Canterbury - Tuesday 25th October, 2005

Today I took James and Luke A to Chatham's Historical Dockyards. They are on half term and visiting with us for a few days. Unfortunately their half term dates do not co-incide with Julian and Sammy's but they are having some time together anyway.

We have had some incredibly stormy weather over the last few days and the trees have been taking a battering. Many of their leaves which had previously appeared to be holding on to their branches for dear life, gave us and rained down on us in great waves of brown and red. Today however, the skies cleared and the sun came back out.

Last week I spent 4 nights back in Ealing working on houses and collecting my nephew Daniel from his boarding school. I collected him on Friday afternoon for his Saturday night flight and through some amazing feat of self delusion, I completely messed up the time I was supposed to get him to the airport and onto his flight to India. Consequently, he had to stay another night in London and loose one day of his precious half term days staying in London. He was very disappointed, as you can imagine, but perked up the next day as he spent it playing with Luke and James. Needless to say I got him on the plane the following night. I had just been saying to Lynn how accomplished we had been getting the family around the world without a single self inflicted misshap. Don't you just hate that.

It looks like the flat in Ealing is rented from this weekend and I will again travel up on Thurday to meet the tenant and take him over the details of how the place works. This gives us a bit more breathing space, knowing the mortgage is going to be covered on this one.

Back in Canterbury we keep coming back to the Clare Ellen Guesthouse (www.clareellenguesthouse.co.uk) as I think it presents a good business opportunity with a proven cash flow. It would not be our choice or private accommodation but we are looking at the possibility of running the business as it is at the moment with a manager and a live-in helper. We would then not move into the place immediately but continue to live in rented accommodation near the school. The guesthouse itself is actually only 10 minutes from school by car and 10 minutes from Canterbury Cathederal by foot. It is a good location. We are praying for the safety of the current owner, who left the UK to spend 2 weeks in Cancun, Mexico, last Wednesday night. She has just strayed right into the path of hurricane Wilma.

The boys are getting on with their new school although this week seems to have been harder work than last. Julian had a very maudling day on Saturday which was not helped by me messing up the flight arrangements for Daniel and therefore having to delay bringing Luke and James down for the weekend. Julie has done a craft morning with some of the other parents of class 5 (Julian's class) preparing gifts to sell at the Advent Fair. It is a major fundraising event for the school and everyone contributes time to it.

We are still having fun with our communications. I spent most of last week in mobile phone shops trying to work out what I wanted (having never owned a contract phone before) and which deal to have. I settled on a really good deal with "3" who are promoting their network with deals that are twice as good as their competitors. I signed up with some ridiculous amount of minutes (I think it was 900) per month on a £25 per month plan with all sorts of cash back as well. They also gave me the latest Nokia 6680 phone.

I thought I was doing well until I got home and discovered that their signal in Petham was worse than Vodaphone's. Under the 14 day return deal they took the phone back the next day but I ended up with a 200 minute plan with Orange. I had to give the 6680 back and go with a 6630 instead (no self video function !). In any case who would ever spend more than 200 minutes on the phone with anyone over a month? Except that 5 days later I looked on the call log and we had made over 4 hours of outgoing calls (240 minutes) and down loaded 17 MB of data.

The following day we read in the paper how mobile phone users are paying £130 million (or was it billion?) a year by going over their plan minute limits. Well it's pretty obvious isn't it? We all assume we are only going to do a few calls and the next thing is that you are paying double the price for minutes that you use in excess of your plan. A really crafty way of doing business I would say. I need a "Fairtrade" phone that not only gives you a fair amount a minutes for your money but doesn't stitch you up with dodgy contract details. "Anytime, Anywhere Minutes" is a bit rich as they seem to have different length minutes for different types of calls. Have you ever heard of a minute that was actually 35 seconds?

The camp kommandant here has agreed that I am able to put in a broadband feed over his payphone line so I am now trying to get the best deal on this. BT only needs a 3 month contract but charge £20 per month and need between 14 and 21 days to instal. Tiscali want £15 per month and will install (or switch on?) in 3 days but I think they want a contract for a year. He was also telling me of another family who came to the camp and were going to our school. They ended up staying for a year! Several house purchases fell through for them. They were forced to move into one of the caravans here to keep the cost down in the summer and then move back into the lodge again. Hopefully we won't be suffering that kind of long term problem.