Some Final Toasts

Here's Marion raising a glass on Saturday evening as we toasted everyone at Instanta using one of the crystal glasses that were amongst the kind retirement gifts given to us by our generous staff. Friends joined us for a meal at home and we used a very fine vintage bottle of wine given to me for my birthday by son Paul and his wife Josephine - thanks it was absolutely fabulous.

Others who we must praise in this penultimate Instanta blog are Simon Smith of Dunk Ink who travelled all the way from Tunbridge Wells to be at our retirement meal on Friday evening at Ho Lee Chows in Southport. Simon has been doing PR work for us since way back in the early 90's and has hundreds of excellent contacts in the catering trade. Thank you Simon, your presence and generosity at the meal was really appreciated by both of us. Best wishes to you and to Sue.

Silverwood Exhibitions who have designed and built all of our exhibition stands for many years must not go without thanks. Barry and Mike are two of the most genial Yorkshire men you could ever wish to meet and their stands promoted the Instanta image to brilliant effect making us look much bigger than we were at first. They are the most professional exhibition stand designers that we have ever worked with and we can strongly recommend them to everyone.


I had hoped to put a photo of the Jackson family from BJ Eurosell Ltd on here as my final tribute for today but unfortunately, as I write, the photo has not arrived. Jim Jackson together with his wife Barabara and son Paul have been supplying Instanta since 1989. They source all of Instanta's boxes and insulation material and you couldn't meet a nicer bunch of people. Paul and Jim are regular fellow sufferers at Anfield and I sometimes see them on the trek up to the home matches. Sorry that your photo was too late to appear here but at least all your packaging always arrives on time. If you need to source any packaging materials BJ Eurosell are a wonderful supplier.

Of course our friends on Saturday had to eat early so that we could watch X Factor. All my money is on Cher Lloyd but her odds have drifted so other punters disagree. Watching this I simply don't understand why she is not favourite. If any of the contestants has the "X Factor" rather than can sing well look no further than this.