In 1979 I changed my path and decided a commercial diver could shorten my life span !! So what do I do now. The funny thing was I needed a new car but couldn't afford one. When I turned 18 years old I applied for a mortgage and due to my above average earnings I managed to get one, I bought my a bungalow for andpound;11,500 and my mortgage was andpound;8625.00 so a car was low on my list, Mortgage payment first then my rates !! When I was searching for a new career a Sales Representative kept jumping out of the pages at me, why ? because they gave you a company car perfect !!

One of my hobbies was water skiing, I spent all of my spare time and spare money at the ski club, Holme Pierrepont in Nottingham. Water skiing was in its peak as a sport thanks to Mike Hazlewood world champion in 1977. I loved this sport I entered interclub competitions around the Uk slalom, tricks and jumping.

If you click the link a small film about Mike Hazlewood and the sport in 1977

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRwZ5hjMN2A

Image of Holme Pierrepont Nottingham

One of the members was a Sales Director for a company called BB Flexibles, he was looking for representative. One of his down sides was he drank too much and one evening at a function he had drunk too much wine and offered me a job and I took it. I had a start at last in the world of sales at nearly 20 years old my new path had just begun.

BB Flexible were part of the Michelin group who made rubber hoses for industry. My job was too find distributors up and down the country to stock and supply hose for air, gas etc to industry.

To achieve a better pressure resistance, hoses can be reinforced with fibers or a steel cord. Commonly used reinforcement methods are braiding, spiralling, knitting and wrapping of fabric plies. The reinforcement increases the pressure resistance but also the stiffness. To obtain flexibility, corrugations or bellows are used. Usually, circumferential or helical reinforcement rings are applied to maintain these corrugated or bellowed structures under internal pressure.

I didn't do particularly well with this company I think mainly due to the nature of how I obtained the job. One of my customers Glover and Wood Ltd of Leeds were advertising for a sales representative to cover Derbyshire and South Yorkshire, knowing my long term future was in doubt I applied and got the job. This company along with hoses, supplied Industry with a vast amount of industrial consumable products.

I started with G and W I was introduced to all the existing customers by Jack the sales manager who was about 55 years old. A very nice professional old school salesman. He taught me a lot about my area and customers and after three months threw me out on my own , I thrived I enjoyed the job . My main focus was in the Peak District and surrounding areas as all types of industry was thriving. There was a lot of business to be had in this environment.

PEAK DISTRICT

In medieval and early modern times the area was mainly agricultural with sheep farming, rather than arable, the main activity in upland holdings. From the 16th century, the area's mineral and geological wealth became increasingly significant. Not only lead, but coal, fluorite, copper from Ecton Mines, zinc, iron, manganese and silver have all been mined.

Lead Mine

Lead had traditionally been found by following veins from Surface outcroppings, particularly in "rakes" or vertical fissures.[11] By the 17th century, however, most surface lead had been mined and prospecting was achieved by less direct methods. Miners searched for surface signs that were similar to known lead-rich areas, they checked ploughed and other disturbed land for traces of ore, and they checked for signs in plants and trees and poorly performing crops, since lead is poisonous to most living things. They used probes to check for signs of ore in soil a few feet under the surface and dug exploratory holes or trenches in promising places. This was usually done to choose the best places to sink shafts ahead of existing working and the rules defined when and where these activities could be carried out.

The miners sank their shafts in turns of up to 90 feet (27 metres), each turn being a few yards away from the bottom of the preceding one, along a gallery which may have been the working level reached by the earlier shaft. They climbed up and down their shafts using either footholes in the shaft walls or stemples, wooden steps built into the sides, an exhausting and dangerous way to start and finish a day's work. These climbing shafts were usually within the miners' coe, the limestone-walled cabin in which they stored tools, a change of clothes and food. Where the mine was on a hillside the vein could often be reached via an adit or tunnel driven into the slope.

Ore was brought to the surface up a winding shaft outside the coe. The miners' equipment included picks, hammers and wedges to split the rock, wiskets or baskets to contain it, corves or sledges to drag it to the shaft bottom, and windlasses or stows, to lift it to the surface. In later years underground transport was improved by replacing corves by wagons, often running on wooden or metal rails. A good example of an 18th-century wooden railway can be found in the Merry Tom mine, near Via Gellia.[12] The miners avoided the need to excavate hard rock whenever they could and where it was unavoidable sometimes resorted to fire-setting.[13] A fire was built against the rock face after mining had finished for the day and allowed to burn through the night. Fragmentation of the heated rock was increased by throwing water on to it. The rule about fire-setting only after the end of the day's work was important because in the confined mines the smoke was deadly. Fire-setting was a skilled technique and was used sparingly for that reason as well as because of the disruption caused by the smoke and the danger from splintering rock.

I now had my company car and enjoyed working for a family business, however after 2 years all was to change when the Thomas Tilling Group took over.

If you want to follow the rest of my journey I will be posting each day, I hope you find my journey interesting please comment and share

I am now happy and fulfilled achieving my purpose, I have a property business and an online business. I have learnt to serve others ( as I hope I am doing now ) respect others for what they are trying to achieve no matter how big or small their ambition. I work on my attitude each day and look to help anyone I can on a daily basis.

Thank you for taking the time to read my blog, please share like or comment.