Kitchen Update – Phase 1 started

There was a knock at the door yesterday and within twenty minutes chaos descended on the house.

We had a phone call earlier in the week informing us that the builders who were going to knock down the wall between the kitchen and diner would be turning up at eight o clock, along with an electrician to carry out the wiring changes. We pre-warned the the kids of the early start and had a bit of a plan as to what to do with the dog to keep him out of the way of the works.

They arrived on the dot of eight.

We had cleared part of the kitchen the night before (and starting to remove some of the wall tiles), which meant the team could get straight off and they certainly did. Firstly Pete said the water would need to go off for around five hours so suggested we fill some  buckets and jugs during the dry period, which we did. This of course causes consternation with Abby as she was expecting to get up and have a shower and ended up with a cold wash. Then the electric went off, not before the obligatory cup of team was made for the team of four. Matt was a bit upset with the no power situation as he’d planned a study day at home, but with no electricity this proved difficult.

Tina, Rio and I retreated to the conservatory, grabbing some cereals for breakfast.

The builders soon got to work and within an hour the plasterboard wall was half down; it’s amazing how flimsy new build houses are. This work created a large amount of dust and soon the place was looking like the sahara desert, even with doors around the house closed. The removal of the wall allowed us to see for the first time how big the new room was going to be and it is certainly going to be big. The rest of the wall was soon removed and they were starting to make good the gap from the old wall.

The electrician started installing cables to the new lights and also fitted a socket in the wall where the TV was going to be fitted. I also got them to fit a box for the aerial cable which mean the wires would be hidden from view once completed.

Whilst all this was going on Rio was determined to be nosey and desperate to get to the builders but we managed to keep him out of the way, with the occasional barking just to let them know he was there.

I suggested to Tina that we treat the builders to some breakfast and Tina agreed to go down to the local tea house and get some bacon butties (it always pays to keep your builders sweet and from experience food and plenty of cups of tea does the trick).

By lunchtime the electrician had finished and by mid afternoon the others were clearing up leaving us with a very dusty house and  a pile of rubble outside. Tomorrow the plasterer will be arriving to finish off the walls and ceiling.

The closure of the door between the kitchen and hallway has caught us all out, I think it will take us a while to get used to it being blocked up. Incredibly the dog seems to have sussed it out straight away.

Letter to Breeder (nearly nine months old)…

Hi Lexi,

Thought I’d update you on progress after our rather fraught mail sent to you last month.

Things seem to have calmed down a little recently and although Rio still has his mad times, we seem to be better equipped to handle his boisterousness and bad behaviour. We have used some of the techniques suggested and they seem to work; he definitely does not like to be ignored and occasionally has had to be dragged out of the room and told to calm down, which seems to do the trick. He also had the op a couple of weeks ago and whilst it hasn’t calmed him down much, he does seem more responsive to some commands.

We have had to restrict his off-lead activities as he seems to have forgotten how to recall and any opportunity to chase other dogs, cyclists and walkers and he will. At puppy classes he either refuses to move or completely ignores me and runs off to play with the other dogs in the class. Last weeks lesson was particularly bad and he just did not want to listen to anything. I have now changed the name to ‘disobedience’ classes instead. I tried the chopped sausage trick but all he was interested in was getting the treat from my hand and not doing what he was supposed to do. We will continue to take him to the classes though as one day it might all sink in.

In other news, the electric fence is now down and has been replaced with a picket fence instead. Rio has got up to his old ways whilst I’ve been erecting it and given the chance would be digging new holes in the lawn and destroying the shrubs, a forceful ‘leave it’ or ‘no’ doing the trick. The new fence will give Rio a small patch of lawn to use plus some earth to dig but we’re hopeful he will grow out of that phase soon so he can enjoy all the garden. Yeah right!

As you may have read, we have also relaid the patio, which gave Rio the perfect excuse to play in a big pile of sand, digging holes and generally having a good time. Perhaps I should have built him a sand pit?

Whilst he was being neutered, his weight was taken and he was a whopping 37kg and whilst the vets said he was a heavy dog they didn’t seem too concerned, although have asked us to take him back next month to check he hasn’t put on too much weight since his op. I have tried to cut down his food a bit, with only a small amount in the morning, but he does get a few treats during the day, which I guess doesn’t help. We have stuck to the BARF diet, now in a routine with sorting out the next days’ food, although I still have an alarm on my phone reminding me just in case I forget.

Rio is still getting things that he shouldn’t; the kitchen drawers have now had to be emptied of all contents as every time we left him alone he thought it was great fun to get them out and play. Last week Tina to him to find paint on the hallway carpet where he’d managed to get a match pot from the back of a drawer and chew it. He also loves to get bin bag liners, unravel them and drag them around the house.

Back to dog walking and one thing we have decided is that Rio must have been a litter operative in a former life; on almost every walk Rio insists on picking up a wrapper or paper bag that he finds in the street. He carries his prize for a short while then drops it, bored from having it in his mouth. I do wonder whether I would be liable for a dog littering the street? The other thing is that he yearns to go back to the vets whenever we walk him past the entrance. You would have thought after what they did to him last month he would not want to go near the place again, but as soon as you get anywhere near he pulls as much as he can.

Right must go now; I have a fence to paint and judging by Rio’s help yesterday I think he will want to do some more too (proof being the green paint on his head and back).

Best wishes for now,

Graham (and Tina)

It seemed a good idea at the time…

One of the pitfalls of agreeing to have a stay-cation is the need to fill your days with enough activities to cover the period away from work. When we decided to forego a holiday away, we both instead made a list of things to do and places to visit. The list included a trip to London, some shopping and a few outdoors rambles with the dog, whilst on the practical side it had clearing out the garage, some gardening, repairing some walls and re-pointing the patio.

In order of importance, the patio was top of the list as many of the slabs had worked loose, with the dog having great fun in bringing indoors lumps of concrete from the joints where he’d managed to ease them out. The steps up to the garden had also worked loose, making it a bit hazardous when treading from patio to lawn. The wall slabs were also in a precarious state, with a stepping-stone lottery as to which ones would give way when you put your full weight on them, a bit like Harrison Ford’s predicament in Raiders of the Lost Ark when trying to get to the prize in the temple by crossing the ‘Walk of God’.

The patio was laid around ten years ago and was probably my first major outdoors project after moving to the new build property. When I laid it I will admit it was a bit uneven (my talents unfortunately didn’t extend to laying level slabs) and over the years the paving has got worse. And then there was the issue of the trip hazard which, although at the time I didn’t think was going to be a problem, for many visitors has proved to be their downfall, literally.

And so to the task in hand, namely to re-point the patio. The intention was simple. Buy some sand and cement and re-fix the loose slabs and secure them in back place. Easy.

I found a bolster chisel and club hammer and was soon loosening the old cement, creating gaps ready for the new filler. Then I realised that it would be easier to lift the slabs that were loose and so started lifting a couple. Then I lifted some more. I seems I had laid these first ones straight onto the sand ten years ago, probably the reason why they had moved over the years.

Within a few minutes I had lifted a few and then I had the idea…

“I know” I said to myself, “I’ll lift the whole patio and re-lay it, it won’t take too long.”

And so I got to work lifting more of the slabs. Within half an hour a third of the patio was up (with the help of Tina and the dog).

It was at that point it suddenly dawned on me that I’d taken on something…

a) I didn’t think I could do again,

and…

b) I didn’t really want to do.

A quick chat with Tina and we decided to get professional help in the form of Nick, our next door neighbour, who has installed loads of patios in the past. A bit of negotiation with him, including a Sunday roast and the promise of cash persuaded him to take on the job, with Nick declaring he had a few spare days this week to sort it.

Nick then helped me lift the remaining slabs and I piled the bedding sand up into a heap ready for the work later in the week. Of course, with the patio in such a state we were unsure what to do about Rio, as he does like his digging and a big pile of sand would be too much temptation. And sure enough, with the first chance he got he was in there, flattening the nice pile I’d made ready for Nick in the week. The rest of the day was spent clearing up sand that had been brought into the house.

Nick got started on the patio on Tuesday and soon it started to look like a patio again, although admittedly it took longer than he thought, finishing up on Saturday morning. Rio had been banned from going out there all week to allow the slabs to set, so he was especially pleased to be able to go back out later in the afternoon, getting up to mischief as usual.

Now that the patio is done, I can now start erecting the picket fence, which will replace the electric fence, installed to keep Rio off the garden. This job is not such a major one and should be fairly straight forward, assuming I can get the fence posts installed straight.

Exploding Coffee Update (final)…

It had been quite a few weeks since I’d heard from Kraft Foods following the saga of the exploding coffee. The last correspondence from them was an e-mail stating that investigations were still ongoing and that  they were not aware that Bosch had sent a replacement machine for the one I’d sent to them.

Anyhow, this week I received a letter from Kraft informing me of the outcome of their investigation.

As expected they explained that they had investigated the disk and the evidence suggested that Tina had opened the caddy before the purge cycle had finished causing the disk to explode. They could find no evidence that the other disk was faulty and therefore were unable to determine why the incident had occurred.

Also included in the letter was an apology from them for the ‘concern and inconvenience’ the incident had caused and they enclosed £25 of Kraft vouchers.

I showed the letter to Tina and she then showed me the scar on her hand which is still visible and we both agreed that the response was as we had expected, with the company not able to admit their product was at fault, but at least they did respond and so I immediately e-mailed the Consumer Relations Team back and this is what I said…

Time marches on…

Wow, what happened to March and April?

With only one blog entry since the end of February, it is clear the blog-a-day-in-february cleared me out of any inspiration or inclination to want to write anything new. But my life didn’t stop so what has happened in the past two months?

Family-wise it’s been fairly quiet with the only notable highlight being Matt starting his new job at Virgin Media. His first week saw him on an induction course in Dudley, where he met his fellow apprentices. The company put them up in a £140 per day hotel next to the main office and Matt thought he was in heaven. He seemed to enjoy the week and it set him up for a positive start in joining VM. The following Monday he had to report to the Northampton office and so we both went to work together, which was nice, although I think Matt was a bit embarrassed when we arrived as his other apprentice colleagues were waiting at the gate. He soon joined them rather than hang around with his dad. He’s now into his third week and says he’s still enjoying the job, which is pleasing.

Whilst mentioning work, I attended a management conference in Birmingham last month. The event was held for all field managers and was really well organised and I really enjoyed it. It was also the first public showing of the video I took part in February. The final cut was really well put together and everyone I spoke at the conference seemed to enjoy my performance . It still hasn’t been released onto the company intranet, but when it does I’m expecting Hollywood to be knocking. In the meantime my equity card is in the post…not!

In other news, Tina and I have decided to update our kitchen, which is now looking a bit tired. I managed to persuade Tina that it would be a good idea to knock down the wall between the kitchen and dining room, creating a larger room and would allow for more cupboard space. We started looking around and saw a kitchen in Magnet’s that we both liked. Plans are now afoot to get things moving but me being the geeky person I am decided to try to do a bit of CAD planning myself using an iPad app called  ’Home Design 3D‘. I was really impressed with how easy it was to create a room, add in the units and then view it in 3D. The results were pretty good and we now have a good idea on what we want when we go and visit the showroom at the weekend. Tina mentioned what I’d done to the Magnet designer and she said that there was always a job for a kitchen planner should I want to give up the day job.

One casualty of the new kitchen/diner is my piano. It won’t fit in the new room and there is nowhere else in the house it will fit so it was placed on eBay last night. I stuck it on for a low price and insisted it was ‘collection only’ as it would have taken a hell of a large amount of wrapping paper and packing tape to post it to the new owner. I won’t really be too sad to see it go as it was really one of those hobbies I really didn’t get into and got ridiculed from the family over my ‘ Les Dawson-esk’ playing.

Rio has been challenging over recent weeks, we think he’s going through his troublesome teenage years and so we’ve had to go back to basics with him, stopping him from going upstairs and jumping on our heads. We have had the last laugh this week though as he visited the vets for castration. He’s now a Ria rather than a Rio. It didn’t seem to make much difference last night though as once the anaesthetic had worn off he was back to his normal, playful self.

The only other thing I’ve been doing over recent months is joining the ‘Instagram‘ crowd by posting a few of my photos on the popular social photo site. I had used the site before the announcement of the Facebook takeover but not really uploaded too many pictures to it. Over recent weeks I’ve been regularly posting photos from my albums, using the app filters to change the pix to make them look more arty. I will upload a few here sometime.

So all-in-all a pretty busy few months has gone by in a shot. With the kitchen work due to start at the end of the month, along with a two week holiday, I think it’s going to fly by and it won’t be long before we’ll me talking about how the days are drawing in!

Letter to Breeder – almost 7 months old…

Our puppy is certainly growing!

Our puppy is sneaky!

Our puppy is destructive!

Our puppy certainly has character!

It’s time for another update on how Rio is getting on. At nearly seven months old he is now really filling out and starting to get his adult coat. His tail is really feathery and has that distinctive wave of fur going down his back that retrievers tend to have. He still hasn’t developed the ruff around his collar but I don’t think it’ll be long before that grows. We have been a bit lazy in brushing him recently. One of the reasons is that Tina bought a defurminator, which Rio detests; he much prefers the normal brush but now tends to fight any sort of brushing.

He was weighed a couple of weeks ago and came in at a whopping 30kg (although I suspect he is heavier now) and Tina now finds him difficult to control when walking him and has resorted to using a halti, which Rio is not too keen on. Generally for me he is OK on the lead and the obedience classes he attends each week are helping. More of that later.

As I said earlier, Rio certainly has character. We are starting to understand his ways; he is quiet happy being left alone when you go out but only if he is given a treat such as a pig ear or a handful of dried biscuits. He has finally accepted that going upstairs is a no no, although there is the odd occasion you will hear him sniffing at the bedroom door early in the morning, but is less and less these days. He does get a bit upset when he’s left downstairs on his own during the day knowing everyone else is upstairs talking and tries to come up, but a quick reprimand and he’s on his way back down.

As you know we had a bit of an issue with him destroying the garden and it came to a head when he brought a fence panel down from the top of the garden which he’s managed to dislodge, creating a gap between our garden and the one at the back of the house. It was therefore time to extend the electric fence to include the whole of the lawn, something we didn’t really want to do, but it was getting silly and there were more holes than grass! He still has the patio and side of the house to roam around and a small patch of earth to do his business.

Rio’s walks have been getting farther and farther as he is growing up. I took him for probably his longest walk yet last weekend around the lake near where we live. He loved the freedom of exploring the woods and playing with other dogs, but he did tire towards the end so I need to restrict that walk to the odd occasion until he’s bigger. He had his first taste of the river the other day, leaning a bit too far over the river bank and went straight under. He then needed help getting out of the steep sides so I think that may stop him from trying that again. We have a couple of set routes we use which allows him to roam freely and he is getting better with recall, although I still have to be wary, especially when there are other dogs around and he thinks they want to play (even when some don’t).

Now Rio has grown his full set of teeth he is showing what he can do with them. Not only can he completely dispatch a carcass of chicken in no time at all, he can also rip a soft toy to shreds in minutes. Most days we find bits of his stuffed toys around; he doesn’t eat the stuffing but finds great enjoyment in ripping the insides out and leaving the bits all over the carpet.

Rio has also learned a new trick which is becoming a pain; he has worked out how to open the kitchen drawer where his lead is kept. Abby watched him delicately pull the drawer open with his teeth and then proceed to grab his lead and bring it to her. Subtle or what! The only problem that in the drawer is also kept his pooh bags and kitchen bin bags and on many occasions we have arrived home to find the contents of the drawer spread across the hall. I just hope he doesn’t suss out how to open the fridge door and then there will be trouble!

We are now regulars at obedience classes with Rio making up the class of ten or so dogs. It is slow progress with him, with some of the other breeds of the same age showing him up, but he is getting better each week. I am always given ‘homework’ to try to practice some of the basics such as recall, which oddly he seems to do fine when we’re at home. It’s just far too exciting to play with the other dogs during class time  but I guess that’s part of the training to learn to ignore others. He was told last week that he had done really well when we did the lesson outside, although for me it was hard work and I had a blister on my hand to prove it. I am trying to progress without the halt lead but there are occasions when he is stubborn and hard work to pull in the direction you want him to go. Still, as I said, he is getting better.

As Rio is now old enough to visit the vets for ‘the chop’ we need to try to get him booked in, although Tina is still a bit hesitant. I think it will do him good and the vets do recommend it be done too so I think it won’t be long before that is sorted.

Right, time to clear up the mess Rio has made whilst I’ve been typing this up.

Bye for now.

Graham (and Tina)

Please let us know…

Is it me or do many companies or organisations you come in contact with nowadays always want you to complete a survey for almost anything? You can pretty much guarantee that if you deal with a large company, you can expect a survey pop into your in box at some point, asking for your thoughts on how they did, how quickly they did it and whether you would recommend them to your friends.

The other day I sent an e-mail to eBay querying something about my account. I got a reply back stating that the representative was not able to help but would pass the issue onto someone that in a different department that could.  I then got an e-mail later asking me to complete a survey on how well the first representative dealt with my initial query. What’s the point of that then, as all they did was pass the buck!

At work we get surveys from out IT department even before the problem has been fixed, we get e-mails from our HR department asking whether we would recommend them (who else could do that job, the Facilities team?) and we get surveys from our supply chain people asking how well they have prevented you from handing over any of their stores.

I suppose with the age of the internet, sending out surveys is now the easiest way to get to hear what their customers think about them and certainly more effective than stopping people randomly in the street, like they used to do in the old days.

Which reminded me of a time when I was walking through Watford High Street and I was stopped by someone with a clipboard. Normally I would have walked on by but the girl was pretty and I had time to spare, so I agreed to help out.

“Do you drink beer?” she enquired.

“Yes” I said.

“Would you like to participate in a survey where there is free beer?” she added

“Yes” I replied, thinking I would be walking away with cases of free booze afterwards.

I followed her to the local YMCA building where I spent the next hour watching dummy adverts, filling in numerous forms and discussing the merits of different logos on cans of beer. And at the end we were all given a tiny little can of beer (a sample tin if I recall) and off we went.

I have never stopped to complete a survey in the street since then.

As most surveys come through as e-mails it’s easy to delete them or redirect them to a spam folder but I do wonder how many people actually do bother to fill them in and whether the companies ever act on the feedback they receive?

Message: In the interests of quality control please could you take time to click on this link to complete a survey on how you rate this blog article.

Exploding Coffee Update…

Further to my post a couple of weeks ago I thought I’d update you on the saga of the exploding coffee machine and how the company responded to my mail.

The company that made the coffee machine, Bosch, is actually owned by Kraft Foods, who are one of the largest food manufactures in Europe. When I e-mailed them to inform them of the incident that occurred with Tina, I didn’t quite know what to expect from them.

I initially got a mail back asking me to call them, which I duly did and had to explain what had happened. The chap I spoke to seemed quite calm about the incident but assured me that they would take it seriously and would be in touch shortly afterwards. He did say that the caddy that the T-Disks sit in have been modified since my machine was bought to prevent similar issues occurring (that suggested to me that they knew there was a manufacturing problem with their machines so I was in a good position to get something sorted).

The following week I got a phone call from the same chap saying the he had spoken to their head office and they would like back the T-Disk that exploded along with machine to investigate why it occurred. Luckily I had kept the T-Disk and so I posted it off to them, along with the bar code showing the manufacturing date.

He also said that I would be receiving a free post label to be able to return the machine to Bosch so they could investigate. I waited a week and then chased as nothing arrived. Within a couple of days the label duly arrived and I boxed up the machine and waited.

And so to Friday. I arrived back home from taking the dog for a walk to find a large parcel had been delivered whilst I was out. I opened the box to find a brand new Tassimo machine although there was no note of explanation and I’d received no e-mail from them explaining why it had been sent.

I e-mailed the guy back to see what had been found and await a reply, but I must say I am impressed by their response, the way they dealt with my complaint and the fact that we now have a brand new machine to replace the one we bought in 2007. Well impressed and good to see a large company acting in a responsible manner.

I enjoyed my first coffee from our new machine on Friday evening and I must say it did taste particularly good

Taking the publishing world by storm…

Well not quite, but you may recall I mentioned in one of the February blogs that I was in the process of writing a couple of iBooks using the new free Apple application iBooks Author, an interactive book creator. Well over the past few weeks I have been working on my first book (I got disillusioned with writing the ones about my website and a daily diary but might finish them some day) and decided to do something a bit different.

Having a keen interest in all things to do with Space (I did go and see a Space Shuttle launch you know), I thought that it would make a good subject to cover in an interactive book so I did some research and found loads of information within Wikipedia. Now I know that Wiki’s can be inaccurate but as my iBook was going to be mainly photos I thought it would be an ideal source of information and it also gets over the issue of copyright as the majority of photos within Wikipedia are covered under the ‘Creative Commons‘ agreement. I could have signed up to use some stock photos but as that would cost me a fortune and I had no intention of selling the book I thought it would be perfect.

Therefore I started planning the book, deciding what to include and looking for some interactive content to include. I found some 3D models of the Space Shuttle, Saturn V Rocket and the sun which would be ideal and contacted the owners to seek permission to use their work in my book. I created a couple of timelines of space exploration using an app called ‘Timelines 3D‘ which produces superb presentations which can be inserted into the iBook. I built an interactive picture giving information on our solar system and the different components of the sun.

I finally pulled it together on Monday and submitted it to the Apple iBooks store and sat back and waited. According to others, the the process of actually checking the books for quality by the Apple people can take up to two weeks to complete so I didn’t really expect to hear back until next month. So I was particularly pleased when I woke up this morning to find an e-mail stating that my book had been published and it there waiting for anyone in the world to download and read. Just think anyone with an IPad 2 or later can view my little masterpiece. The book can be downloaded from the iTunes bookstore or below if you don’t have an iPad.

I wasn’t quite sure at what age group to aim the book at but in the end just left it as general as it might interest anyone who fancies to look at some pretty pictures. I appreciate all the same information can be obtained through the Nasa site or Wikipedia, but my book is more pictorial based and hopefully people will enjoy looking at it (I’m not looking forward to the reviews as I’m bound to get some criticism).

High from the excitement of publishing my first book on Monday, I then thought about creating another; this time something of my own creation. So I decided to bring together my holiday journal when we went to California last year with many of the photos and videos I took. Again, it would be an ideal way of displaying the trip in an interactive way and hopefully some people may find it of interest. As I was off this week with some time to spare, I started compiling the content, deciding on the photos to include and converting the videos I have previously edited and putting them all into an interactive version. I also created some maps showing the routes we took on each of the days we were travelling.

As most of the work had been done i.e. I’d already written the journal whilst I was in America, it was a fairly quick process, especially as I’d learned many of the nuances of iBooks Author when creating the Space book. And by yesterday morning the book was done and ready to submit. Again I assume that there will be a delay whilst Apple give it the once over but hopefully by this time next week I’ll have my second iBook published.

For those that don’t have an iPad (shame on you) I have created PDF versions of the books but of course they’re only going to show screenshots so you won’t get the full interactive experience. You can download The Interactive Space Book and the California and Nevada Travel Journal but be aware they are large files due to the size of the images contained in them.

So what’s next?

If reviews of the two books are positive I might add my other journals to the list!

Be afraid Mr Murdoch, be afraid!

Following in the footsteps…

After failing a number of my O levels in the last year of school, I decided on stay on at sixth form to try to retake them as well as do a couple of A levels. I completed the retakes, passing all of them second-time around but knew that an academic future was not or me and started looking for a job.

When a British Telecom apprenticeship programme was spotted in the local paper, I applied on the off chance, not really expecting to get anywhere. The selection process included an interview, a technical test and a practical and with so many other people attending, I thought my chances of being chosen were slim. To my surprise I did get offered me a position, with the assessor telling me that I’d done just enough to get through but would have to work hard to make sure I would progress.

A year later, having settled into the new career, like a duck to water, I was awarded Apprentice of the Year, proving those that doubted me that I could do it. The apprenticeship set me up well for a career in telecommunications and when the time was right I left the safe environment of BT and joined a relatively new company, Telecential, one of the many Cable TV companies that were springing up around the country.

I soon progressed into a managerial role and whilst the cable industry has gone through some tough times, I have managed to hang in there and now work for Virgin Media, the combination of all those individual companies. And they are doing really well.

So it was especially pleasing when they announced a few years ago that they were starting up an apprentice scheme, knowing from experience how beneficial such schemes are. The initial intake was small at first, but the results were positive and the programme was expanded in subsequent years, to a point where now it plays a major role in recruiting for the future. And the quality of the technicians it has produced is excellent, with many going on to start more technical apprenticeships which will lead them into engineering roles.

And so to three months ago.

I spotted on the company job board some apprentice positions that were being advertised for Northamptonshire for later in the year and mentioned them to Matt. He had been working at the local Co-op since leaving school, biding his time until he knew what he really wanted to do as a career.

And so he applied online and waited.

A couple of weeks later he was asked to do an online test which he did and passed and so then went on to do a telephone interview, which he was successful at also.

He was then invited to a selection day, where he was asked to prepare a four minute presentation and was told he would have to do some individual and group tasks. Now Matt is not particularly confident in his abilities and seemed quiet about the whole thing, but did do some preparation, with a little help from his dad

Anyhow, last Wednesday, he attended the selection day and rang me up afterwards saying he thought he’d done OK, although had struggled to complete one of the practical tests. He mentioned that they asked him how he came to apply for the job and Matt explained that I worked for the company, and they acknowledged that they knew who I was but no more. They said they would let him know if he was successful within a week.

And so to yesterday afternoon he got the call he was waiting for to tell him he had been offered the apprenticeship and that he starts next month. What brilliant news, I’m certain he will enjoy the experience as I did and should set him up for a future in telecommunications, which I must say hasn’t done me any harm!

Well done, Matt!

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