Tough Times

I began teaching my martial art classes in a very small dingy, claustrophobic room at the local leisure centre, which was the only available sports facility in the town to hire at the time. It was a long thin and very narrow hall and there was hardly enough space to breathe let alone do anything else. 

Despite the cramped conditions the room served it's purpose, however during the summer months the area became so hot that students would often pass out due to the lack of oxygen. The only air-conditioning available was the twin fire escape doors at the end of the room. It was here that many students were often resuscitated and nurtured back to life. Many injuries did occur within this environment, however I mainly ignored them and considered it to be all part of the training. Student’s that survived really deserved their place in my club, those that didn't …. just quit.

With this prevailing hard-nose attitude I soon began to sort out the weak from the strong. During the process I collected a few “die hard” students along the way. These students I considered to be “serious” practitioners, those that could take a good old beasting and still come back for more. This kind of practice was considered hardcore and not suitable for anyone with a fragile disposition.

At the time I’d just stopped working as a Painter & Decorator and found some casual work labouring for a couple of friends that owned a small landscape gardening business. I wasn’t teaching martial arts full-time - only for the love of it. I didn’t really care too much about earning lots of money, all I was really  interested in was practicing Kuk Sool.

One day, my two friends informed me that they'd just obtained a large contract and asked me if I would like to work for them on a more permanent basis. The only downside was the job would require me  being away from home at least three or four nights a week. My dilemma was this;  to either take the job, which would mean earning a reasonable wage to support my family and closing down my martial art club, or to choose to stay in the very same position without having any employment at all. You've already  guessed... I took the second option. 

At the time it may have felt like a difficult decision for me to make, however looking back, it was a relativity easy one. I certainly didn’t want to be away from my wife and my baby daughter for long periods of time and I definitely had no intention of giving up on my dream of running my own full-time martial art school.

After turning down the job offer, I had no other option but to register for unemployment benefit. I remember feeling really sad and embarrassed asking for social handouts, but there was no other alternative. It wasn’t long after this that another problem soon began to emerge. One night Alison and I sat down and performed some very simple arithmetic, it revealed to us a very basic home truth – we were financially broke.

At this point it would have been easy to revert back to performing any old job that would pay a decent wage, however work was scarce with nothing available. These were really tough times and thoughts of trying to make ends meet are still firmly etched into my mind to this very day.  If it wasn’t for our parents and the support that they gave us, I really don’t know where we would have ended up.