Loitering within tent

Oh, go on then.

Apparently most review-writing bloggers do it in return for free stuff or even actual folding wonga, if you can believe that. I could argue that this compromises the impartiality of the resulting writings and stake out the moral high ground by telling you all that any reviews I might occasionally do are unsullied by the taint of financial reward, therefore pure and objective, and that I do it like this out of sheer righteousness. Actually it’s just because I’m a bit crap about asking for freebies. Like most of us, I’d be more than happy to sully myself slightly with a wedge of cash in a brown envelope, given half a  chance.

All a bit academic in this particular case though, as I can’t see an organisation as large as Decathlon being interested in giving away a pile of camping gear in return for a rave review from some wittering alpine blogger with an audience of half a dozen anyway. I should really have tried I suppose, but the time required was probably better spent making a pot of tea, if we’re honest.

A stocktake of the available camping gear in the loft earlier in the year revealed a lot of perfectly serviceable kit, most of it completely unsuited to my current solo needs. Mansion tents with enough space for table and chairs plus sideboard, wardrobe and staff accommodation are all very well, but not ideal when you’re trying to put one up on your own and still have enough time actually to go and do whatever activity you had planned in the first place.

Instatent. Just add water.

Time, clearly, to flog it all off and get back to the basic camping experience. Which means a trawl round the web followd by the inevitable trip to Decathlon, cheapo sports kit emporium extraordinaire, and a tour of their Quechua range of pop-up montage-in-a-minute instatents.

These things are available in various forms ranging from rudimentary one-man shelters to mini-mansions allegedly sleeping a family of four, though bear in mind that the assumption here is that your children are all under ten and a bit stunted to boot.

Packed down, your tent comes as a flat disc rather than the usual sausage shape. You take it out of the bag, whip off the restraining strap and the thing pings up (smacking you in the face in the process, as a rule) into – ta-daaah! – a fully put together tent complete with inner bedroom bit. Nail it to the floor and off you go.

Unlikely as this sounds, it actually works. Honestly. Though it has to be said that the official estimate of two seconds is possibly a tad optimistic, especially for the bigger version with porch space and muddy boot storage. But I could probably get it down to five minutes, assuming I don’t try putting it up on the stoniest emplacement in the world next time. And remember to bring the mallet.

Luxury version with foyer area.

In terms of size, these tents aren’t bad as long as you follow the basic camping rule of picking one designed for one more person than you intend to accommodate. You may wish to consider the porch space issue as well – personally I like to have a place for stashing gear (boots, coolbox, via ferrata kit, comfy chair, stray cat etc etc) and lurking in should it decide to rain, so I went for the XXL version, a good move as it’s positively palatial for one person, and the height of the porch means you don’t have to do that undignified crawling in and out thing, which is a serious bonus.

Ah, I hear you say, but does it actually pack down into its disc shape after use and go back in the bag? Or do you have to wrestle with it for three hours before stuffing it in the back of the car in a fit of pique? This was a bit of a concern, and it has to be said that the instructions on the bag are frankly rubbish. The various instructional videos on YouTube aren’t a huge amount of help if you’ve got the two-man model either, as they all refer to the bigger one, which doesn’t seem to work in quite the same way. But you kind of get the picture.

Folding the 2XXL up is merely a matter of doing up three colour-coded buckles, followed by one small wrestling move in order to twist it into a figure eight and fold it in half. Once the retaining strap is on, it goes back into the bag in a remarkably docile fashion, leaving you free to push off and do the day’s via ferrata before the crowds get to it.

The downside to all this is the packed size of the thing, which is a disc measuring about 80cm across and weighing over six kilos. You’re not going to be yomping along the Tour de Oisans route with it tied to your rucksack, that’s for sure. But assuming you’re doing your camping out of the back of a car this isn’t an issue, as it fits easily into the back of something as small as a Twingo and still leaves more than enough room for the rest of the kit. You might have a problem if you’re driving a Smart car, but I’d suggest that if you’re running around in something as ridiculous as that then the size of your tent is the least of your worries.

All in all, this could very well be the perfect tent for basic weekend camping trips. It’s on sale at the moment with 20€ off the original price, so nab one now.

Make and model: Quechua 2 Seconds XXL
Available from: Decathlon stores or online here
Price: 120€, reduced at the moment to 100€

Gardening in the litter box

Parental sunbathing spot

Having burnt my legs in the extensive ornamental jardins of the parental chateau last time there was a bank holiday weekend, I find myself coveting a garden of my own. Or more likely the idea of a garden if I’m honest, as I have to admit to little interest and less skill when it comes to the grubby business of actually being responsible for growing living things. Cats I can just about manage, as they  more or less grow themselves and don’t need much weeding, but the idea of spending weekends mulching the compost heap doesn’t fill me with earthy back-to-the-land satisfaction.

All of which is just as well really, as in order to acquire any viable outdoor space I would have to move to a bigger house, thereby reattaching myself to the financial ball and chain which is a mortgage. Bugger that. I shall just have to take advantage of weekends at the château, where the gardening staff do an admirable job of keeping the grass neat and supplying homegrown strawberries.

But in a bid not to be a complete flat-dwelling townie I have made efforts with pots on the balconies, though my one attempt at long term horticultural commitment in the shape of a rhododendron came a cropper during last winter’s Siberian cold snap, which finished it off entirely, presumably by freezing its roots off.

Spider plants. Will probably survive a nuclear winter.

Having learned my lesson there, I am now restricting my vegetational husbandry to spider plants inside the house (since these are so tough they might as well be made of plastic) and ephemerals such as herbs and the inevitable geraniums out on the balconies. So far I have even remembered to move the right-hand tray of gernaiums when it rains so that they don’t drown in the water feature created by the broken guttering. Yes thank you, I know it’s been like that for three years and I should do something more sensible about it than just play chess with the geraniums.

Leaving aside the thing with the guttering, I have been far more conscientious than usual about the whole business, going so far as to start by rootling through the compost in order to assess whether or not I should replace it with new and presumably nutrient-packed dirt in a bid to give my basil the best start in life. I’m not at all sure why I imagined digging about in it with my hands was going to give me an answer to that question, now that I think about it.

Geraniums. Smell marginally better than cat wee.

Still, it did in fact give me some idea as to the advisability of putting edible plants in there, as the foul pong emanating from the pots as soon as I was up to my elbows in there would strongly suggest that certain furry residents have spent the winter using my limited growing space as an extra litter tray. Possibly the most distressing aspect of this is that I have never caught them at it, as watching something the size of Eric balancing on the edge of a flower pot and trying to aim his bum for the middle would almost be worth my ending up covered in cat wee and worse.

I coud just about forgive them this behaviour in the winter, when otherwise convenient toilet spots are either frozen solid or covered in snow, but a combination of the sorry state of this summer’s basil plus a suspicious niff leads me to believe that they might have got used to the extra ensuite. The dilemma is that the chives are growing like triffids on it – maybe I should leave them to it and install a further pot for the basil. Preferably in  a hanging basket.

Ready steady cook!

Classy.

The end-of-season scramble to scrub everything down and get out of resort without losing tempers, dignity or accommodation deposit resulted as usual in piles of discarded food and occasionally drink. Although my share of this year’s alcohol booty consisted of half a bottle of rum so rank I’m not sure I’d use it as lighter fuel let alone drink it, which was a tad disappointing, particularly when previous seasons have been known to yield enough red wine to keep an entire household sozzled for six weeks. Some of it has even been drinkable.

Diehard seasonnaires who insist on persevering with with the somewhat minimal alpine summer rather than doing the decent thing and getting a soul-destroying temp job while crashing in the parental coal bunker can generally score for half a summer season’s worth of provisions at the end of April, a vital boost at a time of year when jobs are scarce and wages less than minimal.

Canny summer bums will put a bit of effort into getting to know staff in chalets run by small TOs, whose habit appears to be to write off perfectly good dry goods stock at the end of the winter rather than stashing it somewhere for later. Let’s face it, tinned tuna and three cases of Cornflakes are hardly going to off before next December, are they? But feel free to bin it if you insist. Just one small request – couldn’t you go into Rice Krispies next year? Not such a huge fan of Cornflakes really. Thanks in advance.

Never going to be as much fun as skiing.

It also pays to chat up the most incompetent and/or careless chalet hosts you can find, especially if they work for a company which does its ordering from proper suppliers rather than wasting perfectly good ski time by dragging everyone down the hill to Lidl evey week. These people will have an Aladdin’s cave style haul of God knows what tucked away in various corners of their chalet. Go for dazed-looking 18-year-olds who haven’t twigged that if a product comes in boxes of six they don’t need six boxes of it. This does have the downside that you risk living on biscottes and strawberry jam all summer, but free food is free food.

Having more or less escaped from nano-wages and interseason homelessness (touch wood) I have become a tad more picky in my end of season scavenging, though when people come round and dump three carrier bags of produce on my doorstep I’m not about to turn them away. I do perform a fairly ruthless triage on the bounty these days, mostly because it saves having to rootle through cupboards full of junk every time I want dinner, before throwing most of it away anyway when it all goes out of date two years down the line.

First to go this time round was any jam jar containing less than two slices of toast’s worth of jam. Seriously, how did this get as far as me in the first place? Next for the bin were any and all sorts of prepped pseudofoods (Super U allegedly ‘Mexican’ salsa anyone? No, me neither. Besides, I couldn’t get the lid off it.), though I did keep the Cup-a-Soups, a decision I am regretting, having eaten one of them for lunch yesterday.

Thank you Ainsley.

Multiple half-bags of pasta are always a bonus, but I have to say I was unimpressed with the mushroom flavoured stuff, authentically Italian though it may well have been. Suffice to say that black pasta which smells vaguely of mould is not the most tempting of repasts. Bucketloads of flour comes in handy as well, though I did offload some of it onto passing parents since there’s a limit to just how much cake I can eat. More problematic is the glut of polenta – I have to admit to having not the first clue what to do with polenta, and nor does anyone else of my acquaintance judging by their reaction to being offered the surplus. But I’m reluctant to bin entire unopened packets of real food (as opposed to Super U’s faux Mexican salsa, which is blatantly made of petrol and dead dogs), so clearly I will have to find out.

So if anyone out there has any tempting recipes involving two kilos of polenta, half a jar of possibly fermented apricot jam and three leek and potato Cup-a-Soups, feel free to post them in the comments section. Honestly, where’s Ainsley Harriott when you need him?

Lose half your body weight in a week! New miracle diet!!

Cats. Decorative but rather annoying.

Season’s end approaches here and thoughts turn once again to how to earn enough of an interseason living to keep the bills paid and the cats in expensive foul-smelling biscuits which they ungratefully regurgitate in the very spot where you might want to put a bare foot on walking into the kitchen of a morning.

Most people go for building work, migration to the coast or just straightforward sponging off the state, assuming they’ve done enough work to qualify, but in a burst of creativity I feel I might branch out into new enterprise. The market for babysitting, cleaning and the like is not only saturated but frankly pretty dull, so my cunning plan is to market a mad celebrity diet plan. Come on, it’s working well for Dr Dukan, despite his recent loony proposal to link people’s academic grades to their BMI. Just as well Einstein wasn’t a fatty, or we might never have had the hydrogen bomb. Oh wait ….

The diet will have several unique features making it particularly suitable for mad attention-seeking celebrities. First up, it’s one of these plans where you only get to eat random combinations of weird foods which any normal person would immediately identify as being a bad idea bordering on poisonous. The unique selling point here is that you can choose your own freaky foods and eat them in whatever combination you like, giving you endless material for your next series of interviews for Hello! magazine and whatever appalling breakfast TV shows you can worm your way onto. Oh yes, I spent six weeks eating nothing but pork sausage and pistachio custard, I lost virtually all my body fat and most of what passes for my mind, you can say smugly, while Richard and Judy glaze over on the sofa and the viewers rush off to slit their wrists.

And that's just breakfast.

Secondly, it’s dead easy to follow, as it removes all desire to eat anything anyway. Some people might regard this as cheating, but it also boasts a wide range of uncomfortable side effects which again provide more than ample self-obsessive discussion fodder, essential for the insane c-list celebrity about town. None of the side effects involve constipation, bad breath or gout either, which puts it way ahead of Atkins for a start.

From my point of view, the big advantage is that because the dieter selects his or her own mentalist food combinations I don’t have to supply glossy recipe supplements endorsed by irritating TV chefs, who presumably demand a cut of the profits. In fact, the whole thing can probably be typed out on a sheet of A4, though obviously I will doll it up a bit with expensive colored paper. I could even laminate it and charge an extra £50 a go.

The only stumbling block so far is the name, since it’s currently called the My Husband Ran Off With A Child Half His Age Whom He Had Known For Six Weeks Diet, which a) isn’t particularly snappy and b) isn’t going to fit across the top of a page of A4 either. All appropriately zeitgeisty branding suggestions welcome, though be warned that I’m not paying extortionate consultancy fees for meaningless random word combinations with the capital letters in all the wrong places. Be sensible.

Just to give you all an idea and a bit of inspiration I am willing to give readers of this blog an exclusive sneak preview of Week 1. The plan will be to send out subsequent weeks one at a time, allowing the dieter to build up a complete collection and store it in the attractive ring binder provided for that very purpose at the beginning of the course. Just think how good it’s going to look on the shelf next to that cod psychology self-help nonsense you wasted three years collecting.

Tea, you crazy fool

Days 1-3. Allowed foods: none. You may drink as much tea as you like and you are free to take one bite of anything at all as long as you then throw the rest of it away. This phase is much easier to stick to than it sounds, as everything will taste of cardboard and the mere idea of putting any of it in your mouth will make you nauseous anyway. Forget all that ‘comfort eating’ rubbish – people who claim to do that aren’t even mildly upset.

Day 4. Allowed foods: anything bizarre, unbalanced and preferably bad for you. Fish fingers and fried egg, for example. Or pasta and tomato ketchup. Make your own combinations, the more outlandish the better. Carry on throwing half of it in the bin.

Day 5. Allowed foods: doesn’t matter at this stage since most of it is going to end up in the bin again. Today you should make an effort to pull yourself together and cook something sensible. Make some sort of normal grown-up dinner like sausage casserole or roast chicken. Eat just enough to feed an anorexic mouse and put the rest in the fridge. Leave it there until it goes green and then throw it away.

Day 6. Allowed foods: anything you don’t normally eat, plus some wine. But not (and I cannot stress this too much) NOT too much wine. Trust me, after nearly a week of this you are in no fit state to deal with a hangover – it will wipe you out for three days and make you suicidal. Two glasses consumed while watching old episodes of House MD on the MacBook will have a useful anaesthetic effect. An entire bottle might actually kill you.

Day 7. Allowed foods: any new weird combination (noodles on toast, kipper and ice cream, blue cheese with oatcakes and mango – use your imagination). At this stage though, you can stop chucking most of it out. Come on, it was getting beyond a joke, particularly with the price of kippers being what it is here. Besides, by this point you should be down about three kilos, and unless you started out as a complete porker you’re getting into starvation territory, which is going to foil the best efforts of Richard and Judy’s makeup minions. Pale and interesting is one thing, but downright haggard isn’t a good look.

Just to hold the attention and keep people waiting on tenterhooks for the next diet sheet, I might do occasional specials in between the regular issues. Special Edition #1: how long a human being can survive on a diet of anchovies, toast and Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. I can tell you’re looking forward to it already.

Skiing the urban ghetto

Not manly. Sorry.

Finally the French school holidays have petered out and we’re back to some semblance of peace and quiet, thank God. I’ve noticed a disturbing trend for people to come on holiday the week after all the schools have gone back, so just when you think it’s safe to get back out on the hill, you get mown down yet again by North African youths under the mistaken impression that snowblades don’t make them look gay. Really, someone needs to break the news to them there.

Peak season rather makes a mockery of all the peace and quiet of the mountains, man against the elements stuff you hear people wittering on about when they talk about their ski holidays. What with more crowds than you see at Waterloo during rush hour, helicopters chattering overhead and the Pano Bar’s industrialised idea of what constitutes music doing your head in over half the mountain the place is more Brixton than backcountry. So much for peace and quiet.

The idea that you’re pitting yourself against the whims of nature is a tad ridiculous these days as well, when everything is thoroughly signposted, avalanche-controlled, shaped, groomed flat every night and generally managed for your convenience. It’s no coincidence that the other main plank of the Compagnie des Alpes operation is theme parks.

The odd mogul by the boardercross. More than a lot of places give you.

Not that I’m suggesting we should allow random avalanches to carry off our visitors and leave the pistes to go into six-foot icy moguls either – there’s a place for that sort of thing, mainly at the top of the Tunnel over in Alpe d’Huez, and probably not all over the easy runs in a resort popular with families and only moderately competent skiers. So most of the skiing public then.

Ski forums inevitably have a ‘stop the brutal grooming’ faction keen to advocate a return to wintersports sauvage and usually just indulging in a bit of ‘look at me I can ski powder and moguls’ willy-waving. Put your money where your mouth is and hire a mountain guide then. If you’re that good you’ve got no interest in sticking to the pistes with the proles, have you?

What these old schoolers choose to forget is that without all the grooming and snow management, they frequently wouldn’t be skiing any time after March, let alone into the first week in May. If we’d left nature to take its course last season we’d have been lucky to stay open beyond mid-February, which would have been nothing short of a disaster for an already fragile mountain economy. You try making seven months earnings last a year – I can’t see your mortgage provider being too happy with the proposition.

On the other hand, I’m starting to have a bit of sympathy with the idea that the whole business is over-managed. We’ve got a few places here left to go into moguls, but too many resorts bash them out so assiduously that it wouldn’t surprise me if people who started skiing in the past 10 years or so have never seen one. And what’s with the habit of taking perfectly skiable fresh snow and flattening it before anyone can get to it? I know there are legions of holidaymaking skiers out there who can’t deal with it, but that’s no reason to squash absolutely all of it as soon as it falls, is it?

For the punter, the solution to all this is either to get good enough to trek off into the backcountry, not usually feasible for someone with limited practice opportunity and other commitments, or to head off to the smaller resorts which can’t afford as many piste bashers. And while the lift passes might be cheaper in the little places, getting there under your own steam usually isn’t.

Peace and quiet in Alpe du Grand Serre - that's more like it.

Alternatively, the big resorts could try to remember that the fun of wintersports isn’t necessarily all about easy cruising, factory restaurants with more throughput than McDonalds and banging on-piste apres ski. I’m not about to apologise for them turning ski into big business and thereby providing a viable economy in areas which would by now otherwise be populated entirely by inbred 80-year-olds and the odd goat, but it might serve them well to turn the alleged music down a bit and leave us a bit of natural snow here and there.

Nothing to lose but your chains

The Les Menuires 7 - not on hunger strike then.

The middle of Les Menuires in February seems an unlikely place for a sit-in, if only because sitting in rather precludes getting out on skis. Seasonnaires aren’t generally the most militant of groups either, being chosen for their laid beck friendly nature and willingness to work upward of 40 hours a week for tuppence.

But it transpires that it is in fact possible to piss them right off and get your fingers royally burnt in the process. Step forward chalet operator Skithe3V, which this week made the mistake of adding insult to injury by refusing to pay its staff the tuppence they were owed on the grounds that they hadn’t taken the rubbish out or similar flimsy excuse, then summarily sacking them all by e-mail. Now I’m not going to pretend to be some sort of HR expert, but I’m pretty sure not taking the bin out is a long way from being gross misconduct, and last time I was charged with firing some vodka-sodden teenager there was an convoluted procedure involving interviews, warnings ‘opportunities to improve’ (by drinking less vodka) and a string of letters which the little toerag had to sign. E-mail did not feature.

Tents. Possibly not, in the Alps in February

Which is why the Les Menuires 7 have been occupying Skithe3V’s Chalet Georgina (much preferable to a tent outside St Pauls, it has to be said) for the past week, refusing their slavemasters entry and kicking up an almighty fuss on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and anywhere else they can think of including, rather quaintly, Radio Norfolk. The whole business even made it as far as the Daily Telegraph.

More seriously for both Skithe3V and quite possibly the rest of the UK ski industry, they managed to involve the French authorities, who take a poor view of contraventions of local labour legislation, and have insited not only that the staff are paid, but that they get SMIC at 9€ an hour the same as everyone else in resort, thereby more or less tripling their wages. On top of that, it appears that Skithe3V will in future be required to register in France, pay everyone properly and stick to legal working practices. So don’t be in too much of a hurry to book with them for next season, because I can’t see them lasting as far as the end of this one.

Coming hard on the heels of a similar situation on Alpe d’Huez where Take Me Too Ski (why do these firms have such bloody silly names?) went tits up, failed to pay staff and found the Gendarmerie on the doorstep along with the Inspecteur du Travail and a bevy of environmental health officers for good measure, this might prod the French into having a closer look at working practices amongst UK tour ops. Which will be bad news even for so-called ‘reputable’ companies, as I’m pushed to think of a single one which operates legally, though I did once work for a certain large and relatively well respected outfit which required its managers to run a fake rota and set of timesheets for the benefit of passing officialdom, so at least some of them clearly know what they ought to be doing, even if they’re not doing it.

Andy, your van needs cleaning.

I can already hear the bleating from the TOs (starting with Ski Weekends Overseas Manager, posting on the Seven’s Facebook page as Rp Chatters, for reasons best known to himself) – oh but we make such wafer thin margins, we’ll all go bust, they like it really, it’s an experience etc etc. Doing a month’s work for no pay before being thrown out on the street is indeed an experience, but I suspect it’s not one Mr Chatters would appreciate if it happened to him.

However much the tour ops might whine and wriggle, the fact remains that broadly speaking they break the law left right and centre, treat their staff like chattels and as a result quite frequently provide a poor service to their guests. Let’s face it, would you ‘go the extra mile’ (or even the first one) if you were getting £1,50 an hour and a bunk in shared sub-student accommodation? I think not. And don’t give me all that ‘it’s impossible to make any profit in France’ garbage either – the French are all out there doing it every day. Granted the model will have to change, but since that model currently consists of employing cheap staff to provide dubious levels of service, where’s the problem?

How much?! I’ve bought cars for less than that.

Should have had a look at the weather records first.

Now, I don’t know about anyone else out there, but if I’m going to go on holiday I generally do a bit of basic research first. Surf the web looking for appealing accommodation, interesting things to do, likelihood of it pissing rain on me all week etc etc. In particular, I like to know in advance more or less how much the whole jolly is about to cost me. Not because I’m the sort of skinflint who steals the breakfast buffet for a picnic lunch and then refuses to stretch to takeaway pizza of an evening, you understand – it’s more a question of not coming home to find bailiffs on the doorstep intent on repossessing the cats, something which might put a bit of a damper on the general holiday enthusiasm.

But apparently I’m being far too anal about the whole holiday process, and really need to lighten up a bit. I mean, how much can a mere hotel room cost, even if it is in the Negresco? Bound to be about 50€, right? No real need to waste my time doing anything so fuddy-duddy as actually checking the prices.

Dunno ... about the same price as a youth hostel, innit?

This is evidently the strategy employed by sections of the skiing public, judging by some of the coversations I’ve had. No, it can’t be that much, you’ve got it wrong, some quite evidently well-heeled chap told me in a superior fashion last season. He got quite shirty when I confirmed that no, not only was that indeed the correct price, it even included the fairly substantial discount you get for having hordes of badly behaved anklebiters in tow. I’ll take my business to Alpe d’Huez next year, he informed me snottily, and I hope he did because they’re more expensive than we are.

In fact, a quick trawl round Google reveals that most of France’s big ski resorts are more expensive than we are. Only marginally, in some cases, but more expensive nevertheless. Our nearest neighbours, Alpe d’Huez and Serre Chevalier charge 2€ a day more than we do. Further afield, you’ll pay 4€ more for a day pass in either La Plagne or Les Arcs and 2€ extra in Val d’Isere, despite the fact that it’s got less total piste than we have. So there.

Of course, this sort of raw comparison is completely meaningless, as I pointed out to the bloke who accused me of swindling him on the grounds that a day’s skiing in his regular resort of Chamrousse was only 29€. It is indeed, and Chamrousse is a lovely place to ski, but it’s half the size of 2Alpes. Broadly speaking, if you want more of a thing, you can expect to fork over more cash.

Better value than Courchevel. Which wouldn't be difficult.

Reducing the skiing experience to cents per kilometre of piste doesn’t help much either, as lots of resorts are coy about revealing this sort of personal information. Step forward Tignes and Val d’Isere, both keen to bang on about the Espace Killy‘s 300km, but rather reticent about what you get for your one-resort-only pass. In fact, the only interesting information this research reveals is that Courchevel is even more of an outrageous rip-off than you thought, offering a mere 66km of skiing for your 41€. At 29€ for 90km and some stunning views over three mountain ranges, you’d be well advised to go for Chamrousse instead. You won’t have to put up with the likes of Roman Abramovich elbowing you out of the pub because he wants to watch the footy either.

Mere mileage falls down as a guide to value on other fronts as well, as it gives you no idea what’s in the snowpark, how much accessible off-piste there might be and whether or not you’ll need to arrange a mortgage before you go if you want to do anything more adventurous than sit in your chalet and play Scrabble every night. (Needless to say, Chamrousse comes out top here as well, though being stared at beadily by the legions of stuffed animals infesting out regular drinking spot was a bit unsettling at first.)

The inconvenient truth is that skiing’s not cheap, especially if you want the kudos of doing it in one of the big international resorts (not that 2Alpes offers much in the way of oneupmanship points, which might well be why we’re cheaper than average). This being the case, your best option might be to check it out yourself before you book.

By which they do not mean haggling with the cashiers. Sorry.

It’s old fashioned, I know, but it’s always worked for me. Possibly you could think of using the readily accessible websites on which resorts have spent a lot of time and effort in a bid to make everyone’s life easier. Rather than, for example,  haranguing the ticket monkeys when you get here, a strategy which has so far produced no results whatsoever. I mean, what did you think we were going to do? Say, “Gosh yes, I hadn’t noticed how expensive it was, I’ll reduce the price to 15€ a day effective immediately”? Do you try this sort of crap on in Sainsbury’s?

Gestapo on ice

That's you, that is

More symptoms of the galloping infantilism endemic in the UK this week, wth the news that skiers favour a system of speed checks, fines, breath tests and on-piste penalty points in a bid to clamp down on people hooning round the slopes while pissed as a fart on lunchtime vin chaud.

Nearly half of British skiers believe helmets should be made compulsory, it appears, though they don’t seem to have been asked how on earth they imagine this is going to make people go slower or drink less vin chaud. A third of them think speed limit signs would be a good idea, which raises interesting questions. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I personally am not actually fitted with a speedometer, what with my being a yuman bean and everything. Does this indicate that a third of skiers are actually cyborgs? I think we should be told.

Initially I was inclined to write the whole thing off as a load of old rubbish and a publicity stunt on the part of the insurance company which did the survey in a bid to terrify everyone into buying their overpriced travel insurance. But on reflection I have come to believe that it may actually be a stonking brainwave of an idea. Not that speeding or vin chaud feature prominently in my list of offences, mind, but they’ve opened Pandora’s box now, and you can’t get those bat-looking critters back in there however hard you try. Here are a few examples of what you can expect when I’m in charge of the newly minted piste patrol.

• 

  Oh go on then, don't mind if I do

  Hooning down the fall line while sitting on the tails of your skis: two points plus a hefty kick up the arse. It’s not clever, and it means you have even less control over your speed and direction than usual, if that’s actually possible. Stop it

• Clustering round a piste map right at the exit to the chairlift: three points. And you have to remain there while three boarders getting off the next chair use you all as skittles. Did you think all those people behind you in the queue fell off the chairs half way up or what?
• Wearing a romper suit with a fur hood: two points, and you will be required to walk about wearing a nappy for a day. Under no other circumstances would any self-respecting woman dream of wearing a garment specifically designed to make her bum look like Oprah on a fat day. No, it’s not cute. It makes you look as though you have a fat arse. Sorry.
• Wearing fancy dress: two points. Gosh, a banana! How hilarious. Though you can get rid of those points if you go to the ticket office and try to make a serious complaint while still dressed as a banana. We like a bit of comedy value.
• Sticking your bum in the air and your sticks under your armpits then straightlining it down the fall line: six points and a week in ESF cours collectif. You really don’t look anything like Didier Cuche, particularly in that romper suit.
• 

  No excuses, sorry.

  Snowblading: lifetime ban, no right of appeal. Ban extends into your next life if you were wearing jeans and a silly hat.

• Boasting about how your children ‘can get down anything’: four points. Children will generally follow a downward trajectory if you take them to the top of a slippery slope and let go. It’s not remarkable.
• Wearing a camera stuck to your head: six points. You look like a teletubby. I’m just waiting for the chairlift safety bar to come down on someone’s head and send £500 worth of GoPro for a burton.
• Posting headcam videos on YouTube: six points. Why on earth would anyone want to see three minutes of your ski tips, the trees, that bloke you narrowly missed, your ski tips again ……. etc. Koyaanisquatsi was more riveting, not to mention better shot.
• Using two-way radios: four points. I know mobile roaming charges are extortionate and it’s nice to know where your sister-in-law has got to with your kids, but is it worth looking like one of those survivalist gun nuts you find hidden away in corners of Kentucky, plotting to assassinate the pope?

There you go, that’s 10 fairly serious offences for a start, and we haven’t come close to skiing while off your tits on coke or knocking people for six and then speeding off laughing. Feel free to post your own contributions. Alternatively, consider whether we really want to end up subject to the sort of bossy little-Hitler type which inevitably applies for minor positions of power like ski patrol.

You like to be told to “shut the fuck up” by resort employees (or anyone else for that matter)? No, nor me. But that’s where you end up when you hand over all responsibility for your own actions to ‘the authorities’. It’s compulsory helmets this week, but next week it’ll be ski licences and GPS tagging, with the jackboots arriving on your doorstep the week after your holiday and carting you off in a straitjacket because you did 32 in a 30 zone. Be careful what you wish for.

The end of days should be more impressive than this.

Alleged apocalypse next week unless we come up with more cash, more likely

The end if the world continues to draw very slowly nigh, apparently, what with ratings agencies picking on France, Greece continuing not to tell the bankers they lost their bet and tough titty, Eurocrats sticking their fingers in their ears and yelling nananana not listening etc etc. The apocalypse is much more exciting than this in the movies – bloke wakes up in hospital to find the place teeming with zombies, everyone dead of hideously contagious disease which causes your brain to leak out through your nostrils and predatory aliens kidnapping everyone to work on their doomsday machine. Right, let’s get stuck straight in with raiding food stocks and waving guns about. Hurrah! Though they never seem to be short of things like hot water and decent shampoo, mysteriously.

This, on the other hand, is what the fall of the Roman Empire was like – a long depressing slide during which everyone with any nous went off to throw in their lot with the upcoming local warlord, until you found that there were half a dozen of you living in what used to be the tax office, dismantling the Coliseum in order to build a wall around the pigsty and drinking rainwater because you have no idea how the aqueducts work. Less gore involved, admittedly, but also a whole lot less exciting and more depressing.

Lower petrol consumption than a Twingo.

Not that that it’s having all that much effect on us up here as yet, with the possible exception of the astronomical price of petrol, which could shortly make it uneconomic actually to go to work in the first place. Possibly we should have a riot in protest, during which we could kill two birds with one stone and put a few bricks through Casino’s window while we’re at it. If anyone out there is driving to resort and thinking they’ll do a canny shop in the valley, don’t bother – whatever robbing bastard runs the place is charging more down here than the shops upstairs. The rest of us have all turned over to monthly supermarket sweeps in Leclerc and cellars stuffed with tins and dried food.

Skiers still seem to be skiing (come on, what sort of utter girls blouse would let the mere end of the world stop him doing that?), though I have noticed a) a lot more refused cards than usual and b) large numbers of people paying cash. I have to assume the refused cards thing just means people have failed to spot that their moolah is not going nearly as far as it used to and they’ve hit the wall at the end of the overdraft two weeks in advance.

Not sure what the wads of cash business is about though. Italians are notorious for rocking up at the ticket window first thing in the morning waving 500€ notes, but the French have started doing it this year as well, as a result of which we ran out of 5€ and 10€ notes entirely over New Year and had to wait a week for extra supplies from the bank. This was actually less inconvenient that you’d imagine, though people did get a bit shirty about being handed 15€ in small change.

Latest plan to overhaul the banking system

I’m told the Italian cash obsession is down to them all working on the black and no-one paying any tax (which might go some way towards explaining their current predicament), so maybe the French are all at the same scam and worrying about being left with a mattress stuffed with confetti when the euro finally gets round to imploding and we all have to go back to francs. Or possibly deutschmarks, depending on who ends up in charge.

Still, it adds a new dimension to the general chit-chat, which usually tends to focus on the weather and what effect that’s likely to have on visitor numbers/Parisian manners (lack of)/etc. What will happen in February? Will la crise keep them away, send them to the cheaper resorts or prompt them to blow their undeclared income on lift tickets and fin de siecle carousing? Will there be zombies? Who knows, but it makes a change from talking about whether or not it’s likely to snow on Friday.

Of course it’s always possible that euro meltdown might be good news for the British ski market, depending on whether or not it manages to immolate the pound at the same time. I can see you being able to buy a lot of lire for your squid, and you’ll probably need a rucksack if we’re talking drachma (yes, you can ski in Greece, believe it or not). On the other hand, the Hungarian midget might decide it’s a good electoral ploy to evict the Brits altogether, declare war and do a Napoleon. He’s about the right height, after all.

There’s no pleasing some people

Am stuck in garage with piste bashers. Please send shovel.

This time last year we were all moaning ourselves into an early grave about lack of snow. Grumble, boring, where’s our snow, rubbish season, we’re taking our ball and going home, humph, we all said. Incessantly. Though to be fair, we had a point – looking at my snow reports from last season, I see that we had a grand total of eight days precipitation, and I seem to remember I was scraping the barrel a bit calling some of them ‘significant snowfall’. There’s a limit to how much entertainment you can get from skiing the same motorway-flat pistes for six weeks at a stretch.

Interestingly, the punters were all insufferably chirpy while this was going on. Lovely sunshine, great pistes, having a wonderful time, they all enthused whenever I chatted to them on the chairlifts. Wouldn’t want to be next week’s punter though, gosh no, you’ll need more snow, glad we came this week. Though the following week’s visitor invariably said exactly the same thing – having a great time, glad we’re not here next week. And so it went on until about mid-April, at which point a river appeared down the middle of Cretes and even the most positive of holidaymakers really couldn’t ignore the fact that he was having to slalom around amorous marmots and attractive water features. Place looked like Sunday afternoon in the garden centre.

Go up there if you like, but you'll have to tunnel your way out of the lift station.

All of which goes to show that a very large percentage of your holiday enjoyment is entirely down to your own attitude, and if you’re a miserable sod you might as well save your cash and be miserable at home because you’re never going to enjoy yourself whatever you do. It also means you seasonnaire types can all stop stressing over those customer feedback questionnaires with which your slavemsters keep browbeating you, since they’re quite evidently no reflection of your efforts and just an excuse for your managers to trouser your bonus.

This time round, on the other hand, we’ve got more snow than anyone has seen in a generation, and you’d think we’d all be wetting ourselves with joy. But no – too much snow, grumble, snowclearing, grump, where’s the sun, humph etc. Really everyone, take your heads out from wherever you’ve stuck them. If anyone has the right to be peeved this year it’s definitely last week’s visitor, who forked out a wedge of cash, got all excited about new snow and then found himself confined to barracks all week thanks to hurricane force winds, closed lifts and the distinct possibility that were he to venture outside, several tons of the stuff might fall on his head all at once.

When in doubt, hit it with a hammer.

Admittedly the wind has royally stuffed any chance we might have had of enjoying fresh fluffy powder, but on the bright side there’s a base which should last to the end of the season and beyond (barring any sudden global warming incidents), and next time it snows, it might manage to do so without attendant wind tunnel effect. The point being that we’ll still be here for next time, whereas your poor old punter has used his winter holiday allowance and has to go back to his desk job. Come on, how gutted would you be?

I'm sure there's a chairlift in here somewhere ....

Still, the lack of fluffy bits is almost worth the pictures we all got once the storm had abated and you had at least a 50% chance of survival if you stuck our nose out of the door. The people who came and shouted at me about lift closures last weekend might want to have a look at some of them. (Yes I’m looking at you, arrogant British bloke in a badly fitting helmet – being rude to the ticket monkeys will get you nowhere.) Not much consolation if you came out last week and couldn’t ski, I know, but maybe you could fake a bout of norovirus and pull a sickie later in the month. Go on, no-one would ever know.

Can someone throw me a sandwich please? I might be up here some time.

Pictures from Arnaud Guerrand at 2Alpes and the official Facebook pages of Alpe d’Huez and Les3Vallees. Big thanks to all the resort staff who got us up and running and back on the mountain this week.