Home alone

What do you mean, I'm doing it wrong?

Yay, I am off the leash! For the best part of three weeks, no less – an unparalleled opportunity to get out on the tiles, snort coke off the kitchen table and generally lead the wanton single life until the small hours of every morning. In Bourg d’Oisans in the interseason. What’s wrong with this picture, you might ask yourself. Actually, I could be in downtown Paris and still fail to do any of that, having never really got the hang of the wild party-babe lifestyle. Given a JC-free fortnight I’m more likely to clean the house from one end to the other then spend my time revelling in the fact that I will not have to remove skanky socks from the floor, bizarre books from the toilet (What on earth was he doing reading ‘The Nuclear Survival Handbook‘ in the toilet? Or at all, even.) and an assortment of snotty tissues, drug paraphernalia and random beanies from the futon. The drugs in question being tobacco and alcohol before any of you get any wild ideas.

I’d try to feel boring and inadequate over this but I know very well that on finding himself in a similar spouseless condition he too would sack off the chance to paint the town red, only in his case it would be in favour of pulling three weeks worth of videogaming all-nighters while smoking fags in the house, ODing on Haribo crocodiles, wearing the same socks (complete with holes) for the best part of a month and reading weird shit on the toilet. We’re all rock ‘n’ roll here in the Alps you know.

Still, there’s possible skiing activity next week, since 2Alpes opens at the weekend for the annual Toussaint holiday wintersports bash formerly known as the Mondial de Ski and now going by the rather silly monicker of  Come On 4 Ski 2010. I’ll be delighted to see the back of this ridiculous fashion for meaningless English phrases with random numbers stuck in the middle. (Note to marketing wankers: it’s not making your ‘brand’ look cool. In fact, the net effect is one of balding suits trying to jump on a yoof bandwagon and falling into the age gap when they find that their knees aren’t up to it any more.) Text-speak might serve a useful purpose under certain circumstances (while texting, mainly), but there’s no need for it to leak out and pollute the wider linguistic environment.

If we were supposed to do that we'd have been issued with wings.

October skiing isn’t much to write home about, to be honest (though remember to post the pictures on Facebook – your friends will thank you for taking their minds off the upcoming week of corporate wage slavery), unless it snows enough to open the runs down to 2600m or you’re committed to hurling yourself to certain death off the huge jumps in the summer park on the glacier.

The weekend’s Rock On Snowboard Tour, on the other hand, offers the chance to watch other people flinging themselves to their deaths (much more appealing than doing it yourself) while also trying out new snowboards and collecting fistfuls of promotional stickers which you can then attach to your old board in order to create the après ski impression that you are an incredibly sick dude who spends his days hucking backside air-to-fakie 720s off five-metre kickers. (Don’t worry if you you didn’t understand a word of that – it means you aren’t 15 and your trousers couldn’t be used to house three flooded-out refugee families and all their livestock. All of which no doubt comes as something of a relief.)

Oh come on, at least it's not as boring as socks.

Whether or not I actually go up and look at any of this will depend on how guilty I (and visiting equally-if-not-more-skint friend) feel about squandering 26€ on a lift ticket. Unfortunately my insider information suggests that the cash might easily be reallocated to takeaway pizza, cheap wine and new socks.

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