John Linton ....a few extra miles driving never hurt anyone.
We got up very early this morning and skipped breakfast (unfair to accept the offer of the lovely lady who offered to get up at 5.30 am to prepare it) having paid our bill the previous night, and
back tracked to Southwold to pick up the lap top charger I had so
carelessly left in our room thus adding 120 unnecessary miles to our
day's scheduled driving - a suitable punishment for an idiot - pity his
companion had to share the punishment.
However the day was very pleasant
and we got the 'punishment' out of the way by 10 am which is about the
usual time we would have set off - so it didn't affect the day which
was spent visiting a hotel at Blakeney Point we had stayed at during our
honeymoon, looking over one of the largest of the many unusually stoned
churches that abound in this part of England, having one of those
legendary lunches at one of those legendary remote village pubs (half a
dozen huge local oysters (from 'over the back yard fence) and a dressed
local crab (from 300 meters over the front door of the pub) and
finishing the after lunch period off by visiting one the many huge
country houses that beggar the imagination as to how such wealth could
be accumulated to build them. We checked in to our planned
destination hotel pretty much at the time we had planned and, apart from
being sick of driving, in good shape and good humour.
I skip read the Australian financial and communications industry press but didn't see anything of much interest. I co uldn't be bothered with the 'political' press as nothing sensible is going to be said until Gillard actually begins the job of shifting all of the blame for the past onto the lunatic Rudd and attempts to exculpate herself from being associated with the fiasco of the latest Labor government - if that's an appropriate word for the usual Labor Punch and Judy show they mistakenly believe is a suitable imitation of running a small country like Australia.
Two of the emails I dealt with were more interesting, at least conceptually, as follow ups to some vague concepts of Exetel 'merging' with smaller companies than we are on some imaginative bases. I am not yet 'unwound enough' to seriously consider the implications of such proposals but as the tensions caused by the demands of contributing to the day to day operation of a company of Exetel's size continue to fade I will be able to look at such scenarios in a more sensible way. I don't know how many smallish communication companies have been absorbed by larger companies in Australia since Exetel began to provide services in January 2004 but I think, given the time and inclination, I could still remember the names of close to 30 and the ABS stats indicate that there have been close to 500 if you can interpret them correctly (which I can't).
I think that Exetel has steadily grown (in terms of revenue and customers) over the past 78 months and is no longer a 'tiny' data communications provider and of the 500 or so carriers, providers, integrators and management companies that now exist in the Australian market Exetel continually improves its 'ranking' and its 'clout' if the increase in the semi-hysterical "anti Exetel" slagging by competitors in the business data link markets in which we operate is any guide. Whether this slow, but continued' move up the size/business volume rankings is a relevant thing has always been immaterial to me - except in the general way that you are pleased you haven't closed down or been swallowed up by some other company because you no longer have the ability to believe in what you are doing and want to keep on doing it.
For no particular reason I never find myself admiring anything about the communication companies that operate in Australia - nor, let me quickly add, do I admire much about our own business - I have always, correctly, ascribed our many failures as an inevitability of a start up business's problems in simply surviving for the first few years and, if it does survive, the problems of moving from a business of a certain size that can be run by its key staff (and working owners) to one that is too big for that to continue to be the case. I have no idea how long it will take Exetel to move from 'hands on owner managed' to the next iteration of management but I'm pretty sure that Exetel (as it stands) couldn't be managed by an 'outsider' and I certainly couldn't stay with the business and cede any level of control to an 'outsider' - I certainly couldn't "report" to anyone likely to be found in a smaller company that Exetel (or larger for that matter).....but then, when I think about it, I never could.
So it will be mildly interesting to see if there is some 'model' that addresses the downside issues that I can see let alone the downside issues any merger 'partner' may be seeing.
My goodness - is that the time? I'm late for the first single malt of the day sitting here writing this nonsense.
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We got up very early, having paid our bill the previous night, and back tracked to Southwold to pick up the lap top charger I had so carelessly left in our room thus adding 120 unnecessary miles to our day's scheduled driving - a suitable punishment for an idiot - pity his companion had to share the punishment. However the day was very pleasant and we got the 'punishment' out of the way by 10 am which is about the usual time we would have set off - so it didn't affect the day which was spent visiting a hotel at Blakeney Point we had stayed at during our honeymoon, looking over one of the largest ofthe many unusually stoned churches that abound in this part of England, having one of those legendary lunches at one of those legendary remote village pubs (half a dozen huge local oysters (from 'over the back yard fence) and a dressed local crab (from 300 meters over the front door of the pub) and finishing the after lunch period off by visiting one the many huge country houses that beggar the imagination as to how such wealth could be accumulated to build them.
We checked in to our planned destination hotel pretty much at the time we had planned and, apart from being sick of driving, in good shape and good humour.