Thanks for the memories

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?

Belated Birthday Celebrations

I'm always a bit nervous about surprise birthday parties as the person whose birthday it is has a lot of time to think "has everybody forgotten my birthday?" when the event passes almost without comment. So when our daughter Sarah's partner Duncan told us that he had booked a holiday house in the borders to celebrate her 30th I hoped that the small gifts that we sent and the apologies that we couldn't see her as we had to be at work for stock taking would not be too much of a letdown as, let's face it, 30 is quite a milestone in your life. Fortunately everything went well and a group of thirteen of Sarah's friends and family had a very pleasant country weekend in the ancient town of Melrose. Above is Sarah cutting her cake.



Duncan booked a private room in the local Burt's Hotel for a formal dinner on Friday (above)and on Saturday it was home made pizza, strawberries and birthday cake.



And speaking of the cake, I have to make a special mention of Jan Harbon who once worked here in the Instanta office before taking up her new role as a full time foster parent. Jan has always enjoyed making celebration cakes and she kindly made this one for Sarah to our brief. Being a summer baby Sarah has always celebrated birthdays when strawberries are in season and we spent many happy hours with her as a toddler at the local pick your own farm where strawberries would find her basket and her mouth in roughly equal quantities with her trademark saying of "that one's a booty daddy" before it disappeared. We possibly should have weighed her in with our collected fruit. Jan captured this theme with this wonderful celebration of summer and strawberries (and the beautiful fruit cake beneath the decoration tasted as good as it looked). So thank you so much Jan and please put your prices up.



As one of Sarah's birthday presents we made up a photo book of her life for her using the website BobBooks.co.uk (highly recommended - great service) on the Internet and had a lot of fun digging out and scanning ancient photos to go in it. Here's a photo of us as teenagers about forty years ago that we used to start the book. Son Paul says that he doesn't want one when he is thirty but that's not going to stop him getting one.

The visit to Scotland meant that I missed half of the World Cup final but "missed" is probably not the right word. As I said on the blog on Friday, the match was almost guaranteed to turn out as it did and my only regret is that I didn't put my money where my mouth was and put a bet on the nil nil full time scoreline. For me the highlight of the World Cup was this stunning save from Rob Green in the very first England game. Strange how time plays tricks with the memory.