After a very quiet time here at Instanta last week things are back in full swing again today as the factory reopened after the summer shutdown. And bang on cue the sun has come out and I have been driving the car with the sun roof open for the first time in weeks.Sadly for the men here, the sun arrived a week late and nobody has returned looking like they've spent any time on the sun loungers. Oh well. It's a short week and the sun may stay with us until weekend.
With Marion and me into our last ninety one days working at Instanta we are handing over the books to Liz tomorrow to carry out the end of period for August completely on her own. Don't worry Liz we will be here to help if you have any problems. Craig will be doing our monthly return to CEDABOND and a couple of other buying groups and Max will be doing our guarantee reports (all of which leaves me with very little to do). As there will only be three period ends before we go it is important that we make sure that things go smoothly when we have gone so we reckon that three months should be about right. Mind you if the new computer system arrives before we go that might throw a pretty big spanner into the works.
I've been taking Nytol sleeping tablets for a few weeks now. They're available over the counter and they work really well. If I take painkillers before I go to bed I can almost get a full night's sleep but the Nytol give the extra edge of letting me doze off more quickly. However when I went to buy some more from the chemist on Saturday, the young lady behind the counter gave me such an interrogation you would have thought that I had been asking for crack cocaine. How long have I taken them? Am I taking anything else? And so on and so on. The result? I decided not to take either painkillers or Nytol last night. And the outcome? Didn't sleep a ****** wink.
The Times and Sunday Times Internet pay wall has been running for a few weeks now. I never visited either website so I don't know what effect the charges have had. I do know that by logging onto Twitter and following all The Guardian departments that I am interested in I can keep up with the news as it happens. It is a fantastic service and still completely free to use. I am not sure how they make money from it as almost all my favourite pages from the paper are online to read. Of course, being a loyal Guardian reader, I wouldn't dream of stopping my daily delivery but in these austere times, how many will? Just a thought. I hope that their website pays them handsomely as it is a credit to the newspaper.
A couple of weeks into the football season. Charming chaps these football managers aren't they? NB Bad language warning.
If proof were needed that not all Premier League Footballers are narcissistic prima donnas who spend most of their spare time seeking super injunctions to stop the tabloids writing about their sordid private lives look no further than West Bromwich Abion's Gonzalo Jara. Before the kick off at Anfield on Sunday the announcement was made over the PA that, in support of the trapped Chilean, miners Jara was to donate ... cue drumroll and hushed silence around the ground, wait for it............ his match worn shirt. Wow!! Has there ever been a more generous gesture in the history of the Premier League - the PA might as well have announced that I bought a copy of the "Big Issue" outside Lime St Station on Saturday. Why this noble act was announced to such dramatic effect is beyond me. I may be being unfair to Jara. He may not be one of those footballers who are paid tens of thousands of pounds every week (although he almost certainly earns more that 99.9% of those in the crowd) and that shirt might have been very precious to him. Maybe he was also donating some cash but was keeping quiet. But whoever thought that announcing that a Premier League player was going to give up a shirt would be viewed as an act of magnanimity worthy of mentioning proves how out of touch with reality those in the higher echelons of the game are. I know that around me the announcement was met with laughter. No doubt the shirt will be auctioned so that an ordinary fan can dig deep in his pocket to be the true (and no doubt anonymous) benefactor.
Here's a very rare Bank Holiday sight -our garden in sunshine. I've had a wonderful Bank Holiday sitting in the garden reading the Saturday, Sunday and Monday papers all in one go. My only misgiving is that the Observer still hasn't recovered from the loss of Kathryn Flett whose TV reviews were always the first thing I turned to and whose musings from her home town of "Random on Sea" the second. I'm following her on Twitter but, however witty her 140 characters are they are no substitute for her clever and highly accurate take on life that guaranteed a smile every Sunday for many years. Sorry Observer but you haven't found a replacement yet and when David Mitchell is away, as he was this week, the newspaper is not half the read that it used to be. If you can't entice Ms Flett back why not poach Sam Wollaston from The Guardian? He's about the best there is at the moment, along with Charlie Brooker and Grace Dent.
I wonder what they would have had to say about Saturday's Magic Numbers when Stephen Muhern gave one viewer an enormous prize of £310,000. The odds against winning this amount were huge but in a suspense filled couple of minutes a man from Kent who is getting married in a fortnight managed to choose five boxes containing huge sums of money whereas on each pick there was a near fifty fifty chance of winning nothing. The show went from strength to strength and got bigger and bigger each week. Marion and I enjoyed it very much and have taped all seven episodes for posterity and addition to our son's virtual scrapbook.
Tomorrow used to be the last day of our financial year but it is now just the end of month two. However, I will be looking with interest at Craig's spread sheet to see if all the right columns turn green as we hit sales targets. Lets hope that caterers have had equally pleasant Bank Holidays to ours and their coffers are ringing with record sums to go out and spend on new boilers tomorrow to bring a record end to what would have been our year.
How's that for a catchy headline? If I get much better I'll be writing for the Sun soon. Well I suppose that it covers today's main story. Here are Sean Johnson (right) and Lee Moore (left), from our factory, with John Hall from VOSS. John is training Lee and Sean on driving and using fork lifts. This will leave us with better cover for holidays and other absences and make sure that there will always be someone available to load the carrier's wagon when he collects our daily sales.
And the training is pretty timely as the factory is getting clogged up with pallets full of boilers for a big order that we are due to complete this week. Perfect for Lee and Sean to put their new skills into practice.
I wrote about Angels of Ribchester yesterday. Here's a photo taken by Mark who took us there. I told you it was a bit different.
There's a debate about legalising drugs going on at the moment. I'm glad that it's being raised again as I've been pushing for it for years. Just think how much crime is caused by drug addicts trying to raise the cash for a fix, how much money is wasted on prison for possession, how many lowlife make a fortune from others' misery. Prohibition of booze caused Chicago to turn into a paradise for Al Capone and mobs like his and areas of many inner cities in England are controlled by drug barons here. Make drugs legal and it comes into the open. Buying from a chemist means that risks of adulterated powders are eliminated. The drug barons will no longer cause misery for their customers and the savings in drugs squad and the like will be phenomenal.On the downside, making drugs more accessible may encourage more users but we have a demand that is being fulfilled by criminals and that demand is not going to go away.
What do you do when you have money to burn? Go out and buy 15,000 fireworks. A bit of a damp squib in my opinion.
The harvest began in earnest at home at the weekend and we duly cut our first courgette yesterday. It may not be very big but it is perfectly formed and I am sure that it will taste delicious with the apple and walnut salad scheduled for the diet tonight.
There's no shortage of salad leaves and it is a pity that there are only two of us at home as we have had enough rocket and other lettuce to feed a small army over the last few weeks, although the plants are now beginning to show signs of exhaustion and I think that the crop will shortly come to an end.
Saturday Night saw the first episode of son Paul's new show "Magic Numbers" on ITV1. I really liked Steven Mulhern (not Mulhearn as wrongly spelled in previous blogs- sorry Stephen) and the show was very entertaining with a great performance from JLS and another from Britain's Got Talent's Twist and Pulse. I haven't looked at the forums or ratings as, when "The Colour Of Money" came out it took me a few weeks to get over the nasty criticism heaped on the show and left us feeling sick after knowing how much effort had gone into its development. I did catch a couple of comments when Googling for today's blog and I have to say that those that I saw were warm and one even went as far as to say that it was "good" - praise indeed for the Internet. It was a pity that the woman who won the opportunity to phone in and win £250k managed to chose a losing box on her final pick and won nothing when she had a one in three chance of winning nothing but a two in three chance of winning £20k or more.
On Saturday we went to see "Inception". Or at least I think we went to see "Inception" or did we just dream it.Am I now writing this blog or dreaming that I am dreaming about writing this blog? We will ever know unless we have a special token such as a little spinning top or a brass chess piece. Confused? Go and see the film and all will become clear. Or will it?
The first thing I did this morning before starting work was rush down to Vue to get tickets for Toy Story 3 which is on general release today. Both tonight's shows were sold out but I was determined to see it today and so I am skipping lunch and going to the four pm 3D showing - can't wait. Marion's got plenty of tissues.
Our daughter Sarah bought us a patio vegetable garden for Christmas and it arrived last week. We got a huge box full of young plants and Marion has been busy planting as many as possible. It will come in handy for our diet and instead of buying loads of salad ingredients and vegetables, we should soon, hopefully, be able to pop into the garden and help ourselves.
I didn't have enough time to blog yesterday and Wednesday. We are heading for our year end a couple of months early in order to fall in line with the group accounts and this involves a good deal of planning and preparation. Sales of our excellent boilers ,including the super 1500lcd (pictured), continue to grow. We need to bring our processes in line with the rest of the group and as part of this process we will be reviewing our prices earlier than usual this year and will be implementing some price changes on 1st August.Customers will be advised of the impending changes in a week or two.
I'm off down south on Monday. My recruitment process is coming to fulfillment now and Nick and I are planning to interview the top candidates for our new Southern Area Sales Manager position at our parent company Zip's offices in Chiswick. I can't invite candidates until I have the results of some tests that we sent them. I am hoping to see some good scores if I have done my initial vetting properly and am looking forward to meeting four or five of them.
I'm also looking forward to seeing England get back into winning form tonight. In case you have been out of circulation since last week, here are the highlights of their first performance...........in Lego.
After the hectic week of reading hundreds of applications for the new Southern Area Sales Manager job, I have finally reached the bottom of the pile and created a shortlist of candidates. It's been a really interesting process as we are looking for someone who can sell and not simply someone who knows the catering industry (which seems to be the norm within the industry and has led to it becoming the incestuous place that it is). As a result, I have read through a diverse range of candidates cvs and have been impressed by the high standard. As they live all over the place I have asked the chosen few to give me a ring for an informal telephone interview after which I will be whittling the list down further.
Things are going well even without the new sales manager and orders are at a good level for this time of the year. The WA5N (above) is a particularly good seller but I am hoping that our new sales person will be able to show the customers the huge benefits offered by the more upmarket WM series and CT series boilers which include seven day programmable timers, built in filter monitors and easy to read service diagnostics.
The online diet has prescribed beans on toast with cheese for lunch today. I could make this here in the canteen but Marion is at home and I'm going to pop back and share it with her when I go to pay into the bank. It's the four week weigh in tomorrow morning. Fingers crossed I should have lost my first stone.
Dave Horrocks from our sheet metal department popped his head into my office this morning and told me that he had dreamt last night that he and I were playing scrabble and that I was making weird and peculiar words with my tiles. Now Dave, I am extremely flattered to think that I figured in your dreams but not so happy that I appeared in them as a cheat!
Remember the young drummer boy who came third in Britain's Got Talent last week. Call that drumming? Now this is drumming. Have a good weekend.
We would like to wish all our customers and suppliers the very happiest of Christmases and a very peaceful and prosperous 2010.
Here's proud dad sheet metalworker Gary Rodwell with his lovely daughter Ella. Gary popped into the office yesterday to let us see how little Ella is growing up. She's a beautiful baby with a lovely manner. It was a pity that Marion and I both have colds and had to keep her at arms length.
If you are very unlucky and have suffered a boiler breakdown during the holiday period please contact the nearest service agent on the following list. These are running a skeleton service on Tuesday 29th, Wednesday 30th and Thursday 31st December and they will do their best to help you. Before contacting them please have your boiler serial number ready and a full description of the fault. Engineers will not be able to attend to problems with taps under guarantee other than on the WB2 supreme models and please remember that problems caused by limescale or misuse are excluded from the terms of the Instanta guarantee.
London and Home Counties tel City Servicing 01375380165
West Mildands tel Apolon Services 07860791720
South West tel Hawkins Vending Repairs 07860828363
Merseyside and North West England tel Catertech 01512601661
East Midlands and Yorkshire tel Catershield 01159 633681 or 07506867939
South East Coast tel North Brighton Catering 07967198266
Hampshire tel Ocean Catering 01202233496
Cambridgeshire and parts of East Anglia tel Bob Hopper 01223506001
Northern Ireland tel William Gardienr & Sons tel 02890797360 (closed Tuesday)
