Festive Festival Festivities!!

It's that time of year again when all the holidays and festivities come round at once. Back home it's pretty nice – you get to see family, friends, give & receive presents, sit around, watch Doctor Who or the Downton Christmas Special and consume your body weight in Quality Street and mince pies.

Out here it's the complete reverse – family and friends are hundreds, if not thousands, of miles away. You're left to the mercy of Skype to stay in contact. And, let's be honest, despite what the adverts say, it really is shit. Staying in contact with home is difficult at the best of times, but when you want to see everybody at Christmas, a pixilated, jerky image with 10 second delay on the sound really doesn't cut it. We might as well go back to carrier pigeons and photos.

Friends are a different matter. Yes, there are people out here that you can go and have a beer with... Grolsch or Peroni being your only choices unless you want to delve into the delights of Genepi or Limoncello (think toilet duck mixed with paint stripper being sold under the Tesco Value brand and you get the picture), but they aren't your proper friends yet. Think about it – you've known them 3 weeks at most – these aren't the friends that you've made over the course of months or years. To quote Nev from The Call Centre, “Some will. Some won't. So what. Next”. Some of the dudes and dudettes that I've met out here will be great friends for years to come. Some will be swiftly (or not so swiftly) forgotten. It doesn't matter though, there's always the summer and next winter for the same scenario to rise again.

It sounds harsh. It's not meant to be. It's just reflective of the scenario that seasons produce.

Red Wine + Candy... what's not to like?

Giving and receiving presents? Yeah? No... Unless you're one of the few that manages to get a gift parcel sent out from parents, it's never going to happen. Or you might have managed to get a present into your luggage when you first came out, but truly, are you really going to sacrifice weight and space from your 23kgs when you've got to bring 5 months of stuff out here?

There was talk a week or so ago of doing a secret Santa amongst the staff – a nice idea on the surface. However, there are two shops in resort plus a couple of over priced ski shops. A budget of €5 will probably get you a bar of Milka and an 'I O U' to the store owner.

Oh and who wants to sit around and watch Doctor Who or the Downton Christmas Special? Never going to happen. You'll be spending your Christmas Day making sure the guests get the Christmas that they have paid for and want. Their want and demands usually out-weigh what they have paid for the trip though. There will be some of you that manage to get out on the mountain in the middle of the day, but it comes at a price. Yes, you'll be able to say that you skied or boarded on Christmas Day, but by the end of dinner service you will be dead on your feet.

Folks back home won't understand two other, very important, factors when it comes to the holidays out here. The first is that they bypass you. Christmas Day is spent working – it's just another day. You end up having some form of Christmas Dinner a few days later. I say 'form' as there probably won't be any turkey knocking around resort, but it's not that special a day. New Year's Day will be spent doing the usual – literally. You'll be in work with a hangover and fuck all sleep. It's no different to any other day of the season.

The second point is that it doesn't feel like Christmas. If you're home for Christmas you are bombarded with adverts, the office party, the television schedule, pretty much everything is geared towards it. Out here is a little bubble. A lack of British television (and time to watch it) combined with the fact that there aren't any shops, means that you don't have Christmas rammed down your throat. Even though there's snow, it still doesn't feel like Christmas.

This now just sounds like a long moan, and that was never the intention, but it's good to let people know how Christmas works for those people the other side of the counter. Now... let's go and see if I can track down some Quality Street in resort...

The beginning... not the end!!

And so it begins. Another Winter. Another season spent in the Alps with a bunch of miscreants, misfits and the miscellaneous. Sounds wonderful doesn't it? Well it is, except for one small problem – winter hasn't begun this year!!

I mean, yes it's cold and yes there's some snow on the ground (enough, probably, to bring Britain to a standstill), but it's still not enough. We need tonnes of the stuff – and it's not just the resort that I'm in, pretty much the entirety of the Alps needs more snow.

This looks like a good amount to start off with...

The current scenario does make the beginning of the season very interesting and unusual. More staff in a resort that guests? Check. People taking mountain bikes up the pistes rather than tumbling down them on their skis? Check. Pubs being open, but nobody in them? Check. The list goes on...

Chatting to people around resort has taken a turn for the surreal as well. From the trailer park boys that vehemently tell you that the snow always comes – the same amount every year, but its just starting a little later this year. To the fraught resort manager who is telling you that a lot of guests are cancelling because of 'family emergencies' and that it's nothing to do with the lack of snow and their holiday insurance.

Oh and everybody has become Michael bloody Fish – “It'll snow on Friday”, “See those clouds... they're snow clouds. We'll have 3 inches before nightfall”, “I've heard it's not going to snow until January” and my favourite of all “Yeah, well, it's too cold to snow at night and too warm in the day, so basically we're fucked”.

That's what happens though, you end up going one of too ways – start believing that winter is coming and it's going to happen sharpish. Or you end up believing that it's never going to happen and we might as well go and swap our board pants for board shorts.

I like to think of myself in the first camp. So I'll sign off with a promise that I'm off to do a snow dance. What do you reckon – the larger and more exuberant the dance, the more snow that will arrive?!