A Sad Farewell

3rd March 1998 was an historic day here at Instanta. It was the day that a letter from a young David Sweeney dropped onto my desk. The letter told how Dave and his wife Amanda's business, City Servicing, based in Essex might be able to help Instanta. Having engineers permanently within Central London every day, Dave went on to promote the benefits of his firm. These included fully trained engineers with comprehensive stocks and vans linked with Radio Control. Not only that, he was offering Instanta a very competitive rate. And the rest, as they say, is history. I liked the letter, we gave City Servicing a try and before long they were part of the Instanta family.

In the twelve years that we have used them, this family run business has offered us an unbeatable service. Working in one of the most expensive and difficult areas in the country they have always been prepared to put in that extra effort that makes the difference between service and excellent service. We have put hundreds of customers in touch with them and they, in return, have promoted Instanta with confidence. We have thoroughly enjoyed working with them and consider Amanda and Dave as true friends. Like us, their ethos is to treat people as they would like to be treated themselves and this has worked perfectly. They even put themselves out to help my son Paul when he had problems with the plumbing in his London bedsit.

All of us who have had regular contact with Dave and Amanda (including me, Marion, Max, Craig and Jenny) were devastated to hear that they had decided on a change of career and have chosen to wind the business down. Today is their last day and we are so sorry to be losing them from our network of service engineers many of whom are similar family run businesses. If you read this Dave and Amanda, we will miss you very much. Please know that you will always be welcome here in Southport and we wish you the success that you so richly deserve. Good luck.

I'm all choked up now. I'll have to pull myself together. Ahem. Right. How do I follow that. Perhaps I shouldn't. I'll finish with a song just for Amanda and Dave .

Excitement Mounts

Looking forward to Saturday's Eurovision with excitement, I am probably in a minority as , when I asked around the office if anyone else was looking forward to the big event, I was met with blank stares and comments such as "is it on?"I don't know why but I have always enjoyed the parade of kitsch and glitter along with some dreadful songs, rigged voting and the humorous asides of Wogan (sadly no longer involved) and we had some fantastic evenings with the kids and their friends.I still remember the 1998 contest when German entrant Guildo Horn had the whole family plus an assortment of teenage guests rolling on the floor in amusement with his song "Guildo Loves You" which finished a creditable seventh. So on Saturday evening Marion and I will be glued to our sets and watching the spectacle unfold. I wonder if daughter Sarah will be carrying on the tradition in her new house in St Andrews. To add a bit more interest I will have my laptop at hand and have a flutter. The inside info is that Azerbaijan could win but I don't usually back the favourite.



The Apple iPad hits the stores this week so I might have a look as we are going into Liverpool on Saturday. I love Apple (who this week have been announced as the world's largest technology company overtaking Microsoft) and wonder why the Apple TV (above)has not taken off big time. I bought this years ago and it is a super little gizmo that allows you to stream photos from your computer and show them on the TV along with all your iTunes songs which it plays through the sound system. But it's much more than that. You can download TV programmes and films (at a price) and watch whatever you want. I downloaded a film instead of going to the cinema yesterday but by the time we have finished eating our evening meal it was too late to watch it. Oh well we have 29 days to view before it disappears from the Apple TV.



An air of sadness hangs over the office as Max Vidal works his final two days with us. Popular and laid back Max has been a regular in the office for a few years now and will be well known to many of our customers for his friendly service assistance and his tough but fair handling of credit control. But he's not going far. We've found him a new office in our machining department and he is hoping to develop a service empire. Max will still be handling incoming technical calls and warranty requests but in addition will be working with Gav and Dave on product development and testing.



One of Max's final jobs in the office (although he'll be continuing with it when he moves) was to complete our warranty report for April. The figures are good and we still have less jobs per month than we had ten years ago. But I am still not satisfied. I hoped that before I left Instanta I would see a month with nil warranty work. I still think that with all the efforts we make to provide the highest quality it will be possible but with thousands of boilers under guarantee with tens of thousands of components involved at any time, it's a pretty tall order (or "a big ask" in new football speak).

I'll finish today with a taster for the weekend.Has there ever been a better Eurovision enty? And can you really believe that he was only 35 at the time?

I know they've got a job to do but................

for fear of repeating myself, why is the British press (and broadcast media)insisting upon talking the country into a crisis? They did it in 2008 and they are doing it again now. Here I am at work overseeing a successful business with record orders and phones buzzing and yet every lunchtime when I make my trip to pay in the day's cheques into the increasingly growing bank balance I turn on the radio and hear pundits talking about crisis and financial meltdown. Is it just that scaremongering and crisis talk is more interesting than good news or is there a perverse wish to see things go belly up. On today's bulletin one expert was saying that there were a lot of positives but the interviewer appeared deaf to his comments. And let's face it the markets are like sheep. So if they plummet after listeners panic, it won't be a case of the media being able to say "Look!We were right" instead they should be thinking "What part did we play in this?"



I liken the markets to the weak punters on my favourite betting site Betfair. I don't read the forums any more but you can guarantee that within seconds of someone posting a message that says that Jose Mourinho was spotted at Heathrow Arrivals the odds on him becoming manager of West Ham will drop like a stone and the sheep will waste their money while the savvy betting man laughs all the way to the bank. Perhaps the doom mongers are quietly buying back the stocks and shares they sold at the peak of the market before they started their crisis campaign.



I wasn't particularly surprised to hear that the News Of The World had tricked Sarah Ferguson into demanding half a million pounds to fix up an interview with Prince Andrew but I was surprised to see that she fell for the same old N.O.W trap of the fake sheik. Is she totally wet behind the ears? Not only has the Sheik trapped her ex brother in law's wife but a whole string of celebs including Sven and that snooker player the other week. When asked to meet a Sheik about a sorting out a dodgy deal for him the alarm bells should have been ringing at such a level she'd be deaf for a week. You've got to hand it to the Sheik he must be very convincing or is it just that some people are more easily swayed by money than others and he picks his targets carefully.



Wednesday usually means just one thing. We are creatures of habit and always go to the cinema but Marion simply could not be persuaded to go and see that Street Dance 3D movie I blogged about yesterday so we are downloading a film on the Apple TV (great piece of equipment check it out)and watching that. The first episode of Spartacus Blood And Sand aired on Bravo last night.It's been heralded as the most shocking TV series ever and I've been asking around the office if anybody saw it. They all just shook their heads. (It seems that they've all Sky Plussed it to watch on Friday night).



After nine days on the diet, things are going well. I have to say that, whilst all marketing for diets appears to be targeted at women, the online diet that I am on has to be perfect for men. It has lots of targets to meet and stats to fill in every day and (most importantly) a score to see how well you are following the rules. Like all men I have to try and get a better score (just like trying to improve the mpg on the Prius every trip)every day so I should be thin as a rake in a few weeks.

I'll leave you with an important message from the French premier's wife. Sign up, it's a very important cause.

The Future's Bright

The future's Orange for Instanta twins Gary (left) and Darren Rodwell (right) who, on Saturday had one of the best days of their lives when they followed their beloved Blackpool to Wembley and watched the fairytale ending to their football season unfold as the Tangerines went on to beat favourites Cardiff 3-2 in a memorable Championship play off final. Metal worker Gary and welder Darren have been following Blackpool for twenty years and have season tickets at the club. You may wonder why, when there are plenty of big clubs within an hour of Southport, they chose to follow a little seaside club that is a quite tortuous journey away. It's all a matter of family. In 1989 their uncle Tony Rodwell helped the club gain promotion from the then fourth division and his nephews were hooked and have been devotees ever since. Congratulations Darren and Gary I look forward to seeing you when you visit Anfield next season.


And while on the subject of Orange, it looks like it's going to be hard again to find something to see at Vue tomorrow. No sign of Four Lions or Bad Lieutenant at the local cinema and we've seen most of the others. So perhaps we'll give Street Dance 3d a chance. The reviews are OK and we've probably seen the story a million times before (Fame, School of Rock etc etc) but I quite fancy seeing the 3D effects and we've got plenty of vouchers so it's not going to cost us.



Regular blog readers might recognise this face. Rob Lowe (son of Tony in our stores department) has worked with us on work experience and as a student in the past but has now joined the office to help us cope with the ever increasing number of orders. Rob (21) who studied History at Manchester University is very interested in politics and history and it's a great pity that I am stuck in the cell as I would enjoy a bit of political debate. Rob will be dealing with processing the sales orders and will gradually become more involved with the customers as Craig Buckley's assistant.

Where's the blog been? A few readers have asked me why I have not updated as regularly recently. It's simply down to workload.I am trying to help prepare some forecasts for our new owners and I want to do it properly. There's lots I have not done and have to catch up on. But I am catching up now and hope to start to blog daily again henceforth.

I see that ITV stand to lose £1.5m for cutting short the hugely expensive Nike ad that was booked for a slot at the end of the Champions League final on Saturday. It seems that they missed the crucial ten seconds that shows the Nike logo. Oh well you could call me cynical but could the acres of newsprint and hundred of blogs (like this) repeating the story be worth a bit more than the lost ten seconds? Watch it yourself and see if you would have guessed what was being advertised.Mind you isn't that an Umbro logo on Rooney's shirt?

Nature Red In Tooth And Claw (Sort Of)

It was a good job that Instanta welder Kirk Harrison was on hand when this swarm of bees turned up on a local allotment. Not content with his love of real ale (he runs the biggest real ale group on Facebook), Kirk has turned his hand to another old English tradition and is now a keen apiarist (he'll be Morris Dancing next). So when the question "Who you gonna call?" rang around the allotment it was a no brainer and Kirk and his bee-keeping mentor answered the call and picked up the lot and put them in a box and they will soon be at home in Kirk's garden in a new hive.



Kirk tells me that they managed to catch every one of the swarm bar one that just didn't want to join his mates.



Here he is with his box of bees.We are looking forward to buying some honey off him in the summer.



And whilst on the topic of nature, it looked like we had had a light cover of snow when I looked into the bike shed here at the factory this morning. There was a layer of downy white.



It turned out to be dandelion seeds blowing in from the nearby feeds. I've seen them drifting past the windows in previous years but I have never seen so many accumulate. I checked it out on the Internet and found on that highly reliable source The Daily Mail's website under the headline "Invasion of the dandelions" that the country is being overrun by them this year and it is down to the very warm weather.Ah,the Daily Mail bless them. They have to report that the country is at risk of being invaded by something every day. If it's not gypsies or illegal immigrants why not dandelions?



I have avoided keeping politics off the blog but now that the dust has settled I hope that things run smoothly for all of us with the new coalition government. With the support of over 59% of the electorate they have to be more representative than any government for some time so we should give them a chance. I quite like the idea of the Torys' more loony views being tempered by the Lib Dems and vice versa, as my own choice of manifesto was a mixture of bits of the two and if we had one of those voting systems where you put candidates in order of choice these would have been my first two.


We went to see Hot Tub Time Machine last night. I was a bit apprehensive as I wasn't sure that this was our sort of film. It turned out to be full of disgustingly bad language, filthy jokes and dreadful eighties music - we loved it! Here's a taster.

Take An Online Diet And Lose Pounds

Finding myself suddenly considerably overweight (no doubt due to drinking too much wine to alleviate stress), I took the plunge and enrolled on an online diet this weekend. It worked wonders as I've lost seventy pounds already. But that was just the fee. Anyway, it starts today and I've had my first breakfast which was two weetabix, two boiled eggs, an orange and two slices of bread which seems like a pretty big breakfast so maybe this diet won't be such a big thing. For lunch I've got pitta bread with two tablespoons of low fat hummus some lettuce, a tomato and a banana and tonight it's chicken with brown rice. Don't worry I won't fill the blog with a daily report of what I am eating.The photo of me presenting Max with his prize on last week's blog provided the incentive and perhaps I will show some photos of how I'm progressing if the diet works. If it does, I'll tell you which website I am using.



Hats off to The Mail on Sunday for its expose of FA Chairman Lord Triesman. In these days of declining newspaper circulations what do you do to lift flagging sales? You publish a story that is likely to scupper a football loving nation's chance to host the world cup. A bid that has probably cost millions to prepare and involved thousands of man hours. And what's more you publish it a day or two after Triesman and David Beckham present the bid in a blaze of worldwide publicity. If the story had any legs and there was any evidence of Russian and Spanish corruption then it might have been worth running but all they have is an old bloke showing off to a (presumably younger)woman in what he thought was a private conversation. I'm not that bothered about football at the moment after Liverpool's dreadful season but I know a lot of people who are and I really don't think that the Mail group will have made many friends with this one.



After a brief foray into selling on eBay last month I am having another try this time and have got eleven items ready to start on Thursday evening I felt that last month was a small success although some good sales were diluted by a couple of break even ones and one loss maker. It's a lot of work and when you take off the PAYPAL and eBay fees, I am not that sure how profitable it is. I still love looking for antiques to buy but selling them is a bit of a grind. Perhaps when I retire in November it will be more fun.



We should get a chance to get to our Orange Wednesday trip to the local VUE again this week (definitely no hot dog and glass of wine while the diet is running). Although there are a few films we would like to see, none of them is showing locally (the curse of the multiplex blockbuster mentality)so we may be stuck with Hot Tub Time Machine. It had fairly good reviews and I love the eighties but it is scraping the barrel when this is all that's on.

I'll finish today with a surfing sheep. Why? Because I can.

Robin Hood - Marian Steals The Show

We got back into the swing of our Orange Wednesday cinema visits this week after missing a couple of times. Timing meant that we had but one choice - Robin Hood.

CGI seems to get better with every film and Robin Hood's makers have created a very convincing medieval England and France as a backdrop to this old fashioned swashbuckling blockbuster. The film is worth seeing for a good performance from Cate Blanchett as a ballsy Marian and some very solid acting in Russell Crowe's Robin. But I can't say that I enjoyed it. The plot seemed to drag and the climactic final battle scene was so much like one of the beach landings in Sky's Pacific that it strained one's credulity to imagine that these were French 13th century landing craft. If a Japanese plane had flown over and strafed the invaders, few in the audience would have raised an eyebrow.

The filming is fabulous and the action is packed but in between the action the plot is tedious and predictable and not even as good as the recent TV version. If Ridley Scott had been as bold as Robin and Marian and had chopped about twenty minutes off some of the scheming and the Machiavellian plotting of King John, the film would have been more enjoyable for me. As it was, even Vue's super new VIP seats couldn't prevent my restlessness. Let's hope that next week's visit is more satisfying.



Whilst on the topic of Robin Hood, did you read the news about Twitterer Paul Chambers. Paul was a trainee accountant who, during a period of heavy ice and snow tweeted the following."Crap! Robin Hood Airport is closed. You've got a week and a bit to get your s**t together, otherwise I'm blowing the airport sky high.". Someone from the airport picked up the message whilst on Twitter and reported it to the police. It resulted in Paul being arrested and ending up in court where he was fined a total of £1,000 including costs. In a statement, the Crown Prosecution Service told Channel 4 News: "While Mr Chambers may have meant this as a joke, the airport could not risk treating it as such. The threat had to be taken seriously by the airport authorities, who contacted the police. It caused unnecessary disruption because of a menacing communication. There is nothing funny about remarks of this nature as they can cause serious disruption to transport services and divert police attention away from genuine crimes. Where a complaint is made to the police and they pass a file of evidence to the CPS we will examine it. If the evidence is there, then the public interest will usually require a prosecution."

Now I don't know about you but do you think that anybody at all could have seen the message as anything other than a frustrated rant from an inconvenienced traveller? I don't want to sound like Richard Littlejohn (another Robin Hood connection) but you really could not make this up. As for poor Paul Chambers, he now has a criminal conviction that will look great on his CV and could well wreck his future. Let's use a bit of common sense please.



And talking of common sense I hope that the producers and wannabee contestants for the next edition of I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here read the news of the young man in Australia who is in a critical condition after eating a slug. It seems that the creature probably carried a rat lung worm parasite which can cause meningitis type symptoms. Fortunately the young Aussie survived but it may stop the bush tucker trials in their track (and I certainly won't be complaining if they do).



During my sojourn at Towneley Hall in Burnley awaiting a call to appear on Antiques Master that never arrived I spent some time in the cafe. I noticed that they were using one of our Supreme water boilers for all of their drinks. Occasionally customers phone me and say that they can't get the Supreme boiler to make froth. They should visit Towneley Hall for lessons. The lady behind the counter there was frothing the milk up to such an extent that you could stand a spoon in it.

I'll leave you with this week's Internet sensation. If this kid was on Britain's Got Talent, he'd walk it. Which reminds me I must watch it this week. I haven't seen one episode yet this time.

He's In A League Of His Own

Here I am presenting Max Vidal with his £100 prize for winning our Guardian Pick The Score League for 2010. Max ran away with the league with 325 points which was some 45 ahead of Jenny who scooped our £50 second prize whilst I took third with 276. Max's performance was quite outstanding and he finished 8th overall in the country out of many thousands of entrants. Well done Max. Would you like to give me some betting tips next season? Spare a thought for last year's winner Tony Lowe. Tony's fantastic record of predicting took a tumble when his own team Burnley somehow found themselves in the Premiership. Being a true clarets fan Tony let his heart rule his head and his persistence in predicting Burnley wins cost his dearly.



Which leads me very neatly to the hidden gem that is Burnley's Towneley Hall. This lovely old building set in parkland on the outskirts of the town is the setting for the BBC's forthcoming new antiques show Antiques Master which is currently in production. 32 contestants are battling it out to be the most knowledgeable amateur antiques enthusiast in the country and win the coveted title of Antiques Master. Unfortunately for me I was the 33rd contestant and I agreed to go to the hall every day for the last four days (that's why there's been no blog - nothing to do with my negotiations with Nick Clegg) just in case one of the chosen few had travel problems or fell ill. Happily (for them) everything went smoothly and they all turned up safe and well although when one young lady arrived with a fourteen week old baby who was being breast fed I thought that my time might have come.



Being used to the self imposed solitary confinement that I have been putting myself through for the last few weeks, the waiting alone was not a big problem although the runners forgot to bring the promised daily newspapers twice leaving me crawling up the walls a couple of times. I had to arrive at 8am and didn't leave until the first round of the show was in the can so it was a ten hour wait on three of the four days. However the assistant producer Nicola kindly agreed to let me sit in the studio for the filming of the final show and that made up for the days of pacing backwards and forwards. It was fascinating to watch the show in production and I think that it will be a big success.




I can't tell you about it as it would spoil things but it has two great presenters in Sandi Toksvig and Eric Knowles. Whilst neither will be blogging about meeting me, both were kind enough to make me extremely welcome and I enjoyed sitting next to Sandi and discussing the political situation with her. I imagine that this week's News Quiz on Friday on Radio 4 at 6.30pm will be quite hilarious. She was truly charming and was kind enough to thank me for my four day sojourn. Eric promised me that I would get on the next series but I suspect that the show will be a big success and there will be thousands more applicants next time and I won't hold him to it. Do watch it when it comes on. I have met all the contestants and there is a great mix of ages,characters and knowledge. And do visit Towneley Hall if you get the chance. It is a superb place run by the local council and houses a fabulous collection that (unfortunately) I didn't get the opportunity to see.



And finally on the subject, a word of praise for the production crew who were, without exception, extremely hospitable. I got to talk to a number of the runners, the make up artist, wardrobe manager, the floor manger and the assistant floor manager and they were all a credit. Mind you, it is an extremely pleasant working environment and a great way to make a living.

Which is how our son Paul earns his money. Paul's show A League Of Their Own is approaching the end of the current series on Sky 1 on Thursday at 9pm. Starring James Corden, the show has been great and Paul emailed me to say that you can now play the game yourself on the Sky website. Give it a try by clicking
here. and see if you can beat my score of 78%.

I'll finish today with a final take on politics. Nice bloke that Alistair Campbell eh.

No Comment

I'm itching to comment on today's election results and the current standing of the parties but, as Marion and I no longer own shares in Instanta, I don't feel justified in putting forward political opinions on the blog. What a pity as I could rattle on for ages on the subject. I can say that I stayed up late to watch the results come in and I found the whole thing fascinating. As I write, David Cameron has announced that he will be making an announcement soon and I look forward to hearing what he has to say. The sooner we have something positive the better and we at Instanta can all carry on busting the recession as we have been doing for some time.



Good luck to all the players in the Guardian Pick The Score competition which finishes with Sunday's Premier League matches. There's no question who is going to win our Instantasports league. Max Vidal has walked away and is in an unassailable position (and might even win the Guardian's top prize). I am still vying with Jenny for second place although it will take a miracle for me to catch her and both Tony Lowe from our stores and Mike Chubbs for our machine shop have a chance to overtake me. The Instanta team has been fairly poor in the team events and we are languishing at 408th. It's a great competition and it's free to enter. Give it a try next season.

It's nice to be appreciated but it doesn't happen too often.We are always striving to provide excellent service and send out most of our boilers and most of our spare parts on the day that they are ordered. Tony Lowe in our spares department just showed me a fax from a satisfied customer "Tap Received 7/5. What excellent service- unusual to find today! Many thanks" . Well may thanks to you customer. It's always good to be praised.



We haven't managed to get our regular Orange Wednesday cinema trip for a few weeks although we did go to the cinema on Saturday to see The Ghost. It was a good film although I honestly don't think that it merited the rave reviews that it got in the papers. Next week I quite fancy seeing the new Chris Morris film Four Lions. I'm not 100% sure about the subject matter (a comedy about suicide bombers)but I do admire Morris' stuff. I also quite fancy The Disappearance of Alice Creed. However, as Southport's Vue tends to favour blockbusters, neither is showing and we'll probably be stuck with Hot Tub Time Machine.

I'll close this week with someone who didn't take the election too seriously.

Still Not Decided How To Vote?

If you are like me and you are finding it hard to decide how you are going to vote tomorrow, here's a very helpful little flow chart provided by our ace local photographer Peter Raymond. Follow this carefully and you will have no trouble in coming to the correct decision.

With the stock exchange graphs looking a bit like this at the moment it can be a bit scary if your pension and life savings are tied up in investments. And that's why we have left it to the experts who are managing all this sort of thing for us. We have a progress meeting with them tomorrow. We'll keep our fingers crossed although it will be difficult for anybody to know what to do in the light of the current turmoil with volcanic ash, Greek bankruptcy, Portuguese wobbles and Spanish record unemployment. Oh and a general election with an uncertain outcome to boot. Promises to be interesting.



And speaking of experts, here's Max Vidal who is not only an expert in Instanta technical matters but is also proving something of a wizard in football forecasting. Max is a keen player in our Guardian Pick The Scores contest which has its final day on Sunday. Not only is Max leading everyone here at Instanta in both our staff and our friends' leagues but he is lying fifth in the whole country and just a few points away from winning. That is a real achievement. Anyone can predict a few scores correctly now and then but to do so consistently week after week does require a bit of skill and Max has been ahead of the rest of us for months now. So good luck on Sunday Max. We're all rooting for you to win the league. As for the rest of us? I'm third a few points behind Jenny and a few ahead of the pack. It promises to be an interesting climax to the season.



On the business front things are running smoothly at the moment and we have a good number of machines on order and a very big potential order for our under counter models to go out in June. It will be great if that comes to fruition as these are quite excellent units.




I was just having a quick catch up on our brochure designers Workhouse Marketing's blog and spotted a few interesting items. The first was about the resurgence in Direct Mail. As Workhouse MD Mark Jones says, this is a very effective way of getting the message across and we will be taking his advice on board and sending a few mailings out in the near future. Mark also mentioned the effectiveness of video case studies and puts in a bravura performance in an example that Workhouse produced for Business Link. I could see these short films being really useful for demonstrating the super features on our latest range of boilers and much more. My only question for Mark relates to a clock that appears in the clip.What was the office doing open at 6.45? At 6.45 here (both am and pm)it's like a ghost town.

I'll leave you today with an original little film.