Canterbury - 30th November, 2005

Julie is well into her 2nd week of "hamper factory". She is working very hard (physically). It's a man's job really (ok calm down you lot!) but she is pretty tough. She is on her feet all day, sometimes packing as many as 150 to 200 small (8-12 items) hampers. It's pretty certain that her output is at least as good as the regulars there. They have many temporary staff there but most of them (of 12 who started 3 weeks ago only 1 survives) just can't hack it.

She comes home at night with a very stiff back and fingers and hands that are dry and chaffed. She has to endure 8 hours of non-stop Virgin Radio. That alone must be torture. She has conversations that leave her speechless (a girl who was talking about "O" level said; "Well if I had any "O" levels I wouldn't be working here would I?" and "who do you think is going to be the next person to leave Celebrity Get Me Out of Here").

It's quite interesting for me to have her see what I did for 10 years. Now she knows. Someone (mentioning no names CHARLOTTE B!!) had the audacity to remark, that now that I am a house husband, I am at least doing the cooking (for a change) or is it that I am doing the defrosting? Can you imagine? All I can say is that I wish I had been doing what I am doing now for the last 10 years! At least you can do it in a building that is more than a single degree above ambient.

The "I earn it - she spends it" lifestyle we enjoyed so much previously is a little harder to stomach when the shoe is on the other foot. N'est pas? My last expedition to the Stelling Minnis Country Store (our local store 2 and half miles away) cost £27.00 which she dutifully told me she had worked most of a day to earn and why was it that we needed a "bake your own bagette", sweets for the boys, a video, some beer and some batteries (for the computer mouse). I couldn't really answer that.

Normal service will be resumed. I keep reminding the boys of this as I serve them burnt sausages for the 3rd time in a row. Why don't we both stick to what we are good at? The thing is that women (of the age we are) are far more "employable" than men. Mature women are a far better bet for getting on with the job than grumpy old men. As an employer myself (or previously anyway) I can only confirm that in my experience this is the case. This is why I am at home and Julie is in the hamper factory (as we call it in-house).

For some reason (and I blame the Ag family) we are now Archers fans. I guess it has something to do with the fact that the boys have no access to TV. They do latch on to any other media if they can, for instance both of them are a request for radio 4 news in the morning. This seems like a good thing but what with the Archers and the daily news, we spend an awful lot of time explaining things like; gays rights, DNA testing to determine paternity, homosexual bishops, sexual assault, teacher sex with pupils, naked dancing marines and other interesting subjects. Perhaps we should just switch on CBBC.

We have bought our first property. You will see it here: Our First Canterbury Property. It's a property divided into 2 flats with 2 bedrooms each. We have given up on the B&B idea. The only financing you can get for an existing B&B is commercial. This means mortgage rates of 8% (variable) and they must be repayment mortgages. I just don't want to have to go to bed at night wondering what the Monetary Policy Committee is going to do to my life. Fixed rates are more up my street.

Our idea now is to buy a number of properties and set up an accommodation business with these. We hope to be able to do some serviced appartments or at least self-catering units with this first property and then buy some students let houses and (hopefully!) a property where we can live and have some students or a few B&B's.

The way ahead is blocked. (click to enlarge)

Trouble getting to school this morning. Who let the sheep out? A whole field of perhaps 40 sheep had managed to congregate in the middle of our road to school today. There was nothing for it other than to send in our own shepherdess. We all know how good she is at pushing things along. 

Canterbury - 21st November, 2005

We had a great weekend with our surprise guests coming back to see us on Sunday morning. We all went to a country pub for lunch. It was marvellous - a pub with proper home cooking, a real fire, real ale and real dogs running around.

Julie started work today. I drove down to Folkestone with her so she could find the way back at night. She is working in a hamper factory (see: Hamper Factory) putting things into hampers for Christmas deliveries. The company does the hampers for Harrods and Harvey Nichols so they are all pretty top notch. I became house husband doing the laundry, cooking the supper, cleaning the pad and collecting the boys from school. Julie is working from 12 noon to 8:00pm which is a bit tough for morning girl.

Pheasants on the front lawn. 

Balloons passing over the campsite this morning. 

Some of George's fireworks. 

George's bonfire and fireworks were pretty impressive too. 

George also has a skateboarding ramp in his garden - as you do. 

Sammy's classmate George and his horse. We live in the country now. 

Canterbury - 19th November, 2005 - The Advent Fair at Canterbury Steiner School

A lovely brilliant blue sky met us this morning with a frosty temperature of minus 1 deg C.

After weeks of preparation and mornings and evenings working on crafts to sell, the canterbury Steiner School Advent Fair was upon us.

The Rudolf Steiner schools, which are not funded by the state, are fee paying but try to keep their fees as low as possible. Typically they are about half the price of other private schools. So here you get 2 boys in school for the price of 1.

One way they keep the costs down is to hold fund raising events, of which today's Advent Fair is the biggest. The school opens it's doors and brings in as many parents, friends and family as possible. Our school has about 250 pupils but there were many hundreds of people there today.

Every room in the school is filled with craft items, homemade cakes, jams, sweets and a variety enchanting grottos and caves. There is candle dipping, circus performances (we had a circus arts teacher this year), bands playing, cafes and bbqs. It has a festival atmosphere and it's a great fun day.

I have some photos which are posted here: Advent Fair Photos. You don't need to sign in. Click on "View photos without signing in" in the bottom right of the frame when it opens. This is the sort of stuff the boys will be getting up to. Beats maths!

Then half way through the fair we saw a friend of ours from Ealing. She had come all the way with her son (a friend of Sammy's) and husband. They spent several hours with us and ended up leaving their son with us for a sleep over. What a perfect end to a wonderful day.

Canterbury - 17th November, 2005

We woke this morning with the cars covered in a very thick layer of frost. Every window required a good scraping. The skies are blue but this means sharp frosts. We are also very exposed being right on top of the downs. Everyone says we can expect a severe winter this year. One of the ladies at school (who drives a 4 x 4 - actually alot of them do and for proper reasons too) says that the school was closed last year for 2 weeks because of the snow. There are no refunds of fees if this happens.

The school is right at the bottom of the downs. To get there you have to negotiate some fairly steep roads. Rear wheel drives (Volvo) are just not good enough. Only a front wheel drive (Saab) or 4 x 4 will manage the task.

Canterbury - 16th November, 2005

Julie is on the Lemonade detox again. We both did it before when we were in Canada (see: www.londonboards2.blogspot.com) and it was a cleansing and revitalising experience. This time she is suffering on her own. She is on day 5 at the moment. She has not eaten a thing since she started only the lemonade and herbal laxatives.

Our next door neighbour (not in the caravan park but down the road) up here on the downs, is a very interesting person. The reason I know this is that I have seen such interesting things going on in his field and his garden. Yesterday they tried to deliver a 2nd world war tank from a long low loader. Previously I have seen the man (who I am led to believe is a pilot) take off from his field in a huge helicopter (I mean huge not a 2 man one but a sort of army type mean green beast) perform some impressive acrobatics over the caravan park and then shoot off into the valley. I am often in the park when delivery drivers and couriers arrive with packets and parcels of every shape and description. Today a man arrived in the park (they all seem to miss his driveway and end up here) thinking he was going to fix a tank. Perhaps our neighbour is a modern day Guy preparing a final assault. It makes the days more interesting.

We (actually I) ran out of petrol yesterday on the way to a job agency for an interview. We were about a mile from home. Julie had advised me to fill up the day before. Can you imagine the punishment I got (and deserved). I walked back to the caravan site leaving her in the car and picked up the other car to complete our journey, getting to the agency at 11:30am, the time for our interviews. We then discovered that the agancy were expecting us at 10:00am. Where did we go wrong on that one? So she couldn't fit us in at that time and we re-booked for Friday. It was off to Starbucks for a latte and cinnamon roll. Well at least for me. Julie could only dribble.

We found a great property over the weekend with 8 bedrooms for an advertised £375K. Problem is that it has no parking. Can we live without this? It's a Georgian Grade II listed building (see link here: great property) which used to be run as the "London Boarding House" but is currently being sold as a home. Funny that: London Boards . . . . . London Boarding House. It has either a sink or a shower in every room. King Edwards Gardens used to be a boarding house in the '60s and still had a sink in one of the bedrooms. Funny that.

Canterbury - 9th November, 2005

Julie and I are both on a weeks conference with St. Mary's Bredin (www.smb.org.uk) called Face Down. It is great to be able to spend time with God whilst we are looking at the possibilities for our future. The speakers we have here for this week include Bruce Collins and Guy Chevreau, who happens to come from Oakville in Canada, where we spent 3 months last year.

We have got to the stage where we are waiting on a couple a things to fall into place before we make the property purchasing decision. So we have decided, in the interim, that we have both should get Christmas jobs.

Julie tried with M & S after she saw an advert in the store but the on-line application system rejected her. We are thinking of sueing them for discrimination! Don't they know who they are dealing with? The questionaire asks you to select what you are most like, except the list they give you from which you have to choose, includes nothing that relates to you at all. I guess if it did then you would be acceptable. They must have some weird people working for them if they answered the questions correctly. Perhaps they didn't.

I am applying for van driving jobs and Julie is looking at hamper packing. We shall see what happens.

It was very strange and quite amusing to be walking through Canterbury going into Strutt and Parker and looking at £550,000 properties and then to go round the corner and applying for £5.05 per hour jobs. They ask you for your CV too and we try to tell them that it would be of no benefit for them to see what we have done previously. It most probably would put them off. Can I do multi-drop white van driving? Of course. Being the MD of a £2M t/o company is excellent training to be a bad driver who always parks on double yellows. It's the only way you can make it work.

The boys are getting on with it and it keeps us sane knowing that this part of moving to Canterbury is working. It is after all the only reason we came. Neither of us had been here before 6 weeks ago.

We have rented out the flat at Helena Court for 6 months but we may get to the point where, what we want to do down here, would dictate selling a London property. We have to get our heads around that first. You can't have you cake . . . . . . etc.

They have some great investment properties down here if you are thinking of putting a little something aside for your old age or you need some additional income. A property priced at around £195,000 could be bought for a £40K deposit. The mortgage will cost about £700 per month and the already rented cash flow produces £1,600 per month. This gives you a surplus of nearly £900 per month for a downpayment of £40K. Put half of that away for repairs and so on and it still leaves you with £5K per year. Quite a nice little earner. There are investors down here with 10 to 15 of these investments and I suspect that they are doing quite nicely. The properties do not tend to grow in capital value (as they do in London) but then income yields of over 8% are unheard of in the capital.

Canterbury - 2nd November, 2005

A full 3 days before they promised it, Bulldog have activated my internet connection. It is now coming in over the campsite payphone line and going to a wireless router in the attic of the camp launderette. It beams across the car park and into appartment 4 with a signal strength which allows for 24 mbps. Good enough for me!

Please don't hesitate to e-mail me!

Also send you comments on the blog through the comment link. I do appologise for having to turn on the comment verification system. Seems that some clever clogs have devised a way of e-mailing me advertising comments from my blog so I was getting quite a bit of spam from it.

New postings coming soon .........