It would have been nice if it was my novel "Give Your Tomorrow" that was grabbing all the headlines this morning following it's massively successful launch. But, sad to say, it wasn't. No, it was Dan Brown and his new book "The Lost Symbol". According to the reviewers in the posh papers it seems that the book is a load of rubbish but, with Tesco reportedly selling nineteen copies per minute and ASDA shifting 18,000 yesterday, I doubt that Dan will be losing much sleep over the reviews. I haven't read any of Dan Brown's books but I believe that this one takes a swipe at the Freemasons and that can't be a bad thing.
So what have I got against the Freemasons? It's a long story so I'll try and keep it short. I once worked for a bank. It was full of Freemasons. I had a very nice manager and one day I had a heart to heart with him and told him how much I disliked the way that the masons were getting business by scratching each others' backs. It was a way for mediocrity to rise to the top and all the top jobs in the bank were being taken by them. My manager nodded sagely in agreement.
A few weeks later it was my annual appraisal with my manager. I was gobsmacked when I had was given a C rating having only ever had A ratings throughout my entire career. I complained to head office who were sympathetic. My manager was apologetic but stood by his appraisal with no valid explanation.
A few weeks later I was working late and the manager's door swung ajar. He rushed to shut it but not before I spotted him dressed in full masonic regalia, apron and the lot. I didn't spot if his trouser leg was rolled up but the mystery of the C rating was solved.
Along similar lines, the Harper Collins Authonomy website seems to have developed a mutual support mentality. Budding novelists such as me upload their books onto the site and wait for constructive comments. The more support a book gets, the higher it rises in the rankings. The prize at the end of the month is an appraisal by the Harper Collins editorial team. But members are inundated by fellow eager novelists asking for comments on their books in return for comments on yours. Are you going to write "This is worse than Dan Brown" if you think that they might support your novel? No. So the upshot is the person who writes to the most members asking them to look at "The Book Wot I Wrote" is more likely to be at the top at the end of the month than the new (but very quiet) William Shakespeare.
If you are new to this blog and are asking yourself "what the hell has this got to do with boilers?", here's our best selling 1500LCD just for you. We sold out of these for the first time last Friday but Jason got the lads together and with a big effort we were back in stock with another 100 plus yesterday leaving customers boilerless for just a couple of days. I'm hoping that production is running to target as Factory Leader Tony Mercer is back from his holiday next week and we'll never hear the end of it if we miss targets in the only month that he's off for a fortnight (again).
We are supporting the 10:10 campaign - the campaign to save 10% emissions in 2010. As usual for Instanta we aren't doing the obvious like saving on lighting or heating, we did all that years ago when we got our ISO14001 accreditation from BSI. No, we are making our contribution to 10:10 through extra energy efficiency measures in our new ranges to be launched at Hotelympia in February. We aren't going to tell you what these are as we know that our competitors are regular blog readers but all will be revealed at Hotelympia. Lincat will have plenty of time to come and have a look as they won't be exhibiting this time.
Got to fly now to go and get Marion and Jane tickets for Orange Wednesday's showing of Julie and Julia. I'll leave you with an appropriate tribute to the wonderful Patrick Swayze. R.I.P Patrick.
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