Tell me how you discovered novels.

Well, for example, I went to beautiful Harwich, which was a place that I'd bypassed in the past, catching the ferry over to Holland.

I went to Harwich and I was walking up a lighthouse and I saw a novel in a cabinet in one of the glass cabinets inside.

And I said to the guide there, Sue, who runs a volunteer group, what's this about? It was called The Suburbs of Hell by an Australian writer called Randolph Stowe, who I'd never heard of.

I bought the novel, took it home and it's set in Harwich.

So it kind of brought the town to life for me and it filled it with ghosts.

And it was strange because I read it after my trip and I felt Harwich was quite an eerie place anyway.

Chris, you're going to tell me you love Croydon.

Why do you think Microtel needed a new name?

Well, uh, where to start? It was difficult because it was a project name.

They hadn't actually launched any products.

They hadn't sold anything to anyone, and so it was the project name.

And, uh, it's funny 'cause I had to make a presentation to some investors.

It was an introduction to the Hutchison Microtel PCN DCS 1800, and I'm thinking, "Oh my God, where do I, where do I start?" Because it's all about technology, and I thought we have to simplify it somehow.

And I'd been given a bit of advice a few months before saying, you know, "If you could create a brand, just create a fantastic color." And it just started with the color.

How big a deal was that?

What did they tell you about why they looked at this back and forth about the ordinance and said, you know what, Arlington Pride is over?

Yeah, we spoke with CEO DJ Johannesson, who was kind of one of the very vocal people when it came to this ADO.

Whenever the ADO was passed in 2021, DJ and the Help Center were a big part of that.

So as it was kind of being voted on most recently in council, DJ was very, very much against getting rid of the ADO, very pro bringing back the ADO.

And when that didn't happen, he made the announcement What he told me about the reason they decided to cancel was, he said, without these protections in place, if something was to happen, when we invite people from all across the country to the city of Arlington for Arlington Pride, if something was to happen, these protections weren't in place.

I don't know that I could live with that.

So it down to he didn't want people to Arlington without those protections in

Can you talk to me about kind of his response to the help center's point of view?

So

that's sort of the hat I'm wearing with this.

So the first is sort of relationships over transactions.

It's actually one of Dan's.

And what that means to me in this scenario is – during building this portfolio, there's obviously been things that have gone well, things that haven't gone well.

And even ahead of it, when I was building the relationship, I've always prioritized building that relationship over, you know, trying to get, I don't know, a little bit more money here or a little bit more here or, you know, selling something or sort of playing that long game um is what it what it means to to me um so that's the first one is just and i think that's just a nice way to to operate in general um i know you'll like that mark And the second is add value.

And what I mean by this is in those relationships that you build is actually approach it not with what can I take, but actually what can I what value can I add to that? And again, I try and do that with all the relationships I have, whether that be with team members, partners, clients.

Yeah.

And it wasn't the case that they decided to turn it inside into a kind of a 1970s house, or was it just it kind of remained that way and they thought, hang on, this is something of a unicorn for us?

Yeah, it was.

They just left it, really.

It evolved out of a decision they made.

So Nigel and Melissa lived there.

Nigel's 62, Melissa's 60.

And they inherited the house.

And did they have, they had games in there, Skelectrics and all that kind of stuff?