Friday 29 August 2008

Departure Time



Today is the day that we say goodbye to Sue Ebo (above right) and Rob Lowe (below). Sue joined us in January to take over from Natalie whilst she was off on maternity leave. With Nat's return imminent we are pleased to say that Sue has landed a good job with a major bank but we hope that she has enjoyed her short spell in the madhouse and has good memories of her time at Instanta. For our part we are very sorry to see her go and would like to thank her for all her hard work and wish her well for the future.



As for Rob, he has spent his long student summer holidays in our wiring department (not all students are layabouts) where he had the chance to earn a bit of cash to help him through the next year of his degree course in History at Manchester Met University. Thanks for your help Rob. See you next time?



As for me I had a day off yesterday and went metal detecting in the Yorkshire Dales where I had found a site via satellite maps. I am pleased to say that the research proved that I had found an early settlement as I found this interesting artifact. Unfortunately at the moment I can't give a positive identification but feel that it could date back to the Romano British period.




There's a big International football match on Sunday when Instanta take on Poland (well a group of friends of our Polish employees). It promises to be an interesting game but whether or not I will last 90 minutes is open to debate.

This is the standard of football expected along with one of my favourite songs.


Wednesday 27 August 2008

She's a natural



Nat paid us a visit yesterday taking time off from her busy schedule on maternity leave. Baby Olivia was as popular as ever and here she is giving Lauren a chance to show her natural maternal instincts (mind you Lauren did move pretty sharpish as soon as Olivia got a bit restless). Also pictured are Sue (in green), who sadly leaves us on Friday after standing in for Nat's maternity leave, and Marion who (like me) would love to have her own grandchild.





Going to Anfield again tonight to see the reds take on Standard Liege. It's nice to go in the knowledge that my ticket has been paid for by trading the odds on Betfair so it will be £51 if we win and £24 if we don't. I hope that Robbie Keane (above) will shine in his home European Champions League debut. I think we will win by about 3-0




Tomorrow I am going to have a day off and go metal detecting in Yorkshire. I have been using satellite maps to try and find likely sites and have got permission to visit a new site near Ingleton. The sat map (not this one) shows signs of ancient settlement so I am hopeful.



We've got about 25 of our new under counter boilers going out soon. They have all tested perfectly and we are looking forward to seeing them installed. Quite a few are going into a big rugby stadium so we hope to get a few photos once they are in place.

The competition is still running. No winners. I will try and make the next one a bit easier.

I was saddened to see that Judson Laipply has been overtaken as the most viewed Youtube video of all time by Avril Levine's "girlfriend". Methinks a conspiracy by Avril's fans is afoot as both are closing on being the first ever to reach 100,000,000 views with Avril on 98 million and Judson on 96 so I am doing my bit for Judson. If all my regular readers click on this a few times we might get him up to er 96,000,002.



Tuesday 26 August 2008

Well they make me laugh

Although today is Tuesday I've got a Monday morning feeling so thought I would cheer myself up with some of my favourite clips.Hope you share my sense of humour. Here's a classic from Russ Abbot.



And another from Harry Hill and my hero Shane McGowan.



No winners of the competition yet. It will run until Friday when we will close it and start with a new one.

Getting a bit bored with betting on Big Brother on Betfair so will leave it alone until a week on Friday when it finishes. Still top of the Guardian Instanta Sports Pick the Score competition (just) despite getting Everton, Blackburn, Stoke,Tottenham and Fulham results wrong. I thought there were quite a few surprises this week and although my forecast of 2-0 to Liverpool was not way out of line in the final score it really was a lucky win.



I've got eleven items for sale on eBay at the moment including this fabulous Royal Copenhagen vase that I picked up at auction a couple of weeks ago for £11. Lots of interest in it so far and I hope that it will go for a few hundred pounds.


Friday 22 August 2008

No more achievements to report today

After all the successes reported over the last two days the best we could come up with today was factory leader Tony Mercer's granddaughter cutting her first tooth.I don't think that merits a photo Tony. Mind you assembly worker Craig Mercer told me that his daughter also just cut her first tooth. Amazing coincidence or what? Spooky.


(Not Tony's granddaughter or Craig's daughter)



Doing well on the betting front with just two weeks to the end of Big Brother and a minimum win of £312. Still a chance to lay some of the housemates to increase the winnings but I mustn't lay the winner or that would be a waste of months of playing around on Betfair. Still haven't watched the programme but from what I hear it's going to be hard to choose.




Got my first match of the the season at Anfield tomorrow. I am expecting a 2-0 win for the reds. I have two season tickets but son Paul finds it hard to get up from London so it is good to see that the club has introduced a sell back scheme this season. May take advantage of this as I gave away about £500 worth of tickets last season.



Boiler orders still coming in so I am pleased to say that we are bucking the "recession". Got a lot of the new under counter boilers going out next week so that should be good.

Thursday 21 August 2008

Proud Parents Part 2

As I said yesterday, Instanta people's children are achieving loads at the moment. So much that I had to blog on the subject two days running. Yesterday we highlighted our son's success with the TV programme he created and Peter's son's wedding, today it's all about exams.



Here's Laura Neal, Nick's daughter who got an A & 2Bs at A Level and qualified for a prestigious TV Production course at Bournemouth & Poole University. Well done Laura. We know how much you enjoy media and wish you all the very best. That's two Instanta offspring in the TV industry now.



Pictured centre is Sue Ebo. Sue has emailed me a photo of daughter Rachel but as email is so completely and utterly useless I have not received it so, sorry Rachel but congratulations go to her on achieving 6As and 4Bs in her GCSE results out today.


And here's Michael Sweeney son of Dave and Amanda of City Servicing. Michael also got his GCSE results this morning and has got 11 in all including 2A* and 2A. Well done Michael. His mum tells me he aims to follow a career in medicine (servicing people not boilers like his dad).


And here pictured far right is Peter Barlow from our stores department. Peter's son Alex has just passed 7GCSEs allowing him to qualify for Sixth Form college. Like his dad, Alex is a top class footballer, and is going to study Sports Technology at college. He will also qualify for a place in a feeder team for local professional football clubs. Well done Alex. Once again due to the unreliability of email we have had to make do with a photo of your dad!

We've had five entries for yesterday's competition but all are incorrect so far. So here is another clue. Look very closely at the chimney. Unusual isn't it?

Wednesday 20 August 2008

Proud Parents Part 1

Instanta is brimful of proud parents this week so I am spreading the blog over two days to allow a fair share of the limelight to all.



Firstly Marion and I were over the moon to see the following published in Monday's Daily Mirror.

"ITV launch new game show Colour Of Money
18/08/2008

..in the pipeline

Queuing at the cashpoint for a couple of beer vouchers is boring, right? Wrong!

ITV have devised an exciting new game show all about, er, cash machines.

In the Colour Of Money, 10 contestants face a bank of 20 cashpoints - each containing an unknown amount of dosh. Players choose to withdraw cash from 10 machines and have to decide when to shout "stop". The challenge is whether to play safe and win small - or gamble on a big payout but risk losing all if their machine runs dry.

The upcoming show is to get a prime-time slot."

And the reason for our pride?


Our son Paul (above) devoted most of 2007 to developing this game which he created with his colleague Danny and by last Christmas he was trialing it with as many guinea pigs as possible and lots of us here at Instanta played. The game is great fun and not easy to win although Nick won £75k (pretend money unfortunately for Nick). Well done son. And with a new Eggheads programme also developed by Paul airing in October on BBC2 it looks like a brilliant career lies ahead.

And the next proud parent is Northern Sales Manager Peter Brindle whose son John married girlfriend Ruth last Friday.



Sadly Peter wouldn't let me include a photo of him in his tails so here are the happy couple. I have known John for many years and have to say that he is a great young man and a credit to his dad. A talented musician, John teaches at the local Sixth Form College. Our very best wishes go out to both of them.

And so to our new competition. Here is a photo of a lovely Yorkshire Dales cottage.



And here is a short clip from a very famous film


Can you connect the two? First correct answer received with a boiler order wins £25 off their order.

Tuesday 19 August 2008

When in Rome


It's always good when you go abroad to try and learn a bit of the language and make an effort so I was really impressed to see Steve McLaren doing his bit now that he is working in Holland. If you have not already seen it, here is Steve's admirable interview with Dutch TV where he attempts to get to grips with the language. And you wonder how we failed to qualify.





Not much luck on eBay this week. Made a profit but this was messed up by a woman who bid £440 for this super late 18th century Worcester bowl. She now says it was a mistake and the next bidder says he will still buy it but wants to spend just £150! To be honest I only paid about £20 for it so I will probably accept that but it is a lot of hassle.



It's only a couple of weeks to the end of Instanta's financial year. It has been a year of change and development with some highs in the launch of a great new product range and a superb brochure and the lows of the purchase of the freehold and the loss of many thousands of pounds through theft. Despite the gloom and doom in the economy I think that we will see a good increase in sales on last year and, whilst profits will be considerably down due to all of the above we are in a good position to move into our next financial year. Sales of the new products are good and I am pretty sure that the new 1500LCD will outsell the new £434 Lincat EB3F by a long way.



The superb new 1500LCD £399. We are now well on our way to getting 1,000 LCD models out with zero failures reported to date.

Monday 18 August 2008

Happy Birthday Craig



Happy birthday greetings go to Craig Buckley in our Sales Department today. Craig has worked for us since he was a teenager in a variety of office and stores positions and has now reached the ripe old age of 25. For many of you he is your main contact here at Instanta as it is Craig who is responsible for making sure that you get your orders quickly. A keen footballer, golfer,Internet poker player, Liverpool fan and recently an angler, Craig also keeps me advised on what is going on in Big Brother, (mind you as his favourites get eliminated every week I am not taking any notice of what he tells me). If you order a boiler today and wish him a Happy Birthday he will give you £5 discount.



First weekend of the Premiership Season and it's good to see a number of you have joined in our Guardian Pick the Score League. It's not too late to join. Contact anyone here at Instanta and we will send you an invite (it's free). At the moment Peter Brindle our Northern Area Sales Manager is joint top with someone who modesty prevents me from naming but it's a long slog and remember Manchester United couldn't beat rubbish opposition on day one of last season (oh Deja Vu same thing happened this week)so first week results are not necessarily a sign of things to come.



Watched "Into the Wild" at the weekend. What a brilliant film! You have to hand it to Sean Penn. Almost everything I have seen that he has been involved in (e.g Mystic River, The Assassination of Richard Nixon)has been brilliant and the way that he directed this film is so flawless it is difficult to believe that you are watching actors.

Friday 15 August 2008

So Long And Good Luck Les




Today we say goodbye to our machine shop assistant Les Lord. Les (59)first worked at Instanta in the 1990's but was sadly a victim of the economic downturn and made redundant. He then went on to suffer more bad luck in contracting leukaemia from which, we are pleased to say , he made a full recovery. When things picked up we were delighted to welcome Les back and he has been with us since 1999. Keen on sports, Les is a Nottingham Forest fan and still an excellent table tennis player after being Nottinghamshire Junior Champion during his youth. Les has a son and daughter plus four grandchildren (all boys)so we are sure that he will find plenty to keep him occupied during his retirement which has unfortunately come early due to back problems. We hope to see him on our nights out to the Greyhounds (we need his tips) and welcome him to our Christmas lunch. Good luck Les.



Good luck also goes to sheet metal worker Gary Rodwell who is celebrating his engagement to girlfriend Faye tomorrow evening at Southport FC after a whirlwind romance. Plenty of Instanta people will be joining them on Saturday and we wish the happy couple all the very best.

Here's a song especially for Lauren.





No winners of yesterday's competition yet. It's still running but today you will have to order one of the correct models and quote "this is what the lads were making on Thursday" because they don't hang about and they're making something else today.



Betting on Big Brother going very well with a minimum of £315 winnings now as long as Stu is evicted tonight (and I am sure he will be). May get to £400 if I can lay a few of the others before they get evicted. Had a good start to the football season with £55 win on the Man City game last night and £28 on the Liverpool match. Tonight everything is on Bayern Munich with a view to laying off.

Thursday 14 August 2008

We have a new winner! And a new competition.

After a brilliant winning streak ABC Direct have finally been beaten to being the first to answer my quiz correctly and winning £20 off their order. The winners were City Servicing of Grays in Essex. Run by Dave and Amanda Sweeney, City carry out all our service work in the Greater London area and very good at it they are too. So congratulations Dave and Amanda and commiserations to ABC who had a good few stabs at the answer.

I felt it was easy but anyway here is the solution. I asked you to link this photo with two time travellers.



When nobody got it I added the clue of "Ding Dong", think cosmetics, and then gave you a Youtube video of a Hamlet Cigar ad.

OK so the dog is a Great Dane. A very famous time traveller is Doctor Who. If you had googled Great Dane and Doctor Who the answer would have come in the first response. Hamlet is a great Dane. David Tennant is currently playing Hamlet (how could you have missed the publicity?). David Tennant is Doctor Who. His co star is Patrick Stewart who played Jean Luc Picard the Star Trek Captain. (My son says that is tenuous but I argue that as the Star Trek craft travelled faster than the speed of light then he too was a time traveller). Ding dong cosmetics is a reference to the famous Avon catch phrase and the RSC is based in Stratford Upon Avon. As for the Hamlet cigars, I don't need to explain that (or do I?). To be honest, apart from Marion and our son Paul, nobody here solved this quiz.

Lauren has asked me to make today's quiz easier. So this one is dead easy. What are the lads in the factory making today? First to order one of these models quoting "It's what the lads are making today" wins £20 off their order. Here's a very very big clue.



Here's a greetings card for all the doom mongers out there.



Don't believe it.





Wednesday 13 August 2008

Six Degrees of Instanta

It started with a few college students devising a game to play at dinner parties. It was called Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon and the aim of the game was to link any actor with Kevin Bacon within six films eg Jack Nicholson was in "A Few Good Men" with Kevin Bacon. Michelle Pfeiffer was in "Wolf" (or "The Witches of Eastwick") with Jack Nicholson, who was in "A Few Good Men" with Kevin Bacon. And so on. The number of intervening movies is that actor or actresses' Bacon Number or degree number. Thus, in this example, Nicholson would have a Bacon Number of 1 and Michelle Pfeiffer a Bacon Number of 2.The game became a cult even spawning the hit tv series "Six Degrees" as the object of the six became anybody rather than just Kevin Bacon. Scientists have now decided that anyone in the world can be linked in six steps.

So how about Instanta. Well I reckon most people in the UK would have an Instanta score of just one or two.






Well she's got a 1500 at Windsor.


And he's got one at Highgrove. (Nice mug your Royal Highness)




The Emirates have loads



As have Old Trafford for the prawn sandwich brigade.



He's f***ing got one too.



Wasn't it a pity about poor little Yang Peiyi (above) whose songbird voice enthralled millions at the opening ceremony of the Olympics? It seems that the Director Zhang Yimou (below) deemed her not pretty enough to represent the Chinese race and substituted her with some miming little cutie pie. Well Zhang, the words pot kettle and black spring to mind.



The competition is still running. My son Paul solved it straight away although he thinks one of the time travellers is tenuous. However, he didn't buy a boiler so it's still running. Give it a go. Much as we all love ABC Direct, they have won every blog competition we have run so far.It's time for a new winner.

Tuesday 12 August 2008

Too much like hard work

It's been a bit too much like hard work today. It's 3 o' clock now and I have only just got around to starting the blog. Balanced the books for July this morning and am pleased to record a profit for the month and the figures balancing to within 3p. Then went to the local auction to bid on some stuff. I bought what I think is a pretty spectacular piece of Royal Copenhagen porcelain for £10 plus commission and an extremely rare Chinese jug lotted together with some Masons Ironstone and Spode for £160. Unfortunately this foray to the auction house took two hours out of my hectic schedule and when I got back here there was a customer to phone back and the football teams for tonight's five a side to sort out. Pressure pressure pressure.




Seems that more and more customers are using our boilers for Chinese green tea. So whereas we sometimes used to get purists saying that they had to have the water at boiling point to make their tea now we have Chinese tea purists saying that the water is too hot. Fortunately our WM and CT range of boilers are easy to program by a few simple button pushes so whether you are serving Typhoo or Kung Fu you should be ok.



Liverpool's first competitive game of the season tomorrow when we play Standard Liege. Have put £675 on the reds at the moment but hope to lay off when the odds drop tomorrow to give me a risk free bet. I can't see the odds staying at 1.54. This is a match that Liverpool should win. At the same time I am not in the business of risking £675 once the ball is in play so if the odds go above 1.56 I will be jumping off.


My competition is proving hard to solve for everyone. You will remember that I asked you to link two time travellers with a photo of a dog (the breed is important). I then gave you the further clue of ding dong (think cosmetics)and a You Tube clip of a cigar ad. First to get it right wins £20 off their boiler order.


Just a well done to Tom Daley (shown above with his gold medal for great dentistry). When you are just 14 it takes guts to bollock your 20 odd year old diving partner for phoning his mum during the competition. Mind you "Hello Mum I'm at the Olympics" half way through the dive was taking it a bit far.

Monday 11 August 2008

Bargain Bookcase

Following the recent alterations that we had carried out at home Marion and I have been left with quite a lot of antique furniture that doesn't fit in with the new decor. So I have put it on eBay. At the moment this Victorian bookcase that cost us £995 over ten years ago has been bid up to £102. There's still 24hours to go and a lot of interest has been shown. I will be happy if it gets to a couple of hundred pounds. Listed a lot of other stuff as well including this fabulous KMP Berlin cup and saucer c1830 which I have high hopes for.

Here at Instanta some of the lads are working overtime to keep up with the orders. Despite what you read in the papers, we are not in a recession so let's get some positive reporting going. Marion and I have done our best to boost the local economy by spending at local restaurants and the lads in the factory are unselfishly keeping the local hosteleries above water. The message has to be spend spend spend. That will keep a recesssion at bay.



It's been a bit quiet on the betting front as I am waiting for Big Brother to finish so I can cash in my winnings. Guaranteed £275 at the moment but have got £17,517 in the unlikely event of Nicole winning. Want to lay my bets on Nicole (above) but currently 280to 1 means I can only get about £60 back. If she is not nominated tomorrow we may see a price drop. Still haven't seen the programme but will be tuning in on the final night.

Still no winner of the competition but as I have virtually given it away in the last blog, there are no more clues.

Here's one of my favourite songs to blow away the Monday cobwebs.

Friday 8 August 2008

Friday's Blog

It's Saturday now and this is Friday's blog but it took so long to upload the following video that everyone was going home and I had to switch my computer off. I thought it might be nice for a change for you to have a quick look around Instanta. British manufacturers are fast becoming an endangered species but, as you can see from this, we are still going strong. I originally included the office in the film but there was a service engineer making so much noise at the trade counter (and it wasn't Max singing) that I will have to do the office again another day. As you can see from the film, the lads move at a hell of a pace when the tea break bell goes. I was pleased that I managed to capture the most important event of the Instanta week, the bacon butty delivery.

Just completed the warranty statistics for June. Once again we had very few faults but it was interesting to see that we had to replace 5 LCD display boards on wall mounted boilers. As all these boards were from machines supplied at varying times over the last 24 months it was a bit puzzling and could not be attributed to a batch fault. However, research indicates that each boiler was in an area that had experienced severe electrical storms. As the failure rate on these boards is under 0.08% we are not unduly concerned but, as always, we will seek ways of preventing any recurrence.

The competition still running. It is nothing to do with the Wizard of Oz. (Ding Dong Think Cosmetics). Here's another clue. And if you don't get it now I give up.

.

Big things happening in China. But before we all pat the Chinese on the back and congratulate them on a wonderful show, lets all remember how oppressed these people really are. I hope that plenty of peaceful protests during the games show the world that everything is not as rosy as they would like us to think.

Thursday 7 August 2008

No More Victor Meldrew


My critic tells me that my recent blogs make me sound like an egotistical grumpy old man. I (of course) DON'T BELIEVE IT

But just in case she is right, I promise to be nice today. Last night's performances of "Mamma Mia" was wonderful. Pierce Brosnan and Julie Walters sang like angels and danced like Fonteyn and Nureyev. There were no tantrums in the queue when the sold out light went on (just a cheer from the blokes who got to see Batman instead). As one of only 25 men in a capacity audience I felt slightly emasculated but it was good to see what makes women laugh and I feel that if someone reopened the Carry On franchise they may be onto a winner.




Happy Birthday greetings go warmly to Operations Director David Wilson. Dave is 44 today and has worked for us for 28 years. Starting soon after leaving school at 16 Dave has done almost all of the jobs at Instanta including buying and running the stores. He has gained two university degrees whilst working full time and is also qualified in Health and Safety and Environmental Management. Recently Dave has devoted hours to developing our superb new product range and he is pictured here with the first batch of Under Counter boilers which have gone together beautifully. Dave is a devoted father to Jack and Abbie and recently took them on an adventurous outdoor holiday in a wild and wet Wales. With almost a third of the country's Premiership Football teams within 45 miles of Southport, Dave has chosen to support Arsenal and is in our pick the score team as Northern Gunner. Have a great day Dave.



And now that our under counter boilers are going strong we can turn our attention to the last of our development projects the Sous Vide water baths. As we like to think of ourselves expert in water heating technology and wanted to branch out into other areas of catering equipment Sous Vide cooking was a logical step. The machines work brilliantly but, before going into production we are trialing them with a number of top chefs. We will tweak them after the chefs have given us feedback and will launch in late autumn.

Nobody has won our competition yet. To save you time going back through the blogs it is repeated here. And here is an additional clue. Ding dong.

When you order a boiler answer the following question and, if you are the first to get it right, we will give you £20 off your order. Link two time travellers with the following photo.

And to keeping my promise of being nice, here's a nice little song to cheer you all up.

Wednesday 6 August 2008

Weeping Wailing And Gnashing Of Teeth

When I was young, my Dad, during a religious phase told me that on judgement day there would be "Weeping and Wailing and Gnashing of Teeth". Well today must be judgement day as I have just witnessed such weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth at the local Vue cinema as the girl on the till announced that all tickets for "Wall E" had sold out. The queue instantly burst into tears (and that was just the mums and dads who now had to find something else for the little buggers to do in glorious Southport for two hours). The kids had a spontaneous multiple nervous breakdown as pandemonium broke out with much stamping of feet, bawling and a lot of snot in evidence. This was followed by a mass exodus which left me alone to sneak up to the counter and in a hushed tone buy two tickets for tonight's performance of "Mamma Mia".



You may wonder what on earth I was doing buying tickets for "Mamma Mia" after the Guardian gave it the worst film review ever and no stars. However, everyone we have spoken to who has seen it absolutely loved it. Having said that,apart from Max, these people were predominately female and over 50. On a positive note my son Paul tells me it is about a slut who sleeps with so many men in one month that she doesn't know who fathered her baby (so quite raunchy then) although Margaret in our office tells me that the audience were clapping (it's a bloody film who are you clapping?) and, what's more, dancing in the aisles (oh frabjous day). Oh well we are going to the Warehouse beforehand for a slap up meal and pre- film anaesthetic courtesy of my mum. Thanks Mum.



I think its Meryl Streep who plays the slut.

Meanwhile here at Instanta things continue to go well. We have paid all our bills on time again which makes it about 30 months in a row now. If only the customers would do the same we would save a bomb in interest charges and Lauren's time in chasing them up. It is amazing how many people ask for a copy invoice. They have already had two statements. Does nobody check statements any more? We post them religiously every month and no we don't email them as email is crap and slow payers don't need additional excuses. Fortunately we get a nice big payment from CEDABOND early in the month as most members pay promptly although there are some who are persistently late (you know who you are). Come on lads. A deal is a deal.



All Lauren wants is for you to pay on time.

Which leads me into a message for all the kids who missed Wall E


Competitition is still running. No winner yet. See yesterday's blog for details.