I hope that if you attended last week's Cleaning Show in London, your journey home wasn't quite as challenging as mine was. In a normal year, I can travel from Birmingham where the Show used to be staged, more quickly than I can generally get from London's ExCel down to my home in Epsom, a mere 18 miles away to the south west. This year capped all others though, as in the aftermath of industrial action along with driver shortages, I was reminded of the Steve Martin/John Candy movie, 'Planes, Trains & Automobiles' - but without the laughs. As you know I'm already miffed with London Mayor Sadiq Khan over his move to damage lives and livelihoods by expanding the Ultra Low Emission Zone throughout Greater London – which in many cases, includes the ‘leafy suburbs’ and sporadic public transport - so to find that the bus longer exists, which for decades had run to Epsom from Sutton (which was where the trains happened to be finishing that day despite there apparently being 'a good service'), and that I'd have to catch three buses taking me miles out of my way first instead, had me almost spitting blood. I probably shouldn’t say it here, but I recall thinking that he’d have been under a bus, had I chanced upon him in the street!

Despite all this, the Show made everything well worth the effort. It was my first, post-Covid, so to be able to catch up with industry ‘family’ after all this time felt really special. As did meeting new industry friends, of course. On top of that, there was so much which was new, to see and learn about. I’ll be bringing these discoveries to you over the coming weeks so do keep an eye out, but in the meantime, congratulations to the winners of the Cleaning & Support Services Association’s ‘Innovation Showcase: The Future of Cleaning’. These were, in alphabetical order, Cobotics Services, ICE, Infogrid, Solaris and Wecovi (Bubble Flush). I’ll be covering these impressive innovations in detail, as they so rightly deserve.

Congratulations also to Terry ‘Turbo’ Burrows, who once again managed to retain his title as the World’s Fastest Window Cleaner, in a competition overseen by a team of Guinness World Record qualified adjudicators and filmed by the BBC. I’m wondering whether, as well as being the fastest, Terry is also the longest-serving holder of this particular record?