area was a brewery-free zone.
I gathered together a few pals who were interested in the idea - Jas Bhagrath and Syd Freeman initially, then Keith Gray, Peter Cook and Richard Simcox joined us. We did some dedicated "research" and went to look and learn from others. Trips to Doncaster, Burnley and Bury St. Edmonds were undertaken and we soon learned what we were short of - a brewer. The nearest we had was Jas and, although he was initially unemployed, when he picked up a position again, we had to look externally.
Our search eventually brought us together with Robert Lindsay, who was planning to build a brewery at the Lairhillock Inn. We swapped business plans but couldn't come to an agreement with him. In the end, he did it and we didn't - not long after we met, he bought the Creel Inn in Catterline and after several years of very successful trading there, he sold it and bought the Marine Hotel in Stonehaven and subsequently has built a brewery nearby and then last year opened a Belgian Beer Bar in Aberdeen - http://www.sixdnorth.co.uk/.
Opportunity missed, I'm afraid. We could have run a nice little business and had some fun doing it too. When Lucy lived in Redding, we met up with a chap called Robert Ames, who Derek had met whilst working at the local pub. Robert was a bit of a home brewer and gave me lots of reading materials on brewing. He came to Scotland on holiday one year and we did the tourist thing with him:
 |
| Robert Ames, John & Lorna Anderson (Derek's Stepdad and mother) and me
So, I've failed in my mission to make it to the end of the Millennium with this posting. There's still a bit to write about but I'll try and get round to it shortly. Watch this space.
|
No comments:
Post a Comment