6th old blog

Things were looking good. I had my own pool cleaning business, Hales was extremely happy at being able to work on her own at home. We had enough money
to pay the bills and occasionally have a little left over to go out for a meal with friends. We were enjoying living in Cyprus and the stress of working in the UK
and all the debts we had amassed were under control.
My MS was slowly getting worse but I was enjoying myself so much I was pretty much ignoring it! The first year running the business was difficult as I had never
really been my own boss before. I gradually got the hang of it, eventually paying off Martin from buying the business. It was all mine and I was really enjoying the
job. Some days were long and I would be knackered when I finished but I got great pleasure from seeing how well I was maintaining the pools.
The second year was good and we should have had extra money, but problems with my car and extra running costs of the business reduced the extra we had.
I was starting to feel the effects of my MS more by then. My legs would ache more and I was nipping off for a pee more and more often. I would get fatigued easier
and quite often just wanted to flake out when I got home. Looking back it was around about that time that I must have gone from Relapsing/Remitting MS to
Secondary Progressive MS.
I was still doing a fair bit of diving and had found a new friend to help out a bit in Sylke. I had bought myself a good underwater camera and I found that I was really
enjoying doing underwater photography. I also made friends with Pete who was a mechanic recommended to me, and he had been a commercial diver so he soon
became a really good dive buddy. I was still able to do everything for myself diving but I knew I was starting to find it more difficult getting in and out of the water.
In the 3rd year of running my business I noticed I was starting to find it difficult managing so many pools so I decided to take on a helper. Everything went well
and I soon had them trained up and helping me full time. By the end of that year I was doing less and less of the work and paying my helper to do the pools on their own.
We eventually realised I was losing money as the business did not pay enough for me to pay all the expenses and pay for help. I decided that I wasn’t able to spend
enough time making sure the business was running well and decided to sell the business.
I had met Andy on a pool cleaning course and we got on really well. I knew he had his own business and that he was keen to expand so I decided to offer him the business first before I advertised it. It was a lot to do with the fact that I knew he would look after the pools as good as I had tried to. He accepted buying the
business and I agreed to take payment over time the same as when I bought the
business.
Think that’s enough for this instalment, more to come soon. Wont be long before I am up to the present day and how things are going now!
Rob