Photo Shoot

In other news, not so dramatic as the last post - here's something we did get up to.

a couple of months ago we had a fundraising event at Dooly's and Kath won a photo shoot with a photographer bloke.

We waited until the weather was good and a couple of weeks ago he found a nice location on the island and we met up for a photo shoot, first for the whole family.

Here's a few of the good ones..

Easy to see why PEI is sooooo nice, at dusk the water is warm and the light really does give this kind of glow...

It was no problem wading out in our Sunday best, as the shot was worth it.

I love this shot of T4Z, she was very happy and got some lovely pics of her in the sun.

As we left Len (the photographer) said he had another spot to take a few more pics, which was in a field overlooking a bay in Stratford.

This is one of the best pics we've had - so despite all of the stress and worry from events in the UK, we try hard to enjoy our life here... and it's not that hard at all :)

No Blogging

It has come to my attention that I haven't blogged in quite some time.
This will mostly be due to the World Cup and then Kath starting her new job as well as her other job on weekday evenings.
It has meant that on most days I get home from work and take on the kids for the evening, once they're in bed I just have enough energy to veg on the couch and catch up on some shows on the DVR.
I really can't be bothered to think or write or upload photos.

Also it's been a very rough couple of months. Whilst Kath concentrates on the positives and good times via her Blog, let me tell you a little about the reality.
PEI is great and the move was well worth it.
But since June the house we rent has been up for Sale and we've been looking for a new place to rent. For me I have found it very stressful and I hate the uncertainty, and the prospect of moving again. This time lots of factors must be considered as Taryn begins to walk and Hayden will be looking to go to schools, plus of course the bus routes for winter (in case of a car break down).
Add to that the fact that our landlady wanted the best of both worlds - wanting us to rent until she sold, and tried to keep us tied up until November.
Of course we can't risk being thrown out on the street in November with 5 bedrooms worth of stuff and 2 kids!!. After seeing 15 houses in our price range (approx $1K per month un-heated) only 2 were worth anything - the rest were complete dogs.
Much worse than Spring Street!.
One was my boss, Gordon's rental, and whilst nice, just seemed too tight in layout and the location was not great. And the one we found. We move soon into that, but had to pay down payments, and with the landlady being really stingy we had some stress trying to convince her to let us go with 2 months notice - otherwise she was going to steal the damage deposit of $1K!!!

Now the real reason I have been a bit too depressed to blog anything happy or worthwhile is due to our tenant in the UK.
Since moving in she has never paid her rent on time. and is now behind in two payments. The agents there said that she had a guarantor who would pay if she didn't... and he's not answering the phone or letters.
The neighbours have complained about the house stinking.
So my Dad went round the other day and took a picture of the garden from next door...

My home. My house, destroyed by this woman. I was so proud of my lawn, which I seeded and nurtured over a couple of months to make a lovely flat rich lawn. she has not mowed it, and there has been a pool covering most of it for the whole of summer.

And yes, that yellow water? rancid stinking standing water - wafting into the nostrils of our neighbours every time they go out in the garden this summer!!!.

The deck? Not maintained and left to dry up without any oil.

The walnut worktops in the kitchen, destroyed and dry - needing to be completely refurbished.

And what can we do about this woman?
Absolutely nothing. the 'computer says no' attitude of the council woman I spoke to could only quote that the UK government pays money direct to the tenant, and will not give it to us. When I said, 'yeah but she's not giving it to us!!!', all she did was go on quoting about law and that we have to be behind a full 8 weeks. This clever tenant however pays in 50 quid here or 40 quid there and thus remains inside 'the law'.

And what can we do?
Wait 14 days for this letter to be sent to her. Then if there's no response she has 8 days to do something. Then if nothing we can serve this and that... and she has 14 days to do something. then if nothing we can do this, and she has 8 days to do that.
On... and on... and on.. and on. All the time being we get slowly charged our mortgage with no way to pay it.
She steals thousands from us.
At the most if we somehow manage to get rid of her before March (the tenancy agreement) we only have her damage deposit to keep from her on grounds of unpaid rent. What about the rest of it? Court... the damage, the garden? all on us!!
How do we legally fight someone in court from Canada?... wait for weeks, months whilst it's all conducted.. the whole time losing mortgage payments, going overdrawn and being completely screwed.

Do we sell as soon as we get her out? We lose 8K in early repayment fines to the lender....
what do we do... do we rent it?

Top dollar is what we rent our place for - due to the garden, the kitchen and the quality of finish... is it quality anymore? No..
She's reduced our house rental worth, which means we'll have to rent for much less as nobody would feel that it's anything better than a scummy council house that they can get for 400 quid a month!!!

This woman plays the system, whilst taking away my families future. She steals my possibility to sell my house in the UK for full whack and have enough profit to put a down payment on a house here in PEI to buy something.
She forces me to worry, and stress and argue with everyone, whilst I see my future here on PEI and my kids future dwindle.

I have a house in the UK, which when sold at top whack would give me 20K profit, in the pocket to buy a house here and clear up my debts... my family would be debt free, we could finally go on real holidays, pay off the car, buy things without guilt - take a trip back to the UK to see our friends...
And all of that is slowly being taken away with each missed mortgage payment and each month that passes as the house falls into a state of disrepair. Do I sound over dramatic on this occasion?
Personally I don't think so... can I do anything... ANYTHING about it... none!
The law is firmly on the side of the tenant and she is in full power whilst I sit back and watch her take away thousands from me, thousands that would have set me right, and helped me here.

Why did we EVER rent it... simply because the market collapsed and the early repayment penalty threatened to take 10K extra for settling early.
We had no choice but to rent it and hope that it would stay rented for 4 years, covering the mortgage, until the market was stronger and the penalty duration over.

So... aside from having no time to sit and blog with any gusto, of late, I've been pretty depressed and in no mood to write. I'm sitting here at the end of a work day, blogging, having been reminded that I haven't for a while... and it's been... 'good' to get it off my chest.. but... it changes nothing, and tomorrow another day passes where nothing changes in the UK and my grass grows a little longer, and my garden gets a little smellier and my agent charges me a little more of his 10%, and my overdraft gets a little higher and the woman gets paid rent from the council, which she spends on whatever she wants...

EnGAAAALannnd!

World Cup Fever is here!!

The Canadians are a funny bunch when it comes to footy. Most of them refer to it as Soccer, but if you're English and you mention Football, they know what you mean... i.e. not that NFL malarkey.

However most will pretend that the World Cup is - 'some soccer tourny thing eh?', when in reality the Canadian TV coverage is brilliant. CBC has dedicated itself to airing EVERYmatch live in HD, and has English commentary from Nigel Reed and a couple of English lads for post game analysis - to be honest it's better than the brummy guy from Apprentice and Gareth Southgate - so I'm pleased :).

However I could not bare to enter a 'pub' and not get that proper English patriotic feeling of euphoria that one get's when walking into a local in the UK.

So I invited all the English that I know round on Saturday to watch the first England match (England Vs USA), plus one American :).

OK, so the game was not exactly full of thrills, but we painted our faces, rented 87 pints of local ale (in a keg, with a pump), Kath made steak and kidney pies for everyone and we drank from noon until midnight (those who lasted).

I hope to repeat the process this Friday afternoon and for all the England games to come - we have flags and the house if flying the George Cross proudly.
Andy just gave me two car flags also - I'm wary of putting them on though - for fear of getting the car keyed :)

Come on England!

Boston Holiday 2010

So this is the final picture of our Boston trip and if you haven't already seen on facebook we had a wicked time in Boston and loved seeing old friends (not meant in an age sense Nik!!)

This is Raj enjoying noodles in a box and didn't want them unless they were boxed as in 'all American movies, our final evening and the first Chinese Ive had since leaving the UK 14 months ago!!!

Hayden and his new Canadian Friends...Beaver and Moose!

The stunning views of New Brunswick...we must have driven for hours before seeing another car on the road.  Here Hayden and Raj stopped to stretch legs while I changed and fed Taryn.

Lets start at the beginning...a 13 hour trip across the Canadian/US border, 4/5 tolls (including the pricey one to leave PEI) and 2 very tired children later we arrived in Boston.

Nikki's apartment block.  They were lovely even an appearance of the Danvers Police to welcome us!! LOL

Nikki and our 'Pal' Matt in Salem on our first outing.

Paddling in a fountain in Salem, it was so hot I would have joined them if I didn't need to drive home!

Nico and Hayden became excellent friends and had a great time together...

...and Taryn loved Auntie Nikki, it was a red hair thing.

Yes they found another fountain to get run around in, this one much bigger and more fun including Raj and I!

Very cool picture of the boys in Boston.

In the aquarium Hayden got to hold a starfish.

The Rajamanie's in 'Cheers', definitely didn't know our names!!

Baby on the Bar :)

Raj's third baby on the bar!

Boston from the sea on our Whale Watch trip.

Taryn having a fabulous day :)

27 miles out and still see the skyline.  Very patriotic shot!

A whale, Fin Shark to be precise.

Taryn and her first pair of Clark's shoes, 2 1/2 G.

First day on the beach, loving the sand and eating quite a lot of it!

Raj loving time with the boys making sand sculptures.

Nico and Hayden chilling and burying each other in the lovely white sand.

The sand turtle.

Taryn's first paddle, it was so cold and a bit of a shock to the system.

Family shot int he waves.

and I end on a picture of my other Man...he is growing up so quickly, he is cheeky and definitely his fathers son!  He is also adorable and clever...obviously from me!!

Lost

So....it just finished...

was nice...

What do you think?

15" Black Rubber Cock!!!

Nuff said...

LOL, the biggest oxymoron of all time, my 'deluxe PVC' pool cue case :)
So tacky with it's red velvet interior that I could not help but be completely immature and give it an appropriate name... in Tipex, written at the bar just before we left.
Nicole said 'These guys are representing Charlottetown',
to which Andrew (Dooly's manager) could only reply in his best Jack Dee impression... 'Classy'. :)
However the 15" Black Rubber Cock was well received in Halfax and 50/60 years olds found it funny - proving that my teenage antics apply to men of all ages...

The tournament was in Halifax, Nova Scotia and it took around 4 hours to get there on Friday night.
Here's my room, I chose to share with Danny as we figured he didn't snore and knew that both bob and Chester did. Luckily Danny didn't even stay so I had this room all to myself :)

We were welcomed in our room with free beer, a beer cooler case from the sponsers and  engraved beer glasses... nice.

Couldn't stay long though, the buffet dinner started at 7:30pm so a quick freshen up and drink of the free beer and we were out to Dooly's to register and meet the other teams.

Chester is an idiot!, It's official, he must have spent a fortune trying to get the 'Nastiest' shots available for us to down, we went through a lot as they were'nt 'nasty' enough - some actually quite tasty.

See.... 15" Black Rubber Cock gags are funny to all ages :) Especially after many nasty shots...

Friday night we headed out to a Country and Western bar called Rockin' Rodeo. I promised Bob that I wouldn't publish any pictures from the walk home... but I didn't say I wouldn't talk about it!!...
Heh heh, suffice to say it was a good night, took us quite some time to stumble back to our hotel, where we crashed at 4am. Bob was escorted back to his room at 5am or something when he was found waundering the halls in his boxers!! ROFL.
And at 6:55am Danny comes knocking on the door shouting 'Come one let's go!'.
We had to get showered, breakfasted and to Dooly's by 7:30am or something.
Shane who was in Halifax elsewhere this weekend met us and we began our first game of the day.

Chester's Dad was here.. LOL.. (Not really his Dad... so he claims...)

There were a ton of great guys and gals in the teams. The Dooly's staff were awesome and the event well organised. We had 7 rounds to play EACH team and each player once. The total scores cummulative throughout the day. It was a marathon which took about 10 hours. The team from St John's, NewfoundLand were a bit serious compared to everyone else and it showed in thier game, taking an early lead.

When it became apparent that we would not score as much as them, we just had fun.

Bob (who's a twat by the way) had a Whiskey in his coffee at 8:30am, and then proceeded to buy me a Long Island Ice Tea shortly afterwards. 

It starts...

We decided to have 1 pint per round.

Round 7 was against the team from Sackville, Nova Scotia - and both me and Bob were on about 11 pints by then.

We had a great game with these guys, who were likeminded drunks, dancing and having a good laugh.

This is Archie, who being quite drunk, saw me and Steve dancing and thought our game was over (the final game for us), so he started emptying the balls from the pockets before he realised that we were still playing!!. His team kaned him for it, because Steve was winning LOL.
We had to start again, but luckily there were no complaints - after all it was the Fun League.

Oh.. and there goes Archie after Nick dropped him....

It was a great weekend and a great Saturday.
After the games were done we had a buffet dinner, a Comedian came in and did a stand up routine and prizes were given out.
Bob, who'd been kind enough to pay for all the drinks tallied up the bar total when he decided that he should stop drinking and we discovered that we'd had 18 pints each!!!
I haven't done such drinking since Prague a few years ago, which was a stag do.
Bob died shortly afterwards and crawled home, much to everyone's concern, as the previous night's escapades had proven he might get into trouble when left to waunder alone :)
But he made it!.
I continued to drink a couple more pints I think, making 20 pints total + a tequila, before heading to Rockin' Rodeos again with a lad from Saskatchewen.
The guys from Corner Brook, NewfoundLand were heavy drinkers and lasted the full day with us, but Burn was not allowed into Rodeos for being too drunk... he was about 60 and praised us for being able to not only keep up, but beat them at thier own game - clearly, these guys are hard to beat - and I think you have to be British to be able to do it :)

It was really good, and thankfully Chester did not drink on Saturday as much as he did on Friday night by any means, so drove us home on Sunday, whilst me and Bob slept :)

Mazda MPV

So our $850 car lasted a year and did well. It would still do pretty well, but didn't warrent the expense to get it through inspection (MOT) for another year.

We bit the bullet and had to buy a new car.

Still unable to get any kind of lan, car finance or help in the country we had no choice but to lean on our UK bank accounts and overdraft and buy something using VISA. It was impossible to buy a 2nd hand car from 'Joe Blo' as he'd have required cash, so we went to the Mazda dealership and got something for $6K.

this car will be our main car for the long term. We hope it will be a good runner and hope to do many long journeys in it.

It's exciting to have a car that's reliable, something that's comfortable and with air fairs in North America being so expensive it gives us the opportunity to travel and see other parts of Canada now - Toronto, Montreal.

And our first trip will be 1000km (700 miles) to Boston in the US.

We can drive straight there and it should take about 9 hours (we've had an 11 hours journey from Plymouth to Harlow a couple of times before), and traffic shouln't be a big deal, just a looooooong drive on open roads though Nova Scotia, Maine and Massathusets ?!?! (I can't be bothered to look up the spelling!

So here's the car...

It's in really good condition, low kms (only 100k about 60K miles), 2001. It was bought and serviced regularly at the same Mazda dealer we bought it from. Now we can travel, get people from air ports and have a car big enough for visitors to enjoy the Island - if any of you guys ever come to visit that is!! ;)
Kath thought it looked a bit like a Merc... :)

And here's the happy crew ready for our first drive out... taking me to work...