Beyond A Joke

I'll start by saying that I am not blaming our broadband service provider Freezone Internet for the mess that we currently find ourselves in. They have been victims of problems upstream of themselves but unfortunately, as they are the people who supply our service, it is up to them to sort things out and yesterday, after four business days in which normal service has failed to return, they have been unable to do so and we lost patience and have switched to a new provider. But before we can get the new service we have to get a MAC code from our current provider and at the time of writing they have been unable to provide us with one. So if you have been emailing Instanta without response please accept our apologies. We know that there are almost 1,000 emails stashed away somewhere in Cyberspace and our IT people have been working flat out to retrieve them. I am hopeful that they will be on our PC's when we get into work this morning but please don't email us if at all possible until we report that normal service has resumed - best guess at the moment is that it will be some time next week before the broadband is back up and running.





Taking a break from the mayhem that is a business without email and internet running properly, Marion and I had a great weekend at the Bell in Skenfrith down on the Welsh Borders. We were joining old friends in celebrating their wedding anniversary and fortunately the weather was kind although, as you can see, it was extremely windy. Our friends are very keen ramblers and, not wishing to spoil things, I joined them on a three mile walk. Fortunately they chose an easy path and my hip held out although I am glad that it was three miles and not four or five.



Last night we went to see Stephen Fry's show at the Royal Festival Hall. But we didn't go to the Festival Hall. Instead we watched as it was relayed live by satellite to the FACT cinema in Liverpool. It was an interesting event. There were a couple of glitches in the transmission but only for a matter of seconds and watching the event in a packed cinema was somehow more like being there than watching on TV at home. It was a fascinating show and we could only marvel at Fry's ability with words. His nostalgic take on a sixties childhood rang very true with us as we are just a couple of years older than him and we could empathise with everything he said.



Another (convoluted) Instanta brush with fame last week as Laurence Llewellyn Bowen breezed into Southport to record a TV programme. Our store keeper Peter Barlow's wife Angela and daughter Heidi bumped into Laurence and he was happy to have his photo taken with them. Nice one Laurence - true celebrities always have time for the public who have made their celebrity.

I'll finish now. Got to get to the office. No more contact with the cyber world until we get home tonight.