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).
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