We are just a couple of hours away from retirement as I write this but I've still been doing a few figures for head office in Australia and when I finish the blog I'll be helping with a few simple book keeping jobs here in the office.
I'm dedicating my final Instanta blog to my mum and dad. Here they are with our daughter Sarah about 28 years ago which makes them around the same age that Marion and I are today. It's so very sad to think that my dad didn't get to see the end of the family involvement in what he developed although I am pleased to say that Mum is still very much around and not looking that much older than she does here.
The success of Instanta was built upon the "WB" series of boilers which everybody took to be short for "water boilers" but was, of course, William Brassey - a happy coincidence. He and my mum Ann spent most of the seventies and eighties travelling all over the country building the Instanta brand on a shoestring budget and creating the caring ethos towards both customers and staff alike that I hope that we have continued during our stint and I am sure will continue well into the future with our new owners. My parents always bent over backwards to offer the best that they could and took pride in building up a reputation for honesty,quality products, fair prices and excellent service.
So my final heartfelt thanks goes to them. Without their efforts, none of what Marion and I achieved could have happened.
So that's it from me in the guise of the Instanta blog. But I don't think that I can give up this manic addiction to writing and my future posts can be found here. There are no posts yet but I hope to have it up and running in a couple of days.
I'll end with a bit of self indulgence. I've always loved YouTube and it has given me hours of entertainment. Here is my all time favourite video. Nothing beats this for sheer joy and exuberance. Goodbye for now.
Here's Marion raising a glass on Saturday evening as we toasted everyone at Instanta using one of the crystal glasses that were amongst the kind retirement gifts given to us by our generous staff. Friends joined us for a meal at home and we used a very fine vintage bottle of wine given to me for my birthday by son Paul and his wife Josephine - thanks it was absolutely fabulous.
Others who we must praise in this penultimate Instanta blog are Simon Smith of Dunk Ink who travelled all the way from Tunbridge Wells to be at our retirement meal on Friday evening at Ho Lee Chows in Southport. Simon has been doing PR work for us since way back in the early 90's and has hundreds of excellent contacts in the catering trade. Thank you Simon, your presence and generosity at the meal was really appreciated by both of us. Best wishes to you and to Sue.
Silverwood Exhibitions who have designed and built all of our exhibition stands for many years must not go without thanks. Barry and Mike are two of the most genial Yorkshire men you could ever wish to meet and their stands promoted the Instanta image to brilliant effect making us look much bigger than we were at first. They are the most professional exhibition stand designers that we have ever worked with and we can strongly recommend them to everyone.
I had hoped to put a photo of the Jackson family from BJ Eurosell Ltd on here as my final tribute for today but unfortunately, as I write, the photo has not arrived. Jim Jackson together with his wife Barabara and son Paul have been supplying Instanta since 1989. They source all of Instanta's boxes and insulation material and you couldn't meet a nicer bunch of people. Paul and Jim are regular fellow sufferers at Anfield and I sometimes see them on the trek up to the home matches. Sorry that your photo was too late to appear here but at least all your packaging always arrives on time. If you need to source any packaging materials BJ Eurosell are a wonderful supplier.
Of course our friends on Saturday had to eat early so that we could watch X Factor. All my money is on Cher Lloyd but her odds have drifted so other punters disagree. Watching this I simply don't understand why she is not favourite. If any of the contestants has the "X Factor" rather than can sing well look no further than this.
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 mehere . 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 time for blogging yesterday as Michael Crouch came to visit Instanta and take me and Marion out for lunch. I must express my sincere thanks to Michael for taking the time and for travelling so far out of his way to see us. Michael is the Australian owner and founder of the Zip Group which he created over fifty years ago and which he has developed into the runaway success that it is today.
And speaking of runaway success leads me seamlessly to last night's Orange Wednesday offering at the local Vue. With the cinema foyer heaving with Harry Potter fans, we went in the other direction and watched the new Wesley Snipes film "Unstoppable". It's a classic old fashioned disaster movie starting with the introduction of the characters and then quickly throwing them all into the disaster mix. But there's nothing wrong with old fashioned and the film had this viewer on the edge of his seat throughout. It's filmed with great pace and everything about it looks very real which is a refreshing change after the glut of CGI in all the recent blockbusters. If you wanted to be critical you could pick plenty of holes in the film but, if you just want to enjoy yourself, simply sit back and enjoy 98 minutes of great entertainment. Instead of watching in our staid British silence, we would have loved to see this in an American cinema as I am sure that the showing would have been enlivened even more by the unrestrained, whooping and cheering that you get in the USA .
Although we don't retire officially until Tuesday, the staff at Instanta are giving me and Marion a send off at a popular local Chinese restaurant tomorrow evening. We're looking forward to it. It will be very strange attending our last ever Instanta do. Please don't expect any speeches. I'm not sure that we could find the words too easily.
Although Factory Leader Tony Mercer did tell me a story yesterday that would go down well in an after dinner speech. He has saved this for now when we are retiring. Tony is our longest serving employee but tells me that he got the job entirely by accident. It seems that he was playing truant from school when his dad spotted him in Southport. "What are you doing out of school?" asked his dad. Always a quick thinker, Tony spotted the nearby Employment Office and, in a flash, said that he had been given time off to visit the labour exchange and look for a job. Doubting the veracity of Tony's claim, his dad insisted on accompanying him into the office where they saw the Instanta job advertised. And the rest, as they say, is history.
I'll leave you today with an ode to Gillian McKeith.
It was over sixteen years ago that we were introduced to a young John Walkinshaw and his company KLH Electronics by a fellow metal detecting enthusiast and I have to say that this find outweighed any treasure that we have ever dug up as John's brilliance in electronic design transformed Instanta's products from being advanced for the industry to being more than advanced for any industry. With John's help we developed features never before found on water boilers and had the rest of the catering trade scrambling to catch up. Not one to rest on his laurels, John has always been ahead of the game and when the competition caught up and brought out service warning codes and ECO modes we were ready to move ahead again and launch another more advanced generation of boilers incorporating liquid crystal displays, timers and built in filter monitors. The printed circuits designed and developed by John have not only been advanced but also extremely reliable. KLH have invested huge sums in automated production and these robotic production lines ensure that every board is identical and have made Instanta the market leader in advanced water boilers.
Every electronics company needs a brilliant designer like John but we must also thank his fellow director Carol Morris for the efficiency with which she has run the operation ensuring that supplies are delivered on time and dealing with any queries quickly and in a very friendly and efficient manner. We will miss John, Carol and her husband Tom and everyone else at KLH and must thank them for the major contribution that they have made to Instanta's success.
Before we used John's design skills, all our boilers incorporated bulky electro-mechanical thermostats like these. They are good and reliable stats but the bulbs are in contact with the water and can suffer from limescale deposits in hard water areas and they have fairly long differentials when switching.
These tiny thermistors introduced to us by KLH transformed temperature sensing by being extremely accurate and operating on a small differential ensuring constant temperatures and, being fitted externally, less sensitivity to limescale and much easier service.
It looks like Cher Lloyd, my X Factor tip for this year, may struggle to win. She came in the bottom two on Sunday night despite being much better than Wagner and Mary so she may not be as popular as I thought. Mind you, no X Factor winner to date has ever been in the bottom two so there has to be a first time and, in the same week in 2008, KLS were in the bottom two and finished as runners up. Much depends on how big the Wagner bandwagon has become. The anti Cowell brigade managed to knock Simon Cowell's act Joe off the number one spot last Christmas and they could do the same sort of thing again now by voting Wagner to win. But the laugh will be on Simon's face as he's the one who stands to gain the most from all those telephone votes and there's bound to be some sort of get out clause in that prize recording contract. I'm keeping faith in Cher for now and will be interested to see how she performs on Saturday night (if our friends who are coming round for a meal are fans of the show).
Here's another example of the hilarious jokers those great British telephone voters are. They've crucified poor Paige for the benefit of Wagner, kept a leaden lump in Strictly Come Dancing and now they're putting the knife into Gillian McKeith. OK so she's not the world's most popular woman but, after a week of being chosen for those gruesome insect torturing trials, isn't it time to give her a break?
With less than seven working days left, my mind is finally starting to look ahead and I am starting to think what we are going to do with an extra forty five hours every week. "A bit late now" you might say, but we've deliberately not thought about it before so that we could concentrate on the job in hand and make sure that our departure will be as seamless as possible.
We've been at Instanta almost every day this year and haven't had a holiday for almost thirty months so a holiday has to be the first priority but, with a replacement hip booked in for a week on Monday, overseas travel is going to have to be put on hold for a few more months.
Ebay just isn't profitable in the way that it was when it first arrived in the country. In those days you could put anything up for sale and there would be an eager audience waiting to bid on it. Today there are more items than there are willing bidders and, unless you happen to buy something at a bargain price, the chance of selling for a profit on eBay is slim.
Another novel? I loved writing my novel in 2009. I had twenty copies printed and gave them to friends and family. Feedback was actually very positive but the couple of negatives were so discouraging that I gave up hope of looking for publication. Maybe a writing course and rewrite would be worth thinking about. If you took into account the number of words that I have written on this blog over the last twelve months that could easily fill another book so writing one shouldn't be that big a problem.
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Spending more time with the family. Well I couldn't spend much more time with Marion as she has been at my side almost constantly for the past twenty years and that has been great. But perhaps we could see more of our kids Sarah and Paul although as they and their super partners Duncan and Josephine are both involved in pretty tough and time consuming jobs there won't exactly be too much opportunity there. ( I hear sighs of relief in St Andrews and London).
The one thing that I know that I can do well is management accountancy. I don't just mean book-keeping but understanding the books and acting on the information they supply. I think that is the one area that has helped me most in my careers at both Instanta and with Barclays so maybe I should offer my services as a trouble shooter for small businesses who aren't very good with their books.
Or maybe I should just put my feet up,have a well deserved rest and watch some TV. If you get chance try "Raising Hope" the new offering on Thursdays on Sky1 -very funny.
When compiling my list of thanks to all our wonderful Instanta employees yesterday, I said that Kirk was interesting. He's even getting mentioned on YouTube with this video being created entirely in response to his question.
Marion and I are off to the Northcote Manor in Whalley tonight for a meal out with friends Nita and Mark from Workhouse Marketing. It should be a great evening although I was one mouse click away from disaster as I booked on line and somehow managed to find another Northcote Manor in Devon. I filled in all the credit card non refundable booking but just before clicking the confirm button Marion spotted my mistake. Phew. We are going to make a weekend of it and , weather permitting, we hope to do some sight seeing around rural Lancashire on Saturday and then spend a night in Bolton before going to the big antiques fair at the Reebok stadium on Sunday morning. I'll be missing the match at Anfield but who in their right mind wants to go to a football match at 5.30 on a Saturday evening? Thank you ESPN and Barclays Premier League for putting us fans first.
There again our weekend could be ruined by our new dentist. For as long as we can remember our dentist was John Rostron who somehow managed to make going to the dentist a pain free experience. Sadly John retired recently and, on Marion's first visit to her new dentist, she was given a filling that involved thirty minutes' drilling and almost two weeks later it is still giving her terrible pain. Perhaps a few glasses of wine will numb her jaw for her.
I've been on Twitter for a few months now and I really like it. I find it keeps me bang up to date with all the important stuff that's going on in the world like Jason resigning from The One Show and the very latest virals on YouTube. You even get stuff on trivia like politics and current affairs. But the longer I am on Twitter the more isolated I feel and I am sure that I am not alone. Mere mortals like me can delight in reading the witty conversations going on between, for example, the wonderful contributors @IndiaKnight, @GraceDent and @CaitlinMoran and read the funny musings of @SuePerkins, @KateFlett and @ClareBalding but we are like Ebenezer Scrooge being shown the visions of a Christmas party by the ghost of Christmas present. We watch entertained but will never be part of the party. Like the lonely kid in the playground we laugh at the popular kid's jokes but they never invite us to crack our own. We peer through the toy shop window knowing that we are going to find just a tangerine in our Christmas stocking. And if we do try to join in we face the rejection of being ignored or the worry that we are turning into creepy stalkers. So maybe we should all start following complete strangers who aren't in the public eye and create a group of sub-celebrity tweeters. And maybe we will then all begin to feel wanted.
Last year I managed to lose £200 betting on I'm A Celebrity without watching the programme and vowed never again. But the inveterate gambler in me took hold and when I heard that Jenny Eclair was going into the jungle I bunged £150 on her. She is such a funny comedian that she will surely go down a storm. Won't she? Still can't bear to watch it but I'm rooting for Jenny.
Anybody who has read this blog over the past few weeks will have got the message and known that we are leaving very soon. I have been dedicating my blogging to thanking those who have helped me and Marion in our running of Instanta. And nobody is more important than our staff. This photo was taken for our brochure at the start of the year and includes many of our employees although Liz, Dave B, Barabara, Margaret, Peter Brindle,Nick and Gavin were not here at the time and young Tim,Rob and Haylie hadn't joined us at the time.
Any boss would be a liar if he or she said that they didn't have any favourites amongst their workforce. Who isn't going to like those that give their all and make an extra effort? But there's a difference between favourites and favouritism and I would hope that throughout our time at Instanta we have been totally fair and I would like to thank every single employee individually for their help.Here goes in the order that they come up on the payroll.
So Margaret, thanks for keeping the place spic and span and for keeping us amused with your tales of Elvis fandom and for your happy disposition.
Liz for being such an incredibly nice person and learning all the accounts in such a short time.And for all those times when nobody could keep a straight face.
Craig for your unflappable disposition, your sense of humour and excellent rapport with customers and staff alike and for doing such a great job in sales.
Dave Boutle for your unmatched cleaning skills and for giving me someone to moan about eBay with.
Rob for being an incredibly fast learner and for your extremely interesting take on current affairs.
Haylie for making such a tremendous effort in taking over the credit control from Marion - an extremely hard act to follow.
Barbara you've only been here a few weeks but I can already see that you pick things up extremely quickly and I'm sure that you'll be happy here.
Tim the quiet man of Instanta. You've only been with us a short while and I haven't had time to get to know you but I wish you every success here.
Colin for making light work of all the tasks you are given and for quickly picking up the knowledge of how the boilers work.
Tony Mercer for being Instanta's longest serving employee and for leading such a super efficient assembly line and for helping me and Marion out so much in the last twenty odd years with virtually no absence.
Martin for your impeccable attendance record and your supreme accuracy in our wiring department.
Joey for reminding me what being young was about and for your memorable contribution to our five a side nights and your hilarious stand up at the Xmas party.
Mariusz for all your hard work and effort and for coping so well with all of us foreigners.
Lee for our shared love of the cinema, your incredible ability to remember things and for your efficiency in all the jobs you do.
Rafa for your great attitude to work, your politeness and hard work and amazing mastery of the language.
Craig for running such an excellent welding depart, your reliability and hard work and our shared interest in antiques.
Dave or Aitch for your long service, your friendly disposition and our shared interest in losing money on gambling. And for making my life easier by supporting a team that is no better than mine.
Mike for running an excellent machine shop and for your willingness to always help out and get on with the job. Thanks too for the help with the boxes.
Sean for a great attendance record, friendly nature, helpfulness and for making a genuine effort.
Daz for your reliability and enthusiasm, for learning to weld so well and for your great contribution to our football. Good luck with Blackpool.
Jason for your incredible work ethic, graft, accuracy, attendance record and willingness to help.
Kirk for your excellent welding skills and for keeping me informed of your amazingly wide range of interesting hobbies. I never expected to have an Instanta beekeeper.
Kevin for jumping in when we were at our lowest and taking over the sheet metal work so seamlessly, learning so quickly and running it so efficiently.
Steve for your flexibility and willingness to do whatever is asked of you without complaint and for all those times when there was a problem with the car.
Andy for the conscientious and thorough way that you test the equipment - a truly vital job that you do so well.
Gary for your very helpful nature, great attendance record, hard work and contribution to the quality of our products. Good luck with Blackpool too.
Peter Brindle for truly having Instanta running through your veins and for making such a hugely positive impact on our sales.
Max for taking over my responsibility for tackling warranty work so efficiently that nobody will miss me and for your past company on the kop.
Gav for buying so well and making such an important contribution to our margins and for maintaining our relationships with BSI, impeccable time keeping and great attendance record.
Phil for your jovial nature, great attendance, helpfulness with the customers and I won't forget you packing all those eBay packets for me in the past.
Jenny for being a human dynamo, your encyclopedic knowledge of the spare parts and for running a happy and efficient office and stores.
Peter Barlow for all your hard work and for demonstrating what being a passionate football supporter is all about. I just wish that in all your years with us I had had more opportunities for the bragging rights.
Tony Lowe for your composure and efficiency in our stores, your excellent attitude to customer service and conscientious effort.
Dave Wilson for the incredible thoroughness that resulted in our products being so successful, your dedication to Instanta and your amazing success in our gaining all the standards that we have achieved.
Nick for replacing me so effortlessly as the face of Instanta within the industry and doing a much better job of it than I ever did.
That's everyone I think - no favouritism no back handed compliments. We've been very lucky to have such a great bunch working for us and will miss you all.
Speaking of missing people I missed a visit from Natalie yesterday when she brought in her new baby Isabella. Marion naturally grabbed her first to get in a bit of grandmothering practice. Message to our kids- big hint.
I'll close today with a lesson for anyone parking where maybe they shouldn't. Beware of pensioners.
When the end of a major chunk of your life (working) rapidly approaches you tend to think "what if?" (well at least I do) and a lot of "what if's" have occured in my life. What if one Jack Thompson hadn't invented a steam injector and called it the Thompson Instanta"? If that hadn't happened my dad would not have moved to Southport to work for him and I would not have met Marion and our children Paul and Sarah would not have been born and I would not be sitting here now writing about retiring from Instanta in less than two weeks time. And what if, after leaving Thompson Instanta, my dad had not been interested in buying the business when he was approached? And what if Barclays had not lent him the money to buy it? It makes you realise just how many small things influence what happens in every life - things that may seem insignificant when they happen but result in life changing consequences.
And it wasn't just my life that was affected by some of those "what if's". My brother Peter (pictured above with his wife Val and my mum) had the same life changing result from our parents' one decision to move to Southport and he would not have met Val (and had his kids) and would not have made a career working for Instanta. I've been writing final tributes to customers, engineers , past employees and suppliers over the past few weeks' blogs but must also acknowledge the very important role that Pete played here for many years.
Instanta's fortunes were turned around during the big recession of the 1970's when Peter and our father Bill developed the WB100, WB200 and WB300 water boilers. These models revolutionised automatic water boilers in the catering industry and ran a coach and horses through the price structure making auto fill boilers available to many businesses that had previously had to rely upon manual fill urns. Without Peter's ingenuity in solving some development problems, the range of boilers would not have got off the drawing board and that's a "what if" that could well have resulted in the business failing to survive the recession.
Peter went on to develop the hugely successful Fast Flow and Concept ranges of boilers and recruited an army of first class sub-contract engineers who promoted the Instanta name throughout the country. He built up the production facilities and instilled a sense of pride and quality in the products. If he had not done that it would have made my role in continuing to offer the excellent service that the brand has become known for extremely difficult. He always put the customers first throughout his career and that influence enabled Instanta to gain the respect and position that it now holds within the industry. So thanks for that support Pete and for the groundwork that has helped us to continue in your footsteps. I hope that (hip permitting) we can get together for some metal detecting trips when the weather warms up again. Clapham? What if we find one of those Roman Helmets?
Peter enjoys playing the guitar. I'll close today with a new guitar playing viral video phenomenon. I don't really get the popularity of this bloke but his videos are spreading around the Internet like wildfire.
As we start our final couple of weeks before retirement I would like to mention a few of those that we have worked with here in the Instanta office but are no longer working here.
"In no particular order" as Dermot would say on X Factor, I'll start with Lauren Oldfield. Lauren who worked on credit control featured regularly on the blog as she turned her hands to all sorts during the dark days of the recession when there was not much credit to control. She never complained and always mucked in helping out with jobs like decorating the board room, searching the pool table for undated 20p pieces and featuring on our posters. Her boyfriend Darren still works for Instanta so he keeps us up to date with Lauren's progress in her new career where she is now a P.A.
Jan Harbon left us to become a full time foster mum. Jan will be remembered by many customers for her friendly efficiency in running our sales order processing. We bump into Jan from time to time in Tescos and we know how much she enjoys her new vocation. She doesn't have much spare time now but when she does find time she bakes spectacular celebration cakes which would not look amiss on the prize stands at the big catering exhibitions.
Here's Kerry Greig who was with us in our pre-blogging days. Kerry comes from Kirkcaldy in Fife and one of the loves of her life is Rangers FC. She moved back up to Scotland some years ago and I imagine that she now finds more time to go and watch them play. Kerry was a wizard at bookkeeping and did a great job at keeping our purchase and sales ledgers in apple pie order.
Who could forget Natalie Drummond? Nat is a complete one off who left us to have a baby and now has two daughters. She never failed to make me laugh (although I am not sure if that was always the intention) and there was never a dull moment when she was around.
Here's Samantha Wallwork who worked in our sales department before she too left to have a family. Sam joined us on a number of exhibitions and was a great ambassador for Instanta at Hotelympia and ScotHot where she managed to open a number of new accounts. She ran our sales order processing department with great efficiency and was always on top of the job.
And last but by no means least here's the lovely Sue Ebo who joined us for a few months to cover maternity leave. Sue was an office all rounder who slotted in perfectly during her short spell with us and could always be relied upon to have something nice to say.
I'll finish today with my favourite from Saturday's X Factor. Maybe Cher is not the best singer in the competition but when it comes to having something that is an "x factor", she's certainly the one with it. And I have put my money where my mouth is and backed her to win. I was right last year.Will I be this year?
I am writing this from home so I can't tell you exactly when I first started dealing with David and Amanda Sweeney. Suffice to say it was way back in the 90's when they were very young. They were running a company that specialised in servicing hot drink machines in the London area and wrote to my brother Peter asking if they could be of any assistance. Finding a reliable agent in London had always been difficult but Dave and Amanda sold their company, City Servicing, to us very well and we decided to give them a try. Before long we were not only giving City Servicing all our warranty work in the area but also recommending them to any customers who wanted their Instanta equipment servicing.
We did this because the qualities they offered were everything that we could want from a service company - efficiency, reliability, honesty, sincerity, excellent customer service and fair prices. Dave and Amanda grew their business and took on additional engineers and we were always happy with their services. Earlier this year they decided to change their career directions and decided to move onto pastures new and closed City Servicing but Marion and I will always be grateful to Dave and Amanda, not only for the excellent service they gave Instanta, where they often pulled out all the stops for us and our customers, but also for the help that they gave to us on personal basis having helped our son Paul out several times when he had a problem with the plumbing at his London flat.
They could not have run a business in this way without being the truly genuine couple that they are and whenever we had a major London exhibition we always enjoyed the evenings spent in their company far more than the evening spent at any of the official social events. So thank you Dave and Amanda. We wish you both a very happy and successful future.
And if you are a regular reader of this blog you will know that I am a big fan of YouTube and other viral videos. People often ask how I find the time to discover the videos that I have added to the blog over the past few years. So hats off again to Unruly Media who send me details of the most popular videos every week and save me loads of time trying to find them all myself. Viral marketing is an important selling tool and will continue to grow and will play a huge role in company marketing in the future and I hope that Instanta will one day use it. In the meantime we can just enjoy the videos on a personal basis and wish Unruly all the very best.
And on that note I will close today with not one but two excellent videos that they sent to me.
This one's for our son Paul who loves American Football. What a clever play. I wonder if it will ever be repeated.
And this one's for me. I adore kids and I LOVE Bob Marley.
About nineteen years ago I got one of those packs of cards that sometimes arrive in the post. You know the sort, they are mini ads which you sometimes glance quickly through and more often put in the bin. In the pack was an advertisement suggesting that industrial design could add something to the business accompanied by a photo of a very attractive industrial helmet, an item that you would not usually associate with style. The advert struck a chord with me and I contacted the advertiser John Ewans Design of High Wycombe.
Managing Director John came to see me and my brother Peter and we told him that we would be interested in putting design into Instanta products. At the time our boilers, and those of everyone else were, without exception, square but functional metal boxes. We spent some time working with John and with his help we initially developed a pour thru coffee maker. We loved the look of this model and were sufficiently impressed with John Ewan's expertise to decide to ask him to help us to transform our entire range into products that would be functional but would also be pleasing on the eye, easy to assemble and simple to install and service.
As a result, Instanta's image and products moved to a higher plane and, when we showed our boilers at the Hotelympia exhibition in 1996 they received universal acclaim and shortly afterwards we were overall winners in the 1996 Caterer & Hotelkeeper New Equipment Awards for our entire new range - a huge accolade for a small company in a big industry. It is fair to say that at Hotelympia in 1996 Instanta was almost alone in using industrial design in the products and, without it, our boilers would have remained functional but run of the mill. A visitor to Hotelympia this year would have seen that good design is now nearer the norm and we like to think that with John Ewans assistance we helped to blaze that trail in the catering industry. The following are just a few of the many new products that John has helped us to launch.
John is a modest man and didn't send a photo of himself for inclusion in this blog but, as you can see from the products that he has designed, he has no reason for modesty as he is a fantastic industrial designer who has without question been a major contributor to our success. So thank you John and your team for all your hard work and your excellent design. I hope that your relationship with Instanta and our new owners continues to flourish. You can contact John Ewans Design Ltd at their High Wycombe office on 01494 473441.
I knew that I would stir up a hornets' nest yesterday by mentioning immaculate sickness records as I was bound to forget somebody. So here's a mention for Phil Joce in our stores. He joined Instanta in January 1989 and has not had a day off since 1997 although he was five minutes late in 2002 and there was that nose job in 1993. Well done Phil. If there is anybody else I have forgotten I'm sure that I will soon be hearing about it.
All I can really say about Jackass 3D last night is that I have seen it but it was one of those life experiences that I won't be in a hurry to repeat. It was funny in parts but way too long. There are only so many ways that you can watch pain and humiliation being inflicted on people before it becomes tiresome. I liked the mad daredevil stunts but the bodily fluids (and bodily solids) left me cold. As Marion and I were at least thirty years older than everyone else in the packed cinema I suspect that we weren't the target audience.
And it won't be long before another experience that I won't be in a hurry to see hits our screens again.
It's Wednesday which, as usual, can only mean one thing - a trip to the cinema using the fabulous Orange Wednesday promotion. We have to get our own phones in a couple of weeks and we went on the Internet to check out our options on one of those comparison sites. We could be tempted to move away from Orange on looking at the figures but they don't mention the Orange Wednesday benefit which is worth a few hundred pounds a year to us and will reduce the real cost of the phones considerably.Anyway,after "Another Year" on Saturday left us feeling a little melancholy and "Let Me In" on Monday was also a bit sad, we're off to see "Jackass 3D" tonight. That should blow away the cobwebs and liven us up a little. I know you're probably thinking what on earth a near pension age couple are doing going to watch what is (according to NME) stupid and puerile but I'm very keen to see the application of 3D to firing of dildos and excrement out of the screen as that must surely be a cinematic first and we've always been what is known as "early adopters".
As "early adopters", we've been having a look at both the iPad and 3D TV lately. I know we've probably missed the boat on the iPad and we would no longer be early adopters if we bought one now but to be honest, whilst it looks great, do we really have any use for one(unlike the fabulous Apple TV which is a fantastic piece of equipment that we've had for years and for which we could still be seen as early adopters as I don't think Apple have sold many)? But with 3D TV we have to ask ourselves do we watch a lot of TV? Yes. Is the 3D quality good? Yes it's very good. Do we need a new telly? Er, not really. Is there much being broadcast in 3D? Er, not really. Was there much HD being broadcast when we got HD? Er virtually none but we still enjoyed it when there was something. The jury is still out on this one. I'm very keen to try it but I know that the prices may soon come down but there again you only live once and might as well enjoy what little there is available now in the knowledge that, like HD, there will soon be more. We'll decide after we've left Instanta.
With just over two weeks left here, our new computer operating system arrived yesterday. I had promised that I would oversee it's installation and get it up and running before I left but that was when I thought I would have four months and not twelve working days. I have launched into it enthusiastically but have been hampered by my right hand getting cold. I don't know what is causing this - perhaps it's coming out in sympathy with my right hip but since I lost almost three stone I've felt the cold much more and have gone from the one who sat sweating pleading with Marion to turn the heating down to the one who does the pleading to turn it up. I'm sitting here in a centrally heated office with an electric heater alongside me and I've GOOGLED cold right hand and found that some associate it with using a computer. Oh dear, maybe I won't be able to input all that data.
Maybe I should throw a sickie. But that would not be in my nature. As I face retirement I've been thinking about my career record. I've been working since I was 18 so that's almost forty years. I think, and I don't want to exaggerate, that I have had at most five sick days in that time that's less than one hour per working year. And it's not simply because I have been self employed as I worked almost twenty years in a bank. Is it that I am extremely healthy and lucky? Maybe. Or maybe it's just that when we grew up it was just the done thing to go to work or school and muddle through. Anyway I know that one or two here at Instanta, including Marion, Martin and Tony have similar records so I'm not in any way unique.
I'll finish today with a video for our son Paul who spends a lot of time thinking of ideas for game shows for TV. I imagine that when the researchers on Wheel Of Fortune set this puzzle they didn't quite expect it to be solved this quickly.
