Have A Good One Margaret

I somehow managed to miss reporting Margaret Quinn's 60th birthday on the blog last Sunday. Apologies Margaret.But all is not lost as she is having a big party tomorrow to celebrate. Margaret helps us to keep our office and canteen clean and tidy and is here most afternoons. Being one of life's positive people she can always be relied upon for a smile. To say that Margaret is an Elvis fan would be an understatement. Margaret eats and breathes Elvis and spends her holidays on conventions so it was only natural that I should show her outside her favourite place - Graceland. Have a great party Margaret - what music will you be playing?



Here's another very important person who is celebrating a birthday. Our lovely daughter Sarah is 29 today.It's quite a hectic one for her. Yesterday she broke up from school and today she and her partner Duncan get the keys to their new house. Congratulations Sally. have a wonderful day.





Marion and I had a really pleasant evening sitting in the garden and sharing some cheese wine and conversation with our widower neighbours yesterday. One of them, who is 87, is convinced that a German woman has stolen his slippers and nail clippers. As they do.

It will be quiet here next week as Lauren is off to Turkey with boyfriend Darren for a week of sun, sea and sand. I hope they have a great holiday as they have both worked hard for it.



I said that we'd have a competition today and here it is. Above is a photo of some of our wonderful sous vide units waiting to be boxed. We will give an extra £50 discount to the first customer to place an order before 11th July for any boiler,cup holder or sous vide unit who answers the following question correctly. The Instanta sous vide units have a clear digital display which provide the user with nine pieces of information.All can be seen on our brochure cover. What are these nine items?

Everything's Peachy

Here's our antiques loving head of our welding department Craig Peach enjoying a bit of light reading. We'll excuse him his skive as it's his 34th birthday today and, as I said here last year, half of those 34 years have been here at Instanta. I said then that Craig loved travel and since his 33rd birthday he has enjoyed Christmas in New York and a winter break in Florida. His next trip planned is a visit to Dublin to watch U2. He's still a keen Southport supporter and they are as rare as one of those undated 20ps nowadays.Have a great day Craig.



We really enjoyed "Public Enemies" last night. Johnny Depp played his role as John Dillinger perfectly and the film was quite an old fashioned gangster movie with plenty of bank raids and shoot-outs with the law. I was delighted to see scouser Stephen Graham (above) starring in a supporting role as Baby Faced Nelson though why anybody would cast a Kirkby boy as a psychopathic,violent, foul mouthed and booze ridden robber is beyond me!



I've just had a quick look at the June figures. We managed to invoice a huge £1047 more than we did last June but at least that's better than last month when we slipped back. It looks as though, unless our sales collapse in July and August, our turnover is going to be about 1.3% down on last year when our year ends on 31st August which is not too bad all things considering.But we will have shifted less boilers as our average unit sale price has been higher.Roll on the boom times. Me and Marion are getting too old for years of recession.



I heard a new word this morning "NEETs". It seems that there will soon be over a million young people in Britain Not in Education Employment or Training and this is going to be a hell of a problem. The government will have to do something soon or what are they going to do. I seem to remember a similar situation at the time of the Toxteth riots.We've done our own tiny bit with Rebekah joining us yesterday from the ranks of teenagers without jobs but that's a drop in the ocean. Can we have some incentives please Mr Brown?



Have you heard about the Big Lunch? It's being run by the Eden Project and the idea is to get people together for a big lunch (what else) on 19th July in an attempt to encourage neighbourliness. I remember the Queen's silver jubilee when Marion and I lived in Palmerston Road (just around the corner from here). The street was closed and we all had a wonderful time. I clicked on the website to find our nearest Big Lunch but at the moment there are none locally. Should we have one at Instanta? We could but we're on holiday that week.We're doing our own bit for neighbourliness and having a couple of older widowed neighbours round for a glass of wine and some cheese tonight. They always have some interesting tales to tell.

And if you haven't heard of the Big Lunch, here's a bit more about it.

Thunder Lightning - I Tell You It's Frightening

What a storm we had here in the early hours of the morning. We've already heard from a supplier whose factory has been flooded and our order for packaging materials is likely to be delayed. Apologies if your boiler arrives in a non standard box in the next few weeks - blame it on God. A house a few hundred yards from Peter Brindle was hit by a thunderbolt and the roof was completely destroyed. Peter was wishing it had come his way as he would have liked a new roof on the insurance but the latest news is that they are going to have to knock the place down so I'm not sure he would have been wishing for that.



Here's Rebekah Dowell who has joined us to replace young mum Natalie Drummond. Rebekah,17, who hails from Litherland is a keen Liverpool fan.She enjoys computers and, like all Liverpool girls, she loves shopping.So welcome Rebekah. We hope that you enjoy working with us.



We got one. With no orders to process yesterday we looked for alternative ways of earning a few quid and Lauren emptied all the twenty pence pieces from the pool table in the canteen and searched for the elusive and rare undated ones. After checking through 1350 coins she managed to find just one.Now we have to decide what to do with it. The radio reported one going on eBay for £7,000 but I am highly suspicious of that as plenty more seem to have exchanged hands for between £40 and £250. Perhaps we can use it to fund the staff Christmas party.

Our month of special offers is over now so I think we'll have a couple of competitions this month. The first one will be announced on Friday and will run until the end of next week.



After giving Orange Wednesday a miss last week we are going to give Public Enemies a go tonight. It has excellent reviews both here and in the USA and Johnny Depp is already being touted for an Oscar. We'll see if we agree.I'll leave you wth the trailer.

Confusion Reigns

We got the bank statement this morning and it certainly caused a stir. We balance it every day religiously but today there was something missing-those two little letters at the end of the balance "DR". Yes for the first time in as many years as I can remember we weren't overdrawn (at least in the bank's books)so hallelujah. But I'm not cracking open the champagne just yet. We're paying all our suppliers tomorrow so I expect to be back up to the limit in a couple of days. Oh well. It was nice while it lasted.



And speaking of champagne did you read about that bear that burgled a house in the USA. The Guardian reported today that a couple in San Bernardino in California returned home to find the bear in the kitchen scoffing a box of chocolates. It had been into the fridge and moved vegetables out of the way to get at the choccies. He had also tried to open a bottle of champagne but with no success.

It's the last day of the month and Craig tells me that he has had no orders at all yet. When I wrote on the blog on Friday asking readers not to order on Friday afternoon so that Lauren could get off to her Take That concert it was only that afternoon I was taking about!Come on it's the last day of the month we need a few orders to equal last June. Don't forget the special offer on the ex-demo etc on yesterday's blog.



Oh well, with no orders to process Lauren and Craig are just going to empty the pool table and go through the 20p's looking for the rare undated ones that slipped through the mint some time earlier this year. Chances are slim as only 200,000 appear to have been minted but you never know. They're supposed to worth £50 each and are the only undated British coins to have been issued for over three hundred years.



I spent an hour yesterday having my backside massaged by a physio.It hasn't cured my groin strain completely but my muscles do seem a lot less tense and it was certainly preferable to an afternoon working.



Me and Marion are not tennis fans but when we watched the Ten O'clock news last night and at the end the newsreader said that a match was still going on, we switched over to watch the last couple of games to see a Brit scowling, pumping his fists in an aggressive manner and urging the crowd to cheer him on. Come on Andy that's not very British. We're supposed to get beat and say "well played sir" to the winner. "Come on Tim"

Instead of Tennis I'll leave you with a Samurai playing baseball - with his sword.

Let's Hear It For Channel Four

With television full of changed schedules on Friday night we watched a couple of the biographies of Michael Jackson and pretty grim they were too with plenty of comments on the sex scandal charges and on his horrendous addiction to plastic surgery but then there was Channel 4 that stood out like a beacon. No lurid tabloid gossip, no snickering at the mess that he had become. No. Someone at Channel 4 made a decision (and a bloody brilliant one too) to simply string together an hour's worth of his best music videos and run a ticker tape along the bottom with some salient words such as "This was the most expensive video, this album came in at number one etc etc etc" and let us savour the reason why every newspaper, every news bulletin and every channel was covering little else. Hat's off to four. You even managed to bring a tear to these cold and unemotional eyes.



Today's final offer in our June month of daily deals is 50% off every unit that we have in our current ex-demo stock. We have managed to build up a fair number of boilers that have been returned following loan on exhibitions or use in trial kitchens, reclaimed from bankrupt customers or suffered minor transit damage.We have no real outlet for these items. Most are in new or nearly new condition and we can offer them at 50% off the (already discounted) prices that you will find by clicking HERE


Now that Jenny and Craig are back from their fortnight's holiday looking tanned and relaxed we have got to get down to deciding upon Natalie's replacement. We hope to have a decision by tomorrow so will be letting the lucky (or not so lucky maybe) applicant know very soon.

I am getting nowhere with the groin strain that has been troubling me for months now. It's easing ever so slightly but I am hobbling like an old man and have not been able to swim or play football since the first week of May. I've booked an appointment with a specialist this afternoon and maybe she will be able to advise me how to get it better. I don't want to raise my hopes too much but it is really starting to get me down.

It looks like the Toyota Prius is going to be the choice ahead of the Honda Insight. The deal clincher is the sun roof. The new Prius has a solar panelled sun roof as an option whereas the Insight has no sun roof option at all. The big problem is that the new Prius is not out yet so there are none of the super deals that I was expecting in these recessionary times. I was half expecting a buy one get one free offer such is the doom and gloom in the motor industry but no such luck. Even the APR on the deals that Toyota are offering at 10.5% is not exactly attractive. Another snag is that as they don't have one in the showroom yet I'll be buying blind.

Maybe I'll just go for one of these little numbers.

Let's Show Some Respect

It's only a few hours since Michael Jackson passed away but already the Internet is awash with sick jokes. I like a laugh as much as the next bloke but when will people realise that to poke fun at a personal tragedy just ain't funny. The same happened when Jade Goody died and with the attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team. Look. There are millions of things to make jokes about, leave the dead alone. If you were around when the Jackson Five first took to the stage, you will never forget Michal's impact. If YouTube had been around then, it would have made the recent Susan Boyle phenomenon pale into insignificance - it was that good. R.I.P Michael. I wasn't a fan after you grew up but nobody deserves to be mocked in death.



Lauren has to get away early today as, for a surprise for her mum Kathy's recent 60th birthday, the family have treated her to the Take That Circus tour at Old Trafford tonight - in a box no less!! So do us a favour and don't order anything this afternoon. Good present that when everyone else gets to share it with you. For Marion's next birthday I'm going to treat her to a box at Anfield for a big European game.If you read this Kathy,(who looks like she's celebrating her 50th) have a great night.



Today's special June offer is on the new sous vide units. For one day only until 1pm on Monday 29th June there will be an extra 10% discount on the fabulous SV25 and SV38. To qualify for this discount orders must be place by 1pm on Monday and MUST quote blog offer 260609.

Today marks the end of an era as we say goodbye to Natalie Drummond who has found that, working full time, she was not seeing enough of her daughter Olivia. Nat has been with us for almost two years and we wish her well for the future. She has promised that her mum will carry on bringing the bacon butties on Fridays. We have to decide on her replacement now.



As I write this, after a week of beautiful weather, the sun has just gone behind a big cloud. Typical. Just in time for the weekend. I'll close today with one hell of a cool dude.

Almost There

After a few months our gas tower is down to the last two levels now. One of the demolition workers popped into the factory on Tuesday and asked if he could reverse his lorry into our car park. "No problem" we said before an enormous low loader carrying a massive crane backed in and promptly churned two tracks into the warm tarmac. Fortunately the workers were very good and have made quite a good job of patching the mess up.



Today's special June offer which will run until Monday at 10.am is an extra 10% off all the twin tapped CT range boilers. That's the CT4000-3.CT4000-6,CT6000-6 and CT6000-9. A saving of up to £96.90. To qualify for this special price, orders must reach Instanta by the deadline and MUST quote reference blog offer 250609.

We're well into the holiday season now and when I go round with the pay packets it feels like there are more people away than are here. I know that isn't quite true but I'm hearing all about Nick's forthcoming trip to St Lucia and Lauren and Daz's holiday in Turkey whilst me and Marion are planning three nights in Dundee.(Tis madness but there be method in it).



I had a vist from Damian Thompson from Andy Bounds Ltd yesterday. We saw Andy give one of his motivational speeches at the recent CEDA conference and were impressed. Damian is going to give us a quote for training our sales team as young Craig Buckley is going to join Nick and Peter on the road in September so,coming at the job as a completely raw recruit, some professional training might go down well. I imagine the session might go a little bit like this.