Is it me, or was this Christmas the longest holiday ever, with many companies finishing up the week before Christmas and some still not back by until 3rd and in some cases 7th January? How wonderful! If that’s the new trend, then I must confess that I for one am a fan.
Well, now that we are all back at our steering wheels and desks, we thought we would wrap up December and indeed 2018 with our end of year Newsletter.
So, how was Christmas for you? Restive, festive, reflective? Everybody has their favourite thing about Christmas and for me, one of my firm favourites are the jokes to be found in Christmas Crackers. Yep, very sad I know 😊 ~ but, in the spirit of sharing, my personal favourite this year was:-
“What do you get if you cross a caterpillar with a parrot? A walkie-talkie!”
Admit it, you smiled 😊… just a little bit.
Well, what an eventful year that was! We started with the winter to end all winters, as we had a rather lively visit from Siberia, catchily nicknamed ‘the Beast from the East’. We then had a stonkingly warm summer which seemed to go on and on. Then we closed the year out with what must have been one of the mildest Christmas’s on record. It does make you wonder, doesn’t it?!
December for us epitomised the transport challenges we faced across the year, with signal and line issues affecting major rail networks and then the appearance of ‘Drones’ bringing Gatwick airport to a standstill for a couple of days. But on a positive note, at least we didn’t have thousands taking to the street in high viz vests blocking motorways, roads and generally partying on down with ‘home made pyrotechnics’ in our cities. Ever thankful for small mercies.
As always, December was also a very interesting sporting month as ‘the special one’ left Manchester United with his carpet bag crammed full of cash. Love him or hate him, somehow English football will not be quite the same without him. Liverpool continued their winning spell and appear to have opened a small gap on the chasing pack. Will the trophy be returning to Anfield after an extraordinarily long absence (One year of which we looked after it here in the East Midlands YAY)? We will see, but for sure can expect Manchester to have a say in things once again.
Not just 2018, but very much December too became synonymous with the dreaded ‘B’ word. I’m not so sure it’s not more about ABC – the C for Compromise and the A for Armageddon. As so-called ‘learned members’ in several houses of ‘representatives’ both sides of the English Channel posture and pontificate, I think it is fair to say we have many more moments ahead between now and a prospective March B-Day (or bidet as the French might call it). What might ‘project bidet’ mean for East Midlands businesses in the coming months? Are we all ready for BREXIT? Well, just in case we are not I suspect Evoke Telecom will be putting together a telecommunications ‘Brexit Checklist’ for our customers and followers, so watch out for that hitting your mailboxes at some point in January.
Well, did we actually do any work in December I hear you ask? In reality, December turned out to be the busiest one we have had since Evoke started! Here are a couple of projects from the last 2 weeks of the month alone, that kept us from an early sherry:-
- The upgrading of a large college system, out of hours, to Avaya’s latest release 11 software and adding some spiffing new J series handsets
- The installation of a new Ericsson-LG iPECS telephone system at a holiday park
- The installation of our first FTTP at a local Derbyshire gate manufacturer
- and we moved a major school from ISDN30 to SIP lines, across their entire estate
… Exhausting stuff!
Then, when we came back to work at 09.00 on Wednesday 2nd January, we managed an office move for one of our customers who was moving to larger new offices, removing, re-installing and upgrading their Avaya telephone system for them. Needless to say, all went exactly to plan. But more about that in January’s update.
Finally, we did have a disappointing moment too when we were called in to help a local religious establishment who were being threatened with service removal by their existing telecoms provider. Shocking stuff! Needless to say, we have provided all the support and reassurances that “Father J” could need to ensure one and all could relax and enjoy their Christmas. Phew!
Read our December updates here:
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