New Start

It's been some time since I last blogged, but there's been a lot happening, both in my personal and my business life.

On the business side, there has been a lot of pressure that has been causing me no end of problems. On 7th May, one of my team left the employment of the company. The details aren't important but suffice to say that neither him or us wanted the split to happen.

Since that time, I have been trying to complete lots of the projects that he was involved with along with dealing with my own issues. This has obviously been causing me issues, and leading to lots of sleepless nights.

We therefore needed someone to replace the missing member of staff and I was pleased that the position was offered and accepted by someone Lorraine knew. Today was the day that he joined the company. I'd met the applicant briefly as he had worked with Lorraine in a previous position, and in a way I was happy to be able to assist him in leaving his position.

Now begins the hard work on training him on our systems, and unfortunately having to let the staff members loose on him. Hopefully everything will work out successfully and he will continue with the company.

On Saturday, we made our annual visit to the South of England Show at Ardingly. This is a great place to go and there are numerous trade stands to buy things at. Once again we made our way to the food halls as this is where we find some of the good products that we have used over the last year.

Once again we purchased some sauces and marinades from Jethro's. We've used this for a few years and they really give a great flavour to meat and salads. We also purchased some powders to go with mayonnaise. Doesn't sound like much, but when mixed together, they come up with some really flavoursome mixes. I'm looking forward to making some up and using it with some crips whilst watching the World Cup. The final item we purchased was from a company called Proven Products Ltd. The item they were showing was called the 3 Minute Frame. Basically this is a way for you to make your own canvas prints and to re-use the frames if you tire of your picture. A simple solution, but effective. Now it's just a problem to find the pictures we want to show on canvas.

Once we finished our walks around all the trade stands, and the small animals we then got our lunch and headed over to the main arena. This is where all the bigger shows go on, but the one we were looking forward to was the foxhounds. I realise that there are major feelings about whether fox hunting should be banned or not, and following the unfortunate incident in London, this is likely to come up again for discussion. However the sight and sound of 9 packs of extremely well trained dogs running around the arena under the control of the huntsman was amazing. The other sight was seeing the magnificent and well cared for horses running around. Sometimes you feel happy to live in the country where these pursits go on.