Claire's IT Training and Solutions blog

This morning I was having a leisurely start to the day (I was in the bath, actually) when the phone rang. “Where are you?” I was supposed to be in Basildon, delivering an Excel Intermediate course. I had accepted the booking last month, but somehow failed to enter it into my diary, and I had completely forgotten about it. This is a trainer’s worst nightmare – even worse than the one where you’re completely naked and trying to deliver a course but haven’t been told what it is! I have let down my agency, the client and the delegates. Absolutely horrible.

The agent has spoken to the end client, and they agreed that it would be better to cancel the course, rather than have me arrive totally flustered and two hours late. Presumably they will reschedule, but I somehow doubt that I’ll be offered the replacement.

All I can do is apologise profusely and put steps in place to ensure that this never happens again.

Well, a new era has dawned – I finally have a website!

I am not by any stretch of the imagination a website designer, but my hosting company runs a decent-ish template service, and I AM an IT bod (and short of funds) so I thought I would give it a go myself. The site is at www.squibb.eu (if you didn’t get here from there). It took me about three months of odd moments, and a lot of to-ing and fro-ing with their (very good) help department – especially when the template wasn’t obeying its own rules and would suddenly throw a section to the bottom of the screen without being asked.

Once I had “finished” it, I put it up online and emailed my kids to review it. My daughter came back with some excellent, constructive tweaks, which I applied, and now it’s all live and shiny. I’m pretty pleased with the result!

But if you do want a website designing and contact me, I will put you in touch with somebody who does an excellent job professionally, and at very reasonable rates – not me!