Ready to Apres

Today was my day off and after a day ironing, packing and watching classic TV such as Jeremy Kyle. About  half three I wandered with a friend into town. We walked past a cocktail bar and I suddenly had a huge desire to go in and have a drink. And the more I thought about it the mort I wanted a jager bomb.

Then I realised that it was Apres time. That in the not too distant future, four pm will be prime drinking time.

The girl I was with was a little bit shocked that I was being pulled towards the drink so early in the day. In the world we inhabit together four pm is prime working time.

So, in the end I did not have a drink, and in fact even though we went to the pub much later I didn't have a drink then either (I do have work tomorrow) (not a thought that will be worrying me in the future).

However on Thursday I will be going to the Ski and Snowboard show at Earls Court. I cannot wait. And I'm going in Thursday evening to make the most of the apres that will be going on. I'm also going with my ski obsessed mother. I'm hoping that if I get my mum a couple of jager bombs she might become very free with her credit card. I'm after a new coat, some goggles, some black snow boots, some neon yellow sallies and potentially some skis. How many jagers do you think that will take???

Alcohol is not my friend (when other people drink it)

The other night my City job had a staff party. It was part leaving party for those of us who only work there in the summer, part leaving party for a man who is moving on and part celebration of recent successes. It was the first time we have all got together after work to spend time as a group. If there is something seasonaires do a lot it is spend time together outside of work.

One particular young man at the party slightly over did the red wine and at the end of the evening it was down to me and a couple of others to escort that gentlemen to where he was spending the night, which happened to be very near to my house.

I don't know what happened to me but without thinking about it I was transformed in to 'looking after drunk people mode'. I told him that if he was sick in the car, I would be really mad. His drink addled brain couldn't quite understand why I was pre-empting vomit. What he didn't know was quite what a large number of drunk people I have dealt with in my time.  I have seen them all, happy drunks, angry drunks, horny drunks, sleepy drunks, crying drunks, hungry drunks and vomiting drunks.

I have sat and watched two inebriated women eat pizza, not noticing that the entirety of the topping was sliding off the pizza, down their chins, down their front and into their laps. And then when they did notice the tomato and cheese sat on their jeans, pick it up with surprise and eat it.

I have comforted girls when they were hysterically crying wine tears (Miss P, fashion designer you know who you are). Usually over the ineptitude of the males in the species.

I have dealt with the vomit, I have been talking to a very drunk girl when she suddenly, out of the blue, vomited down herself, into her own hands, outside of a bar, at about 6pm, wiped her hands and then carried on drinking. At this point, chef laughed and told me it was a tactical chunder. This was too much, even for me to deal with.

I have had men try to come on to me, I have been picked up and carried. I have prevented women getting naked in bars and I have gone to sleep trying to block out the sounds of drunken sex. I have put people to bed. I have seen the wounds that occur when drunk people go skiing topless and fall over (ice burn is not pretty)  Most of all I have listened to people talk absolute crap to me for hours on end.

I have dealt with the horrific morning after fall out. The midnight fights, the midnight feasts, the drunk off hand comments (the best one being 'I know if I don't pull, when I come back you will have sex with me', that girl was pissed off for days!) I have looked after the girls who went a bit too far with the wrong man (in the mountains most men are the wrong man). I have listened to the stories. I have done the washing after someone woke up in the middle of night and wee-ed all over his room mate's clothes and shoes. I have calmed down angry French men who were a little fed up with the nightly drunken singing. I was told all about when two people got it on in a bubble lift on Wednesday afternoon.

There was usually way too much detail involved in everyone's stories. Way too much.

I'm sure that a lot of drunken behaviour went on that I didn't know about, but gossiping is the number one activity in the mountains, and I usually heard about it one way or another.

I'm not playing the martyr, I got drunk, I did silly things, I was once so drunk I attempted to light the wrong end of a roll up and I have been known to share way too much information myself.

While out to dinner with the Rep last week we were talking about alcohol. About how our alcohol tolerance has gone right down since moving away from the mountains. And the miracles of almost hangover-less mornings. After come discussion about why hangovers just don't have the crippling effects at 1700m that the do on the ground, we concluded that, 'Well in the mountains you just get up and get on with it don't you? You can't just lie in bed feeling sorry for yourself'.

In conclusion, the recent work party was a good re-introduction to the world of the drunken staff, and he was the best behaved drunkard I have ever dealt with. I'm thinking of offering him a job.

Are you ready for music in the mountains yet???

http://www.youtube.com/user/theramraidcouk?feature=results_main

Changes

Things are changing. When I began writing Seasonaire in the City I was fresh off the coach from Meribel starting a new job in the big city, ourcapital city. After so long up a mountain I was missing being away and slightly overwhelmed by the size of the city and the number of people. I was certain I was not going to go back.

Now I am going back.

So in a months time I am not going to be a seasonaire in the city, I am going to be a seasonaire up a mountain in France. With a whole new set of staff members (if they think I haven't already started looking them up on facebook they are wrong!!!)

So over the next few weeks I am slightly changing the format of Seasonaire in the City. I am adding some new things to the blog; including a Meribel review section to review bands I have seen, nights out, pubs, bars raclette restaurants and anything else that takes my fancy. I am also going to regularly update with Meribel news and weather so that those of you stuck in England can feel very jealous of the snow depth.

Don't worry though, I will be keeping up with my regular blog.

And ladies and gentlemen, if you want anything else, don't hesitate to let me know.

List Making Time

The other night I started the first of my long drawn out series of last night outs, farewell parties and goodbyes. My delightful house mate, the wonderful Matt, took me out, and after a very nice evening sitting in the sound box at the Theatre,  we skilfully managed to avoid what was destined to be a terrible double blind date and danced the night away at G.A.Y.

So in the next few weeks I have a night out to a medieval banquet with my friend Hutch, a pub night out with the rep, a work goodbye party, a day out to York with my friend Miss T and my lovely 2 year old godson, a night out in the Victorian Industrial West Yorkshire town I am originally from, again with Miss T and a Christmas Day with the family.

In between all this fun I have to finish at work for the winter, pack up my house, move back home and pack for the mountains. This means I have to start making lists. Lots of lists. There will be lists blue tacked to every wall, ceiling and floor before long. When I was at school I had a boyfriend who said he had never met anyone who planned things to such extremes as I did. A Olympic gold medal winning planner.

The first time I went to France I didn't know what to expect so I couldn't prepare as well as I should and I had to get several things sent out; a Hungarian goose down duvet, a set of speakers, several copies of BBC History magazine, a second pair of snow boots, a very thick woolly hat)

At the moment I'm currently thinking of making a list of what kind of lists (and the sub lists) I have to make.

1. Things I have to buy before I go
a) Skiing things
b) Food that I have to take that I miss while I am out there (Marmite, earl grey tea, most forms of biscuit)
c) The cosmetics and beauty items I have to buy that I absolutely cannot run out of while I am away (foundation, mascara, dry shampoo, razors, hair removal cream)

2) Things I have to do before I go (Pack, Arrange for extra luggage on the aeroplane, Take all the things out my suitcase that I don't actually need, Get my hair cut (I rather stupidly got a fringe put in about six weeks ago that might stop me seeing anything about two months into my six month trip), complete my food hygiene course)

3) Types of food I am going to miss and so will have to eat before I go (Chinese, curry, fish and chips, mum'a roast dinner)

4) Things I absolutely don't need to pack because I do not need them (bikini, 20 different nail varnish colours)

5) Things I have to persuade the doctor to give me a six month supply of

And this is not ever going anywhere near the list of things I actually have to pack.

Its going to be be a very busy couple of weeks. And I'm not sure, once I have made all my lists, whether I am going to have the time to do anything on my lists.

Line up Line up - its multivitamin time.

Early mornings at the hotel were pretty much always the same. Even though I lived the furthest away, I often got their first, followed by a succession of blurry eyed, sleepy people, usually complaining/ gossiping about what people had got up to the night before (he wee-ed in my shoes, she was such a total bitch, I woke up and they were shagging RIGHT NEXT TO ME) On more that one occasion I was shown pictures of people  who were so drunk they had fallen asleep naked and their loving friends had taken pictures of them, sometimes there was one person in the picture, sometimes there was two. Coffee machines were turned on, cereal was transferred into bowls and I went to wake up the one person who had been too drunk to turn on their alarm (by the end of the season I had woken up every member of hotel staff). On the worst occasion one boy had to be physically dragged out of bed before he would wake.

One morning I stood in the kitchen and looked around me at the mass of grey , miserable looking faces, all moving at the speed of snails and suddenly I had a thought, every single person in the room (except me) looked close to death and worryingly lacking in several vital vitamins. If they died or were rushed to hospital, it would be me who would have to call their mothers to tell them their child's constant drinking and inability to eat fruit and vegetables when not being forced by a loving parent had taken the ultimate toll.

My own mother was very worried about vitamin deficiency and had been sending me a pack of multi vitamins on average every three weeks. And as a dutiful daughter and not much fancying a visit to a French hospital had been taking them regularly.

Chef was the worst of the lot, his skin had actually turned slate grey. Not wanting to deal the death of a staff member I knew I had to do something and I hunted out the bottle of vitamins that had come in the post from England the day before.

I lined everyone up in the kitchen, chef first and gave each of them a vitamin shot. I was a bit worried that their bodies wouldn't be able to cope with the sudden rush of healthy things and would start immediately to reject the tablets. Fortunately this didn't happen. Some tried to ridicule me for thinking they needed it but nevertheless they all took it, with considerably less persuading and threatening than I was expecting.

Through out the day, the story spread and different staff members sort me out in secret, like I was some kind of drug pusher, so they could have one too.

The childcare manager, who didn't eat any fruit and veg anyway, didn't like them because they were orange flavoured. The rep had two.