Foreign Perspectives

We’re starting to dispare of ever being able to collect on the child benefit over here!

It’s been a couple of weeks now since we started a full scale onslaught on the citadel but every time we think we’ve broken through, we find yet another letter on the doormat a couple of days later (always dated for the day that we were there) asking for more documents. Two letters ago it was asking for proof from the child benefit office in Donegal (yes, Donegal) that they’d stopped paying us; that was sorted by yet another visit when we were assured that the money would be with us within the week.

Saturday, the letter arrived. They want proof of income for 2002. Since the UK tax year is April to March, what they want is actually impossible to provide so we’re just going to weigh in with the April 2003 tax statement (if I can find it) which at least covers most of the time they’re looking for.

On other fronts, we went live on the main pages (hotel, guide and transport) in Dutch over the weekend and tidied up a few loose ends along the way so now the tabbed look & feel is reflected across all the pages in all the languages and the language bar has been shrunk to cater for the seven languages on the hotel & transport pages (most pages only exist in English, French and Spanish) as the old style was getting a bit unwieldy. We’ll be running with that style for the rest of this year.

I’m hoping to add photos of the various festivals to our festivals & events page so we’re hoping to get along to a reasonable number of them during the year. Locally, there aren’t any ’til February and supposedly the first one is the hunting festival at Arles-sur-Tech which the tourist office site says is always the first weekend in February ie this weekend, so off we went. Nope, ‘taint this weekend. One thing that the tourist offices here are consistently dreadful at is publicising festivals and the like but you’d think that if they’d listed something as happening this week, it would.

The level of bookings seems to be starting to pick up a little. Not by a massive amount but then we normally get most bookings a few weeks ahead so starting to get summer bookings now is a good sign. The mix of sources seems to be quite similar to last year, in spite of all the additional listings ie about a third each from our own website, from the reservation systems and by phone. As with last year, we haven’t much of an idea of where people are getting our phone number but as the breakdown is similar, it’s probably from the website (the French rarely book online).

We had a family of Belgians in the other day. They’re always good to have as they nearly always take the evening meal and aren’t bothered about the cost (almost completely the reverse of the French). Anyway, the coffers for February are starting off on a decent footing as a result. Thanks to a considerable increase in our restaurant charges, we pulled in virtually the same amount as we did for the Dutch hiking group last year and that was including a big chunk of cash for an airport shuttle from Carcassonne!

On the restaurant front, that’s one area that we’re hoping to promote a whole lot more this year. Due to the awkward time of John’s arrival last year we didn’t really push the restaurant over the bulk of the high season which was something of a shame as the restaurant pretty much doubles the income from a room. Wendy’s planning on giving her coffee shop a go over the next few weeks though I don’t know that we have enough passing trade at the moment.

Our Sunday run was cancelled today as it’s absolutely pouring. Weather-wise, the neighbours say that January & February are generally a bit of a write-off but that things pick up in March. I’ve had to take the jumper off over the last few days so I guess the temperature must be starting to get back to normal.

The OU parcel arrived a few days ago (via my parents); we’re none too impressed with airmail that takes a fortnight from Belfast to here. Anyway, so far, so good with the Spanish. I’ve managed to complete the exercises in about 30 minutes when they are supposed to take about an hour; that’s about the same ratio as I had with the first French course three years ago. So, Jackie, it’ll be no problem for you this time next year either :))