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).

One of the finished bedrooms at Station Road West. 

One for Charlotte - the view from our kitchen window. 

This is what we have done to the bottom flat at Station Road West. 

Oh check out the wallpaper and the green cupboards. 

A view of our "lounge". We have been in the house for 6 days now. There are no carpets, except for the rug we put down over the lino, the heating/hot water system is not functioning properly and Julie is cooking on a cooker we found in one of our other purchases. We are living in a tip and our tenants are living in the lap of luxury. Hhhmmmmm. 

This is our "dining" room. Note the lovely wallpaper and the heating vents from the no-longer used forced air heating system. The designer furniture adds a nice touch. The 60's lampshade is priceless and shortly to be sold on e-bay. Any offers? 

Canterbury - 26th April, 2006

Just don't know how we do it.

We took possession of St. Peter's Street at 10:22am today and the tenant moved in at 5:00pm. The place was transformed into a serviced apartment in less than 7 hours.

Previously (on 24), we took 40 days (and nearly 40 nights) transforming Station Road West into 2 serviced apartments. Both these apartments were occupied over the weekend and we are now hosting 10 people for a 3 week period. We have other bookings too but I now need to concentrate on marketing. You will see why if you look at www.canterburyservicedapartments.co.uk.

On top of all this, Julie has a job and we have had the boys on half term and we have moved into our own house, which as you can see from the pictures, needs to have the treatment done on it.

When we moved in we discovered rats. Not proper ones but fancy rats. The boys were promised a "pet" and now they have one (2 actually).

They are just such cool ski bums.

Daddy under the peak of Mt. Blanc. We had a great week skiing except for a final day fall by me that left me hobling. 

The living room at St. Peter's Street. The apartment is over a shop in the pedestrian area of Canterbury and has parking spots at the rear. It was built at least 350 years ago and the roof beams are all original. It has one bedroom. 

The kitchen at St. Peter's street. Amazing what you can do with a wide angle lens. 

View of Canterbury Cathedral from the upstairs kitchen at Station Road West and yes I am going to move the drain vent from sticking up like that (click on photo to enlarge). 

The upstairs apartment living room at Station Road West.

The house we are are converting into 2 serviced apartments in Station Road West.

The downstairs bathroom at Station Road West. 

Canterbury - 30th March, 2006

This is the night before:

1. The end of term for the boys.
2. The last night in our camp site self catering unit.
3. We (Daddy and the boys) leave to drive to Chamonix to ski for a week.
4. We exchange on 2 more properties.
5. We have had our first property in Canterbury for exactly a month.

Phew. It's all go around here. Julie has been in her new job (see: www.kran.org.uk) for 2 weeks now. She has her first event with them next Thursday. She was slightly perturbed today when a woman at another meeting she went to, explained that she (the woman not Juie) was not allowed to make home made cakes as she has not got her Basic Hygiene Level One Certificate. Now isn't that the best excuse in the book. Julie hasn't got one either but 5,000 people must have sampled her baking by now (she did 500 at one go for a wedding!). This kind of attitude unfortunately is all too prevalent in the quasi-governmental, Guardian Jobs page types of jobs that everyone has around here and especially everyone who works in any type of social service like Julie is doing now. She is going to have to bite alot of her tongue.

Work is at full tilt on the first of our serviced apartments (see: www.canterburyservicedapartments.co.uk). All the walls have required re-plastering, we are doing 2 new bathrooms, 1 new kitchen and new carpet and decorations throughout. We have our first customers moving into both apartments on 23rd April and I even have a tentative booking for another property which we are yet to complete on. We have amazed and encouraged at the response we have had so far.

I am going skiiing with my brother in law and his boys and Julian and Sammy. We are driving to Chamonix. The boys are really excited as they loved skiiing in the U.S. last year (oh my was it that long ago?) and they know that their cousins have never been on skis before and will therefore not be able to keep up with them for the first few days.

Canterbury - 3rd March, 2006

I just have to get back to the blog and let you know how we are doing. We have had such a good week this week that we feel guilty for receiving so many blessings, well above what we are due.

The biggest and best news is that Julie just got the best job in the world for her. She has been taken on by the Kent Refugee Action Network (www.kran.co.uk) as a manager of refugee mentors. This job was made for her. She gets the laptop and the mobile phone (perhaps not entirely made for her) and she visits, recruits and trains people who want to mentor refugees. It's a job share with (coincidentally) another parent of a Canterbury Steiner School child. A fact she only found out after the first interview. She subsequently met the lady in the school car park. She will be doing two and half days per week which she can basically fit in at any time during the week. The job pays the boys school fees completely and some more.

She is over the moon and can't wait to get started which she does on March 22nd.

Today we completed on our first property (we had originally offered on it back in November but have been going slowly on it) which is located at 32, Station Road West, Canterbury. See my hastily developed website at: www.canterburyservicedapartments.co.uk. We are taking bookings and have already (it was only put on the web last week) had a week booked from Australia and a Pastor from Aberdeen who wants 3 weeks from March 11th (ooopppps I had better get on with the refurb) and yesterday we had an enquiry from the whole cast of Black Beauty who need accommodation for 8 people for 3 weeks. Since we have 2 flats with 2 bedrooms in each, I am able to offer them the whole building. Yet to find out if we have sealed this deal but the immediate response has been so encouraging we just can't believe it. One of the cottage / holiday lettings agents who operates around here is coming over to see the property on Monday. She reports that her most sucessful property is one that is in the middle of Canterbury (like ours) and that it is almost always booked out. Our hopes are raised!

We have 3 more properties on the go and they are all going through smoothly so far. We should complete on a 6 bedroom student accommodation (currently rented) sometime in the next week. Thank goodness there is nothing to do with this one. It is a new build property, purpose built for student accommodation and it is occupied at least to the end of this academic year.

We have an apartment on top of a shop in the pedestrianised high street. The building is over 350 years old and looks very wonky but the survey has come in OK for the mortgage. The final property is where we are going to live (for a while anyway) in the immediate future but it is also a cracking property to convert into a 5 bed student let in due course.

Julie and I both have a sense that we are finally moving on again.

The boys are also doing well. We had some very positive feedback from Julian's teacher who said he is doing fine and is perhaps the most enthusiastic learner in the class. When Julie and I had scrapped ourselves off the floor, he went on to say how delighted he was with him and how different he had turned out to be in comparison to how he was during his interview when his then prospective teacher described him as perhaps the most belligerant boys he had ever met.

Sammy too, is getting along really well. He literally jumps out of the car in the mornings and we have to drag him off the basketball court at the end of the day. Last week he and his buddies were playing with diablos and he is now very proficient. The school certainly suits his style.

Julie has become renowned for her baking. The school has a fund raising bake sale every Friday at collection time. She is also doing some work as the helper to the Class 5 class representative. They are organising a Quiz Night in a few weeks and we have been doing the tickets and invites. We are getting back into the swing.

Things are moving along with the church as well. Julie is doing a Fairtrade stall there over Fairtrade Fortnight and doing a little introduction to it in all the services. We are putting feelers out about starting a family home group (starts at 6:30pm and finishes prompt at 9:00pm and all the children come and are looked after) and they are very enthusiastic about it. With 35 home groups already going, they need new ones. As soon as we move into our house we will get going.

And finally we are getting some visitors. Julie has one of her best friends visiting this weekend and they are going to the theatre and next week we have a visit from some other friends of ours from Ealing.

So good.

Canterbury - 30th January, 2006

Over the last few weeks Julie and I have completed about 20 sessions of invigilating for a local school. These have mainly been mock GCSEs and also some A and A/S level re-sits. We have had some absolutely remarkable moments, eye popping and heart stopping:

"Sir, sir, over here. Sir, sir, I've got bl_o_ coming out my f_ _ _y"

She was trying to shock but it did catch me momentarily off guard, being as it came from the mouth of a 15 year old girl who announced it loud enough in the exam hall for at least 20 students around her to hear. It was actually quite funny and the girl in question was surely going to be a commedienne in later life but at the time .....

Some of the attempts to complete exams (or not complete them) were staggering. Almost in all cases, students taking an exam of an hour and a half (didn't exams used to be 3 hours long?) were finished within 40 minutes. In some cases students did not even attempt to look at their papers. Apparently we are paying some of our students to attend school now and as long as they sit in the exam hall they will continue to receive their payments. Paid to do nothing.

What we did see (and we spent quite a bit of time in the staff room) was a team of brilliant teachers, committed to the kids and who where truly professional. Unfortunately (and this is corroborated in the school's Ofsted report) they are up against a brick wall of a disruptive and often absent set of children. We could hear lessons being taken where the teacher spent at least 80% of the time just trying to bring order to the room and this is in no way an inner city sink school.

The whole experience was quite good fun and we should be going back for the main stretch of exams in May and June. During these we will be taking more care to ensure mobile phone are not taken into the exam rooms!

Canterbury - 14th January, 2006

Somethings have changed. In comparison to our life in London . . . . . .

• We have NO night time meetings at all.
• We have not entertained anyone in our home (except Christmas) since October.
• We are not in a house group (yet).
• The phone rings only 4 times per week on average (outside our working day).
• We have only been in one traffic jam in 20 weeks.
• We do not work at the weekends (yet).
• The boys do no organised extra-curricular activities at all (outside school hours) - it is not recommended by the school. (They do enough).
• We have only had three sets of visitors to our house in 20 weeks.
• We do not have a land line telephone.
• The TV is only 14" (diagonal) and is on only 6 hours per week (for videos only).
• We have spent hours and hours and days and days together as a family.
• Our accommodation costs us £600 per month (half London cost) - including utilities and taxes.
• We listen to at least 10 hours of story tapes per week.

This is not a comment but just a reporting exercise ("The facts mam, just the facts"). This will not last for much longer and neither would we want it too but it is interesting (for me at least) comparing it to our "4 nights a week out, busy, entertaining full time lifestyle" as we knew it.