Joyce's Column January

Well, we are virtually one month into 2025 very scary how time flies. Christmas 2024 seems to have been ages ago, but I hope you all enjoyed it and the New Year too. My Christmas was good helping out once again at a homeless shelter on Christmas Day morning it is sad to see of the poor homeless that come to the shelter, following my stint here I then had 5 guests for dinner who would have been on their own and lonely if I hadn’t asked them to join us. It must be awful to be lonely at any time but at Christmas I feel it must be even worse.

New Year started with a bang literally!! I was involved in a car crash and spent 2 days in hospital as I had a head injury and concussion, they did all sorts of tests at the hospital (still found no brain – no surprise there!) and when they were satisfied they allowed me home. The vehicle I was in as a passenger was stationery and the driver of the other vehicle who was speeding lost control and rammed into the passenger side of our vehicle and knocked me for six as they say. I hadn’t my seat belt on as we had just got back to our vehicle and was about to put it on when this happened. The police arrested the driver of the other vehicle and despite the injury and shock I lived to fight another day.

Many of us around will know Dave and Judy Anderson ex Coralhaze, well Dave recently reached a new decade and a milestone birthday a few days before Christmas 80 years young. They had a celebratory lunch for him locally at The Black Horse, West Boldon for family and friends and James Andersons’s doggie Little Dave also attended. Gosh Dave it doesn’t seem that long ago we celebrated your 50th, but whatever hope you enjoyed your day after you deserved to and here’s to the 90th.

The first show of the exhibition season 2025 is now under our belts and here are some jottings from it.

Sorry not to see Ian and Tina Eason of Instance Automatics not exhibiting this year as they have attended the show since 1997. Apparently, they encountered a lot of problems regarding their stand, being moved from their usual one, stand fitters and also about the build up system, so they decided they would pull out of the show, which was a shame as they were missed. Hopefully next year things can get sorted between them and the organisers and they will be back in the fold in 2026.

It was nice to Lisa Lambert of NSM back in fine form with her usual warm smile and welcome to their stand, and I mention this because poor Lisa had an awful 2024 with family problems amongst other things, so Lisa here’s hoping 2025 will be a much better year for you, and I am looking forward to seeing you at the Irish show in March.

Bandai Namco had a new member of their sales staff on board Christian Temple, he is the son of the well-known industry Temple family, the son of Kevin and Jack is his grandfather. Christian only joined Bandai Namco on the Monday as the show commenced on the Tuesday, but he appears to be a young man that has already adapted to the industry and a person that takes everything in its stride, and I am sure he will go a long way and will make his own mark in the industry bringing further success to Bandai Namco in his role as sales for Northern England and Scotland.  I wish you luck Christian in your new role and before too long I am certain your name will be well known, for all the right reasons of course!!

It was nice to see ex Bandai Namco’s Chris Bell walking the aisles at the show, Chris retired back in early 2024, he says her misses the industry after all the years he spent in it, but he is also enjoying retirement. I have to say he looked a million dollars and even younger than at his retirement party, so obviously retirement does suit him.

Staying with Bandai Namco a party of them went out for a meal to a very posh Indian restaurant in Bond Street which has a fabulous reputation for Indian food this was to celebrate the retirement of Ravi one of their engineers who is retiring after 42 years in the industry. Now as I am sure we all know or most of us know that Bond Street is a very upmarket area in London and everyone was behaving themselves (yes including Steve Short and John Crompton!!) and they were all perusing the menu deciding what to order with so many mouth- watering dishes on offer and of course there was alcohol flowing. Eventually they decided they were ready to order well Russell Hotson was still perusing the menu and the waiter took the rest of the orders and came back for Russell’s who told the waiter he would have ‘Number 29’ the waiter was somewhat puzzled at this as their menu didn’t have any numbers on any of their dishes, so couldn’t understand what Russell wanted, so he went through the menu with him, and guess what Russell had ordered the price of the dish he wanted instead of the dish itself. Poor Russell must have thought he was in a Chinese restaurant not an Indian, needless to say the rest of the party thought this was hilarious and certainly won’t let him forget it. Whatever Russell I hope you enjoyed your ‘Number 29’ when it came, and maybe take more water with it next time, or even no alcohol at all.

Cosmic Leisure’s Martin Austin told me a story about the late Roy Deeming and shoes? Apparently when Martin joined the industry some years ago and was  introduced to Roy and Roy looked him up and down and he came to Martin’s footwear and Martin had shoes on that Roy thought were not suitable for his role as a sales person. Roy did no other than say to Martin ‘You need to change the style of your footwear, otherwise you will not get anywhere in this industry.’ The following year the pair met up again at a show and Roy immediately looked at Martin’s footwear, and this time Roy approved of it and commented to him ‘I see you took notice of what I said, now you stand a chance.’ Roy was as everyone knows was always suited and booted and always nice clean shiny shoes, and he used to say ‘Well if you go in feet first at least they will remember your shiny shoes’.

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31 January 2025

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