Friday September 7, 2018

I recently returned from a holiday at my parents’ home village, Arpino in the Lazio region of Italy. We were there to celebrate the baptism of my nephew. My sister raised a few eyebrows in the family by appointing me Padrino to the boy. I am not sure what delighted me more, being entrusted with […]

Saturday August 4, 2018

In Catalonia they have a lovely old expression when bidding farewell to a friend. “Que no haya novedad”. “Let no new thing arise”. Because as we know, change usually means trouble. But in business change must be seen as an opportunity to be embraced. Possibly the biggest change to hit business in living memory was […]

Tuesday July 3, 2018

Yes, that is a word. ‘Shoreditchification’ refers to the London Borough of Shoreditch and its transformation from a post-industrial backwater into Hipster Central. This is slightly different to ‘Gentrification’ which is simply estate agents calling an area something different and hiking the house prices. Personally, I still call ‘High South Gosforth’ Longbenton but I am […]

Friday June 8, 2018

Customer feedback is important for any successful business and while we regularly ask our landlords and tenants what we can do to improve their situation it is often the informal chat which is most revealing. A tenant popping into the office, or chatting with our maintenance crew often leads to a more wide ranging discussion […]

Thursday May 3, 2018

Organising a photo shoot for our newest staff member Kayley McKnight was not rocket science but it meant I had to ensure everybody knew where they had to be and when. This done, I sent out an email headed “we are ready to shoot Kayley. To be informed that I had probably blipped the radar […]