Rain and Reign

Debrah was supposed to go back to London yesterday but fate intervened.

The rain has continued here unabated for three days now and was probably a factor in the car battery being flat when I was supposed to be taking Debrah to the airport for her flight. It was certainly a factor in there being no taxis available immediately, and as we had left our departure until the last minute as ever, we had no room for manouevre.

We retreated back inside resigned to it all and lost a crucial fifteen minutes before I discovered that the flight was running 30 minutes late. I rushed upstairs to Denis' apartment and grabbed the garage keys and we rushed up to the airport in Denis' car. The plane was just landing as we got there, but it was all to no avail - as far as they were concerned we were late for the flight and they had closed the gate and they weren't going to let Debrah on the flight despite the fact she had checked in online and only had hand baggage and despite there being plenty of time for her to go through security and join the back of the queue at the gate (one plane, one gate, twenty metres from security to the gate, lots of people stood about doing nothing - but no go).

I don't know if it was Ryanair policy or Carcassonne airport policy or both but it wasn't a good advert for either of them. We accept that we were late but so was the flight coming in - seems that Ryanair are allowed to be late without consequence (I'm sure there was a good reason) but passengers get no leeway despite also having a good reason and despite it all being easily feasible for Debrah to have joined the flight in good time. Maybe they are only really interested in charging the £75 fee for re-booking than in actually getting people onto the flights they have already paid for.

Actually none of all that surprised me - I've always known that the whole system is geared towards the benefit of the provider of the service and not the person paying for the service - surely it should be the other way around.

The reason that all the above is relevant, and is not just a diatribe, is that we have been discussing the service that we provide here at 42rvh to our paying customers. The debate is centred around whether we give too much for too little cost or not - i.e. should we be going out of our way to provide the best possible experience at all times, no matter the inconvenience, for our guests or should we draw the line somewhere and downgrade what we do or charge extra for certain things.

I make it sound very black and white but it's nothing of the sort and not as extreme as the picture painted, but it is still difficult to decide how we move on next year in continuing to develop the business and the services we will provide and what cost we should charge for them, especially given the economic situation.

In it's barest form the equation is easy - we want to provide as good a service as possible at a price people can afford that also generates a profit. Can we do all three? I hope so.

In the meantime, the relentless wet weather, the unexpected bonus of Debrah being here longer than expected and no guests to worry about has resulted in us getting thoroughly absorbed in the BBC mini-series of the Tudors - all long leather boots, bare chests, loose morals, double dealing and intrigue - and a history lesson too, your grace, my lord, your majesty!

Dump?

It has been a long time since I was able go to sleep without having to worry about what time I had to get up to make a breakfast, but I was able to fully enjoy that pleasure this morning.

Both sets of guests left on Monday and we now have no bookings until Christmas. I am not sure how much of that is due to the credit crunch or whether this is just normal for November. Either way, it gives us time to take stock of things, catch up with accounts and tax returns, not worry about breakfasts and lounge about watching dvds in the evening on the big TV in the Studio - great.

The guests were a complete contrast. One couple came up on the train from Barcelona and had a very enjoyable weekend here. They were originally from Brazil via the USA and England via Amsterdam, so they are both well travelled.

The other couple, with their six month old son, were from the UK and looking to move abroad at some point in the future. They didn't seem to have such a nice time and complained about the street noise and Eliot's change of routine and just about everything. When she left she told me that she thought Carcassonne was a dump!

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, of course, but as I live here I thought her comments were extremely insensitive to say the least and obviously I don't agree with her. It makes me wonder what she was looking for - I hope she finds it whatever it is.

It poured down on Sunday, but yesterday was glorious sunshine all day. So after despatching the guests Debrah and I went out for a spot of lunch and it being sunny and us being English we elected to sit outside at the brasserie Saint Germain much to the bemusement, I'm sure, of the other diners and to our very amusing waiter (he spoke English very well after a spell working in Winchester).

It was lovely until the low sun passed behind the top of the adjacent buildings and then it began to get slightly chilly - but we had enjoyed a classic brasserie lunch of fish soup and sausage and lentils washed down with a glass of red - glorious.

Whilst walking off lunch immediately after, we came across the main town cemetary around the back of the barracks and decided to have a look inside. I am glad we did because the place was a riot of colour with all the chrysanthemums placed on the graves and tombs after 'toussaint' last Saturday.

Of course, predominately Catholic cemetaries are a glory of stone carved angels and jesuses and madonnas and elaborate mausoleums. One of the most moving tributes is a common one found on many tombs - 'mort pour la france' - which as always means a young man cut down in his prime during the great wars of the last century. Everyone should visit cemetaries now and again - I think they bring a great deal of perspective to life and make you realise the importance of your loved ones and your family.

After the cemetary, we wandered along the banks of the Aude, with the Cité up on the hill to our right and the trees in their many shades of Autumn colour and thought how beautiful is the dump that we live in!

Hurrah for live footie

After threatening all sorts of nonsense weather-wise for this weekend (according to all the forecasts), it turned out to be a lovely start to November and a good market day.

The 1st November is a national holiday in France (all saints or 'toussaint') and so the market wasn't as big as usual with several stallholders obviously taking the day off and many of the bars and cafes were also closed and a lot of the shops closed early too.

Despite all that we still managed an exciting market day. Today we went large on unusual and, in some cases, exotic fruit. We bought quinces and pomegranates and prickly pear and from a producer from Salleles d'Aude, near Narbonne, we bought feijoa, a brazilian cousin of the guava, and fuyu, a relative of the 'kaki' (persimmon, in English). Our plan is to make a very different but exotic fruit salad for dessert tomorrow with our vegan guest in mind.

We also bought a selection of the most fabulous wild mushrooms picked from the hills surrounding the Aude valley and had some of them this evening in a cream sauce with fillet steak and sauté potatoes and a rocket and watercress salad - it was absolutely delicious and all washed down with one of our favourite wines, La Falaise from Chateau de la Negly - if you can find it you should buy it.

The baby theme of the week continued during lunch at Saillan, where it was warm enough to sit outside and enjoy the sun. David's daughter and her husband and 6 month old grandchild were over for the weekend (came on the same flight as our guests from East Midlands apparently and stood behind them in the checkout queue!) and bizarrely David's ex, Anne, and his son Stefan, were also there - too many generations and ages to keep up with. Nonetheless, it was a very pleasant hour sat in the open air chatting about life.

Phil, the son-in-law, was bemoaning the fact that there was nowhere to watch Sky TV (the new Irish bar is probably still two weeks away from opening according to Patrick, whom we bumped into earlier).

Lo and behold, when I got home there was a message from Mr Sieff in London with a link to online live tv channels including live premiership football. How happy was I that I could watch some live football - in fact live football that most people in the UK can't watch (unless they have discovered this link, that is, or paid for subscription tv).

So I tested it out this afternoon and watched the Man U v Hull match and then sent the link to David so that Phil could watch Derby tomorrow and I will certainly be watching Bolton trying to extricate themselves from the bottom of the Premier League, without any hope that it will happen, sadly.

In between all that I repaired a window in the stairwell. On our way out to the market this morning Debrah noticed that one of the window panes in the window outside our internal front door was hanging on by a thread (the old putty had cracked and fallen out on three sides). So I lifted the glass out and cleaned up both the pane of glass and the window frame and siliconed it back in place - tomorrow I will put some new putty around it.

It's just as well Debrah spotted it because it could have been disastrous if it had fallen out. It is also another example of a job that will cost the owners next to nothing but which could have cost us all a couple of hundred euros under the old managing agents because they would have got a specialist glazier to do the job.

A couple of years ago I wouldn't really have known how to fix it, but now I knew immediately what needed to be done. I am proud of that - not just the knowledge, but also the confidence to just deal with it.

It is yet one more example of how this whole enterprise, renovation and business building, has been so very good for me.

Young and Old

Our suites here at 42rvh are very much geared towards couples - but, to keep our market as large as possible, we thought that babies under one year old could be accommodated too and we said so on our website.

Well, people have come and gone all year and not a baby in sight and then two come along in the space of a week. Cute Pippa has the honour of being first baby in residence and she left this morning with Doug and Anna as they continue their 3 month tour of France. Eliot arrived this morning from England with Paul and Caroline and immediately becomes our second baby visitor.

We finally resolved the cot problem - Debrah was a bit confused by the whole issue too and had the added problem of not being able to purchase anything that looked badly designed or was in ugly colours (which ruled out pretty much everything on offer). So we paid more than we might have done but it is totally in keeping with the 42rvh design ethos.

So old guests gone and new guests arrived in both suites and the usual round of domestic chores (room change, laundry and ironing). Debrah is still nursing her toothache with antibiotics and painkillers and I'm not feeling 100% either - we were both in bed asleep by ten last night and it won't be much later this evening.

Damn the years and the mileage.

Cot in two minds

It took some time to register, but I finally realised that it was my alarm and that it was time to get up and sort breakfasts - it felt as if I'd only gone to bed five minutes earlier.

My plans for a little afternoon nap to boost my energy levels came to nothing as well - just too much to do - so it will be an early night.

Lance and Ellie left this morning. When he asked me to find out how to get to Paris, I initially thought that they were going to stay a couple more days and go to Paris as planned at the weekend - alas for me, they just decided to go to Paris immediately and bin the rest of their tour up the west coast of France - oh well - I'm not complaining because they were good company, brought me a lovely bottle of wine, have promised to send me a bottle of the Absinthe they make back in California, wrote some lovely words in our visitors book and also promised to do the same on tripadvisor - I really couldn't ask for more.

I finally got the car going again - I had to walk up to the motor spares shop on Allee d'Iena for a new fuse for the charger and then wait for a couple of hours for the battery to charge. I was mobile again by mid-afternoon.

After a trip to the supermarket for essential supplies, I ventured into 'New Baby' and 'Baby 9' out of town stores to look for a cot. It must be 18 years since I was in a baby store - so it was all slightly wierd. The strange thing is that nothing seems to have changed - everything still looked the same (blue and pink!), except for the odd French design element.

Being a bit tired and a little bit overpowered by the shop assistants very fast explanations about the key differences of the different cots on offer, I failed to make any sort of decision and, am ashamed to say, I will need to go back again tomorrow with Debrah to come to a purchase conclusion. Meanwhile, I am assured that Pippa is very happy in her nest on the mezzanine of the studio. Bless.

It's all relative

What was to be a fairly relaxed but busyish day, working through various administrative and domestic chores before cooking dinner for my American guests, turned out to be slightly rushed and a bit fraught because of welcome but unexpected guests and a car that wouldn't start.

The text and phonecall with my new Australian guests this morning really concentrated the mind - their room wasn't ready and they had a six month old baby with them.

All year we have been meaning to get a cot of some sort - and strangely enough this coming weekend we have a couple booked who are bringing their infant child and so the purchase of a cot had become an imminent occurence before today's events.

So having said to Denis this morning that he didn't need to move his car, I now needed him to do just that - not to worry, I thought, I'll go to the market first and get the provisions for dinner and then I'll sort the room out - and sure enough, by the time I had finished that, Denis had come back from lunch and moved his car.

I just had enough time to pop out before the new guests were likely to arrive - how wrong I was. I bought a new battery for the Audi at the beginning of the year and since then I haven't had a problem with getting the car going - until today - battery flat - car not going anywhere. To add insult to injury, when I hooked it up to the charger there was no response - so it seems that the charger might need a new fuse or it's broken.

There was a certain irony to all this - the only place to buy a new charger, or a fuse for a charger or a new battery or, indeed, a travel cot is in the industrial and commercial zones (out of town stores). To reach said destinations a car is the ideal mode of transport. You see my predicament.

Added to that was the worst day of weather for about four months - no wonder the Aussies had abandoned their cycling week and sought refuge here.

So with the mattress from the fold-up bed and some sheets and blankets we made a little snug for young Pippa who was as good as gold as the rest of us tucked into a four course dinner this evening.

The conversation was amusing and diverse and as ever with Americans and Australians we ended up discussing roots and ancestry - Anna was proud to be directly descended from one of the first convicts exported to Australia which put her on a par with a descendant of the first settlers who landed in America on the 'Mayflower' - according to Lance from California. In the end we all agreed that we all had some element of Irish ancestry, which was a bit sad to admit - the Irish can't have populated the whole world surely? - we even wondered if Barack O'Bama had any Irish blood.

Ellie was born in Swaziland from parents who worked for the UN and so is American by default, as she didn't see the place until she was five years old, but African by birth and has an African middle name - aren't people's lives fascinating?

If we go back far enough, I guess we are all related.

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.