Important news is that the AVEX Exhibitors' Manual goes online this month. No more the fat, daunting printed manual with umpteen pages that have to be completed by hand and returned by post or fax, but an easy-to-access list of pages to complete on the screen - for everything from electrics to flower displays.

Simply go to the AVEX site (www.avex2009.co.uk) and click on ‘Exhibitor' and then ‘Exhibitors' Manual'. Simple as that - so they say ...

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As if he doesn't have enough to do, what with Bunzl Coffee Point and the AVA, Charles Trace - also a member of VI's very own Vending Star Chamber - was recently in the press in his role as Vice Chair of the Greenwich Leisure Limited Sport Foundation, presenting 19 Olympic hopeful athletes in Surrey with training grants.

GLL Sport Foundation plans to give more than £1.5 million to young athletes in the south in the run-up to the Olympics in 2012.

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Have we now heard the final death knell for cigarette vending? Nobody would pretend that this sector of our industry has had it easy during recent years, but with the sale of cigarettes now to go effectively ‘under the counter' what hope is there?

Once upon a time, tobacco vending had its own trade association (NACMO) and even its own exhibition. Vending machines - now claimed to be the source of cigarettes for up to a fifth of young smokers - will "face a ban or age-proofing measures such as requirement to buy tokens for the machines, rather than using cash", said Alan Johnson, Health Secretary.

Although I am a ‘holier than thou' ex-smoker, I recall that when I started smoking back in the ‘60s there were fairly stringent age restrictions in force, but they didn't have very much impact then (at  least, not with me). Now, the government has raised the age limit for buying tobacco from 16 to 18, but where there's a will ...

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Who remembers seeing a vending machine selling fresh fruit on London's Paddington Station - back in 1929 or so? There was a picture of it in the Daily Mail just a few weeks ago.

Apparently it was one of a number of newly discovered photographs unearthed recently relating to the history of the Great Western Railway - described at the time as ‘God's Wonderful Railway', something of a far cry from the description of railways of today!

Seemingly a merchandiser with 36 individual ‘boxes' each containing pieces of fruit which could be accessed by inserting cash, it makes you wonder just how far we have come. Would such a machine not find a home today in schools?

This, and other GWR memorabilia, can be found in the Steam Museum of the Great Western Railway, in Swindon.

John Sewell