Chapter 7
More random thoughts from the balloon days.
On the forum Balloon Chat Darren Atkins (Nippy99) ran the Balloon Review section over the years from around 2011 to 2018. Darren posted over 200 reviews of balloon magic, balloon DVD’s, downloads etc etc. All that he had purchased over the years Now I have a lot of DVD tutorials that I have collected over the years and I better mention that probably 90% I have never looked at, some are still in the cellophane covers and un-opened… anyway back to Darren and he must have the biggest tutorial collection of balloon modelling definitely in the UK and possibly the world?
Plus I just realised Darren used to take pictures agains his brick wall so people could gauge the size and now here I am in Balloon Towers two where we moved in back in January and I’m taking pictures against a fake brick wall as mine is wallpaper.
Darren really went to town on this and helped people decide what tutorials would be best suited for them. With Danny doing the Topic/Discussion of the Month these two really kept the forum up and running and being very interactive, thanks both XXxx.
Talking of DVD’s, I did get in trouble once as someone was looking for information that was on a DVD, I mentioned I had it in my collection and they asked if I could check something out for them. So off I went to have a look but unfortunately the said DVD was still all sealed as I had not looked at it and I did not want to break the seal to view. Apologies about that but we are all a little quirky and some would say me more than others… he he.
So back to the days, Sempertex did offer to keep sponsoring the days but dropping back from 10 to just 3 days a year, I tried to sort a compromise and said 6 but unfortunately at the time this was not an option for them. I think it was at the millennium jam in 2009 that Qualatex who took over sponsoring the days I believe in 2010 approached me and wanted to discuss the possibility of sponsoring the days again… and yes it was a total shock. I remember it well and will keep anonymous who made the approach as at the time they had had a few drinks and were… well you can imagine, enjoying the evening. I suggested we had a meeting the next morning as this was late at night. The meeting did go ahead and Qualatex did want to sponsor the days going forward.
I did have one last chat with Sempertex as I’d obviously had a soft spot for them as they took a chance with me when we had only just started the days and had no sponsorship at all. The offer was still the same, so I had to make a management decision and took the plunge and went with the Qualatex offer. I was a bit hesitant as Qualatex were at the time and generally always have been very hands on and this is the way we do things. I assumed they would be getting in touch regularly and checking who and where events would be happening etc. How 100% wrong I was, they just left me to it, so assumed they must have been happy with everything and were happy for me to carry on. I always used to do more events than the 10 and then when attending conventions/jams etc on my own would promote Qualatex there as well. They were excellent to me and I hopefully was good for them as well. I carried on selling Sempertex, this is how we had to have two different websites which I thought was fair and not a problem. They even let me have the website domain name, www.qualatexballoons.co.uk. I did ask for this but was surprised when they agreed but in the beginning, we hoped it would help sales for the new adventure that was about to begin.
We kept driving all over the UK running the Care & Share days, attending a few face painting jams and events, and even started running balloon workshop days and flying people in from abroad to run the days for us. Some of the early ones, I did look on Balloon Chat to refresh my memory, we had Twistina, Malcolm Mallan, Thelma Levett, Sabina Kellner from Austria, Petra came in from Holland, one of the original Macaroni girls and Gabriella Hodge who generally had a heart in her design, she was known for this. These workshop/star lecture days started off at just £5 to attend, I know ridiculous, and we used to easily get 50 people attending. I’m looking back through Balloon Chat at some of the events and looking up the pictures and comments from the days, FAB memories, thanks to all who made the days what they were.
Also in 2009 Mike Ingham and I put on a performance magic workshop day; we had done a couple of theatre shows together and go back many many years to clown alley in Bromley where we met, this was a juggling club. This is where I met Pearse who ran the workshops that I mentioned earlier who helped with my Balloon Magic act. Who would have thought that we stayed great friends for over 30 years. Mike and I ran two days, one in Sutton where we had 10 people attending and then up in Birmingham where I think we had three people booked in so moved the venue to Thelma’s house. Would be nice to run these again and just talk about how and why we do things as we do. Would be happy to just put these on as a free day to help others along in the entertainment industry.
Jumping ahead a little but I posted this on Facebook this week so as fresh in the memory.
World Record Attempt.
We did help Caroline Ainslie (Bubbly Maths ) with the world record attempts in 2014 for the Tetrahedra design. In the Guinness book it’s under “The Largest three-dimensional fractal made from modelling balloons”
When we made the 8-metre-tall version there were 30 volunteers helping and for some reason Guinness would not accept this, even though we had a university professor doing all the measurements and recording the event. Guinness then invited us up to the head offices in London in 2015 where we made a 2-meter design with 12 people helping and this did get approval and is in the Guinness world record book. And with a smile on my face about 8 years after we did eventually get a certificate to hang on the wall… now where did I put that. Since the move quite a few things I have mis-placed… oops!
Thanks Caroline for the friendship and support over the years XXxx
To Be Continued… if anyone is reading these, that is xx
