Do you need to get something urgently to the other end of the country? Sending goods directly nationwide is what we specialise in – and it’s not as expensive as you may think! For example Redhill to Birmingham is only £162 + VAT and your goods should be there within 3 hours, traffic permitting of course. If you’ve got an engineer waiting on site for an urgent part, or a customer who needs something desperately then we think it represents excellent value for money. Maybe you’ve got urgent documents needed elsewhere in order to close a large deal. Give us a call and we’ll be happy to help. Remember you can find out the price using our calculator at the top of our home page.
Call us NOW on:
0845 092 0010
Mercedes Sprinter added to fleet
We are pleased to announce that we now have a long wheelbase Mercedes Sprinter van on our fleet. This van is able to take 4.2 metres in length and up to 1600kgs. It can take three normal sized pallets with ease. We are offering it a very competitive rate of just an extra 50% above our normal advertised rates for small vans. Please give us a call if you’d like to book this van as we are sure it will prove popular.
Passport Same Day
Have you ever needed a new passport really urgently? I discovered yesterday that you can get a new passport the same day and you don’t even need to leave your office. Make an appointment at the Passport Office in Eccleston Square, London SW1 and then arrange for one of our couriers to act as your agent. Yesterday I did just that and took the relevant forms, photographs and payment from a client in Dorking, lodged the application and then waited four hours for the passport to be ready for completion. By the close of office hours I was back at the client with his new passport ready for another ten years of travelling the globe.
Fast Food
It’s not so easy to eat healthily when you’re out on the road, there are so many things to tempt you when you stop for fuel – mega-size hot sausage rolls, double packs of Mars bars, iced buns, the list goes on… So in an attempt to keep us more or less on the straight and narrow, I make my reasonably healthy flapjacks – reasonably healthy because, instead of using butter, I use olive spread and before you say ugh, there’s very little difference in taste but you have a nice smug feeling that you’re not taking on some much cholesterol! So here goes with my recipe for flapjacks.
Using a large saucepan, gently melt 150g of olive spread (Bertolli or supermarket own-brand), 150g of Demerara sugar and one large tablespoon of golden syrup. Once melted mix well and add 275g of coarse porage oats (I use Scott’s Old-Fashioned Porage Oats) and stir to combine. At this stage I throw in a good quantity of dried cranberries but you can leave the mixture as it is or add nuts, glace cherries or your own preferred dried fruit. Having given the flapjack mixture a final stir, tip it into a baking tin – my 22x22cms non-stick tray-bake tin is ideal – and press the oat mixture evenly across the base of the tin using the back of a metal spoon. Bake in a pre-heated oven (190C / 375F / Gas Mark 5) for 25 minutes. After the 25 minutes I turn the oven off and leave the tin of flapjack in the oven for a further 25 minutes to dry out a little. Once removed from the oven, score into pieces to suit your appetite (!) and allow to cool completely before removing from the tin.
Signwriting
Many of you who’ve seen our flagship vehicle recently may have noticed that the signwriting was starting to look a bit worn. The van is only two years old but unfortunately the quality of the original signwriting seems to have been fairly poor. Anyway, earlier this week I took my van along to Bel Signs in Crawley and a very helpful young man called Darren spent most of the day replacing all the signwriting. I have to say that the quality of his work is brilliant, and more surprisingly he actually charged us less than we were charged two years ago by the people who did the job originally. This is also taking into account the fact that Darren had to take all the old signwriting off the van before he started – which took him several hours.
So if anyone wants any signwriting done, whether it’s a vehicle or a shop front, have a look at Bel Signs. I feel like I’m driving around in a new van now!
On Your Feet
One of the luxuries Gill and I treat ourselves to every few weeks is a reflexology treatment. We visit a lady called Georgina who lives between Godstone and Bletchingley. I went along last night and my feet felt wonderful afterwards. I am always amazed how George (as we call her) can identify what problems I’m experiencing, such as a bad back, just from massaging my feet. The treatment will also help to ease most other bodily ailments.
I must admit that before my first visit I was somewhat sceptical and also worried that having ticklish feet would be a problem. I needn’t have worried!
My feet still feel wonderfully relaxed today and I’m already looking forward to my next visit. If you feel you’d like to give it a try let me know and I’ll happily pass over George’s details.
Bagits
If you’ve got smaller items to send via an Overnight service then give our Bagit service a try. From only £11 we can deliver your item to most areas of the Mainland UK for next working day delivery. If you’ve got two deliveries then they’re only £9 each. For £2 more we’ll get them there before noon next working day. If you’ve got even more items then greater discounts are available. See the link on our ‘What We Do’ page, or call us on 0845 092 0010 for more details. All prices are subject to VAT.
Economy Document Service
From today, 1st June, we’ve launched an exciting new service for smaller items to Central London. If you’ve got items or small easily portable packages (under 5kgs) to get to Central London then why not try our ‘Economy Document Service’? The cost is only £30 + VAT and we won’t charge you the London Congestion Charge either! If the items aren’t desperately urgent then give us four hours from the time you call and we’ll get them there for you – so if you call us at 11am for example we’ll deliver by 3pm. The following London Postcodes are included in this service: W1, W2, W8, WC1, WC2, EC1, EC2, EC3, EC4, SE1, SW1, SW3, SW7, SW10, E1, N1 & NW1.
Initially we are only able to offer this service from the following start postcodes: RH1, RH2, RH3, RH4, RH6 & RH9 but if the service proves popular we hope to be able to extend it to include areas further out.
PLUS
If you’ve got more than one delivery then you can save even more! The second delivery would only be a further £20 + VAT and then each extra delivery only £15 + VAT.
Call us now on 0845 092 0010 for more details.
We are also happy to offer the service in reverse – so if you’ve got something small to be collected from Central London to come back to you we can do that as well. However we do need an extra hour for this please – so call us at 10am for example and we’ll have it back with you by 3pm.
Going Batty
We saw the announcement in the Surrey Mirror last week and thought ‘That sounds interesting’. So there we were last night, outside The Pavilion restaurant in Priory Park, Reigate at about 8.30pm. We were a little early and there were only a couple of other people there, apart from myself, Gill and her sister Ali. However by 8.45 there were about fifty of us altogether and two Priory Park rangers. The wardens handed out half a dozen bat detectors and off we went towards the trees at the top of the park. This is apparently where they roost and we were told that we should see them coming out of the trees on their way to hunt. The bat detectors were tuned to 45 megahertz which most bats can be detected at.
Anyway 9.15 came and went and still no sign of a bat. We were beginning to think this was a pointless way of spending a Thursday evening in May. We were led down to the lake and still nothing. Then, suddenly, Gill thought she saw something up above just for a split second. A few minutes later the bat detectors starting making whooshing noises and we knew we were in business. The rangers told those who had detectors to try different frequencies as each species of bat has its own particular frequency. Within a few minutes there were a huge variety of noises emanating from these machines. And then we started seeing them.
One or two at first, darting about over the lake, hoovering up all the small insects they could find. Then there were some quite large bats which were flying more slowly and actually catching insects on the water. These are called ‘Daubenton’s Bats’ or ‘Water Bats’. There were also ‘Soprano Pipistrelles’ which are only the size of your thumb and ‘Noctule Bats’ which are much larger ( they can have a wingspan of up to 45cms ). The place was alive with bats everywhere of all shapes and sizes. Some of them came quite close to us as they were darting about.
We’d been told not to use our torches as, contrary to public opinion, bats can actually see and they don’t like torchlight. It was amazing just how much light there still was coming up to 10 o’clock at night. Our eyes had grown accustomed to the twilight and the spectacle of watching these bats was truly mesmerising. Anyway we thought we’d better call it a night but we’ll definitely be back to have another look.
Why not go and see for yourselves? To find out more about bats visit The Bat Conservation Trust website.
Music On The Move
The question on everyone’s lips these days, seems to be ‘what’s playing on your iPod?’ Whenever I switch on my iPod I find the battery’s flat – so for me, the answer is always ‘nothing at all’. It’s a very different matter when it comes to what I listen to whilst I’m driving – the CD I play over and over and over again is ‘The Very Best of Rondo Veneziano’.
I first came across it at our wonderful hairdressers – Pisani in Woodhatch and I loved it the first time I heard it. I left many hints for Frank over the following months, but it was my sister, Ali, who gave it to me for Christmas – and, as luck would have it, she received a bonus copy of her own, courtesy of Amazon. She had ordered my CD online but, in Amazon’s infinite wisdom, her order got into a loop and started duplicating itself. She phoned to stop the flood of emails acknowledging orders, but too late to stop a second copy of the CD being sent out, which she was told she could keep with Amazon’s compliments. So Ali now works along to this brilliantly uplifting music, whilst I drive. I can’t explain it, obviously it’s not everyone’s taste, but it just makes me feel happier as I drive around. It’s excellent music on the move, with its upbeat momentum and a spring in its step!
It’s not Frank’s sort of music at all, as he told me when first he heard it – he loves all contemporary music from the 60s till now – he’s great to have on your quiz team! But a strange thing happens when, on the odd occasion, Frank drives Katy the Tardis… I will have left Katy’s radio tuned into the local BBC radio station but when I next return I find the volume turned up and ‘The Very Best of Rondo Veneziano’ playing!
To get a taster of mine and Ali’s favourite CD visit the Rondo Veneziano site.
© copyright 2010 Frank Brown Delivers LLP
Frank Brown Delivers LLP no 0C328313 Partners: Francis Anthony Brown, Gillian Rosemary Brown