Cycles everywhere plus thumb update

The cycle of life continues at Blenheim Palace. As we prepare for the funeral of Tony White (our construction manager) we received joyful news today of the birth of Alison Digweed's grand-daughter (Sophie Grace) ten days early. Alison retires tomorrow as our payroll manager, both to try to keep up with her husband and to share the lives of her grand-children. Remarkable timing really - and there was me thinking she wanted to avoid a payroll year end! Remarkable is a word that fits Alison very well really; she has done a stunning job.

As I said to one group today, these events remind us that life moves relentlessly on. You can either rage against it or smile and flow with it, enjoying and making the most of the ride. Alison is most definitely doing the latter. We are very lucky to have been part of the last 15 or so years of her life, we wish her the very best in the next 15 as she and Chris bless their grandchildren's lives too.

It was also great to see so many former members of staff at our farewell celebrations for Alison, proof if ever needed of the enduring strength of the family which makes up Blenheim.

We continue to focus our efforts and investment in our year long "Buy One Day, Get 12 Months Free" promotion. We had some credit card glitches over the weekend, causing delays for our guests and stress for our staff. I was impressed and proud that our IT Manager Tim Long responded by offering to shift his working week so that he is in every weekend until the end of summer and that he will base himself in the heart of our Operations team to provide the best support possible both to our reception teams and to our guests. Ensuring that we give the best and smoothest welcome to our guests is incredibly important to us. That we are usually achieving that is clear from our performance - again this weekend we had 50% more visitors than this time last year. (No, we are not full!)

I met a lot of happy visitors on Saturday afternoon and I took some dear friends around both the State Rooms (guided tour) and Blenheim Palace: The Untold Story (guided by the ghost of the first Duchess's maid Grace Ridley). Sometimes we get so familiar with this that we take it for granted; the look on my friends faces reminded me what a special experience Blenheim Palace is.

I am glad to report that my thumb has healed. I am utterly underwhelmed by the sympathy that was not aroused. My triathlon training staggers along but I get on my bike this week to ramp up the training.

Which probably brings us back to the beginning of this missive....

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The sun is shining, except on my thumb

I start this blog in something of a state of surprise for two reasons. One - I have sustained my first blogging injury. A sprained thumb! No, really, I am actually in pain typing this, albeit I only use my thumb to hit the space bar. You may find I use a lot of very long words in this post. And two - to my horror I have received emails telling me that people are actually reading this. That is less surprise, more shock; I had come to regard this blog in quite a short space of time as something of a private confessional. The discovery that it is not private caused me to very rapidly reread what I had previously written in a state of mild panic. I think I may have got away with it though, as long as She Who Must be Obeyed doesn't find out.

I actually hurt my thumb in triathlon training, swimming at Westminster Hill (one of those humiliating training sessions in which a twelve year old girl glides past me twice every length without any effort on her part - why do I work so hard to go so slowly?). This is my second Blenheim Palace Triathlon ; I entered last year. My training has picked up sharply over the last ten days and I do, of course, have a much better idea of what I am facing this year. But the pressure is so much greater. My colleague, Roger File (our Property Director) kindly came along to support me last year with his family. They watched as I crawled around in a dreadful state (I nearly drowned, honest!) so I regaled them with tales of how demanding and challenging the triathlon actually is. To my horror, Roger has now entered this year's triathlon and will therefore quickly realise just how uselessly slow I was. The only possible ray of sunshine is that he is asking me for advice! So, here goes:

1. Rest is very important. Do absolutely nothing for at least three weeks before the race


2. Getting adequate carbs is also very important. I recommend a large bag of chips every night for the same three weeks


3. Roger - you wanted to know which bikes I would recommend. I have done some research and believe this picture represents state of the triathlon art

How long is it until the race? 8 weeks....

On the same subject, our Head of Finance, Anita Donaldson, is now working part time to accommodate training for qualification for the World Triathlon championships! I can't even imagine being good enough to contemplate that level of performance. Go for it, Anita, we are all in awe of you right now!

On Friday, we bid farewell to our popular Under Butler Stephen Duckett. Stephen is a big loss, apart from his normal duties, he also led music at Blenheim. Visitors were often surprised and delighted to be regaled on the Willis Organ in the Long Library, or on the smaller (and much more interesting) Chapel Organ. He introduced the Sunday music in the Long Library and set up the Blenheim Singers who performed Handel's Messiah at the end of last year. This loss, however, is tinged with happiness - Stephen leaves us to fulfil his lifelong ambition to take up Holy Orders. Take care, friend - we are proud that you have followed your calling. We'll try not to worry too much that total isolation from the world seemed preferable to another day with us.

In spite of the sadness surrounding the death of Tony White, our construction manager, there is some creeping optimism around the place. While the news each night still carries gloom and doom stories about recession, our numbers are well up. The weather has also been terrific, and Blenheim Palace is a bewitchingly beautiful place in the sunshine. Deep down, we feel this will be a great year to enjoy Blenheim Palace. The daffodils are out and blooming, the Palace stonework radiates a honey-coloured joy from all around, the park is as stunning a landscape as ever. Especially if you are an Annual Pass Holder (and why wouldn't you be? get it free with every Palace ticket!), I would strongly recommend popping over in the week in the sunshine to bask in this opulence. Come and sit on the slope inside Woodstock Gate overlooking the lake, gazing across at Grand Bridge and Palace in the sunshine... you will be uplifted, I promise you!

Incidentally, I had intended to write something about our business response to recession (given that this is a finance director's blog) but once again I seem to have run out of time and space. Next time...

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Rest in peace, Tony

Just as the year seemed to be going our way, we received terribly sad news last night.

Our popular and well-known Head of Construction, Tony White, was found dead last night. It appears that he may have suffered a fatal heart attack while out walking his dogs near Cornbury Park but we won't know the full story for a few days.

Tony was a remarkable man. He was so astonishingly capable at his job that we tended to forget what a challenging job he did. He led our new-build programme at an amazing pace. Yet he was never too busy to lend a hand to anyone who asked. And when you asked, his response was always overwhelmingly kind and supportive.

We'll always remember his spontaneous generousity - the muffins, the Easter treats, the strange alcohol which would come back from his travels! We'll remember Friday nights at the Kings Arms.

We'll remember the laughter in his eyes as he drily recounted the latest mischief on his sites.

We'll remember the way he would always stand up for his friends or for a stranger wronged on the street (earning a pair of black eyes for the latter).

He has left a permanent mark on each of us and he has left a permanent mark on the Estate.

God bless you, Tony.

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Keeping it going...

Three thoughts here based on this title.

1) obviously, despite having had loads of blog ideas BEFORE I started writing this blog, I now find myself bereft of ideas. ONE WEEK IN. This is potentially disastrous. I know it takes several repeats of everything to develop a good habit (well, any habit I suppose. I probably have more experience of bad habits in truth). Surely I cannot possibly fail in the first week? Perhaps I can blog about four English sides going through in the Champions' League? Maybe not - and maybe there shouldn't be an apostrophe in Champions' League. No, I shall keep blogging...

2) my preparations for my second Blenheim Triathlon are going CATASTROPHICALLY badly. No, this is not trying to lower expectations. Swimming, biking and running are almost non-existent in my week. I just cannot seem to develop the reasonably good training habits I managed last year. It's a bit too much like hard work. To be clear, it's not as if I am any good at any of the disciplines. In fact, my talent if anything seems to lie in being very good at Not Stopping. I am a pretty good Not Stopper, if I do say so myself. So, next week is it - from Monday I am going to be a very serious student of the athletic arts. There is clearly room for improvement from last year (avoiding a near-death experience in Blenheim Lake would represent progress). I will keep going on this too. Or start going anyway.

3) business point. Sorry, I have to do this otherwise someone will notice this blog and actually question its value. Anyway, you are probably only reading this because of the Blenheim Palace connection so I really ought to humour you with some business. And business is tough out there, for example we have had two big Blenheim Palace Natural Mineral Water customers go bust in the last two weeks and our investment in debt collection is growing fast. Yet, even in this slightly luxury end of the market, there is opportunity out there. We have really pushed on in our London sales efforts for the mineral water and have landed some nice new business. We are even now exporting water to Hong Kong (surreal, isn't it, but there is a big ex-pat community out there which yearns for all things British and, let's face it, there are few things more British than Blenheim Palace and shipping water around the world wrapped in a heavy glass bottle). We are also hunting investment opportunities in the water market and may be close to landing a really good one. My hat goes off to Trevor Rawden who runs that business and is doing a terrific job - he is feeling a bit unwell right now (he is an Arsenal fan) but we all appreciate him and wish him a very speedy recovery. David (his No 2) and I will try not to mess everything up behind his back.

Incidentally, in our main visitor business, we are up 20% across the board this week despite extremely grey weather. Apparently Sunday is going to be stunning - and apparently I will be keeping the garden going too (according to She Who Must Be Obeyed).

Ah well...

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Starting my blog

Well, here goes. I've agreed to write a blog for the Blenheim Palace website. In fact, even worse, I volunteered to write a blog. In truth, no-one was going to ask me (I'm the Finance Director - can count a bit, can write a bit, hopeless with people) and doing a blog on our website is about as close to public profile as I'd dare get.

It took a bit of pondering to figure out what I should blog about. I'd read Naked Conversations by Robert Scoble and Shel Israel - a classic of its genre. That scared me - don't overtly market, be incredibly honest, write very frequently. Er, I'm an accountant. Have you seen accountants marketing?

I kept reading - I'm good at that, by the way. Could I sustain a blog about the trials and tribulations of the Finance Director of a famous estate?

Then life here began to get exciting and a little bit terrifying. It was, of course, looking like a tough year to run a heritage visitor attraction. We had undergone a substantial cost reduction programme last year as the full extent of the likely recession began to emerge. For us, that pain was compounded by some mandatory works on the Blenheim Dam (big numbers! More about that another day - suffice to say that Capability Brown was a genius at landscaping but, by modern standards, he has something to learn about dam construction. And easy access to formal gardens too - that's another one for another day.) In this climate, no-one was expecting bumper visitor numbers.

Then we had a cunning idea. It's a tough year for everyone, we all need help. I had cunningly cut the marketing budget, so whatever we did, it had to involve extremely efficient use of marketing money. And then it came to us. Just give every visitor an annual pass - I mean a proper gold-plated (almost) photographic pass for a year. More paying visitors, lots of return visitors plus a huge jump in our customer relationships and goodwill.

We knew some heritage houses owned by charities had done it quite successfully - Leeds Castle do something similar with Gift Aid but I think there you just hold onto your paper ticket and use it until it falls apart. There's an obvious flaw there - they miss out on all the customer information which we treasure. Sadly, it turns out that there was quite a flaw in our plan too...

Our execution required that we take name, address, contact details and photos from every customer and print them beautiful membership cards on the spot (actually on several spots). We had about two weeks to find kit, to write the software, find marketing partners, train lots of staff. We opened - and all hell broke loose. It turns out that, even though we thought we had made the process as fast as possible (an extra £500 per card printer took 20 seconds out!) (I like parentheses, by the way) it still took far too long. Our marketing partners at the Oxford Times did a great job. Lots of people arrived. I mean, LOTS. Queues formed.

Somehow "queues" does not do it justice.

Try Queueueueueueueueueueueueueueueueueueueueueueueueueueueueuueueueueueues.

We tried desperately to speed it up. Emergency meetings behind kiosks. Much interesting language. Extremely good-humoured customers and staff. Very calm Operations team. At our size of business, you don't get nice integrated IT systems for this kind of thing. We had our hotchpotch of hardware, a custom designed "processing system" and and off-the-shelf system
for grabbing photos and printing cards. It wasn't talking very well. In fact, at times the "magic whoosh" button wasn't working at all. Whooshing is the process by which the card printing programme gets all the information about the visitor and puts it on the card with the photo - apparently it's an IT term.

Overnight, every night, we made changes. We built more conversion points. Staff got faster. Miracles frequently occurred. Until Saturday 28th February. The Day the Database Got Too Big. To everyone queuing on that day, we hope you are still in the good mood with which you blessed us as you queued. We know it wasn't good. Our staff suffered too. Loads of you gave us your data online instead - a very good idea! We talked to many more of you as you queued - shared your frustrations, marvelled at your good humour. Agreed many times that it was such a good offer that it was worth the wait!

Just to reassure you, the database has been redesigned by two miracle workers. We have learned loads of lessons. It will never be that busy again.

And the sun is shining this weekend.

And I have worked out what this blog will be about.

It'll be about the people at Blenheim Palace - staff and visitors. Standing in that crowded courtyard, I realised more clearly than ever that it isn't the buildings or the landscape that makes Blenheim Palace special. It is everyone that was there that day.

It'll be about the real experiences of people here. Those who visit. Those who work front of house. Those working behind the scenes. It will be about the days when the magic whoosh button works. And it'll be about the days it doesn't.

Feel free to tell me when I'm talking tripe - I won't edit you out (that button doesn't work either).

Have a good weekend

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