Happy Birthday, Juan!

The clouds finally lifted, in every sense, this weekend. Thanks to our “Swiss” friends Antje and John inviting us to use their holiday flat for a night, we had a reason to return to Aussois, in the Vanoise,  last visited with Brian Todd in summer 2011 in unimaginably different summer heat.

In summer the ski infrastructure is a blight on the landscape. In winter – well, I admit it, we had an absolute ball. Grandiose, 360-degree panoramas, with the Ecrins in the far background…

… and views across to the col we’d walked over with Brian in summer:

I may have looked longingly at the ski-tourers heading off to the back country but the isolation of some of the pistes came close to it:

The wide, empty pistes, under wall-to-wall sun, were a joy to ski down…

We managed to ski in perfect harmony for two days together, Juan’s January fall making him more cautious and therefore compatible with his increasingly speedy wife. I even managed to coax him into a couple of the mountain eateries…

Sunday was Juan’s birthday. The wife managed a cake, lit at breakfast so we could take some slices onto the piste!...

 … and Juan had something  to open, thanks to Buff and Colin. (Awesome.)

A wonderful, wonderful weekend.

deep and soft and uneven

Snow, forecast for Sunday (and inspiring Juan to leave for Yverdon mid afternoon to avoid the horrors of un-snowploughed roads), finally started to fall early Monday morning. By the time I woke up there was an impressive 20cm of wettish white stuff, the trees and shrubs bent double by the load. And it continued unabated all day.

In team with the neighbours we shovelled the carpark to allow the cars to be moved. The snow ploughs were slower than usual to arrive and even the main road remained an unstable sea of slush and ice until mid afternoon. Against all sense I decided to hold the admin rdv at the Renault garage, annoying the hell out of the motorists queuing behind me as I drove at snail's pace down to Gières. Maybe I should display "recent accident victim: bear with me, please" on my rear windscreen.

Driving back, the road was clearer. But where to put the stuff remained the issue: the road and pavement snow ploughs creating an increasingly high and narrow wall between the two.

And still it fell. During the night I relieved the boredom of insomnia by taking a snap of the view from my bedroom,  then took it again this morning. Today, unlike yesterday, the snow-clearing teams must have been out in force: the roads were clean as a whistle with just the 35cm on car roofs testifying to the volumes that have fallen. Temperatures are not especially cold so will this taste of the Arctic vanish as quickly as it arrived?

troubled waters

My blog absence over the last few weeks reflects an unhealthy mental state. What can I say that is honest?

Maybe nothing, on this occasion. Onwards and upwards.

First to Bournemouth, where my niece Poppy had her own troubles: a hall of residence clampdown on the use of microwaves severely curtailing her possibilities for self-catering; and the house-sharing configuration for next year shifting with the Bournemouth sand. (Everyone I've mentioned this to confirms that there's something about girls... though my memories of the happy band with whom I house-shared in Newcastle are all positive. Thirty-three (yow!!!) years later my friend Clare will be visiting shortly.)

Anyway, it was lovely seeing Poppy - an all-too-rare event these days. And I think she has forgiven me for the non-communication which resulted in me frogmarching us around Bournemouth while she was recovering  from shingles.

Poppy and the banned, sarong-clad microwave

From Bournemouth I linked up with students travelling to Wimbourne for Bill Palmer's PG shiatsu course. And ten spent 3 days working with the inner organs, trying (and failing) to gain support from them.

Bill demos working with the lungs

Then, at B on Avon, Mum and Dad were their usual supportive, kind, interested selves.
I had the bonus of coinciding with my nephew Ol - a temporary tenant while he works another contract for Aardman (aka Wallace & Grommit). Jaws dropped as he took us through a Shaun the Sheep video project that will be released this March. Eventually, the penny dropped and I understood that modelling doesn't mean modelling, it means modelling.

Awestruck grandparents gaze nonplussed at genius Ol's stills

  

Crash-landing back in France there is at last some news about the car. (Yes, it has taken 3 weeks.) It is repairable so I have access to a courtesy car and can cross "marooned without transport or ability to work" off my list of worries.