Here is our Narnia lampost. Not that it's always winter and never Christmas. We are very snug and warm in our holiday chalet. The swimming pool is frozen and covered in snow. 

This is the road to school. No one has been down here for a while. The only prints in the snow are from foxes and pheasants. (click any photo to enlarge). 

You may remember the picture across here from before. The sun was shining and the grass was green. 

Yes, I know it looks like a picture postcard. Well it is. Almost as white as Canada. You just can't imagine that you are in Kent. 

Canterbury - 31st December, 2005

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

We all hope you have had a great Christmas and are now having a Happy New Year.

I have posted some photos of the snow we have had recently in Canterbury. Sadly, it has all melted today.

Very soon in the New Year we will have a property or two available and we then sincerely hope to see some visitors to this beautiful part of the world.

Lots of love

Julie, Richard, Julian and Sammy

Now I know you have been waiting with baited breath to hear the next episode, so here it is:

The Kentish Gazette - 22nd December, 2005

Around the Villages: Barham

From our correspondent Amanda Willis about the local WI.

The Barham and Kingston Women's Institute Christmas lunch was enjoyed by everyone with entertainment from Mrs. Butterfield and Mrs. Greenstreet. Mrs. Helbling won the pomander competition.

Penny Marsh from the Brockman Family Centre chatted to members and collected the gifts donated for the centre's children.

A Father Christmas sack contained a small gift for every member of the institute.

The next WI meeting takes place in Barham Village Hall at 2:30pm on Thursday, January 12th, when Angela Barnes will talk about reflexology. The competition will be for a decorated footprint on A4 paper.

Just thought you ought to know the result of the competition. I will keep you posted as to who wins the decorated footprint.

The Kentish Gazette - 8th December, 2005

Around the Villages: Barham

From our correspondent Amanda Willis about the local WI.

During the annual meeting Dora R. was presented with a box of heathers to thank her for her work and support during her years as a committe member. Three new memebers joined the existing committee, Mrs. C., Mrs. S and Mrs. W. Mrs. B agreed to remain president for another year.

During the year the Wednesday Walkers achieved their 90 miles of extra walking and are now compiling a scrapbook which will be entered in the Federation competition. Another achievement was Barham with Kingston receiving third place in the 90th birthday cake competition.

Mrs. B. thanked her committee for their support, especially Mrs. R. who supervises the teapot. The finances are sound and reports were received on the Etchinghill birthday party, the group meeting and the Federation Day.

After the business, entertainment was provided by Mrs. S reading Pam Ayre's poem about the common cold and Mrs. F. reading one of her own stories, Ladies Only.

The next meeting is the Christmas lunch today. As is tradition, members are asked to decorate themselves with a piece of tinsel and take a gift up to the value of £1.50 for the bran tub and an unwrapped gift for the Brockman Family Centre. The competition today is for a pomander.

It's so beautiful it nearly made Julie cry. We have so much to look forward too.

P.S. Sorry about the layout changing about but I am making an effort to learn HTML (web programming language). Life is just not complete until you can create and post your own webistes. I have so many that I want to make including: www.myhometel.co.uk, www.canterburyhostfamilies.co.uk and www.canterburyservicedapartments.co.uk (bit long that one) and also www.canterburyhomemakeovers.co.uk. They are all in the pipeline somewhere except it is a very long pipe.

Canterbury - 9th December 2005

Poor Julie, she has just completed a marathon 13 day stint of back breaking work. 3 days at the hamper factory, 4 days at a show in Earls Court, immediately followed by 5 days at the hamper factory. Much back massage needed here. All this has been accompanied by car problems which on one occasion required me to rescue her from the side of the road at 8:30pm at night.

That's all behind us now. The sun is shining, the car is fixed (for the grand total price of £31.00 for a 2nd hand set of brushes for the alternator) and it's Saturday morning. The boys are performing this afternoon in the parent's festival. They will be singing in French and German, playing the recorder and doing Eurythmy demonstrations (if you are not sure what that is see: Eurythmy). They are very excited about this. Julian is also very excited because he has been asked to perform his juggling at the end of term show. I always knew it would come in useful. Teach your children to juggle. Nothing beats it.

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.