Monthly Archives: September 2011

It’s just dawned on me . . .

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. . . . I’ve become a coffee snob.

I’ve liked coffee all my adult life and even before I got a taste for drinking it, I remember as a child the wonderful aromas drifting  out of the doorway of a local coffee roaster*.

It got to the point some years ago, whilst working in a high stress job, that if you’d asked me, I’d probably have admitted I was addicted to the stuff – at least 10 super-strong, freshly brewed cups a day. Changed job and cut back, so it’s more like one, sometimes two a day now.

But I’m passionate about the quality.

Having recently invested in a lovely new machine to replace my old one, most weeks I try a different pack of roasted beans bought from specialist roasters and I’m really enjoying the experience of truly good coffee. I still haven’t found the perfect bean yet (current favourite is Hasbean‘s Blake blend) and in many ways hope I never do. The downside is I find I can’t enjoy high street coffee any more. The stuff you get from the main chains either tastes thin and burnt, or bitter and tasteless. I’d rather go without.

Does that sound like coffee snobbery? No? How about if I add that if I have to go away for a few days, I try if possible to take my espresso machine with me. It’s the size of a small, fat suitcase and weighs about 20kg. So, more like an obsession than snobbery then.

* with this new passion of mine, whilst searching for the perfect coffee, it’s really noticeable how few coffee roasters there are now. Maybe you’re lucky and have one near you but I have to travel miles to the nearest city (none in local towns) or buy over the internet. What’s happened? Not enough demand to support a small enterprise? Shame really.

We’ve never had it so good/bad

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What are you to think when there is so much conflicting opinion? I’m talking here about the future market for UK holidays.

For the last couple of years it’s been hard to read a newspaper, listen to or watch the news without one aspect or other of the credit crunch/banking crisis dominating the headlines. To twist Harold Macmillan’s famous line of 1957, “we’ve never had it so bad”.

So, on the one hand it’s all doom and gloom with unemployment rising, savings being depleted, inflation on the up, fuel prices at an all time high – but on the other, there seems to be plenty of people out spending. What’s going on?

Taking the UK holiday market, which is largely dominated by self catering cottages, lodges, caravans and camping, my guess, based on what we’re told is going on in the economy, would be that year on year there would have been and will continue to be, a steady reduction in people going on holiday. Because of UK land and property prices, holidaying in the UK is expensive! I’d guess too that more expensive places would be suffering and that the cheaper places would be doing better. After all, better to have a cheaper holiday than no holiday at all?

But, according to people in the business, that isn’t what’s happening at all.

What’s being reported is that whist 2011 bookings were a little down on previous years, 2012 forward bookings are looking good. Even more surprising (to me) is that it’s the bottom and middle market self catering holidays that are suffering and that at the top end, luxurious holiday homes are doing very well thank you.

I wish I knew what was going on, but then, if I did, I’d have made my fortune by now and might well be blogging about that.

My guess is that what we might be seeing is one effect of the wealth divide that is growing in the UK – the poor are getting poorer and the rich are getting richer. So, it’s not a question of a cheap holiday being better than no holiday – if you’re struggling then you’ve no choice: it’s no holiday. At the other end of the scale, if the money is rolling in, then why not spend a little extra on staying somewhere really nice.

But I bet that’s not the answer either. What do you think?

I couldn’t be that mean

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One of the (many) great things about the internet age is the staggering ease with which you can research all about a planned purchase before you part with your hard earned cash. And a great part of that, perhaps the most influential part, is customer reviews.

Now I’m not a great writer of reviews myself but like most people I do take a lot of note of what other people have to say about the company or product I’m interested in. Amazon reviews for electronic products for instance are a prime example. Another would be Tripadvisor for hotels and restaurants, which again I refer to regularly.

But a recent experience got me thinking.

I was viewing a property and needed to stay overnight in the local area. As it was close to the end of the school summer holidays and I’d left it late to book something, literally all I could find available was a room in a very expensive hotel or a room in a fairly modest B&B. The cost difference was more than £100 for the night so I thought I’d plump for the B&B. Its website was a bit minimal and no photos, only a couple of Tripadvisor reviews, but they were 3 and 4 star so I felt it would probably be all right.

My wife and I turned up mid evening, sun still shining, it looked OK from the outside, nice and central to the town and we were greeted pleasantly by the owner and shown to our room.

It was stunning – but not in a good way.

Being charitable, it probably needed a complete refurbishment 20 years ago. I’ve never seen let alone stayed in such a dismally tired room. Clean I guess, but hard to tell because it was so tatty – and musty. Not so much retro-chic as your grandmother’s sadly neglected and unloved spare bedroom. We left our bags in the room and went into town to get something to eat, taking our time as neither of us were looking forward to going back to the room. Just thinking about it made us miserable for the whole evening.

Anyway, we spent the night, not a very comfortable one, had a pretty decent breakfast, paid and left. Nice owners, terrible room and not good value.

Which brings me to my point. The experience was so bad that it was enough to spur me to write a Tripadviser review – something I’d never done before. Except that I didn’t. Because, frankly, if I’d left a review spelling out the awfulness of the place, that would sit there with their other two reviews and would probably severely harm their business and hence their living. And I couldn’t do that to them. Had they deceived me by saying it was luxurious when it wasn’t, or cheated me in some other way then I probably would have left a review. But they hadn’t. How they had achieved two fairly positive reviews in the past I don’t know but we did hear two other guests talking together over breakfast who seemed very happy with the place. Just us then or just our room? Who knows.

Everybody’s gone surfin’

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  • The Beach Boys sang about it in the 1960s but it wasn’t invented in California.
  • Mark Twain wrote about it when visiting Hawaii in 1866, but it wasn’t invented there either.
  • Captain Cook saw it in Tahiti in 1778, but even that’s not its birthplace.

No, believe it or not, people have been riding the waves for thousands of years and pottery in Peru, dating from around 1000 BC, appears to show people wave riding on shallow reed boats similar in shape to a modern surfboard.

OK, so Devon and Cornwall hasn’t quite got that heritage but there are some fabulous surfing beaches to be found there. I’ve added details of a number of them to my West Country Cottages website.

Description, photos, maps, surf cams and more.
Best Beaches for Surfing in Devon and Cornwall – beginners and experts

Why we all love to hate them

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I’ve been reflecting on recent events and have come to the conclusion that selling your home can be a pretty miserable experience. Not the current economic climate or state of the housing market. It’s the process itself.

I’m thinking about estate agents. Here you are inviting people in to ‘professionally’ appraise your home – following them around looking for clues in their faces as they peer into each room. Cringing as they step over the basket of laundry you’d left on the landing, which you’d meant to move but had forgotten. Silently wishing you’d replaced the stairs carpet last year as you’d told yourself you were going to.

And then the verdict.

What hadn’t struck me until now was the strange dynamic of the “we value your property at . . ” conversation. They’re sitting there looking at the eager faced house-owner trying to gauge where to pitch the price. They’re selling too after all; does the house-owner have realistic expectations: pitch too low and they’ll probably go with another agent who over priced; pitch too high and it won’t sell. Hence the inevitable “how much are you hoping to get for your property”, we’ll then agree if it’s not unreasonable, adjust it a bit if it is, pre-cursor to the main event.

So you end up choosing your agent based on a whole set of compromises. One lot valued highest but you didn’t like the person who came round; the others have lovely offices and were really nice; and those ones didn’t stand out but their boards seem to be everywhere so they must be doing something right?

And all the while it is eating away at you that, whoever you choose, for what seems a small amount of work, their fees are going to be more than you earn in six months.