Thursday 30 September 2010

It Never Pours But It P****s Down


After three weeks in the broadband wilderness I thought that things couldn't get much worse until Instanta's computer network server collapsed and died yesterday just to rub it in. But things were looking positively rosy by comparison this morning as Marion and I set off in bright sunshine to a lunch appointment with old customers who had invited us to see them before we retire. Three miles outside Southport the car started to drive noisily and I realised that we had a flat. I thought it would be a minor inconvenience until I discovered that the Prius does not have a spare tyre but an emergency repair kit that comprises an electric compressor which pumps sealant into the tyre and inflates it sufficiently to get you to a garage. Sadly this innovation, which I assume is designed to cut weight in the car, failed to do the job and I ended up several hours later with the very pleasant and capable AA engineer, Imran, who kindly took off the wheel and drove me to Kwik Fit to replace the tyre and then back to the car to refit it. Fortunately Tony drove out to us and took Marion back to the office where, minus computers, she helped everyone to prepare for the madness that will arise tomorrow when the new computer server arrives. At least I have been told that the computer data has been saved.


Most people have an urge to go an a cruise when they retire. We wouldn't mind doing this but it is not our top priority and our only holiday plans are to drive down to Ille De Re in France next spring for a cycling holiday. I really don't fancy going through that puncture rigmarole again in a foreign country on unfamiliar roads so, to hell with the fuel efficiency, I'm going to buy a spare wheel to take with us on longer journeys. Today we were only three miles from home and it was late morning. The same scenario at midnight on a French country lane doesn't bear thinking about. I believe that Toyota are not alone in not supplying a spare. I don't think that it's a great idea as I don't think I've owned a singe car in the past thirty years that hasn't had at least one puncture. Until now I've been happy with the Prius and this is the first negative but it's a big one.




We went to see"The Town" last night. I had very high hopes for this film as it has received almost universally positive reviews. Now it's certainly a film worth watching and if you enjoy crime movies you will probably love it but we just felt that it didn't quite live up to the fulsome praise that came before it. The film centres around star and director Ben Afflek and his gang of bank robbing hoodlums attempting to outwit the FBI's finest (in the form of John Hamm "Mad Men's" Don Draper). There are some great car chases and several violent and audacious heists including a final showdown at Fenway Park home of Boston's famous Red Sox. But for me the action was too reminiscent of old gangster movies and the Wild West style gun fights,the underlying love story and the sinister Irish mafia family led by Pete Postlethwaite failed to convince. Don't be put off, it's an entertaining film but, in my opinion, not quite the five star movie that it's been billed as.


Thanks to the well wishers who sent me birthday greetings yesterday. I had some great cards and presents (including enough cash to pay for the new tyre). But in keeping with the overall tone of the week I got home today to another card and a letter in the post. The letter was from the Inland Revenue saying I had underpaid £700 and the card? From some old friends (I recognised the writing) but the envelope was empty. Let's hope that next week sees an upturn in our fortunes.


Dave Wilson's back from two week's management training in Australia. He's picked up some great ideas on productivity. Here's the proposed new working speed for Instanta assembly workers as demonstrated by an Asian workforce.

Wednesday 29 September 2010

It Never Rains But It Pours


The saga of the Freezone internet finally came to an end yesterday and the Instanta broadband was back online after almost three weeks of being down. During the three weeks, the lads from MCS (our local computer company) have been regular faces here in the office in their attempts to reconnect us to the outside world and when they were not waiting for Freezone to answer the phone they made a few suggestions for improvements to the current network. A new shelf in the computer tower would make sense and take strain off some wires that were a bit overstretched. So Tony arranged for said shelf to be fabricated this morning and when Kevin put it into place he managed to do something to one of the wires which resulted not only in us no longer having any broadband but no computer network. So, having gone from being without email and internet we went to having no computers at all. As I write (on my own laptop) one of the MCS lads is taking our server back for inspection and I can only hope that the problem isn’t fatal. I sometimes think that we are reliving a Charlie Chaplin, Norman Wisdom or M Hulot film here.

Speaking of Norman Wisdom, Marion and I returned to Preston on the train from Euston on Sunday evening. After running over Marion’s toes with his wheeled suitcase, a young man settled into a seat at the adjacent table. It was soon clear that he had consumed rather a lot of alcohol before boarding as he sat down beaming inanely from ear to ear. He proceeded to unpack a large rucksack. The first item to come out was a small electric kettle which he plugged into the computer point. He then knocked the kettle over and soaked the table. Changing his mind about a nice cup of tea he delved back into the rucksack, belched heartily and opened a can of beer. A laptop came out of the bag next quickly followed by a pile of sandwiches and a DVD which he started to play on the laptop. He put headphones on to listen but then asked everyone in the loudest voice imaginable if it was too loud. It wasn’t, he was. Apart from his constant chuckling at his film the rest of the journey was uneventful but the announcement of his stop was pretty late and the scene as he repacked the rucksack with soaking kettle, laptop, soggy sandwiches a couple of hats and his DVD taking each out at least twice and putting them in another section was memorable. As he left he dropped one of his hats and another passenger had to chase after him. Fortunately he was a harmless drunk but if he had been an aggressive one the journey would have been extremely uncomfortable.

So that’s put an end to today’s blog. It’s my birthday today. We’re going to see The Town at the cinema tonight but before then I am going to have to go and work on some accounts at home. Maybe I’ll get a chance to get back to normal when the server is back.

Tuesday 28 September 2010

It's Supposed To Be Entertainment



It was August 1967 when I first handed over my four bob (20p in today's money),pushed through the turnstile and gazed in awe at the steep staircase ahead of me. At the top of the stairs was a dark tunnel through which a tumultuous noise was coming. I entered the tunnel to see the mighty Kop in all its glory and I was hooked. In the forty three years that followed I have been a regular on the Kop and a season ticket holder for the majority of those years. Why? Well the main reason is that I loved the whole thing, the game the noise, the spectacle - the tremendous atmosphere. I was happy to hand over my cash even when it escalated from a few shillings to twenty and then thirty quid and is today pushing forty. Because I was being entertained.


On Saturday I couldn't make it to Anfield as I was celebrating in London with Marion. A couple of years ago I wouldn't have considered missing a match but sadly my whole reason for going to Anfield - to be entertained - is evaporating in an acrimonious cloud of poison. There was a time when the players would beam out from the photos in the programmes with smiles on their faces but today there's a near universal hard man scowl. It was nice if we won but no big deal if we didn't as long as it was a good match. After all it was entertainment, like going to the cinema or a concert.


Last Saturday a supporters' group demonstrated before, during and after the match at Anfield and staged a sit in. More is planned for this Sunday. I sympathise with the group. I understand their hatred at the way that the club became big business and was taken over by soulless money men looking to make a quick buck and I share their frustration at seeing the one time colossus shrinking towards oblivion. But what are the demonstrations going to achieve? What is their purpose? To tell the owners we don't want them there? Well I would have thought that was pretty obvious to them by now. All they are achieving is distracting the players and distracting the crowd from what, after all, they are paying (through the nose) to see. Staying behind after the match to vent spleen at the owners who most likely are not even there is only going to get the protestors hoarse with shouting. The only people being damaged by the protests are those who want to watch an entertaining game and then get home in a decent time. Everyone knows that the ownership of the club is a disaster, the demonstrations will achieve zilch other than perhaps a burnt Sunday dinner. Until the club is either repossessed by RBS or sold to a new owner we'll just have to take it and hope that someone on the pitch gives us cause to smile. Here's hoping for Sunday.





As you make your sandwiches tomorrow spare a thought for the bloke who bought this loaf from his supermarket. He though that the bread looked a bit of a funny colour at one end and then saw it was a mouse. Oh well, at least he spotted it and found it was complete - except for the tail.


I'm away from the office today but I hear that the broadband is back up and running after three weeks. Normal blogging should return shortly.

Friday 24 September 2010

Tesco Cards? You'll Be Rolling In The Aisle


Buying a birthday card used to be a pleasurable experience. A visit to the card shop would present the customer with a wide range of cards for all occasions - birthdays, marriages, deaths and anything else that one might consider worthy of celebrations or condolences. Cards would be funny, sometimes clever, sometimes corny. Sincere thoughts might be found alongside more dubious messages. There are fewer card shops around today as the big supermarkets continue their inexorable rise to retail denomination. So,yesterday, in search of a birthday card for my daughter's partner Duncan I found myself in Tesco. The card aisle should be given an x rating. Rows of cards offered me the opportunity to insult poor Duncan by suggesting he was old,flatulent,balding or alcoholic (or often a combination of all four) or to amuse him with jokes that Roy Chubby Brown might consider too near the knuckle. Duncan is a scuba diver so my eyes were drawn to a card depicting a diver in full diving gear only to find a crude joke about cunnilingus no less. Another depicted an old man hiding his genitals in a popcorn bucket he was about to share with an old woman(so original - a joke made in Diner in 1982) and one hilariously made a connection between a girl and a crab.I don't want to sound like disgusted of Tunbridge Wells - I can laugh at any joke if it's funny - but sorry Tesco, your (huge) card selection stinks. And if you are reading this Duncan, don't worry I left the superstore empty handed - you aren't old, flatulent balding or alcoholic.


As the saga of the lack of internet rumbles on for yet another day, yesterday turned out not to be "today" as Freezone had hoped and I finally gave up and on 29th September we should be back up and running with Be There who have been recommended to us by our friendly IT Crowd at Mainframe Computer Services. We have managed with a dial up connection for the past week but it's painfully slow and means that we haven't been able to send emails with attachments of any size and downloading orders from web based ordering systems has been extremely difficult. If you run a business you might learn from our experience. Imagine how you would manage without broadband for a day. Now think about three weeks. Doesn't bear thinking about does it? If it happened to us it could happen to you so maybe the insurance of a second broadband line and provider would make business sense. That's what we're going to do and a few hundred pounds a year is not much for peace of mind.


We're off down to London tomorrow to celebrate my birthday. We've got a busy weekend ahead of us and are going to a matinee performance of The Railway Children at Waterloo Station theatre and then a dinner with Paul and Josephine at the Dorchester Grill. We're staying at the County Hall Park Plaza (above). I mention all of this as each of these bookings was made after following recommendations on the internet. Trip Advisor members rank the Park Plaza 44 out of 1058 London Hotels, 1654 Top Table members have given the Dorchester Grill a massive average score of 8.6 out of ten and The Railway Children has glowing reviews on many websites. So when it's working like it is here at home (thanks BT), broadband is now perhaps life's most important and most useful tool.


As we are travelling by train I'll have plenty of time for the Saturday papers. I've started buying the Times on Saturday as well as the Guardian as the Times has a superb quick crossword that will guarantee to keep me quiet for the journey. I've never been into cryptic crosswords but these puzzles are really entertaining with the challenge not being whether or not you can finish them but how long it takes to do so. This is one area where the internet can't beat printed media.


And where would the internet be without YouTube? Here's a little film for the weekend.



Samsung have done it yet again.

Thursday 23 September 2010

The Customer Is Always Right


We’ve always accepted that age old cliché here at Instanta but an incident this week has left me questioning its truth. A few days ago a customer phoned up to place an order. We quoted a price to him upon which he blew a fuse and said that the price was not the one that he had on his price list. We courteously told him that we had sent him a new price list in July and that he was on our mailing list and should have received it. Instead of calmly saying that he had not received it (in which case we might have come to a fair agreement and perhaps split the difference with him or even honoured the old price), he continued with such a tirade of abuse that our (totally innocent) employee on the receiving end was visibly shaken. There’s no place in business (or in any other part of life) for bullying, especially when the victim is relatively junior, has no say whatsoever in our pricing policies and is a totally innocent party. So, is the customer always right? Certainly not in this case and I would like to suggest a saying for him to take on board in future. “Do as you would be done by”.

I trudged up to Anfield last night to witness another nail being hammered into the coffin of the football club that I have followed since I was twelve. I know it was only the Carling Cup and Liverpool put out an under strength side but they were playing what equates to fourth division opposition and at least six of the team have plenty of Premier League experience .It was an opportunity to show the depth of the squad. The depth was shown to be severely lacking and it soon became clear that Pacheco (much heralded as one for the future) will soon be one for the past and Jovanovic demonstrated that if you pay peanuts you get monkeys (if you call a few million quid peanuts). You can’t blame every Liverpool player for the debacle. Captain for the night Kyrgiakos gave his all in a swashbuckling attempt to salvage something from the game and inspired the team to a late extra time equaliser and I felt sorry for Wilson the new signing from Rangers who demonstrated a fine passing touch that has been severely lacking but at the end of the day the once Mighty Reds were pretty well outclassed and we had to endure a huge crowd of Northampton fans singing “Can we play you every week?” and then walk back to the car in monsoon conditions. We play Blackpool in about ten days. I’m feeling nervous about the headlines already.

Going to Anfield meant that I sacrificed the opportunity to watch the groundbreaking new reality TV show Seven Days and I even forgot to record it. As far as I can tell, this is an original concept (although Paul will no doubt tell me that it’s been done somewhere else – nothing TV related escapes his attention).It certainly raised plenty of comments on Twitter #SevenDays so it must have had a sizeable audience. It seems that Joe Public can offer advice to the real participants in the show, via the show’s website, on how to handle their problems although I doubt that the difficulties encountered by inhabitants of Notting Hill will provide as much interest as those facing sink estate dwellers in Glasgow. “Just doing the Ocado order online Jemima. Ciabatta or Focaccia?”

Still no Broadband service here at Instanta. I’m starting to feel like a donkey with a carrot dangling on a stick before me as our providers keep telling me it will be back on today. At least today they are saying “today” whereas on every other day they have been saying “tomorrow”. So will today be the day? Today they acknowledged my request for a MAC. Seems that they have a legal obligation to provide one within five days but I requested it over eight days ago. But did I get an acknowledgement of my request they ask? I think that their email says that I did but they interpret it differently. Do I want to get lawyers involved? Always a difficult decision when that carrot appears to be so close.Until then no photos and no YouTube on this blog.

Tuesday 21 September 2010

We need a MAC and it's not even raining




The saga of the failed broadband will be into its third week tomorrow and, whilst we have been promised that it will be back on Thursday, we aren't exactly confident. This sorry situation has highlighted a number of serious problems in the broadband system. Somewhere down the supply chain a company called Aspire Internet had a "contractual dispute" which resulted in their broadband supply being switched off.You can't run a business today without broadband so we contracted with a new supplier. But you can't move to a new supplier without a code known as a MAC from your current supplier. But as the current supplier Freeezone can't get a MAC from Aspire, the new supplier BE can't switch the broadband. I have spoken to OFCOM, Freezone and the new suppliers and nobody can get around this problem. Short of getting BT to install a new line there's not much we can do other than accept Freezone's assurance that it will all be back on Thursday at which point we will be off like a shot to the new company. We also need to get a back up supplier as it is intended that all our accounting system will be run on broadband via our Australian group offices one day in the future and this episode would have left us with no book-keeping for two weeks. Time for OFCOM to sort this MAC situation out as hundreds of Aspire customers have been without broadband for a fortnight.



I'm following Kirsty Allsop on Twitter.I've always enjoyed her property shows with co-presenter Phil and it seems that they are working on a new travel programme at the moment.She's currently campaigning on Twitter against homework for young school kids and I have to say that I totally agree with her.Our children had no homework other than reading until they were into secondary school and it didn't do them any harm.They were encouraged to enjoy themselves after school and given as many books to read as they wanted and allowed to watch telly too although they tended to enjoy playing and reading more and only tended to watch the programmes they loved.It was before computers really took of so I don't know how different it would be today but who can forget the enjoyable times we had with books and audio books to quote "The Owl Who Was Afraid Of The Dark" - "That was nice - what's next?"



We went to see Tamara Drewe at Vue last night. A break from the usual Wednesday night routine as Liverpool are playing at Anfield then and I somehow subscribed to buy tickets for League Cup games. The film is based on Posy Simmonds graphic novel in The Guardian and it was a very Guardian sort of comedy based around a literary retreat full of middle class aspiring writers. It was a bit of a rom(p) com and we thoroughly enjoyed it. Posy Simmonds observes the British middle classes with uncanny accuracy and of course,as always with her,there is much more to it than just straightforward comedy with an underlying Thomas Hardy theme (echoes of Far from The Madding Crowd and Tess of the D'Urbevilles)running throughout.The cast is very strong and there is a brilliant performance from young Jessica Barden playing tearaway teenager Jody.Do catch it if you can.

A dog plays a big part in Tamara Drewe. I've never been a dog owner and people sometimes think I am a dog hater although that is not true. I like other people's dogs very much as long as I don't have responsibility for them for 365 days of the year. Who could resist a dog like this who gets a little bit confused about a trip down an escalator?



Taking the dogs theme one step (ok fifty steps) further are the wonderful OK Go. You will all know OK Go as the group who made the famous treadmill video on YouTube and then the paint video last year. Here's their latest. I hope that one day they will record a song that gets played on its musical merits alone but until then let's all marvel in the wonder of their videos. Thanks to Glinner on Twitter for pointing me in the direction of both of these little canine wonders.

Friday 17 September 2010

No Room At The (Days) Inn



We went down to Teddington Studios on Wednesday to watch the recording of two episodes of the new season of "A League Of Their Own". We had a great time and enjoyed the shows immensely. Along with the four regulars, the guests were Chris Evans, Dermot O'Leary, Tim Henman and Phillips Idowu and each of them added a very different flavour to the proceedings. It is going to be a very hard job for the editors cutting several hours of footage down to two chunks of thirty minutes or less. Paul took us to the green room after the show but this time Marion was under strict instructions not to ask for her photo with any of the celebs so we left them in peace and I had a chat with James Corden's dad who is a really nice bloke. "What has this to do with today's blog headline?" I hear you ask. Well, as we were unsure of timings and whether we would be taking Paul back to Limehouse we didn't bother booking a motel as I thought that we would be able to choose the most convenient on the way back up north. We started heading towards South Mimms but a quick call informed us that the place was full so a change of direction was in order and it was back through central London and London Gateway on the M1 next. Same story there so on to Luton where the bloke in the service station newsagents told us there was no motel on site only for us to spot one when it was too late and we were back on the slipway and on our way to Milton Keynes.By now it was 1.30 a.m and surely we'd find somewhere to get our heads down there. But no it was the same story. Fortunately the receptionist directed us to somewhere else and at around 2 a.m we finally got to sleep.In future I'll get a confirmed booking before I set off and congratulations to Days Inn, no sign of any recession there.



At the recordings we were extremely impressed with Dermot O'Leary who has real presence and confidence and oozes professionalism and with the always funny John Bishop but I liked Freddie Flintoff best of all. He announced his retirement from cricket the day after the recording which is a pity but he has a very natural way of telling a story, is very self deprecating and naturally funny. It's sad that injury has forced premature retirement but I'm sure that he will have a very long TV career.



Teddington studios back onto a weir behind which are the famous navigational locks. We arrived early and had a walk. I was amazed to see a bright green parakeet in the trees on the river bank and thought that it was an escaped pet. But then we saw another and another and realised that there was a colony of them. I remember reading recently that Ring Necked Parakeets had become naturalised in the south of England but certainly didn't expect to see so many. It was obvious that the locals were used to them as they were given no more attention than the many wood pigeons that shared the tree tops.



The phone started ringing earlier in the week as news broke about a commercial coffee machine exploding in a Sainsburys store in Hampshire. I have been in the business for over twenty years and my family has been involved in producing pressure boilers for most of the past fifty years and this is the first instance of a pressure related accident that I have ever come across. The machine was sold by a reputable Italian firm although I don't know if they still manufacture in Italy or like many have contracted to the Far East. There are tens or maybe hundreds of thousands of expresso machines in use throughout the world and I can't help but think that something highly unusual must have happened to this piece of equipment as most pressure vessels have more than one fail safe device. Our only pressure boilers, the WB2 Supreme models have a safety valve, an operating pressure switch, a safety pressure switch and cut out and taps that would open long before dangerous pressure levels built up so an explosion is well nigh impossible. I am sure that the machine in question would incorporate similar safeguards.I read on the internet that a stuck safety valve was the cause but this alone should not be sufficient and I await the results of the inquest into the cause of the terrible accident.



If all goes well I should hit the target weight at the weekend. I've always wanted to be in one of those slimmer of the year photos, preferably one with a cardboard cut out of the earlier me. Well I haven't got a cardboard cutout so I'll have to make do with that other staple - holding out the waistband of the trousers that once fitted snugly. More on this next week if successful.

A big thank you to Jenny Buckley who, with the help of MCS of Southport (Mainframe Computer Solutions), our very own IT Crowd, has managed to get us back up and running with emails. We've got the internet too after a fashion but it is very slow and I am still trying to get the broadband back up. So thanks again Jenny and Steve and your team. You can't imagine how bad it has been without it - I had no idea what's been happening on YouTube and Twitter for almost a week. We'll soon put that right


Wednesday 15 September 2010

Off To Teddington



Marion and I are travelling down to Teddington studios later today to watch the recording of a couple of shows in the forthcoming series of A League Of Their Own. I pinched this photo from Jimmy Carr's Twitter feed. Hope he doesn't mind. We're looking forward to the recordings. Guests include Tim Henman and Chris Evans ( I think) so listen out for us shouting "Come on Tim" when the shows are aired in the autumn. It also gives us an opportunity to see our son Paul who has been heavily involved in the show from the outset. As he lives in London we don't get enough chances to see him and it's a pity that this will be a flying visit as we are back in the office again tomorrow.



And in the office we are still trying to survive without broadband. We have found a new supplier but they can't get us up and running without something called a MAC code from our old supplier who haven't come up with it yet. This one could run and run. Fortunately we have a temporary email server set up but it's expensive and it is not very fast. At least we aren't as cut off from the world as we were last week.



When we get back tomorrow I've got a lot of work to do on the accounts for August. I did the preliminary figures yesterday and they look good. I've just got to complete the VAT return and do some final double checks to finish them off. Then I've got to somehow train someone else here to do the figures when I have retired in a few months time. It's a lot to do but we'll manage- we'll have to.

With no Broadband I have to write this before I get to work. So time has run out now and I'm off. The blogs will have to be short until normal service resumes (unless I start getting up even earlier) by which time I will have probably lost my growing number of readers which will be a pity - mind you when I retire in about ten weeks time the blog will have to retire with me.


Tuesday 14 September 2010

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.

Friday 10 September 2010

Belated Birthday Wishes Mr Aitch

It may look like I forgot about metal worker Dave Horrock's thirty fourth birthday yesterday but Dave will assure you that I didn't. Sadly our broadband provider, who on Wednesday became a broadband non-provider, failed to get the service up and running again for the whole of Thursday and, I am worried that it will be same again today (I am writing this at home). It's a bit frightening how dependent things now are on the internet. All our consignments are arranged on the web and many of our invoices are sent by email and orders received in the same way. We have done our best to tell customers about the situation (by fax phone and, of course, this blog) but there are bound to be some important emails floating around in cyber space. Anyway, as I write this (Thursday night) Dave should be celebrating with a well earned pizza. Dave has been with Instanta since shortly after leaving school as a sixteen year old and has been a stalwart of our metalwork department for many years now. A devoted dad, to Jack and Cameron, Dave enjoys a flutter on the football and the horses and,like me, has a tendency to keep being let down by favourites (when will we learn eh Dave?). Dave is a keen Everton fan and I hope that his team do well this weekend when they entertain Manchester United and the Rooney circus.I hope you enjoyed your birthday and that pizza Dave and I wish you all the very best for your future with Instanta.



Hats off to Debenhams who had a sale on yesterday. We are going away for the weekend and now that the diet is almost at an end, I have very little to wear that fits. So we went after work and I managed to kit myself out with two pairs of trousers, two jumpers and a shirt for less than the cost of one jumper that I looked at in a shop down the road and less than one night in the pub we are staying in. And no I don't look like Worzel Gummidge. Ever since Gok's being doing that programme where he dresses models in high street stuff and an American woman fits others out in designer labels costing ten times as much I've realised that the only benefits of designer clothes are being able to show off how much you have spent and not wearing the same as everyone else. I still think that there's nothing to beat a top quality jacket but jumpers and shirts are just jumpers and shirts and I looked pretty much the same in Debenhams cheap cashmere as I did in Paul Smith's expensive wool.



We're getting excited about a trip to Teddington studios next week to see the recording of two shows for the new series of son Paul's show "A League Of Their Own".Of the last series,Duncan Gray, Head of Entertainment at Sky, said "From the moment it aired," A League of Their Own" was an instant hit with our viewers and we can't wait to have all new episodes to play this Autumn. "A League of Their Own" first teamers James Corden, Jamie Redknapp, John Bishop and Georgie Thompson will be joined by big new signings from the world of comedy, celebrity and sport as they set out to sweep all before them in the new season." We'll be seeing some big names in the recordings and plenty of laughs are guaranteed.

The consultant told me on Wednesday that I won't be able to fly for four months after the hip replacement. No worries, we can always take a cruise. Or on second thoughts, maybe not.




He also told me about the potential problems involved in hip replacement surgery. Obviously I had to do some investigation into these and found this unsettling video. What gets me is the poor bloke's daughter's reaction. We dad's are so funny aren't we.


Wednesday 8 September 2010

Apocalypse Now




Imagine a world without Broadband. That’s what we have had at Instanta today. So how come there’s this blog you might ask. Quite simple, my home Broadband is still working. But at Instanta (whose lack of connection appears to be a BT problem) the internet disappeared at about 11.15 and did not return. Considering that ten or so years ago it did not exist, it is amazing how much the business world has become reliant upon it. So what will be the result? No doubt tomorrow (if it’s back up and running) we will receive urgent emails that asked for overnight delivery of boilers and perhaps a service breakdown that needed urgent attention, which will be bad for our customers but completely beyond our control. Our bosses in Australia could be wondering where our daily reports are but enterprising Craig has given me the reports to send from home as well. So how could our customers have insured themselves against this inconvenience? By asking for email “read receipts” and, in their absence, phoning us up. I noticed one of the people I follow on Twitter having a dig at those who request “read receipts” but here’s one very good reason that they do. The problems for Instanta have been relatively small but if we were completely reliant upon internet orders it could have been an extremely expensive day.





What has one leg shorter than the other and squeaks? No it’s not a joke. Having gone to the hospital this morning, this was the scenario drawn up by my consultant as he explained to me the possible downside of having a hip replacement operation. It appears that he has to have a bit of a guess when he is sawing my femur and does it by sight. “But don’t worry” he added “if we get the length wrong we can always shorten or lengthen the other one when that needs doing”. As for the squeak, it seems that some hip replacements make a noise like a rusty hinge. Unfortunately I can’t be giving my hip a quick burst of WD40 or a drop of oil and if I am one of those unfortunate enough to be fitted with a squeaker I’ll be like one of those cats with a bell and you’ll hear me coming. These side effects apart, there’s always the chance of heart attack, stroke or infection. Happily the percentage risk of these is low but I suppose that’s what the 2% of people that it happened to said too. Oh well I’m on the waiting list now and I have told them that I can come any time after 30
th November.





A young couple arrived in reception. “We’re from Monster Energy” they said. Although the young man had a T shirt and dreadlocks and his colleague was in torn jeans, Marion thought they were selling power and told them that we were with E-ON. But it seems that they were selling a new energy drink and gave us thirty free samples. I took one look at the calories and caffeine levels and gave them a miss but was happy to let the lads in the factory give them a try during lunchtime and the production line was hyper all afternoon.




You have to hand it to those witty headline writers in the British press. I was in the waiting room for quite some time this morning so amused myself reading the back of everyone else’s newspapers. Are “ROONEY THE PRO” or “ROONEY SHOWS HE’S A PRO” or “A PRO PERFORMANCE FROM ROONEY” a case of great minds thinking alike or, as I thought, pretty sloppy nudge nudge wink wink journalism? The thing that shocked me the most about last weekend’s stories is not that Rooney might have paid for sex (let’s face it he’s not exactly Brad Pitt) but that he shelled out £200 on a packet of fags.

Alexandra Burke's new single is now out. After her great performance on Magic Numbers the other week, there's now a video out. This is how I'll be after the diet and the hip op.... Honest

Tuesday 7 September 2010

One Step Beyond Retirement



Marion and I retire on 30th November and the first step we take will be a rush to the car and a drive to Manchester to see Madness perform at the Apollo. Truly a case of One Step Beyond and quite an appropriate one I think. We've always loved them and they have many similarities with that other favourite of ours ,UB40, being a big group with a lot of instrumentalists and ,whilst it's not reggae, another stomping beat. Roll on November.





As we came out of the cinema last night the air was thick with smoke. It was clearly a big fire so we had to go and have a look what the source was. When we saw that local roads were cordoned off, the size of the blaze became apparent and the huge number of blue flashing lights on the Promenade pinpointed the conflagration to the old Kingsway club which, still firmly ablaze, looked to be now just a shell. I read recently that the owners had applied to demolish the building. No need now. That will save them a packet and all that tedious beaurocracy too. It's strange how a number of derelict local buildings have gone up in smoke recently - not that I am pointing any fingers. The Kingsway was famous for being the venue where Ringo made his first ever performance with the Beatles, where my brother used to splash two shillings on roulette and where, as a teenager I once managed to get in but discovered to my disappointment that it was called a "night" club because it was pitch black inside and apart from shirts lit up with UV lights I couldn't see a thing.



The scene last night taken by Jenny's friend.



And the morning after.



As for the film, "The Last Exorcism" was a pretty scary horror movie although it was spoilt for me and Marion by four juvenile morons (older than teenagers) in the row behind who managed to talk (talk might be too generous- grunt might be better) for large chunks of the screening completely oblivious to those around them, rushing out to answer their mobile phones and rocking our whole row by putting their feet on the seats - and no I didn't do anything about it, I just hoped that something as nasty as what was happening on the film befell them on their way home. That nastiness included gruesome mutilation (which would have been just fine by me). A good film but not a great one. It moves with pace. It is filmed in the style of "The Office" as a film crew trails a preacher who was once an exorcist on one final exorcism. He is now coming clean and wants to show that he was just a fake and nobody is ever really possessed - or are they? A great premise and a good story well filmed until the final five minutes. I won't tell you the ending but it takes the themes of more than one famous horror - "Rosemary's Baby", "The Wicker Man" and "The Blair Witch Project" all spring to mind - and mixes them all up into something of a disappointing mess.




Finally I would like to wish our factory leader Tony Mercer all the very best for his birthday today. Tony is Instanta's longest serving employee having been with us for around thirty six years. As usual he is holidaying on his birthday but I hope that he finds five minutes to see what I have written about him. As this is the last time that I will be at Instanta for one of his birthdays I would like to offer Tony my sincere thanks for his support over my past twenty two years here. His time keeping and attendance records have been exemplary - I can't recall him ever being late and he has struggled into work many times when others would be shivering beneath their sheets. He hardly appears in our sickness records going year after year with 100% attendance. He must be doing a good job as our productivity figures sometimes slip when he is on holiday (factory please note) but targets tend to be met when he is not. So enjoy your well earned holiday Tony. Marion and I wish you a very happy birthday and a continuing successful career at Instanta.



I'll close today with a clever promo for "The Last Exorcist" using ChatRoulette.com. Bad language warning.

Monday 6 September 2010

Like The Proverbial Bus


Life can be odd can't it? One minute Marion and I are bemoaning the fact that we've got nothing on and the next we get a glut of activity all at once. This is happening in the next few days as, after a period of inertia, our free time has suddenly sprung into life. So much so that we are going against the grain and paying for two cinema tickets tonight instead of taking up the usual Orange Wednesday offer. Yes, after a potter around the gym we are off to see "The Last Exorcism". Will let you know what we think tomorrow.




And on Wednesday it's the local hospital for a check on my hip and back again in the afternoon for Marion's mum's annual check after her successful cancer operation five years ago and then Marion's off out to a charity food evening. Then on Friday we're travelling down to near Haye on Wye to celebrate close friends' wedding anniversary. Back late on Sunday and on Monday off to see Stephen Fry's show being beamed live to FACT in Liverpool and on Wednesday off to Teddington to watch the recording of two episodes of Paul's "A League Of Their Own". And then back to normal and staying in watching the telly.



Which is not always a bad thing as ITV1's "U Be Dead" proved last night.One of those fact is stranger than fiction stories, it told the tale of a successful psychiatrist and his fiancee whose lives were ruined by a stalker. From the text message of the title "U Be Dead" I guessed that the stalker would be a west country type like that archaeologist in "Time Team" or Phil in our stores. But she turned out to be a lunatic Argentinian woman who bombarded the couple with sinister and threatening text messages, cancelled their wedding reception and, when the doctor became involved with another woman, took a used condom from the bin and used the contents to frame him for rape almost wrecking his career - you couldn't make it up. A great couple of hours drama from ITV and, although when you Google the show, photos of David Morrissey and Tara Fitzgerald come up, the true star was Monica Dolan who was chillingly convincing as the stalker Maria Marchese. Well done ITV drama.Five stars.



And speaking of convincing performances, we watched "Couscous" at the weekend. Hasfia Herzi (above) plays Rym, retiree Slimane's girlfriend's daughter. The story tells the tale of Slimane trying to realise his pipe dream of opening a boat restaurant on a quayside in a southern French port - a simple premise but one that is wrapped in a multitude of layers. These layers - family,age,immigration, bureaucracy, retirement, love, infidelity and much more unwrap beautifully before us but rarely do you see as powerful a contribution on screen as that of Herzi who manages to instill her character with such feeling that she makes you feel that you know her. A wonderful film.Look out for it on DVD. Here's a taster.

Friday 3 September 2010

Well That's Next Wednesday Night Sorted Then




At last a film with decent reviews arrives at the local Vue. "The Last Exorcism" is right up Marion's street as she loves nothing more than a bit of horror - she married me! And it was reviewed with no less than four stars in today's Guardian which means that it should be passable at least. So that's Orange Wednesday sorted and, as I am going to see the specialist about my hip on Wednesday morning it will be a chance to get the horrors of the impending operation off my mind.



The Guardian devoted an entire page of the G2 section to sous vide cooking yesterday. The writer expressed surprise at how delicious the food that he cooked in the water bath was, although it was no surprise to us at all having seen the benefits of this method of cooking several years ago and acting upon our taste buds and developing our prize winning SV25 and SV38. Our sous vide water baths were developed in close consultation with leading chefs and are built with all the features that they demanded including our unique internal water agitation system.



With the prospect of a holiday next year after two years without one we have been planning carefully and are thinking of a return to Ile De Re. Looking at the photo you might wonder what the attraction is of a flat featureless French island but we hope to get back on our bikes and Ile De Re is perfect being criss-crossed with miles of purpose made cycle tracks with two or three lovely little towns on pretty harbours and the flatness should be a big help with bedding in the new hip. Only problem was that last time we went the weather was so (uncharacteristically) bad that we christened it Ile De Rain.




A week on Monday Stephen Fry is performing his one man show at the Royal Festival Hall.It is being used as promotion for his autobiography and as an experiment the show is being broadcast live at cinemas around the country so we bought a few tickets to see it at FACT in Liverpool. Problem is we might have something else on that evening so, if anybody out there is interested get in touch. We may still be able to go but we won't know for sure until Wednesday next. As it is almost sold out, we should have no trouble finding someone to take them off us.

Have a good weekend. I was going to embed the brilliantly innovative new YouTube video for Tipp-Ex but it can't be embedded. But you can check it out
here. So instead I'll embed the now famous dancing dog. If you haven't already seen it, have a look it's a brilliant dog.




Thursday 2 September 2010

Off to Oz




One of our Operations Director David Wilson's responsibilities is staff training. But now and then the trainer needs to become a trainee and our parent company decided that Dave would benefit from seeing how manufacturing is carried out Australian style and have booked him into a manufacturing course down under in a couple of weeks. It will be a hugely exciting and interesting couple of weeks for Dave and I look forward to hearing what he has learnt when he gets back. With a twenty two hour journey each way lets hope that fellow film fan David has plenty of viewing choices on the way.



I was saddened to see the extent that William Hague had to go to in rebutting the gay affair accusations that had been heaped upon him. To feel that it was necessary to bring his wife's unfortunate string of miscarriages into the open in order to put his point across shows just how much pressure public figures are put under by today's media. My feeling is that, if you were a senior public figure and powerful politician conducting a clandestine gay affair, the last thing that you would do is openly book a twin room in a hotel with your handsome young aide. I am sure that this was simply a case of economics and those responsible should be brought to book if their allegations prove to be untrue. Nick and Craig often share twin rooms when on exhibition duties for Instanta and football teams regularly do the same without any hint of scandal being raised.




This is a photo of me presenting Max and Jenny with their prizes in our Pick The Score competition in May. It is the last photo of me taken before I started on the diet and, as you can see, I had a double chin and was not exactly svelte. I got on the scales on Sunday to see that I am now two stone and two pounds lighter. My waistline has shrunk by almost five inches and none of my clothes fit properly. All of this has resulted in me being constantly asked about my health and being treated in some cases like an invalid. Honestly, I know that my face is a bit thin but my BMI is still only on the borderline of healthy at 25 (down from 29) and the target weight is still a few weeks off. It's going to be expensive then as I will need a lot of new trousers.But thanks for the concern and no I am not ill.



Were you amongst the 5.4 million people who tuned in for Sunday's final ever "Last Of The Summer Wine"? Being a regular fan I, of course, was watching but, however much I loved that longest running sit com - and I often found myself a lone positive voice in a roomful of haters, I could not say that this was its finest hour. In fact, it was dreadful. There were plenty of laughs but only on the canned laughter sound track as, apart from the trouserless police officers, the whole half hour episode failed to raise even the semblance of a smile and I realised that the decision to axe the show was one that should have been taken several series ago. In those days I loved the Sunday evening escape to a land where the sun always shone and the stories did not centre solely around Marina and Howard. I would like to see the BBC bring back "Jam And Jerusalem" as a slightly more edgy replacement.

I'm off for lunch but before I go, here's a brilliant video brought to my attention by The Guardian sports pages. How to overtake when there's not much room.

d to

Wednesday 1 September 2010

Time To Reflect

As retirement rushes towards us like a rip tide Marion has been busy tidying up the office and shredding stuff that has been here for donkey's years and is no longer needed (not, of course, as any sort of cover up). From time to time she picks out a little blast from the past such as the letter I wrote to our insurance brokers in 1996 when I had to notify them about one of our driver's convictions. "Mr x had been to a pub and was returning home when he saw a police car behind him in his mirror. He knew that he was over the limit and decided to take the next turn in the hope that they were not following him. Unfortunately the next turn was a one way street and he realised immediately that he had entered at the wrong end and was stopped."

Or the letter in 2010 when I wrote to another motor insurance company who were accusing one of our staff of causing an accident. "How your client is claiming against us when she attempted a U-turn on Lord St and was hit at the rear side (not the back as stated in the letter) is beyond me but it seems that any accident nowadays is sadly seen as a chance to make money. You may note that our driver, who was not at fault, has not suffered from whiplash, which today seems more common than the common cold and much more difficult to diagnose."


Oh well, off the soap box and back down to earth where I find that our turnover for August was up by a considerable percentage on August 2009. I am pleased to see those figures which, in conjunction with the one week factory closure, have left the cupboard a little bare when it comes to boilers on the shelves. However, we did not let any customers down on deliveries last month and ,thanks to Dave Wilson's meticulous planning, I expect the same in future months and that Marion and I will leave Instanta with our legacy of prompt deliveries and excellent customer service running on well into the future.



Wednesdays usually mean only one thing - Orange Wednesday at the local cinema. However, this week, yet again, the films on offer don't really excite. "Scott Pilgrim" got good reviews in the Guardian but most of the other papers gave it a thumbs down and we've already seen "Kick Ass" this year and, much as we like Michael Cera, I think we'll wait for this one to come on Sky.



And speaking of Sky, Marion and I are putting the best part of £90 a month into Murdoch's coffers. I don't like doing this but the service is, unfortunately, the best there is. The sports coverage is second to none and even the normal schedule has some real pearls with the wonderful "Modern Family" and with the purchase of the HBO catalogue this can only get better. And that is without even mentioning "A League Of Their Own" in which we have a family interest. But, however good a channel might be, it is extremely upsetting to note that the Murdoch newspapers turn a blind eye to news that doesn't suit them and this is a worrying and undemocratic trend. Last week Mark Thompson had a go at Murdoch in the McTaggart Lecture at the Edinburgh TV Festival. His words got wide coverage but The Times was strangely silent on the matter although they reported heavily on anything that came up at the festival that cast the BBC in a bad light. This is how censorship starts. You don't want to upset your boss so you only print what you think he would like to read. A very worrying thin end of the wedge and, now that Channel 5 is owned by Desmond, one that could become pretty thick within the next few years.

I'll leave you today with a little video that caught my eye. Now I could start making these when we retire. We have the technology.