Catching up on customer and holiday home admin
I know, I know, I've been a bit remiss on the blogging front over the last few weeks.
I have a good excuse (honest), that I've been working ridiculously hard trying to get the contract signed for a new project at work. I've had about 6 weeks of late nights and hard work agreeing contract schedules (the 'you do X, we do Y sort of stuff') in excruciating detail, and then when we thought it was almost sorted, we found that we were still away apart on some fundamental issues and so we've spent the last two weeks working solidly in their solicitors offices on agreeing everything. It must have been some of the hardest time at work I've ever had, every day from 8:30 (in central London so that means getting up at 6:15 for me) and finishing at 8pm or 9pm or 10pm, all the way up to 1am one morning - exhausting!
OK the free food (especially the bacon sandwiches) were good along with the endless diet coke, tea and coffee; and the surrounding were very nice in plush solicitors offices, but after nearly two weeks of it I was beginning to go stir crazy.
Anyway, it's all done now. Everything's agreed, the contract's been printed and signed, and now I'm back to normal work - just got to deliver all that we've set out in the contract now!
So the blog's got rather left to one side as has doing some of the admin associated with running our holiday home.
We've started getting a few enquiries over the last couple of weeks, some of them were for very optimistic customers who wanted to know if we had availability for this month (sorry, no), but we've also taken bookings for two separate weeks in October and the Christmas week. One of the October bookings was from a family in Sweden who will be flying over to Paris and then driving down to Brittany and the Christmas booking was for a family who stayed with us soon after we'd first started renting the Gite in May 2005. Nice to talk to them again and hear that they want to come and have a different Christmas in France.
So of course with new bookings I've been getting a bit behind with the admin, writing and sending out the booking confirmations, marking down deposit payments and monies owing, sending out travel directions from the appropriate port or airport to each customers, telling our agents that their holiday dates, etc, etc.
More work for me (unpaid unfortunately) but one I enjoy doing. It's when you get emails from the returning customers who say things like "We did have a wonderful week in your gite, you are very lucky to have such a place in such a beautiful part of the world" it makes it all worthwhile.
In case you're wondering, the picture above is of the inside of the roof of our barn in France. We use the barn to store the bikes and kids toys in !
Here's a larger picture of the inside of the barn roof.
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I have a good excuse (honest), that I've been working ridiculously hard trying to get the contract signed for a new project at work. I've had about 6 weeks of late nights and hard work agreeing contract schedules (the 'you do X, we do Y sort of stuff') in excruciating detail, and then when we thought it was almost sorted, we found that we were still away apart on some fundamental issues and so we've spent the last two weeks working solidly in their solicitors offices on agreeing everything. It must have been some of the hardest time at work I've ever had, every day from 8:30 (in central London so that means getting up at 6:15 for me) and finishing at 8pm or 9pm or 10pm, all the way up to 1am one morning - exhausting!
OK the free food (especially the bacon sandwiches) were good along with the endless diet coke, tea and coffee; and the surrounding were very nice in plush solicitors offices, but after nearly two weeks of it I was beginning to go stir crazy.
Anyway, it's all done now. Everything's agreed, the contract's been printed and signed, and now I'm back to normal work - just got to deliver all that we've set out in the contract now!
So the blog's got rather left to one side as has doing some of the admin associated with running our holiday home.
We've started getting a few enquiries over the last couple of weeks, some of them were for very optimistic customers who wanted to know if we had availability for this month (sorry, no), but we've also taken bookings for two separate weeks in October and the Christmas week. One of the October bookings was from a family in Sweden who will be flying over to Paris and then driving down to Brittany and the Christmas booking was for a family who stayed with us soon after we'd first started renting the Gite in May 2005. Nice to talk to them again and hear that they want to come and have a different Christmas in France.
So of course with new bookings I've been getting a bit behind with the admin, writing and sending out the booking confirmations, marking down deposit payments and monies owing, sending out travel directions from the appropriate port or airport to each customers, telling our agents that their holiday dates, etc, etc.
More work for me (unpaid unfortunately) but one I enjoy doing. It's when you get emails from the returning customers who say things like "We did have a wonderful week in your gite, you are very lucky to have such a place in such a beautiful part of the world" it makes it all worthwhile.
In case you're wondering, the picture above is of the inside of the roof of our barn in France. We use the barn to store the bikes and kids toys in !
Here's a larger picture of the inside of the barn roof.
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