The Final Count Down

With 1 week to go it’s looking likely that this will be our 1^st & last year as a seasonair.  There is so much good out here, as I have been banging on about for the past 5 months, but there is also a lot of bad.  It comes down to how much you enjoy the actual snow.  For me, I love it.  I love getting up the hill & challenging myself on the hardest runs in difficult conditions.  But in order to do it again next year I would have to work 6 days a week getting up at 5:30am & not finishing till 11 or 12 pm (granted there would be a substantial break in the middle of the day for boarding) during that time I would have to be cleaning others peoples shit, driving the little shits around, taking them out on to the mountain & putting up with there shit & dealing with all the shit that France throws at you, which is a fuck load.  I would get paid barely any money & it certainly wouldn’t help me in my future return to real life.  I love boarding, but do I love it that much?  Next year we’ll be out here but joining the ranks of tourists again.  As I sit here typing this over looking the amazing view of the Solaise & Bellvarde Mountains it does make me a bit sad, but (& it’s a big but) the truth is I would never get this view again without spending £320,000, instead we’d be in a tiny little bedroom covered in pine overlooking a car park with some brat of a child stomping its foot demanding Frosties for breakfast from its ignorant over indulging English parents who would be staying in our Chalet.

So what to do in the last week?  The snow is poor & getting worse.  I have forced myself out there a couple of times but its borderline torture.  The snow is bad here but there is still snow, the other surrounding resorts (including Plagne, Les Arcs & La Rosiere) are all but shut.  This means all the punters from those resorts end up here making it incredibly busy on top of the tricky conditions.  I just didn’t have the heart to stand in big queues to get to the top of a muddy slushy run, so I gave up after about 2 hours.  To get down though (I still refuse to get the cable car) I came down the black run of which I’ve mentioned before, the Face.  Its tough in good conditions but it was an ever-changing mix of ice, rocks, grass, slush & massive mounds of a combination of the lot.  I can safely say it was the hardest run I’ve ever had to do.  I got down it though without a single fall but my legs were on fire by the time I was drinking my celebratory beer at the bottom.

Without the snow the only thing left to do is drink.  Life is still good.

With the return to England on the horizon I’ve been thinking of the things I’ve been missing & therefore looking forward to most.  Obviously my family.  My parents are towards the end of building their dream house on the coast.  It wont only be great to see them but it’ll be great to see how the home is getting on & trying to help out with the stresses they are facing.  Also, to see my brother & the family.  We missed my little nephews 1^st birthday recently & it’ll be great to see him, hopefully he’ll be walking, then I’ll be able to trip him over! 

Getting out & having a few beers with the boys.   I’ve meet a few people here but nothing can replace the high level of bollocks we can speak when we’re 5 pints down surrounded by people who you have no reservations at all in calling a c*nt. & that understand how your twisted brain works   Bon times. 

Food.  France is famed for its cuisine but is all very samey here in the Savoyard.  I cant wait for a bacon sandwich, a proper curry & a Chinese.  More importantly some proper beer.  The beer here is either piss water or liquorice tasting 8% sludge.  Give me a proper larger or a pint of Guinness & I’ll be a happy boy.

Golf.  I haven’t played for 6 months now so I’ll be even more rubbish than usual but golf is a great way to get out & talk even more bollocks in the pretence of doing sport.  It’ll probably be raining but I’m getting on the course & hacking my way round as many times as I can convince people to come out with me.

And finally & somewhat surprisingly England.  One of the reasons we left was because we were fed up with the way the country is.  It might be a mess but it’s our mess & we understand it.  France is a difficult country to be in.  The language is ridiculous, the lifestyle is backwards & the bureaucracy is quit frankly laughable (or at least it would be if it did make you want to kill yourself then everyone around you).  Getting back to a place where most people are friendly & polite, where you can buy a drink or a meal or anything when you want, a place where supermarkets don’t close for 2 hours at lunch & a place where (as long as you avoid the students) the majority of people wash.

Sun, C and VAT.

Sorry about the lack of blogs, there is no excuse other than complete laziness.  There have been times as I’ve been slouched on the sofa or sunning myself on the balcony when I have been a bit bored & thought I should write you all an update but I just couldn’t be bothered.  You see its been scorchio here for the last couple of weeks.  It’s been up to 28 degrees in the village.  This isn’t just unusual, it has been, up until this season, completely unheard of.  You don’t need me to tell you that that sort of temperature is not helping the otherwise average snow conditions.  It has melted 40cm in 2 weeks.  All the snow in the village has disappeared, the runs into resort have receded to just leave a slushy white stripe in an otherwise brown muddy mountain & even high up the conditions are very poor.  I still give credit to the piste bashers for having any runs at all open.  Other resorts are down to just 2 or 3 high altitude runs or closed completely, here is still running at about 80%.  But what with all this heat & the poor conditions I have only boarded for about 8 hours in the last month & apathy has set in.  It’s a bit like when, all those thousands of years ago, we were on school summer holidays.  Haven’t really got anything to do but cant be bothered to do it.   We have been out & about visiting the nearby villages of Annecy & Chambrey.  The Chambrey visit was due to a giant of a friend of ours who managed to slice his finger open in spectacular fashion & we needed to take him to have surgery.  Bloody stupid basterd (typical 18 year old, well not quite typical but definitely stupid) he was making his lunch of Saussicon & the work top was dirty, instead of cleaning it like a normal human being he held the meat in his hand like a policeman’s truncheon &, using a serrated steak knife, attempted to saw it horizontally in the air.  Saussicon being the toughest of all sausages meant he had to give it some serious force.  It was only a matter of time till the inevitable happened & the knife slipped & sliced though his index finger so deep it was only his bone that stopped him slicing the whole thing off. Another 1 of his colleagues brought him some bandages but he still had to get on the public bus with his hand & arm covered in blood &, to stem the flow of blood to his hand, he had to hold it above his head making him look like some sort of ballerina of Death.  They gave him 4 stitches but referred him to surgery to repair all the tendon & nerve damage he has caused.  But Chambrey was quite nice, a medieval town & we’ve been to Annecy before which is a lovely town right on a big lake.  But France being France & their desire to make everything difficult we couldn’t drink when we wanted a drink or eat when we wanted to eat.  Tossers.  The outcome of it all though is that the big gay bear has to go home on Saturday, he’s really pleased to be going home but we’ll miss him.  Good luck big man.

Val D’Isere is a very big and internationally renown ski resort & as such quite a few celebrity’s come through town during the season.  I’ve already mentioned a few I met including Heston Blumenthal, Holy from Red Dwarf, Timmy Mallett & Nicky Clarke.  These are people who I have actually met (even the wife had her photo taken with Timmy) & made laugh with my amazing sense of humour?.  But since then I’ve got a couple more to add to my list & we even move out of the Z lister’s.  Whilst at work the other weekend 1 of the girls got a call from her husband & was told that a major movie star was in town & in the tourist information office, none of us believed him but as I was in a bit of a lull at work I thought I ought to check it out so I legged it the 150m to the tourist info office.  It was empty.  When I came out though I notice the shop next door was unusually busy so I thought I may as well, whilst I’m here, check it out.  As I marched a military pace (so as not to miss too much working time you understand) I rounded the corner and quite literally bumped into Arnnie.  Yep the superstar & governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger was in town.  He looked great (all be it a bit old nowadays), massive barrel chest & an old beaten classic top-gun leather jacket on.  What was surprising was that he was about the same height as me.  I thought he was going to be at least 7 foot.  Anyway after a quick chat, a few beers discussing the various wars we’ve been in & a wrestle I had to get back to work.  But the celebrity spotting hadn’t finished for the day.  As I banged on about before, for my work we go to the best Chalets in resort & fit up the clients for ski’s & boots.  The poshest of the lot is a place called the Eagles Nest.  We got the heads up that a very famous Lady would be staying there but we wasn’t to make it common knowledge around town.  Even I had heard of this women, but as it turns out, not recognise.  There I was fitting about 6 well-behaved children (very rare for expensive chalets) and a few adults, I’m on to the very last person.  Everybody else had been fitted with no problems what so ever but we didn’t have the right boots for this final lady.  She was very polite & gracious about it and it wasn’t a major problem but bloody typical it was her.  The celebrity that we were told to keep as happy as possible & not disturb her anymore than was strictly necessary.  “Can I just take your name please, you know, for security purposes”  “oh yes” she replies, “its Stella.  Stella McCartney”.  The daughter of 1 of the most famous men that’s ever lived & the super successful fashion designer who I knew to be staying there but still didn’t recognise.  Anyway, we returned with the correct boots, sorted out her skis & left her to get on with her holiday.  Before this season started the most famous person I’d seen was Anton DuBeck from Strictly Come Dancing.  Now I’d met 2 megastars on the same day.  They didn’t give me any money though.  Tight arse’s.

Then reality came & bought me down with a crashing bump. I had a few text messages from my brother saying he’s about to have all his stuff repossessed unless I sort out my VAT bill.  After 5 months of lounging around & messing about in the snow with the biggest stress being what cocktails to get in 2-4-1 happy hour this was all a bit of a pisser.  So I rushed to open my emails to be confronted with an £11 grand bill that needed to be paid within 7 days.  FUUUUCK.  I had a flap, stressed around town a bit, shit myself then called the VAT office.  HM Customs & revenue, if a call centre wants to know how to improve their service they should call them.  Tax & VAT is wank, we all know that but that’s why I think they are so good, sort of camaraderie in the ranks and all that.  Granted they had fucked up & sent some very scary letters to my brother, but & this is the all-important thing, it was sorted out instantly & efficiently.  I am very rubbish with my tax & VAT returns & they have to talk me through them like some sort deranged ape so its probably to do with my uselessness that started of the problems but to receive a letter telling you your about to have all your things removed because someone else might not of paid a bill must be very scary.  Sorry Big brov, Sis in Law & Baby Nephew.  It turned out I had paid & they had neglected to remove me from the records when my company shut down.  A very bad few hours that though.

And finally.  The end of the dream.  After all those heroics, nail-biting performances & luck we are no longer going to win the Champions League.  I’m not disappointed, we over achieved, we did better than all the pundits thought we could & got further than Arsenal.  Well done mighty Spurs.  All you need to do now is win all the remaining prem games so we can do it again next season.