Outside Context

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Now, my birth­days, like those of many men, are things that nor­mally pass quietly. A meal per­haps, a quick call from Dad maybe. Quiet, relaxed, unfussy and def­in­itely unhurried…

But not this one, oh no! This one was spe­cial! Cesca had plans and as they unrav­elled I began to real­ise that all I could do was relax my nor­mal kung fu level grip and let her get on with run­ning things.

Firstly, on my birth­day morn­ing I had a bril­liant break­fast fol­lowed by the rev­el­a­tion that we were head­ing dry slope ski­ing. This was some­what of a shock, but then Cesca is well versed in sur­pris­ing me with out­land­ish presents; from capoeira les­sons, straight razor shaves, and track days. Always a shock really. After all, I asked for a PS3 this year. Any­way, this was a wel­come sur­prise as I love ski­ing dearly and haven’t been able to go since a brief but bril­liant trip to Ver­bier a few years ago.

After hit­ting the dry slope we came back and then went out to din­ner with my won­der­ful brother and mum. We went to one of my favour­ite res­taur­ants: Loch Fyne, which is a bril­liant chain of classy fish restaurants.

The next day more sur­prises were in store and of increas­ing cool­ness. Firstly, we both geared up and went air­soft­ing. Yes, we. Francesca was going to play as well. Nor­mally she hates the sub­ject even being mentioned.

Fal­lout is an ex mil­it­ary base, mostly under­ground and she had hired the entire place for me and my mates to go shoot­ing in. I was very happy to find a whole gumit of my Darkan­gel broth­ers await­ing me at Fal­lout Basil­don. After a day of intense fight­ing in dark cor­ridors and throw­ing flash bangs at each other, not to men­tion giv­ing the SCAR a good air­ing (review com­ing) we left and went to cent­ral Lon­don for a drinks party with fam­ily and friends.

It was here that Francesca unveiled her greatest surprise.

Tignes.

Val d’Isère.

SKIING FOR A WEEK!

You see, for her 30th I sur­prised her under sim­ilar cir­cum­stances with a trip to Venice leav­ing the next day. I was almost half expect­ing her revenge to be along sim­ilar lines, but could not look to hope that, joy of joys, we were actu­ally going to go real ski­ing. When she announced the trip, and that it was leav­ing in the morn­ing, I exper­i­enced one of the those moments you see in films where the big sur­prise twist is revealed and there fol­lows the character’s stunned expres­sion and a quick sequence of flash­backs to all the little clues that this char­ac­ter has missed lead­ing up to the event. Mine were the obvi­ous dry slope ses­sion being a warm up for us both, the fact that Cesca booked me a week of work by call­ing my boss, vari­ous clues in my birth­day cards, search­ing ques­tions about “what are you doing with all your ski­ing stuff” a few months prior dur­ing a house clean­ing ses­sion. (She was check­ing that I had it all you see). We drank late into the night and it was won­der­ful to share the even­ing with so many friends. In fact we drank so late it was a close run for the last tube and a mer­ci­ful bed awaited at 1:30am

The alarm woke me at 7am. That wasn’t so merciful.

We needed to be at Gatwick ASAP and as I had not known about this hol­i­day until the party the pre­vi­ous night, I had not pre­pared any­thing. There­fore my pack­ing was best described as sporadic. Like a man on the run from the mob who pops home for lit­er­ally a minute and throws his life into a suit­case. I have found all sorts of things I don’t need and rather a lot that I should have remembered is actu­ally miss­ing. That is liv­ing on the spur of the moment.

The next 8 hours was a jour­ney to the heart of the French Alps and small snatches of sleep.

Remem­ber that I had skied on my birth­day and then, with little sleep, gone air­soft­ing for 7 hours, from there to a party till late and then got up at the crack of dawn to travel 500 miles to France… I was best described as run­ning on vapours. A bike slow­ing down and becom­ing hard to steer. Indeed upon arriv­ing at the chalet I of course shunned the meet and greet and went straight to bed and rose like a new man…

Like bol­locks I did!

I spent another night drink­ing and chat­ting with the other chalet guests and only turn­ing in as the clock struck another witch­ing hour.

One thing the area is fam­ous for is its Mar­mots that live amongst the slopes. I per­son­ally wanted to stay far away from them because it is a not well known fact that Mar­mots are the source of the Bubonic Plague.

By cough­ing on people.

Ser­i­ously!

Don’t pick them up. Def­in­itely don’t lick em! More inform­a­tion for the doubters can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marmot and here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubonic_plague

We rose again at 7am and I was start­ing to feel like I was in the army. I then skied non­stop from 9:45am to 3pm.

Tomor­row may be called off… but I doubt it.

I love ski­ing and even this late in the sea­son the snow here is still good. Slushy in places and you need your wits about you, but this resort is bloody massive and I was sure that even later in the week we would still be able to find some­thing. Its beauty is unsur­passed and the resort sits majestic­ally by a lake formed aside a giant dam. Above which the moun­tains and peaks hide an impress­ive num­ber of top runs of all types. Clusters of high greens run into blues and are sur­roun­ded by lithe reds which are the foot­hill of the peaks and the blacks. Some of which are Olympic runs.

Crack­ing, ninja, European mega-blacks.

We took it as easy as pos­sible and Francesca’s ski­ing shows a marked prom­ise. Her lines into and out of turns are very nice and I per­son­ally think it is only her con­fid­ence that lets he down and thus the inev­it­able tumble and sprawl of skis fol­lowed by tears.

Surely the first day is the hardest.

We even­tu­ally came back to the base of our lift at 3pm, a few hours early, and Francesca headed straight to bed while I sat up here in the main room chat­ting to the chef and join­ing him in tast­ing some wines for the evening’s din­ner party.

Com­pared to being at work I know which real­ity I prefer!

The quiet beauty of the chalet is won­der­fully punc­tu­ated by the pleas­ant guests and inter­est­ing con­ver­sa­tions. Thus far all were being polite and guard­ing their more extreme opin­ions, but hav­ing done a few of these shared chalets in my time, I had a good feel­ing about this one. Din­ner, sleep and tomorrow’s runs awaited and I finally suc­cumbed to the bed at midnight.

Day 2 (run­ning diary)

Mar­mots spot­ted today 2.

Today was a mix­ture of both pleas­ure and pain. In Cesca’s case more pain than pleas­ure. We star­ted by try­ing to book her on the group les­son for the morn­ing, the first chal­lenge of which is find­ing the ski school and we did so only after wan­der­ing into some Frenchman’s house. He gave the Gal­lic ver­sion of “who the fuck are you two idi­ots?” and we quickly made our exit. After find­ing the shop (hid­den in the start­ling loc­a­tion of dir­ectly over the road) we could only book Cesca on a private les­son over in Tignes. There is no bus from Le Bev’ (the tiny town we are stay­ing in) to Tignes so we had to ski it. With only an hour to get over there we rushed up the slope and around the moun­tain mak­ing it with moments to spare. Cesca’s instructor was a Mace­do­nian called, obvi­ously, Alex­an­der who had been ski­ing since in short trousers and was of stra­to­spheric skill level. If any­one could give Cesca her mojo back it was this guy.

I left them to it and we up the other side of the moun­tain with my sights set on the mon­ster black run back down called Trolles. I had spied it the day pre­vi­ously and its sheer unadul­ter­ated fear factor can be sensed across the entire range as it sits atop its peak eman­at­ing broken legs or glory. Once up close I could see it was the short stack run before the main, much lar­ger, and black. I could also see it had not yet felt the day’s sun. Once out of the lift I skied to its start. As soon as I even con­sidered it my bet­ter judg­ment jumped in like Obi-Wan Ken­obi announ­cing to Luke that this Death Star looked dicey. So I skipped it and joined the black from the bot­tom. From there I could see what a shit run it was, no Mon Fort, and the con­di­tion of the rest of the run told me I had made the right choice.

The rest of the run… yes, a massively wide black with no one on it at all and actu­ally for good reason. It was a pure ice cube.

I went over on my first turn and lost a ski.

Lay­ing on the ice I watched as my loose ski com­pletely failed to stop and made a very spir­ited break for Switzer­land. It finally stopped in Chelsea high street. With great care, I skied the down to it on one ski.

Just to show how hard I was.

That or stupid.

Any­way, errant ski reat­tached, I tra­versed the rest on slow-mo and finally I was down and relieved that it was done. At the bot­tom (which dove tails a green) I met up with Cesca dur­ing her les­son and caught the lift up the other side of the moun­tain with them; a nice blue called Combe. After the les­son the instructor told her the same as me; that she is a great skier but she lacks con­fid­ence in herself.

Cesca’s ski­ing is like this, her lines (the tracks of her skis on the snow) are excel­lent but she fears to fall, which forces her to turn too often, with shak­ing legs and not lift her feet. Thus the turn is much harder, pro­gress is much slower (more slow turns) and her legs ache much more. If you ski with con­fid­ence then you can do a mushy mogley blue in 4 turns; Cesca takes 30 with stops in between, thus she is work­ing much harder than she needs to. It is a mat­ter of con­trol. I.E. You can ski any run as fast as you like, turn­ing not at all, if… if you can stop when you want to.

As Bohdi says in Point Break, “Fear causes hes­it­a­tion, and hes­it­a­tion will cause your worst fears to come true.”

All ski­ers go through this stage and both Cesca and I can’t wait for it to pass. When we finally made the Sache lift down to Le Bev’ I dropped Cesca off and skied down the red called Pavot. The snow was awful towards the bot­tom and I was glad when ski­ing up to the bar at the end and a well deserved pint. Once back in the chalet we went for a long Jac­uzzi fol­lowed by 15 minutes in the sauna. Much refreshed we sat down to a great meal with the rest of the chalet and Robin the rep.

Day 3

On day 3 Cesca was in such pain from her falls the day before that she declined to go up. This afforded me to join Robin the rep and the rest of the chalet guest on a tour of the moun­tains up to the far peaks of the gla­cier. Robin set a ter­rific pace that I was only just able to keep up on our jour­ney across to the far left of the ski map, dur­ing which we went down the men’s Olympic black run to Val d’esire called Face, which is a very steep black mogle field through the trees, fol­lowed by the snow train back up the facing mountain.

In record time we were up the final push and on the lift called Leis­siers Express, which pulls up over the moun­tain range and down to the ice world of the Pis­s­ailas Gla­cier. This lift was ter­ri­fy­ing because with no warn­ing, upon breach­ing the lip, the lifts path dropped away in almost freefall. Made all the worse for the slow speed. Not for the first time I recog­nised the fear called vertigo.

The Gla­cial world is won­der­ful. Snow here never melts at the same speed at the rest and we were in a winter won­der­land. Spir­its amongst the group was high and we held an informal tour­na­ment to ski the fast­est. I was never in the run­ning for this but man­aged 43 miles per hour on a down­ward slope (as meas­ured by a satel­lite linked arm band) only to fall and be flung through the air onto the snow. A most express­ive fall! My back filled up with snow and ice, thank­fully numb­ing the pain and it wasn’t until I got back to the room I could see the dam­age (some intense scrapes and bruising).

This was my only true fall of the hol­i­day, so I was glad to simply get up and get back on with it. Too easy can one break some­thing at that speed. Not that I was the fast­est, by a long way. The final score was nearly 70mph by one of the oth­ers from the chalet.

After, as my brother would say, “cain­ing it” around the Gla­cier we caught the bus to a open lift (the main drag being closed for some reason) and then down a couple of quick runs to the Après Ski of live music, table dan­cing and drunkenness!

Cool!

Unfor­tu­nately, without Cesca I felt a right traitor and spent most of the time film­ing the scene so she could at least exper­i­ence it back in the chalet later. We even­tu­ally left Robin there, dan­cing in his under­crack­ers! And skied back to Le Bev.

That night the group from the chalet decided to all go out and we went for a group meal. Mine was frankly one of the best meals I have ever eaten. Steak with duck liver on toast with dauphinoise pota­toes! Truly the French can cook. I have taken Cesca to Pet­rus (http://www.gordonramsay.com/petrus/ ) in Lon­don and paid 3 times this price for lesser food!

The wine was good too. Well and truly stuffed we adjourned to a local bar, where the group played table foot­ball and danced.

Often at the same time! Our chalet cook and all round hard drinker; Andy showed up with a massive wig on and the night drew to a very fun but undig­ni­fied close.

day 4

Unsur­pris­ingly, after his ses­sion at the bar last night, Andy was a no show this morn­ing, so one of the guests very kindly stepped up and made the break­fast. We all grumbled, but also we chuckled as Andy was a nice guy.

Ski­ing today was Cesca and I together again. Overnight Cesca had finally worked out the per­fect clips set­ting for her boots and for the first time on the hol­i­day she really enjoyed the ski­ing. We went dir­ectly down runs that only two days before had reduced her to tears and she had a won­der­ful smile for me when we skied along­side each other.

Lunch was held at the live music bar from the day before and this time they had a female lounge singer who was excel­lent. She walked around using a radio mic and when Cesca was away from the table ser­en­aded me with “The girl from Ipan­ema”, which reminded me of Cesca and I’s hon­ey­moon, which was to Brazil with 3 days in Rio. Cesca returned to the table and asked why the singer had been gently brush­ing my arm, I am embar­rassed to say that I didn’t notice as the memor­ies the song evoked quite lost me in the moment.

Or, at least, that’s my excuse!

There was a slight hic­cup after lunch as the routes I had picked involved a long run down from the res­taur­ant atop the Daille cable car.

Much of the easy routes had been closed due to lack of snow and we were forced down a com­bin­a­tion of the “ok” red run and “G” black, which was slushy in places and quite threatened to ruin Cesca’s good mood. How­ever, once down we climbed aboard the lift and rushed back up to the top and then star­ted our jour­ney back to the Sashe cable car and very well deserved drink for both of us.

Din­ner that night was good again, Andy hav­ing sur­faced finally, but the efforts of the last 5 days had caught up with me and at 10pm I fell into deep sleep with hardly a thought.

day 5

This day was the best ski­ing for Cesca of the hol­i­day. One of the guests had arranged for trans­port over to Val’desaire and this afforded the chance for Cesca and I to try the begin­ners run’s up the lift called Sol­aise. These were high up greens and wide sweep­ing blues that suited Cesca down to the ground and we were very happy to be there as I don’t think we could have skied all the way without run­ning out of time and hav­ing to turn back. We spent a happy day redo­ing the same three runs; Madeleine, col de Madeleine and glacier.

These runs are dir­ectly on the other side of the moun­tain to the high gla­cier I had vis­ited with the group a few days ago and still had loads of good snow on them. They also had lots of kids on them, which slowed me down a lot, but I didn’t mind as the little trains of cute kids ski­ing together is great fun to watch.

As the lift clos­ing time drew near Cesca took the lift down and I skied the only open path to meet her at the bot­tom; called “M”. This was amaz­ingly slushy by this point and a tired set of legs met Cesca at the base. We awaited the arrival of the other chalet guests and when they appeared dropped off our boots and skis in the van and took to scour­ing the shops.

This time of year the entire region is clos­ing down for the sum­mer and many of the shop have massive sales on. A couple of sea­sons prior I got my ski boots for £25; a huge sav­ing! This trip, I had less fidu­ciary reserves and even less luck in find­ing a bar­gain of equal meas­ure, but I did man­age to find a very nice hoody with 40% off.

That night, back at the chalet, a few of the men folk stayed up late into the night, drink­ing and chew­ing the fat. Even­tu­ally, hav­ing covered everything from Philo­sophy, music, polit­ics, reli­gion and of course movies, I mooted the fant­astic the­ory of Quas­ars and the other adjourned to their beds. Mind you, at 1:30am and a bottle of wine each (and the rest); the massive men­tal image of quas­ars and super massive black holes is too much for anyone!

day 6

Our final days ski­ing star­ted with the chalet staff miss­ing again and indeed the man­ager informed us that he was sacked for his non attend­ance. Stu­pid fel­low as he lost a large chunk of accrued wages, his fight home, and his ref­er­ence only two days before he was due to col­lect. A sober­ing thought that people often waltz dir­ectly into get­ting sacked when they feel irreplaceable.

Ski­ing’ wise Cesca improved to a new high today and our days ski­ing was a great pleas­ure of reds and blues. The slopes were very quiet due to most hol­i­days stop­ping short the day before. We took full advant­age and covered a good few slopes with just each other for com­pany, which was most romantic.

Lunch was a splen­did meal where we joined in with the other guests at a lovely slope top res­taur­ant and ate more very fine French food.

After Cesca and I skied back and jumped into the Jac­uzzi together and enjoy­ing the final night.

Andy’s replace­ment; Chloe, was enter­tain­ing to say the least as her idea of a starter was almost as hil­ari­ous as her descrip­tions of her work­ing con­di­tions and com­rades. One of which was monik­ered Pir­ate Boy. Bizarre in the extreme.

Our last night was short to say the least. We rose at 4:30am and the long jour­ney to Eng­land began in earnest.

Day 3 of back to work

Sit­ting here now, watch­ing the TV and wash­ing my clothes in my flat, France seems a long way away and a long time ago. Already work is piled high and stress pilled on, and I find it hard to catch enough breath to even write this art­icle. Its influ­ence on my passing the 30^th mark is thus, as yet, unclear to my mind. How­ever, the hol­i­day was fant­astic fun, great ski­ing and a simply bril­liant sur­prise. Cesca has out­done her­self and set myself a high bar to reach for her 40^th!

Com­ing soon will be a com­pil­a­tion of our movies shot on the holiday.

Regards,

Basho