Home & Away

We left France on the 3^rd of May.  We made good time along the French motorways, only being held up by the geniuses of P&O.  The 1^st thing we noticed about being back in Blighty (& we continued to notice it) was just how fat most people were.  Don’t get me wrong, nobody would mistake me for a bulimic, but I’m talking about proper fat, the sort of people who can no longer walk but waddle.  The rest of Europe just doesn’t do fat like we do.  We arrived home the way you should, floating towards the white cliffs of Dover & I would like to say that I was really happy to be home, but I wasn’t.  I couldn’t wait to see my family & friends & we received an overwhelming amount of generosity but I was depressed.  Not least because after 6 months in the mountains coming down to sea level & the country was in its full spring bloom the hay fever didn’t gradually come over me over weeks but slapped me in the face like wet tar forcing me to take tablets, hay fever tablets always bring out my dark side but I was a bit miserable.  I shouldn’t of been though, we were staying in a friends house for free whilst they were on holiday, another friend met us at 11pm to help me unpack & give us a carrier bag full of essential supplies, we was bought lunch, made dinner & got drunk.  After a couple of days & being the hero I am I stopped with the hay fever drugs & everything became fun again.  All be it in a very hectic & rushed way.  After meeting up with the family & seeing the progress of the parents new home, collecting our clothes from all corners of the county & repacking from winter to summer it was time to get back into the local pubs.  The wife was out with the girls so most of the men were forced to baby-sitting duties, all but 1.  He had to come out but the poor boy was grey, very hungover from night before it took him just over an hour to finish his 1^st beer.  Finish it he did though (it was touch & go for a while), he kept it down & we managed a good 12 hour session ending in a row of tequila’s each.  We can’t remember who was responsible but I do know it pushed me over the edge.   It delayed my sample production for another day!  Before we left to France in November I got the snip, we’ve never wanted kids & it was the sensible but painful solution but to be given the all clear my fertility needed to be tested.  As the old saying goes, ‘your either a wanker or a liar’ & I’m no liar but doing on command wasn’t as easy as you’d expect.   There’s so many rules.  These are the actual notes I was given; do not use the withdrawal method, it is not to be passed into the container orally, no lubricant can be used, no trace of soap can be left & the sample must be produce directly into the pot without contamination!  Add the fact that it had to be taken to the hospital within an hour of production & the necessary hospital was half an hour away & the sample needed to be kept in a pocket to keep it at body temperature the whole thing took on military planning.  I had to produce, pot, bag & deliver during a week day morning with the neighbours builders drilling & shouting out through the open windows, the wife stomping about downstairs packing & all the time the pot sitting there winking at me like Jabba the huts ugly sister.  Every time I got close & picked up the little plastic basterd the whole moment was lost.  There is jut no romance these days!  Anyway, job done.

We were at home for 2 weeks & we only spent 1 evening in.  It was a feast of food, booze & company. That was all great but the 2 weeks did make us both realise that as much as we have missed the people at home we still don’t want to go back there.  It took us the 2 weeks to finalise our plans to get away, not booking our accommodation until 3 days before we left, but the day to leave arrived so off we went.  It was 1 of the worst days travelling we’ve ever had & most of it was down to my own stupidity.

My parents were driving us to the airport & they arrived half-hour early, which I’m going to blame.  We made excellent time getting to Heathrow T5 in just under an hour so we had a good 3 hours to relax into the airport shops & bars.  Whilst enjoying a coffee before check in the wife, checking I had every thing, said got your injection, cause I had!  Oh fuck.  As you may know I’m a diabetic.  Not being 1 to over dramatise a situation without insulin I will die & as we intended to be away for a few months I had quite a lot of it.  It was left in the fridge round our friends house, my parents where carrying on to see some friends & the rest of my mates were at work apart from 1 hapless buddy who happened to be on the night shift.  I went into the airport Boots & they contacted my doctor who was able to give me an emergency prescription for a few douses but I needed the lot.  I woke the poor basterd up who then had to drive round Kent to get the keys, pick up the life saving insulin then hot foot it to Heathrow before check-in closed.  The irony of it is is that back in his single days & previous job (making drugs for a pharmacy company) 1 of his regular chat up lines was that he saved lives for a living!  He made it though & we were on our way.

1^st Stop Milano.  It was an easy flight & an easy train ride to Central station.  This was by far the most impressive train station I’ve ever been to.  Easily beating all the London ones (as great as they are) & even Grand Central Station NY.  We had a short walk to our hotel & that’s when problem 2 started.  We had been moved hotels without prior warning.  Granted we had been upgraded from a 3 to 4 star hotel because of it but it was another 20min walk in the sweltering heat with all our luggage (which in total consisted of 6 bags) to a more remote area back the way we had come by the train station.  As we all know, the train stations the world over attract the down & outs, vagrants & in this case 50 year old Chinese transsexual hookers.  We made it to our hotel with both our luggage & arseholes in tack & hit our 3^rd problem.  They had only booked us in for 2 nights instead of 3!  After what seemed like an ice age since we left Kent we were finally in our room, which, as we have no other address, would be our home. 

This blog is becoming  bit long now & I know some of you need to get back to work(?) so I will tell you all about it later.

The end of an era

Its been a while since my last post but before I fill you all in I just need to give a massive thanks to my good friend, you know who you are, who yet again put himself out & this time it really was to save a life.  He is the brunt of most of our jokes (mostly coz he gives as good as he gets, better a lot of the time) but he helped me out of a bad situation.  Its not often us men are very genuine but I can say with all sincerity, Thanks you bender!  I will fill the rest of you in when I get there, now its recap time.

The ski season is over.  I skied for the 1^st time in my life & probably the last in May, I did just 1 run on the last day of the season.  The top half was amazing, true spring snow conditions, the mountain all to myself & a seasons worth of experience in my legs.  It was great.  If any of you are yet to experience spring snow its like the softest of powder days, you float through it like boarding on sugar, it’s the best.  The bottom half was quite the reverse, the sugar turned to slush, the mounds turned to mud & the dips turned to puddles.  There was a section where I had to speed over some mud, skim a slushy puddle & turn before the snow run out.  The run complete I joined the wife in a celebratory beer & reminisce of the season complete.

The last week in Val was spent almost entirely in a state of drunkenness  & 1 day with top 5 bad hangover.  On the Monday it was the wife’s birthday, so we packed up a picnic & set of to hunt for the elusive Marmot (which we shall all call the European Beaver from now on).  We went deep into the backcountry searching moist crevices & overgrown shrubbery & then there it was, the European Beaver poking out between 2 rocky lips looking all cute & like it needed a tickle.  The European Beaver satisfied we went out for, what was supposed to be a nice long meal & a sensible amount of drinks.  1 out of 2 aint bad!  After the meal we had to walk home as the buses had stopped running for the season.  I had to clear some of the lovely Italian wine from my body so we thought we might as well pop into Café Face & have a nightcap while we’re at it.  It was a very surreal experience, I’m not sure if it was the staff end of season party or what but there was only about 10 people in there & all of them were behind the bar out of there nut passing round a microphone MC-ing to the music.  We got told the drinks were on the house & was subsequently thrust 2 very big Bombay Gin’s & tonics (usually about €10 each).  They were doing roly-poly’s over the sofa’s, swapping T-shirts & generally acting every bit of drunk they clearly were.  We were in a different world to them & just couldn’t quite manage it so we carried on our Journey down to V-Spot where we proceeded to quickly leave our world behind.  The next day was our wedding anniversary & we intended to go round all the posh hotels & have a cocktail crawl, instead we went up the mountain to the Folie Douse for a very over priced & hungover lunch. 

The Wednesday was my works party.  As with the spirit of the season & the forward planning I came to expect from the job; at 9:45 I was asked if I could help out for the day & could I start at 10!  It was 1 of the best working days of my life.  I was paid to burn things & drink beer, 2 of my most favourite things in the whole world.  So by 10:30 & 2 pints down we had managed to get a raging fire, we dumped on the coals & the BBQ began.  The person I was supposed to be “helping” was swanning round on the pretence of taking photo’s so it was down to me to take all the money from the punters & give them the obligatory stamp.  It was disgraceful; some of the tramps even wanted me to stamp their thighs & chests!  We soon drunk the place dry of beer so I had to resort to the red wine.  The problem with that though was I was drinking it in pints & as fast.  I don’t know what time I made it home only that I didn’t make all the way upright.  The next day though, Oh My.  I wasn’t like death warmed up, I would of dreamed of feeling that good.  I didn’t think I was going to die or the world was going to end.   The world had ended, I had died & gone to hell then that had ended & the devil himself was released of doing evil every again as I was suffering for everybody’s past & future pain all in 1 day!  Then what made it 10 times worse?  I had to go to fucking work.   

For the next couple of days I hit the slopes getting in a bit of last minute boarding.  It even snowed when I was up on the glacier for the last time.  But all things must end & soon enough the packing was done, the car was loaded (only half as full for the return leg) & farewells were said.  It wasn’t sad leaving, we were ready to go but I don’t know.  There was so much good about it but unfortunately there was as much bad & it’s that, I suppose, that is just shame! 

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.

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.........