Week 3 - Wine, work and Chris who?
26/12/05

Its been a rock and roll week this week, lots of highs and lows. My girlfriend Cath came out, then we promptly got drunk and very nearly split up on the first night. I also met up with the guys from Natives and had a pretty good chat about life, business and possible future employment. Then of course we had Christmas which is an emotional time anyway, without being away from home and knowing present opening has to make way for making other people’s beds!

In vino veritas (In wine, the truth)
I won’t go into the details of what happened with Cath, but we said a bunch of things when we were drunk that have needed to be said for a while, and came a gnats cock away from splitting up. I went to see her the next day (sober) and she was clearly feeling the effects of the 4am start in England, a late, late night on the wine, then a 9am start in the Laundry (plus the cold, the altitude, the new home and everything else).

We met up for lunch the next day and she was feeling pretty sorry for herself, and us and wanted to forget everything. That night, I got a call saying she’d been sent home from work because she was really ill. It looks like she brought a bug over from England and with the sudden change of environment and everything else, it took hold with a vengeance. Whether we were close to splitting up or whatever, TLC was the order of the day (in fact the next couple of days) until she was better. It gave us a chance to get closer again.

Going Natives
If you don’t already know, this season I signed up to be a resort reporter for Natives.co.uk. It’s a massively popular snowboarding website that’s very much the bible for people who either work seasons, or just love snowboarding. Each week I upload a report saying something like ‘No snow this week. Take out the hire board as there’s rocks and grassy patches everywhere.’ Etc.

I met up with Iain and Phil (Iain started the site in 1998) who were doing a tour of the resorts to set up various events and meet up with the reporters. We had a good chat about the site and the various media work I’d done in the past. Iain’s looking to possibly try something new with Natives next year and I think I’d be quite good at helping him get it going. I basically said ‘that sounds like fun. I’d like to do it. Lets keep in touch then talk a little more seriously about this when I get home in April…’ Obviously it’s nothing certain, but it doesn’t hurt to throw your name in does it?

I also agreed with him to get our bar put on Natives (in return we’ve put up Natives recruitment posters in the bar.) Jonny (my hotel manager) is really up for turning our bar into a major nightspot in Val D’Isere. I’m designing various posters and even a website (linked to Natives) to help advertise our place.

Board ‘em
Anyway, it can seem like it’s all work out here sometimes, which it shouldn’t be (even if I do end up working 60+ hours a week!) We’re here to ski and board at the end of the day. The rest is immaterial. We’ve had no snow for a while now, so there’s patches of grass and rocks poking through the snow and ice patches. It doesn’t matter though, once you start feeling the cold wind in your face and you start feeling the flow over the white stuff everything becomes alright. We took some sandwiches up there too and I played around with my camera while we sat in the sun overlooking Tignes and Mont Blanc.

Chris who?
It feels like there was no build up to Christmas this year. Sure, I’d made some posters advertising our Christmas carol performance we were going to put on. Sure I’d pulled one of the Nannies names out of a hat to be her secret santa, but it was only when I put on a Christmas CD that I suddenly realised it was Christmas Eve!

We had tons of people come down to watch us sing. The plan, in a nutshell, was to get smashed, then sing The Holly and the Ivy, Away in a Manger, the 12 days of Christmas and Jingle Bells. It worked a treat! Everyone had a good laugh singing, the guests and other people who came down all enjoyed watching us, and it was an excellent start to a night where I made a point of getting into the Christmas spirit by drunkenly shaking every blokes hand and kissing every girl and wishing them a very merry Christmas.

Christmas morning I woke with all the joy of the Christmas knowing that I had a whole morning of making other people’s beds, empting their bins, collecting their glasses and coffee mugs and then tying back their curtains. Its OK for about 10 minutes, then the next four hours last at least a day and it all becomes crushingly boring.

Then I had a call from Cath saying she’d had enough of her job and that she wanted to go home., which would pretty much mean curtains for us.

Anyway, after Christmas lunch (pasta with bacon and mushrooms – our Christmas Dinner is on Wednesday) I managed to get out on the mountain and went over to Tignes. It’s all pretty icy up there which makes you go very, very fast with much less chance of stopping on time, but it was a whole heap of fun.

Especially going up and over the snowy mountains on a chair lift, looking at the craggy peaks and aircraft con-trail broken blue skies. Talk about dreaming of a white Christmas, I think I’ll think of that fast paced, beautiful afternoon every Christmas Day from now until I die.

Christmas Evening I worked 3pm until 8.30pm, opened my presents, then chilled for the rest of the night. I knew I was going to meet Cath for breakfast early on Boxing day on one of the rare times when both of our shift patterns didn’t conflict.

Boxing Day we met up and decided to see how it goes this week. She’s decided not to go but it all still feels a bit uncomfortable. So we’ll see how it goes.

Writing all this down, it all seems a little bit grim, but to be honest with you, I’m having a fantastic time! It’s the little things we do together, like the Mexican wave to welcome the guests on Transfer day. It’s all good fun and it breaks the ice (excuse the pun) between us and the new arrivals. It’s only a small hotel so it’s really nice when everyone gets into the spirit of things and has a really good time!

Anyway, Merry Christmas everyone. Tis the season to be jolly!

Lunch at the Top 'o the World

Me and Mont Blanc