I mentioned the other day that I had heard about a new Instanta baby boy and here he is Filip Kolasinski. Filip was born on 21st July and weighed in at a healthy 3 kilos. Congratulations to proud dad assembly worker Rafa Kolasinski and mum Beate. He's a beautiful baby.
Orange Wednesday tonight so we have finally decided to go and see Bruno. I think we'll either love it or hate it with little chance of anything in between.
We've got the new bank area manager coming to see us this afternoon. We'll have to see what he has to say about the wonderful interest rate collar that's currently costing us about £3,000 per month. I doubt that there's any way out of it though.
I did the company figures yesterday and they look OK. I also got the industry figures for the first two quarters of 2009 yesterday and we are certainly ahead of the field in terms of sales growth. Our growth is shown at -1.0% whilst the industry average is a much higher negative.
Here's a taster of what we are letting ourselves in for tonight.
After two sleepless nights in our Holiday Inn Express room positioned on the Tay Bridge in Dundee we asked for a change. The receptionist kindly moved us to the back of the hotel and peace from the incessant traffic noise. Our delight was sadly short lived as we found ourselves alongside the top of a multi storey car park. There were no cars in the car park but there were about thirty floodlights. The local seagull population has commandeered every one of these as permanent roosts. We learned that seagulls don’t sleep either and if you can imagine the racket that thirty seagulls can make you will understand why we are now contemplating asking to be returned to the heavy traffic room tonight.
Noise apart we’ve had a pleasant few days in St Andrews visiting our daughter Sarah who has recently bought a new house with her partner Duncan. We’ve been driving around garden centres and DIY stores and Sarah now has a variety of new plants, pots, a parasol, a sun-bed and a chimenea to go with the John Lewis table and chairs which arrived bang on time as promised. Marion has been digging the garden and helping Sarah to plant everything up.
The table and chair instructions said to allow five minutes to assemble each chair and fifteen minutes for the table. That makes a total of forty-five minutes for the lot. It took me longer than that to take them out of their boxes and it was close to three hours when I sat back and admired my handiwork. Even then there were some screws that I hadn’t enough strength to tighten right up. It really is a great outdoor set though.
It’s our last night in Scotland tonight so we are off to The Seafood Restaurant in St Andrews. It’s a superb restaurant located right on the seafront in a modern glass building. I wonder if they do any sous vide cooking? I’ll have to leave a brochure with the chef.
Going to The Seafood Restaurant means no Orange Wednesday so we'll have to make it pink Thursday and go and see Bruno when we get back to Southport. I see today that the film has been banned in The Ukraine (yet more publicity for Sacha Baron Cohen. When will they learn!). It seems that so many under 18s have been trying to get in to see the film and been turned away that the producers are rushing out a censored version with a lower rating than the current 18. We watched the Inbetweeners on Channel 4 last night. I'm sure that they would be at the front of the queue trying to get in - at least Simon would be at the front of the queue with Jay at the back telling him what to do - brilliant comedy, if you haven't seen it check it out.
It's truly a sign that the silly season has arrived early this year when Barack Obama swatting a fly gets on newspaper front pages and has been on every news bulletin for the last twenty four hours.No doubt the annual "Beast of Bodmin" and "Man Bites Dog" stories are just around the corner. I was going to put the clip of the fly swatting on yesterday's blog but realised that everyone would have seen it by teatime. The incident goes to prove the vacuity of today's news media with even The Guardian devoting a full page to the story including instructions on the best way to swat. At least it wasn't The Guardian's front page news.
To prove the point further, Sacha Baron Cohen even got onto the Guardian leader page which commented on the premiere of his new film "Bruno". It seems that the film is sending out very mixed messages but is nonetheless extremely funny. I'm looking forward to it but don't want to see people being ridiculed unless their bigoted attitudes deserve it.
Last night's film was Ken Loach's "Looking For Eric". Being a lifelong Liverpool fan I should have hated it but the film has a great deal of charm and a wonderful performance from Steve Evets as depressed postie Eric Bishop.Cantona, who appears as "lui meme" is as sardonic as ever although none of his words of wisdom match his "Sardines Following Trawlers" which appears during the closing credits.I was saddened to see only 13 people in the audience whereas the film is probably playing to standing room only at the other end of the A580. A sorry indictment on the tribalism that overwhelms football at the moment.
Will they or won't they go bust. As one of the 1.2 million mugs who pay Setanta £12.99 every month to watch a handful of Liverpool matches that aren't on Sky I'm waiting to know if they are going to continue. I have heard that trying to cancel a sub to Setanta is as difficult as swatting a fly (unless of course you are Barack Obama who probably cancelled his sub in seconds). My sub is on a credit card. I haven't tried to stop it yet but I know that VISA won't cancel it. Fortunately the credit card expires in a couple of months.Will Setanta expire before the card? If they do, Scottish football is going to be in big big trouble.
Today's special offer is on the CT2000. There's 10% off the usual price of £545 for all orders placed before 5pm tomorrow 19th June 2009. To qualify for this special price ordered must reach us by the deadline and must quote reference blog offer 180609.
I got a very nice letter from an analyst at Plimsoll Publishing Ltd this morning. It seems that Instanta is one of only a handful in the UK Catering equipment industry not to have suffered a big decline in their financial performance. He also tells me that 201 of our fellow competitors are in financial danger, there are plenty that would make excellent acquisitions and a third of companies are making a loss. All nice to know, but at our age acquisitions are the last thing on our minds. I was watching a documentary on BBC2 the other night about a struggling Midlands engineering firm and the MD and his secretary were both still hard at work and both in their seventies!
I'll leave you today with a couple of young lads making a cheerful bit of music.
