Apr 19 2008
Christmas 2002
It’s been an eventful year for the family.
In March my second grandchild, Olivia was born, to Dougal and Jo, in Barcelona. She’s a delightful little thing.
In the same month we bought a new holiday property in North Wales (to join the two we already own in Porthmadog). This is a Victorian 4 story, 9 bedroom, terraced house on the seafront at Criccieth. The intention is to convert it into 3 flats but obtaining planning permission has dragged on all year and we haven’t got very far. We love it there and had our annual family holiday there, inviting other family members and friends to join us for parts of it. Even when we had 16 staying the house seemed to swallow everyone up.
Nicola had her 18th birthday in June, which we celebrated with a family party. We bought (cheaper than hiring) a small marquee and did our own catering. Nicola worked for wholesale wine merchants, which was handy. We had a record number staying –28 including 6 in tents and 2 in a camper van. Not great weather but nearly the longest day and quite a success.
Then in September James (now 36) and his lovely bride Rachel got wedded. We all were cursing him because it was arranged in France just after the start of the school term in a place not near any major airports and a long drive down (near Cognac). However it was such an idyllic event, lasting over several days, and we all had such a good time none of us would have missed it for anything. Rachel’s parents are British but live out there and the wedding was in a marquee in the grounds of their lovely gite. Now they live in London.
In July Dougal, Sue and I started a new business and currently work almost full time at it. The idea came from our holiday properties in North Wales. When in Columbia, Dougal had generously designed and built a website for us. As we learned more about the Internet we started to get bookings through it. Then he suggested we had our own url and obtained Selfcateringhols.com. So we decided to try to get other people’s properties on the site and take a commission. We’ve had to employ James to help build this much more technically sophisticated site (required with lots of properties and search facilities) and we’re very excited about our progress to date with about 150 properties and bookings coming in increasing numbers. Of course everything is much more complicated than we originally envisaged and we can see it will be at least a year before we have things the way we want them but the potential is incredible.
All our children, their wives and our grandchildren are assembling in Criccieth for our Christmas celebration the weekend before Christmas. Then they wend their separate ways and we have Christmas day on our own there before haring over to Scarborough to celebrate with Sue’s parents, sisters and their children.