Helpless

As always seems to happen when I go to London, I don't get around to putting anything on my blog. There was plenty to write about - just a bit slack on my part - sorry about that.

At least the weather here in Carcassonne last Wednesday prepared me - rain and wind and a distinct nip in the air. To be fair though, the weather in London wasn't that bad with spells of glorious sunshine either side of the torrential rain!

Actually, I felt much more relaxed this trip than I had done for many of my visits over the past two years - partly that was because I wasn't going back under pressure of work for a London job and partly because I was just going back to see Debrah and sort out some of our home administration that has been neglected over the last six months or so.

I spent all Thursday working on financial stuff relating to London and to Debrah's business and thinking about our second year here and the general economic outlook - then my head started to hurt from the immensity of it all and I had to sit down and watch the two football matches being shown on channel 5 in the evening.

That's not really true, because I didn't stop thinking about our business future and our financial future - in fact I think about it all the time. I was thinking about it so much on Sunday when we went to the West End that not only did I have to carefully balance my spending in relation to my debt position but I also had to manage my desire to kick-start the British economy and therefore prevent the seemingly inevitable spiral into recession.

So I bought a T-shirt for £8, thus spending within my means whilst also fueling the consumer boom needed to get us all back on track.

To be honest, Debrah did a far better job than me with her clothes purchases but also highlighted a sizeist issue according to country of origin of retailer. So in Zara, fabulously stylish Spanish clothes retailer, all the sizes seem to be at least three sizes too small from what you expect them to be, whereas in Banana Republic, newly opened cool American brand, on the old Dickens and Jones site, the small appears to be a large and an XL would appear to be a fifteen burger and twenty three coca-colas a day hulk who sits in front of the telly all day - shame on her.

A strange thing happened over the weekend, we had two new enquiries. Could this mean that people are in fact getting their confidence back and considering going away again or are they just thinking 'what the f***, it's so miserable here, let's go away'! Either way, it's encouraging.

Which brings me back to current guests. I had a bit of a rush today after getting back to Carcassonne, as I only had a couple of hours between (slightly late arrival) and new guests turning up. Thankfully, it all passed by seamlessly as it always does at 42 rvh and my new guests are lovely, grateful and very interesting Americans (he distills alcohol and she writes for travel books) - totally on brand!

Despite being back here in Carcassonne with guests to serve and more to come at the weekend, my mind is 100% in London where Debrah has a big toothache problem and and an even bigger dentist phobia - the poor love.

I feel really helpless here when she needs me there.