Washing Day Again!

I mentioned at the end of last week’s blog since our family holidays in our blue S Type, that she has been given a deep clean and now that she is only used for weddings. This leads me to answer what many have asked me since we turned professional - how often do you clean your cars as they are always pristine?

Well, to state the obvious, they do get very dirty on our country roads especially when it is raining. Having said that, the S Type is only taken out when the roads are dry unless we are doing a wedding in her when the weather is bad. Although she is very reliable she is still an old lady and needs to be respected to preserve her!

Needless to say I do enjoy bringing both our ‘working’ cars back to their normal glory when they have got messy.

Before each wedding the car that is being used, is cleaned immaculately and new fresh wax is applied. Additionally, we clean and condition the leathers in the car and give the whole inside a full clean, including inside the doors around the hinges as well, to ensure that the passengers who enter the car need not fear about any dirt getting on their clothes, especially the brides beautiful dress!

For the silver XFS, not only is she cleaned for weddings, but also before any executive travel journeys I do in her for clients, like airport transfers, events, special occasions, or taking clients to other parts of the country for a long weekend, when driving the long distance is just too much for them.

Additionally, when we have to travel a distance either before we pick up the bride or client for executive travel, the car becomes dirty to varying degrees from the road grime on the journey to the client. This means that we set off much earlier to ensure that we have the chance to clean the car again before we meet our client. 

Our intention, is that whenever we meet a client, the car is presented in a totally clean state when they enter the car. Not only is the car cleaned from any dirt when we arrive close to the pick up point for our client, but more detailing wax is applied - subject to when it is not actually raining at that time. Should it be raining, we ensure the car is clean in any case as much as is possible.

So you see, cleaning our cars is done frequently.

So very briefly, to pull this week’s edition to a close, when a car is extremely dirty, we follow the below steps, with the twice yearly additional deeper cleansing as indicated:

1. Apply snow foam with a snow lance attached to a jet wash

2. Leave to soak for 10 minutes

3. Jet wash the car

4. Wash the shampoo and a woollen mitt

5. Use a clay cloth with juice to remove the deeper road grime (twice yearly)

6. Jet wash the car

7. Dry with microfibre drying towels

8. Apply deep polish to remove swirls etc and polish off with clean microfibre cloth (twice yearly)

9. Apply deep carnauba wax to lock in the shine and give further protection and buff up with clean microfibre cloth (twice yearly)

10. Apply detailing carnauba wax to all surfaces except windows to add more shine and protection, including the stainless steel exhaust pipes

11. Apply special window cleaner and buff with clean microfibre cloth

12. Wheels are also cleaned with using specialised fluids and dried before applying tyre gloss and then finally adding the rim coating to protect from further dirt build up

I will leave to another blog describing the types of materials I use inside the car and outside, why and also where I resource them from to a later blog. I hope you find the above helpful and interesting.

Recalculating…

Several years ago, during the winter, I was trying to get back from Hull and many of the roads were so flooded they were impassable. It was just before this journey that we as a family decided to get a SatNav, thankfully before and not after! As I approached one road after another but still heading South, the roads were blocked so I had to divert and take another route, causing the SatNav to recalculate the route and we tried again. The total journey that usually took between 4-5 hours actually took 10 hours!

The SatNav managed to save me many hours on my business travels, but also on family holidays. As with most inanimate objects used by our family, SatNav was quickly given a name, Jane. We had many adventures with her, but a few have stuck with me - the ones that caused the most stress mostly!

I recall one particular holiday in Pembrokeshire with my wife, our youngest daughter and our German Shepherd Beulah. We found a beautiful beach, Cwm-Yr-Eglwys, and as it was quite late in the day, we decided to have Jane save the location as a ‘favourite’, meaning that no matter what angle we were approaching on another day, we would be able to find it again - perfect!

A few days later we decided to make a day of going to Cwm-Yr-Eglwys. As we were getting closer to the beach, Jane took us down a road that looked like a nice little shortcut through the pretty Welsh countryside. Living in rural Wiltshire, we were quite used to narrow lanes that usually open up into larger lanes, however I was a little concerned when we came across grass growing in the middle of the road. As we headed further along it, the trees got thicker overhead and the verges were closing in on us with rocks sticking out in places - not just soft grass and ferns! After coming so far, I decided it was best to keep going forwards slowly rather than risk attempting to reverse all the way back up to the main road.

The only way forward was for us to each open our windows, the road was too narrow to open the doors, and check a couple of feet ahead to see if the S Type would be able to move forward without causing damage. When I received the all clear, I moved the car another 2 feet, then we each checked again and continued until we were past that stretch.

The next hurdle was a hairpin bend which, when I was negotiating it we noticed some walkers who seemed to watch us with disbelief. As I continued to work my way round the bend so to speak, I called out to them that we were on a ‘Top Gear’ challenge!

Amazingly, we came across a house with a nice couple who told us the best form of transport in that area was, surprise surprise, boat or a very small car! They explained that Cwm-Yr-Eglwys was in fact not reachable on that road. It would come to a dead end just before the beach! Thankfully, before the dead end, there was a turning onto another road that would get us back to the main road and we could get to the beach on the original road we'd used a few days earlier. No need to reverse up that road! 

We did eventually reach Cwm-Yr-Eglwys, which Beulah enjoyed enormously after being cooped up on the back seat of the Jaguar next to our daughter for a long time. 

After many family holidays with a few similar, though not quite as bad, experiences and a German Shepherd, our S Type survived and has since been lovingly cleaned, polished and thoroughly vacuumed throughout. She is now enjoying her retirement as a wedding car!

Why Jaguar?

On my travels and at the networking meetings I attend, I am often asked why I chose Jaguars. When I purchased our first Jaguar 11 years ago, I was working within a global corporate company and previously owned a Vauxhall Omega.

At the time when we needed to change our family car, which was also used to travel for work, Vauxhall no longer manufactured Omegas and didn’t produce anything near the size that we had become used to. So, having driven Vauxhalls for many years, I had to go on the search and test drive many different cars.

When I was being chauffeur driven for the corporate job I was often in BMW or Mercedes Benz, and although they are the normal chauffeur cars, they were not quite what I was looking for.

We first tried Volvo, Ford, VW, Audi and Jaguar. To be honest although the most comfortable we drove was the Jaguar X Type, we thought that there was just no way we could either afford one or would feel too embarrassed owning one being that Jaguars, were usually regarded as for the super rich when I was growing up!

We also test drove a Saab, but even that was not comfortable enough for us - we were beginning to run out of options and really, my heart was set on buying a British car.

So we went back to the garage to see what deals could be done, and Grange Jaguar at Swindon did not disappoint! We soon surprised ourselves in buying the 2005 Jaguar X Type 2.0 V6 SE in deep Pacific Blue.

The day we brought the X Type back with our faithful Omega besides

Now, the timing of this purchase was critical not only for us, but also a couple who we were due to provide a wedding car for. They expected to be using the Omega when they asked us. 

I placed the order for the X Type and while at the garage, I made a phone call to them saying something like this…. ‘Hello, it’s Dave. You know we are providing your wedding car, well we have just sold it and we no longer have it……….. instead we will be picking up a Jaguar X Type the week before your wedding - would you like that instead??’

The answer was just as we hoped for, but even better… it went something like this…. ‘That is just amazing, what an incredible treat and surprise, my fiancé has always dreamt of having a Jaguar for his wedding. Thank you so much Dave’

Our Jaguar prepared for the first big cat wedding!

One of the biggest pleasures was not only doing several weddings, as well as for our 2 oldest daughters’ weddings, but also taking my father out for a drive. He had always loved the Jaguar brand but was never able to own one even though he owned with his brother, my Uncle Gordon, a garage that sold new British cars and used cars for many brands.

That car served us well as a family car as well as for business and weddings until we part exchanged it in May 2009 for another big cat. Our long term relationship with Jaguar as a brand was developing! 

Presenting.....

During the corporate jobs over the past 15-20 years, I was required to do many presentations, stand up and address varying people of different levels in the companies. As I've mentioned in past blogs, travel was a big part of my previous job. I was required to go Milan, Italy a few times to do some training and presentations, although there is one trip I will not forget. 

The day I was travelling I was required to go to the company HQ at Slough. Following the meetings I had there, I was whisked away to the airport by the corporate chauffeur. He took me swiftly to Terminal 3 where I paid up, got out of the car and made my way to the nearest departures board - the plane was on time. All going to plan… Or so I thought!

My laptop bag seemed rather light. I checked it and found that my laptop was not inside, it was still on my desk in Slough! I definitely would need it in Milan as I was doing some training at the office. All of my information was on the computer.

I rang the office who gave me the phone number of the corporate chauffeur. I then rang and he agreed to go back to the office, collect my laptop and bring it to the airport. He made it just in time for me to get through Security in time to board the plane. Thank goodness for the kindness of the chauffeur!

The experience of giving many presentations in different environments has put me in good stead as I now need to present in networking meetings but also to key individuals in companies and hotels. Except now it is on a subject that I really can say I am passionate about. 

After planning what to write for this blog, I was presenting at a networking meeting from my laptop. When I arrived at the venue I proceeded to set up my TV screen that I was using, got out the cables to connect it to the laptop, reached in my bag for the laptop… It had happened again! Except this time the laptop on my desk at home and I was the chauffeur, so I couldn't nip back and get it in time for my presentation. I managed to improvised by using my iPad. My opening line was ‘I’ll just connect my iPad to the screen’, at which point I placed the iPad on the top of the TV screen which thankfully caused quite a few laughs. Many people congratulated me on the presentation, so no harm done!

Turkish Delight...?

Last week’s blog mentioned about seeds being sown for the chauffeur business, although, at that stage I had no plans to change my career any time soon. The global company I worked for gave me plenty of opportunities to travel abroad, which I loved for many years. More often than not when I was overseas, the business trip was very much like this: taxi from the airport to the hotel, the next morning, taxi from the hotel to the office and at the end of the working day, taxi back to the hotel, change clothes and then taxi to the evening meal somewhere other than the hotel if we were lucky, then taxi back to the hotel and repeat.

So, you can see being sat in the back seat allowed me time to experience the varying standards of driving in many different countries. One of the worst I have ever experienced was in Istanbul Our team were being taken back to the hotel late at night by two taxis. The drivers drove at an unsafe speed, braked erratically, cornered sharply with the result that we were literally being thrown about. We were fearing for our lives when, for some reason, it seemed they stopped in the middle of the road and refused to go any further. We had to pay and get out - I have no idea to this day why and all I can think of is that perhaps we hit a time limit for those particular drivers shift.

So perhaps it was a blessing that our taxi driver threw us out! The drama didn’t stop there though as when our team tried to find our way back to the hotel, the rest of the team decided to go to a night club, which I didn’t want to do, so I was left on my own to find my way back. There was no way I was going to attempt to find another taxi and potentially risk my life again!

Thank goodness for 3G and an iPhone - I turned on Maps and entered the name of the hotel, which it found immediately and I proceeded to walk the 3.5 miles back. However, it was a race against time as my battery was getting low. At least it was quite hot weather in the middle of the night and not raining. 

I took the shortest distance to the hotel, walking past a group a people when I couldn’t fail to notice some poor person was on the floor being kicked and beaten - something inside me was being torn to help him, but I decided the best thing to do was to keep looking straight ahead and walk through the crowd literally praying as I did.

Thankfully the same time my iPhone battery died, I could see the neon lights of the hotel high above all other buildings. I finally arrived at my room, safe and thankful.

I did however, find the people in that city very welcoming and their turkish delight was the best I ever tasted - the family enjoyed them too!

Enter Mr Bean!

During my time working for a company that was in Swindon, I was given the opportunity for overseas travel, visiting a number of countries including regular trips to Copenhagen. My three daughters and I had made an unspoken deal in the family that each time I went overseas I would bring a gift I could only get from that country. Some times it was special Danish cakes and other times wafer thin chocolate that I thought was only available in Denmark. Years later my eldest daughter found that exact type of chocolate had been available in a nearby supermarket! I tried!

About 6 years ago the Swindon office was closed and most of the employees were either made redundant or were moved to the offices in Hull or Slough. I thankfully managed to negotiate a ‘work from home’ contract which required me to go to the global head office in Slough for meetings only 2-3 times per week to start with. When friends and family asked me where I was working I would innocently reply the ‘Home Office’. Most cottoned on to the joke, but one of my sisters genuinely believed I meant the Home Office in Westminster! We played that joke for quite a while, until she eventually realised!

Being home based with the need to travel to Slough frequently, meant I was often driving to Slough during the rush hour and naturally got used to driving through those difficult conditions. Then when I had to go abroad, I used to leave my car in the relative safety of the head office car park, and catch a corporate chauffeur driven vehicle to Heathrow. This gave me lots of experience of the good, not so good and quite honestly, the painful times being chauffeur driven by other people. The seeds for creating my own executive travel company were being sown.

Whilst waiting for a meeting to start at the head office, I was sat in their reception area enjoying a coffee. Unfortunately, I was blissfully unaware that every time I reached forward to pick up my drink from the low coffee table, my tie was being dunked in my mug! I only realised something was wrong when the coffee had seeped through my shirt and trousers. Thankfully I was quite early for my meeting, so I rushed to the toilets and attempted to dry my clothes using the hand dryer, very much like the famous sketch by Mr Bean!

Dazzled by the Light

Around 2001, when I was working for the software company, my employer had a job for me in central Manchester which required me to stay over during the week. As it happens, my younger sister and her family lived in nearby Preston. One evening, after work, I popped in to see them. On my way back to my hotel in Manchester, I found that I was unable to actually see the road signs indicating which junction off the orbital M60 motorway to come off. In fact, they were dazzling bright and I realised I could not focus as everything was a blur! This was very frightening and concerning. As soon as I got home I made an appointment to see my optician, who informed me, as I suspected, that I required glasses! Since that day I have always worn them whilst driving. Thankfully I have never since had a repeat of that experience I had on the M60!

In 2002, when I started working with my last employer, I was able to cycle to work just 6 miles away from home. During those initial years I was frequently visiting Derby, Hull and Slough, but also Copenhagen. In one of my previous blogs, I mentioned how I joined a cycling club around this time. Here's a photo of myself with my fellow cyclists from Team Ridgeway.

Team Ridgeway - can you guess which one is me?

For the journeys in Britain that required a car, I used my own, the Vauxhall Omega; which we affectionately called 'Goldie'.When travelling to Hull from Royal Wootton Bassett, it was a 220 mile journey to the factory. But I used to get up at, what we called, 'the crack of sparrows’ and get there often by 9am ready to do a full days work. I would then head to West Carlton Country Guest House and I would often stay there for 2 or 3 nights before returning home.

West Carlton Country Guest House 2008

I will take this opportunity to recommend them, as Tim and Caroline Maltas were always so good to me and provided a very high standard of accommodation and hospitality. Do check them out on their website as they are worth considering when you are in the Yorkshire area. We have even spent a few days on a family holiday there as I enjoyed the visits I did for work so much. Here is a photograph of their property, as it looked in 2008, during a family holiday we had then. Can you spot my youngest daughter in one of the windows?

With all the extensive travelling I have done, both abroad and in Britain, it has certainly given me a wealth of experience! 

Keeping The Balance

Fast forwarding a few years, in 1983 as a couple, my wife and I settled in Royal Wootton Bassett and had 2 daughters. I was still working as an accountant for various different companies in the local area (not at the same time!), and progressed through many disciplines of accountancy roles. At the company where I worked as Group Chief Accountant in Swindon, I reported to a person with the same name as the then current Prime Minister, John Major. This made for lots of fun conversations with friends and family about my work!

With a rather sedentary job, finding a way to stay fit and healthy was important to me. I always have had a love of cycling, especially since watching the 1976 Tour De France in Paris on the Champs Elysee. So turning my hobby into a way of not only keeping fit, but also a way to commute to work (15 miles there and back!) was an easy decision. After a while I joined a cycling club, which has given me plenty of amusing, if not painful, stories to tell!  

During this time, the family business was still carrying on until my parents and uncle retired and then it was sold to another company. It was sad to see the business leave the family, but life moves on as they say.

Just over 20 years ago from today, I was working for a major company near Swindon, that had a gave me an opportunity to switch from Finance to an IT role, specifically looking after their Finance systems. I was still not travelling much at that stage, although I had a few business trips to Munich. 

It was not until I was head hunted by a software company based in Alton, Hampshire when I took on the role of a Finance Systems Consultant. I was then sent to many different locations where their clients were, to provide support and work on specific projects at the time.This position took me to Manchester, Redhill, Cambridge, Kings Lynn and many more. I had always enjoyed driving and at that time I was driving a Vauxhall Omega pictured below which was so comfortable and smooth, but also a great family car. 

Our final Vauxhall before we bought our first Jaguar in 2006

I now discovered that like my father, I had the stamina to drive long distances. As I have said in previous blogs, my father was also an RAC recovery driver, rescuing people whose vehicles had broken down. It was fun to hear about my father’s stories of people he had picked up and taken to their destination in different places throughout Britain, with their vehicle behind them on the trailer. I seemed to have found my ideal job as I was fulfilling a passion for driving, but was able to earn an income from a demanding job as well. As with many good things, there was a down side. With the increase of travelling, I was spending more and more time away from my growing family.

This was a situation that was difficult to balance, but after 3-4 years with that company, I found a role with another major global corporate company in the area that was just 6 miles away from our home. By then, we had a third daughter who was growing up rapidly, so this seemed ideal.

The bonus was that there was still some travel, but not nearly as much as before…… initially, that is.

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!

From coaches to elbow grease and sky hooks!

I would like to tell you a few more stories of the early days of just before my time, my childhood and growing up within the family business.

My father’s long distance driving really started in the 1940-50’s with the coach business known as Dauntsey Vale Coaches, which was then run as part of Barnes & Sons started by my grandfather which preceded the G & K Barnes Ltd business, where they operated several coaches as shown below. This was before my time, so all I have are a few photos now, but it helps me appreciate that the care I show my clients has its roots in my father to whom I owe a lot.

Fast forwarding several years, G & K Barnes Ltd also provided an RAC Recovery service for drivers that had broken down and needed transport with their vehicle to anywhere in Britain. Mostly Dad provided the service and we would often receive a phone call any time day or night with my Mother packing Dad up with provisions for a long journey ahead.

This service was initially using the Austin Westminster (Westie) and trailer and then later with the Range Rover (Rangey) as shown below with Dad.

On a few of these journeys during the late 1960’s and early 70’s, I had the opportunity to go along with Dad provided I did what I was told and it did not interrupt with my schooling. This was really exciting to me as a child and bearing in mind there was no ‘Sat-Nav’ as we call it, so we had to use a map and compass. It was during these trips that I learnt through Dad, how to navigate using these tools. It is so much easier these days!

Amazingly, during the late 1970s, Dad was able to stay in contact with our base via the latest technology called a mobile cellphone, as example is shown below - it looked much like a brick, although this is a photo off google and not by Dad! The below photo and more details on mobile phone history are available through this external link

I mentioned during my last blog that I used to frequently wander down to the garage as it was next door but one, to our family home. One of the ways I helped, was to fetch parts and tools for the mechanics occasionally from the Parts Department. On a few of these occasions I can remember Ray in the Workshop telling me to ask Godfrey for a ‘sky hook’, and when I asked him, Godfrey responded with the reassuring ‘I think you’ve been had Master Barnes’. On another occasion, Ken in the Bodyshop told me to ask Godfrey for some ‘elbow grease’. You can guess what Godfrey said - I soon caught onto questioning more what I was being asked for - a good lesson for a 7 year old to learn!

I hope I am a bit wiser these days! Anyway that’s it for this week folks.

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.