Full video

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life for living and do everything you

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want to do every day if we really wanted

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to make it we needed to move to london

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so we packed up all of our stuff and we

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did it i'm not a rich man but i'm not a

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poor man

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um but yeah

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it's just been a time for reflection the

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last two years and just thinking

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what's it all about having to actually

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care

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uh

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for a human

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uh

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on a date a minute to minute basis and

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what uh because you're sustaining them

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you're literally responsible for them to

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keep them alive it was too fast-paced i

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felt almost like a rap race there you

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know everyone each to their own hiya so

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this week i wanted to ask a more deep

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meaningful question to the people of

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brighton i wanted to know they've ever

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experienced a moment in time that's made

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them change the course of their life now

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i'm not just looking for negative

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stories i'm also interested in the

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positive realizations that have changed

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people's futures now before we get

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started if you're a fan of easy english

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welcome to easy english here we go

1:14

[Music]

1:31

um yeah tell me your life-changing

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moment my life-changing moment was when

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my

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wife's sister unfortunately

1:41

was lost to leukemia and it made me

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realize life's a living and do

1:45

everything you want to do every day

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and uh how long ago was that

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15 years 15 years ago do you have like

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um a life-changing moment in your mind

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my life-changing moment for myself was

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moving to brighton because it's a lovely

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area

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very calm and relaxing but a lot of

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opportunity still i come from quite a

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dead-end place well i wouldn't say it's

2:07

dead end but not as much opportunity

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yeah and um

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it's more of a younger crowd easier go

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with the flow place here and

2:16

perfect energy life-changing moment for

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me

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i was definitely making the move over to

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the uk from south africa with my husband

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that was a like a huge life-changing

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thing for me okay and what led you to do

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that

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we me and my husband are both tattoo

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artists and we kind of felt like if we

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really wanted to make it we needed to

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move to london

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so we packed up all of our stuff and we

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did it and now we've been here for like

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three and a half years

2:46

and we love it yeah so can you tell me

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your kind of

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life-changing

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moment um living in australia employ a

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lot of people in my business

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and i spent two years during covet

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trying to assist everyone else and maybe

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i lost sight of my own um issues

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so it made me reflect after covid uh

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reflected what life was really all about

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and

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in terms of finances and stuff and i've

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brought forward my retirement to this

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year um

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and and basically smell the roses i was

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an artist manager so i was dealing with

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um with kind of everything

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i was working in uh with an artist sort

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of business structure and it's a lot

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more uh

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intense pressure because you're working

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with

3:39

uh

3:39

everything that the artist wants to do

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on a day-to-day basis you know the

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relationships can become quite strained

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and quite toxic and stuff like that and

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you just

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i've been doing it for so long i did it

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for over 10 years and

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you get sort of sucked into it and you

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you're carrying other people's

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pressures and it can be hard to put it

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down because it's a round-the-clock job

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it made me realize that

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having the the kid on top of

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kovid coming in and shutting everything

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down and making me kind of reassess my

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my own priorities it made me realize

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that actually um

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with no reflection on any of the artists

4:16

i worked with but i was very unhappy in

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the job and the i wasn't i wasn't happy

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with the lack of boundaries i wasn't

4:23

happy with the pressure that was on me

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in that situation and i reconnected with

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a lot of music and realized that in a

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lot of ways even though i was working in

4:30

music i'd lost my love for it in a lot

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of ways because i was seeing too much

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how the sausage was made in a

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good good good phrase you know in a in a

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in a negative way i was seeing two

4:44

behind the curtain and and all of those

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things kind of stacked up and it made me

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take a dive i basically took a voluntary

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redundancy from a relatively well paid

4:53

step yeah to nothing wow in order to

4:56

kind of

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re connect uh reconnect with my desire

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now back to the episode

5:49

and so what kind of changed 15 years ago

5:52

in your in your life because of that uh

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stopped working so hard made sure i had

5:57

time for my kids my family and realise

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that every day

6:01

is a blessing

6:03

so i kind of live each day kind of yeah

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and how is that going do you still kind

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of have that is that something you

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always wake up thinking about it's 10

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well time is it 11 o'clock on a monday

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morning i'm in brighton

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and i should have been leicester so yeah

6:16

i'm still living it are you scoving off

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work yeah

6:21

so you really are doing it i'm really

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doing it man wow okay that's brilliant

6:25

some of my friends moved down the year

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before and i felt they they enjoyed it

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so much and

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i felt like it was a time for me like i

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moved to london for a bit and it was

6:34

just too fast-paced for myself it was

6:36

too fast-paced i felt almost like a rat

6:38

race there you know everyone each to

6:40

their own and i feel like brighton's

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more like a community like almost like a

6:44

small town everyone knows everyone i was

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going to ask you like what are like what

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are some good points of why people

6:49

should move to brighton well number one

6:51

obviously the sea

6:54

lovely people

6:55

um

6:56

yeah just a lot of good opportunity and

6:58

then did

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because when you're in london

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you came from london to brighton or you

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go went back to surrey i went back to

7:05

surrey for a bit um i only lived in

7:08

london for about a year i was doing

7:10

insurance work and i felt like you know

7:12

what that wasn't really for me being

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behind a desk and everything

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and i wanted to get out and about you

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know i started working on the site for a

7:20

bit yeah and i've loved it obviously and

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there's a lot of space around here a lot

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of um everything's being you know built

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up around it and i felt

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it was good opportunity

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um but now i'm moving and doing bar work

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and like i say there's

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all so much opportunity different

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choices around here are you creative as

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well yeah i am a creative i do music and

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i feel like it's a good area for that as

7:43

well lots of just lovely people in

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general who are very open

7:47

to to new opportunities and that and was

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it a spontaneous kind of thing or was it

7:52

very well

7:53

planned and concealed we had been

7:55

thinking about it for like

7:57

since we visited so it was about a year

7:59

and it took like a year to um

8:02

kind of get all of our like paperwork

8:04

together um

8:06

so

8:06

yeah i imagine it's not so easy to it

8:09

was hard it was difficult yeah well we

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did it and are we here congratulations

8:14

and where is do you have a tattoo shop

8:16

now open um we we don't have we don't

8:19

own one we work for uh i work for two

8:21

different tattoo shops in london the one

8:24

is called cloak and dagger and it's just

8:26

off brick lane and then the other one's

8:27

called seven doors which is also just

8:29

brick lane so one's at the top one's at

8:30

the bottom and when you say specific

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tattoos what what what do you mean is it

8:34

you said that uk

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a lot of like traditional tattoos ah

8:38

okay

8:45

a lot of people call it that a lot of

8:46

people just call it like american

8:47

traditional you can call or just

8:49

traditional whatever whatever you want

8:50

to call it nice and do you regret your

8:53

life change at all no not at all if

8:56

anything i feel like i've grown a lot

8:57

since i've been here and

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i've made like really great friends and

9:01

work has just taken off better than i

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could have hoped so

9:04

all round good decision that's good to

9:07

hear uh congrats and so then have you

9:09

now moved to the uk or no i am on

9:12

holiday we had a tour planned around

9:15

believe it or not a garth brooks concert

9:16

this weekend in dublin and my wife being

9:19

the minister for planning in our

9:21

business

9:22

in our family yeah uh decided to build

9:25

an eight-week holiday before

9:27

the concert um so we've been we left

9:29

australia in july

9:31

and we're just coming to the end we've

9:33

been in italy we've been in cornwall wow

9:36

and it's in ives

9:38

and

9:39

glasgow my

9:40

hometown

9:41

and now down with family in brighton

9:44

heading to dublin on thursday and then

9:46

home next week to australia bloody out

9:49

my next question was gonna be and how is

9:51

your life decision like doing for you

9:53

right now but it sounds like it's just

9:55

all rosy well i'll be honest the the

9:58

change i'm struggling to be honest in

10:01

terms of mentally just with the i've

10:03

worked since i was 15 so i'm 65 i've

10:06

been in business a long long time

10:08

employing hundreds of people over the

10:09

years

10:10

and honestly struggling

10:13

with the concept of not working anymore

10:16

and not getting up at 5 30 every day

10:17

because i love my job

10:19

but um i'll ease my way into it yeah

10:23

and and see what the next chapter in my

10:25

life's got i want to give back

10:27

i want to look after homeless kids and

10:30

and see if i can maybe point them in the

10:32

right direction i was going to say how

10:34

do you intend to spend your once you

10:36

return from your holidays to spend your

10:38

free time um i've got a thing um

10:42

obviously divorce rates in australia for

10:44

instance every second marriage ends in

10:46

divorce which means that children don't

10:48

have a father figure possibly to show

10:51

them the way and then they go to crime

10:54

i'm hoping that maybe myself and some

10:56

other people possibly some federal

10:57

funding from australia that we can put

11:00

these kids into careers and show them

11:01

that you don't have to steal you don't

11:03

have to break any people's homes

11:05

we can show you if you learn a trade and

11:08

and get a job you might be able to be

11:10

successful

11:11

and that's

11:13

that's my goal next you're going to be a

11:15

philanthropist are you kind of something

11:17

like this yeah a bit of my money and a

11:19

better more of the governments i might

11:21

add um i'm not a rich man but i'm i'm

11:23

not a poor man

11:25

um but yeah

11:27

it's just been a time for reflection the

11:29

last two years and just thinking

11:32

what's it all about and how's it going

11:33

now then great yeah very happy super

11:35

happy yeah yeah yeah yeah nice do you

11:38

sort of have contacts with people who

11:39

did the same thing you did and like

11:41

think i'm not involved in that anymore

11:43

yes yeah that's a lot of that is uh yeah

11:45

i mean the thing is in management it

11:48

it'll either

11:50

it can it can sort of crush you yeah and

11:52

people will just leave music entirely

11:56

and i know i know that i know a lot of

11:58

people that have left music entirely

12:00

because

12:01

the the pressure of being either an

12:02

artist or being a manager or whatever

12:04

has just completely crushed their love

12:05

for it and i could see that that was

12:07

what was happening to me and

12:09

that's why i kind of shift i decided to

12:11

shift gears so yeah you're not bitter

12:13

about the whole experience at all

12:14

because you go out there quickly

12:16

i have like i have memorabilia from my

12:18

time and management hung on my walls

12:20

like i'm i'm happy that i i sort of did

12:22

it in the end yeah yeah but i'm also

12:24

very very happy that i got out i'm

12:26

interested in hearing your stories about

12:28

how small or big moments have changed

12:30

the course of your life positive or

12:33

negative let us know in the comments

12:35

below thanks for watching this week's

12:36

episode and we'll see you next week

12:41

[Music]