……..soon after that my beautiful 911 Porsche cabriolet went, I had no home to call my own and life really started to go into a decline……
I moved from this gorgeous warehouse apartment, with 35 foot high ceilings, a spiral staircase taking you up to the bedroom, which overlooked this huge apartment, wooden floors and large metal girders magnified the space. I ended up moving in with Georgie, oh god, she had total control on my life now…..well that’s how I saw it and to be honest, that is exactly how it was!
She owned this ex-council flat in a rough part of Essex, near the M25 Dartford bridge, that links north London to South. It was in this horrible gray pre-fab concrete building that was built in or around the 70’s, it was so drab and dismal looking that no wonder people felt they had no hope who lived there – the building was truly suicidal looking.
Once you’re through the front door it wasn’t so bad, you walked into a long through hallway, the bedroom was the first door you came too, not massive but adequate. The next room was the bathroom, a decent size but had no window and the bath, toilet and sink came from medieval times. After the bathroom comes the kitchen which opens into the lounge, with a window and door to the rear garden. The kitchen was as old as Gordon Ramsey, needed updating just like he does! I think I spent £5,000 on doing it up, £7,000 on a ring….money was just dwindling away, I had no job and soon the money in the bank was down to the last £10,000.
I had my 911 red Porsche Cabriolet parked outside this “rough as fuck” council estate in Essex, I was running out of money, just like Greece did a couple of years back and to cap it all, my girlfriend was a complete nutter!! If you’ve seen the Stephen King movie Misery, I’d rather wake up with Annie Wilkes – honestly, I would! I was smoking more weed and feeling even more of a failure, this girl who was poison had me by the short and curleys – I was in real trouble and I seriously knew it.
We were engaged to be married, I’ll tell you straight how and why we got engaged – it’s a funny story really! She knew that I was married to Lucy and I’d obviously told Georgie (who’s the most insecure person I’ve ever met…still to this date and we’re now in 2018) that Lucy meant nothing to me – but if she meant nothing to you, why did you marry her? (oh you can hear what Georgie said back to me too can you…haha) So I replied, well at the time I thought she was right and it turned out that she wasn’t…….you mean she fucked some other geezer and then you threw her out!! and with that reply, she starts to snigger, a real hateful laugh…….Now I was quite an angry young man and I don’t like things being rubbed in my face, there was no need for that answer – but because of Georgies insecurities, she would have to bring you down into her world of misery!
So I tried to make Georgie feel better about herself, obviously, I prefer to be with Georgie otherwise I’d have made a go with it with Lucy, I wouldn’t have given up that quickly would I if I wanted Lucy??….no I wouldn’t! So because I bought Lucy a £3,500 ring, she said ‘you can spend more on my ring, if you love me more than Lucy, as you keep telling me you do’!! Oh man, that’s a clever girl that, you can’t turn round and say no, can you?? For those who said yes, I would love you to wake up in the film Misery, because you’d better sleep with one eye open – I bet you a zillion dollars that John Wayne Bobbit wished that he had read this before he lost his nuts to his psycho Mrs…..although I am not saying that JWB was right – but losing your nuts is a big price to pay!! Anyway, I digress as usual…..and that was how we got engaged, how romantic!
So soon the Porsche went, I owed money on it so I didn’t walk away with much cash from it, I had no job and things were starting to look really bleak.
But a lot happens in a short space of time…..this guy I used to buy weed and coke off, he’s called me up and asked if I was interested in setting up a weed farm – I knew nothing of weed farms apart from the fact that they MAKE MONEY! Now the strange thing was, this coke dealer and I had fallen out over a deal one day, words were exchanged and time moved along……but now he’s contacted me saying do I want to start a factory…..alarm bells should have rung a little bit louder in my head – to be honest they were ringing so loud but when you are desperate for cash – hope blocks the sound of the bells out.
Next thing, I’ve contacted a friend of mine who runs an estate agents in London, he thinks I’ve still got my IT business, I tell him that I need to rent a house because my company had contractors, who needed living accommodation due to this big deal I’ve just secured with some blue chip company. My friend found me a house, took my deposit and let me move in. Now, what me, this chap called Ab and his mate Jon (not their real names) did, was start a weed factory in a mid terraced home in a London suburb. We went out, I bought all the equipment and we took it back to this house, at all hours of the night and set the factory up. You would never imagine how much soil 250 plants needs and how do you explain this much soil to your very nosy neighbours. Holes were cut in the ceilings to allow ventilation, millions of screws fitted to walls and ceilings, black plastic is put up to keep light out and prying eyes too. The electric was bypassed, the light needed to grow weed use up a lot of electricity and the Police look out for high electric bills. Basically, the house was fucked – I must point out that it had cockroaches and was very grimy so don’t feel too bad, I wouldn’t let a dog sleep in there and they wanted money for rent – cheeky bastards.
Now, we’ve got 250 weed plants growing in this house, if you looked inside you would be horrified, it’s so dangerous as we have electric plugs and wires running the walls, floor and ceilings, there’s a lot of water needed for these plants and there’s a fuck load of electricity being pumped around this room, that’s supported by a very tempory electric wire straight from the electric company – no safety features at all! It was very very bright in these rooms, the different lights to grow weed are very very bright, you really need to wear goggles and you could, if it wasn’t so dam hot in there and they just kept steaming up all the time, so in the end you didn’t bother.
Religiously every day I’d go round and pick Ab up as he didn’t drive and we’d go off to the weed house , it was some 3o min journey there and 30 back, and that was on a good day, it was a real pain but I could see the reward that will come in under 2 months.
I finally left Georgie, I thought I’m at my last here, I need to make this work and she, is someone who must never find out where this is, she’s the kind of person who’ll tell the police, local gangsters what you’re up to, the way she sees it, if she can’t have you then no-one will!
There are some people in life who are just plain dangerous, I was one of those people (I was but not anymore….unless you hurt my family!) and Georgie is definitely one of those people, not only was she streetwise, but she was smart too and had a body to help you throughout the toughest of questioning! I was always going to lose against her and one day, I decided to leave her and concentrate on growing the weed. I moved into the weed factory, not the smartest of things to do, I took all of my belongings which comprised of some clothes, shoes and a 40″ plasma TV that had cost me £3,500….back when I was riding the wave.
Remember I told you this place had cockroaches, well it wasn’t very nice and also, if the police just happened to find this factory, well guess who will take the blame for it if when they do??? Yes ME!! So, now that I could see light at the end of the tunnel, I went and borrowed some cash from my Mum and Dad, who’d just downsized on their home and had some spare cash laying around (obviously I did ask them first).
So, Mum and Dad lent me £10,000 – yes I am a lucky man, I know that thanks, they helped me out loads in my life, but I’ve also had strangers lend me £15,000 and £2,500 respectively but that comes later on.
With that, I rented an apartment on the 22nd floor of Ontario Tower in Londons Docklands, floor to ceiling windows overlooking Canary Wharf, The Themes, and Greenwich the home of the Cutty Sark. This place had a 5 star hotel next door to the apartment block and they would deliver food to your apartment – it was amazing, every second car seemed to be a Lamborghini (apart from my 3.25i BWM with blacked out windows, it just so happened to be my car and I was drug dealing, so stereotypical). The way I looked at it was, I’ll soon have enough money to live here, pay my parents back and then do something with my life.
While I have this weed house growing, I decided that a good way to just get some extra cash would be to get a job as an Estate Agent – I called my mate who ran a large group of offices and asked if he could help me out and give me a job, he said there was nothing at his but knew a mate who was looking. Now, it was only a small firm, they had I think 3 offices in close proximity but the areas were good, Canary Wharf.
Another quick and unbelievable story that I can honestly say hand on heart happened! I needed some suits and shirts and ties for this new job, so I went to a very well known Suite shop in Canary Wharf. Whilst I was browsing for some attire, this dark skinned assistant came up to me and asked if he could help.
I explained to him that I needed some work gear and explained how messed up things were in my life. We walked around the shop and he said did I like this shirt, yes I replied and he said ‘well you’ll need one in different clours for all the days in the week’? I said ok, but I don’t have the money for that….he moved on and picked up a tie, different coloured shirts require different ties. Finally, he said which suits did I like, I had to have more than one as I’d need to get one dry cleaned and so would require two, so I picked out two and he took me over to the counter to pay for it all. When he passed me the bill it was for one shirt priced at £49.00 – and that was it. On my life, my Mums life, my dogs life (I have a dog now but that’s for later)…..this man only charged me £49.00 for all of that, 7 shirts, 7 ties and two suits – the suits were £700 each – I couldn’t believe it.
We exchanged numbers, how could I not with a man who has helped me out so much, I mean, you can’t dream this shit up but on my life, it happened! My thoughts were, he must be gay and thinks he has a chance. I met up with him the next day, he came round to my house, strangely he smoked weed, he was married with a new baby and was not gay – he just said he could see I was in trouble and that was his way of helping me out…….to this day I can’t work out why but I am and have been forever grateful…….we lost touch and I think you’ll understand why when I say…….GEORGIE!!!!! (but I’ll come back to that, as it only starts to get even worse)
So my day job was Estate Agent and my night job was growing weed – well, what little I knew of growing weed. Anyway, I was doing really well in this firm of estate agents, I was taking on loads of houses and putting the deals together and selling them. I think they saw me as some kind of go-getter, I lived in the best apartment block on the Isle of Dogs (that’s the real name for Londons Docklands – good isn’t it, Isle of dogs, proper gangster sounding!!!)
Guess what, I get a call from Ab, “I’ve just been round the house, eveyrthnig’s gone!!” – I hear it and then slowly reassemble the words to try and make sense of them…….. EVERYTHING’S GONE, is all I can make of it…….”what do you mean everything’s gone” I said??? OH FUUUUCKKKK!!!