Page 81 - IT'S A RUM LIFE BOOK FOUR Volume 1 "Northcote 1984 to 1998"

Francis had a beautiful enlarged photograph on display in his home, a continuous memento
of his happy days working at Northcote.
I had photographed him one morning as he had exercised Jacob our young Percheron
horse. Francis had the horse on long reins, we were teaching the horse voice commands
ready for driving in a wagon. The photograph was taken on the local airfield close to the
centre and I managed to choose a position slightly lower than Francis and Jacob as they
came down the road before me. It was just one of those perfect studies, a one in a
hundred and so appropriate.

IN COURT
No sooner had we lost Francis than we found ourselves under huge pressure from the
Bank that held our mortgage.
Due to our severe drop in income, several months had gone by without us being able to
make any regular payments. The bank was threatening to re posses the property.

Bolstered by my prayers and their answers I went to court to fight our case, we managed to
win a reprieve. With the agreement of the bank Ruth began to pay the mortgage out of her
income, together with other liabilities as and when she could.

We began to see some light but times were very difficult and showed us where any friends
existed!

Very soon afterwards I found myself in court once again. Just before the big problems
began I had bought a second hand portacabin to act as a new secure harness room as in
March 1992 thieves had broken into our harness room and taken everything we had
worked hard to collect and conserve.

Fortunately it had been insured but we had to buy new to replace the older beautiful
antique harness from our original collection. We needed better security hence the portacabin.

The local vendor had agreed to supply the cabin on ‘easy terms’ over two years and I was
obviously to pay interest on the amount I owed him.

When things got really hard I told him I could not pay for a while and would he wait for his
money. He decided not to and took me to court. (This was a prominent Spilsby
businessman who I had done many favours for in the past during my time working for
Morton's Newspaper Group).

Over the years I have managed to become quite eloquent and this time was no exception,
we received a very fair judgement to pay what was owed over the next three years. This
was obviously much to his annoyance.

You see, some good comes out of evil, and was he evil and to illustrate that fact even
further, after the amount had finally been paid into court he sent me a bill for the
outstanding interest!