Dicks Pee Bar

Clean down week was LONG. I pulled a disgusting amount of hair out of plug holes and I have never done so much polishing in my life. We weren't given our ski passes until our chalets were signed off as complete so to compensate for our lack of fun during the day we spent pretty much every evening frequenting the various drinking holes around town.

On Friday we were finally given our ski passes and headed out early for a big day on the slopes. It was snowing pretty heavy so it was a really tough first day but great to finally be out there. Obviously I spent a lot of the day teaching A how to ski because she wanted to know how someone can get to look as good as me on the slopes...she is getting there slowly.



Sunday was arrival day for our first set of guests so after a big night out on Saturday and a bit of a lie in on Sunday morning we began to prepare everything for the evening arrival of our guests. I put up a Christmas tree for the first time, it made me feel quite manly, even if it is about 2 feet tall. Unfortunately, due to the fact that a couple of inches of snow pretty much shuts down the entire UK, plane delays meant our guests got in at 2.30 in the morning. They are lovely though, 2 families who stayed in our chalet last christmas so they know how everything works already. So we served them up a 3 course meal in the early hours and crashed hard for the night.

Monday was the young lad (the baby of the group) I mentioned before's 19th birthday so we all went out and had it in a big way. It was a special night and our young boy showed signs of becoming the ladies man he so longs to be by getting off with one of his guests and leaning over her shoulder whilst dancing and high fiveing the other guys and making 'GET IN THERE' motions with his fist when she wasn't looking. It was quite charming. She didn't come down for breakfast the next morning.


Today was our first day off. Last night we followed the pub crawl in town organised by our company for the guests. It was a messy night that ended up in the cramped, sweaty cave that is Dick's Tea Bar. It's pretty horrible and they punish smokers by making them all stand in a tiny cupboard and blow smoke in eachothers faces. There was all sorts of interesting goings on, the much maligned seasonnaire incest that is so rife got into full swing with many staff members exchanging bodily fluids throughout the night (making for a fun day of skiing around and catching up on the different slices of gossip around the slopes) but my favourite story of the night was a different exchange of bodily fluids... between my Welsh roommate and the bedroom floor of one of the girls next door.


He's a lovely chap my Welsh friend but when he drinks, he tends not to stop until he is in a horrific state. Last nights horrific state consisted of him singing (shouting) the Welsh national anthem for 2 hours, crashing out in the girls apartment next door, waking up at about 5 in the morning and taking a pee in the corner of their bedroom and then crawling on the floor through the snow outside back to our place. I think it must be a Welsh thing, I worked with one last year that couldn't control his bladder either and ended up peeing on his managers X Box in the middle of the night.

Chalet Prep Week

Wednesday – 8pm

A here, finally writing from resort!

Training week was ace, a quite drunken affair as every evening meal was accompanied by unlimited wine, but also bloody hard work, starting most days at half 6 and not finishing until 11pm. On Thursday we had a fake Christmas, I was cooking so I couldn’t get very involved, but after the meal was finished J sang his ‘Chalet Host’ song which went down a treat. He didn’t want to do it, on one ‘team bonding night’ (aka ‘lets all go to a bar and drink ourselves silly’) I revealed to our chalet manager that J played the ukulele and had written a very explicit song based on his previous ski season, and so he was effectively bullied into doing it but I think he’s happy he did it now, as it did make him the coolest cat around for a while.

On Saturday we all moved to our resort, and saw our accommodation and chalets for the first time. I’m sharing an apartment with three amazing females, one of whom I share a bedroom with which I’m happy about as she is hilarious, basically a crazy aunt who is mental and maternal in equal doses so I feel pretty lucky! We’ve made our bedroom very homely, mainly because whilst deep cleaning my chalet I discovered a secret supply of blankets hidden in the eaves of the attic, so I’ve ‘borrowed’ them for the season. We also have a spare bedroom!! And J has 2 spare beds! So come one, come all, come visit!

This week we have been deep cleaning our chalets, this has been fun as we have been unsupervised, and so we can plug in the ipod speakers and pump out some tunes whilst cleaning. Also, we have all been given chalet phones, so we have been making lots of unnecessary calls to our friends in the other chalets. Yesterday J’s welsh roommate, who was still drunk at breakfast, decided to spend the day wooing the Essex Girl over the phone, so every break from cleaning was spent thinking up obscene things for him to say to her.

 I am now a pro at making beds and the art of towel folding. My hand had some sort of reaction to the cleaning chemicals though and has got all swollen and red and cracked. I think I’ll return home in 5 months with the hands of an 80 year old woman. We also had to do an inventory of everything in the chalet, we are missing loads so I’ve written a massive list which I’ve given to our manager,  fingers crossed we will get it all before our first guests arrive on Sunday. Also, lots of things were broken, ie: bunk bed ladder wasn’t secured, plug sockets hanging off the wall, so I compiled another list which I gave to the maintenance man. I get more joy from list making than anything else in life, so you can imagine my delight at getting to do it all day every day!

Speaking of things I get delight from, I got to do the online shopping the other night! I did it with my manager and afterwards when I saw how much I had spent, she said ‘well done, that’s very good for the first week’ so I thought I had done pretty well in sticking to the budget. But she just popped into the apartment now to give me the shopping list, so I can cross reference it when its all delivered tomorrow and I have spent more money than any other chalet! Including one which has nearly double the number of guests than ours! I spent 53 euros on a weeks worth of butter…I bought 6 bags of lemons… I have 15 litres of apple juice and 15 litres of orange juice… I have 3 kilos of grated cheese.. My flatmates found this hilarious. It seems even when shopping for food I can’t control my spending.

J is happy though as I ordered him some ‘Herbs de Provence’, which apparently make everything taste better.

Very excited for when it all arrives tomorrow and I can put it away in my newly organised kitchen!

Today we are very hungover. Last night was the staff welcome party; Up till now the other half of our resorts staff had been working in the evenings as their chalets opened to guests earlier than ours, but as today was their first day off we all went a little bit overboard, but it was great to have everyone in one place, all getting to know each, in some cases getting possibly a little bit too friendly with each other. I can imagine that in a ski resort, between colleagues, it all gets a bit incestuous towards the end of the season!

Anyway, this is super long so I’m going to cut it short. I am having a wicked time, I feel like I am in a little ski-season bubble! Hopefully by the end of tomorrow we will have had our chalet signed off by our manager and can FINALLY get on the mountain! 

Update - This was written on wednesday at 8pm, it is now Friday at 7pm and I just wanted to clarify that our chalet was signed off (the cleanest one our manager had seen!!) and we just had a full day on the mountain which was wicked :)

Training week...

Apologies for not posting in such a long time. We have been ridiculously busy. On Saturday we caught the train to Victoria Station where we jumped onto a bus, 22 hours later we jumped back off in Val d'Isere, France for our training week. The train journey went surprisingly fast, A and I were quite anti social and did a lot of sleeping. A made me watch the 2nd Twilight movie... It was shit. So shit. Nothing happened in it. There was lots of moaning and a couple of wolves who I suppose were cool but my god, what a long, boring film! It did make me sleepy though...every cloud!

The first day was basically spent meeting everybody else, moving into our rooms and getting settled. There were 13 of us in total. One of the first people we met was a young 18 year old lad fresh out of school. He is brilliant. On the first night he woke up at 3 in the morning and got everyone else up to start cooking the breakfast because he thought it was 7. Throughout the week he has continually solidified his role as the baby of the group but on Wednesday night he drunkenly told me that he is not happy with this title and would prefer to be known as the 'ladies man'.

There is also a girl from Essex who tells many stories that end in the word 'DISGUSTING'. She is great value for money and says some horrendous things, all in good fun though. The other night she lowered the tone of a harmless dance off by miming an indecent act on one of the other guys here when he bent over on the dance floor.

Yesterday we finally arrived in the resort we will be working in for the rest of the season and moved into our accommodation. It's very nice, A shares with 3 girls next door and has
 a spare room and a nice kitchen. I am sharing with the token Welsh man and another guy, both are very cool, we've got a good living room. The Welsh chap is from Barry Island so there has been a bit of Gavin and Stacey banter. Everything is infinitely more enjoyable when said in a Welsh accent.

First guests arrive in a weeks time, this week will be spend cleaning the chalet and doing an inventory. Also hitting the town for a few beers hopefully. Last night we hit the town, it was a lot of fun but it could end up being pretty expensive as we live a little way away and have to get a taxi home. We made friends with the driver though (somehow spent the whole journey trying to describe to him what banana boating was, he seemed very confused) and plan to bribe him with cakes and other delightful treats as the season goes on.


That is all I have time for for now. We're off for dinner at one of the larger chalets and then heading out for a few beers. Hopefully will be able to update more regularly after guests arrive and we get in the swing of things but for now.. a plus don la bus.

Dinner Party Take Two

J's already updated on our massive pisste-up (my very witty, very original pun, thank you very much) so I'll just add my own two cents: It was amazing! Lovely to see everyone, and lovely to dance the night away. At midnight we got out a fairy cake an ingenius friend had smuggled into the club, and all sang happy birthday to J, of course he doesnt remember that at all, but it was a magical moment.

Later on in the week J and I cooked another 3 course meal, this time at my house, which was a bit of  nightmare as there are small children and animals EVERYWHERE. Every time i turned around there was a cat/dog/younger brother sniffing around. I got very stressed. But fortunately the only person I didnt blow my top at was J which I think bodes well for our future chalet-hosting gig! We had our good friend, who shall be known only as Pilot Harris, sitting in the kitchen with us. He's currently heartbroken, having recently broken up with his long-term girlfriend, and so we tried to keep him amused with our kitchen banter. Ultimately though, he kept us more amused, by dissapearing midway through the cooking process, then returning with lots of beer and cider, which is always welcome in my house.


The starter, which was Js work was: Fondue with Croutons and Side Salad 

 The father christmas table cloth was a leftover from my festive celebrations on saturday night. The fondue was delicious, despite a minor burning incident when J left it on the hob too long - never mind, it is good to make these mistakes now rather than later when we are feeding actual paying guests! He got very cross when he realised it had burnt, and spent a good few minutes moaning, then I told him to add milk, and voila, it was saved. I'm a genius.


Main course was: Roast Duck, with a dark port sauce, carrot ribbons, buttered cabbage and Dauphinoise Potatos.  This was a split jobby, myself taking care of the duck, sauce and cabbage, and J handling the carrots and potatos. 

Dessert was a banana tart tatin; this was all my doing, and having never made one before, I wasnt entirely sure what was going to happen; when I took it out of the oven it kind of looked like a giant naan bread. J recorded the monumentous moment that I turned it over. Adding a new element to the blog... video!! I'm very excited. I hope it works.

Piste off my head and doing the J-Shuffle.

I apologise for the pun, too easy. As the hilarious title loosely suggests, A and myself hit the town over the weekend to say goodbye to our friends as come next Sunday we will not be seeing them for 6 months. Sunday was also my birthday so it was a double celebration, for this reason I ended up twice as smashed as everybody else and for the latter part of the night could be seen with a dopey grin on my face somehow managing to sway in at least 7 directions at once and not fall over. This is a manoeuvre that has taken me a long time to perfect and adapt. I can now do 'the J-shuffle' whilst simultaneously sipping a pint, smoking a cigarette and feigning interest in what somebody is saying to me.

In response to the previous blog entry, I am not some sort of creepy facebook pervert, I am just interested in who I may be spending the next 6 months with. This is just A's way of taking the light away from her own facebook stalking habits, last night she mentioned something to me about our resort reps mum living in the same town as her aunt or something...weird.

I had a lovely birthday on Sunday, I recieved many ski related gifts including goggles, socks a hat and some WeSC headphones. I've not recieved a gift from A, she forgot it was my birthday, that's all the way back on page 1 out of 8 on her to do list. I did, however, recieve a birthday card from her with a picture of Jonathan Creek and his assistant on the front with mine and her heads superimposed over theirs. This is the sort of creative ingenuity that allows me to forgive a friend for letting my birthday slip their mind.


We cooked another practice dinner last night, this time for A's family. I think it went quite well, her Dad had about 4 extra portions which is surely a good sign. A has photos so I will let her give you the details. In the meantime, I am going to complete page 2, item 4 of the list my friend has kindly written for me and get my suitcase out of the loft. Salutations.