In Brussels and not a sprout in sight

The break-up of Tom’s marriage to Hannah has hit us all hard. It was a dreadful shock and a massive emotional wrench. I’m not even sure I should be writing about it, perhaps events are too recent and too raw, but this is a diary and it’s supposed to chronicle my life.

People change, of course, and the breakdown of a marriage is nothing at all unusual in this day and age. Many of our friends and family have had breakdowns and reconciliations - my sister, several cousins, friends ... Margaret’s twin brother Phil has had two wives and is currently working on no 3.

It’s easier when it’s one step removed, even if it is family. Parents are like children, caught in the middle with loyalties owed to both parties - your own child, but also his/her spouse. Margaret, in particular, was very, very fond of Hannah and is sad that she probably won’t see her in future.

I too have many shared experiences with Hannah, from family holidays, Christmases, to standing at Donington Park in the pouring rain all day. She and Tom even lived with us for a while when they’d finished university.

Now I have a new partner to meet and become acquainted with, but also an urge to see Tom and try to offer some support as he sets out on a new chapter of his life. In difficult circumstances, you can often learn a lot from dogs and I feel I’m acting a little like Gravel, not judging, just meeting new people and experiences with an open mind and a waggy tail. Actually, it’s not a bad philosophy for life.

So last weekend, I went to Brussels to spend some time with Tom. I think he was keen for me to go across and there were some things we needed to talk through. I also wanted to see that he was OK and was settled in his new accommodation.

I’d booked fairly late, couldn’t get a Friday night train very easily and so stayed at Sam and Lucy’s and caught an early train Saturday morning. Booking late meant ticket prices were a bit higher, but also that first class was only a tenner more than standard, so I upgraded on the way out and enjoyed a nice breakfast on the train. It wasn’t too busy and also stopped at Lille where a lot of people got off. Quite a few were carrying ski gear and changing at Lille for trains to Switzerland and elsewhere (perhaps Bourg-Saint-Maurice?).

Tom was was waiting for me for me at Brussels Midi, so I had a guide to take me through the idiosyncrasies of a new city’s metro. For example, the doors don’t open on their own like they do in London (sometimes you have to pull a handle and sometimes press a button), stations always have two names (in French and Flemish) and the signage is quite different to London with the four (I think they were four) lines given colours and numbers, but not consecutive numbers, that would be too logical. To make matters worse, they often confuse by having one line sharing the same end destination. It’s a circular line, so it sort of makes sense, but a via Arts-Loi would be helpful.

After a couple of journeys, it began to make sense, but I was still caught out from time to time by the fact they label stations with prominent signs to other locations or destinations. There’s no common, eye-catching logo like there is on the London Underground.

The Brussels Metro is also very is also very shabby with lots of dirty concrete and stations which seem to be either gently decaying or in the midst of a very slow renovation with chipboard nailed over everything. Compared to London (and I never thought I’d say this) it is awful, but there is one redeeming feature that I suspect Londoners would happily swap everything for - the prices are less than a third of what it costs on the Underground. So a journey in Brussels costs €1 and, if you exit the destination station and get back on the metro within one hour, the next journey is classed as an extension of the first and so you don’t pay any more. With a minimum Oyster journey costing £2.40, that’s quite a saving.

We headed straight for Tom’s new apartment, which is situated near the European parliament building at Shuman; it’s on the ninth floor of a development (so quite high) and overlooks the Parc du Cinquantenaire. You certainly get more for your money in Brussels than you do in London and once you’ve got through the lift (which wouldn’t pass health and safety legislation in the UK - no inner door) it’s really very nice. He shares with four others, but has his own bathroom and quite a large bedroom. Two people had moved out and the other two were away for the weekend, so I was able to use one of the empty rooms for the night and we had the place to ourselves until Sunday afternoon when an Italian chap (called Ignatious) moved in.

The apartment itself has two huge living/dining areas and glass doors open onto a balcony overlooking the park. There’s a lion’s head on the wall (a stuffed one), parquet floors, original art on the walls and some really extravagant fittings, such as a chaise lounge, and a massive Bose sound system with quad speakers. On the downside, the plumbing is in the best Belgian tradition, the wi-fi has (shall we say) a limited range and the kitchen, considering the size of the rest of the place was quite tiny.

Can you see the lion's head (by the open door) and the chaise lounge?

I met Tom’s new life partner Lucia, which was something of a nervous encounter for both of us. I guess she’d seen pictures of me, so knew what to expect, but I had no prior view of Lucia except a description from Sam, who had been sent a picture by Tom. Sam has a trick of comparing people to celebrities. When he first started going out with Lucy (his wife) he told me she looked like one of the Corrs. Lucia, he said, looked like Konnie Huq, so that was all I had to go on. I have to say that Lucia looks as much like Konnie Huq as Lucy looks like Andrea Corr!

Lucia is from Ecuador, speaks excellent English (as well as French and her native tongue - Spanish). What can I say? She’s smart, erudite, intelligent, good company and very likable - you wouldn’t expect anything less from someone Tom wanted to be with.

I hadn’t picked the best day/weekend to visit Brussels. On Saturday it was cold, raining and windy and on Saturday night it snowed and froze hard, so the pavements were like a skating rink. On Saturday afternoon Tom and I went down into the old town to the Grand Place or Grote Markt. It’s a beautiful square, but best enjoyed in sunshine. There’s a beggar who always has puppies with him and, according to Tom, always does a roaring trade. As promised, there he was, complete with three puppies covered by a blanket against the cold and the tourists were chucking their cash in his tin. For a beggar, there’s nothing like a dog to boost takings, so you can imagine how the revenue increases when you have three adorable puppies. Tom was wondering how he always managed to have puppies and also what happened to the puppies when they grew bigger and slightly less adorable. I wouldn’t like to speculate, but if I had to, I’m guessing it involves a hammer and a skip.

A short walk from the Grote Markt, down a street lined with chocolate shops, is the Manneken Pis. This is a fountain where a statue of a small boy is weeing into a pool. It’s all very strange! The statue was put there in 1619, but has been stolen many times and the current statue is from 1965. The original is in a museum on the Grote Markt. The Belgians think it is hilarious to dress the Menneken in different costumes. I wasn’t that keen to see it, but I was a tourist in Brussels and I think Tom would have been offended if I hadn’t. It was a bizarre sight, a tiny fountain, in very bad taste and 30 Japanese or Chinese tourists snapping away. The Manneken was dressed in something, but I can’t remember what.

On a damp, cold day in Brussels, there’s only one sensible thing to do. We retreated to Mort Subite for a gueuze of the same name. A gueuze is a blended beer made with wild yeast, it’s cloudy and quite sour, but I had some Mort Subite at Christmas and I rather liked it, so I was keen to try some in situ. It’s jolly good stuff - not a Fursty Ferret - but very palatable and in a la Mort Subite, you have it with a plate of cheese, mustard and celery salt. We followed with a Chimay Blue, which I preferred; it’s darker, also sour but more bitter than sour and with a greater depth of flavour. I could get into Belgian beer in a big way. I like the idea of drinking stronger beer in smaller quantities and I also like the ceremony of beer where there is a different glass for every type of beer.

Mort Subite - a gueuze fermented by wild yeast

Chimay Blue - like a Mackeson

In the evening Lucia was making an Ecuadorian meal. Sam had suggested this would be baked guinea pig and this is a joke that the Ecuadorians also appreciate. Toby Knights had guinea pig in south America (perhaps Peru) and had not really enjoyed it at all. Lucia says it’s very nice when done properly and perhaps Toby had the version they give to tourists. My meal wasn’t guinea pig and it was very nice. A bonus was that the Italian girl who had moved out of the flat had left behind some bottles of wine and we made sure they didn’t go to waste.

Sunday was bitter cold. It was nice to look at the snow from my warm bedroom window and funny to see dogs in the park charging around like loonies. Why do dogs love snow so much? Margaret sent me a picture of Holly in the snow in Thorney, there was a couple of inches there too. After breakfast, we set out a little too early (considering the weather) to the Palais de Justice, which sits in an elevated position above the old town. When it was opened in 1883, residents of the area whose houses had been demolished to build the courts, occupied the building and made a dirty protest, defecating all over the building, so it had to be closed and thoroughly cleaned. After the war, the retreating Germans set fire to it and the central dome (which is larger than St Peter’s in Rome) collapsed. It was rebuilt and open again by 1947 and is currently undergoing further restoration, so I wasn’t able to see it at its best.

It was pretty cold in Thorney too. This is Holly running in the
snow in our garden on March 24th (spring!)

The walk down into the old town was quite treacherous on the icy pavements. I found a chocolate shop to buy Lucy an Easter chicken and Davina (and the office) some rich chocolate. I’ve given up chocolate for Lent, so there I was in Brussels surrounded by the stuff (even being offered free samples) and not able to have any. It was so cold that we went to a cafe next to the flea market in Place du Jeu de Balle. Some hardy stallholders were setting out their wares so, after we’d warmed up a little (and it was a little) we had a wander around the market. It’s the sort of place you could spend a happy hour or two on a warm day; perhaps I’ll be able to come back one day and do just that.

Chocolate everywhere (some of it free) - and I've given it up for Lent!

We were really just killing time until we could go to the restaurant that we’d booked for lunch - a place called Restobieres, which I guess translates as “the beer restaurant”, in rue des Renards. I had reclat cheese (melted in a dish, not by a little stove), followed by rabbit and a waffle (for the full Belgian experience). To drink, we started with a Trappist beer called Westmalle, which had a particularly nice glass and which also tasted very good. This was followed by Liefmans Goudenband, which was darker and had a very distinctive sour taste. I liked it very much, which probably means that a pint of Timothy Taylor Landlord will never have the same satisfying taste it had before I was corrupted by Belgium.

The hard stuff - Trappist beer gets the monks singing (quietly to themselves)

You know a beer is special when it comes wrapped up.

And that was pretty much that. Time to head back to London (and no first class this time). Actually, Eurostar back to London is a less pleasant experience thanks to the UK Border Agency. I had to queue for about 20 minutes at Brussels Midi to get through passport control and then another 15 minutes at St Pancras to go through the whole process again! I can’t help feel we’ve got it a bit wrong - we annoy British passport holders with unnecessary bureaucracy but somehow Jordanian Islamic hate preachers can get in and spend years taking the mickey out of the country. Fortunately, I was staying with Sam and Lucy on Sunday evening as the delays would have put me back to the 10.10 train.

I’m back at Brussels at the end of April when we’re off to Assen for the World Superbikes round and hopefully Margaret and I can spend a few days there in late June or early July before Max’s wedding.

Max has been privatised!

Youngest son Maxwell has a new job as a geography teacher at Dulwich College, one of the top private schools in the country.

It’s great news for him in his wedding year as he’s always hankered after a job there. To many teachers at tough south London schools in the state sector, Dulwich College must stand out like an oasis of light in a gloomy landscape.

Of course, I exaggerate a little (as usual) and Max has enjoyed his two years at St Joseph’s. It’s been challenging as a first job, but with the challenge has come opportunities to develop his class skills and to take on roles such as head of year, acting head of geography and other responsibilities. He’s been foremost in establishing a little climbing club at the school, getting a climbing wall put in and training a number of teachers how to use it.

He’s put a lot of himself into the job, so it was a bit of a tough call to make the first step of applying to Dulwich. He’d seen the job advertised and wanted to apply, but called me to see if I thought he should. I said it was always difficult for any business that depends for its success on the skills of its staff (like teaching). The best people always tended to move on and the smaller fry lost out. It was frustrating for the people in charge, but that was life and I said he should give it a go.

He did the right thing and spoke to his head teacher, who was very supportive, and Max was delighted when he got an interview. After two years teaching, I don’t think he thought he had a good chance, so I guess he was thrilled to get an interview and then daunted by the knowledge that he was one step away from getting the job.

There were over a hundred applicants, so being one of a handful selected for interview was great news.

Max loved the place and it’s such a contrast from the state sector in south London. Old boys include PG Wodehouse, writer of Jeeves stories, and Ernest Shackleton, the Antartctic explorer. One of Shackleton’s expeditions came close to disaster when his ship was trapped in ice and the hull crushed. His men faced starvation but Shackleton and some other crew members set off in the ship’s dingy to get help.

As a boy, As a boy, Shackleton was expelled from Dulwich College for climbing the clock tower, but now the small boat used in the rescue - the James Caird - is on display in the school. There are also eight VCs on display, won by former staff and pupils.

I had wanted to see Max the week after I got back from holiday to hear all about the place and about his interview, but he was leading a field course group on the Isle of Wight, so we had to wait until the week just gone.

I think he’ll love the place; it’s got great sports facilities, they have a climbing hut in the Pyrenees and a trip to Nepal is on the agenda next year. He’s taught a lesson on global tourism and its effects on the environment, which had gone well. He said it was an amazing contrast between the work rate, application and behaviour of the boys there compared to St Joseph’s. That’s no surprise of course, but it’s still remarkable when you experience it for the first time. I guess one reason why Max has been able to be successful in his current role is that he’s been a tough disciplinarian and he’s had the physical and mental toughness to sort out the class behaviour to give him an opportunity to teach.

In his new job, breaking up (often quite vicious) fights won’t be a daily occurence, I wonder if pupils every bring knives to school and probably never replica guns. Blood feuds against rival schools (Eton) probably don’t happen, a hood is something to pull over your head and bitches are female dogs. That’s my knowledge of street slang exhausted in a sentence.

Max said the head used to be head at Oakham School, so he was able to mention King’s School, Peterborough and playing Oakham at cricket. The head knew Gary Longman and that Max had been head boy so I’m sure that all helped.

The new job starts in September, so Max is married in August at Kilworth, honeymoons in Iceland and then starts his new job. It’s a great year for him.

Sky holiday day 8 - ski holiday day 8 - journey home

We were a little nervous about the journey home as the trip down had taken considerably longer that we’d envisaged.

We decided on a 4.30am start and to ensure that the sat-nav didn’t try to take us through Paris as it had last year.

I did the first shift behind the wheel and it wasn’t a happy session to start with. Traffic was light, but we got stuck behind some slow French drivers (yes, such a thing exists) and then it was quite foggy in places which meant I had to keep a check on speed.

After Lyon, and with the sun coming up, the mist cleared and I was able to set the cruise control at 80mph and gain some time. Average speed rose quickly and we were well on the way by the time Sam took over. We managed to thwart the sat-nav’s evil plans for a trip around the Paris ring road and arrived in Calais over an hour ahead of our ferry check-in time.

There had been some mind games with the sat-nav. It was determined we should skirt Paris and when we ignored the first turning, it calculated a longer drive time and laid plans for us to turn off on the next. Ignoring that made it recalculate again, but it was determined that Paris was the best route and it recalculated an extended journey time based on us still heading through Paris. That caused us to have, at one stage, a journey time that meant we’d miss our ferry. We stuck to our guns and once the sat-nav was certain there was no chance of going via Paris, it chopped a couple of hours off the journey time. It was a seminal moment - I’d been right and it had been wrong. A humble apology would have been nice, but all I got was a grudging recalculation.

P&O Ferries got major future credit by letting us on an earlier ferry without additional payment, so we’d be home much earlier. It was an uneventful crossing, but the ferry was full of old people (very old people) who seemed to be having much difficulty in getting about. I was feeling quite gloomy about lots of things.

Tom and Hannah’s marriage break-up was obviously prime among these; I was worried about Tom and also upset for Hannah. Margaret had taken it badly (of course) and had also been disappointed not to come on the ski holiday because Gravel was poorly. On top of everything, she was still worried about Gravel who was now on medication for hyperthyroidism, but still not showing many signs of improvement. All-in-all, I couldn’t wait to be home.

There was one bit of bright news in all of this worry and that was that Max had been offered a job at Dulwich College, one of the UK’s top private schools. Every cloud ...

Ski holiday day 7 - not fallen off a ski lift all week

I must be becoming a more expert skier. I realised today that I have not fallen off a ski-lift all week.

People who do not ski should know that one of the most scary and difficult techniques for a new skier to master is getting off the chair-lift. It requires a certain body position, sitting well forward and a good shove of the hand to get you out of the seat and on your skis. The next trick is not to ski into anyone and not to go careering off out of control.

Falling out of a ski lift will bring upon you the scorn of your fellow skiers. Everyone is nervous of an uncontrolled skier, but also someone lying in a heap at the top of the lift or, worse, in a pile of bodies created by your ineptitude, will cause the ski-lift to be stopped.

You’ll note that I haven’t mentioned drag lifts - this is a whole different nightmare for some and the cause of much hilarity for others. On this particular holiday, Lucy had the nightmare and Sam the laughs, but drag lifts are an unpredictable mistress.

Well, I survived the week with deft disembarkation from the lift even when I was given a small French child to look after (which was just about every time I went on a lift). Because this was French holidays, the resort was packed with children. They aren’t allowed on the lifts unless they have an adult with them so you are invariably allocated a child when you get on board.

Sam and Lucy had some naughty children during the week, including one who was wriggling so much that Sam grabbed his collar to be sure he didn’t fall out. Lucy also told off some youngsters who were throwing ice.

My charges were much better behaved. Normally I wished them “bonjour, comment allez vous”, they realised I was foreign and sat there terrified the whole time. A child frozen with fear is not going to fall out of a chair-lift.

Once I encountered a small English boy who was on holiday with his parents. They’d put him in ski school and he was the only English child in a pack of Parisian brats. It’s enough to scar a child for life - and probably has.

My skiing has improved considerably during the week, but I start off each morning with some aches and pains which disappear (a little) as I warm up. My final day was no exception and it was also the worst day of the holiday weather-wise with a cold wind, rain at 1600 and snow higher up. I did one run, but was getting cold and wet, so I thanked Loic for his help and bade him au revoir. He asked me if I had enjoyed my class and if my skiing had improved. I said I had and it had, but I was a little disappointed that the improvement hadn’t been more obvious to Loic!

In Arc 1600, I treated myself to a nice breakfast - orange, tea, croissant and roll with butter and jam, then took the funicular down to Bourg. It was quite sad being on my last journey. Down in Bourg, I got a message from Sam and Lucy - they were also calling it quits for the day. It was snowing quite hard and visibility wasn’t great, so we arranged to meet back in Bourg.

I had a small amount of shopping to do - some presents for Margaret, a Christmas tree decoration to go with the realistic resin hedgehog I’d bought earlier in the week; some postcards for Laura; some chocolate Orios for Davina and some biscuits for the office.

We walked across the footbridge over Bourg station into the town and had a little amble down the main street to buy some bits and pieces. The Christmas shop which I’d visited last year to buy a very tasteful white fluffy bird for the tree, seems to have had a change of policy. The Christmas merchandise is now much restricted, his range of cuckoo clocks reduced and the space filled with fantasy figurines consisting of very shapely young women in skimpy costumes often accompanied by tigers or mythical creatures. I’m surprised there’s a large enough market for that kind of thing in Bourg, but clearly there’s more to the town than meets the eye.

For lunch, we settled on a restaurant in the main street called La Refuge. It had an interesting line in decor - literally a washing line of baggy underpants strung across one wall. Here’s another aspect of Bourg which I had previously not seen. We settled on the €18 menu, which delivered three courses and our meal was accompanied by a bottle of Savoyard cider which was very nice. I had chicken with gingerbread for my main, which sounded intriguing. It was chicken strips in a sweet sauce and tiny gingerbread croutons.

It was then a final visit to Super U to full up with diesel at €1.39 per litre (it’s £1.46 at home).

Back at the chalet, Sam took a telephone call from Tom to say that he was leaving Hannah. Talk about bombshells!

Ski holiday day 6 - Arc 1950

It was a bit dull with snow higher up the mountain today, but we had a really good day in ski school. We did a similar route to yesterday, down the long blue, but instead of skiing past Arc 1950, we took a little chair-lift up above it and then skied down into the resort.

Arc 1600, 1800 and 2000 are all in a similar style - tower-block hotels (completely out of keeping with the traditional architecture) plonked on the side of the mountain and they stand out like a sore thumb.

Arc 1950 was built much later (in the past decade) and was funded by the same group that developed Whistler in north America. It was quite controversial, I don’t think Arc 2000 was best pleased and there were allegations of over-development. Actually, the resort is really nice. It’s built in what appears to be a more traditional Alpine style and it has a village feel to it with a central square, clock tower and narrow, winding streets.

We stopped for vin chaud in a cafe in 1950 and then skied through the streets and down to the chair-lift that we would have taken the day before had it not been shut. I told Loic I thought 1950 was much nicer than the other resorts. He agreed, but said it was very expensive to stay there.

The chair-lift took us back up to the ridge but instead of coming off on the left and down into the bowl, we headed right down a steep blue. I managed to fall over when I hit a ridge of deep snow kicked up on the edge of the piste and by the time I’d got going again, the group had disappeared. Ahead there was a fork in the route - should I go right or left? I decided to go left, but when I skidded to a halt after the turn, I spotted Loic above helpfully pointing out that I’d gone the wrong way. It would have been more helpful if he’d waited by the junction, but never mind. He told me to stick to the blue, keep right and wait for them at the ski-lift. The next ski-lift was actually a drag lift so I don’t think he meant that and I couldn’t see a join in the pistes, so I carried on down, joined the main piste and waited at the next lift for about 10 minutes, but there was no sign of our group.

There was nothing for it but to set off on my own, so I skied down towards Arc 1800 and then joined the long blue back towards 1600. This is a narrow but very gentle run with just a couple of steep bits where it stops contouring and takes a step down. I got back about lunchtime and found Sam and Lucy in a bar, so we had some food, a drink and headed down to Bourg.

When Sam and I had taken the rubbish down to the bins in Villaret the day before, we’d spotted a sign showing a footpath down to Bourg. We’d previously assumed the path was further along as we’d seen a chap hop off the road on one of the hairpin bends and then (by the time we’d driven down) he’d popped out onto the road below.

This path went from the centre of the village towards the centre of Bourg and it seemed much better defined. So today, which had turned into a lovely sunny afternoon, we decided to explore. The first section was steep zig-zags with deep snow. I don’t think anyone had used it for some time and the biggest problem was not the snow, but the dog poo. The owner of the cottage at the top of the path has a couple of border collies and she appears to let them out to do their business on the path. The first 50 metres was like picking your way through a minefield.

The French have a really bipolar attitude to dog poo. In Bourg and other places, including Arc 1600, it’s not unusual to see dog poo on the verge. Where the snow has melted in verges in Bourg, there are often piles of decomposing dog poo that’s been deposited on snow and is now lying, months later, of brown grass. In contrast, there are free poo bag dispensers all around the town centre and signs urging you to clean up after your dog. There’s no dog poo in the centre at all.

Once we’d got through the dog-poo section, the going was fairly easy, you just had to keep to the crusty snow. If you stepped off, you could sink up to your knee, which I did a couple of times. If you were doing the route in winter, you’d want either snow-shoes or crampons, depending upon the snow conditions. After a couple of hundred metres, the path evened out, the snow had melted and we came to a small stream and a road with houses. This was La Rosiere, a district of Bourg. Our village is called La Villaret sur la Rosiere, which is exactly what it is. The road is fairly steep and zig-zags down into Bourg. On foot, you can cut off the zig-zags in exchange for a steeper path and we cut down past the cemetery and hospital (situated conveniently side by side) to come out above the main square and by the central church.

We had a look inside the church, which was built about 130 years ago; it’s quite grand, has a separate bell/clock tower alongside and inside there’s a series of paintings hanging on the walls showing Christ on his way to be crucified. They are particularly interested when he stumbles and have a special painting for each of those incidents.

We than sat outside a bar in the square having a drink in the warm sun. In fact the sun was so strong, we retreated around the corner to sit in the shade. The walk back up was not too bad (quite a good work-out) and then it was tuna salad for dinner. Lucy had spent a long time in the supermarket finding line-and-pole caught tuna.

Ski holiday day 5 - rescued by a bus

Sam’s regular monitoring of all available sources of weather data had suggested that our fifth day in France might not be quite as nice as the first four and so it proved.

The day was decidedly windy, so it was glasses off and goggles on and time to pull the neck-warmer up around the chin.

We took a higher ski-lift than previously which led to a high ridge that I’d been on the first day with Jo. There was a good blue which led off the ridge down into a huge bowl. It was not too steep a run, but narrowish and with a pretty steep drop to the left. As is descended into the bowl, other runs joined it and a blue ran off to the left down past Arc 1950.

The high wind which had been kicking up spindrifts of snow as we sat on the sk- lift and had been ripping across the ridge, was now left high above and it was a great day. The new blue was steep in places, but nice and wide and not too busy so we could practise our parallel turns, which were coming easier and easier to me. I’m still snowploughing into the turn and left turns are better than right, but if I lose control, I can generally regain it quite quickly.

We skied down past 1950 and to the foot of a couple of chair-lifts where there were massive queues. Although we were nicely sheltered, it turns out that the wind higher up was stopping the leifts from operating, so it was skis off and Loic led us out onto the road where we waited for the courtesy bus to take us back down to Arc 1600.

By the time we got back, there was just time for a quick 20 minutes ski on one of the lower lifts that was still working and then it was lesson over.

I’d decided that my long hair really needed sorting out, so I headed down to Bourg, parked my gear in the car and headed for the hairdresser. I got there just after 1pm and, guess what, it was shut! French hairdressers open at 9am, shut at 12 noon, open again at 2pm and shut at 5pm. It’s not exactly an onerous working day! They do stay open all day Saturday, which is clearly haircut day, but get Monday off in compensation.

I was just getting grumpy about it (and considering my next move) when Sam texted me to say he and Lucy were heading down, so I walked back to the car to meet them at the bottom of the funicular. It turned out that someone (clearly a Parisian) had skied into Lucy at a chairlift, she’d hurt her knee and also broken a part on her ski binding.

The grumpy Scottish man at Polaire was needed, but this being France and this being lunchtime, he was also shut. Sam decided to give InterSport a chance and so we drove there (it’s just next to the Super U supermarket and we’d been there last year for a look around). Inter really came good, the ski workshop was open and the guy spent ages looking through his boxes of bits for a spare part and then sorted it out in no time. he didn’t even want paying, just a donation in the tips box.

With our gas sorted out, Sam was able to resume his cassoulet plans and it was very good, worth waiting for. Our evenings are spent doing crosswords, drinking and stoking the fire and by 9.30pm, I’m ready for bed. Lucy keeps reminding me that it’s only 8.30pm UK time.

Ski holiday day 4 - Loic in charge

After two days of afternoon ski school, it was a bit of a shock to have to be up at Arc 1600 for a 9am start.

We caught the 8.30am funicular and it was the third really warm sunny day. Getting the early train meant that it was a little more quiet, but really filled up at the middle station called Les Granges, where lots of families seem to be staying. The carriages fill up with French parents and little children all decked out in their ski gear.

When the funicular pulls into Arc 1600, the children sing “nous sont arriver, nous sont arriver”. The carriage slows down as the cable pulls it into the finish position and the children’s song slows to a crawl as well. Lucy loves to sing along.

Sam and Lucy (mainly Sam) had a couple of things they wanted to do on this holiday. One was to ski down from the Aguille Rouge - high point in the Les Arcs ski area and black run along the top/side of a ridge. They had looked to do it last year, but the wind had been too strong, so they managed it on Sunday when the weather was absolutely beautiful. Sam said it wasn’t too bad, it was really a red run, not a black, but they’d probably classed it as more difficult because of the exposure and to discourage too many people from trying it.

Their second objective was to have a day in the La Plagne resort, which sits alongside Les Arcs, but is separated by a long, narrow valley. They’d bought a one-day extension on their ski pass and to get across there, you take resort, which sits alongside Les Arcs, but is separated by a long, narrow valley. They’d bought a one-day extension on their ski pass and to get across there, you take the Vanoise Express cable-car. This is a massive contraption, a double-decker cable-car that shoots across the valley in super-quick time.

I met Loic as suggested. Of course, Jo hadn’t mentioned our arrangement to him, but he seemed quite pleased to have someone else in his group. The standard wasn’t massively different, but Loic didn’t seem to have the same obsession with left-foot side-slipping which was a blessed relief.

There were six French in our group and two English people, myself and a chap called Dave, who was the polar opposite of Meg. He was there with his wife, who was a much better skier than he was and he was having lessons in a lower group, hoping to improve enough to ski with her. He was a nice chap, but he was no Meg. He was having only one lesson per day and he was a careful, steady bloke who didn’t want to break anything. Among the French was a woman with her teenage son and daughter. It was quite touching that the son, who was the better skier, was always looking after his mum. He’d hang around at the back with her to make sure she was OK and help her up if she fell.

View of Bourg-Saint-Maurice from Arc 1600. Villaret, where we are staying is more or less in the centre
of the photograph. Mont Blanc is in the centre of the ridge. It looks like part of the ridge but is actually
20 miles or so behind the other mountains (and much higher of course).

Loic’s lesson was more laid-back than Jo. He had a good sense of humour and after half an hour skiing, he decided we all needed to visit a cafe at the side of the piste. When I ordered a vin chaud, he joined me in a flash. It was a lovely clear day with great views across the Mont Blanc massif. We skied down into Arc 1800, the sister resort to 1600 (but 200 metres higher, as the name suggests). Neither resort has much to commend it. In the 1960s, when the ski boom was starting, Les Arcs was a small collection of farms. The land was bought up, runs constructed, lifts installed and several large, multi-storey hotels were plonked on the side of the mountain. The architecture is high-rise flats and there’s precious little character or anything to do except ski, eat and drink (which is fair enough because that’s exactly why people go there).

So Arc 1800 was built a few years after 1600 and is pretty much a carbon copy. I learnt a few new blue runs and it was a really good day’s skiing. The icing on the cake was that I hadn’t fallen over once and I was also starting to get the hang of the parallel turn, so that steeper slopes could be traversed in more safety.

Some of the blues were quite busy in places, but you just had to keep an eye out for folk. On the ski lift up from Arc 1800 I was sat next to a Frenchman and his young daughter (five or six years old). It was a beautiful day and the little girl was singing away to herself. I remarked that the scenery was so beautiful that it made you want to sing, at which point she shut up like a clam, but dad was very keen to have a chat. Where was I from? Was there snow in England? I said there wasn’t and we didn’t have mountains like this. What about Scotland? he said. I said that my bed this week was higher than the highest mountain in England and that Scotland had got nothing on the Alps - he was very lucky. he lived in Grenoble, which is very close by and he loved the mountains. He advised me to come a week later next year to avoid the French holidays (he hated the Parisians). We parted old friends.

Thanks to Laura at work and Michel Thomas, I have learned a few useful French phrases and Laura has also taught me a few things about French manners, which definitely makes a difference. Always says hello and goodbye when using a shop, for example. Certain manners are important to the French; they think nothing of pushing in front of you at the ski lift, but it’s really bad form to enter a shop and not give a hearty greeting to the assistant.

I’ve been je voudrais this, that and the other; I’ve nailed meme chose pour moi si vous plait and pas pour moi comes in handy when waiters are keen to fill your glass with water. Indeed my French is so good that I’m now often mistaken for a native and have to explain to an astonished Frenchman that je suis anglais and je parle pas francais tres bon.

I guess I was riding for a fall and after my ski lesson I stopped off in the main square for a drink and a noon snack. I wanted my usual lemon tea, honey and almond crepe and a Ricard. I’m not sure what went wrong; I think I caught the waitress on a fag break and her mind wasn’t really on the job, but I ended up with tea, an espresso coffee and a crepe. I decided two out of three wasn’t too bad!

Ski holiday day 3 - thrown out of ski school

Day 3, Monday: another absolutely glorious day with bright blue sky and lovely warm sunshine. How long will this last - well until Wednesday according to WeatherPro, when we are forecast wind and rain at low altitude and snow higher up.

I wasn’t due at ski school until 2pm, but I went down to the funicular with Sam and Lucy in the morning and, while they went up to Arc 1600, I walked across the footbridge into Bourg.

I’d taken my ski helmet off yesterday and I had a really bad case of helmet hair - I looked like a mi-ki dog - so this morning I decided to get a French haircut. There was some speculation as to what I would look like after being coiffured (and I was a bit grumpy about spending €20 on a haircut - that’s London prices) but it would be an adventure.

Well, it would have been, but Lundi is Bourg’s day off - very little was open and the hairdressers were not. I had a little wander around, read The Times on my Kindle in a cafe and I was wondering what to do by 11.30am. I walked back to the car and ate my lunch - a Savoyarde Sam special sandwich (ham, cheese and mustard) plus a piece of flapjack. I’d made a tray before we left thinking that it would work well for packed lunches and it was quite useful. I sat in the car going through Total French (disc 1) by Michel Thomas (which is a very good course) but the dozy woman student gets so annoying that I want to punch her.

I could now engage my fellow ski school students (most of whom are French) with such banter as “what opinion do you have regarding the economic and political situation in France at the present time?” I might try that on Jo if he starts banging on about my big skis again. By the way, I asked Sam if he thought I should hire some shorter skis and he very definitely thought that I shouldn’t.

I was at ski school bright and early at 2pm. Colin had been promoted to a better group and Tom had fallen over and hurt his leg. There was no more skiing for him - hopefully Mrs Colin’s evil plan was not coming to fruition. Meg was also on the up. She’d been skiing in the morning again and was now heading into a higher group - watch out Mr Meg, she’s catching you up.

I asked Jo about going in a lower group and he said I was too good for the lower group and that I should stay with him. He headed up the small ski lift and then up the longer one to above Arc 1800. I’d survived some left-foot side-slipping and a steepish slope when Jo pulled me over and said I was too slow and would hold up the others. He advised me to go to the ski school and trade in my group lessons for some personal tuition which would be better for me. I said I didn’t want to pay for personal tuition and was there a group in the morning that would be better suited to my skill level? He was quite surprised (as if English people didn’t function in the morning) but said that if I wanted to I could do that and I should rock up at 9am and ask for Loic.

With that helpful advice Jo was off, advising me to stick to this slope and I’d find my way down. I was at the top of quite a steep section of blue, but it was nice and wide, so I traversed back and to, going at my own pace and came back down into Arc 1600 in about 30 minutes. I was a bit grumpy about being left halfway up a mountain and told to find my own way back, but that’s the French for you! I consoled myself with a lemon tea, honey and almond crepe and a glass of Ricard. Actually, eating and drinking in the sun was a much nicer way to spend an afternoon that falling over a dozen times.



Sam and Lucy were not too late and we popped into the supermarket for fresh supplies - logs for the fire, beer, cheese and a few extras such as a bottle of limoncello!

The logs were about €4 a bag, but they were good hard wood, nicely dry and seasoned and they burned really hot in the stove. If you light that, it gets the whole chalet warmed through. I also bought some Beaufort cheese - with the summer (ete) cheese you’re supposed to be able to taste the grass and it did have a lovely earthy taste. Sam made a tartiflette for dinner because the gas bottle had run out on the hob and we hadn’t been able to find Luc (the ski instructor cum handyman, who looks after the place). The oven runs on electric, so we could use that and leave the half-finished cassoulet on the hob.

Spring in the garden

We have a cold spell in March - it's been one of the coldest days for more than 30 years - but the spring flowers are making the most of any sunshine.

Margaret has taken pictures of some of the flowers using her iPod Touch.

Hellebore - we have a few of these, most
self-seeded. This is a lovely colour
and we also have pink and pure white.

Dutch iris have been blooming for three weeks.
In this pot they are mixed with white crocus.

A lovely, colourful group of species crocus.

Ski holiday day 2 - I am cream-crackered!

Day 2 (Sunday) and the weather is absolutely amazing. It’s bright, strong sunshine and very warm in the sun, as high as 15 deg C, according to the forecast and I can believe it.

After a decent night’s sleep, we were all ready to get cracking. I had a ski lesson planned for the afternoon, but needed to go up to Arc 1600 to book my lessons for the week. We drove down to the funicular for a fairly early start and it was like the Victoria Line. That’s Paris holiday week for you!

Your ski pass is a little like an Oyster card, as you approach the funicular gates, they open to let you through and it’s the same for the chair lifts. Last year, I’d skied in the morning before my lesson and managed to hurt my leg quite badly, so this year I decided I’d play it safe and have no skiing until my lesson which was arranged 2-5pm for the next six days.

That done, I popped back down to Bourg-Saint-Maurice to collect my skis and then had a wander around town for a couple of hours, doing some window shopping and getting my bearings. Bourg isn’t a large town, but it is a proper town rather than a ski resort, so there are a decent range of shops and bars which cater for French residents rather than tourists. Lots of people who are skiing stay in the town, of course, but it’s a nice mix.

St Maurice was a Roman soldier, commander of the Christian Theban legion before Christianity was the official religion of the empire. They were ordered from Egypt to Gaul to help the emperor Maximian to defeat and uprising and were to clear what is now the Little St Bernard pass, which is a route from Italy to France. The Legion was ordered to take some reprisals against Christians in the area, but refused and Maximian ordered the legion to be decimated (every 10th soldier was killed). They still refused to carry out the order, so Maximian ordered another decimation and when they still refused, he had the whole legion, including Maurice, executed - a total of 6,500 men. You don't mess with the Romans.

After a light lunch, it was time for ski school, back up the funicular, this time wearing heavy ski boots and lugging my newly refurbished skis. A small group of us was gathered in the ‘improvers’ section and they were mainly French. There was one English girl called Meg, who was there with her husband. He was a good skier and she was having lessons twice a day so she could improve and keep up with him. She seemed just a little too competitive for my liking (perhaps Mr Meg quite liked a little Meg-free time, but his time was clearly going to be limited).

Also in the group was Colin and Tom from Suffolk. Colin was about 55 and Tom (his dad) was 83. Apparently Tom had been an accomplished skier in his day, but he hadn’t skied for 13 years - since he was 70 - and he looked as if he should be holding a walking frame, not a pair of ski poles. Age had given him a permanently bent back, so that he was always in a racing crouch.

Colin told me that he had arranged to come skiing with his son, but his son had to drop out due to work commitments, so his wife (who had been worried about him coming on his own) had persuaded Tom to come in place of his grandson. I wondered if this was Mrs Colin's evil plan to cash in on her inheritance, but I have to say, I admired Tom's pluck and he’d come into the learner group to see how he got along after not skiing for 13 years. 

Our instructor Jo took one look at Tom and got on his radio. It’s very rare the French let health and safety get in the way of a good time, but Jo could spot a lame duck and he arranged for Tom to go in the beginners’ group. That was a bit of a shame because it’s quite hard work for beginners at Arc 1600 - there’s no lift and only a small nursery slope, so they have to toil up and down this little space in front of the ski lift (side-stepping up and snow-ploughing down).

We headed up the small chairlift and down a bit of green and blue so Jo could see how we got on. He asked me how long my skis were and, of course, I had no idea.

“Size isn’t everything, Jo,” I told him, but he didn’t understand smutty English humour and told me my skis were too long, I should have no more than 150cm skis, otherwise it would be hard for me to learn. That’s just what I needed to boost my confidence.

It was a good afternoon, we did lots of blues and some steep sections where we could practise Jo’s favourite activity - side-slipping. My legs, especially my left leg, were taking a pounding and as I got tired I fell over more and more. I must have fallen half a dozen times and I was absolutely exhausted by the time we were finished.

It was good to be done and I said to Jo at the end of the lesson that I might be better in a lower group. There were a couple of other fallers in his section, but I think the overall standard was a little high for me, so that I was struggling to keep up.

It had been a perfect day for skiing with brilliant warm sun, clear views across the alps with Mont Blanc standing high in the north. It was good to enjoy a beer in the last of the evening sun and nice to see the collie dog who last year I’d christened Meribel. She came for a fuss, but there was no sign of her partner from 2012, Maurice. She stayed until we got tired of stroking her, she’s skin and bone and has big mats of fur behind her ears, but her teeth are brilliant white. This was the only time that we saw Meribel, perhaps there had been complaints about them running loose, or perhaps they were busy on the farm?