Joyce's Colum: January

Firstly, a belated Happy New Year to you all, and I can hardly believe that virtually one month has passed into 2026, very scary really how time flies anyway hope you all enjoyed a good festive season.

A well-known and popular lady in our industry celebrated a new decade birthday just before Christmas and the lady in question is none other than our Karen, Karen Cooke (Codd her married name.)  Karen celebrated her 60th birthday and had plenty of surprises courtesy of her husband Billy. Firstly he whisked her off to New York for a few days, where I believe they had a ball, secondly he treated her to a nice hotel in the UK with an overnight stay and a celebration dinner, thirdly he took her to the races and had a private box with all the trimmings and bubbly of course, fourthly he had a race named after Karen and then she had to present the cup to the winning jockey of her race. Gosh Karen, that was some great birthday, and what a lovely, thoughtful and kind husband you have to give you so many special treats and a birthday you will surely remember. I am sure all of us that know you would like to wish you a belated Happy Birthday.

Now for some not so good news about Karen, at the first day of the recent EAG she ended up at the hospital, apparently, she suffers from gallstones and they decided to play her up. I can sympathise with you Karen as I had my gall bladder removed a few years ago and prior to that the pain was excruciating. The next stage now for Karen is an operation which is booked for early February, so here’s hoping she will soon be up and about again and feeling much better. I know she and Billy were hoping to attend the Irish show in March, so just take care Karen, and I am sure Billy will be there for your every whim and will cosset you to recovery.

It is nice that even though people leave the industry and move on in life that they still keep contact and meet up with previous friends and colleagues, and the photo here shows Evelyn Wilkinson at lunch with some of her ex-colleagues from her days spent at Deith Leisure.

As we all know we have the first exhibition of 2026 EAG under our belts and this month and next there will be chat and reports from it. I know the show appeared to go well and there were many exhibitors from numerous countries showing their wares ad many first time exhibitors, which is great it is always good to get new blood into exhibitions and the industry. The visitor numbers didn’t disappoint either, in fact the first day of the exhibition was the busiest I have seen on a first day for many years, and the following two days appeared to have a good attendance too. So well done to the organisers who obviously pulled out all stops to try and make the exhibition a success, and from what I know it appeared they had achieved this.

It was nice to see Instance Automatics back in the exhibition after missing the 2025 one, but very sad not to have the owners of the company Ian and Tina Eason on their stand. Apparently, Ian had an operation the week before the exhibition and he didn’t feel well enough to attend, shame really as you were both missed, and I really missed our chats and catch-up. Hopefully, you are now on the mend Ian and will be back to 100% good health, but please take care and don’t overdo things.

The late Derek Horwood of UDC received a posthumous award from EAG the Chairman’s Award recognising Derek (who sadly passed in 2025) as a respected businessman and friend to many, whose life’s work brought pleasure to countless others. What a fitting tribute to a great industry character, and I am sure that his son Mark and all at UDC were honoured to received the award.

Ex industry personality Andrew Murden decided to pay a visit to the exhibition and I have to say he looked very well, and he says he is enjoying his retirement spending lots of time on holidays around the World and just relaxing. As I think most of you are aware, Andrew had quite a collection of motor bikes as he was an avid biker, but he has recently sold two of them, he felt the time was right as you can’t go on collecting forever.

Derek Lynch of Radical Shock received a great response to the NFC Contactless Payment System at the recent ACOS exhibition that he decided to take a stand at EAG to test the waters there. The JFC system is a one stop solution for wallet based redemption, with complete stock control with no need for expensive hardware as it is based in The Cloud and has bank level security. Derek experienced a buoyant first day with strong potential and the second and third days were also lucrative for him. People were impressed with the simplicity but capabilities of the product plus it is offered at a competitive price.

A tribute and a glass were raised to the late industry personality Ron Vinson by some of his friends, his wife Jill and daughter Rebecca at the BACTA event on the first evening of the exhibition, the evening then continued on in The Fox. Ron was one true gentlemen of our industry and is sad loss to all of us that knew him 

There is also a photo here of Jill Vinson with Grahme Wood (yes Grahme is spelled correctly) who is a programmer and he has the nickname of Splinter, don’t ask me why, but by the looks of it Jill and he enjoyed a good catch-up.     

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29 January 2026

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