Aconite Mini and Floppy disks

In last weeks blog, I mentioned about producing the month end accounts and managing the forecourt at my father’s garage business. This was a time of my life when I first started to learn about hard work and making sacrifices for the family business.

Customer care was paramount when I was serving behind the till and was also required when going out to help the customer with checking the tyres, filling up with oil and fuel. I also had to deal with enquiries directly from customers related to products that we sold out of the small shop. Those were the days when we were taught that the ‘customer was always right’, and I believe this attitude has continued with me to this day.

Sometimes it was a struggle to remain polite, especially with some customers, who had never got used to the fact that automation and self service was here to stay. Often with them, it was a case of going the extra mile to meet their demands, but customer satisfaction was key to the success of the business.

Back then, I learnt to deal with cash and to give the correct change worked out manually, my strength in maths was helpful for this! That was until more and more people were starting to use credit cards, which meant we were then using a machine similar to the one below - much bigger that the machines we use today!

Around this time of our lives, just before myself and my wife were married ourselves, we often attended weddings for friends. I can remember my first duty as a wedding car provider for a friend, I had no idea that I would one day actually be a professional chauffeur! Believe it or not, I was dressed in a bright green suit and used my Mini shown below, to transport 3 bridesmaids. We had an impossible deadline to get through the city of Bath, but we got there and so my first wedding chauffeur experience was done. You may even be able to notice my green waistcoat and my fiancé by my side, who I had to leave at the church whilst I went off to collect the bridesmaids.

The same Mini was originally green but when I took it over I did some small modifications and painted it an aconite colour, using the facilities of the Paint Shop in the garage. I can remember taking that car on many trips to Cheddar, Somerset and have to admit I was not as diligent on keeping the speed limits as I have now been for many years. Guess that made me a boy racer in my youth!

Thinking again about my ‘garage’ days, the time had come to consider computerising the accounts and after much persuasion and investigation, I managed to convince my father and uncle that they needed a computer. Eventually they invested in an Apricot Computer much like the library picture below found on this link:

After many long days and nights, I finally transitioned all the accounts and management reports to the computer. The 3 1/2 " floppy disk was an incredible invention, it stored so much information… Or did it?

Anyway, thats it for this week folks.

The Lady and the Morris

Continuing on with the series on growing up within the family business and starting a career in accounting.

With both my parents heavily involved in the family garage business, it was expected that I would follow suit, but my father encouraged me to study hard and go for an accountancy career. I always enjoyed the subject of maths, so accountancy seemed like a reasonable choice. 

After school, I went to Bristol Polytechnic and took the Foundation Course in Accountancy for which there were 7 subjects to pass in and in those days all subjects had to be passed in the same sitting. This was extremely hard when, for me, there was only one subject that I seemed unable to get through, which was Law. I went through retakes over many years, also when I was working in a Chartered Accountancy practise in Cheddar, Somerset, and even during the time when I was ‘courting’ a lovely young lady who later became my wife.

With the family business being a garage, there was quite some choice of which car to use for our wedding! There were cars by Austin, Morris, Rover, MG and Wolesley, but there was car that was extra special as my paternal great uncle had bought it in 1936 from the then named 'Barnes & Sons'. A Morris 8 four door saloon. This lovely car is still owned by my older brother!

For me, this was a ‘no brainer’ and so my Uncle Gordon, Dad's brother and partner in the business, was our chauffeur for the day. Below you can see a photo of myself and the beautiful old lady, oh, and my new wife! When it had be raining most of the day previously, I could forgive the saggy ribbons!

At that stage I had never imagined that I would one day be a professional chauffeur, as my mind was still fixed on being an accountant.

In the following years after being married I changed the companies I worked for a few times, and then the accountant role at the family garage business became available. I accepted the position and gradually took over from my mother. After the transition was over, I was heavily involved in producing month end accounts for the purchase and sales ledgers as well as the nominal ledger and producing management accounts for the Forecourt, Parts, Service, Paint and Body Shop, RAC relays and Customs (for RAF Lyneham), and New and Used Car Sales departments.

It was a time when I could put my 'double entry T Account (Debits and Credits)' knowledge into practise first hand, using a massive NCR Accounting Machine, similar to the photo I have found on the website below. The whole machine weighed a ton or more and was incredibly noisy!

I learnt so much during the years at the garage and was very much involved in stock control, forecasting and managing staff and shifts on the forecourt as well as serving on the pumps and balancing the till.  Debt collection was also something I had to, and I have to say, back in those days farmers were sometimes quite difficult to get to pay. I also used to have to climb up on tankers, one of them is below to check the dipstick - we have deliveries of 27,500 litres sometimes twice a week

I can remember on more than one occasion people driving off without paying for their fuel, with me quickly getting someone to stand in for me and then I drove off promptly to chase them down, sadly unsuccessfully. But that was quite fun!

How did this happen?

This being my initial blog, is to start a series that helps you to understand where I come from and how this passion to drive came about. I hope you enjoy reading this and that it gives you an insight into what ‘drives’ me, excuse the pun! 

Born in 1959, I was brought up my by parents in the little village of Dauntsey Lock, near Lyneham and was one of 5 children, 1 brother and 3 sisters. My father Kenneth and his brother, my uncle Gordon ran a garage business G & K Barnes Ltd in the village, which later expanded to having a garage at nearby Lyneham. So straight away you will appreciate that I grew up with cars very much being in the family and that my parents ran a family business.

As I grew older, I used to spend a lot of time at the garage, and indeed used to serve customers on the pumps where I was often told ‘fill her up with 4 star please’. In those days there was no self service, and an attendant would fill your car with petrol, check the oil and water and wash your windscreen for you as part of the service. That attendant at times was me, even though I was only a lad. 

The customer would pay me the amount I told him and I would then take the cash to the till to ring it in, going back out to the car to give him any change. My mother also worked at the garage as well as being a full time mum to us all. Mum would ‘cash up’ at the end of the shifts and balance the till as it was called. She also prepared the accounts with my father.

Eventually in the 1970’s automation started to creep in and our garage installed with BP what was called a 'note acceptor'. This meant that after hours when the garage was closed, we could let customers serve themselves petrol once they have inserted the cash amount of petrol they wanted. For this, they would have to insert a valid cash note into a tray which the machine would accept, that then released the pump for them to dispense the petrol into their tank.

This idea of serving yourself was quite slow to catch on at first and I can recall a customer at some point having tried to insert a £5 note into the door crack instead of the notes tray and shouting to the machine to actually put the fuel into his tank. I am still not sure whether he expected the pump nozzle to move itself into his fuel tank or not - it was quite funny at the time!!

As you can imagine there are more stories like this that I could share, but growing up in a family business taught me that customer care was always paramount in building a business, which is something we as a family now, pay particular attention to with every client we have.

I hope you enjoy reading this very short initial blog as I hope to add more contents over the coming weeks on this first series. I also have other ideas for future series but I will leave that for later.