The Chronicles of Gregor

Happy New Year from the alps! We are now halfway through our third group of guests. Things are going very well except for last week, A decided that she didn't really like 3 of the guests (a sweet 8 year old girl, a middle aged friendly teacher and a lone travelling cross country skiier named Bob) and therefore just didn't bother cooking them a dessert...out of hatred. I then had to take them aside and break the horrible news to them. All but one of them cried and Bob told us he had been looking forward to Panna Cotta all week long, none of these people left us a tip.

It has been a very eventful time here so I will focus on one particular event of the last couple of weeks to tell you about. A colleague of ours, named Jay funnily enough, stole our chalet phone a couple of days after christmas. I don't know why he decided to do something so mean, he muttered something about christmas blues and not recieving the tractor set he asked for, whatever.


Anyway he decided to go on a massive off piste run with our phone in his unzipped pocket, bad idea, an hour later he came and told us that our phone was halfway up the mountain in a treacherous rocky off piste area and we were never going to see it again. These phones cost 200 Euros to replace so nobody was particularly happy about the situation.


The next afternoon, quite a few of our colleagues recieved a mysterious phonecall from our lost phone. The man on the other end was a thick accented Slovakian named Gregor. As Jay was the one that caused all this trouble we decided it was best that he deals with Gregor.


The next 2 days saw Jay spending a lot of time on the phone to our Slovakian friend trying to organise a meeting place where he could go and retrieve the lost phone. During this time Jay learned a lot about Gregor and a budding friendship developed. It turns out Gregor is a piste basher who works all over the French alps. His wife left him for a bouncer at Dicks Tea Bar and his choice of headwear is a fez, 'like a camel'.


So Jay finally managed to arrange a meeting time and place with Greg, he was to meet him at midnight at the South Eastern side of the white christmas tree in Mottaret centre and if he was lucky, Greg was going to take him for a ride on his piste basher. Jay stayed in for the evening waited patiently for Gregor's call, all the while getting more and more excited for his ride on the piste basher. He called round all of our colleagues and told them the exciting news. It was the talk of the resort... At half past 11, Jay recieved a heart breaking phonecall. Greg couldn't make it, there had been an avalanche in Courcheval and he had to go and do some emergency bashing.


A heartbroken Jay went to bed with the promise of a phonecall from Gregor in the morning. The phonecall came and another meeting was arranged. This time Jay was to meet Gregor outside a bar in town. Jay was already going to be at this bar with all 30 of our colleagues for our staff christmas dinner so it was perfect.


4 pm arrived and Jay stood outside, wearing his reindeer antlers (Gregor asked for him to wear something recognisable) looking for a burly Eastern European man wearing a fez (like a camel). A phonecall from Gregor arrived...it was at this point that I headed outside to greet Jay, the lost phone attached to my ear, putting on my most convincing Slovakian accent, apologizing to a red faced Jay for not wearing my fez.

 Turns out it isn't that difficult to find a lost mobile phone off piste.