Only Connect

I always wondered why my middle name only had one ‘n’: now I know, it was to help us sell our house and save thousands of pounds.
When we were restoring our very nice mid-terrace Victorian house in Pontcanna a couple of years ago, the cleaning of the Bath stone revealed a name “Pendenis House”. Now we didn’t even know we had a name, or, it later transpired, that our street had changed its name either, but that’s another story. So when we decided to take on the estate agents and try to sell our house without their expensive help we decided to market it under the name pendenis.co.uk. And this week we’ve gone public and already have got a top Google ranking.
We actually launched the site late in August to avoid the dreadfully stupid HIPs scheme and had a few hits. But getting the last few pictures done took longer than we thought so we didn’t want to encourage an avalanche of enquiries ‘till now. If you need a nice house in this most fashionable of places then go see.
As well as saving money we also wanted to show the estate agents how to do it. You would have thought that for six or seven thousand pounds (top whack, cheap skates would do it for less) that you would get a web presence of some style and magnitude. Since we’re also trying to buy a house – even more difficult – we’ve had a stiff learning curve on what agents do – and don’t do.
Take pictures: in this age of digital technology you’d think they be doing movies by now. Oh no. (But then we haven’t either, thought it would be tooooo tacky!!) Four stills if you’re lucky. And don’t bother to tidy up or even make the beds (how gross can you get?) we’ll just take what’s there. And don’t worry about deception, they can’t have heard of Photoshop.
As for words: well it’s always been a source of fun to read estate agents’ particulars, but with so much legal stuff now they have become very, very boring. The measurements of rooms are laser accurate to a millimetre: “but we didn’t tell you about the motorway at the end of the garden?” Oops.
Spend so far? Nothing for the domain name ‘cos work buys so many (a perk a last); free web hosting ‘cos we have an iMac account; no expensive designer ‘cos we used iWeb (not great but ok for the job); £50 for a board; £135 for a house web site aggregator (backing all our options) at The Little House Company; and a few quid for the shop window posters. Say £200 max. The savings will buy a nice holiday.
PS No, I haven’t got hair suddenly, that’s himself, not me, posing as a sign pole.

Commenting on this blog I made my position clear

The problem is not just about having a conversation about Wales’ status it’s also about where! Just look at that front page and compare it an average day in the life of the Western Mail.
First the name – The Scotsman (forget gender issues for a second) identifies with a person in a place and recognisably gives both value: The Western Mail refers to a bit of Britain tacked onto the west hand side – it could as easily be in Cornwall or Devon.
Then the coverage – the top masthead is about one of the largest cultural festivals in the world: where was the Esisteddfod last week – treated like some language centric oddity..
Finally, the quote: ok so copied and cribbed (JFK I think) but name me a Welsh politician who could have written that, let alone said it with passion and conviction – where’s the hwyl?
So, as well as politicians, we need media, and something more serious that the tiny circulation, public sector job-ads dependent travesty of the WM.

In response to the blog here, I was unequivocal

Peter D Cox said at 7:24 AM, 19 April 2007

As chair of an arts organisation my questions are simple:
1 – can the nation afford an Olympics without it threatening its cultural life?
2 – do we allow uncapped capital development projects in the arts with 60% contingencies on costs?
If the answer to either is no, then it’s a no brainer – cancel the games.