The early part of 2008 was probably some of the best times for us. I was working hard and learning a new trade at the same time. Hales was working and enjoying the peace and quiet of working from home. Our 3 cats were settled nicely into life together in the new place.
My MS was still pretty much behaving itself, the few symptoms I had were fairly mild and easy to hide. The only one a bit more obvious was that I had to go to the toilet more often, and get there quickly!
I was still doing quite a bit of scuba diving and loving every bit of it. I had bought myself a half decent underwater camera and that became the thing I enjoyed the most when diving.
I started taking loads of photos when I went diving. Of people, the sea life nd just the general scenery underwater. I even managed to persuade Martin to learn to scuba dive and got some good photos while helping Emil when he was reaching him.
I was definitely feeling quite settled back then, I didn’t’ miss being in the UK at all. I did miss my family, but I had lived away from my family for a long time anyway so it wasn’t’ too bad.
Things changed yet again in the July of 2008, Martin had to return to the UK for family reasons. We worked really well together and we had become really good friends as well. I had learnt a lot about pool maintenance from him, and had gradually gotten to know all his customers as well.
He asked me if I wanted to buy the pool cleaning side of his business from him, and even agreed to take monthly payments for it. I obviously didn’t’ have the money to buy it outright so really that was the only option for me to get the business.
Obviously I agreed to do it, and after contacting all the customers they agreed to keep me on maintaining the pools as well. It was a sad time watching my friend leave Cyprus, and also a happy but daunting time starting my own business!
We were back to not having a great deal of spare money, obviously most of it went to paying for the business. But we had enough to pay the bills and still live on.
We were also sending money back to the UK to pay for all the debt we had left behind. We had managed to arrange payment terms with all the lenders and debt management companies. We had been determined to pay everything off even though we knew it would take us several tears.
So that was basically how the rest of 2008 went. Paying for the business, paying off debts and trying to live with whatever money was left. Money was a bit tight at times, but we were both quite happy and managing.
I was obviously working quite hard, 6 or 7 days a week mostly trying to keep the business going on my own. Hales did help me with the paperwork side of things, but after it had been Martin and me doing the pools it was quite a bit of work on my own.
That will do for today, I will continue with our story soon!
Rob
My Life and My MS 