Why I Voted to Leave the EU

(I wrote this in response to a lady friend who was grieving after the referendum result meant we were to leave the EU. She was genuinely hurt in her soul)

I feel your pain. I can see it in your writing. You are right to grieve. You have lost something dear to you. 

I just wonder if it helps for you to know something of those that aren't grieving now. Would it in part alleviate some of your sorrow, knowing that others are not suffering in the same way? Or that, the reason for your grief and sorrow has given others a new lease of life. A death can also be the portent of a new life, a resurrection. If part of your healing is to hear of how this result has brought happiness and joy to someone else and that this could be part of your healing, you might enjoy reading this.

After I read your brilliant piece, I spent a day riding my motorbike. The best place in the world I have found to clear my thoughts and think afresh. You prompted me to look so much more deeply at my own decision in this referendum and I, like you, saw the emotion that this involved. We don't live in a logical paradigm. I am an emotional voter too. There has hardly been a single factual piece of information with which anyone could inform their decision. In the end you go with your gut, your heart, your life experience and your expectations for the future.  This is why I decided to vote to leave.

Background; went to school in Holland for several years (for a while Dutch was my first language), family lived in Holland, Belgium, Germany and had a house for 40 years in France. My father ended his day France and was buried there just before he was awarded an MBE for his services to the community he served in that country. Julie and I have hosted 250 students from around the world (50% Europeans) in the last 20 years. My son went to University in Holland for a while. We have opened our house to refugees and immigrants continually for the last 10 years. We had a family of 3 Afghan refugees live in our house for 9 months. In the last year we have had 2 homeless Romanian lads live with us, one of them shared our bedroom as there was no other room in the house. We have 10 people currently living in our house including a 92 year old, a Latvian migrant, and employee of Asda's, a Scottish College lecturer and a law student from Kent University.

Here we go; let me tell you why I am relieved, filled with hope and more joyful than at any time in the last 10 years.

However it happens, either quickly or as a painful extraction, I will be relieved that we are finally pulling away from an institution and a way of life dominated by un-paralleled bureaucratic interference. A byword for any seemingly useless and irrelevant piece of legislation has always been "oh that's the lot in Brussels telling us what to do again". Although a lot of it was anecdotal and amusing (bent bananas), it became part of the conversation never-the-less. You never heard anyone defend it or come up with a reason that our lives would be improved by our membership of the EU. Whether it was the case or not, few of us have fully investigated the pros and cons of our membership for the last 40 years and most of us were never in enough of an educated position to judge. Thus the EU failed to take us with it, to these new heights of a social and legislative nirvana, where the world is a better and fairer place. We were just left with a feeling that they were interfering busy-bodies. 

I am relieved that I might be further away from France, whose shambolic bureaucracy prevents me from shutting down our family bank account in Cannes because they have not had written instructions from my dead mother.  I don't want to be associated with a country whose legal system is corrupt to the core and when we sold our house, even the lawyers requested our fee payment in cash in order to cheat their own government (they didn't get away with that - which is why it took another 6 months to complete the deal). Even to be in the same trading block as them feels like an insult to me when the farmers and dock workers in that country shut the country down at the slightest inclination that they might have to work as hard as we do in the UK. A French doctor once told me that the maximum working week legislation of 48 hours had them all rolling in the aisles. Not a single person they knew had ever worked half that number of hours in the last 20 years. I don't want to be in an organisation, working on a supposedly level playing field where half the workers are enjoying full time rates but only putting in half the hours.  I have felt sad and ripped off by the injustice of this for so long. Don't even start me on how Greece has rewarded its workforce. Now I am relieved. I am no longer being mugged.

This is my experience. These are my personal examples of the emotional response I have made. Right or wrong. It is what I know. What has happened to me.

I am relieved that my business might now be protected by laws made in this country designed to serve the people of this country. The operation of holiday rental homes (short term rental of property) has always been considered a bona-fide business in this country. Like any other business, it was subject to the rules of taxation that allowed it to compete and prosper as any other business has done. This was not accepted by the EU, whose other member countries did not permit this type of business to be classified in this way. There was much talk of us having to abandon this tax structure in the UK in order that we conform to the rest of Europe. For some time, I was under the impression we would have to close our business. I felt bad about that. What harm was I doing to anyone? Was this just another stupid piece of the EU that I could do without? I think it was Tony Blair who stepped in and saved our little industry back then but in recent years the prospect of this impending legislation had reared its head again. Now we are leaving the EU, I am so relieved, I can't tell you.

I know now that they won't close my business down simply for the sake of conformity to some foreign dictat. What a relief.

I am very relieved (the most relieved) that we will pull away from allowing unlimited numbers of EU citizens unfettered access to this country. The original countries were within my knowledge and understanding. We have lived in most of them, understood their ways, enjoyed their cuisines and different lifestyles and mostly shared their values and morals. When the EU started to expand into countries we had never been to, or in some cases never heard of, it all started to affect my business. These were countries where the lifestyles and ways of life were so different from ours that I couldn't grasp why we had asked them to be part of our community. I don't know how much you know about the sex trade in Canterbury but I am quite up to speed (no I am not a consumer!). Some of our recently acquired Europeans have been setting up in this City and enjoying an income of £5,000 per week selling the bodies of their "girlfriends" who are servicing up to 10 men per night 7 days a week. How do I know this? Because they have been using my properties and I have the numbers and figures to show it. Yes there have been pop-up brothels (my made up name for them) appearing within 100 metres of Canterbury West railway station. It sickens me to the core. Who knows if these women are trafficked or held against their will? My friends from the same European country as these pimps, inform me that the girls could well be these gangsters sisters that are being offered up. I don’t want them here. We would be so much better off having some border controls that would hopefully weed out these criminals from coming to our country.

Prostitution is the oldest game in the world and no country is immune but this level of the monetisation of the human body is so alien to my culture and way of life it sickens me to my stomach. I have to clean out the used condoms, wash down the bathrooms used by the customers to wash the sex off their bodies before they return to their wives and deal with thugs, the like of which I have only ever seen in movies before. Frightening doesn't cover it. Yes of course they represent only the very smallest percentage of all European migrants to this country. They just happen to be the ones I have come across. I don't have the right to tar them all with the same brush but with no control on which of them enters this country, I have no option but to vote to leave and to instigate some form in border controls. None of them should have access to this country unless they can prove where and how they are making their money or have bona fide employment. That's fair isn't it? I have to prove every penny of expenses on what I earn. Their £5,000 per week (multiplied by 100s of similar operations throughout the country - just type "pop up brothel" into Google) is big bucks. Makes me mad as hell to think about it. I am so relieved it may come to an end.

These types of "holiday home" customer are a direct threat to my business. How do you think the neighbours enjoy living next to my properties now? This didn't happen even 2 years ago. Now it's common place. How am I supposed to vet who books my apartments? Excuse me sir, are you setting up a pop-up brothel? Are your girls here on their own volition? Can I put a line in my booking system apps that says; "no dogs, no children and defo no pimps from Eastern Europe"? Can I do that? My life is going to be much better off if these people are not given free travel passes to come here and destroy my business. What a relief it is to me to think I might be rid of this plague on me and my business. 

(note: the operation of these "pop-up brothels" is totally legal. All transactions and bookings are done on line. There is no money taken at the house. I have no legal way of preventing this sickening operation from happening right here in Canterbury, in my houses - it would be me breaking the law if I tried. However, through various means, I am now one step ahead of these guys, who now try to make bookings calling themselves George Smith and the like. I still live in fear of Bogdan turning up and threatening me. He wasn't pleased the last time I turned him down. They have tried offering me double rates. It will soon be threats to my person. The trouble is, they just move to the next holiday home operator who doesn't mind the extra money). 

The only means I have to fight them is to vote leave. 

I have also been responsible for closing down a dangerous and highly illegal drug running operation right down town in our City. It was run by the same "family" of men as the brothel operators. Sitting in a £60,000 Range Rover in my street with 2 young expendable lads running cocaine to the revellers in the local clubs. I felt particularly piqued with the arrogance and audacity of this open air operation from this RO registered vehicle. How dare you come here and do this and stick a finger up to us at the same time. Not even trying to be discreet or undercover. Detroying my neighbourhood and trying to ruin my business by selling drugs outside one of my houses with your sickening disregard for our lives or our lifestyle. And to sit there boasting of your gains and advertising your origins. It was too much to bear. (note:I had them run out of town. The police set up a surveillance operation and closed him down - I'm guessing he's just moved to another town).

I don't want these guys in the country and I'm relieved that in the not too distant future, there might  be some controls that might even prevent one or two of these criminals coming over here to harass me. 

I have accommodated some of their fellow countrymen in my house (even in an emergency in a bed in my bedroom) and they have told me the same thing. Do not trust them. They would sell their own sister for a few pounds. I know that sentiment as a fact now. It is my experience. It is actually what had happened to me and my business and my family. I'm not making this up. They were selling women in the streets of Canterbury as if they were slabs of meat laid out in the Goods Shed.

I am relieved that I may be able to protect my children from this influx of people who have such different values and life styles to ours, by voting for an exit to this madness. I sometimes thought I would lose my mind it bothered me so. There are people in this country who break the law. Thankfully, I have not met many of them in my community, even though I spent a considerable time as a visitor to Wormwood Scrubs. The ones I have met, I could work with. I could see who they were and how they came to that place in their lives. I'm afraid I cannot see the same things with this new threat. There are some men doing this stuff that are as cold and dead in their hearts and minds as you will find anywhere in the world. I have felt physically sick shaking their hands and holding their semen stained money. Physically sick. I am so relieved that this might just be a thing of the past.

I am relieved that maybe we will no longer have to pay to educate people from Europe who don't reside in our country. One Polish boy, who stayed with us for 3 years, gleefully dropped his mobile phone in the bin as he left, in the full knowledge that he would now never be traced by the Student Loan Company, as it was their only point of contact with him.  Off he went with his £35,000 worth of debt courtesy of the UK taxpayer. Other children who have stayed with us came here and enjoyed free top notch education at local grammar schools (surely some of our local students missed out as a result?). These children were carefully chosen by schools as they were triple grade A students and were always mentioned in the school results. This of course keeps those schools at the top of the educational leagues. This is a scam and another waste of tax payers money. Why did we insist in giving all this money away to European students? I felt mugged again. Now I can rejoice in the knowledge that this little scam might come to an end.

There are others in our community in Canterbury that have travelled from those regions that now live in shanty towns behind the Wincheap industrial estate and the Asda supermarket. I really thought I had seen it all in my travels through the shanties of New Dehli, Cape Town and Nairobi but now we have small cities of people living here as we might have done half a millennium ago. There are 6 or 7 poor people squeezed into a damp and cold rusting shipping container at the end of our road. But we do nothing about it because we want someone else to wash our cars. All of this is a result of the free movement of labour in Europe. It's the nasty, real side of this experiment that I see. I have helped men in the middle of winter living in tents right opposite the Langton Boys school, who were so ill they couldn't move and who were in actual danger of dying. They had no friends and no family by their sides. They came to England to find a better life and it nearly killed them. Why do we allow this to happen in our towns and cities. With no control of the numbers, they keep rolling in, believing the hyperbole that the streets are paved with gold. Our Porchlight charity and homeless shelters are buckling under the strain of an imported and wholly preventable problem. I have spent evenings at the church shelter with some of these guys who are the losers in this whole European debacle. It is not a pretty sight. These poor unfortunate souls are better off at home in their own communities and families. Let's end this misery.

Finally, I am relieved that I don't have to explain to Grandad why the country voted to stay in the EU in this referendum. At 92 he still lives his D-Day plus one nightmare. Driving over the dead bodies of his fellow countrymen to resupply the front line troops who were being slaughtered by german bullets. He still finds it impossible to allow a place in his heart for them or the continent that he fought to free. It sounds illogical to the younger members of our communities but we sit and eat together every night and I am frankly delighted that I don't have to live with a person who feels that this vote, had it been to remain, would have cast an acrid pall over his remaining days. For him, it was quite literally "the Germans are going to win in the end" type of scenario that was about to come true. The thought of all that blood and loss of life, in his eyes, would have been for nowt. However irrelevant this might be for 95% of the rest of the population and is illogical to us (given our relationship with Germany now), Grandad still lives with it. And we still live with him. He will not go to his grave with any regrets.

How would you expect me to vote?

I'm going to the pub to celebrate.

Last Trip to Kenya 2005

Amboseli National Park

Got these guys just at sundown

 

 Lovely evening lighting.

  My family under the tree. I'm taking the photo.

 On the way up country.  My wife is doing point duty.

 Up country visiting our family

Our family

 The office in Nairobi that I specified the electrics on in 1980 something which was later blown up by terrorists.

Canterbury - 28th July, 2007

OK so now the market has most probably topped out. All the gains of the last six months are wiped out. There is the possibility of one final burst upwards but don't count on it. Get out now and short the market or buy oil futures. $100 per barrel is on the way. Good luck.

Canterbury - 27th May, 2007

We have moved. The purchase of our 7th property in Canterbury has seen us finally moving into a house which will allow us all a bit of space. Even though we have 11 people (actually there were 2 other "unauthorised" visitors last night - making it 13) living in the house at the moment we will eventually settle on about 4 or 5 guests and have a room of our own each, something we have never had before.

The house is on the other side of town from where we were in Cowdrey Place but very close to most of our other rentals so very convenient from that point of view. It has added about 10 minutes to our school run journey but it has the benefit of the only cycle path in Canterbury at the end of the garden. It takes you straight into Canterbury city. Perfect for boys.

We have been worked off our feet in the last month. What with the move and working almost full time invigilating for all the exams that are on at the moment. The house at Cowdrey Place was rented from the day we left so it had to been made immaculate before we left. We are using it as a serviced apartment until July when it is then rented for a year to students. Then we moved into the new house with the electricians pulling up the floor boards and new guests arriving. We took our 2 chinese boys with us from Cowdrey and have since acquired 2 chinese girls (on half term from a local boarding school), a member of the cast of Starlight Express, who are in town for 3 weeks, James, our PGCE student who has come back for a week and Craig, an English Teacher who is also a long term customer. The family gets bigger.

Julie has handed in her notice and will leave her job at the end of June. She finally gave up with the ineptitude of the organisation and decided she could no longer be part of the shambles. She will miss the refugees and the mentors that she has nurtured but it can no longer be. She will do more work for our property business instead. She only needs to generate an extra week and a half of rentals to cover her salary.

The business is going well. We have a good number of advance bookings and have had a couple of really good long term executive business rentals, one of which has lasted since lastNovember.
We have also taken on a property for a friend to rent for holiday lets in the summer and to rent to students from September. We still do not generate sufficient income from the 7 properties to cover our living expenses. I estimate that we need at least 9 to do that but I think we have done well to get 7 on the road in 13 months. Not sure how we keep going at that rate. Our funds are virtually used now so we have to wait until some of the properties have sufficient equity in them to pull some out for the next deposit.

Now to the stock market: we are waiting for the moment. China is about to crash. Never in financial history has a market risen so audaciously since the South Sea Bubble in 1720. When it falls we will all suffer the consequences just as we shook when China sneezed in late February. If you sell your shares now, cash in any endowment policies and move any pension investments into cash you should be OK. Get ready to short.

You should see some photos of the new house below.

The 35 foot long attic room. It is a proper loft conversion with stairs and windows either end. All the junk you can see belongs to the people selling the house. When we moved in it had all been removed. Due to some overbooking by me (Richard) we have found ourselves (the 4 of us) sleeping in this room. We currently have 7 guests in the house in the 5 bedrooms on the first floor.

The house from the front. Note the lovely non-descipt '70s styling and the double car garage (possible extra 3 letting rooms!!).

The house from the garden. Lovely 1970s non-descript but a good size garden.

The view from our bedrooms looking over our garden and the Kings School playing fields over the fence.

Canterbury - 6th March, 2007

See, see, see, I told you so. Now you might just listen in future!

I first started talking about this over a year ago, so you should have had time to prepare. My little trick was to have some short positions riding on the downward movement. The gains I made on this were impressive and have recouped all my investments to date.

But folks the never ending bull market just ended. There may not be such drastic falls as last week but the trend now is downward for at least the next 3 years. Some pundits are even predicting a 1930s US style depression. Ride it down if you can. Keep your pensions and investments out of the market. Buy government bonds or savings certificates or even a property or 2. Meanwhile, try not to let them rip that shirt off your back. We are in for a rocky ride.

Christmas Message 2006

Our second Christmas in Canterbury arrives with much to report about our first full year in this lovely corner of Kent. Although at times it seems that we have made little progress, physically we have achieved an enormous amount. We have purchased and put into service 6 properties which now form the basis of an income producing business for us. We have sold our London properties and moved everything (including old motorbikes and an attic full of stuff) down to our now permanent place of residence. Where the feeling of “little progress” is apparent is in our own living circumstances and spiritual welfare. We are still living in a half decorated 1960s box house (with a lovely flat roof – no attic space!) which has 3 bedrooms and now has 8 full time residents including us. You work out the maths. Actually to be fair we have just completed the conversion of the garage into a fourth bedroom which makes it a little more bearable. However, living like this has been challenging and without the close support network that fed our spirits in Ealing, it has at times been hard going.

The boys have been great. Having had a year travelling and now a year living in conditions that are not much different to a caravan/boat/airport or RV, they seem not to be too disturbed by our lack of facilities and home comforts. Their school has been the constant factor for them (in fact for all of us – since it is why we are here) bringing a sense of rhythm and focus. Driving them out to the school in the middle of beautiful Kent farmlands everyday and watching them prosper has been a joy. We simply cannot overstate how much better Steiner Waldorf education is for them. What is apparent is that we are the only parents we know who have nothing but praise for their children’s school and the system of education they are using. Just imagine “no SATS” and no “league tables”. There is so much not right about our state system ...... and we thought it was “education, education, education”.

Julie has been far more involved in the school in the last 6 months and has made a big impact. Apart from the standard of baking improving immensely, the parents organisation has been inspired. Julie became the Chair of the parent contacts (parents committee). As a result, this year’s advent bazaar (the main fundraiser of the year) broke all records in generating funds for the school. Julie’s class stall produced over double the income of last year’s. More importantly the organisation of the event was well prepared and completed with far less stress than before. Everyone agreed that she had been instrumental in this process. The school will never be the same again.

So the whole school / life thing is beginning to work well and this keeps us going when we look around at our primitive physical environment at home.

In addition to “running the school”, Julie is also working at her job. Billed as a “part time” job (what it really means is part time money for full time work) it has turned into a major undertaking. Her partner has been ill off work for some time and she has been doing at least 2 people’s work. The organisation for whom she works (Kent Refugee Action Network) has had it’s problems too, which has distracted from the work to be done and caused additional levels of stress.

In addition to the school and the job, Julie has also been looking after 8 people at home (have we ever been left hungry? – like heck), 6 properties (we are now up to managing 32 beds – just imagine the laundry – up to 5 loads a day) and church activities, like selling Christmas cards to support church members in Uganda.

We have also managed to receive some visitors this year which has been a real blessing and joy. It is clear how important our friends and family are to us. Thank you for being there.

For my own part, I have been responsible for the buying of the properties and much of the day to day running of the business. I have discovered the joys and sorrows of ironing, toilet cleaning, decorating, waiting for clients to arrive and working for the best part on my own. Probably one of the main reasons small businesses fail is the fact that working by yourself can be a tedious and sole destroying task. It saps your drive and tests your determination. If you are not a “loner” you are in for testing time. I hate it. Working by myself does not sit well with me. Julie tries to come with me to the flats as much as possible (when she does we always seems to get more than twice as much done) but of course her time is limited.

To alleviate the pain, I have taken a greater interest in stock market trading and now spend a couple of hours a day “fiddling” (as Julie calls it). I have not had very impressive results this year (have you ever met a rich day trader?) but more lately I am following several disciplined approaches (discipline is essential) that look more likely to be profitable. My own view, which I have been spouting for a year now, is that the markets (housing, equities, commodities) are scheduled to experience a significant correction (downward). I am trying to prepare for this and position myself to take advantage of it. Remember house, share and commodity prices can go down as well as up and never invest more than you can afford to loose!

News from our families includes: my sister Suzanne and her husband Rob have decided that old Blightly is not for them and are flying off to Auz (envy and sadness but joy for them) , my brother Tony and his wife Carolyn have become grand parents (my niece Lauren became a mother to Weslie this summer), my mother has been suffering a number of ailments including something called “transient amnesia” which means she sometimes doesn’t know what she just did but she has been well looked after by her husband Paul. Julie’s Mum and Dad have had some health issues this year but on the whole seem well disposed. Oh and we acquired 2 new members of the family; Sneezer and Cheeseburger the boys pet rats.

We are all looking forward to a more stable year next year and one that is perhaps run at a more dignified pace (I am still trying to teach Julie to say “no” to new jobs). I do hope that we may see you in the New Year and that this season meets you with joy and celebration for the birth of our Saviour Jesus Christ.

Links:
www.canterburyservicedapartments.co.uk

Canterbury - 13th January, 2007

Happy New Year to all.

Our year has started with a bang. Enquiries for rentals are coming in all the time now. Before Christmas it was dead. Now we are up and running again. We are taking bookings for the summer and as far ahead as September. We have had some great long term bookings of 6 weeks or more. We are also getting corporate bookings which are really good as they tend to be at top dollar.

I have also just rented our student house out for the academic year 2007-2008. Students who are in halls of residence for their first year start looking for their second year' s accommodation in January and all the houses are booked by the end of January. We got a good group of 6 girls for the student accommodation and a load more enquiries. Julie suggested we got one of these other groups to come and look at our house, where we are living. Even though it is in a state, they loved it and it is now booked for the next academic year as well! So we have to move again. Oh yes please.

Good thing that we found a house already. Just a few days ago I think we found the largest house in Canterbury that we have ever seen which is at a price we could afford. OK it is 1970s horrible but it has 5 bedrooms and 35 foot long attic room with proper stairs going up to it, a master bedroom with a huge en-suite bathroom (just imagine how much we will be able to rent that out for - and you thought we might take it for ourselves - pah). It also has 2 internal garages (I'm thinking 2 more bedrooms or a swanky granny annex) and off street parking for at least 6 cars. Our offer has been accepted but there is work to do on our house (we are having the front garden converted into hard standing for parking at the moment) with a new kitchen and wiring and re-decoration and there is lots of work to do in the new house: 3 new bathrooms, 2 new kitchens and a redesign of the ground floor to create that King Edwards Gardens kitchen/diner that we hanker after.

At home we have just had 2 Perivian girls move in who are staying for 5 weeks on an english course (it is their summer holidays now) and a german boy who is on a 3 month exchange at the boys school. We also have our long term PGCE student so now we are back up to our normal compliment of 4 lodgers. They completely pay for the mortgage and council tax. We live for free.

Julie and I are doing a little invigilating at the moment as our school is doing the A/S level re-sits. Looks to me like most of them are sitting them again but at least the papers looked as if some work might have had to have been done in order to complete them.

Julie is working like stink. Most not doing her job (finding and matching mentors with refugees who need help) but farting about with the organisation of the enterprise that is supposed to support her. The lottery funded charitable quango would survive for about 30 nano seconds in the real world but it is run by hopeless incompetents who really couldn't organise a ...... Just imagine how this saps her. She is ready to leave, if it weren't for the refugees.

The boys are back in school. Sammy comes home every day covered from head to toe in mud. I suppose it's better than being stuck inside. Julian has made friends with a really nice boy and is pushing out towards teenagerdom with interest. He thought the other day that he would like to go to university. Don't know where he got that from!

Christmas was quite interesting. We had 17 for lunch. Our chinese girls stayed with us and we great fun and mucked in with everything. We had Rob and Suzanne (my sister and her husband and 2 boys) who are about to leave us for Australia - oh thanks alot guys. They are emigrating like. I guess it means that we will have to go and visit at some stage. We never got to Australia on our trip so going there will be an adventure.

Canterbury - 7th November, 2006

The house sale completed on King Edwards Gardens 2 days ago and we simultaneously completed on another 2 bed apartment which we are going to set up as a serviced rental. We have someone moving in today. All the apartments (4 in total) are now occupied but rentals from the middle of November look very scarce at the moment. Christmas in completely booked and we have already taken a couple of bookings for the new year but we are just wondering what to do in November. Does anyone want to come and visit?

We are both working very hard with Julie on a seemingly endless treadmill of activity. Whoever said moving out of London would be a change of pace? We are still not in a break even position with our income and expenses. I really need to have 8 or 9 properties. We now have 6 including ours (which I am converting into a student / sharers rental property) and the 6 bed student house. The business would be a nice little earner on the side if that's what it was but it's not. It's our prime source in income apart from Julie's part time salary. So we need to keep going with another few properties. We are keeping our eyes open but they are hard to come by here.

Canterbury - 19th September, 2006

There is a feint mist and chill in the morning air. 45,000 students have re-populated the city and there is an air of expectancy. Quite exciting.

We have had a busy summer with our apartments booked 80% in July, 100% in August, 100% in September and already 70% booked in October. Christmas is full and we have taken a booking for the Tour de France coming to Canterbury in July next year.

I have never seen a business where the original budgets were wrong by a factor of 2 in our favour. The business is profitable at around 60% occupancy supposing that you don't give away too many discounted weeks. We have just bought another 2 bedroom apartment which will be our top end luxury rental. It's gorgeous. We all want to go and live there ourselves.

We continue to live in our flat roofed 1960s box house with the builders currently converting the integral garage into bedroom 4 and the dining room into bedroom 5. We currently have 2 chinese students in one room and a PGCE student in another. The 4 of us continue to sleep in one room.

Julie is working hard with her refugees, the school (she is already the Chair of the Class Contacts) and trying to keep me and the boys out of trouble and on the straight and narrow. A huge task in itself.

Our vicar has just returned from a 6 month sabbatical and it looks like there are some interesting months ahead of us!

Teachers vs students. Teachers won. 

Julian and Sam in their 3 legged race. 

Sammy and Fox compete in the Sports day 3 legged race at the Canterbury Steiner School. 

The medal ceremony. Something for everyone. 

It was pretty exhausting just watching! 

Julian throws the Javelin. 

Getting ready for the start of the relay race. 

Julian high jumping. 

To the sound of a single drum beat, 400 participants process into the Olympic stadium in the beautiful grounds of the Michael Hall School. 

The olympians prepare to compete. Notice the togas. 400 class 5 students come every year from all over the UK and some from Europe to compete. 

Julian's campsite at the Olympic village they created at the Steiner Michael Hall School in East Grinstead. 

Sammy's class dancing around the maypole. 

Julian and his friend Rob doing a greek dance. 

Sammy's class 4 - performing at the end of term parents festival. Check out the backdrop of green hills. (click to enlarge) 

Canterbury - 16th July, 2006

Business as usual. Bookings are OK. We are running at around 70% occupancy at the moment. August is looking a little poor but we seem to do quite well with last minute bookings.

School finishes in 2 days time which is great for the boys but a challenge for us. We are not going to New Wine this year (sorry Lynn and Simon) as we have to stay and look after the clients.

The weather in this part of Kent is always a few degrees hotter in summer (and cooler in winter), so we have been enjoying some really hot days here. Perfect for me but not so good for Julie.

The boys have had a good term and have done some great performances in their end of term shows and displays. I have some photos above.

Julie is working hard with her mentoring project but is quite distressed by the management of the organisation. Not quite what she is used to.

I am convinced that the world is about to suffer a set back of significant proportions in the financial and property departments. I have sold all of my shares, liquidated my SIPP pension and now hold these assets in cash. During May the stock market fell 10% but this is just the tremor before the quake. Hold onto your shirts in the next few years. There will be people trying to rip them off your backs.

I have also sold our pride and joy: the house in King Edwards Gardens. The deal has yet to complete and I am hoping to get it through before the property crash bites. It is a sad moment but it has served us well and I need to use the money more productively down here in Canterbury.

To supplement our summer holiday income we have taken in 3 language students at home. A 14 year old boy from France, a 17 year old boy from Shandong Province in China and a 22 year old boy from Russia (Moscow area). Makes for an interesting breakfast. The language schools are just around the corner from us and they provide the students with lunch and evening meals during the week, so it's not such an onerous proposition.

Canterbury - 19th June, 2006

Some time since I last posted! We have been so busy with getting the apartments up and running.

I has been hard work but then we have had a nearly 100% rate of occupancy for the last 8 weeks. The end of June and begining of July look a little less busy but then our bookings pick up again.

I have rediscovered the joys of ironing - something which I really enjoy but rarely used to do. Now when 4 people move out of an apartment, you need to wash and iron all the bed clothes to prepare for the next lot. We do have 2 sets for each bed but we seem to be turning them around pretty quickly at the moment. Last week we had 10 people move out - that's 20 sheets and 20 pillow cases. I think ironing may be outsourced shortly!

It seems that the one bed apartments is the mosts popular. It has been 100% occupied since it first came on stream which was 7 hours after we completed on the purchase on the 26th of April. We may need to find another 1 bed apartment to keep up with the demand. I have had to turn customers away.

We are invigilating too. We are now doing the actual GCSEs which are quite fun. There seems to be a little more commitment by the students this time around although we still have those who finish an exam of 1 and half hours in less than 20 minutes.

We tried Julian on the foundation science paper (Did you know that there were different levels of exam at GCSE? Neither did we. Some of the core papers are split into Foundation, Intermediate and Higher tiers. I am reliably told that you cannot get higher than a grade C at Foundation level and so on) and he scored over 50%. Typical question: What is the liquid rock called that comes out of a Volcano? Choose your answer from: core, lava, metamorphic, sedimentary.

The RE "A" level was good stuff. "Scripture is the word of God", discuss. How much time do we have?

We enjoyed a free Elton Jon concert last Saturday night as he was playing at the Kent County Cricket ground just over the road from us. We all lay in bed and sang along. Sammy has recently discovered the joy of vinyl records and we inherited a gramophone (as Julie still calls it) with one of our houses here. Julian and Sammy now often go to bed singing along to the Seekers or Police from records they found in the local charity shops.

Canterbury - 7th May, 2006

On Saturday night we get the call that one of our upcoming apartment guests has arrived in the UK 2 weeks before her booking date. Do we have somewhere for her to stay? She is a student from Hong Kong who is over here to take exams in a local college. We had had a lengthy e-mail conversation with her about where she would stay and we had told her that she could "homestay" with us if the worst came to the worst.

Well it did. We had heard no more from her and she had booked to stay in student digs (of which there are many around here) sharing a house with some Canterbury University students. However, when she saw how bad they were she was unable to stay there and called us up.

We had originally offered the accommodation with us on the basis that if we knew she was coming we would have at least 2 weeks to prepare a room in the house for her. As it turned out we had 10 hours. This is what it looked like at 6:30 am on Sunday morning:

And this is what it looked like at 4:00pm. Bonkers or what?

On top of that the rest of the house had to be made into a respectable place, which since we have just moved in, was something of an ordeal.

It's all business.

The finished lounge upstairs apartment Station Road West. Do you recognise the colour scheme and the furniture? Compare it to the same room shown 12 photos below (it had a fridge in it then).