A Pocketful of Holes and Dreams (32 page)
Read A Pocketful of Holes and Dreams Online
Authors: Jeff Pearce
Tags: #Poverty & Homelessness, #Azizex666, #Social Science
Gina, playing polo on Tordia
Me, playing polo on Rubia
Our Jaguar horsebox in all its glory
Our first Tickled Pink Collection in 1989 – neon paid off!
Nutria and I prepare for battle: I am in character as Sir Jeffrey of Whitegate
Abbots Walk: the big house in the country
The entrance to my emporium, Jeff’s of Bold Street, with the wishing-well behind me
(
l to r
) Me, Ian Yates, Katie, Faye, Gina and Trinny and Susannah, with my Gold Award for Independent Retailer of the Year
Epilogue
The store continued to be successful over the next two years. I ploughed all the profits straight back in to pay for the £200,000 worth of stock we now carried. Then, in 2004, I started to notice that the takings were dropping below the £20,000 a week we needed to pay the interest on the loan and all the running costs.
The harder Gina and I worked to bring the takings back up, the more they fell. At the same time, the bank was contacting me more frequently and asking me to provide monthly forecasts on the store’s takings. In short, they wanted me to give them the good news which I didn’t have.
History was repeating itself – we were heading into another recession, and I started having sleepless nights. This time, however, I was not prepared to watch all my hard work disappear in front of my eyes. So I quickly put Jeff’s of Bold Street up for sale with a price tag of £1 million. Almost immediately, we had interested parties wanting to purchase it, and I struck a deal whereby they paid the full asking price for the freehold and we were able to rent the premises back at a favourable rate. We were then able to continue trading without all the financial worry. What a lucky escape! I was no longer faced with the threat of the bank destroying our lives. And on the day we repaid the bank, Gina and I felt free.
Despite all my successes in the fashion trade, if you were to ask me what are my proudest moments in life I would say, without doubt, watching our two girls, Katie and Faye growing up into well-balanced young women. They too spent their childhood years growing up in the rag trade. When old enough they were out in all weathers helping us make a living. I instilled in them the same work ethic that my mother had given to me and they too excelled in their chosen fields.
At school Katie was head girl. She also captained the hockey and netball teams and later studied law at Nottingham Trent University. On completing her degree she decided to follow her passion and became a drama teacher, which she enjoys so much.
Faye, equally, proved her determination and talent. She became head of sport at school and played hockey for the Cheshire County Team as well as running for the North-west of England, like her sister. She later studied Fashion Design at Edinburgh University, achieving a First before completing her Masters at the Royal College of Art in London. She is now a fashion designer for a large American company, thus keeping the family tradition well and truly alive.
I carried out my mother’s last dying wishes and looked after my baby sister June as if she had been my own child. As for my father, I also kept my promise and cared for him for thirty-two years. As time passed, he became my best friend and I loved him dearly, and he did eventually tell me how proud he was of me. I held his hand as he took his last breath at the age of eighty-two and, to ease his conscience about how he had treated my mother, I told him that she was waiting to welcome him with open arms.
As for my mother’s predictions for me all those years ago, two were indeed correct. I have had a very happy life and I have been successful and wealthy. All that remains is, will I be famous? And in answer? I can almost hear my mother’s voice singing to me ‘Que sera sera, whatever will be, will be,’ as she put me to bed when I was just a little boy.
The only regrets I have are that my beloved mother never met Gina, Katie or Faye, nor shared in the success I made of my life with me. And that Gina, my beautiful wife, has had to work so hard. My overly ambitious drive must have been difficult to live with at times, and I could not have achieved what I did without having her by my side. She is one in a million, the same as my mother was.
When I retired at the age of fifty-three I felt a burning desire to write my story. But there was one major problem. I could only read and write like a seven-year-old. I tried asking others to do it, but it just didn’t work; it was no longer my story. Gina, as ever, gave me encouragement and words of advice – she insisted that I was the only one who could tell the story as it was, and that I had to write it myself. The thought terrified me. I felt that I would be leaving myself wide open to public humiliation and scorn; but part of me had to acknowledge that what she said was true.
I started small – writing ideas on bits of paper which I stuck on a board. It was hard going; putting my thoughts down on paper was a totally unnatural thing for me to do. I then began to write each story, staying up until the early hours. Each and every word was a struggle – written, rubbed out and written again – and even after doing my best, I knew it was still wrong. Writing frustrated the hell out of me, and made me hate my dyslexia even more.
Gina was the only one who could read my writing – she’d had many years of practice with the notes and love letters I’d written her – so she volunteered to type up my notes. But as my obsession with the book grew so did the volume of work I produced, until it was too much for Gina to cope with. I eventually found the perfect partner to help me, Kit Knowles. She was a star and would sit with me for hours and hours at a time; thank God she had the patience of a saint.
Over the next three years, with great optimism, I sent out chapters of my book to numerous literary agents and publishers, and received fifty-one rejections in return, almost one for every year of my life. But I didn’t give up. I even printed a small run of my first draft for friends and family, and received such encouraging feedback that I persevered with my work. Almost four years after I started, I received a call from an agent out of the blue, telling me he had found a publisher who was interested in my story.
I often wonder whether my inability to read and write hindered me through life – or was it the spur that motivated me to succeed, to try and try again? Whatever the answer, obstacles are there to be overcome, and the important thing is to believe in yourself. After all, who would have thought it possible that a man who had lived in fear of the written word every day of his life, would then rise to a new challenge, overcoming his illiteracy and ending up writing this book? Whenever I think of these things, I always come back to the belief that it was my mother who had a lot to do with the success I made of my life. As well as giving me all the love I could ask for, she showed me that the harder you work, the more likely it is that you will achieve your dreams. And that sometimes, rags really can be turned into riches …
Table of Contents