Blimey Kirk You Kept That Quiet

Here's Kirk Harrison our welder, the real ale lover and beekeeper who, to every body's surprise, went and got married to girlfriend Gillian on Saturday. Kirk planned the ceremony very secretly as he wanted the minimum of fuss and arrived back at work on Tuesday as normal.He will be taking a honeymoon in the late summer when the happy couple plan to visit Italy to take in some of the culture and, of course, the wine.



Not long now before the fate of the England team is known. It seems that nobody here at Instanta is bothered. We arranged for anyone who wanted to watch the match to do so if they took a very late lunch and stayed on until six fifteen to make up the time but it seems that rumbling stomachs took the better of them and nobody could manage to wait an extra hour and three quarters without eating so I will be watching almost alone. (I'm used to going without food now that I am into the fifth week of my diet). Not sure if I can be bothered as, let's face it, their attitude to the fans and to the management is pathetic. What a load of spoilt brats. If they do come home tomorrow it certainly won't be to a heroes' welcome. I see that the French are in an even worse mess with Thiery Henry being summoned before Sarkozy to explain why the team embarrassed the nation. I would have thought it was obvious. You take a player like Annelka with his track record of petulance and fall outs with both team mates and managers with you and you are asking for trouble.



Nick and I went down to Chiswick yesterday to interview a number of candidates for our new Southern Area Sales Manager position. The interviews went fairly well and we are mulling over our decision. I have to say though that I was disappointed that a couple of the candidates did not even know what we made. You couldn't make it up.



I can here that the match is just starting on the radio. Slovenia at 9-1 to win look like a pretty good bet to me. Oh well I'll finish for now with a girl who will grow up to be a WAG.

Nature Red In Tooth And Claw (Sort Of)

It was a good job that Instanta welder Kirk Harrison was on hand when this swarm of bees turned up on a local allotment. Not content with his love of real ale (he runs the biggest real ale group on Facebook), Kirk has turned his hand to another old English tradition and is now a keen apiarist (he'll be Morris Dancing next). So when the question "Who you gonna call?" rang around the allotment it was a no brainer and Kirk and his bee-keeping mentor answered the call and picked up the lot and put them in a box and they will soon be at home in Kirk's garden in a new hive.



Kirk tells me that they managed to catch every one of the swarm bar one that just didn't want to join his mates.



Here he is with his box of bees.We are looking forward to buying some honey off him in the summer.



And whilst on the topic of nature, it looked like we had had a light cover of snow when I looked into the bike shed here at the factory this morning. There was a layer of downy white.



It turned out to be dandelion seeds blowing in from the nearby feeds. I've seen them drifting past the windows in previous years but I have never seen so many accumulate. I checked it out on the Internet and found on that highly reliable source The Daily Mail's website under the headline "Invasion of the dandelions" that the country is being overrun by them this year and it is down to the very warm weather.Ah,the Daily Mail bless them. They have to report that the country is at risk of being invaded by something every day. If it's not gypsies or illegal immigrants why not dandelions?



I have avoided keeping politics off the blog but now that the dust has settled I hope that things run smoothly for all of us with the new coalition government. With the support of over 59% of the electorate they have to be more representative than any government for some time so we should give them a chance. I quite like the idea of the Torys' more loony views being tempered by the Lib Dems and vice versa, as my own choice of manifesto was a mixture of bits of the two and if we had one of those voting systems where you put candidates in order of choice these would have been my first two.


We went to see Hot Tub Time Machine last night. I was a bit apprehensive as I wasn't sure that this was our sort of film. It turned out to be full of disgustingly bad language, filthy jokes and dreadful eighties music - we loved it! Here's a taster.

Happy Birthday Kirk

Happy birthday today to welder Kirk Harrison. Kirk turns 32 today and is in his eleventh year at Instanta. Real Ale enthusiast Kirk runs the biggest real ale group on Facebook with over 1500 members to date. He has plenty of other interests and is planning to start bee keeping on a friend's allotment in the near future. Apiary aside, 2010 promises to be a big year for Kirk as he tells me that there are also wedding bells in the air. He plans to marry Gillian his girlfriend of three years later this year. Congratulations to them both for that and congratulations to Kirk for today. Kirk is planning to celebrate quietly at home with a nice meal and a bottle of wine? (Wine Kirk! shouldn't that be Old Peculiar?)



Jen from Workhouse has just phoned to say that she has instructed the printers to start the press rolling on our new brochure. Phew. What a relief. It's been months in preparation and, although I thought we had loads of time our takeover caused a few late changes which have left me sweating on the deadline. I really didn't want to turn up at Hotelympia at Excel next week without any.Thanks to Marion, Liz and Jenny here. I asked if anyone wanted to proof read my finally approved proof of the brochure and they managed to spot several things that I missed. It must be a woman thing or maybe I simpy can't read properly.



Speaking of Workhouse, I had to chuckle at their MD Mark Jones' blog the other day (you can check it out here).Mark was commenting on how people he doesn't know address him as "Mate", "Pal" or even "Dude".Mark suggests "Mr Dude to you!". I couldn't help but agree (with a knowing smile) after the teenage checkout assistant in Tesco yesterday kept referring to me as "Hun". "Hun!" what does that mean. Do I look like a fierce horse riding warrior (the Wikipedia definition)? And for that matter why do people keep telling me that they are going to give me a bell? I get this all the time and yet none of these bells has ever arrived as promised.



Off to Anfield tonight to watch the not so mighty reds in their Europa League tie against the near unpronounceable Romanian side Unirea Urziceni. I signed up for the season ticket for Liverpool's games in the Champions League but it seems that in the small print I also signed up for this in the event of them getting knocked out of that competition. Fingers crossed we might get knocked out tonight to save me many more trudges to Liverpool to watch the European equivalent of the League Cup. Mind you, it give me a chance to see my old friend Dave Haworth who joins me on European nights.

It's a pity that tonight won't involve a penalty shoot out. They can be good fun.