- Untitled
- The season begins
- Jan 2010
- Feb 2010
- March 2010
- April 2010
- May 2010
- Ski Pictures 2010
- June 2010
- July 2010
- August 2010
- September 2010
- October 2010
- Late October
- November
- December 2010
- January 2011
- February
- The European Youth Olympic Festival
- March 2011
- The season ends
- May and June 2011
- End of June
- July
- August in Yorkshire
- September 2011
- 28 October 2011
- November/December 2011
- Season 2012
- February 2012
- March and April
- June
- 'Summer' 2012
Homecoming
Three hours delay in Geneva wasn’t that bad. Taking off in a blizzard and being informed by a cheery captain that they were five minutes away from cancelling the flight was sort of okay as Honi pulled the blind down firmly saying ‘Mum there’s nothing you can do about it’. Arriving to find Honi’s skis had gone somewhere else was really not great at all.
Its nine o’oclock (ten in our, now French, body language) we are starving because Easyjet had run out of sandwiches, yet again, and minus two pairs of racing skis. I try to explain to the dead pan women at the Easyjet information desk that these are not your average pair of holiday maker’s skis waiting to gather dust til next Christmas. Peering over the desk to catch sight of the diminutive child that I claim has just won the Anglo Scottish Championships she reluctantly scribbles ‘ PAX IN BRITISH SKI TEAM AND HAS AN EVENT AYT W/END’ and hands me the form. That’s it we retire to Starbucks where I discover the delights of a Falafel Panini and where the girls, overloaded sugar and salt, choose tomato and mozzarella salads.
Minus skis, we set off to find car. Christian parked it before the big snow. His instructions read: ‘Take bus or short walk; turn left then left again, row G’. There is no sign of bus so we set off on short walk which ends up as long walk as we are in the wrong car park. Back at the terminal I ring Christian and find out where to pick up bus. Bus arrives at car park (which might have been short walk for strapping 18 year old boy but is a good five minutes drive). No sign of our red car or any particular car as all cars under a foot of snow. Bus driver is surprisingly impatient bearing in mind he has no other passengers and is sitting in a warm bus while we are trudging around in the snow.
Honi finds car (ski rack was a good clue). In France we have a shovel. In Newcastle we use our sleeves and a CD case that we find amid the debris in the car. The A1 has a 30 mile per hour limit. When I bought our Daihatsu Terrios I was accused by certain family members of driving a Postman Pat van but now I feel vindicated – we are moving in a blizzard while most of those around us are not. We drop Cara off in Middleton Tyas. Her mother invites us in but I want to get home. When she hears of our predicament she rushes off and finds two hot water bottles and an electric heater.
We have run out of oil. The signalman that was supposed to tell the company when we had run low failed to work; by the time the error was reported the weather was too bad for them to delivere. I have phoned every day for a week to no avail.
It is midnight and slightly colder inside the house than out. I have been worrying about my cats all week. Friends and neighbours have kindly fed them but I notice immediately that Sapphy (my fluffy black baby boy who was to be a girl hence the name) has a pulsating balloon over his eye. He has been attacked. I pick him up and he purrs gratefully.
My lovely neighbour has lit a fire in the wood burning stove in the sitting room. I stoke it; plug in the electric heater and unravel the mattress that we use for sleepovers. Honi braves the kitchen to fill the hot water bottles while I venture upstairs to find bedding, thermals and fluffy socks. Crouching in front of the fire we don multiple vests, leggings, flannel pyjamas and dressing gowns. Then clutching our hot water bottles we slip under the layers. Sapphy creeps in between us purring
It is another four days before we have heat and hot water. Five until the skis arrive. On the first day I take Sapphy to the vet where he is stitched up. Home but still dopey from anaesthetic he pees on our mattress bed and is sick. I steal more bedding from Sam’s room and wonder if the washed stuff will dry or freeze solid. After one glorious night at a friend’s house, with Sapphy in a large carrier, we return to find Sapphy’s attacker, a large tabby tom cat, in the utility room. We move our whole life, which consists of phoning the oil and lost luggage companies, eating ready meals, filling hot water bottles, and stoking the fire, into the sitting room. Honi goes to school but I daren’t leave the house for long in case I miss the oil or the skis. By eight o’clock we are tucked up (now with six hot water bottles) on our mattress and channel hopping.
On Wednesday (we have heat day!) we venture out of the sitting room, I turn on my computer, go on line and type ‘housesitter’ into the task bar
'Be Prepared'
‘You must be a very organised person’ says David. I decide that I like my house sitter immensely even if he is completely disillusioned . As I wave goodbye to the smiling bearded Welshman who is going to use his stay in North Yorkshire to read through a trunk full of manuscripts I decide I had better stop at the next lay-by to check if I have our passports. They are in my bag; I wonder if perhaps my facade is becoming the real thing.
For the past four seasons, and during the China years too, I have been totally in awe of those mothers (well it is usually the mothers) whose matching luggage holds everything the family needs, neatly folded and in order. During my first ski race season I really wanted it to look as if I had nonchalantly tossed five pairs of skis and poles into the top box and packed the right gloves, helmets, cat suits, shorts, slalom guards, back protectors, face warmers, thermals and of course ski prep kit and schoolwork in the course of a well organised afternoon. When I wandered round the shops of yet another new resort, weary and hassled, late at night, trying to rent buy or borrow the item or items that we had forgotten this time I would try to browse like a casual shopper and when told for the fourth time ‘no we don’t stock slalom guards’ swallow my rising sense of panic and leave smiling.
Forget the matching luggage, we pack in re-useable carrier bags (of which we have hundreds because you have to buy them if you don’t have your own in France and we never remember our own), because you can see what’s in them when a last minute check is in order, and squash them into corners when packing the boot which is always full to bursting. The top box came to grief in Puy St Vincent, the day that, after struggling in the freezing fog to open it to no avail I enlisted some help. ‘I know it’s not locked, just jammed’ I told my Good Samaritan’ so would you force it?’ In an extra-ordinary show of strength he prised it open; there was loud tearing sound because I was wrong, it was not jammed but still locked. Fortunately that was the end of the season and masking tape got us all the way back to the UK. At my parent’s house in Sussex, the car, a ten year old {Peugeot 406) died too. We did the final leg by train. Did you know that dogs travel free on British Rail? That was one of the many things I learned that year.
My French improved a bit, though not as much as I had hoped, but my geography came on in leaps and bounds. Previously as a holiday maker my knowledge of the Haute Savoie had been confined to the route from the airport to the flat and even that was usually undertaken in a taxi. My first attempts at navigating the mountain roads were tentative and slow: a weekly trip down the valley to the Supermarket in Sallanches, using second gear the whole way. I was fortunate at that time that Sam and Honi were competing with the local French Club so were chauffeur driven to their first few races. That was as long as they didn’t miss the bus.
It had to happen. Not that I was so stupid as to forget to set the alarm. No I was much stupider than that: I went to the UK for two days and overlooked the time difference. I woke with a sense of foreboding at exactly the time that the bus was pulling away. Sam did his best to don a catsuit and accompanying paraphernalia and I pulled my sallopets over my pyjamas and rushed out with him but we both knew that the bus never waits.
Ten minutes later we were in the faithful Peugeot on our way to Chatel. As I haired down the mountain, braving third and even fourth gear, Sam was on the phone finding a sitter for Honi and trying to ascertain where in the Alps Chatel actually was. We got enough information to program the Sat Nav and I found myself winding around the mountain towards the Porte de Soleil. We stopped in Les Gets for Sam to be sick and visited a few barns in .........................where the SAT Nav seemed to lose touch with reality altogether. By that stage I was beginning to wonder if I had too as the weather beaten locals were making their way to church, clad in dark a shapeless garments which seemed to place them in a different century and contrasted sharply with the colourful array of ski attire that we saw every day in Flaine. They took our detours in good part though and helped direct us on our way.
We made it in time for Sam to get the last slot in the first run. I handed him over to a very long suffering coach ordered a tea and croissant and hoped that the other parents, mainly lithe and tanned ski instructors would not notice my pyjamas beneath my outer layers. He didn’t win any medals, but he didn’t expect to that first season. I left him to ride home in the bus, and, as I made my way back realised that I was positively enjoying the drive.
Jan 17th 2010
I always wake just before the alarm except when it doesn’t go off! I get up blearily and check Honi's bag one more time, taking her (very heavy) ski repair kit from my back pack and adding it to her kit bag which then becomes even heavier.
No sign of the group at Terminal Five at 5.15. Just one team mate who has driven from Kent. Her ski bag has wheels. Honi tells me that all the ‘smart’ girls have ski bags with wheels. I wish she had imparted his information before Christmas when we bought her an Ipod.
The group materialises at 5.45 a.m. Apparently the first shuttle bus from their hotel was at 5.30. Honi doesn’t have a water bottle. One girl ended up in hospital last year with dehydration. I give her bunch of Euros and stand watching her laughing and chatting as they move towards departures. She does not look back.
I wander aimlessly, vaguely looking for the shuttle bus; then realise I have missed it because I am in departures not arrivals. When I finally get back to the hotel, it is too late to go back to bed so I enjoy my all inclusive breakfast and reflect on what a wonderful educational experience my daughter is having. Not only is she learning to organise herself, to live and work with others but she is geting first hand experience of life in other cultures. As for school work, we did some maths on the train from Darlington; we’ll keep on top of it somehow.
Sometime mid morning I text to ask if she has managed to buy a water bottle. The reply comes straight back: ‘Mum u cant use Euros in check.’