Unofficial Christ's Hospital Forum

Richard Ruck wrote:It's looking like Horsham at the moment....

The down-side to self-employment!

Ditto that. I haven't had a holiday for three years. Partly due to lack of funds, partly to not feeling like I need a holiday (I genuinely enjoy what I do for a living) and partly to the dedication needed to get a small business off the ground.

There's a very interesting article (ahem ) on page 20 of The Old Blue (PDF download click at your own risk if you're on dial-up as it's quite big!) about starting your own small business.

I did go to North Cornwall in 2003 (self-catering and staying in a beautiful converted barn), does that count as a holiday destination? Because I'd go back like a shot!

Three years???

Luxury......

Four well-dressed men are sitting together at a vacation resort. 'Farewell to Thee' is played in the background on Hawaiian guitar.

FIRST YORKSHIREMAN: (M.P.) Aye, very passable, that, very passable bit of risotto.

SECOND YORKSHIREMAN: (G.C.) Nothing like a good glass of Château de Chasselas, eh, Josiah?

THIRD YORKSHIREMAN: (T.J.) You're right there, Obadiah.

FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN: (E.I.) Who'd have thought thirty year ago we'd all be sittin' here drinking Château de Chasselas, eh?

FIRST YORKSHIREMAN: In them days we was glad to have the price of a cup o' tea.

SECOND YORKSHIREMAN: A cup o' cold tea.

FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN: Without milk or sugar.

THIRD YORKSHIREMAN: Or tea.

FIRST YORKSHIREMAN: In a cracked cup, an' all.

FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN: Oh, we never had a cup. We used to have to drink out of a rolled up newspaper.

SECOND YORKSHIREMAN: The best we could manage was to suck on a piece of damp cloth.

THIRD YORKSHIREMAN: But you know, we were happy in those days, though we were poor.

FIRST YORKSHIREMAN: Because we were poor. My old Dad used to say to me, "Money doesn't buy you happiness, son".

FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN: Aye, 'e was right.

FIRST YORKSHIREMAN: Aye, 'e was.

FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN: I was happier then and I had nothin'. We used to live in this tiny old house with great big holes in the roof.

SECOND YORKSHIREMAN: House! You were lucky to live in a house! We used to live in one room, all twenty-six of us, no furniture, 'alf the floor was missing, and we were all 'uddled together in one corner for fear of falling.

THIRD YORKSHIREMAN: Eh, you were lucky to have a room! We used to have to live in t' corridor!

FIRST YORKSHIREMAN: Oh, we used to dream of livin' in a corridor! Would ha' been a palace to us. We used to live in an old water tank on a rubbish tip. We got woke up every morning by having a load of rotting fish dumped all over us! House? Huh.

FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN: Well, when I say 'house' it was only a hole in the ground covered by a sheet of tarpaulin, but it was a house to us.

SECOND YORKSHIREMAN: We were evicted from our 'ole in the ground; we 'ad to go and live in a lake.

THIRD YORKSHIREMAN: You were lucky to have a lake! There were a hundred and fifty of us living in t' shoebox in t' middle o' road.

FIRST YORKSHIREMAN: Cardboard box?

THIRD YORKSHIREMAN: Aye.

FIRST YORKSHIREMAN: You were lucky. We lived for three months in a paper bag in a septic tank. We used to have to get up at six in the morning, clean the paper bag, eat a crust of stale bread, go to work down t' mill, fourteen hours a day, week-in week-out, for sixpence a week, and when we got home our Dad would thrash us to sleep wi' his belt.

SECOND YORKSHIREMAN: Luxury. We used to have to get out of the lake at six o'clock in the morning, clean the lake, eat a handful of 'ot gravel, work twenty hour day at mill for tuppence a month, come home, and Dad would thrash us to sleep with a broken bottle, if we were lucky!

THIRD YORKSHIREMAN: Well, of course, we had it tough. We used to 'ave to get up out of shoebox at twelve o'clock at night and lick road clean wit' tongue. We had two bits of cold gravel, worked twenty-four hours a day at mill for sixpence every four years, and when we got home our Dad would slice us in two wit' bread knife.

FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN: Right. I had to get up in the morning at ten o'clock at night half an hour before I went to bed, drink a cup of sulphuric acid, work twenty-nine hours a day down mill, and pay mill owner for permission to come to work, and when we got home, our Dad and our mother would kill us and dance about on our graves singing Hallelujah.

FIRST YORKSHIREMAN: And you try and tell the young people of today that ..... they won't believe you.

ALL: They won't!

FrogBoxed wrote:The down-side to self-employment!

I did go to North Cornwall in 2003 (self-catering and staying in a beautiful converted barn), does that count as a holiday destination? Because I'd go back like a shot!

.... and Cornwall is a great place too! I'm into the CHA bed swap business if anyone has a room within reach of CH for occasional visits to Jonathan. With B & B at £50 a night plus food and travel it all seems rather expensive. I can offer in exchange (and not on any rigid day for day programme) a room with two beds (and Oliver's drum kit which could be removed!) directly overlooking Falmouth harbour and within 20 feet of the water, a sunny garden facing due south and with a little private beach at the bottom. Flushing is said to be the warmest village in England and in my view is one of the prettiest. (I would put some pictures up, but I have still not sussed how to do it and I don't like to ask JT too often!)

Off to Australia this afternoon, speak again when I get back.

AKAP wrote:Off to Australia this afternoon, speak again when I get back.

Hope you have a great time! Don't drink too much of that Fosters stuff!

AKAP wrote:Off to Australia this afternoon, speak again when I get back.

It's a good life!

Australia is pretty awesome. Hope you had fun. And werent in TNQ. Bit b******d up there at the moment

Great Plum wrote:definately bother with travel insurance...

(so says the Kuoni employee! )

I'm off on my honeymoon to Kenya and Zanzibar in June...

the truth will out. Kuoni it is...

about travel insurance though, it's not that black and white. granted, in the event of the insurance company giving YOU money, you'll no doubt be glad of taking out a policy.

however: this dead woman's family would still have to fork out thousands, even if she had had a policy. not 30,000 granted, but you can be fairly sure that the insurance company wouldnn't pay it all.

my grandparents had booked to go somewhere exotic and expensive, and taken out an exotic and expensive insurance policy. the sort of really expensive 'cover-everything' policy that most people don't bother with. something came up and they had to cancel, they were covered for this. yet when my grandmother rang up to claim, they told her in no uncertain terms that she was entitled for nothing.
only when my stepfather heard of this, always somewhat of a successful soap-box lawyer, did they litigate and win.

that is how the insurance companies work. they scare-monger, and then if the unlikey does actually happen, do everything possible to stop you getting your money. dirty tricks and all. they pick on people least likely to do anything about it: the young, the old and women (that would be this forum then!). not because these groups of people are in any way inept, just because they are statistically proven to be less likely complain (think union membership numbers).

remember:

We will give you money if something bad happens!*

*
1) We have the final say
2) We will give you money if something bad happens, with the following exceptions: absolutely everything imaginable. And 'Acts of God'.
3) If you seem to have found any loopholes in our policy, or hurt yourself by doing something that we forgot to mention you weren't allowed to, see 1)

Hendrik wrote:

Great Plum wrote:definately bother with travel insurance...

(so says the Kuoni employee! )

I'm off on my honeymoon to Kenya and Zanzibar in June...

the truth will out. Kuoni it is...

about travel insurance though, it's not that black and white. granted, in the event of the insurance company giving YOU money, you'll no doubt be glad of taking out a policy.

Generally an insurance policy is itself insurance that the event will not occur (there are always exceptions)

They don't always say no. My elder son took out worldwide travel insurance when he wanted to go round the world for a year. We got a phone call from New York and called the insurance people saying where he was and what we had been told.
Their immediate reaction was to get our phone number, put the phone down and 10 minutes later we had Toronto (their North American hub) calling us. They had already called New York, got the diagnosis and agreed to ship our son back to London, with a qualified nurse and to cover all New York bills including our basic accommodation.

The actions in New York and getting him pre-admitted to a local specialist hospital here and flying him back were as efficient. There was a sideline to this; the duty medic in Toronto was, I think, an ex RN nurse and he decided that he would do his first accompanying job in several years - his mother lives 8 miles from us in England!

Rob also had Critical Illness insurance; they agreed the claim immediately based on a phone call from us and a call to the doctors (subject to written confirmation). They did have a delay in issuing the cheque because the security cheque machine was out of order - they added interest to the payment a week later.

We booked a holiday 3 days after I missed my period.

26 weeks later (28 weeks pregnant for the slow) I slipped a disc on a gite holiday (the only driver)

AA 5star had us home in 24 hours.

It took a little longer for the car as the delivery driver rang the door bell on our 2nd floor flat and it took me so long to get to the door he left.

"Delivery Driver" - is that pregnancy terminology???

Great Plum wrote:definately bother with travel insurance...

(so says the Kuoni employee! )

I'm off on my honeymoon to Kenya and Zanzibar in June...

Congratualtions and Felicitations!
I shall be going to OurGate - nice house in the Cotswolds.......red bricked - actually spend a lot of time there!

Jude wrote:

Great Plum wrote:definately bother with travel insurance...

(so says the Kuoni employee! )

I'm off on my honeymoon to Kenya and Zanzibar in June...

Congratualtions and Felicitations!
I shall be going to OurGate - nice house in the Cotswolds.......red bricked - actually spend a lot of time there!

I know the feeling !!

We COULD get away, but never seem to, due to the girls having to be all over the place for various things , Mr C "having" to attend to school business, not being able to take the dog (and not wanting to put her in kennels) ....... and if we do get away it`s either visiting relations, or something self-catering - which is hardly a holiday....... not for me anyway!!

Mrs C wrote:I know the feeling !!

We COULD get away, but never seem to, due to the girls having to be all over the place for various things , Mr C "having" to attend to school business, not being able to take the dog (and not wanting to put her in kennels) ....... and if we do get away it`s either visiting relations, or something self-catering - which is hardly a holiday....... not for me anyway!!

Self catering holidays - even ones on narrow boats are very draining - I love life at 4mph, but I have to cook at 70mph, etc! (mind you we did have the odd G&T just oafter 10am!) the worst is coming back - all that post, and how is it that even though you are not home the dust still comes down and covers everything???