The kids new school is amazing at school trips. In their old school Percy went on one trip to the local park, in the rain. When I was at primary school my school had a school trip to a sewage farm. The bar was really low.
Maybe it's unfair to judge them against their old school because it was covid most of the time we were there, but so far Percy has been on a trip to the picturesque port of Collioure (on his second ever day of school), he did forest school, a trip the the aquarium, a sailing trip on a catamaran and now skiing!
The school won some funding for skiing, so we have to pay a small amount towards it but it was heavily subsidised. He's going on three separate days because we're only about an hour and 20 mins from some ski resorts, so it's near enough to do a day trip.
I've volunteered as a helper parent for almost all of the trips we've been on because I've got free time, it helps to practise my French, and it's nice to see the kids with their classes and meet other parents. But this was such a cool opportunity. I noticed there were a lot more Dad helpers on the trip than normally when it's been 90% women. I doubt as many Dads will be there when I am a volunteer parent on Monday for Christmas baking with Eric's class.
I spent the previous few weeks trying to source ski clothes as cheaply as possible. We bought the thermal under layers from Decathlon, and got the goggles in the sale of last years stuff. The we got Percy's all in one coat thing second hand and I managed to borrow ski trousers and a coat from a lovely friend, Erica, who had just bought that stuff and not even worn it herself yet. How kind is that! We hired the ski boots and skis and helmets so that was all free.
I've never skied before, I feel like it's something you have to be born into, like being a horsey person. I asked my mum if I could do horse ridding lessons once and she straight away said no. I'm not sure why, probably money, but I also think there's only a limited amount of hobbies that normal people get to try: stuff like football, dance, swimming, and playing the flute. I don't know anyone who got into curling or shooting or playing the bassoon as a child. I reckon I was potentially middle class enough to ski but just the wrong kind of middle class. I was born into sailing, I went sailing in the womb, (and out of it). I regret not learning much about how to do it, I learnt a bit like how to do an anchor and how to cook at a 45 degree angle, but the problem with sailing is that only one person really needs to know what they're doing, and the rest of the people in the boat can mainly just chill out and occasionally follow instructions. So it's easy to grow up in a sailing family and not become a sailer. Whereas you can't really grow up going skiing and not learn how to ski.
My experience of snow as a kid was it would occasionally snow and we would immediately go out and sledge. The one hill that was walking distance from our house was at the electricity substation, it was an odd place to go and not even a great hill. One better option was the big hill in Kenilworth that was always rammed with people, but it was a good hill if you could manage to not fall in the lake at the bottom. I realised when getting off the bus in all my ski gear that this was the first time I was properly dressed for the snow. When I was a kid I'd wear wellies and tights under jogging bottoms and woolly gloves which immediately got wet as soon as you picked up snow and then it made no sense to wear them, and you'd just stay out for about 3 hours and then when you couldn't take the cold anymore you'd come back for a bath. Dan said he had the exact same experience.
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| Me and Mum 1991 |
I do like the idea of skiing but I just don't really see what's wrong with sledging. Sledging is really fun and anyone can do it, that why me and Dan sometimes talk about a snow resort idea "whizzneyland" - I must have mentioned it on here before. It's like a ski holiday for people who don't feel posh enough or can't be bothered to learn to ski. It's just a load of hills and tyres and sledges and inflatables and maybe a ski lift for the uphill and you just mess around and have a laugh.
We arrived at school just before 7am. Percy was told he could come in normal clothes and change on the bus when we got to the ski place. I had the job of checking everyone's bags to make sure they all had googles and gloves, but they all seemed to be already wearing all their ski gear. We had a nice ride there, we're right on the main road to Andorra so it's a very simple journey, an hour on the main road travelling west which gets windier and snowier as it goes, and then a right turn and 20 minutes north. I was sat behind Percy and his best mate Eva. I've been on a few school trips so I feel like I know his friends a bit and I enjoy trying to practise my French with them. I find it less pressure than when I chat to adults and I think they like chatting to me. Some of the kids were singing "We Wish you a Merry Christmas" which they have been learning in English at school. It sounds very funny in a French accent.
When we arrived they were all very excited and immediately got off the bus. Percy then panicked that he and one other kid and me were the only ones that weren't dressed properly and all our clothes were in the bag storage under the bus. It's a good job I was there because he really needed calming down, he was worried the bus was going to drive off and he was very annoyed that he wasn't already changed. I also had to change but I at least had the foresight to wear my base layers so that I didn't have to strip down to underwear on a school bus. Anyway it was all fine and we headed over to the place to hire skis from.
I was under the impression that I wouldn't get to ski at all so it was great when the teacher said I could get skis. The people in the hire place asked me what my level was and because I didn't know the French for beginner I just said, "bad" and then I remembered I knew how to say, "it's my first time" which sounds a little better.
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| Waiting to go up in the cable car. |
The weather was absolutely perfect, so beautiful and sunny and actually pretty warm. I was in the group with Percy and all his year which is only 12 people. We had a ski instructor and one Dad helper. I was worried I wouldn't be much help, not knowing much French or any skiing skills, but I found my niche in helping the girls tie back their hair. I have spare hair bobbles and yes I know how to appropriately style hair with a helmet. In your face brilliant skier men. I also helped them get into their skis and picked them up when they fell over. We started with just one ski on going down a very shallow slope and then waddling like injured ducklings back to the top again. Then we moved onto 2 skis and did some more.
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| One ski practise |
The kids didn't have any bags with them but I did so when one kid told me she was thirsty I let her drink from my bottle. Mainly because I wanted to prove to her that I understood the French word thirsty. A few others drank from it too, but it was soon time to be reunited with all the their food and drink for lunch in a cabin. The cabin was like a a big barn with a fire in the corner. I saw two really old men in ski clothes eating meat they'd barbecued on the fire and I thought they are living the dream, I hope I can do that when I'm 70.
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| Heading to the lunch barn |
I filled up my bottle at lunch but within 20 minutes of the afternoon class it was empty because the whole class was thirsty. I went to tell the teacher they were all really thirsty but she wasn't really interested. The poor class! One boy was so thirsty he was eating snow! Percy, who had been fine all day, then hit a bit of a wall where he was just done. He said he hated it, and he didn't want to do it again. The struggling uphill bit was really annoying, but when that bit was over I thought it would be fine. In the last bit of the day we were going on the ski lift thing that you hold onto and put between your legs. I was pretty excited, this was real skiing! We got to do a good few hundred meters of fun not-too-hilly down hill and then get the lift up again.
Percy was not excited about the ski lift thing. He really struggled to do it and kept falling off, he just was not happy at all and started to cry. I tried to be encouraging and reminded him it was his first day and that on his first day trying basketball he nearly gave up, but now he's on the team. There wasn't really much I could do and after a while the other parent and the ski instructor told me to keep away from him. At one point they almost shouted at him to stop crying. I've noticed the French (in my experience) are more like this. Kind of like old school parents who just make you get on with things, and I can see both pros and cons to this approach.
I tried to enjoy a few goes round the slope, but I was a bit concerned for Percy and also every time I saw a kid who'd fallen over I had to help. This trip would have been perfect without the kids! I did think about pretending I'd lost control just so I could go off down a fun big slope but I restrained myself. At the end of the afternoon we regrouped with Percy's teacher who had taken the older class. She saw Percy pretty fed up and was very kind and caring towards him while I was pretty far away, because I had been told to stay away. So it must have just looked to that teacher like I didn't care about my own child. We went back down in the cable car looking out over the little town and the lake, which looked incredible.
Percy cheered up a lot on the way home. He had Wednesday off school (because French schools aren't on on Wednesdays) so it was nice for him to have some recovery time. We watched a few youtube videos with skiing tips. One of them was presented by a 4 year old which was a little patronising. By Thursday morning he felt ok to go back again for day two. I was gutted not to be going again. The school had only said I could do one day, and I had my French class anyway. The weather conditions were worse that day and so I wondered all day how he was getting on. A few whatsapp videos of the class were going round, but it's hard to tell from that if Percy was happy or not. So I was really happy when he returned home and said it was a much better day. He said he managed to do the ski lift right a few times and he got to go up a different slope where you take an escalator. I was so jealous! He's doing his final day next week. I really want to get into skiing now. Me and Dan were already talking about whether we could do it while they're in school one day. If I had the money I would totally go on ski holidays all the time. I'm feeling very lucky to be living in a place where you can either swim in a warm sea or ski at least 10 months of the year. (Ski Dec-Feb swim in a warm sea May-Oct) and very lucky that my kid gets to go on better trips than to sewage farms.
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