Thursday 21 July 2016

Getting Dumped By Your Homeland

I've sat on this blog post for roughly a month now. Largely because I wasn't entirely happy with it - not necessarily about the subject material (I mean, how the fuck can I be happy writing about it), but mainly because I wasn't entirely certain of how to get my point across. Well, it's been pretty much a month since… that day… so, it might as well see the light of day.

When I first started writing this blog post I was still too disappointed in events to continue writing (I felt like that annoying history teacher at school that never lost their shit, but was just disappointed that somebody had drawn a cock on somebody else's homework.). It was also one of the hardest things I've had to do in a while. I mean, let's be honest, my life revolves around cleaning, making beds, more cleaning, initiating small talk with people that I have very little in common with, and dealing with idiots. Not the most taxing issues people have to deal with in this world.

Always have an escape plan...

It is also a blog post unlike another that I've written – usually I'm describing life in the mountains, how I exist, and how drunk the last 6 months has been. This time it's all about how it feels to be living on the continent, away from the bubble of the UK and looking at it all from the outside. Let me assure you – it's not really a nice thing to be witnessing from afar.

One shitty Thursday, roughly a month ago, the United Kingdom decided, as a people, to become an inward looking, nostalgia driven, uninformed populous that is shrinking away from the rest of the world. And, as a member of the 1.2 million British people that live in the EU, I am in the position that allows me a different viewpoint on the whole damn mess – okay, so it's not unique, but you get the idea.

I am a fully fledged member of 'Generation Y'. We are, as a group, an outward looking and mobile generation. We have grown up with an increasing volatile and fractured world, but that has meant that we are also a generation has been afforded the ability to live and work pretty much anywhere in the world. From those of us who have run away to the mountains, to those finding themselves through a 'Gap Yah' on a little known island in the middle of fucking nowhere (and everybody left between). It's wonderfully liberal and helps us to connect with people from all walks of life.

On a personal level, I have always been proud to say that I am from the UK. Until now. Now, there is an underlying sense of shame whenever anybody asks where I'm from. I fear that I am not alone in this feeling.

Waking up to the news that my homeland had voted to leave the EU was horrible. Yes, it was democratic and I'd had my vote, but it was still horrible. Many of my friends out here have spoken of how it made them feel – one has a very eloquent comparison to leaving a girlfriend under the promise of something better, but then finding out the replacement probably didn't exist. He put it a lot better than that and I really can't do it justice, but I know what he means. The day after felt like I'd been fired from my job and dumped on the same day – and not knowing what the fuck I'd done wrong to deserve it.

How are you supposed to recover from that? I mean, shutting myself away in a darkened room with Ryan Adams playing really isn't going to cut it this time.

Somebody go and put the vinyl on...

The result of the referendum has now become something that defines people – not only back in the UK, but on the continent as well. I was fortunate enough (in my opinion) to have a family who all voted to remain within the EU. This is not the case for all of the Brits that live in my particular part of the Alps. I know of people who haven't spoken to family members since [the fucking referendum] because of the way they voted.

It's also ended up defining us in other ways as well.

Any time somebody asks where you're from, and you answer with “the UK”, you are now greeted with a look. I still haven't worked it out – it's a mixture of sadness, pity and loathing. Therefore, straight off the bat, you have follow it up with the statement “but I voted to remain in the EU”. But the damage has been done. The shame is there. It feels like the moment a guest catches you eating your breakfast at work – you know you haven't done anything wrong, but you also know that they're judging you. I mean, the people that judge you for eating your breakfast are pricks, but the French, the Germans, the Italians, etc. they're not. They've got good reason to give us that look. As a nation we've further heightened the fragility of the continent that we are part of. We've helped give further raise to the 'exiters' in these countries, we've helped weaken the overall economic performance of the region (which has direct impacts on other countries… sorry Italy), and we've fucked up people's compassion and tolerance.

The other major way that this shit-storm has defined us is the uncertainty. It's like predicting next winter's snowfall – nobody knows what the fuck is going to happen. Everybody tries to remain positive and pretend that they know for certain, but nobody really does.

And, for all those that say, “Oh, it'll be fine. It'll work itself out, these things always do” - do they? Excellent, let's go and ask the last country that left the EU… no, wait, you can't BECAUSE IT HASN'T FUCKING HAPPENED BEFORE! Twat.

But, seriously, speaking from where I'm currently situated, there is an entire region, an entire industry on tenterhooks waiting to see how this all pans out. And I'm not even talking about the shit that everybody thinks about – freedom of movement, falling rate of the pound, etc. No, I'm talking about the other aspects that are slipping under the radar. For example, what the fuck happens when the EHIC system gets revoked? How does a company pay for insurance for all of their staff? Or what if they don't? What if they leave it up to the employee to buy health insurance? Because, let's be honest, buying health insurance for what is classed as an extreme sport, for a 5 month period, is going to be cheap as chips!

I know this scenario isn't just playing out for the ski industry, but that's the aspect that has a direct impact on my life at the moment. Seasonal work, throughout the EU, is now in a state of limbo until some random day in the future when some fuckwits in parliament decide it's time to trigger Article 50.

That's how it feels though – to live in the EU whilst your homeland is deciding that it doesn't want to be involved any longer. The overriding feeling is one of shame and disappointment, and is one that won't be going away for a very long time.

Right, I'm off to listen to some Ryan Adams and see if that helps. I doubt it.

Until next time.


Rooster

Wednesday 27 April 2016

An Apology. Of Sorts.

Well, that was one hell of a winter, wasn't it? Did you enjoy the updates!?! Sorry about that. I honestly meant to keep up the blog this winter, it has never meant to be a single season thing – purely because I want to have some form of contact with folks in the UK.

The aim of this post is to apologise, give you a brief heads-up as to how it was, and then to confirm to you, the masses, that I will be writing more over the summer and will go into more stories of what happened this winter (because there are a fair few that deserve their own posts!).


Do this?? Or write?? Yeah... sorry!!


So, where to begin??

I guess the snow would be a good point (and something I blame for my lack of posting). The start of the winter was slow – across the Alps. We had a couple of dumps in late November and that really got us through the initial weeks, thank fuck! Towards the end of last summer, mountain bums had been waxing lyrical over the fact that El Nino was a biggy this year, and that was supposed to mean a bumper year for snow in Europe. Fast forward to December and we were starting to pray to every fucker and his dog that the snow would actually appear at some point. It was devastating.

And then, THEN, it happened!! For 18 solid days, in January, it snowed (in some form or other). Whether it was a flurry, a big dump, a storm, a 'let's all look like yetis on the lift' storm. Fuck me, it was good. Skiing in the softest, champagne snow and basically eating snow every time you made a turn, winter had arrived with aplomb. February and March continued in the same vein, topping up every time there was an inkling that the snow might turn to shit. April was a different affair – it got hot, goggle tans were to be worked on, slush riding was a given and BBQs happened more than the local bar owner was shoving another form of white stuff up his nose. By that point, though, nobody really cared – it'd been a solid winter!

Which was a good thing, because the punters were their usual dickish selves for the entirety of the winter. To begin with it was, “No, I don't know when it's going to snow!! And trust me I'm more concerned than you are because I'm here for the next 16 weeks and grass skiing looks shit!”, but then it quickly moved on to, “Stop fucking moaning that it's snowing – YOU'RE IN A FUCKING SKI RESORT”.

And that was just the beginning. This winter, people excelled at being fucking morons. Just because you are on holiday it does not mean that you are allowed to check your brain into Left Luggage at Geneva. Fuck off. From the dickhead who had his ski boots couriered to a resort 60k away (and blamed us), to the fuckwit who went into the back-country without a guide and got lost – that was a personal favourite as I got to go chasing after him like a one-man-band rescue team (I didn't find him, but he eventually turned up looking like Jack Nicholson out of The Shining).


"Not for the first time, Jerry didn't have a clue what he was doing..."

It wasn't just the punters that were idiots this year – resort staff were on another level too. It probably can be put down to the snow being pretty good and everybody leaving their heads up the hill, but either way it was pretty impressive.

Bar staff had left resort before it had opened because they went to another resort, got in fights and ended up coming back with broken hands, wrist, etc. Nice one, dickheads – you came out for a winter season and you've ended up going home before it even fucking snowed. Slick. Our staff were equally as special. This year we had broken knees, broken hands, broken teeth, bruised egos and broken hearts. Ah, to live in the mountains – everything is so simple.

Most of the special stuff, by our staff anyway, was on the mountain. People going off without guides and ending up closer to other resorts than home. People heading off without appropriate kit – admittedly nothing too terrible happened, but still, screw your fucking heads on. The best story came from two lads who took to hiking a local ridge for some freshies. The hike should've only taken 45 minutes, but it took them 6 hours because they went up in the clouds, got lost, walked around in circles and then eventually managed to get back to their start point. And that was all after one of them had managed to set off his airbag on the chairlift. The mind boggles at the idiocy.

"This way.. or that way?"

To be fair though, our staff were on point when it came to their actual work and being in and about the chalets. I could count, on both hands, the amount of times staff were late to shift. Which is unheard of. No, the main problem at work was the incompetent ineptitude of the management. I say management, but it was only one. Then again she was the Catering Manager (herein known as Dory because she was the spitting image of the little blue fish), so she had an impact on the whole company. Don't worry – Dorys' getting a whole blog post to herself, which feels weird because I honestly want to cut her out of my memory.

To explain, I feel that I should give a brief example of how she managed to fuck everybody off – and that's not even an overstatement, she managed the impressive feat of alienating EVERYBODY in resort by the time she left.

So, one of the busiest changeovers of the year in our flagship took place and it was pretty much all hands to the deck. Dory pops over to give a helping hand (so far so good), but in doing so proceeds to wind everybody up to the point that I had to tell her to fuck off from the chalet. Rather than helping with the system that was already in place, Dory decided to tackle it her own way – fuck everybody else, her way was best. Now, one of the best chalet hosts I've ever come across also happens to be the most chilled guy you've ever met as well. We'll call him 'Pickle' (since that is actually his nickname). Pickle is one of those sickening types that picked a snowboard up for the first time and two weeks later he was chucking rodeos of fuck-off big drops. You can't hate him for it though because he's always chirpy, always up for a good time and gives everybody the time of day. Pickle was late out to resort and had arrived not two days before. I've known Pickle for a couple of years now and have never know him lose his temper or, in any way, profess to want to hit anybody. He had 36 hours and one changeover with Dory and enlightened me on the fact that he basically wanted to give her the Archie Slap (watch RocknRolla if you don't know what that is).

Anyway, as I said, she's getting her own post of shame. Silly bitch.

But that, in a nutshell, was the season. It came, it saw, it dumped, it fucked off and now we're closing down for the summer. It was an absolute blast. We smashed the shit out of it – in all possible ways. We worked hard, we skied hard and we partied hard. What else do you want from a season?!

As a final point, I would like to state that I've had some abuse from the masses back home. 3 amigos deserve a particular mention, because without them I probably would've written this post sooner (I joke), but yeah… thanks to Chief Wiggum, 'I've-got-more-bollocks-than-Lance' Armston, and 'I-swear-I-never-said-I-looked-like-Kris-Marshall-to-get-her-into-bed' Burns.


Until next time! (Which won't be as long as last time).
Rooster