Anybody Speak Chinese?

來給你加油打氣!!!保重!!! .........................................

This was a comment that was made on the blog yesterday.No idea who the sender was but it's nice to know that my blog is being read in such far flung places. I said in my heading "Anyone speak Chinese?" as I would love to know what my Oriental reader said. But then I remembered that I've got the Internet of course and with the Internet you can find the answer to everything (except tomorrow's lottery results that is) and after a few minutes browsing, hey presto I discover that it means something like "Best wishes" or "To bring you good cheer". So thank you mystery Chinese person and the same to you too. They drink a lot of tea in China. Interested in buying any boilers?

Apart from writing the blog of course, I am spending all my time working flat out with those wonderful people from Workhouse Marketing of Ribchester who are designing our new brochure. The brochure runs to over 24 pages and is our best yet. It will include a fold out flap at the back that will allow users to check out the performance figures whilst looking at the boiler details. Nick has been asking me to have it printed on nicer paper but if we are going to be green we are going to be green so it's got to be ethically sourced so if it means a few fingerprints so be it.



Yesterday I mentioned the low number of service calls this month. We had a couple since then but I am really pleased with the service that Max has been giving the customers. It's always service with a smile here at Instanta. We like to sort our any problems that arise very quickly and nine times out ten we do. Unlike the wonderful Tiscali Talk Talk. One of my family had their wonderful broadband and TV package installed but has been without any service for days on end. He keeps getting passed to call centres in India and then getting return calls at times when has specifically asked not to be contacted. He knows how to get the service working (by dialling on the land line) but it disappears again within an hour. However, when he speaks to the service centre they keep closing the case as it is working at that moment. He has been tearing his hair out and has asked to cancel. OK say Tiscali but that will be £250 cancellation fee. You couldn't make it up. I think that the Guardian's consumer help might be interested in this one. By emailing capital.letters@guardian.co.uk their consumer team might take it on.

We'll have to hope that Workhouse's brochure is not too good as poor Craig Buckley is overrun with orders at the moment and it hasn't even been published yet. If we get everything out today we will have beaten last year's sales again so, for Instanta Ltd, the recession has certainly ended and long may things continue that way.

I'll close today with the most popular YouTube video of 2010 to date. 2,382,0000 views to date. Who would credit that it would feature Fleetwood town?

Jenny Buckley Our Very Own Football Pundit

I've written about our interest in the Guardian's Pick The Score competition. This is the third season that we've been doing it here and it's always a source of fierce rivalry. We have to predict the outcome of the Premiership matches every week and I offer a small prize to the first second and third in the league at the end of the season. In 2008 I pipped Jenny Wright by one point on the last day of the season.In 2009 Store man Tony Lowe ran away with the title and this year Service Coordinator Max Vidal has taken a convincing 12 point lead just past the half way point in the season. But today I have to take my hat off to Office Manager Jenny who this week predicted the correct score in no less than six Premiership matches. That is an amazing achievement which has propelled her up our league and left her in seventh position for the week in the whole country. Well done Jenny. No extra prizes but can you give me a few tips for my bet on Betfair this week?



Just got an email from son Paul. While he is on his honeymoon his company CPL Productions are recording A LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN a new programme that he has been heavily involved in.England’s Number One fan and Gavin & Stacey star James Corden will referee proceedings. The brand new format will involve former England footballer and Sky Sports presenter Jamie Redknapp and one other (to be named)as team captains and Paul has managed to get our names on the list to go to one of the recordings. I'm really looking forward to it. His "The Colour of Money" last year was not a huge hit but I reckon that this one has all the makings of a successful panel show.



I don't want to temp fate by saying this a day early but Max tells me that this month's warranty calls are likely to be less than 50% of the number that we recorded in January 2009. And considering that there are more boilers under guarantee today than there were last year I think that's a pretty good result. Well done to everyone in the factory for getting the job right. If we could eliminate a couple of niggles that continue to crop up every couple of months (components that we don't make and that we are sure are the best available) we could get the figure down even lower. Nick told me that he was going to buy me and Marion dinner on the day that we go a month with no warranty calls at all and I intend to hold him to that in the not too distant future.

As I write, poor Marion looks like she is at death's doorstep. She is absolutely full of a cold that she just can't shake off. I keep telling her to go home and try and get better but she won't listen and keeps on taking the tablets.She doesn't want to be ill on the big day in just two weeks.Jenny has been just the same as Marion all week too and she has managed to come in as well. A big thank you to them both.

Being what is known to salespeople as an "early adopter" I always like to get the latest technology. I want one of these now.

You Couldn't Make It Up

I don't want to start sounding like Richard Littlejohn (heaven forbid) but an item on the Today programme this morning certainly made me raise an eyebrow. It appears that a woman in Norfolk asked the local Job Centre to put up an advert for a cleaner. In the advert she asked for applicants who were "reliable and hard working". When she called the Job centre the following day she was told that the advert could not be displayed because using the word "reliable" would leave the Job Centre open to prosecution for discriminating against "unreliable" workers.Hmmm. The Job Centre did put the advert on their website but did not display it in their office. Now I'm all for political correctness but who in their right mind would go to court and say "I'm not reliable and I am suing." Of course this argument doesn't have much relevance to Instanta. We have never ever had an unreliable person work for us in our 53 year history. Honest.



The new brochure is approaching completion. I have been struggling to get hold of a couple of case studies to break up the endless pages of stainless steel and chrome. We have thousands of satisfied customers but the likes of the Police, the NHS,the Prison Service and major restaurant and hotel chains have strict rules on endorsement and , whilst we may well get permission "in due course" we simply don't have time to wait for the approvals. So a big thank you to David West of Marble Hill House near Richmond who managed to get us approval to mention his boiler and to Amanda Sweeney of City Servicing for pointing us in his direction.



The wedding is approaching at breakneck speed. On the Friday evening before the wedding Marion and I are hosting a "rehearsal dinner" at L'Escargot in Soho for the 30 people who will have roles in the ceremony. It promises to be a very pleasant evening and, to date, almost everybody has accepted. The next job is to arrange a seating plan. As long as everybody gets on with each other that should be a piece of cake. It's a wedding. Everybody gets on with everybody at weddings. Don't they?



Now I don't want to set alarm bells ringing amongst Liverpool fans but I just got an email from the club offering me £20 off one of their special edition Fernando Torres shirts. Being a businessman I wonder why on earth the club would want to discount the price of their best and most popular player's shirts. Surely they can sell as many as they can can get hold of. But the transfer deadline closes on Sunday, Liverpool are skint and Torres is a valuable asset.Who would want to be left with a pile of shirts on Monday? Just a thought.

And speaking of Liverpool I'll finish today with the highlights of last night's match at Wolves....

All Quiet On The Factory Front

With the factory on holiday it's quiet in here this week with no throbbing and banging from machinery and no loud voices discussing the latest football news. Except for the lathe department that is. Due to staff sickness last week we got a little behind in the machine shop and Craig Mercer (left) and Steve Eyres volunteered to work the holiday to help us catch up. Thanks lads. That means that when everyone is back next week they won't be short of parts to get the production line rolling again.



Whileit is peaceful, buyer Gavin Ford has taken the opportunity to arrange the packaging for the new products with our packaging suppliers BJ Eurosell. Here is Eurosell's Jim Jackson (right) with Gavin. We have been using this great family run business since 1989 and they supply all our boxes and insulation. The fact that the family are all Liverpool fans has nothing to do with our supporting them (but it helps).



Speaking of Liverpool FC, the reds are in action tonight at Wolverhampton Wanderers. Will it be another true grit performance like the one against Spurs last week or will we be back to our dire worst like we were against Portsmouth? The Guardian had most of a page devoted to a rumour that Rafa is going to manage Juventus. I don't really have a lot of time for the rumour mill but The Guardian has an uncanny knack of getting these things right.The Gary Neville survey ended up with 88% of Guardian readers agreeing that he is a sock sucking moron - so it's a paper you can trust.



I won't be watching Liverpool tonight as they are not on TV but tomorrow it's Orange Wednesday and we might get the chance to take in a film. We still haven't seen Avatar. As it's going to be the biggest box office hit of all time I think that we should see it but, although I don't know why, it doesn't really appeal. (We still haven't seen that other Cameron blockbuster Titanic yet). We haven't seen Sherlock Holmes either so maybe that will be the choice.



I spotted a fabulous Japanes vase on the internet the other day with an estimate of just £100. Having several pieces by the same artist in my collection, I knew that the estimate was way off the mark and asked if I could have a telephone bid. Sadly I was not alone and the price soared way above my limit and I had to take another call before the hammer came down. In the days before auctions were listed on the internet things like this could be bought cheaply (even today the top bid in the room was only £180)but now that collectors worldwide can search for "sleepers" they are becoming few and far between. I suppose that the best bet for antique collectors is to drive around the country and seek out auction houses who haven't gone on line yet.

Did you hear about the survey that came out today withe the news that Britain is finally more tolerant towards gays and unmarried couples. Where Instanta leads, Britain follows. We've tolerated just about everything here for the last twenty years. Here's a short video on the subject.

I Survived The Stag Party

This weekend was dedicated to son Paul's stag party. The wedding is under three weeks away now and, although Paul is not particularly traditionalist, his friends wanted to follow the tradition and they organised a fun packed day. They started off with a football match at Powerleague a brilliant indoor venue beneath the railway arches in Hackney. It would be great if Instanta could find somewhere like this as it had excellent changing facilities and great astroturf pitches that were nicely fitted out. The game was a close one with Paul's Southport friends beating him and his London friends 18-16.



After a quick breakfast in a Wetherspoons pub the boys got a stretch limo down to Brighton (I drove down alone so missed the excitement of this experience). Then it was on to Komedia a comedy club. This was another great venue with two very funny comedians and a couple of so-so ones. By the end of the show the evening became a bit fuzzy but there was an hour in a pub before going into a night club for my first time in almost forty years. I was out of my comfort zone in there so was back in bed before midnight. But I heard that the young ones enjoyed themselves. I have to thank the organisers Jamie and Alex for doing such a good job. Things ran very smoothly and they put up with dragging a hobbling old codger around with them. Thanks lads.

Here are a few photos.











The factory is quiet this week as we close it for a week twice a year to accommodate holidays. So factory leader Tony Mercer had a few spare minutes this morning to bring in his lovely granddaughter, Craig's little girl Amelia. She was a bit shy to start with but she started to open up a little when Granddad told her that he was going to take her to MacDonald's and the park.






When you run a business you never switch off from work. Stuck in a traffic jam on the outskirts of London on Saturday en route to Brighton I spotted a catering equipment showroom. The name didn't sound familiar so I snapped it from the car. No doubt one of the sales team will be fully aware of the showroom but, just in case, here it is Nick and Pete.

Instanta Twins Are Thirty

Well they will be tomorrow. Here are twins Darren Rodwell from our welding department and Gary from our sheet metalworking team. Darren has grown a beard to help us to tell them apart. The brothers remain close and will be celebrating with family on Sunday. Let's hope that their beloved Blackpool FC beat Watford on Saturday to make it a day to remember. Both twins are loyal Blackpool fans and season ticket holders who travel around the country together following the Tangerines.Being a proud dad to baby Ella, Gary has little time for any other hobbies but Darren spends his free time fishing, golfing and playing pool. He tells me that he is taking girlfriend Lauren on holiday to Amsterdam to celebrate his birthday. Darren has been with Instanta for 13 years which has certainly not been unlucky for us as he does a great job. Brother Gary is well into his second year on the Instanta books. We hope that they both have a memorable thirtieth.I'm starting to feel very old when people I took on at 17 turn 30.

I'm feeling a bit guilty today. Everyone else in our road except us had one of those big blue recycling bags for the newspapers. Ours disappeared one day never to be seen again and never to be replaced by our friendly recycling team.As I arrived home yesterday the bottle men had actually been (after the bottles and papers had been outside since just after Christmas). There, floating down the road like tumbleweed in the breeze, was an empty blue newspaper bag. Now I know that it wasn't my blue bag (because I didn't have one) so I suppose I should have made a neighbourly effort to return it to its rightful owner. And that's why I'm feeling guilty. Because I didn't. Now some other poor soul is without a blue bag - sorry neighbour.



I was sitting in the board room yesterday (as you do) and I realised that all the photos of our boilers on the wall were of models that we stopped making about four years ago. So I went to the printers this morning and got them to do me some prints of our latest ones. And very nice they look too (mind you the old models weren't bad at all).

Have you read the news about our Prius driving footballer? The question is, Is Gary Neville a "Boot Licking Moron". According to the Guardian Carlos Tevez certainly seems to think so after an astonishing attack on the Manchester United right-back. Neville is not the most popular among the ABU tendency, but does the Old Trafford stalwart deserve such abuse? Please follow this link to have your own say on ther matter. I don't usually vote on the Guardian daily polls but today HAS to be the exeception.



Shortly after I finish writing this I'll be off down to London to meet up with son Paul for his stag party. I'm not sure that his friends will relish having invited me along as I've vetoed getting dressed up like this and told them that strippers are completley out of order and off limits. They've settled for a comedy club in Brighton. Now lads, if you are reading this, I've heard that there are some very nice antique shops in Brighton.


Well stag parties are notoriously boozy events. So, as Paul is a huge Jets fan, I thought that he'd enjoy this interview with legendary Jets quarterback Joe Namath

The Boys Done Good

I said yesterday that last night was going to be make or break for Rafa and I was really pleased to see that the team rose to the challenge and gave a passionate display reminiscent of the old days when Liverpool would never say die.Thanks to Dirk Kuyt's goals we got a well earned win.OK it wasn't the nicest football and skill was distinctly lacking but, what they lacked in skill, they made up for in effort. The crowd responded extremely positively and got behind the team making it a very upbeat night for all of us Liverpool fans.I particularly enjoyed seeing Jamie Carragher making a huge impression as captain. He gave out just the right amount of stick and encouragement to his team and was instrumental in lifting everyone. Keep it up. If we can get Torres back the season might be back on the rails. As for Stevie G. £40m sounds like a lot of money to me.



In the factory the lads are working flat out to get the orders completed for tomorrow.We got a nice order for some special new boilers for a company who are supplying hospital trolleys. This could be ongoing. We are trying to get them finished as the factory closes on Friday for a week's holiday next week. Don't worry, we'll all still be here in the office.



When I saw these wrinkly eyes above the headline "TV's worst shows named" my heart sank as I thought that they might belong to Chris Tarrant who presented "The Colour Of Money" the show developed by son Paul last year. But when I clicked on the story I was relieved to find that they belong to Derek Acorah who presented a seance in which he "contacted" the late Michael Jackson. There were a number of notable stars in the top ten list including Horne and Corden and Al Murray and, I am pleased to say, another game show "Heads and Tails". "The Colour Of Money" probably won't resurface in the near future but Paul has some more shows in development and I look forward to blogging on them when they come out. We've got all the programmes that Paul has been involved in on the SKY Plus. We almost had a disaster last week when the HD box packed in. The engineer came round and said that although we can still play back our recordings we need a new box as several channels have no signal and if he fits the box we will lose all the recordings. So I had to rush out and buy a DVD recorder and am now in the process of copying all of Paul's shows across. I've done "The Great British Village Show" ,"Are You An Egghead?" and " Who Dares Wins" and am now onto "The Colour Of Money". I'm just relived that it was the channels that packed in on the box and not the recordings.



The Hotelymia Exhibition is rushing towards us. However well we plan and however much time in advance we get things moving it always seems to take us by surprise when we get to a month before. We've got a few weeks yet but we are approaching deadlines for samples, for brochures and more. We always seem to make it in the end at the last minute. Two years ago the printers had to deliver the brochures to the stand on opening day (my fault not theirs I hasten to add) and Dave Wilson and Nick were at the factory until midnight on the day before to make sure that a sample sous vide water bath was ready. There's cutting things fine and there's cutting things fine.

And talking about cutting things fine. You know how there's often a big argument about whether the ball crossed the line in football matches. Well here's one to watch. What do you think? Goal or not?

It's Make Or Break For Rafa Tonight

No Orange Wednesday for me this week as we went to the pictures on Blue Monday because Liverpool are entertaining Tottenham Hotspur at Anfield this evening. Normally this would be a fixture to look forward to but the long haul up the hill and up the steps to the seat is becoming less and less inviting as the season progresses. There was a time when there would be a bound in the steps on the way to the games but it is now more of a trudge. Although he has huge support I have to blame Rafa. If you are in charge of any business whether it is making boilers or running a football team the buck has to stop with the boss. And if you can induce a feeling of indifference in a supporter who has been going for forty five years you've got to be doing something wrong.Let's see how things turn out tonight.



Perhaps the Reds will take a leaf out of the New York Jets' book. After a completely indifferent season in the NFL, the Jets (my son's favourite team)scraped into the play offs with a run of results from other teams that went in their favour. And now they are just one game away from reaching the Super Bowl the USA's biggest sports event of the year , an event that they haven't won since 1968. It will be a fantastic achievement if they make it to the Super Bowl. So perhaps all is not lost for Liverpool. Spirit of Istanbul and all that.



The new brochure is looking good. I'm getting quite close to the deadline so I need to get it to the printers soon. There's bound to be some errors in it. I am hopeless at spotting typos (as you will know if you are a regular reader of this blog) but fortunately Jenny and Marion between them seem to have the knack of picking up most of my mistakes.



I just got the figures from CESA for the last quarter. We send our sales figures to the trade association every quarter and they collate all the members' info anonymously and get the overall picture back to us. I was very pleased to see that for 2009 we beat the average change by 15%. Well done everyone at Instanta.

I'll finish with a Death Metal Rooster. Why? Why not?

Blue Monday. How was it for you?

You have probably read about that scientist who came up with a formula that proved that yesterday was officially the worst day of the year. It seems that this third Monday in January is a totally depressing day for millions and everyone is fed up. Well I was quite upbeat as I had bought a lovely antique Chinese bowl on eBay to add to my collection and was quite looking forward to its arrival.

And then it arrived.

And then I read that the Toyota Prius is now the favoured car of a leading Premiership footballer. That's great news. Football stars following my lead but then I read on to find out who this green Eco warrior footballer is and discover that it's none other than Gary Neville. Gary Neville! Isn't he the one with the chant "He hates scousers"? Yes. So there's my lift from that news gone.


So I took Marion along to see the new George Clooney film "Up in the air".In keeping with the Blue Monday theme I thought that this might not live up to the billing but I was pleasantly surprised and we both enjoyed the film very much. There are some great performances from Clooney and his co star, the beautiful Vera Farmiga, and the film gave us the lift that meant that Blue Monday wasn't blue at all.



And it certainly isn't a blue Tuesday. I just did the figures for December and I'm pleased to say that our figures for the first four months of the financial year are significantly better than the figures for the same period last year. And Craig tells me that he reckons today has been his best ever day for orders on the sales desk so with Blue Monday behind us we can move on towards happy days.

I'll finish today with the boys in blue. You'll have already seen it but I have to make a comment. These blokes have done more to improve the public's perception of the police force than any amount of PR. And what do they get for it? A dressing down from the boss.

The Quiet Man Turns 39

On Sunday Jason Poland will be thirty nine. Jason has worked at Instanta for over eleven years now and is the deputy to Factory Leader Tony Mercer. Married to Jude, Jason is a very keen (and very good) pool player who enjoys holidays in far away places although he is also very much at home in Ayia Napa in Cyprus where he takes his autumn breaks.Though Ayia Napa is not famous for its quietness, Jason is very much the quiet man of Instanta. He likes to get his head down at work and, as a result, he is one of the most productive workers we have. Have a great day Jason. You've earned it.



We're down to almost the last box of our super 2008/2009 brochure and I am working flat out with Jen at Workhouse Marketing to get the 2010/2011 issue out. It's a big brochure with a lot of new stuff in it and it's starting to look very good. I've got a deadline of 31st January and it's going to take a concerted effort to hit it but at the moment we're looking good. If any customers have got an interesting case study regarding an Instanta boiler that they have supplied to a photogenic site please get in touch.We've got quite a few possibilities but so many of our end users such as the police and the royal palaces are unwilling to give endorsements as a matter of policy.



Here's Tony Lowe from our stores. Tony is suffering from a severe case of franker's cramp today having prepared over 2,500 copies of our Dealer Newsletter for tonight's post. Thanks Tony (and Jenny and Marion and Peter and Phil and Lee and Craig) for your sterling efforts in getting this out so quickly. We only got the letters from the printers at nine o'clock.



And here is the front of the Dealer News.There's some interesting stuff on the back too. If you are on our mailing list you should get it on Monday. If you aren't, we can supply you with an email copy or pop one in the post to you. Let us know.

I'm on an email list that sends me all the latest viral videos that are taking the internet by storm. One came from Coke this morning. It's supposed to be about a Happy Vending Machine that Coke set up in a University common room but it's rubbish.So here's one for Pepsi instead (that isn't).

Oh dear

Last month's sales were really good so I thought I'd give Sales Director Nick a treat last night and took him along with me to watch the FA Cup replay between Liverpool and Reading at Anfield.Towards the end of the night poor Nick must have been wondering what he had done to deserve having to endure ninety minutes of misery although he was probably starting to cheer up a little as we left our seats on the Kop and trudged down the hundred steps towards the exits as the clock ran down. But as we hit the bottom step a Reading player hit the deck in the penalty area and we had to trudge all the way back up again to take our seats for another thirty minutes watching the abject apology for a football team that Liverpool are at the moment. Above the entrance to the pitch in the players' tunnel is a sign "This is Anfield". It was put up in the Shankly era to motivate the team and to put fear into the opposition before they entered the boiling cauldron of noise and were subject to a fearless onslaught by the reds. I can only imagine that the sign is now viewed by the opposition with a shrug of the shoulders and a wry smile. It would be quite funny really but I, and 31,000 others actually paid to watch it. Poor Nick must be wondering what treat I have in store for him if the sales ever go badly.

Meanwhile, back at Instanta we have been testing the circuits on the new Wall Mounted Economy range of boilers that we are bringing out on 1st March.They will be available in 2.5,5 and 10 litre sizes. They look great and the new display makes it easier for the end user and service engineer to understand the boiler status than the simple multi coloured LED that we use on the current WA5. Starting at just £425 these boilers are going to make real waves in the market.



Whilst all this snow is beautiful to look at (no I didn't take this photo), spare a thought for the self employed. Whilst Marion and I are not into domestic help and share the household cleaning between us, we do have help with the garden and our poor gardener has not been able to work for weeks now. We've paid her regardless but she tells me that nobody else has paid her and that means that the weather is costing her dearly. I was in the bank yesterday and the customer next to me at the tills was involved in a conversation about how he was going to pay his workers as, being a roofer, he had done absolutely no work for almost a month.(You used to get a bit of privacy when I worked in a bank).



It's less than a month now to son Paul's wedding. Here is the venue. Its the Naval & Military Club in London which is interesting as there are no military or naval connections in either family. Paul and Josephine tell me that the club is just right for the function and the whole ceremony and reception happens in the same place. I'm looking forward to it and I'm busy writing my traditional father of the groom speech.

I'll finish with a film for Liverpool fans. Watch this and weep.