Leave behind your friends, your high heels and all your morals and get on an aeroplane to management training

After being driven to Leeds train station, getting a train to Manchester Airport, an aeroplane to Heathrow Terminal 5, spending a couple of hours in Terminal 5 wondering who comes to an airport and buys a new Gucci suit and lunches on caviar and champagne, then another flight to Geneva and a coach, I finally arrived at management training in Courchevel in the 3 Valleys.

It was getting on the coach that I met the three people with whom I would spend the majority of next two weeks. The first I had noticed in the departures lounge at Heathrow. The second was piling her huge amount of luggage onto a trolley (I could just about carry mine) and the third was helping with the second's luggage.

Instinct told me that it was a good idea to attach myself to this group of interesting looking women. Especially number one, who had dyed red hair and a lip piercing and didn't look anywhere near as nervous as I felt. She immediately assumed we would sit next to each other on the coach and I breathed a sign of enormous relief as I realised I wouldn't be left on my own. The other two girls took their seats across from us and a dark haired girl sat behind.

It didn't take long before it was obvious the coach was split between those for whom this was old hat, the experienced seasonaires and those who were new and nervous. It also didn't take long before I realised that the second person I had had met since getting off the aeroplane in Switzerland was possibly one of the loudest girls I had ever met. V was blonde, busty, beautiful and very very sure of herself. She always knew that everyone in the room was looking at her and often did her best to ensure this was the case. I thought she was fabulous.

We all began those awkward conversations that you have with a group of people you have never met (where are you from? what did you used to do?) and the conversations that seasonaires have with each other (have you skied before? where are you going? skier or boarder). The skiers try to prove they are just as cool as the boarders and the boarders try to prove they are cool enough to be boarders.

As we start to climb up the mountain two things began to be obvious. The first was that there was no snow. None anywhere. Disgruntled moans get louder and louder. The second was that the quite, dark haired girl sat behind me was not feeling very well. When someone is ill on a coach I really want to be the person who helps, who looks after them, the Florence Nightingale figure. What I really am is the person who doesn't want to be sat near a person vomiting on a coach (ever since a rather nasty event when I was helping out on a local primary school trip and a child was sick and I ended up vomiting outside Embankment tube station being watched by 10 year 5s) . These two conflicting ideas fight inside me and I eventually say 'Just breath deeply, close your eyes and try and get some sleep...oh and if your actually going to be sick please let us know'. She wasn't sick thank God, but she did do a lot of complaining about not feeling well all the way until we got to the hotel and she realised it was dinner time.