Morning!
There always seems to be so much stuff happening, the weeks just flash by. This week not only did we have quite a few orders to put together but managed to fit in one day’s bank preparation for the bank managers visit, another days Lean Management training for everyone, a turbine visit from one of the local villages and a night out for Caroline and I to see Adam Ant in concert.


The highlight, after Adam of course, was the bank visit and having to come clean about the difficult season and the knock on effects that will have over the coming year for us. Luckily having a specialist manager worked brilliantly, he was well aware of the extraordinary weather issues and was pleasantly surprised that we were not as badly off as some of his other customers. The preliminary figures are not pretty and will still knock us back, but it was great to hear the bank looking to the longer term, being very supportive in sorting out extra financial backing and encouraging us to look to next season and beyond rather than dwelling too long on the fallout from this season. That was great news and certainly helped on the sleeping front the following night! Phew.

Talking of looking to the future our lean management training is bowling along nicely and a few ideas are beginning to come together on how we can making little tweeks to different areas and further improve our performance. It’s great to have everyone doing it together and looking at everything with a bit of a fresh eye, it should be quite refreshing for all.

Anyway the real excitement was the Adam Ant concert last night in Basingstoke which brought back a few memories. I saw him in 1979 in Southampton just as Dog Eat Dog was in the charts and when it was mainly a punk audience. He uses two drum sets which creates such a drive and the guitarists were brilliant. Adam did his thing, although I felt he was justly slightly embarrassed by his Prince Charming phase. Overall a great rock and roll show. What is going on with audiences though? It would appear that there aren’t many who can just go and be blown away, they have to constantly hold up their phones filming the whole event. We were about half way back and all we could see was the glow of phones held aloft all around the stage. It should have been a seething mass of dancing bodies which would have created a great party atmosphere but most were stood perfectly still so that the pictures recorded didn’t jiggle! Rather than witnessing a live in-person performance they watched it on a tiny screen. Why not get a DVD and watch that? They can watch it back and show their friends recalling their night out watching the back of their phone whereas I have it in my head where it can look and sound a lot better and even improve over time! Live life, don’t just record it.

Eco News
Got our last Scottish & Southern electric bill this week before we change supplier and I suspect they read my last newsletter.
They managed to forget to refund the interim payments we have made over the last 3 months for the Triad charges that would have been charged next winter if we had stayed with them. I have had to send an email explaining the situation to my account manager for him to work out how to settle the balance as there was some debate as to whether we wouldn’t get it back until after the triad payments are declared at the end of next March! This is the company who are so proud of their customer service!

Lovely group of villagers from King Somboune came for a look at the turbines on Friday evening, all quite excited by their visit and getting up close and personal with the turbines. All very positive stuff and nice to hear that there are no rumblings of revolt among the natives.

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Have a good week, from all at Kirton Farm Nurseries