Gavin And Spacey

Yes the competition has been won again and once again ABC Direct are the winners (turning into a nice little earner for you eh ABC). The famous poster we were recreating was "The Usual Suspects" and the man in the Kevin Spacey position is our assistant director Gavin Ford who could be identified from earlier blogs. Well done ABC. No competition today. Instead we are making a one day only special offer instead (see below).

As it's the last day of the month and we hear that competitors are giving away free boilers if you buy four, we thought that we would go one better and give everyone £20 off the list price on any CT or WM range models ordered today. What do you mean that's not going one better? £20 off an Instanta or a free Tincan - no contest. To take us up on our offer order today 31st August 2008 and quote order ref "there's no such thing as a free boiler."

At the moment I can't concentrate because Max is singing too loudly and he's not getting the words right. Look Max, watch this very carefully and learn the words (and the tune would be a help). Although I have to say Max has got quite a good voice really.

Watched the reds play Villareal live on Sky Sports last night. Actually lay on the bed with the TV on and was put to sleep by a soporfic, meaningless friendly. Why Sky wasted two hours of airtime on this is beyond me. And some idiots were even betting on it on Betfair (not me I hasten to add).

Well it's the end of the month now so I better get some work done for a change. Can't bet on Big Brother any more as I have layed everyone so that I win £262 whoever wins. Not a bad result. Pity I have to wait a few weeks for the payout.

Sad Sad Day

When someone goes on maternity leave you have to take on someone temporary to replace her. We landed on our feet when Sue (pictured above right with new mum Natalie) joined us to cover Nat's absence. But all good things come to an end, and with Nat's leave drawing to a close Sue has gone and found herself another job. She'll still be here for a few weeks but we would all like to thank her for the wonderful contribution she has made to the Instanta office. We will miss her very much. Here's a sad song to fit the mood in the office.

Meanwhile, despite everybody doing their very best to talk us into a financial recession, I am pleased to say that things here are still going well. The new models are into production and a few are now out in the field with excellent feedback.

We are just preparing some fonts for demonstration and I have to say that they look fabulous. This now give us time to concentrate on the sous vide machines. They are now nearing completion and we have five top chefs lined up to field test them. After their feedback we will do a few tweaks and then they will be ready to go.


Paradise lost.

Reading of the tragic shooting of Ben and Catherine Mullany in Antigua really shook me and Marion. Having just spent two weeks on holiday with our own 28 year old daughter it was so easy to imagine the feelings of their distraught parents who went from celebration to devastation in just a few days. Having visited the Caribbean on a number of holidays in the last few years, the shootings do not come as a surprise. Whilst the islands are spectacularly beautiful, there is tremendous poverty and deprivation outside the resorts and the tourists wealth can only bring resentment. Marion and I used to walk up a hill to our rented villa late at night in St Lucia oblivious to any danger. We would not dream of doing it again today.


Don't forget we are still running a competition. See earlier blogs for details.

No pervs today.

I got a bit of stick after yesterday's blog after including a clip of Gary Glitter's "Hello Hello I'm Back Again". Seems that people only remember him for his misdemeanours in the Far East (albeit pretty serious and nasty stuff) but I have very fond memories of sitting with Marion outside Southport Theatre one evening. We were by the Marine lake and the lake was just behind the stage. We didn't know that the Glitter Band were appearing but we heard the beat of drums getting rhythmically louder and louder and louder whilst the screams of the audience grew to a massive crescendo. And then, just as the noise level simply couldn't get any higher it was drowned by the revving of an obviously huge and powerful motor bike off stage. The bike must have flown onto the stage and Gary immediately launched into "Do you wanna be in my gang". It brought the house down and is still the most memorable pop entrance I have (n)ever seen.

Well, as the Italian fattoria starts to fade into happy memories it's back to work and starting with balancing the books. But I'm clearly still in holiday mode as,when the figures didn't balance by 0.05p, I thought "big deal" and left it. Now that might sound like the obvious and most sensible course of action to you but in the past I have spent three or more hours looking for a couple of p. Must be the ex banker in me.

In the 70's (around the same time as I was sitting listening to Gary G) I worked as a cashier for Barclays Bank. I thought I looked the bees' knees with my shoulder length centre parted hairstyle, my 3" platform shoes and off white suit with flares and could never quite understand it when my appearance came in for criticism from the pin striped bowler hat brigade that made up my colleagues (yes they did still wear bowlers in those days). During flower show week I spruced the outfit up by wearing a pink carnation in my buttonhole.

Delighted to see how Big Brother has been going whilst I was in Italy. With Betfair UK banned over there I simply left all my bets as they were and have come back to some huge swings in the odds which mean that I will win whoever wins. At the moment some of the potential winnings are on the small side but there is a lot of time to adjust that. Here's how the book looks today. Come on Dale.
Kathreya £41.27

Darnell £168.33
Rex £243.63

Luke £47.34
Michael £29.30
Rachel £704.63
Stuart£604.13
Dale£1,063.50
Maysoon £861.63
Lisa £887.63

Sara £601.63
Mohamed £243.63

And finally, whilst I was away the Instanta family continued to grow. The following is dedicated to buyer Gavin Ford (and Tony Mercer, Tony Lowe, Les Lord and Phil Joce)

New Competition Running

First day back at work so not a lot of time for blogging.

Nobody won my last competition so I have decided to close it. I asked who was the first team that I saw Liverpool play. After a fair number of incorrect answers I gave an additional clue of a photo of Jimmy Hill together with the clue "this may strike a chord". Although Jimmy did not play for Arsenal, he wrote the Arsenal 1971 cup final song hence the musical reference.

So on to our new competition. To enter, place an order for a boiler and tell us the answer to the following question. Below is a photo of Instanta management recreating a very famous film poster. The question is "Who is Kevin Spacey" First to answer correctly wins £25 off their order. Past blogs will partially reveal the answer.

Pick The Score Is Back

As I started this blog a couple of months ago I was bemoaning the ending of the football season and with it the Guardian Pick The Score Competition. Well I am delighted that the Guardian is running the competition again so if you follow this link http://guardian.pickthescore.co.uk/ you can register for the next Premiership season. If you had a user name last season you still need to register again. You can use the same name if you like.

Customers are welcome to join in and we will be running Instantasports for staff and another Instanta friends league for both staff and non-staff. Entry is free. email us when you have joined and we will invite you into one of our leagues. After her performance in Euro2008 I suspect that Jenny may well  get her revenge this season.

Well tomorrow will be the last day at our beautiful Italian fattorria. It really has been a wonderful find and I am delighted to recommend it to anyone http://www.fattoriadistibbio.com/ This sums up the last two weeks and, I hope, tomorrow.

What's Happening At Instanta?

The big problem with owning a business and going on holiday is that you don't know what is happening while you are away. Many of the people that we know in similar positions simply spend their entire holiday emailing and phoning the office but that's not really a holiday is it. I suppose that at least they have the peace of mind to know that when they get back it will be like they have never been away (because they haven't) but we have to approach Monday with trepidation.

Did Nick & Peter sell anything? Is the bank balance ok? Has anybody hit anybody? Did the parts arrive on time? Did we hit production targets? Did anyone win the competition? Well all of that will be revealed on Monday.At least we have a great staff which means that chances are that we were right to relax. Until then here's a photo of me by the pool. 

Sunshine and Sunflowers

Still relaxing and enjoying the sunshine and scenery. The holiday has been perfect so far and with four days left we hope for more of the same.

A Night At The Opera

We had a memorable night last night at the Puccini festival at Viareggio near Lucca. We hired a minibus to take us to the performance of Turandot. The production was spectacular and the weather in the open air auditorium perfect so everything went well. It gave Marion and Sarah the chance to wear something a bit more dressy. Driving to the airport now to take friends Dave and Jane back. Nothing planned for the rest of the week just continuing to recharge the batteries.

Custody threshold passed

Blogging from the dining room of the fattoria

Even though I am away on holiday I couldn't resist reading the court reports last night following the appearance of our ex head of metal work Brian Woods. Despite our absolute conviction that we have lost in excess of £10,000 the police decided to run with £3-4,000 which surprisingly falls within the jurisdiction of the local court and saves tax payers money. He pleaded guilty and has been released on bail pending probation reports but the judge did note that the offence "passed the custodial threshold". I doubt that he will do time but at least he will have to sweat it out for another week.

Although the weather has been great here, we had a hell of a storm on Sunday. 

It's our 32nd wedding anniversary today so we have got a chef coming round tonight. Looking forward to it.

Relax

Doing my best to get Marion to wind down but, as you can see from the photo, she doesn't know when to stop working.

Good news is we've got wireless internet.

Bad news betfair is not allowed in Italy

Wish you were here

UPS Useless Parcel Service

I said yesterday that I would devote today's blog to bigging up UPS if they got Sarah's passport to us on time.

The fact that in the following photo I am at a Scottish motorway service station at 8 o'clock this morning having driven nearly 200 miles to meet Sarah's boyfriend, who had driven a similar distance, means that rather than devoting the blog to bigging UPS up I will be bigging them down (if you can do such a thing).

I phoned DHL and UPS to ask how they could help me get Sarah's forgotten passport to Southport for today. UPS were the best on the phone and I booked them at about 9.30. They said that they would collect the packet from St Andrews University IT department before 5pm. To cut a long story short, they didn't. Between 5 & 6 last night we phoned UPS three times to be cut off, fobbed off and then promised a call. Got a voice message at 6.30 from someone saying that the driver had attempted collection at 1.30 but nobody knew anything about it.It would not now be possible to collect today. Rubbish! The packet was at reception all day and the driver had a mobile phone number in case of problems. As I wearily pulled into the service station this morning I got a call from UPS saying that they tried to collect at 19.15. Oh yeh they went to a closed University IT department at 19.15 after saying that the driver would not be in the area again that day (on a saved voice message). Still no mobile phone call. Absolutely rubbish service UPS. What a let down.

And just to make things worse, I just got a phone call to say that UPS called in to make the collection today. The driver said that he had gone to the library yesterday (sure, everyone in the library knows where the IT dept is) and as the packet was not there when he arrived today, despite me telling UPS that I had come to Scotland at 8 o'clock, he is coming back at 4.pm. What a shambles.

More wrong competition entries. It was not Fulham or Spurs.

Oh well, in a few hours I will be off on my holidays for two weeks and this should be the view. Don't know if I will be blogging. Depends on time, the weather and the broadband speed. But please do keep coming back. The next competition question will be. Who is Kevin Spacey? Entry details to follow when the existing competition has been won.

Don't Panic

When you go abroad on holiday it helps if you take one of these. My daughter Sarah made the long journey from St Andrews last night to join us before flying off to Pisa on Saturday. And yes she forgot just one thing. We are now hoping that UPS are as good as they say they are. If so we will dedicate tomorrow's blog to bigging them up. If not Sarah will have to enjoy a fortnight in sunny Southport. Well the open golf is on next week (very exciting).

The competition is still running and we have ruled out Blackburn Rovers Wolverhampton Wanderers and Manchester United. I will add a few more clues. It was a First Division match and the photo below might also strike a chord.


With Sarah at home I watched a few things I wouldn't normally watch on the telly last night. Room 101 featured Marcus Brigstocke's hates (one of which was football) which led to the showing of this clip which I have never seen before and I think is brilliant.

The circuits have arrived for the new push button boilers so we are going into production.

Marion and I have been invited to dinner with the bank manager tonight. Finally we have made it to the echelons of the most desirable of bank customers - the ones who owe too much!

You can please some of the people all the time, all the people some of the time, but you can't please all the people all the time

I write this heading after a long discussion with our sales department this morning. It seems that some of our dealer customers are selling our boilers at prices that other of our dealer customers don't like. We don't like them not liking it and would like it if everyone liked what everyone else was doing but it's not like that is it and we we would like to try and get everyone liking everything that we do - like. In the meantime our own take on it follows


Meanwhile our disingenuous competition continues. You will remember that I asked who was the first team that I saw Liverpool play way back in the 60's. Two incorrect entries have been submitted to date so you can rule out Manchester United and Wolverhampton Wanderers. To enter, place an order by FAX or email and tell us the name of a team. First to get it right wins £20 off the order.

Orders and enquiries for our super new push button DB2000 boilers are flooding in and we are finally in production. Sadly the credit crunch (IT'S NOT A RECESSION) hit someone down the supply chain which resulted in a supplier's supplier going bust and delaying the arrival of some vital components. An alternative supplier was sourced by our supplier and things are now moving quickly. Apologies if you have been kept waiting. You know that it's not like us.

You just can't get the staff nowadays.

Asking me to lend a hand checking paperwork the other day resulted in an unfortunate customer getting the wrong boiler. I will probably never hear the end of it so I am sitting here wearing my dunce's cap for the rest of the day. You should leave me doing what I know best
I am not the only eBayer at Instanta and fellow eBayer Dave B has some great anecdotes. This week he sold a beautiful old wooden box which he had picked up for peanuts. The great selling point to the box was the ultra rare locks. The box came complete with two keys and generated a huge interest before selling at a fine profit. Dave was delighted and started to pack the box for the seller. Where would be a safe place to pack the keys? In the box of course. Clunk click you can guess the rest.

Marion Knows Best

My lovely wife and fellow shareholder Marion (above) gets a little depressed at the stick that she and Lauren get from slow paying customers. It's just about the only thing we ever get complaints about which is a bit unfair when all we are doing is asking people to pay on time for the goods that we delivered on time. Yesterday we had a letter from a customer who is going to seek an alternative supplier if we don't reinstate his credit but today we got letters from two insolvency practitioners advising us that two other customers who had had their credit accounts withdrawn by Marion were both going into administration. We aren't being nasty withdrawing credit and are probably doing a favour if we make the account holders think a bit more about what is going on in their businesses.

Sorry to see Peter Crouch leaving Liverpool.

Honest.

Which leads me to today's competition.



Everyone who knows me knows that I support Liverpool. Who where the opposition when I went to my very first game? Place an order for a boiler by email or FAX and include the name of a football team. The first to answer correctly will win £20 off their order. The competition will close when it has been won.

Isn't She Lovely?

As reported last week, our machine tester Andy Fyles has just become a dad. He is on paternity leave at the moment but popped in today to introduce us to little Bethany who proved to be a huge success on her Instanta debut. Marion and Sue now have another little person to make gooey sounds to and it did not escape our notice that Lauren looks to be a natural too.

Bloody tennis! Pah. That meant missing "Songs of Praise" but we have managed to get hold of a copy for you.


And it also meant missing my favourite "Last of the Summer Wine" where the sun always shines but sadly where the plot seems now to be lost. Well not exactly lost it's just the same plot gets repeated every week. Will Howard and Marina's passion be forever thwarted? I have to say though that the two coppers Ken Kitson and Louis Emerick are absolutely brilliant and I hear that Louis makes a great pasta too.


Seems that Friday's competition was a bit too hard. Well I thought that a combination of a hard competition and a two hour time frame might just about save us giving ABC Direct another £20. There were plenty of clues. I started by saying that we might have to send some goods by sea. We then showed the magnificent Pogues playing "Bottle of Smoke" and I said that I might fall from grace with God after that. "Bottle of Smoke" comes from the Pogues album " If I should fall from grace with God". Another track on the album is "Thousands are Sailing". Instanta has a range called the thousand series. So there you go.

Come back tomorrow for another competition

No betting now for a few weeks due to holidays coming up (although will drop in to Betfair this week just to see how the Big Brother odds are moving). Put quite a lot on the tennis being completed on Sunday but as the night started to draw in I chickened out and won a princely 70p (better than losing a princely £200).

How to make friends and influence people

I got an email the other day from a prospective end user asking me to quote for Instanta's nearest equivalent to a competitor's wall mounted boiler. Always playing by the rules, I forwarded the email to our nearest agent and asked them to provide the customer with a quote. The propective customer emailed me again today with a copy of the quote that he had received from the agent. It was for a competitor's product! We are constantly trying to work with our dealers to generate a good working relationship and to ensure that we don't sell direct behind their backs but when this happens you sometimes wonder why we bother.

Anyway, rant over. With weekend beckoning the storm clouds are gathering over Southport and I strongly suspect that it's going to be a weekend inside. With only a week to go before we leave for Tuscany this won't be a bad thing as it will give us the chance to get the packing done.

Just got a very nice enquiry for the under counter boilers from overseas. Only problem is the freight cost which, at £596 for one unit is pretty prohibitive. I think we will have to look at sending by sea.

Which leads me into today's competition.Here is my all time favourite song, the one that will be my number one when I go on Desert Island Discs with the lovely Kirsty Young.


Maybe I will fall from Grace with God after that but if you link an Instanta range with the video and you are the first to get it on an order before 4.pm today (Friday 4th July) we will give you £20 off your order.

Time For Some Good News

I don't know about you but I am starting to get thoroughly sick and tired of the doom and gloom merchants who seem to be revelling in talking the country into a recession. I turned on the radio this morning and item after item concerned rising food prices, falling house prices, higher road tax, higher fuel tax, falling share prices, gloom gloom gloom, doom doom doom. Well my blog is now officially a NO BAD NEWS blog
So what good news have we got today?



Well how about his super Vienna cup and saucer bought on eBay for £26 and sold on eBay for £371.60?


On the betting front I have managed to trade my bets into a can't lose position on all the current housemates in Big Brother. I haven't watched the programme yet but will need to do so nearer the end if I am going to trade up to get higher profits on the favourites.

I just completed the stats for warranty work for May 2008. There were just 11 calls on boilers under guarantee out of a total of over 13,000 boilers still within their guarantee. That's 0.08% and that's pretty good news.

Andy Murray lost at Wimbledon. Now some of you may construe this as bad news but I feel that in losing so spectacularly Andy has kept up the British tradition of never progressing to the semi finals and this is good news for all us traditionalists.

And as I write all this good news, the sun just came out. Hip hip hooray.

Half a Lifetime At Instanta

Congratulations on his 33rd birthday go to our head of welding Craig Peach who joined us in 1992 when he was just 16. That means that he has been with us for over half his life. Quite an achievement. Craig, proud father of Dannika (14) and Georgia (9) is a big fan of Southport FC and,with partner Dawn, enjoys travel and antiques with a particular love of Italy and Venice. We all wish Craig a very happy day.

And having a birthday on Sunday does not preclude you from appearing on the blog so congratulations also go to assembly worker Aron Riding above who celebrated reaching the ripe old age of 19 last Sunday. Aron thought he had got away from the publicity but he will soon learn that nothing goes unnoticed here. As he has only been with us a few months I don't know Aron very well yet but he tells me that his hobby is sleeping (so typical teenager then). I can say that he is quite a mean footballer judging from his five a side performances to date. Here is a song dedicated to him for last Sunday.

No competition today as ABC Direct have taken all our competition budget having won three times in the last fortnight. I am pleased to say that they have managed to solve all my puzzles so they are not (contrary to popular belief here at Instanta) unsolvable. On Monday I asked you to Link Stevie Wonder's records with photos of a lion and tiger. Yesterday I added a further clue of a photo of a piston. Stevie's record label is Tamla Motown. Motown is Detroit. Detroit has three sports teams the Detroit Tigers (Baseball), Detroit Lions (Football) and Detroit Pistons (Basketball). So there you go. Congratulations once more to ABC and no you are not banned from entering.

A particularly tough cowboy rode into town, tied up his horse outside the saloon and strode menacingly through the swinging doors. The room hushed as he walked purposefully to the bar. "Bartender. Give me a whiskey". The trembling barman handed him the whisky which the cowboy downed in one and strode back out of the bar which reverted to its previous merriment.

Seconds later the doors swung open again as the same ugly brute reappeared. Again the saloon immediately fell silent. Heading straight to the bar the cowboy said in a loud and threatening voice "My horse has gone. Bartender give me another whiskey. I am gonna drink that whiskey and go back outside and if my horse ain't back, it's gonna happen here like it happened in Dodge City."

The cowboy drank the whiskey, slammed the empty glass down on the bar and walked out of the silent bar. His horse was back and he mounted up. As he mounted up a particularly brave saloon customer crept out of the bar and cautiously tugged at the cowboy's sleeve. "Hey mister. What happened in Dodge City?"

"Had to walk home".

Another Instanta Baby

Congratulations are in order for Andy Fyles our boiler tester. His partner gave birth on Sunday to a healthy little girl Bethany. Mum and daughter are doing well and we hope to get a photo for the blog soon (in the meantime this one may raise a smile). New man Andy is now on paternity leave although looking at the maternity leave that Nat is on makes me wonder if there is something of an imbalance between mothers' and fathers' rights.

Being the first of the month we are snowed under with figures and statements. Initial signs are that June was pretty good which, in view of the credit crunch and downturn in the economy, is encouraging.

Out in the factory it seems that there is a proliferation of mobile phoning going on. As the lads are being paid to build boilers and not to exchange electronic messages we have had to ban them.Perhaps they will think twice before using them after watching this



Nobody won the competition yesterday so we are going to let it run for another day. Here is the question again with a further clue added.

Make a connection between Stevie Wonder's records and the photos below.To enter the competition place an order for a boiler by FAX or email and give us your answer.The first to answer correctly will win £20 off their order. The competition closes on Wednesday 2nd July at 2.30pm.