Foreign Perspectives

Archive for the ‘Commentary’ Category

Starting from early in the Summer, payperpost dropped the number of paid posts allowed per blog from 3 to 2 which combined with the lower average payout per post over the Summer dropped everybodys’ income fairly drastically.

The reverse situation is coming into effect now. For a few weeks the number of paid opportunities has been growing rapidly as had the average amount on offer. As of today PPP are taking the number of posts per blog per day up to 3 again which has already added $10/blog for us (ie, in theory, potentially $300/month).

Of course, the big question is whether or not we’ll actually be able to keep up the pace with the blogs… three in a row is a bit much but that’s OK as we can space them out throughout the day. However, it’ll soon be six when our next blog comes of age later this month and, perhaps, nine by Christmas…

Still, I imagine that the bank won’t complain too much.

Now and again we get asked that and it’s far from an easy question to answer as we don’t know anything about the people asking it.

For example, we get lots of walkers and cyclists staying with us. They usually don’t need a car but sometimes they do in that they want to walk in a number of number of different types of scenery.

Depending on where you want to go, you can do quite well with public transport or, alternatively, see nothing at all of interest to you.

If you’d like to go to the beach, it’s quite easy from here on the bus for instance. However, if you want to see the castles then you’re going to need a car unless you’re fairly fit and can cycle or walk to them.

So, if you want a sensible answer, don’t just ask us if you need a car: tell us what things you want to see, whether you like walking or cycling, and so on so that we can give you the correct answer.

Yesterday was the typical September day over here right up until the late afternoon when it became a little cloudy to the west but now it’s the miserable weather that you’d more typically associate with the west of Ireland rather than the south of France.

It’s become quite cool at night too.

Both aspects are unusual for here as ordinarily we’re running around in t-shirts from March to January.

If this is a sign of colder weather coming along this Winter maybe we’ll need to get some more snow chains. No rush yet though as the snow doesn’t arrive at the ski resorts ’til November.

From around June to August we expect to not be able to do anything that isn’t directly concerned with looking after guests. Non-essential administration just piles up, not to be looked at ’til September.

With the lower level of reservations in September, you’d expect that we’d be able to get stuck into that backlog of administration but that usually doesn’t happen ’til October as September represents the final month before the exam for my course so I end up needing to spend more time working on the Spanish which certainly makes up for any lower number of guests.

Also, some of that non-essential administration generally gets to move into the category of “essential” or at least “needing done” when it’s left undone for a few months which takes up the level of work required.

In fact, it’s not ’til well into October that we start to feel that we’re beginning to get on top of things again.

The profile of guests that we receive changes quite dramatically throughout the year but it’s September that tends to provide the most enjoyable mix for us.

July and August always seems filled with people racing from A to B and, on the whole, just using us as a waypoint in their travels. In the very peak periods we get a lot of the overflow from the beach resorts which means that there are a fair number of people staying with us who really wanted to be at the beach and this therefore represents the peak of our problem guests too.

Early September sees a dramatic change in the profile. For a start, that coincides with the Visa pour l’Image photojournalism festival and we generally get some journalists staying with us then which always makes for a more interesting time. By mid-September we usually get some people staying for quite a long time using us as a base to explore the region. As we’ve fewer people staying at this time, we get to interact much more with those that are with us which makes for a more enjoyable time: we’ve already had the traditional storyteller from last week and this week it’s a historian who’s been filling in loads of gaps in our knowledge of the history of this area.