Friday 26 November 2010

Thank You Steve From Kall Kwik


It's our final Friday here at Instanta and there has been a steady trickle of visitors, congratulatory cards and gifts arriving in the office and we're starting to feel quite choked up. We've written thanking everyone for their kindness but another special thankyou needs to go to Steve Bibby at Kall Kwik Southport. Steve has been supplying Instanta with all our printed materials like instruction books, letterheads, business cards, promotional material, rubber stamps and other stationery for over twenty years and has been another excellent supplier. Steve, like me, enjoys a flutter now and then but I think that his success rate exceeds mine by some distance (not too difficult I imagine). He has always been extremely helpful in getting our orders to us on time and the quality of our printed material bears testimony to his excellent service.Thank you for your support and your kindness Steve.


I used to work for Barclays and I am still relying on them for some of my pension. Banks are not very high in the popularity stakes with most people but our relationship with our branch and our business managers has been extremely good.From the day that my dad took out a loan from the then Martins Bank to buy the company we have been with the bank for forty years and they have seen us through thick and thin. Having the experience of working for the bank has been a big help as I know what makes a good customer and have tried to fit that bill but I must thank all the staff at Barclays St Lukes past and present including Sheila, Tracey, Kim, Allison, Gina, Rachel, Sue, Judith, Danni and Lorraine for their super friendly and efficient service and past managers Chris Wynne and Rosemary Riley for backing Instanta when we needed them. I must also thank Karen at the Preston Business centre for all her hard work, Paul Matthews who took over from her (good luck with the kids' football Paul)and finally Sharon Harrison our newest Relationship Director who kindly took us for lunch the other day. We have only had a short time dealing with Sharon but she is a great people person and I am sure that, with her help, Instanta's long and successful relationship with Barclays will run and run.


You will have read about the notorious Twitter joke trial. Just in case you didn't, a young man's visit to his girlfriend in Ireland was thwarted by snow closing the airport and he posted a jokeyTweet to the effect that if the airport didn't get its act together he would blow it sky high. Nobody in their right mind would see this as a terrorist threat but somehow the poor bloke, Paul Chambers, ended up with a criminal record and a fine to boot. He took it to appeal and everyone expected that to be the end the matter but, to amazement and total shock amongst Twitter users, the appeal judge failed to overturn the original sentence and Paul's criminal record still stands (and the police haven't given him his laptop back yet). He is now taking his case to the High Court and needs to fund this. Scott Pack, who tweets as @meandmybigmouth, works for Harper Collins and has offered to auction his services to read and honestly critique a manuscipt for the highest bidder. It's a brilliant cause, so I'm going to put in a bid before the auction closes. It will have to be a pretty big bid to compensate Scott for having to read my novel. You can read about his offer and bid against me here . Or alternatively, if you've no manuscript, you can find out more about the case and a link to make a donation to the legal fees here.

We have got our old friends David and Jane Haworth (sorry Dave, young friends who have been friends for a long time) coming round tomorrow evening so we're just off to Coldland to stock up.

No comments:

Post a Comment