We went about, and as I passed under the boom onto the starboard side something tweaked in my back and I found myself in excruciating pain, and completely immobilised. Luckily the boat was pointing in the right direction and I aimed for our shore and safely beached the boat and everyone came and unrigged it. But I couldnt move. Someone suggested I have swim in the natural hot baths nearby, which was fine when in the water but even worse when I got out and felt chilled. I sat or was on my bed doubled up with my stiffness, and had to supervise the loading of the boats on their trailers as we departed and said our goodbyes, and boarded the ship for home. By Venice the pain had eased a bit and we got back to England, but the stiffness was as bad as ever. I made up my mind that under no circumstances was I going to allow myself to be beaten and be seized up by it, at the age of 42. The only course of action was as much physical activity as one could bear so that the lesions would loosen and become supple again. I joined the local squash club and played regularly. The active home therapy over the next few months performed its natural healthy cure without any recourse to drugs and future hospital dependence!
In the autumn of 1972 I felt that I should now consolidate our business position and our future security by acquiring the freehold of our premises in East St. I could see prices were beginning to rise and that our rent would possibly be doubled in three years time. Hitherto with low inflation it had been well recognised as bad business practice to get involved with freeholds as purchasing them reduced ones active working capital which could normally give a return four or five times as much. But against this I felt that we needed the security of having property in England at a time when as a family we had lost our main assets in Ceylon. I felt that it was my responsibility to have a secure income base that could provide for both Mother and Father in their old age, as well as myself and our family. So I approached Mr Sargeant my landlord and said:
“ Look I would like to purchase the freehold from you and as the normal valuation is ten times the rental value, I would like to make it sweeter by offering you double the price at £30,000. I suggest that you go and consult with your Property friend Mr Padwick and see what he has to say!”
He came back to me a few days later and said : “I talked it over with him and he said I should accept but I am not so sure. Somehow I do not think it is right”.
“Well I tell you what I will do. I will offer you £5,000 more but I must have a firm reply in two days time or I will withdraw my offer and do something else”. He came back and agreed and then I linked in with the merchant bank ICFC that was owned by the major clearing banks to help small companies develop. With their help I purchased a company J. Hutchinson Ltd that owned a shop on a fine site in Cobham, which was one of the wealthiest suburbs of London and home to media personalities and top management etc and oozing with money. At that time with Ted Heath’s boom, interest rates were only 6%, and long term floating rates were 9%. The Merchant bank took a long term debenture of £65,000 at a fixed rate of 11% repayable over 10 years. This deal enabled me to expand the business, build the new store at Cobham, and it was to prove my saving lifeline when the inevitable financial crash came two years later, and interest rates soared to over 20%. We were having our very best year ever with Horsham and Cranleigh making a profit of £23,000 which now because we were a partnership put us into the “Super Tax” bracket. Everything was changing and in a flux. A new Tax called “VAT” was introduced in April 1973 and my dear miserable, dry, book-keeper Reg Collard, puffed on his pipe and gave me six months notice that he would leave, as it was too complicated for him and he could not cope with the new system. .
In the winter of 1972, I had finally linked up ICFC, purchased the freehold of the shop in Cobham , I owned the freehold of Scott & Sargeant in Horsham, and had my own home with 4 acres of land in the beautiful countryside of Surrey. Everything seemed like a dream and future progress and expansion appeared as natural as a bird flying through the air. I was full of enthusiasm and willing to take enormous risks to push my ambition forward. The first was when I had finally acquired the Cobham premises. Adjoining the site was a triangle of grassy land with about 60 ft of frontage tapering back to a point at the rear of the shop. It had been owned by a man who had died and bequeathed it for some unknown reason to the Post Office. I contacted them and obtained a lease on the property for £150 a year to set out garden plants etc. As soon as I had the lease, I got a surveyor to draw up plans to build over the whole area, and I went to the council and within three weeks had obtained planning permission to commence work. Bulldozers were in digging out the foundations in the early spring of 1973 and I then wrote to the Post Office informing them of what I was doing, and suggested that it would be easier for all concerned that I renegotiated with them to buy the freehold of this piece of land which was quite useless to them. When they heard what I was doing they went apoplectic with rage, that I had coolly undertaken my building without any sort of permission, but they did agree to sell the freehold at a price of £30,000. I countered that the usual price was ten times the rent and it was worth to me £1,500 but as a generous gesture I would offer them double. Their figure was 200 times the rent and as such was a gross exploitation of the property boom. At the time Harold Wilson the new opposition leader was making great headlines in parliament by denouncing the Tories as a miserable bunch of spongers and speculators creating no real wealth. I threatened the Post Office with making the whole affair a national scandal and they then agreed to tone down their demands and we settled the argument with £10,000 which was a real bargain. When our building was eventually completed we had 9,000 sq ft of space, which later we extended again by another 1000 sq ft.
This period of the property boom, the introduction of Vat, a new book-keeper, dealing with a charming lady from ICFC and the formation of our new company, all coincided to make life absolutely hectic without a second to spare. Life in England was beginning to change from the slow quiet gentlemanly manner of doing business, to an increasingly more ruthless approach. A typical example to illustrate this point was with my solicitor in Horsham. When I first arrived in 1968 to acquire our business I asked Mr Sargeant if he could recommend a good solicitor to act for me. He suggested John Mitchell a partner in Coole & Haddock’s in the Carfax or centre of the town. I found him to be a delightful character, short and stocky in his fifties, with a broad Sussex accent, which is rare nowadays. When I told him that I was from Ceylon he replied that he too had spent the latter part of the war at Peradeniya near Kandy on the staff of Admiral Mountbatten who was then the overlord of South East Asia Command. So we had many reminiscences together as we concluded the purchase. A month later I met him and reminded him that we had not had a bill.
“Oh don’t worry about that now” he replied, “You have got a lot of expenses which are far more critical than my account, and it can wait|”.
Six months still without the bill , I met him socially one day at a party and reminded him again.
“Oh yes I see what I can do, I will look into it”.
Eighteen months later I acquired from the national company MacFisheries our shop in Cranleigh, Surrey, and again he handled all the legal side and I reminded him again. In 1972 we were then in complex negotiations with ICFC, we set up a new company, and acquired another, and I again asked him to render an account for all the work he had done and finally in March 1973 he sent me my bill, saying that he wanted to get his accounts all straight before the onset of VAT! This was over 5 years after he had commenced his original work!
