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!).
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| 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).
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| "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.
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| "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
