Many years ago I was working in Wrexham at a food cold storage facility, and I had a young apprentice to nurture. His name was Kevin, and every morning over a cup of tea we would religiously study our stars to see what the day held in store for us. We even took it to a point where we would determine our day’s work by what the stars had in store for us. ‘Today you will have trouble concentrating and be unable to achieve much.’
“Well, hey, Kevin. Lets just have another cup of tea then!”
One day, back in 2002, my stars said, ‘Stop dreaming and start living your dreams. You will be surprised where you find a receptive ear.’ I could not equate to that but those words kept going round in my tiny mind as we tackled some trivial maintenance task.
‘Stop dreaming and start living your dreams.’ But what was my dream? Ah, that was easy. I wanted to get back to sailing and buy another boat. But a receptive ear? It took me all of 20 minutes to come up with a ‘plan’! The telephone conversation went something like this.
“Mr Lloyd? (Yes, THE Mr Lloyd of the bank by the same name.) Tim Carrington here. - Yes, I’m fine, thank you. And you?” The pleasantries over I got down to business. “ - I read my horoscope this morning, and this is what it said. Stop dreaming and start living your dreams. You will be surprised where you find a receptive ear.” Pause for a comment from my business bank manager, but none was forthcoming.
“What I want is a business loan of £15,000 to buy a boat. You know my business will stand it. I want to start teaching people to sail and when it takes off I want to scale down on my engineering.” Where did that come from? An instant business plan?
The potentially receptive ear said he would call me back in half an hour, or rather the voice of the person WITH the potentially receptive ear said he would call back. Even I know that ears can only listen.
Half an hour later he rang back. “I can’t lend you £15,000 to buy a boat!” (Bugger, shit, arseholes. His was the wrong receptive ear!) I said, “not to worry, but with a horoscope like that I just had to try.” “Let me finish,” he added, “because I can lend you £10,000 to buy a car.”
A car? What did I want a car for? I was a white van driver. A scourge of the open road. I terrorised reps in company cars, gave way to ALL women and was the last of the late brakers at roundabouts.
“I can’t put down ‘boat’ as the reason for a business loan, but what you spend the money on is up to you,” he added by way of explanation.
So that’s how I got back into boating. Six years later I traded up from ‘Nivram’ a 27’ Cutlass, to ‘Lady H’ a 36’ Gib Sea, and here I am, some 30,000 miles later, teaching people to sail, helping others further their sailing skills and taking people on cruises around Corsica and Sardinia. If you want a moral to this entry, then perhaps it should be, don’t knock the tabloid horoscopes. One day it might just apply to you.
Of course, that was all years ago, as I have said. And it is not all blue skies and gentle winds. It has rained and blown then rained and blown again for the last four days! So why this blog, now? Blame Miriam the Go Mad Nomad!
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