Description:
The trials and tribulations of running a funfair company ably assisted by my 2 partners, Laurel and Hardy
Contents:
A New Addition To The Fleet
We rack up quite a few miles throughout the year, our Jaguar Estate car piling on nearly 70,000 in a little over 15 months. Upto now we have hired vans in, partly because we have an excellent deal with a local van hire company, and partly because we didn't want the rapidly depreciating drain on our books that any vehicle represents. However since our acquisition of Chocolate Experience, the chocolate fountain hire company, we have had a need for a smaller, lighter type van than those we have been hiring. Traipsing down to Norwich in a jumbo long wheelbase high roof transit averaging about 26 to the gallon wasn't really suitable when you had around half a dozen smallish boxes in the back. The van hire company has a single Transit Connect, but this tended to be out on long term hire all the time.
Anyway, we have just acquired a Citroen Dispatch specifically for these smaller jobs. Its a little larger than a Connect, but smaller than a transit, and has 3 seats which is an added bonus. We haven't had the van long enough to make a decision on how reliable it is, but on our first trip to London and back it averaged 39 miles to the gallon, which is only about 6 MPG behind our Jag, and well in front of the Transits we use. The Dispatch is identical to the Peugeot Expert and Fiat Scudo, the only difference being the Dispatch is fitted with Traffic Master navigation. This is a GPS system with a monochrome screen about the size of a credit card, and I was doubtful as to its utility, being more used to the widescreen full colour Garmins we have been using (although with their terrible back up service the Garmins are being replaced with Tom Toms shortly). However in use the system seems to work as well as any other we have used, also it links to the Traffic Master system and routes you around traffic delays. It also gives me the ability to prepare routes online and send them to the satnav system, so I can reprogram a staff members destination on the fly. The system must also be the most polite navigation system on the market, it doesn't tell you to take an exit on the roundabout, it asks if you would "Please take the exit".
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Mobile Bar Buzz
We recently installed a bar at an event for a major motor industry manufacturer and a games console company. This was a pre paid job with us supplying a fixed package of drinks, including cocktails and one of our Jagermeister tap machines. The event went stormingly with everyone in fancy dress and the room buzzing. Sabine Schmitz (the German female racing driver who raced Jeremy Clarkson around the Nurburgring race track, with Jeremy in a Jaguar S type, and Sabine in a Transit Van, she lost by only 9 seconds. Ms Schmitz and a cohort of German friends managed to consume our stocks of Jagermeister, before moving onto frozen Margarita cocktails with an added shot of Vodka, something our cocktail mixologist insisted you couldn't do, but the Schmitz party proving you obviously could!
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Poor Bloody Pandas
Have a read of this amusing story posted on an Orange website . Quite amusing, right up until you read that the Pandas are being carried back to China by Fedex, poor bloody Pandas, if they are lucky they will turn up in Siberia, or Tanganyika, or any where but China, if they are unlucky they will never be seen again, and to add insult to injury, when the Chinese government ring Fedex to ask where they are, they will no doubt be informed by Fedex customer services that the address is wrong and the delivery driver can't find anywhere called China.
Read my last experience of Fedex here! An amusing little anecdote unless you are me, well guess what, I was stupid enough to use the same Australian printing company AGAIN, who used Fedex AGAIN, who have managed not to deliver my parcel 2 days in a row AGAIN, and who have informed me that its because I have supplied the wrong address AGAIN, thing is the address I have given them is the correct one AGAIN, the same one that is successfully delivered to by every other parcel company in the English speaking world, except for Securicor who employ the same morons that Fedex do.
On a lighter note, we are trialling the use of Skype on our mobile bars website to allow people to contact us free of charge using the Skype service. The intention is that if it is successful we will roll it out on the other websites in our portfolio, (take note Fedex, I assume you don't have access to mobile phones with which to ring and ask me for directions to my address, well now you can use either Skype, email or snail mail giving you 3 more opportunities to find out where I am located).
Clicking the button
should automatically send a call out from your Skype system to ours, assuming of course that you have Skype installed, and as long as amember of staff is available to answer it we will take your call. Obviously the button will need to read online to indicate that the service is available at that particular time.
Complete Bar Package For Smaller Events
As January draws to a close, I've been looking at our sales leads. Last year we posted an incredible 209% increase in leads during January. My target this year was a modest 10% increase as I don't think it is possible to keep growing at the rate of 200% per year. As it turns out we have posted a 95% increase on last year, which equates to almost 500% up on the year before! Chocolate Experience has added some of the increase as last January we didn't own that business, but stripping that out we are still some 85% up on last year.
Everything is in place for the bar business, including a number of confirmed bookings for weddings. After looking into the market I noticed that there are plenty of bar companies offering complete packages for events with 100 plus guests, but very few catering for the smaller 30-40 guests event. We are quite happy providing services to events at both ends of the scale, and as a result have launched a new microBAR service offering draught, spirits, wines, alcopops and soft drinks on one of our Victorian style carts, or one of our new contemporary illuminated bars at a fixed price. Details are available at microBAR Package. This uses one of our new european designed integrated draught chiller/dispensers along with bar butlers to hold the optice and some mini wine coolers allowing us to provide everything in a much reduced footprint.
We also sold the square helter skelter just before Christmas. Unfortunately we had to borrow it back for the 4 days of Stockton Christmas festival and I ended up having to build it up and pull it down after I had thought I had seen the last of it. Whilst at Stockton, we received the snow ahead of the rest of the country, with an incredible amount falling within the space of a couple of hours. On the final day whilst taking the ride down, I discovered that the chutes contained a thick layer of ice, not good when you have to walk up them. I eventually used boiling water to pour onto the chutes and defrost them, this lasted around 5 minutes after which the water cooled down and refroze and we had to repeat the process.
Once we had the ride dismantled and taken back to a nearby yard for storage (as I didn't fancy driving it on the roads in blizzard conditions), all that remained was to wait for better weather and return the ride to its new owner. As it turned out that took nearly a month, as everytime the weather in Yorkshire was ok it was bad weather in the North East, and vice versa. Anyway the ride is now safely back at Rotherham and off my hands again.
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The Cult Of The Green Fairy
We tend to add additional lines to our portfolio in a number of different ways. Sometimes, as is the case with our new mobile bar service, our existing clients ask us for it, with others such as the milk shake cart I think it has some potential, buy the equipment and then set about winning work for it, and with the Chocolate Fountain company we acquired it was a mixture of luck, being in the right place at the right time, and the fact that someones wife had decided to have an affair causing her husband to sell us the business.
In addition to the aforementioned bar business we have just launched, we also added the option of a specialist JagerMeister bar. We have now added by demand a Baileys drinks fountain to our , and an Absinthe bar, simply because I like the ritual involved in preparing the drink.
For those who have yet to sample the delights of the Green Fairy, as Absinthe is commonly called, it is a herbal spirit, which according to popular legend was invented in Switzerland by Dr. Pierre Ordinaire for use as a medicinal remedy. A mistaken, although widespread belief that the drink had strong hallucinogenic properties led to it being banned in many countries in the early 1900's, although surprisingly Britain didn't ban it, making it one of the few occasions we were less stringent when applying bans than our Euro cousins.
In the early 1990's the drink made a comeback and the ban was gradually rescinded. The preparation of the drink is a ritual in itself. Absinthe can be anything up to about 89% proof, it is not intended to be drunk neat, (some people do drink it that way, but some people also drink meths or industrial alcohol), and needs to be diluted with water, not only to lower the alcohol percentage, but also because this releases different flavours and aromas which are otherwise locked into the neat liquid. To prepare it, a shot of Absinth is added to a glass, an Absinthe spoon is placed across the top of the glass, these are usually decorated spoons, which are perforated to allow liquid to drip through them, a sugar cube is placed on the spoon, and a small amount of iced water drizzled onto the cube, this is then left to dissolve and drip through to the Neat spirit. After this more iced water is slowly drizzled through the spoon and into the cup, the Absinthe is louched, which refers to a process where the clear green liquid is gradually turned into a paler, cloudy substance due to the various oils being released and mixed into the water. It is then drunk!
The weather here was just starting to thaw, when it started to snow again, not heavy but we have had about half an inch since tea time. Arthur hasn't experienced any of this yet due to the fact that he is sunning himself on a beach in Sharm El Sheikh, expect news of war breaking out in Egypt at any moment!
We have also just taken delivery of a batch of wedding chair covers we ordered from America. They were ordered on the 8th of January and we received them on the 13th, a mere 5 days from order to delivery. The same day we ordered them, I ordered some addiitonal equipment for our new bars, this was ordered from an English company, and we are still waiting for it.
On Monday I am due to collect our new bar sections, and a wine cooler allowing bottles of red and white wine to be kept at different temperatures in the same cabinet. We also took delivery of some heavy duty counter mounted corkscrews, you insert the bottle in the bottom, pull the handle and the cork is removed and ejected, if when first examining the mechanism you tip it upside down whilst your finger is inside, it neatly corkscrews through your hand as I found out a couple of days ago!
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A New Year, New Lines
Well, this time last year saw a massive increase in inquiries for our services. Truth be told I was a little worried about this year as I felt sure things would start to slow down. However they have done just the opposite. Not only are the level of inquiries almost four fold up on last year, but we also have over four times as many booking confirmed for the coming season as we had at the END of January last year. Of course the Chocolate Experience business has helped boost the total, and as the mobile bar business picks up steam I hope that will make a similar contribution.
We have already added two new lines for the coming season, the first is a new pick and mix stand that offers twenty different sweets on the same display, and can carry upto sixty kilograms of confectionery. The other is a stand alone JagerMeister bar. For those who have never tried it, JagerMeister is a liqueur made from various herbs and barks giving a very dark almost licorice tasting drink. It is best served at minus fifteen degrees centigrade, to which end we have acquired JagerMeister Tap Machines for the perfect temperature control. The drink is also served in test tubes giving it another distinguishing feature and providing an interesting talking point at any event.
 
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Seduced By The Hype
For the past 5 or 6 years I have used Windows Mobile smart phones. I was due to swap my phone in about a month ago and decided I was sick of the little quirks present in every Windows phone I have used, so following the mass hysteria generated by the Iphone I duly swapped allegiances. BIG mistake, I have been trying to use the phone for about a month and am now reduced to carrying 2 phones, one for making calls with and the other for sending emails, it turns out that the Orange Iphone is unable to reliably send emails from an Orange email account! So I have a very pretty but totally useful for business use phone. Orange technical support have tried a number of times to sort something out but can't, Apple support have had a couple of goes but can't, their latest suggestion was for me to take a morning off work, and drive 40 miles to my nearest Apple store to see if they are able to make it work, customer service per excellence. The frustrating thing is I am stuck with this bloody phone for 2 years now, I think my next stop will be trading standards as I don't think a modern smart phone that cannot send emails is fit for the purpose of which it was sold to me.
On a more upbeat note, we have finally come to the end of the ridiculous workload we had for December, and have a little more relaxed schedule for a few weeks. The Chocolate Experience business should benefit from additional SEO work, and our new mobile bar company Tempus Bars is now up and running, so that can have some serious SEO work applied.
Time for a rare relaxing evening in front of the TV, and some catching up of the various novels I am part way through reading.
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Scalextric Party Hire
On our travels to various parts of this island fortress, we meet a weird and wonderful variety of people. This ranges from the incredibly interesting, to the mildly entertaining. Sometimes however we meet complete morons.
Last week in London (one of 4 days there in just over a week), we had directions to the loading bay of a venue. As is often the case, we approached from a different direction, and missed the entrance. When this happens I've found the best course of action is to park up, locate the entrance on foot and then return for the van. I found the loading bay entrance and noticed a security cabin at the side, so I walked in and asked the on duty guard if it was the correct bay, he proceeded to look about 3 feet to my left whilst talking to me, but he seemed to be responding to my questions so I assumed it was me he was talking to. I told him that I would be back in a couple of minutes with a white van, to which he nodded his assent.
As I drove into the entrance of the loading bay, he rushed out of his cabin and signalled to me to stop. He then demanded rather irately as to where do I think I was going? "To deliver to the hotel ", I replied,
"You cannot just drive in here like that", said mr security man,
"I didn't", I said, "I was in your cabin around 2 minutes ago and you told me to fetch my van in"
At this point I could see him concentrating really hard, obviously the synapses in his brain made some sort of connection because he nodded, his next outburst caught me a little off guard though, "You've stopped your van in the entrance, you can't stop there, you have all of the entrance blocked up", WTF, you signalled for me to stop you cretin, although I didn't actually use that term seeing as I was in quite a pleasant mood, "I only stopped there because you shouted stop", this time he was really struggling, obviously the communal brain cell was in the possession of another of his tribe on this particular night, "Well don't do it again" was his parting shot as he lumbered towards his cave!
Anyway the rest of the night was quite a success, with us presenting a range of items including one of our fully landscaped Scalextric tracks. This side of things seems to be picking up speed to the extent that we are investing in a host of new slot car racing products, and have launched a small website to cater for this market, this can be visited at Slot Car Party Hire
I also received my personal alcohol licence from Wakefield council this morning, so I am now authorised to dispense alcoholic beverages, or to authorise their sale. The new outside bar business should launch early in the new year.
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Halloween
Our horror themed props, See HORROR THEMED PARTIES have come in handy with a number of halloween themed bookings. I am out to night in person with a horror themed candy floss cart dispensing green candy floss, so I will post some images here after the event.
I have also been roped in by my daughter to carve her pumpkin. Normally an aunt does it for her, but with her moving away its been left to me. I have to say that at 40 years of age, this is the first pumpkin I have carved, anyway an image of it is below;
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