Good morning

As Richard says the Watford game was not like watching Brazil, but we did have some laughs during the evening. I was watching Barnet as they had 2 ex Daggers, Glen Southam and Anwar Uddin, both were stalwarts for us. Glen unfortunately believed he was better than he was and thought Fulham were in for him, and as good as he is for Conference football he is an average League 2 player at best. He is described as an attacking midfielder but he spent more time looking at the defenders than the other way! Anwar though is a Club legend and a great leader who won the Conference with us and really motivated the Team, best of luck to both players.

Well the weekend is quite a busy one unusually for me, snooker tomorrow and seeing an old mate on Sunday and I am taking my fiancee out on Monday as we have a babysitter. I am VERY much looking forward to this as it’s a nice break from parenting, though you never stop worrying about them!

Next week is another biggie, I am conducting Customer Reviews with my staff and One To One’s for which I will be doing some weekend preparation. I enjoy these sessions as they give staff a purpose and they are what the Company is all about.

By the way….there is a rumour that our exciting new Park Home Scheme is going live soon and we are testing a new amendment to our Scheme for Hobby Caravan owners which has been in preparation for some time now.

Got to go now, things to be done!

Have a great weekend

Mike

If you are getting static caravan insurance quotes it may be easier if you have all the information you need before you begin. You may find that insurers will typically need to know:

• your name;
• your address;
• your telephone number;
• the make, model and age of your caravan;
• whether you have an alarm fitted;
• where the caravan is kept; and
• the value of the contents of your caravan.

Some owners of static caravan sites may try to insist that you purchase caravan cover from them, but it is not obligatory. Before you are tempted to buy your cover from them, you may wish to shop around first. Looking around for other quotes may not take you very long, but may save you money in the long run.

Do note that if you do choose to buy your static home insurance elsewhere, the site owner may ask for sight of your insurance schedule and may charge you a fee. Even if you are charged a fee by your site owner for not taking his caravan cover, you may find that by taking cover elsewhere, you still save money overall.
So it is worth investigating all your options.

What are you looking for?
Now that you have a few static caravan insurance quotes, how do you compare them? You may wish to weigh up a number of considerations before you make your final decision, based on cost, service and cover.

Cost
You may wish to check that you are taking advantage of as many discounts as possible. In particular, have you told the insurer about all the security features you have installed? Is your site a member of any scheme that recognises secure sites? These are factors that insurers may take into account when deciding what to charge for static caravan insurance.

Service
After a successful claim, how long does the insurer typically take to pay for repairs or replace missing items? How helpful have you found their staff when you have been investigating insurance? An insurer that looks after you before you are even a customer may make a good impression when you are collecting static caravan insurance quotes.

Do you have any obligations under the cover?
A full static caravan insurance quote may come with a draft policy attached. When you are checking this for details of the exclusions and limitations, you may wish to check also whether there are any obligations on you as an owner.

For instance, the insurer may expect you to maintain the caravan in good order. And, some static caravan parks close for the winter. While static holiday home insurance cover may typically continue throughout the colder seasons, you may as an owner be obliged to drain any central heating system in the van to minimise the risk of damage caused by burst pipes.

Cover
Finally but perhaps most importantly there is the issue of cover. What risks does the insurer cover? The exact list may vary between providers but the perils that usually crop up may include things like fire, storm, flood, theft etc. Some providers, such as ourselves, provide cover for malicious damage – note that this is not commonplace and may be a valuable element of cover to have.

Static caravan insurance quotes may typically be given for a combination of structural and contents cover. For contents cover, you may wish to make sure about whether any valuable items are included, as some insurers have limits on single items.

Well the trip to see Watford play Barnet last night in a friendly was not the most dramatic of evenings, the highlight of the night was probably the eating of Mcdonalds! Watford played poorly, we fielded a pretty strong team and they simply failed to impress. You could argue that pre-seasons friendly’s are routine affairs and it is just about getting the match fitness of your players to the right level for the start of the season proper.

However to lose 1-0 at Barnet must remain dissapointing. The new club captain, John Eustace (perhaps spelt with a silent L in place of the T), seemed to be a poor leader and motivator on the pitch, spending most of the game shaking his head and moaning at people, his own game was poor and as the minutes went by he reverted to an aggressive style of play not suited to the team.

Like it or not the Captain’s job is to motivate and inspire his players into greater things  – very much like a leader in business – and these things he failed at.

Lloyd Doyley remains one of the poorest defenders I have ever seen and having been playing at Watford for something like 10 years it is hard to believe that he remains the first choice left / right back. I can only assume that he brings other qualities to the team, he does make few defensive mistakes but he cannot pass and has the vision of a horse in blinkers.

However, all that said, we had an enjoyable evening and the company was fun, we still managed to have a laugh on the journey home and thats what travelling to football is all about.

Today sees my last day in the office for a week as tomorrow I am off on annual leave and the clan and I fly out to Nerja (near Malaga) for a well deserved week away on Saturday.

It will be the first beach type holiday for the boys and I hope that we can settle in and have a good time. My eldest has only ever really been on a beach in Torquay for a holiday where it rained all the time. In the worst case scenario we are only away for a week, I am confident that we will have a good time as any ingredient including sun, sea, swimming pools and food should make a good break away.

We chose Nerja as I have been travelling out there for business for some time and my good friends, Joao and Jackie, have both their home and business based there. They have very kindly agreed to pick us up from  the air port and return us at journeys end – the boys are very much looking for a game of football with them! Dog walking will also be high up on the agenda.

I will not be taking my lap top, mainly because the apartment has no wireless access, but I will take my Blackberry. At the end of each day I know I will get bored and hence it is a great opportunity to have a scan of my emails and see what is occuring back at base. It will not be spending the week with me and that is much better behaviour than I normally offer!

So today will not doubt have it’s up’s and downs as last days in the office usually do but that is part of the buld up to a holiday!

Have a great week and I am looking forward to blogging upon my return!

Happy days.

Richard

Dear All

I have been at this Company now for 7 years today and I cannot help but reminisce about my time here. Believe it or not we did not have a website in those days and it just shows that we as a Company have been innovative, keen and enthusiastic. We have studied our markets and produced Schemes with people that we trust and that trust us, and above us have demonstrated that we treat our customers with respect and as fairly as possible.

I also thought about past colleagues that I have worked with and whom have since left, as always you make promises to keep in touch and you never do. Still, we all get older and circumstances change for the better so I cannot complain.

Tonight I am watching Barnet vs Watford (not my beloved Dagenham) and then it is a quiet rest of the week before a busy end of month rush.

Have a great day

Mike

We watched a film last night called Everybody’s Fine – out of interest it starred Robert Deniro (wrong spelling, I know).

Now I am not one for films that bring a tear to your eye or films that make you think and this film had both those effects.

It was really very moving, the prologue suggested it was a heart warming tale and indeed it was.

What it made me think about was the simple subject  – how many people, including those close to you like family and friends, ask you every day how you are or how has your day been and how mnay people do you give a truly honest reply to?

In most cases not very many is it? The film focussed on the fact they all the main characters children tell dad life is good and sometimes they even spin a small white lie and it is not until he visits each child without warning that he finds out the real truth behind the age old reply “Everybody and everything is fine” – when quite simply it is not.

We cannot go around telling everybody everything but what we should do is have people we trust and people we can honestly give a trusted response to.

If you have people, if only one or two, you can do that with and have the honesty reciprocated then I reckon it will make life so much easier.

It’s not just sharing problems that help but also the sharing of good things as well.

Well that is my preach for the day.

Tonight sees us off to see Watford play Barnet in a friendly and I am displaying the new Watford shirt in the office today – I must admit it is very, very yellow! Big kid I know.

Enjoy the sun.

Richard