This was the view from the West end of Bloomfield House tonight - very impressive 8^)

My kids got a tip for carrying a guest's bags to their room on the very day they (the kids) were behaving more outrageously than ever. That afternoon I found this sign on the side of the road...

Gorgeous and gratis (ish)... 

Coming up Roses

Well here's a turn-up: just when mister bin Laden's cronies are managing to create yet another blight not only on the lives of many Londoners but also on the UK's tourist industry, we discover a major boost to our eco-hotel's beauty and prosperity right on our doorstep. My genius of a wife Kari got into conversation recently with the Parks and Gardens guys here in Bath. She discovered that, in their constant quest for the highly coveted annual Britain in Bloom Award, our local council plants no less than 90,000 bulbs every year. It turns out that it is not economical to save and re-use most of the plants that are used to turn Bath into a blaze of floral glory, so, at the end of each season, they are composted and replaced with new ones. Kari asked if they would mind if we picked out a few of the more robust perennials from the compost heap every once in a while. They were delighted to hear that these plants might live on to flourish another day. The result: the council has contributed to yet another successful local recycling scheme (Bath has also won several awards in the recent past for groundbreaking recycling projects) and Bloomfield House has even more beautiful gardens with which to delight our family and guests - and all for free (if you discount the vast amount we pay in Council Tax and Business Rates)!

The Could Life II - core eco-hotel management team members get down to an intense strategy meeting at Bloomfield House - 'What kind of muffins shall we serve at breakfast tomorrow, Daddy?' These decisions can take hours... 

Open Letter to Steve Jobs

Well, a whole bunch of astonishing synchronicities have taken place since my last posting, all to do with activating the concept of The Could Life on a more ambitious scale. Rather than bore you with the details, I'll simply distil it all down into a letter to Steve Jobs, in the hope that someone out there can arrange to sit him down to read it. Who knows what may then unfold?

Dear Steve,

I was delighted to read your speech to the graduating class of Harvard (as detailed in an earlier posting on this blog). A thought has occurred to me as a result. The combined resources of you, Apple Computer and Pixar International could perhaps achieve something of potentially enormous global, social, economic and historical significance. Imagine combining the resources of Apple and Pixar in the creation of an online learning, inspiration, information-sharing and action-creation system which had the following features:

• It enabled people of all ages and cultures to take a little time out to explore, identify and activate their true vocational dreams
• It connected those who'd discovered their unique potential contribution to society with those who already had great experience of working in the relevant fields through an inter-cultural, inter-generational, interdependent network in which everyone gains
• It offered opportunities for those who had progressed from defining their own individual passion-based lifework to meet, face-to-face, with those who could offer them hands-on mentoring in actualising these dreams
• It thus created the means for them to begin making those powerful contributions, overcoming the limitations of soul-destroying dead-end employment (within the wealthy nations) or crippling socio-economic deprivation (within the poorer nations)
• In a similar way, it linked vocation-workers with potential beneficiaries of such work
• It operated on a business model whereby those with relative personal economic wealth would pay for their vocational learning opportunities, the revenue from these payments being used to subsidise those who were unable to contribute so much financially
• The participation of a growing network of players in this system was stimulated by outstanding and inspiring Pixar movies and facilitated and grown via an Apple-based, global, online communications system
• By this means, eventually, millions of people discovered the route to meaningful deployment of their energy and passion, each in their own unique way giving and receiving optimally in a mutually beneficial web of unlocked potential

This idea is the culmination of a good deal of thought and action on the part of myself and others here in the UK and elsewhere over the last fifteen years or so. I would very much appreciate the opportunity to share more detail with you. In this way, you could play a vital role in creating a legacy that would realise for many people the inspiring reality you outlined in your recent speech at Harvard.

Yours sincerely,

Rob Weston

OK dear readers - anybody who has a link to Steve Jobs, please let me know so we can get this in front of him and help spread The Could Life concept to millions :)

Detergent Sculpture Epiphany

So, I'm seeing, yet again, the most unlikely events reminding me to make no assumptions. And yet again, it's the little ones who are the teachers. We had a young couple from Paris check in to Bloomfield House to spend a week in Bath. She was an international development specialist who had been working in the White House and had already managed a PhD in philosophy by the age of 21. He was a digital media engineer between jobs and contemplating his next career move. They were very bright and very exacting. The American half of her family were huge in Texan oil and they were used to the world's best hotels, with uniformed flunkies ready to jump at the slightest raising of a disapproving eyebrow.

On Day One Monsieur lodged two complaints: the shower in their room, he said, wasn't operating powerfully enough for his liking and, despite our assurance on the hotel's website, he couldn't access the wi-fi broadband in his room. I called the plumber and then our IT consultants and arranged for both problems to be solved that afternoon. The complaints were dealt with promptly but I felt I had to resign myself to a week of high maintenance and stress.

That evening I joined our male Parisian guest on the terrace while he enjoyed a smoke. As we talked, I suddenly spotted, horror of horrors, that the children had, once again, poured detergent into the fountain and, directly behind him, it was pushing out great clouds of foamy bubbles. I was sure that, the minute he turned around there would be an explosion of anger at such unprofessional hoteliership.

'MON DIEU, WHAT 'AS 'APPENED TO YOUR FOUNTAIN?' he bellowed as, inevitably, he turned and spotted the disaster. I explained in my stumbling French that it was impossible to tame five small pranksters and waited for him to summon his wife for a hasty, indignant and premature check-out.

'Zees ees ze sort of thing zat 'appens when you are surrounded by children!' he went on. Eet ees absoluement beautiful. We 'ave been talking of starting a family for some time. I would like to take home with me a photograph of zees magnifique miracle and place it on the wall as an inspiration to my wife and myself!'

Monsieur et Madame spent much of the rest of the week in the company of our children and at one point threatened to smuggle six-year-old old Claudia out of the country to their next destination: their second home in New York. I don't think this happens at the Ritz or the George Cinq.

I look forward to hearing news of their firstborn baby - who knows, it may have been conceived at Bloomfield House...

Current score on Advanced Customer Relationship Management - Kids: 201; Dad: Nil.

My kids' mischief creates a detergent scupture in the fountain - did this, in turn, trigger the creation of a new set of kids in Paris and New York? 

Steve Jobs - living The Could Life? 

Steve Jobs Could Have Died

Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and Pixar International, made a speech recently to the graduating class at Harvard. In it, he tells three stories from his own life of events that changed his outlook for the better. Fascinatingly, they were all tales of adversity, some of it devastating. They describe:

• His adoption as a child and eventual dropping out of university when he found his working class parents were sacrificing all their life savings to keep him in an undergraduate career that didn't inspire him
• His being fired in a boardroom coup from Apple, which he had co-founded at the age of 20 in his parents' garage and which had, in ten years, grown into a $2 billion corporation
• His being told, quite recently, by doctors, that he had a rare form of inoperable cancer and would be dead within 3 to 6 months.

Steve Jobs later discovered that his cancer was an even rarer variety than the medics had at first thought and that this form was, in fact, operable. By this time, however, he had lived through the experience of expecting death at any moment and had discovered what he felt was really important in life. It was those old chestnuts: family, health, relationship, community and giving something back. In his conclusion, he had this to say:

"Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma--which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary."

This is an eloquent statement from a man who has done a great deal already and been to the brink of death to find out what counts and what is just a blind waste of life. I predict he'll do a whole lot more and that it will change people's lives profoundly. This is what I'm trying to talk about in The Could Life.

We'll be coming back to this theme...

Finny - contemplating his first innings at Lords? 

We've got a star in our house!

I know this is a real bloggy thing to do - every other family blog has pages of elegies to the kids - but I really have to make this story public. My son Finn is growing up to be a remarkable young man. A couple of weeks ago he quietly revealed to me the most beautiful, perfect miniature Gray-Nicholls cricket bat, signed by his headmaster and the head of sport at his school. The bat is inscribed: "Presented to Finn Weston for scoring his first half-century for Kingswood Prep - 55 (in 45 balls) v Paragon at Prior Park on 17-06-05." At the age of just eleven, he has achieved something I never achieved, despite playing for my school's first eleven cricket team for three successive seasons. Last year he came home with the Player of the Year medal for his year at the local cricket club. Finn's great grandfather on his mother's side was an England opener and is still, as far as I know, the only England batsman ever to score a six off the first ball of a test match; he also once took all ten of the opposition's wickets in a single innings, for just 31 runs. It looks as if little Finny has Charlie Barnett's DNA rocking and rolling through his bloodstream. Yet he (Finny) is not at all boastful in describing his achievements. If asked he'll proudly but quietly describe the more memorable shots he played and he lights up with enthusiasm for the game. But he's no more effusive than when he describes his team-mates' successes on the field. This is another way in which he has already exceeded my achievements. I'm proud of him and I can think of few better ways of telling the world than on the worldwide web. Well done, Finny and thanks for setting your old man such a good example :)

Bloomfield House - expect elegance, steer clear of stuffiness 

Claudia - the real power behind the international branding exercise 

Felix, eight-year-old cricketing pundit and sticky-fingered diplomat 

Child labour scandal in a so-called ethical enterprise

When we first became hoteliers I thought a) that the strongest selling point would be our eco-credentials, yummy farmers' market food and the holier-than-thou aroma of fair-traded coffees (actually we've found one that's also tastier, like the bacon, than any of the villainous brands - people rave about it), and b) that the place had to be a smooth-running machine with the children hermetically sealed behind closed doors, never to be seen or heard. The bumptious brood had other ideas, insisting on taking people to see their rabbit farm in the garden shed and explaining the finer points of the art of cricket to bemused visitors from overseas. Judging by the outpourings of enthusuiasm in the vistors' book, it is this that they actually appreciate most.

In retrospect, I can see the appeal. We have never enjoyed the mechanistic, clinical atmosphere of 'slick' hotels either. And I now think all of us human animals have some sort of atavistic urge to combine our professional lives with our family lives. People often express their relief at feeling they can 'be themselves and, for once, relax completely'. Luxury and elegance don't necessarily mean you have to behave in some formal, artificial way that leaves you exhausted from keeping up appearances, being someone you aren't.

Of course, it also means that we ('the groan-ups') have been able to de-stress a lot more and I think this comes across in the way we deal with guests. And there's a lot of laughter and cross-cultural exchanging of names and addresses between visitors from all over the world, loosened up and with their loads lightened by diminutive diplomats with sticky fingers.

Maybe Kari and I should retire now and bequeath the entire operation to the kids, before they grow up too much to remember how to run a successful multinational enterprise.

You find all sorts of strange creatures curled up, fast asleep on the furniture 

Bloomfield House - Fawlty Towers meets The Waltons 

Sublime to Ridiculous

What's really interesting is the leverage effect that seems to be associated with Bloomfield House and Bath in general. I just ran into a friend of mine in the local corner shop. He lives on the same road - Bloomfield Road - as us. Another friend, also a Bathonian, had asked me last week if I might be able to help his company - a very well-known multinational - with some of their corporate social responsibility (CSR) issues. He was particularly keen to take a look at links with the United Nations. My neighbour just happens to be an advisor to Kofi Annan on the Global Compact, his (Kofi's) favourite UN corporate initiative. Funny old world - everything's on your doorstep. We've got environmental strategists, human rights specialists and globalisation gurus coming out of our ears around here, and most of them are to be found at our local deli, chewing the fat. Sometimes, when we're running CSR seminars at the hotel, you might find a group of international business movers and shakers in the drawing room, with a couple of my kids sat with them, holding forth on the meaning of life. We can serve up the world's tastiest bacon on a Sunday morning, provided by BBC broadcaster Jonathan Dimbleby's Bath organic farm (almost visible from our dining room), then hear him on the radio, locking horns with the Prime Minister over the Common Agricultural Policy.

Rob - not really messianic, more 'did I turn the gas off?' 

The Fawlty Towers bit

We didn't intend Bloomfield House to be unduly eccentric but there was a certain inevitability about it. We'd never been hoteliers before, when we moved in around a year-and-a-half ago on a Friday evening. The following day we were fully booked. The entire contents of our previous home - which were voluminous, as it was a big old five-storey Bath town house - plus the children and the animals, were packed into our private quarters, within the hotel. Despite spacious rooms and high ceilings, there were boxes, gazillions of them, stacked in almost every cubic inch of our space. We had to climb mountains of furniture and squeeze oúrselves along the bedroom ceiling to find our way downstairs. The guest areas, however, were immaculate. Something had to give. This was a top-of-the-range, five-diamond guest house, as established by the previous owners. Actually, the guests never had any idea we were beginners. A trained chef and old friend of the family arrived early on Sunday morning and we, after almost no sleep at all, served delicious farmers' market organic full English breakfasts to an amazingly enthusiastic clientele.

Then the hotel inspector arrived to confirm, or withdraw, our five diamond status and, as he was sat in the dining room, discussing the finer points of top quality hotel service with Kari, the puppy crept under the inspector's chair and deposited an odoriferous little gift on the carpet...

The Waltons bit

So, there's me, Kari and the five kids: Arun, Anna, Finn, Felix and Claudia. Plus Alfie the border collie (all sound, no fury), Honey the almost-matching cat, Beau-Beau the handsome buck rabbit, Isabelle his demure, sexy wife and her wombful of fluffy - if soggy - baby dwarf lops. We run the place as an eco-hotel, which means not that there are solar panels on the foúr-posters but that the food is as organic, local and fair-traded as we can make it. Rainwater irrigates some of the garden and the car may soon be running on recycled cooking oil, if and when we can buy it in sub-humungous batches. The rest is elegantly wasted sillk curtains and antiques with the odd muddy rugby boot to break the monotony. The children earn and then jeopardise their allowances by changing beds, waiting at table and breaking windows. The guests hang out in the garden and take photographs of the astonishing sculptures that emerge from the fountain after the kids have dosed it with detergent.

This is going to sound too weird

What's so weird is that, on the face of it, it all seems quite idyllic and wonderful. And in many ways it is, it truly is. We live in this gorgeous Georgian manor house in Bath, one of England's most beautiful cities. Bloomfield House belonged, many years ago, to the Lord Mayor and Lady Mayoress of Bath and now it's ours - or, at least, we sort of co-own it with the most amazing bank. Yet the route to this place has been both hilarious and scary - and, like nearly everything that actually happens in the real world, impossibly unlikely.

How we got to this perhaps enviable position has often seemed particularly unenviable. Rob tends to do long-winded, Kari long-suffering. But, against all the odds, it seems to be working. For now.