The Travels & Adventures of Flog-It Removals.

It’s been a long time since we got back from the final leg of the previous round trip down to Javea, over a week in fact. I was going to write about the delivery to Wendy & John, “Hi Wendy & John”.  I thought about writing about our evening in the Hotel Port Denia and our chat with Norman & John, “Hi Norman & John”. But like I said a lot has happened since then, I have been to

England on a plane and that was much more exciting. No problems what so ever on departure for the outbound flight. No problems while over in Derby either, apart from the snow and driving rain on Friday. The hotel was good, breakfast great, food superb, beer…. Well yes I have to admit it was that smooth flow crap and at £3 a pint I think they were pushing their luck. It was once I got to East Midlands Airport and attempted to leave the country that the fun began. Now I know I sometimes push my luck and try to bend a few rules but the procedure to get out of England is such a pain in the derriere, especially as I was carrying exactly the same as for the outward journey. I took off my jacket, like in Spain, and removed my laptop case from my hand luggage bag like it says to do, only one piece of hand luggage per person but you have to split it down into component parts for HM Customs. Once I got to the scanners I had to remove my belt (which I wore through in Spain), then I had to remove my shoes (in Spain they stayed on my feet), then I also had to remove the laptop from its case and place it in its very own plastic bin to go through the scanner, in Spain the laptop stayed in it’s case. Feeling half naked I walked through the body scanner and guess what? I set it off!! I don’t even wear a watch so I cannot for the life of me explain why, but needless to say the one in Spain let me walk straight through, shoes, belt and all. One “frisk” later I was standing getting dressed as I watched my bags come out of the X-Ray machine…. Laptop, laptop case, shoes, jacket, hand luggage. Then the security guard hit the reverse button, back went the hand luggage and stopped whilst a couple more men in black gathered to look. I could see them pointing at something and discussing it. It was an almost square thing with three prongs poking out of it and to me it looked just like a standard UK three pin plug, and there was a good reason for that. My case was marked for search and I had to stand and wait while other cases were searched and once a guard became free it was my turn. Once the case was open there it was in full view for all to see, next to the three pin plug… Oh my God this case is packing a well squeezed tube of toothpaste!! Security alert, it was not allowed through, even though it was less than 100ml unless for the sum of £1 I was to purchase a protective and toothpaste neutralising clear plastic bag. Now I thought that if the bag cost a quid it would need to be lead-lined so I refused and instructed the powers that be to place the offending item in the nearest quarantined receptacle. Of course a case carrying one banned substance could well be carrying another so a more thorough search produced a half empty deodorant spray which with my permission met the same fate as the toothpaste. “Don’t worry Sir, you can buy a replacement once you are through customs.” Said the guard. Then it struck me, what a damned clever idea, here we are in times of crisis and the HM Customs are trying to save the economy and save Boots the chemist from bankruptcy by confiscating unsuspecting toiletries and forcing unsuspecting passengers to buy new and therefore stimulate the economy!! Gordon Brown would be proud of them. “No thank you, I would rather stink!!”  The case was closed and re-packed and I was allowed through and once on the other side I sat down in departures and re-opened the case to take out the bottle of vodka which they missed and gave myself a well deserved mouthwash. Nice one Cyril.

At last, almost recovered from the longest journey in history I now have to write this just before departing again southwards for the final leg of this trip. Not that this journey was actually a long one, oh contraire, in fact it was quite short really, just that with the total gross weight of the truck being only 20kg below max when we put it on the weighbridge at Dover it was just slow progress down through the Massif in France. In fact one 200km stretch took us 6 hours to complete and an overnight stop in a Campanile was in order. Now if you are a regular reader you will know I do not rate the Etap hotels, and now I will add Campanile to that list – A double bed & a single in a room the size of a double bed and a single, and the very first time I have been able to stand under a shower without getting wet. Give me an Ibis any day of the week. Looking back over the trip, Friday 13th was uneventful for us although the Premier Inn at Manchester Airport had a rotten day, they got everything we asked mixed up and eventually were throwing food at us as an apology (not literally) yet we just could not eat another thing. The following day the collection of Arnie went smoothly and the drive to Tamworth was uneventful and once we got to load the goods collected from Inverness we realised just how big Arnie was. The goods were like a pimple on an elephants arse. A full LWB van load took up just one small part of Arnie from floor to ceiling. The evening festivities were fantastic, stag & hen nights for some friends who are getting married in Las Vegas next week – The whole ceremony will be internetified so I will be watching it live from my hotel room in Derby next week when I go for training. Today we have unloaded the goods into our faithful Iveco Daily XLWB and it has filled it about three quarters of the way, yet it looked nothing in “Arnold” – I can see this being a good investment. In our spare time we took Gertrude back to Halfords to have her put out of her misery… “Have you updated the software?” said the expert. “Not lately – Since she last dropped me in it I just put her away and ignored her.” “There is an update, please try it out and let me know what happens.” “It’s a bag of crap, I don’t want it.” “Please just try it.” “okay.” Anyway I let him update it, then we drove the rest of the way down to Dover etc and once we got to Calais she… (Gertrude) immediately put us on the wrong road and was once again thrown on the scrap heap. I can honestly say that this Garmin GPS is THE biggest piece of junk I have ever had the misfortune to own, it just cannot map read to save it’s life and I am sure you would do better with a blindfold and a pin. Anyway the drive south was smooth yet slow and Nicky got her chance to re-live her childhood only this time instead of sitting in the passenger seat whilst her Dad drove her around in his lorry, she was in the driving seat herself – We make a good team really when we are not arguing over the “Other Woman” - (Gertrude!!). Once finally back home on Tuesday we got the local deliveries out of the way and then transferred the Inverness load into our good old Daily ready for onward transport down to Javea. Like I keep saying, if you are in the area just give us a shout on one of the Spanish numbers we list and come and join us for a pint or three. Thanks very much to the two Posers David & Jason on board the P&O Ferry Pride of Canterbury, they just could not resist getting in on the photo shoot during the parking of the truck on the ferry so we told them their mugshots would appear on the blog for the whole world to see… So here they are!! A round of applause for David & Jason Ladies and Gentlemen, they do something on the boat to earn a living… Not sure what but it doesn’t look too hard!! Sorry it’s a bit dark lads but your high viz jackets work too well and there was no time for a second shot.

We did take a load of photos apart from this one and once we are back from Javea we will put the whole lot up on Picasa and link it from here so you can take a butchers.

For the technical amongst you, I spent a couple of hours today going over the analytics for our website to see what I can change to bring in more traffic. We are already bringing in around 1000 hits a week which for a small business like us is not bad but there is always room for improvement (we still have banner exchange space available if you are interested). I have gone over everything Yahoo, Microsoft & Google say to make sure I get good positions in the search results but I have concentrated on Google to get a good position in their rankings. When I search on Yahoo, there we are on page 1 of the results but in position 8. When I search on Live Search, wow we are at number 2 in the hit parade. As for Google, no where to be seen, on page 1 anyway. Looking deeper into it I had a look at what keywords were actually being successful and which ones are useless and it turns out that our best keywords are “Transport” which I can well understand and “eBay” which I agree we also use. However I have to admit that I am totally baffled as to where they get “Bouncy Tits” from but hey, who’s complaining!! Obviously more work is needed in Google to improve our results.  Of course I now expect to get many more hits on this blog as I have now used those fantastic keywords “Transport”, “eBay” and “Bouncy Tits” three times!! So now the search is on for more high quality keywords, I think for starters I’ll try “Great Tits” and “Blue Tits”. What do you think?

Now our trip to go and fetch Arnie (more in a future post – Call

that a cliff hanger) in a couple of weeks is going to be a bit tight for time so we thought it best we get our newly arranged UK based van to go and do the Inverness collection for us and bring the goods down to storage for us to collect later. As this is a famil

y business of course, the UK operation is run by Nicky’s brother so no matter which van arrives on your doorstep it will most likely be manned by a man & wife team so that the men can work while the women stand and talk about it. (That one’ll get me into trouble, pound to a penny). So Saturday afternoon our Frank set off up to the land of

Single Malt and Plaid in the direction of Inverness so that Sunday the collection could be effected during the hours of daylight and a good start made back doon hame again. Didn’t know I could speak Scottish did you?

As for the trouble with staff, as you can see from the photos somebody got to pay a visit to a highland pub. Somebody got to visit the Beatrix Potter Garden. Somebody got to see Loch Ness. AND IT

WASN’T US!!! Well at least he didn’t get to see the Wee Beastie or their would’ve been trouble. Anyway, according to the customer everything went perfectly well, which was to be expected, collection done and the journey back south completed by 02:30am and the following morning the van unloaded into the storage.

Just the one thing, as a social in the public eye, under the spotlight, internet based removals company that relies on word of mouth and customers loving being the stars of our blogs and photo albums…. Working for Flog It means not only being a driver, but also a photographer, copywriter and comedian. Now I need to update the map and in two weeks time (Friday 13th to be exact) we jump on Ryanair and go and collect Arnie ready to load him up and bring everything including the kitchen sink (seriously) back down to sunny Spain.