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.
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.
No comments:
Post a Comment