Falling down a mountain (part 2)

After practising a little bit on the beginners slope I wanted to try the between the legs ski lift that takes you up over bridge onto a bigger hill, it was tricky getting into this ski lift, you have to go through a turnstile thing which I found tricky with by big clown feet (skis) on. I had also accidentally dressed as a clown. I got some ski trousers for 2 euros from a charity shop which I was super chuffed with as they were such a bargain. They looked normal with my blue coat but when I took off the coat (because it was actually hot) and I was just wearing purple trousers with elastic straps over a red and white stripy top I did look a bit clown like.

Anyway I got on to this ski lift, which looks like a zip line seat from a kids park except your not ment to put all your weight on it, you just put it in between your legs and let it pull you. I managed this fine and even managed to film a little bit of me going up for my TikTok (see here). I put my phone safely back away in my pocket and then, I don’t know how but I just ended up on the floor. I thought about grabbing on and being dragged up but decided this was not the thing to do, so I just crawled out of the way of the person behind me who shouted “oopsie!” I didn’t even know the French used “oopsie” but that’s nice. And then I skied down and got in the queue again hoping not too many people saw. The second time I made it to the top but coming down was a problem. I fell over twice and the second time I could see the rest of my family were all at the top of the beginners slope which was just across from where I was, so I gave up on going down and crawled sideways to suggest to them we took the cable car now.

With the beginners pass you get one free cable car return journey, so we hobbled over the road to get on it. It was a beautiful view on both sides, as we went up we could see the little town surrounded by mountains and on the other side, close to the mountain, we could see this toboggan track which looked a lot of fun. At the top we stepped out onto a flat bit which was busy with groups milling around and a few ski school groups, it was a bit of a party atmosphere with music playing loudly. 

I found the bit I had gone to once before with Percy when he did his school ski trip last year and I was a volunteer helper. It was this very gentle slope with another zip line style ski lift. After going for one day on this bit I thought I could ski. I don’t think I ever fell over because the slope was so gentle, and I always had to help other kids that had fallen over, that is what I was there for so I never got to really discover what I could and couldn’t do. So we had a bit more practise on this bit and then Dan took the cable car back with Eric while I skied all the way down the mountain with Percy. I massively misjudged how far this was and how long it would take. There were a few lovely bits but mostly it was too steep. I went too fast and then I fell over, and then I couldn’t get up. Percy was much better than me and had to wait patiently for me. One time I fell into such a big heap of snow that it went all up my back and down my clown trousers.

I was relieved that we finally made it down it one piece, actually in two pieces, we haven’t been one piece since 2014. We had taken a wrong turning at some point and didn’t come out exactly where we wanted too but luckily phones exists and we managed to meet up with Eric and Dan. After giving back our ski stuff we headed home. Stupidly I had planned to host a dinner party that same night as it was my birthday. But cleverly I had made Dan agree to cook for it. There was still a lot to do when we got back including all of us showering and changing into party appropriate clothes.

We had three families round, for the first hour or so we had my artist friend Flick, with her 6 and 16 year old daughters. They are English, and then we had a couple who Eric refers to as “our board game family.” They are two girls, one French and one German, but the language they mainly speak to each other is English. Every Wednesday we play board games together. So for a while we were all English speakers and we played our new game Herd Mentality together. It’s a game where you have to answer questions and you get points by having the same answer as the majority. For example “what is the heaviest fruit or vegetable?” Most people said pumpkin so they all got a point, but I said watermelon and someone else said pineapple so we get no points.

We ate this lovely Gordon Ramsey sausage rice dish that Dan made, and then another family arrived. I know the mum from my French class, she is Spanish/Senegalese but speaks good French, and has a French partner and two young kids. So then I tried not to speak too much English as everyone there at least knew some French. Our German friend Marie also spoke good Spanish so they could talk together, and the kids all talked together in French. 

It did get chaotic, but in a lovely way. At one point I let the kids draw on our big sliding door window with Posca pens. I thought it would be a nice non language based activity that would keep people amused for half a hour but within 5 minutes the windows were filled with doodles.

I had a massive rainbow cake. Good food colouring is really hard to get in France, so when I was back in England for Christmas I stocked up on the good gel food colouring, thinking it would last for years and I’d use it for all the kids birthdays. But then I was just too tempted to use it on my own cake and it’s now nearly all gone. I got sung to in English, French and Spanish. 

Good night, Bon nuit, Buenas noces.

Falling down a mountain (Part 1)

Hello welcome to my first blog of 2024. It’s my 15 year blog anniversary and my 38th birthaversary.

 I feel blogs are dying a little now, because there’s podcasts and TikToks and vlogs, and to be honest the page views have gone down a bit since the glory days of the 2015-2020. I’m going to carry on with it though, even if no one reads it, just because I enjoy reading it back sometimes and remembering things that I would have definitely forgotten otherwise.

According to page views you guys love a bit of tragedy though. You like it when things go well for us but you absolutely loved it when things were going badly for us a few months ago, you loved it when I was going out of my mind stuffing frying pans in public bins just before we moved countries, but you loved it the most when I had cancer in 2018.

Well sorry to disappoint but things are going ok right now. Not great, Dan is still out of work although he has a bit of temporary work for this month which we’re very grateful for. It was my birthday yesterday which I want to write about but I never got round to writing a Christmas blog so I’m going to do a quick Christmas summary:

I painted my pregnant sister’s stomach.

I had an argument with my mum about pie.

I held 2 new nieces one 7 months and one 2 weeks old.

We had a fun new year with our friends Zac and Jude.

Dan had a job interview but didn’t get it.

We went to London to see my extended family, and while we were there saw some penguins, a film about the moon and Rachel Goodsall. 

We got evacuated from a canal boat because the river was flooding. I realise this sentence doesn’t make much sense, but we were sleeping in my parent’s canal boat to give others room to sleep in the house. The river was rising fast and this was our last chance to walk off the boat onto the decking and back to the house before the water went over the decking level.

My sister Sarah had a baby shower where I made a quiz. You had to guess from multiple choice questions where my kids think babies come out of, or what they think is good parenting advice. I filmed them answering these questions, see the video here if you want a laugh:

Percy and Eric’s views on birth

Ok Christmas summary done. Let’s talk about Skiing.

When I was growing up I didn’t know many people who went skiing, I’d never been and that was normal for most people I knew. I’m not trying to make out I’m from the hood, we went sailing which is arguably more elite. But when I think of snow I think of sledging. Any time it snowed I’d put on my tights under my jogging bottoms, a pair of wellies, t-shirt, jumper, coat, 2 pairs of socks and woolly gloves that got wet in a second and then made you cold. And we’d head out to the electricity substation which was our nearest hill. We’d mess around for a few hours until we couldn’t stand the cold any longer and then come back for a hot bath. 

Did you know snow can be better than that? Did you know they actually make trousers that are  waterproof and warm and base layers that are intended for the purpose of wearing in the cold? They make boots that are both waterproof and warm! This was a revelation to me and Dan who grew up with the exact same experience of snow. But if you are growing up in the village I now live in it is completely normal to go skiing every year. I think almost everyone will have at least tried it. Percy got to go on a government funded 3 day trip with school last year and I got to be a parent volunteer helper for a day.

I’ve always been envious of people with summer birthdays, I’d love to have a nice barbecue birthday party, but I’ve always had to do indoor things. But living here is redeeming the January birthday for me. The boys loved yesterday so much that they both asked if they could go for their birthdays (May and October) sorry boys. Eric’s now asking if he can go instead of a Christmas present, that’s how much they love it.

We live about 80-90 minutes away from the ski resort we went to (Les Angles) so it’s near enough to do a day trip which makes it more affordable. We got the beginners pass, which was 28 euros each, and actually allowed us to go on some really big slopes and using a few different ski lifts. We had to buy some skiing clothes and the goggles but most of that we’ve picked up second hand, none of us had “ski coats” we just wore our normal everyday coats. But it was actually really warm in the sun so I didn’t wear a coat hardly at all. We hired ski boots, skis, helmets and me and Dan had poles, this cost around 15 euros per person for all of it. If we stay here long term I’d love to buy this stuff so that we didn’t have to pay to hire it but for now it makes sense to hire.

I was under the impression I could ski, because on my one day as a helper parent on a school trip I didn’t  fall over. I have now realised that on the school trip I didn’t really go downhill. I went on the gentlest hill you can imagine. And I was supposed to be helping the kids when they fell over, so I just assumed that I could ski and if it wasn’t for stoping to help the kids I’d be amazing.

So we got to the beginners slope which I think was still pretty steep and I thought, I’ll ski down holding Eric’s hand, he’s never done it before so he’ll need loads of help. He fell over, I fell over and I couldn’t get back up. I was completely useless at helping him because I didn’t know anything. Percy started just getting on with it and doing it with no help. Dan had to take over helping Eric and I had to try and teach myself how to do it. All I know was make a backwards “V” shape with the skis to slow down. But sometimes I got so fast and out of control I had to do an on purpose fall over to prevent just going at 60 mile a hour into a tree. But then I really struggled to get up from the ground when I was down and so sometimes just bum slid down for a bit.

I feel like this blog is long enough and I want to sleep and rest my achy old body, so I’m going to make it a two parter.

Next time…

Falling off a ski lift, going up to the top of the mountain in a cable car, taking 40 minutes to get down the mountain. Rushing back to host a dinner party, bilingual party dynamics and my rainbow cake.