Musings on a snowy Sunday

As it's Sunday, Vicki is obviously working ridiculously hard to change the chalet over from this morning's departing guests to those arriving today. And as luck would have it, they are arriving early. Joy. So even less time for Vic to get everything sorted and cleaned up. I, on the other hand, have had less work than a Morgan Stanley tea-boy. According to the old hands in the ski school, this is probably the worst slump they have ever seen. And I am one of the few "lucky" ones as I had a good start to the month with some full days and returning clients. But a total of 40 hours over a month is not anything to write home about. But the snowy conditions have meant that at least the free skiing has been pretty awesome. So can't really complain too much! So the situation being what it is, I am sitting in a cafe, having a pleasant drink, surfing the world wide web as I believe they call it, watching the snowy drizzle come down.

We took the opportunity of the sunny weather last week to go ice-skating at the sports centre. However, we were the only ones there and the whole thing was slightly eerie to tell the truth. We started out by helping ourselves to the skates in the hire room (you have to love these trusting Swiss...) and proceeded to skate around for about an hour, all on our own. We felt like we had broken into the place and kept expecting an announcement to come over the tannoy informing us that the police had been called and that the exits were blocked. But luckily no arrests were made and so we took the opportunity to practice our backward skating and hockey stops (well half of us did at any rate). It was fun, but you do miss the crowd watching and staring at other people going round when you stop for a breather.

And the biggest scandal of the season so far occurred the other day when someone vandalised the lift in our apartment block. Shock horror! They did quite a good job of it, spray painting obscenities across the three (carpeted) walls of the lift. And knowing the Swiss authorities, the culprit has probably handed themselves in and been given a good, stern telling off, before being made to apologise to the owners and promising never to anything like that again. Bless. They haven't made much of an effort to clean it off, although they did clean the mirror inside, so at least I can still check my hair on the way out the building. And see quite how wonky my eyes look on the way back in at the end of the night!

The weather has been fairly unpredictable lately, but there has been some really good snow and the lack of crowds means you can still find fresh tracks well into the day without going too far afield, which is nice. Easter will bring some people back into town, but according to the bookings for those two weeks, it is going to be nothing like Christmas or February half-term.

The only development was the arrival of Kate's birthday present to me, which the Swiss postal system eventually deigned to let me have after three weeks. This was a funky little DAB radio, which has given us a slightly more varied musical repertoire to listen to. iTunes has been great, but we are definitely starting to know pretty much all the songs by heart. The downside is that e do tend to stumble on some seriously dodgy Swiss, German, French and Italian songs. And why, by the way, do foreign artists insist on singing in English, when they can't pronounce half the words even close to anything properly?!?!? Sorry, that really gets on my nerves.

Less than a month to go now, and we are slowly coming to terms with having to go home. Although I think Vicki can't wait! She will then be able to be a lady of leisure, swanning around town having lunch with anyone who will have her, and generally rubbing my nose in the fact that the roles are finally reversed!! Hopefully, the weather will have improved a little by the time we get back as the thought of getting in to grey, drab London really doesn't fill me with joy. We are however postponing the return by a couple of days, as we will be staying in Geneva to relax and explore a little. We will probably try and swing by Gingins so that Vicki can see the beautiful village I grew up in (or in Vic's terms "the back of beyond hovel" I grew up in ;o)). If anyone with a big car fancies coming to pick us up from Gatwick on the 27th, get in touch! I'm sure we can recompense you with some lovely Toblerone... or maybe a cuckoo clock?

And there are still some very good last minute deals for anyone who fancies...