Everything's Peachy

Here's our antiques loving head of our welding department Craig Peach enjoying a bit of light reading. We'll excuse him his skive as it's his 34th birthday today and, as I said here last year, half of those 34 years have been here at Instanta. I said then that Craig loved travel and since his 33rd birthday he has enjoyed Christmas in New York and a winter break in Florida. His next trip planned is a visit to Dublin to watch U2. He's still a keen Southport supporter and they are as rare as one of those undated 20ps nowadays.Have a great day Craig.



We really enjoyed "Public Enemies" last night. Johnny Depp played his role as John Dillinger perfectly and the film was quite an old fashioned gangster movie with plenty of bank raids and shoot-outs with the law. I was delighted to see scouser Stephen Graham (above) starring in a supporting role as Baby Faced Nelson though why anybody would cast a Kirkby boy as a psychopathic,violent, foul mouthed and booze ridden robber is beyond me!



I've just had a quick look at the June figures. We managed to invoice a huge £1047 more than we did last June but at least that's better than last month when we slipped back. It looks as though, unless our sales collapse in July and August, our turnover is going to be about 1.3% down on last year when our year ends on 31st August which is not too bad all things considering.But we will have shifted less boilers as our average unit sale price has been higher.Roll on the boom times. Me and Marion are getting too old for years of recession.



I heard a new word this morning "NEETs". It seems that there will soon be over a million young people in Britain Not in Education Employment or Training and this is going to be a hell of a problem. The government will have to do something soon or what are they going to do. I seem to remember a similar situation at the time of the Toxteth riots.We've done our own tiny bit with Rebekah joining us yesterday from the ranks of teenagers without jobs but that's a drop in the ocean. Can we have some incentives please Mr Brown?



Have you heard about the Big Lunch? It's being run by the Eden Project and the idea is to get people together for a big lunch (what else) on 19th July in an attempt to encourage neighbourliness. I remember the Queen's silver jubilee when Marion and I lived in Palmerston Road (just around the corner from here). The street was closed and we all had a wonderful time. I clicked on the website to find our nearest Big Lunch but at the moment there are none locally. Should we have one at Instanta? We could but we're on holiday that week.We're doing our own bit for neighbourliness and having a couple of older widowed neighbours round for a glass of wine and some cheese tonight. They always have some interesting tales to tell.

And if you haven't heard of the Big Lunch, here's a bit more about it.