I have always thought that retirement would be a difficult concept for me. I have also always been of the opinion that retirement is much more difficult if you have started your own business. So, having started two businesses it is proving doubly difficult.

I did, like all of us, have plans for 2020 and of course, by March these all had to change. It has been a source of some frustration that the corona virus waited until this very year to manifest itself. My planning for how I would draw to a close my working life has simply fizzled out. 

40 + years do seem to have passed by in a flash. Certainly, the world is a different place. I started back in 1979 working for an American computer company, thinking this is the future and how exciting to be part of an invention that was going to change how we all worked. 

I seemed to have ended up in Property Management, not by design but rather by a series of unplanned events. Starting our own business was never in our plans and yet now it seems the most logical thing to have done. I am proud of what we have achieved, and I know that the businesses will continue to grow under the new leadership of our daughter, Sarah.

The time, however, is right for us to look to our retirement and the renovation of the 17th Century Water Mill in the Dordogne should certainly keep us active.

It is only right that I offer my thanks to all those who have helped us on this journey. This includes all the wonderful and lovely staff at Cleaver Property Management, the Contractors, the Advisors, the Bank Manager, and anyone else who I have forgotten!

My biggest vote of thanks goes, of course, to my wife Sue. Sue has always pushed me and the business on through good times and bad. She has put up with me and – certainly in the beginning – the 24/7 effort we had to put in to get the business going.

It’s been a journey for which I have no regrets but a journey that seems to have come to an end all too quick.

Martin Cleaver

December 2020