My Mental Body

Rain in England never really bothered me; in fact, most of the time I quit enjoyed it.  It always cheered me up when I was at work & it was pissing it down & I could stay in the office laughing at the poor suckers that come running in drenched from it, & you don’t feel like you’re missing out on anything when you’re at work in the rain either, apart from a good afternoon drinking session in the local pub.  I liked the sound of it & I didn’t even mind walking in it.  Out here though it’s a whole different storey.  It’s warmed up this week; it’s a positively balmy +4 in the village & not much colder at the top so all this potential snow is falling on us as dirty stinking French rain.  It turns the snow into slush, blinds you &, obviously, soaks you.  For this reason we haven’t been boarding this week yet, I attempted it yesterday but turned round before I even got to the chair lift.  Boarding in slush is bad but walking in it is worse.  The workers concentrate on keeping the roads safe (I say driving on ice is fun, not a danger!) so the pavements get left, 6inches of snow turns into a quagmire of cold slushy slush which splashes up your legs, goes in your shoes & makes you slide back & forth like a demented curling team.  But it gets worse, slush that turns to ice.  Our little side road is only 30m long & ever so slightly on a hill but it’s a fucking death trip in the mornings, there is no shoe in the world that would grip, ice skates wouldn’t even work because its covered in little ice marbles.  So I sit in our apartment with not much in the way of news to tell you, so I thought I’d tell you about my mental body.

The human body is amazing, the way we do all the things we do without even thinking, it heals itself, renews itself & adapts to most things, but since being here I discovered a few things about mine that is just a bit weird.  Firstly, as you may or may not know I’m a diabetic, I have to have 4 injections a day to keep myself alive (or at least I did in England) & to date there is no known cure.  Up here in the cold altitude it seems I’m cured (almost anyway).  There are so many things that I don’t understand about this disease even though I’ve got it, but this just makes no sense what so ever.  Not that I’m complaining only having to stick a needle in myself once a day has got to be an improvement but it does make forever paranoid that it’s going to catch up with me at any moment & turn me in to a mumbling wreck. 

Secondly, sweaty eyelids.  Who the f#ck gets sweaty eyelids.  I don’t get them when I’m hot, I get them if I have any form of spice.  I love a bit of spice on my food, I can’t truly say the more chilli the better but most food can be improved by big kick of heat.  But for some reason when I have a dose of spice (doesn’t even need to be that hot) I start getting sweaty eyelids.

And finally & possibly the most weird of all.  For as long as I can remember being hot hasn’t really agreed with me, I love a summer holiday on the beach but I’m usually found covered up under tree or keeping cool in the sea doing my best to reduce the uncomfortable boils that spring up all over me.  This is 1 of the reasons that an escape to the mountains was so inviting.  But this I first discovered over New Years Eve last year while in Stockholm.  As you may guess Sweden in the winter gets very cold, whilst we was there it was between -5 & -11 during the day & much colder at night & now here.  Apart from this freak hot spell we’re having it is around -5 in the village & -15 up high, cold I’m sure you’ll agree.  But what happens to me?  I get f#cking heat rash! -15 & f#cking heat rash, what’s all that about.  Now I know some of you might be thinking that it’s not heat rash, it’s some form of dirty lurgey or the Aids is back, but as I say, I’ve been getting this on summer holidays all my life, I know what it is, besides I’ve a got a text from the NHS proving I’m aids free, how many of you can say that (Nige, high 5 brother).  Its heat rash, I can only guess it’s coming in from the cold into hot heated buildings, but still weird & very annoying. 

Anywho, I’m down the pub later to watch the football, Tuesday night is boys night the world over (unless its Wednesday night) so I’m off to the Pacific Bar & their 7 massive TV’s, not even close to £9 for a 4 pint jug though.  In fact that is just dream these days.  COYS

Type this yesterday (Tuesday) I know we managed a 3-3 draw.  Top of the group.

Out in the snow

Gripe of the week.  Internet.  I’m not going into details coz it makes me far too mad but the jist is this.  We bought a mobile internet dongle so we could use the internet from our apartment, not least so we could skype people, after 2 days of joyous use the credit run out & we needed to charge it up.  It won’t let us though, no matter what we do.  This French company don’t want to let us give them money, no wonder their economy has gone to shit.  So it’s back to using Wi-Fi in cafes & bars on limited battery & dodgy signals but hey, if that’s the only thing we have to moan about then life must be good.

And it is.  We’ve had a week on the snow now & its f#cking brilliant.  We’ve had a few white out days but thats not a problem as its dumping 20cm of snow on the mountain, & it has been dam cold up there, -20 on average but what do you expect when to come to a place like this.  We have tiered & aching muscles already but then I came here with a particular dodgy back & The Wife’s knee has never been the same since 1 of you boys smashed into it after half a day’s ski lessons only to decide he didn’t need any more (granted he did spend most of his time videoing some old bird on the drag lift) he lost control & tried to stop all his 16 stone of, err let’s call muscle (?) on her leg.  I don’t think either of them stopped.  We also have 3 flights of steps to get up at the end of the day, this is not easy at the end of a hard day sliding about on your arse.  We’ve covered a lot of the mountain already but probably on about half of the lifts are open so there are still loads more to do.  The ski conditions themselves are good for this time of the year.  The higher slopes are fluffy powder with only the runs into resort getting icy.

On to the more important stuff.   Beer (I can’t bring myself to call it Après Ski).  We’ve been to all the bars that are open (not that many, yet) with varying degrees of enjoyment.  Let’s start with the bad, The Blue Note – We’d heard a lot of good stuff about this bar, but we couldn’t bloody find it.  After being directed to it for about the 19^th time we eventually found it but it wasn’t really worth it.  Think youth club out of Byker Grove & full of students on their gap year full of their own self importance all talking over each other to convince others that they were really vain, humourless & boring.  We were convinced so we left.  Then there’s the Pettie Danois – This is easy to explain, think of a shit-pit you’ve been to then add in some complimentary smoked, dried & cured meats & few boiled eggs & leave them on the bar for the day, then fill the place with scuzzers that can’t afford dinner so they go there for a free meal get pissed on the all full beer & wine then throw it up on the floor where there standing.  We won’t be going back.  Lucky though, all the bars that are not bad are good.  Our favourites being; The Lodge, V Spot & XV.  (Strangely it’s the bars full of French that are best).  I’ve also discovered my Football pub, the Pacific Bar, very similar to the Ashes back home but more underground (I mean literally, not in the cool exclusive sense).  The drinks are expensive, about 8 euro’s for a beer & glass of wine but as the other local workers get to know you then a few free drinks find themselves coming our way, let the rich tourists make them a profit.  The bars are all having opening parties as well.  1, The Morris Pub, had theirs last week & we was going to go.  When we was away before 1 of my mates (the 1 mentioned above actually) sent out a batch of mini disks for me (do you remember mini disks, they were around for about 6 months before being replaced by mp3 players) anyway one of them he sent me out was the debut album by the Coral & to this day it remains as 1 of my all time favourites.  Well would you believe it they were playing the opening night so we was going.  We got into the V Spot though & got a fair few pints down our neck & then couldn’t be bothered to walk the 30m to get there.  As it turns out though we had a result, they came on about mid-night, played 1 song complained that the sound was shit & stormed off. 

The really bad news is, we start working next Wednesday, we have to start at 10am as well.  Tough, Tough, Tough.

In the mean time I will be solely concentrating on Snow & beer, the important things in life.