Our friends there have a great holiday home that they use themselves and it is let as a self catering holiday let.  it-is worth people wanting to come to Edinburgh thinking about places like North Berwick – not in the city, has its own attractions and you can get into the city easily and quickly with good rail service.

Now children are back at school and so we are back into a more normal routine after the festive season.  Business is certainly looking up, the increase in activity we saw last week has continued and I have seen another – very quirky and very well located property that I am looking forward to letting.  It’s in a great location on Northumberland Place, on the ground floor and with superb views all the way out to Fife.

Lenore and I are looking at other services we can supply to guests and landlords.  It’ s not easy thinking through all the implications of all the possibilities.  We do have to be realistic about what can be done, what we can charge for it and whether it is worth the time and effort for the benefit it provides.  One of the many challenges of having your own business and building it up.

I’ll keep you posted.

I hope you had great celebrations with not too much of a hangover.  We managed it with a family ceilidh at our local church hall and estimated we’ve raised £500 for the church’s charity – so good stuff!!  As one of our group works for the Royal Bank of Scotland, we expect they will match our contribution – so Children in Malawi will get a £1000.  Let’s hope the difficult times for the banks don’t stop them encouraging this sort of charitable endeavour by their staff.

A new year brings it’s new opportunities and challenges.  Business is picking up again.  We are sold out of 1 bedroom flats – so we need more and we will be looking at how we expand our services to both guests and landlords for this year.

It’s not feeling at all Christmassy as we’ve got unseasonably warm weather.  It was even hotter for the people around Victoria St on Friday night with a major fire – hopefully the only other fires we will see will be nicely controlled and in fireplaces!  I do love a real fire and they are part of a real Christmas for me as we are lucky enough to be able to have them. the smell of a real fire and a pine tree are part of the experience.

Business is fairly quiet as all properties are booked out for hogmanay and all enquiries just now are for hogmanay.  Presumably we need to get past the holiday season to get bookings going again for 2009.

It was lovely being a tourist.   Strangely a highlight was seeing Damien Hirst’s diamond encrusted skull in the largely closed Rijksmusem.  It is spectacular and I’m sure I queued for less time there than I would have done here.

Back to Edinburgh after a very efficient flight with Easyjet.  We are very lucky to have access to so many places.  Now onto serious Christmas preparation.  Not feeling at all ready.

Having raised the credit crunch in an earlier post, I’ve been seeing more impact.  I’m being contacted by people who have properties that they either can’t or don’t want to sell, and so are looking for rental income.  It makes sense – why sell at a low point in the market if you can hold on and just get some income to cover costs.  It will be interesting to see if the numbers of people doign this are enough to drive down letting prices.  Jury’s out at the moment.

I am so looking forward to going away.   There was a (long) time in my life when i was at airports 2 or more times a week jetting off to some city or another for meetings, just to jet back having seen the inside of a taxi and hotel or office, so this is real luxury.  My friend will be working and I’m going to be a tourist.  Probably I should do some Christmas shopping but currency rates the way they are may put me off!

First one came up when we were looking at remortgaging because some of our mortgages are at the end of fixed terms.  Fortunately we’ve held the properties long enough for them to have increased in value.  It was noticeable that there is a big variation these days in what mortgage companies are offering and arrangement fees should we decide to change company are much higher than they used to be.

Secondly, a washing machine broke down at one of the flats i manage.  It’s still within guarantee, so should have been no problem, but the customer care line has a pre-recorded message saying the holding company has gone into liquidation, so all we can do is pay to get it fixed.  I guess we are going to see more of these.  For anyone interested – it’s a Servis washing machine – so I hope your’s doesn’t break down!

We feasted on the most magnificent scallop and oyster starter and ten had game.  He had hare; I had partridge.  they were both wonderful.  I fell at his hurdle, but he was up for a fabulous Pistachio souffle.

Trying to eat less for the rest of the week!

This property owner was considering a Saniflow toilet to go in a second bathroom.  She wanted to know a bit more about them and had done some Internet research.  s id not unusual with Internet research, she found loads of horror stories.

As it happens I have a saniflow toilet in one of my self catering flats.  It is a second toilet and has been in use for about 18 months.  I was warned about potential problems and so put a warning note above the toilet saying not to put tampons, nappies, condoms etc down the toilet or else it would get blocked, an expensive visit form a plumber would be required and i would have to pass on the cost.  Whenever people are shown into the flat, they get a friendly comment about the toilet.  There has only ever been 1 problem that I know about, and the guest managed to sort it out themselves.

I take from this that clear instructions and personal greeting for guests in self catering flats work!

This personal greeting aspect i regard as very important, and do believe it does help get guests to return, to recommend us and to respect the properties they use.  It does result in very nice thank yous as well – and that certainly makes it worthwhile form my point of view.

I started the day with a run which is a bit unusual these days.  It a was a good run – I ran about 3 miles which included running up Comely Bank, so I felt extremely virtuous.   The dog wasn’t very happy though because I didn’t take her.  Apparently she sat at the gate  doing her “polite” barks – which are normally used when she wants to come in from the garden.  She obviously thought I’d forgotten her.

We made it up to her later and went on a lovely walk along the River Almond walkway.  This is a highly recommended walk – and was fairly busy today.  It goes form Crammond out to Cammo along the River Almond -not surprisingly.  It’s very beautiful, off the road, and there are a couple of what look like very pleasant cafes which I have yet to try out.

Rounded off the day by picking up daughter form Ocean Terminal and popping into the new Asda in Leith.  May not be the best supermarket in the world, but it is very convenient!

It won’t be all business.  I share my life and home with husband, 2 teenagers, dog and cat, and various others who come to stay: currently my mother, often my Father in law.  Family focus just now is husband’s birthday on Thursday.  We did have part of the celebration last weekend when we went to see Scotland hammered by the All Blacks.  Husband is New Zealander, so a better birthday present than it would have been for a Scot!

Over the next few weeks, I’ll tell whoever reads the blog about my life and observations.  My aim is to be positive and look on the bright side b y talking about the good things around us.  Not difficult for me as I’m an innate optimist, although there is a risk that topics such as Edinburgh traffic and weather will result in the odd whinge!