Back to basics

After the 1 & only comment I had on the last post I have reread some of my previous blogs & I think they have been too serious by far & we need to get back to talking about what makes us happy, that is Beer, boobs, Boarding & insulting the French.

1^st of all lets cover the ever beautiful, medicinal & fun inducing qualities of Booze.  Like back at home I try & have a mid week drink then a few over the weekend.  As I work the weekend I tend to have a few on Thursday/Friday.  But unlike at home I do have a beer with lunch or dinner almost everyday.  The past week was fairly typical.  Beer with lunch everyday then Tuesday night the wife & I polished off a couple of bottles of wine & few Gins.  I have been lucky lately & avoided hangovers, not this time though, a nagging head-of-doom all day.  I’m blaming the French wine, they cant even do that right.  Then Thursday night (St Patrick’s Day) we went out for a few.  Started of in the Lodge bar (our local) where we meet some of the wife’s colleague’s & a few of their clients (a bunch of lads with a very sad man trying to chat up the wife’s mate who is about 60 & looks it).  We then meet up with a few of my mates & hit the drink properly, as with at home everybody came back to ours & we polished off 2 bottles of Gin as well as the beer.  It was a very drunken & funny night that eventually ended at 4am (unfortunately no roads were closed during the evening).  I woke up about 11 & MY GOD what was going on with my head.  It was like the Val D’Isere bell tower had relocated inside it & the monks were trying to recapture there lost your & recreating some punk classics in there.  Dam.  We were heading over to Tignes to watch the X-games but I found out I had to go into work instead.  I didn’t want to do either; all I wanted to do is hide under a table with a crash helmet on & rock gently till the inevitable death came along.  But no, I missed the X-Games & had to go into work, not only that I was on my own for the 1^st time & I also had to drive the van!  It was the longest 2 hours of my life but I made it & I only run a few tourists over so that’s ok.

On next to the Boobs.  It was not the boobs that made this though.  On Sunday evenings, as part of my ski technician profession, we go round to the best Chalet’s in Val.  As mentioned before these are in excess of €35,000 per week & as we all know the rich managed to afford shallow girls who just so happen to have some redeeming features.  It doesn’t happen very often but last week we arrived at 1 of the better 1’s.  All the people were supper friendly & it was quit a pleasant fitting.  During the middle of it the people who had there own equipment came down to the boot room to unpack their ski gear.  This 1 particular women was very difficult to miss but being the professionals that we are we carried on without too much drooling.  She was stunning & in very tight see through clothing, she had just bought new ski boots (or her boyfriend had just treated her to) & she wanted me to fit them to her skis & could I check her boyfriends for him.  A little while later the boyfriend turned up.  My boss likened him to ‘an aging hippy’.  Which I think is a fair assessment of him.  An old man with long bleached hair covered in fake tan with numerous beads, necklaces & cross draped round his neck below an open shirt with 3 or 4 too many buttons un done.  As we drove away we both exuberantly lamented the wonders of this young bit of stuff & expressed our confusion of how the aged hippy come to be with her.   The following day we found out that the aged hippy was Nicky Clarke, the multi award winning celebrity hairdresser & she was his new girl friend, 22 years younger.  In the words of Mrs Merton ‘I wonder what she see’s in the multi millionaire Nicky Clarke’.

We’re here to board so I ought to mention what’s been going there.  I have more or less given up with the board park, I’m too old & too rubbish so I’ve been sticking to slopes & doing little tricks off the sides.  I’m pretty confident on any slope know & even blasted down the Face (a black run which is the steepest down hill run on the world cup circuit) the other day.  Pissed it.  But just 2 runs later, on a simple Blue run I had my biggest fall of the season so far.  I was just doing some gentle carving but & high speed after just shooting out the end of a wide gully.  I don’t know how I did it but I caught a front edge which flipped me forward onto my knees & face then tumbled for about 100m head over hills & spinning in all directions bashing ever single bone & muscle on my useless boarding body.  I managed to find my feet before the fall came to an end & made it down without any serious damage but I am still in pain.  It feels like I been stonewashed in a giant washing machine.

& Finally it comes to insulting the French.  I’ve all ready mentioned the X-games.  They came to Tignes from Wed to Friday last week & in the words of Ron Burgundy in ski terms ‘there kind of a big deal’.   We drove over on Wednesday afternoon so we could watch the final (finishes after the last lift to Val).  It was the Slope Style final 1^st.  The French in there infinite wisdom wouldn’t let spectators up the edges of the course so you had to watch from the very bottom.  But the French being French still weren’t completely satisfied with the view so they built a huge jump directly in front of the spectators so that it was the only thing of the course you could see, but as the course was running slower than usual none of the competitors had enough speed to even get up this let alone do any tricks of it.  The only thing we could see of this were the riders slowly limping over the side & down into the interviewing area.  Ridiculous, only in France. 

We Keep Marching On

What a night.  There I was on my own in a full pub with the walls covered in TV’s all showing football.  I cant tell a lie, I was more than a little nervous, defending has not been our forte this season & with AC Milan on full attack & us throwing in last ditch tackles, blocks & line clearance’s from early in the 1^st half I couldn’t see my nerves easing.  There was a big group of blokes standing next to me & they were brilliant.  They were Scoucer's so didn’t really care who won but they where cheering & chanting along with the Spurs Faithfull & even started the slow drawn out ‘Oh when the Spurs, Go marching in’.  We all got pissed, I abused the Arse (lets make it clear, the arse & not their arse) & they abused the red side of Manchester.  It’s what football is all about.  Having a laugh & supporting your team, getting drunk & good-humoured banter.  There a few sets of fans that this is easier than others & I have found the world over that the Liverpool set to be fun, knowledgeable & fair (sorry Man U mates but I cant Lie) there is always the aresholes out there in all groups of supporters but I’ve been lucky enough to have never met them.  Why do I say all this?  I heard a good friend of mine got bottled, glassed & kicked unconscious by a group of blokes putting him in hospital for the night & in his own local as well after the Liverpool Chelski game & it wasn’t done by the Liverpool fans!  It was completely unprovoked & started with a bottle over the back of his head when he had his back turned at the end of the game, even more confusing is that he is a true blue himself?  What’s the point?  

Anyway, we were probably 2^nd best last night but the important thing, the Olive munching mummy’s boys couldn’t score & we’re through to the next round.  It’s a wonderful thing.  The next match is only against Barcelona & who the fuck are they, should be easy.

OK enough football & back to my other favourite subject.  Me!  It’s getting closer & closer to the end of the season (only 8 weeks) so we need to be sorting out our summer plans & what to do next winter.  Up until a few weeks ago the summer meant 6 months round the world going to California, Cook Islands, New Zealand (for a couple of months & work), Sydney, China & then meet up with our friends around the Middle East before coming home.  This plan has been set in our minds for a while now & an integral part of it was being able to work in NZ to help with the funding & to keep our minds in check.  The problem is, we’re too old to get a normal working holiday Visa.  The only company that offers this Visa for the over 30’s, Bunac, are piss takers.  In order to buy the visa from them you have to buy their working holiday pack which is £500 & all you get for that is access to there support network(?) & a lonely planet.  As we have eye’s & a brain (the wife has anyway) finding a job would be just like anywhere else in the world which makes it the most expensive lonely planet in the world.  We would only want to work 6-8 weeks & with the exchange rate we would of had to earn $3000 (NZ) just to brake even.  It’s just not worth it.  So this is a major spanner in works & with our minds all ready on a world trip the re planning is somewhat difficult.  We are going to do a tour round Europe with a rough route of South-West France, Barcelona (knocked out the CL but the mighty Yid Army), South France, all through Italy & Sicily & back through who knows where.   There are loads of problems to sort out, work, language barrier, August holidays, cost & final route being just some of the mountain of issues we need to sort.  It’s a good problem to have really but The Wife loves to plan everything & I like to just drift along.  It’s always been like this & its fine, she loves a list & I don’t worry about much.  This though needs much more planning than our round the world trip would & has forced me to think about things.  This isn’t something I’m used to & it’s making my tiny brain hurt.  Couple this with the fact that we’re not 100% sure whether we’re going to come back to the mountains next winter its put a little strain over the last week or so.

Spending Summer in Italy.  Its tough life

Big puddles though

Why wouldn’t we come back next winter after how great it’s been (so I’ve been telling you all)?  Everything I have said in previous blogs is true, it is wonderful here & we have loved it.  Me more than the wife maybe, but that’s hardly surprising.  You might not notice it when you’re on holiday & it’s not been completely obvious to me until recently but it is such a bloke place.  Your whole world evolves around sport & beer.  You spend the day boarding or skiing, you then spend the night drinking beer (its cheapest) talking about it or going to watch football or talking about football.  Those of you who know the wife will know that this is just not her.  Even the other girls here are blokey tomboys so there isn’t any getting away from it for her.  Its not just that either, we’re both older than the workers here & don’t share much in common with them.  The old time seasonairs are no better, they’re all a bit manic & not something we aspire to.  But it’s also the remoteness of it.  I know in the grand scheme of things we’re not far from anywhere but we’re not close to anything either.  For a ski resort Val is quite big but as a town it’s tiny, & as mentioned before we’re in a little bubble not knowing what’s going on in the real world.  Our life is skiing & as much as I love it, too much of a good thing and all that?  If you don’t ski then what do you do.  Passing the time for a day is ok, for a week even but what then?  We haven’t had to work either & like in a Vanilla Skye the other night (a waste of 2 hours of my life that I will never get back) you can’t enjoy the sweet without a bit of bitter.  Coming back is definitely not ruled out, Like I said above it has been great, we just need to find a job that will suit us both.  We are looking into working in a chalet for the season.  As with all jobs it has it’s down sides but with more to our life than drinking beer & boarding it should give us more perspective.  (What the hell am I say, more to life than drinking & boarding, I must be going mental).   Anyway I’m of for a board then a beer.

Through the eye of the Needle.

The big melt has started

Our Little Gift to Val D’Isère

You may have noticed there has a distinct lack of blogs from me over the last few weeks.  This is mostly down to laziness but also because of the absence of news worthy activities.  It seems we have settled into the life in the mountains & although it’s not your every day routine its routine none the less.  Its not that we’re enjoying it any less its just the things that were novel & exciting to start off with are now constant & satisfying.  We still get out & board, we still get drunk, we still eat far too much  & there is still a lack of snow. Couple this with the fact that its been half term week for European schools & the slopes are heaving with irritating kids all full English & horrible Parisians we decided to have a little break from the mountains, in fact a break from France altogether so we have just popped over to Italy for the last few days & spent our time chilling out in Turin.

As I have banged on enough in previous blogs we are currently experiencing somewhat of a snow drought.  It hadn’t snowed with since early Jan & since then we’ve had warm weather that has contributed to 1 of the worst snow records in the last 30 years & the snow depth is actually only 25% of the average amount.   Snow was desperately needed so when we booked our holiday we had a bit of laugh about the fact that at least if we go away then it will snow in Val.   Sure enough that’s what happened.  As all you skiers out there know skiing when its actually snowing is tough & not all together enjoyable suffering from white out conditions.  The best time to ski is to get up on the 1^st lift of the day & make fresh tracks in the fluffy powder.  It snowed continuous from Sunday morning to Monday night, we had to leave for Turin on Tuesday morning.  So we missed out, our bad weather curse continues but at least the slopes of Val have been refreshed

So Turin then.  For a start it was great to just get away from the little bubble of mountain life, away from the scuzzy people, the whinging kids, the smelly French & the downright horrible Parisians.  Incidentally if the French are the most hated people the world over then it’s the happy people from Paris who are to blame.  Everybody hates them, even the French hate the Parisians, even the Parisians themselves hate each other.  We all know that Paris itself is full of art, culture, history & all that bollocks but how is it possible to enjoy it sounded by these people.  In a recent travel magazine there was an article titled ‘Paris, the Dead centre of Europe’ because even the people that live there can’t even be bothered to go out.  I digress, Turin.  It was just over a 3 hour drive through the alp’s, I’d like to say the scenery was amazing but as almost the entire drive is through tunnels it would be a lie.  Luckily we borrowed a friend’s sat-nav because, as with city, it was chaos.  We made it though & had a thoroughly lovely time.  Italy is amazing wherever you go, the food, the drink the people & Turin is no exception even though the French influence (as its so close to the boarder) makes for some difficulties.  Having a coffee isn’t as easy as it should be & going out for a few drinks in the evening is a little unusual as all the bars do ‘Aperitevo’.  This is a set price for a drink & includes buffet style antipasti.  All very nice but expensive if you’re not hungry.

Just as well they don't do it in Val, as it is I'm so heavy that whilst dropping the kids off at the pool this morning the toilet seat shattered, it was a right pain in the.........