Coldest Easter on record

My project to document my garden through the seasons during 2012 was quite an interesting exercise and provides a number of references for the year. My entry, alongside images for March, said it was unseasonably warm and reached 16 deg C on March 11.

Not the case this year. Average March temperatures have been just 2.5 deg C, it’s been the coldest winter since 1962 and the coldest Easter on record, with snow recorded in London on Easter day.

I think last Easter, we had some of the boys home and we had a barbecue on the patio. I went outside to do some gardening this year and my hands were frozen within an hour. I wanted to get the big border tidied up and I’ve only got about halfway down it. Even though it was cold, the ground had dried out on top, so it was workable and I managed a good chunk of weeding, also removing a very large clump of Solomon’s seal plants that had rather taken over.

What I couldn’t do was plant any seeds outside. I’m keen to get sunflowers in so that some could be ready for Max and Inna’s wedding in early August. I’ve started some sweet peas off in the house, but they are pretty hardy and won’t mind it being chilly if they go outside in a week or two. If I did sunflowers, it would be much too cold for a half-hardy plant; we really need to get this cold spell out of the way.

On Saturday, Pauline and Chris came for dinner and brought Jasper the labradoodle along. It’s just over a year since they lost Gremlin, so it’s nice that they have a new dog. Jasper is growing fast - he’s almost as tall as Gravel - but still quite unruly. He will make a very nice dog when he calms down a bit and becomes more easily trained. He’s very food-focused, so I’m sure you’ll be able to teach him anything if you have a biscuit in your hand.

I made a cassoulet, with gammon, chicken and sausage. Sam had made one in France and I thought it would go down well. There was far too much and so we have another three or four portions in the freezer to go with the three portions of butternut squash risotto I made on Friday.

On Sunday, we went to see Sam and Lucy for lunch and took Holly and Gravel along. I think Sam was keen to see how Gravel was doing. Springer Spaniels are good travellers - we just put them in the car and they sat happily in the back all the way down to London and all the way back. I’d given up chocolate for Lent and so enjoyed a chocolate Easter chicken for breakfast on Sunday, followed by a three-course lunch at Sam’s (including a meringue with cream and lemon curd). I’ve been keeping a food diary and trying to stay under 2,000 calories per day, so Sunday was a bit of a blip! Gravel and Holly sniffed every inch of Sam’s house and garden. They have a nice enclosed rear garden, so we could just let them out from time to time. Holly liked the fact that she could see people walking past on the street and would have happily stood in the bay window all day woofing at passers-by.

I thought Monday might have been cold but sunny; it was just cold - colder than ever. I had a wee potter outside, but it was nice when Max and Inna arrived and I could come in and chat. I made tartiflette for dinner, so it was another bad day for diets. Max helped me put it together and then we went to the Rose & Crown for a couple of beers leaving Margaret to take over putting it in the oven.

It’s a jolly nice dish and went down very well. Max and Inna will stay a few days and then head to Leicester to spend some time with Inna’s parents. Next weekend, we have a couple of wedding-related tasks. Margaret is going to Kilworth on Saturday for some kind of recce to do with flowers and then we’re there again on Sunday with Michael, Marina, Max and Inna for a tasting session to determine their wedding menu.

A rare trip to Queensgate

On Friday (Good Friday) we made, what is for me, a very rare trip into town.

I can’t think when I last went into Peterborough to go shopping or look around - no wonder businesses are struggling.

I wanted to buy a couple of things - some headphones so that I could listen to my Michel Thomas Total French on my iPod on the train and also some new casual shirts.

Margaret also wanted to look at some dresses that she’d seen on the internet. She wants a new dress for Max and Inna’s wedding. Her friend had offered to make her one, but Margaret has not taken her measurements (as promised) and was making some lame excuses for not having done so: my sister should have done it, but it was a bit complicated; she’d been worried about Gravel; the Moore Stevens e-mail server had been down ...

Well, the dress hunt didn’t go well. We stopped off in John Lewis and they didn’t have the dress that she’d seen online and so couldn’t try it on. No doubt John Lewis has got wise to the fact that women see a dress on a website, come to their store to try it on and then buy it online. If they’ve any sense, they’ll monitor websites and take all dresses that are featured on the internet out of the store.

It didn’t put Margaret in the best of humour, but that job done, we went upstairs to buy some headphones. I’d toyed with the idea of getting some noise-reducing headphones, but I couldn’t find any and the ordinary headphones seemed expensive enough. I selected the cheapest I could find, but then went for the second cheapest because they had proper ear pads, not ear-pieces. They actually seem OK, so I’m looking forward to trying them out sometime soon.

Next it was ground floor for some shirts. This was going to be more difficult because I didn’t want to buy a shirt made in China (I don’t approve of their record on human rights, especially Tibet) and I didn’t want to buy anything from India or the far east - I can’t support 12-hour days for 10-year-olds, so it had to be something from Turkey or the poorer parts on Europe (Portugal). The chances of finding anything made in England are next to zero.

It clearly wasnt going to go well. The nicest shirt (from Hackett) was £90 and from Vietnam; Barbour (a brand name I wouldn’t have expected to find on a shirt) were good, but made in India; Tommy Hilfiger and John Lewis were Chinese ...

I decided to have a look in Beales, which used to be Westgate House (the Co-op) and, initially things didn’t look any better. We did eventually find some shirts that probably were made in England, but they looked like shirts that James May (the Top Gear presenter) would wear - awful! In the end, I found some nice quality ones from a company called Vedoneire that was selling British-made jackets. It didn’t say where the shirts were made, but they were cheaper than John Lewis and they were good quality.

Why on earth you can’t buy a shirt made in Britain anywhere in Peterborough is beyond me. I wouldn’t mind paying a premium price for something that is good quality and that I could be sure hadn’t seen made by slave children in a despotic country on the other side of the world. Time was when gloves were made in Yeovil, knives in Sheffield, hats in Stockport and plates in Stoke-on-Trent. These days, even really well-known British brands like Barbour and Hunter make their goods overseas and they use all kinds of marketing tricks to convince you that you’re buying a home-made product. “Designed in Britain” is a favourite; Hackett pins British icons to its Vietnamese clothing with phrases like “The Boat Race Collection” or “Mayfair Range”. It’s children’s clothes are call “Little Britons” - it should add “made by little Chinese.”

We needed a new kettle because our old one was leaking and we’d also decided to buy a new toaster. Oddly enough, a toaster is one thing you can buy that’s high quality and is made in Britain and it’s also a brand that’s suddenly become hugely fashionable. Dualit toasters have been made since 1945 and they’re famous for being repairable, you can buy new elements if they burn out and all the other bits and pieces are so rugged that a Dualit toaster should last you a lifetime. The company is now cashing in on its iconic reputation for toasters by making every other kind of kitchen appliance, none of which say “made in Britain” because none of them are. Well, we bought a Dualit toaster and a matching Dualit kettle (which is very nice, where-ever it’s made).

While I was wandering around Beales moaning about Bangladeshi sweat shops, Margaret was wandering around the dresses section moaning about nothing fitting her. I said that her friend had offered to make her a dress and she should get that offer back on track, so when we got home I took the measurements (which was complicated, but which I think I have got right) and Margaret resolved to call her friend in the week.

As luck would have it, next day we bumped into the friend in Whittlesey and so Margaret was able to tell her what we’d done and promised to get the measurements to her in the week, arrange a trip to London to buy the fabric and get her first fitting sorted out. That is one dress that we know will be made in England!

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.