Week 10- Mid-Season Madness
Week Ending 11/2/6

My manager Iain’s departure at the end of last week was a real shock. On top of him being pretty much half of my department, he was also the first person from the hotel to leave this season (excluding a nanny that gave up before start-up week was out). I was a bit shell shocked for a couple of days, especially as people seemed to assume that I’d be taking over. ‘Caretaker manager’ was one phrase I heard.

Taking over his responsibilities was something I really didn’t want, one of the things he was ‘demoted’ for,(Demotion means go home now, then be offered a dish washing or nightwatch job in a couple of weeks. It’s not getting fired, it’s quitting yourself type thing.) was the fact that takings had been down on and off for a few weeks. But takings generally have been down throughout Val because the snow has been so rubbish. People just haven’t come here as much this year.

Thankfully, John, the General Assistant and guy who covered our shifts on our day off wanted the job. He’s a company veteran (6 seasons) and has been a Head of Department before too. That suited me fine because as I’ve said before, I’m not here to work, I’m here to snowboard!

Anyway, enough of the politics, it’s been a full and fun week this week. Including one night when we covered Henry in various cakes after he passed out drunk in the staff room.

It’s also been a good week for skiers as a few of them got with the program and tried taking up boarding. Some people took to it like a fish to water, others didn’t quite get it so well. On Tuesday, my day off, I said I’d take a few people out and give them some pointers. I went up the hill with Wendy, Pete and Vicky. Wendy and Pete seemed to be getting the hang of it, but Vicky kept on falling over and saying she couldn’t do it. I’ve seen it loads of times where skiers say boarding is too hard, and say they can’t do it, but as soon as they start saying ‘I can do it’ rather than ‘I can’t’ they improve greatly.

Everything was going pretty much alright until I left Vicky to catch up Pete and see how he was doing, we sat at the side of the piste and decided to wait for Vicky to catch up. She came over the hill, did a couple of turns then caught an edge somewhere and hit the deck really hard. Pete and I looked at each other and went ‘Oooohh, that must’ve hurt’ but we say that a lot because part of snowboarding is falling over.

We saw Vicky take her board off, then we couldn’t work out if she was laughing or crying, then we realised she was definitely crying. She couldn’t move her wrist and was in a lot of pain and distress. It’s well known that just one emergency ride on a snowmobile costs €300 and she couldn’t see how she might be able to afford it. French hospitals like payment up front, they get pretty pissed off if you can’t give them immediate insurance details assuring payment.

I sped down to the next lift station to get a blood wagon (snowmobile) to come and get her. I ran up to the Lifties and saying “My friend needs help she’s hurt and ...” The lifty looked at me and said “Parlez-vous Francais?” I said “Shit… Um, Je suis desole, Je ne pas parle Francais. Mais, mes amis elle ‘Ouch’” and pointed to my wrist. The guy smiled at me and held his hands up and said “OK, Ok, I just wanted to see if you’d try to speak any French. What’s the problem, where is your friend?” I was a bit taken back but told them the piste and piste marker number, then waited for the medics to go by.

As I stood there by the lift I got a text on my phone, it said ‘Hi mate, guess what, first day of boarding and I’ve broken my arm. Would you believe it! Tony.’ It took me a couple of seconds to register it, but I suddenly remembered Tony and Joe were heading out to the Alps at some point soon. Anyone who’s read my old wheresthatluckybastard.com site may remember Tony and Joe. Tony is they guy who went most of the way around Australia with a broken leg (he broke the same leg twice.)

I figured it just must be the day for beginner snowboard injuries.

I saw the blood wagon go up to get Vicky, then saw it come back and head up towards the main lift station. The British medical centre is a 100m mostly flat walk across snow from the bottom of the lift station. To rack up the insurance costs, the medical guys got a 2nd snowmobile to take Vicky to the road, then got an ambulance to take her into town, round the roundabout then back out again on the next spoke road to the medical centre.

They gave Vicky a big wrist support like a giant children’s water wing. Her X-Ray showed her bone had partly snapped outwards at her wrist. The medics said there wasn’t much they could do and either we could drive her to the hospital an hour away in Bourg-St-Morice or they could call her a taxi. We arranged for me to cancel my day off and I’d cover John (a registered driver on the company van) to take her to Bourg.

Now the next bit I feel a bit of a guilty scumbag about, but ‘every cloud’ and all that. Chatting to John when he got back from the hospital (Vicky had been admitted over night), I arranged to have my day off the next day, and also arranged to head over to Les Arcs to meet Joe and Tony for the night. Tony said I could have his ski pass for the day as he certainly didn’t need it. So due to two of my friend’s painful misfortunes, I got to escape the resort and have a nice couple of days out of resort drinking and snowboarding… Surely there’s some bad karma or something coming my way now?

Anyway, it turned out Jonny had to drive into Bourg for something, so I got a lift to there, where I caught the Funiculaire (sky train) up to Les Arcs. I met Tony for lunch, who was feeling really quite pissed off. I asked him why he can’t just have a decent holiday without breaking something?!? He didn’t look that impressed. His holiday insurance company wouldn’t send over the forms that guaranteed payment for the French doctors/nurses etc and they were all getting annoyed with him because of it.

I met up with Joe and we went out boarding for the afternoon. Then we went back to their apartment and I met the blokes they were on holiday with and we all had a couple of beers. We sat there as it started snowing outside. It’s a simple joy to see snow falling from the sky, especially when we’ve had so little of it.

After the rude French nurse turned up late and injected Tony in the arse with his Pain killers (or whatever it was) the three of us went out to dinner, Tony limping along due to his bruised behind.

After dinner, we saw ‘Mullet’ in the Red Hot Saloon Bar, a local covers band that plays loads in Val. I saw Kelly, one of the girls I met on the Natives Show Love night, and she offered me a lift back to Val the next day. Serendipity strikes again! After that we went on to Apocalypse, a club that I thought was huge until I realised the walls were covered in mirrors.

We got in just before 5am, I had my own bed because the guy I’d been put in with snored too loudly for anyone else to share a room with him. I thought I’d be fine because I’m used to sharing a room with snorers. When I heard him snoring though, I saw their point, so I struck upon a cunning drunken plan.

The room was really hot and he was laying spread eagle on the bed, mouth open and nose vibrating with every road-drill in-breath. He was sleeping under a window, so I opened it just a tad to get some sub-zero air circulating out some of the heat and cooling off the room. It worked a treat, within about 5 minutes he’d gone from spread eagle, to a foetal position under the covers to keep warm…. Job done, no more snoring!

A few hours later when the sun came up, I went out with a few of the guys for a board, but I didn’t get very far because the cloud was rolling in. I knew Kelly wanted to get down the mountain before any serious snow fell on the roads.

When I got back into Val, it was strange, I’d only been away for about 24hrs but it seemed like so much had happened. Vicky had come back from hospital and was being driven to be with her parents somewhere in France, she was going home. Emma, the customer services girl who fell over on some ice on transfer day was in hospital. She’d had a day off earlier in the week because it had been too painful, but she seemed to be on the mend when I left. She spent about 3 days in hospital before coming home with a neck brace and a medical report that simply said (in French) ‘Hurt back slipping on ice.’

The night I got back from Les Arcs, Slash had arranged some pub golf for everyone so my hopes of having a quiet night after my trip out were dashed as I made tons of cocktails.

All in all it was a really mad week. We lost two people, had one in hospital, Jonny was ill, Tori, one of the HODs went home for the week and half the nannies had been sent to other places, I disappeared for a day. It was all very strange, especially at the prospect of two new people arriving on Sunday…

Again though, whatever happens, it doesn’t really matter, as long as we all get to go out and play in the snow. Check out my jumps….

Drunk Henry Cake

Matt (chef) smashing up his new Public Enemy skis.