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Chugga Chugga

Posted on March 8, 2009

On Fri­day Wal had a meet­ing in Kid­der­min­ster which I think is in the west mid­lands and we tagged along.  We were dropped off in Bridgenorth where we hopped on a steam train and chugged our way over to Kid­der­min­ster.  Bridgenorth looked really cool and old timey and I should have spent more time there.  I didn’t know which way to head Upper Bridgenorth or Lower Bridgenorth– the sta­tion was smack in the mid­dle and it was one hell of a hill so we just hung around the train sta­tion.  

 

Once on the train Squidge and I had a bit of fun.

We had a fan­tas­tic time on the train and Squidge just loved the chugga chugga sound the train made.  It’s a shame I didn’t research it a bit more as it was some sort of steam engine festival/gala/day and some ‘famous’ trains were out and about.  Not know­ing any­thing about any of them I didn’t really go out of my way to pho­to­graph any of them.  I did take a bucket load of pho­tos and they will be mak­ing an appear­ance on my Flickr site so if you really want to see trains you should head over there!  On Sat­ur­day we went to a birth­day party but that’s a post for another day as it’s 1:30 and I really should go to bed!

Meribel

Posted on March 16, 2008

We’re home from our trip. I would love to say I had a fan­tas­tic time but I can’t. I had some melt­downs. Squidge had some melt­downs and well Wal just looked at us and tried to do the best he could. The flight was LOOOONG. Not in dis­tance but in lack of ease and enjoy­ment. First Choice does NOT make it easy for you to travel with them. I had never trav­eled with a pack­age hol­i­day com­pany and don’t know if I ever will again. Check in was chaos– at one point Wal actu­ally placed his hands on my shoul­ders and phys­i­cally restrained me from get­ting into it with another pas­sen­ger. They spent almost 2 hours try­ing to fig­ure out if the cor­rect num­ber of pas­sen­gers were on the flight– this meant that we were stuck on the plane while they did a sort of Lau­rel and Hardy rou­tine count­ing pas­sen­gers and check­ing board­ing passes. I sat sep­a­rate from Wal and tried to con­tain Squidge in my lit­tle seat and not elbow the woman sit­ting beside me. Can you say good times? OOoh yah. I actu­ally started cry­ing at one point I was soo mis­er­able. Oh and did I men­tion all the stu­pid men on the flight that had smug­gled cans of larger/cider onto the plane so that they could start their hol­i­day early? And did I men­tion it was TEN O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING? I got sooo many dirty looks from those ba$tards I wanted to scream. We finally landed in Geneva and it was even more chaotic than check-in. I really didn’t think this was pos­si­ble but I was wrong. We waited over an hour for our bags and then con­tin­ued to wait for the pushchair. You know the one I had given them at the gate so I could get it back first. The pushchair that a now des­per­ately tired Squidge really needed so she could sleep. We waited and waited and waited. We finally decided to try to find some­one to help us locate it. We didn’t find any­one and just started look­ing our­selves. We finally found the pushchair (ours and another pas­sen­gers) hid­den (not an exag­ger­a­tion) in a cor­ner under a huge box. I don’t know how I saw it because it was pretty well hid­den. Then it was onto a bus and onto France. Mer­ci­fully Squidge fell asleep for about 2 1/2 hours of the 3 hour trip.

We were all pretty exhausted by the time we arrived at our chalet. We met our chalet girl and set­tled into our room. Then din­ner where we met all the other chalet guests. I had NEVER done any­thing like this and it was lots of fun. It was very homey– kind of like meet­ing your dorm mates in col­lege for the first time.

On Sun­day we sorted nurs­ery and lessons. We decided that I would get more out of one-on-one lessons, I booked 2 lessons. My first one was on Mon­day and my part­ing words to Wal were some­thing like ’ I eff­ing hate you and I eff­ing hate this’. Hmm can you sense my excite­ment at the thought of actu­ally hav­ing to put my skis on? Tomás (my French ski­ing instruc­tor) was trés cute and I had images of my humil­i­at­ing myself for his enjoy­ment and plea­sure. Sadly I didn’t dis­ap­point on this. My first les­son went well. Didja know I have really good bal­ance? Not bad for a woman of my mature age who has ZERO expe­ri­ence with any­thing sporty. Dur­ing the sec­ond part of my les­son Tomás wanted to take me up to a prac­tice area on the moun­tain. I tried to explain to him my fear of heights but he pre­tended he didn’t under­stand me and took me up any­way. I was scared shit-less but didn’t do too badly. On the first les­son I only fell twice– pretty darn good as far as I’m con­cerned. In case you were won­der­ing Squidge was at a really cute French nurs­ery while I was out tor­tur­ing humil­i­at­ing endur­ing enjoy­ing my les­son. I took a break the next day and Squidge and I played in the snow while Wal Skied.

Wednes­day I had my final les­son. This time he took me up the moun­tain and wanted me to ski down a piste. I didn’t want to go but I remem­bered that we had paid a whole lotta money for the lessons his French charms worked on me and I agreed to ski down. I think ski might be over stat­ing what I actu­ally did. I snow­plowed very very very (did I men­tion very?) slowly down the moun­tain then took a chair lift up again and skied down to where I started then took the gon­dola down. I would have skied down all the way but it changes from a green (very easy) to a blue (more dif­fi­cult) run and I just couldn’t do that to myself. There were tears, lots of curs­ing (with Tomás telling me I was using bad words and me telling him to get used to it as I was plan­ning on using many many more that after­noon) and a cou­ple of tum­bles. My sec­ond fall I hurt my knee. What do you do when you hurt your knee while on the side of a moun­tain? You keep ski­ing because you don’t want to be ‘res­cued’ too embar­rass­ing.
Then we met up again and played in the snow again.

We had a bit to eat.

I rested my knee on Thurs­day which is why I was on my way to the hot tub. On Fri­day after­noon Wal and I dropped Squidge off at nurs­ery and I slowly, grudg­ingly trudged to the gon­dola whin­ing that my knee hurt and that I was scared and I didn’t want to go.. whine..whine..whine. There were tears and lots of huff­ing and puff­ing while I psy­ched myself up to get going. It ended up being fun (in a weird way) and I’m look­ing for­ward to our next ski trip. And THAT my friends is a state­ment I never thought I would say. Next time we’ll use a more ‘fam­ily friendly’ hol­i­day com­pany. Once we got to the chalet First Choice was great and we really enjoyed our­selves. It was just that we were the only ones with a kid that added a bit of stress.

We went ski­ing with these folks.

Sam is an old friend of Wal’s and Kate is his new girl­friend. They’re still very much in love (yuck!)

and I vaguely remem­ber feel­ing that way about Wal. I’m jok­ing around of course, they were great and we’re hop­ing to see them again soon.

All in all it was a good time. It was hard work. Going on hol­i­day with a tod­dler is sooo much more dif­fi­cult than going on your own but you know that going in. Once the hol­i­day is over you kind of for­get the bad bits.

Edited to add:
Just to clar­ify, I DID in fact have a good time. It was just NOT a relax­ing hol­i­day– it’s not in the nature of a ski­ing hol­i­day to be relax­ing. Am I look­ing for­ward to doing it again? YES! It’s the type of thing that scares me half to death but also makes me want to improve and see what this ski­ing thing is really all about. So bring it on Tomás. I’ll see you next year and maybe just maybe I’ll do a black blue run!

Hiya!!

Posted on March 13, 2008

Yep, you guessed it– I’ve found an inter­net cafe!   

I’m here.  I’m alive. I’m hav­ing a good time. Squidge is in nurs­ery– cry­ing her eyes out and I’m about to hit the hot tub.  I know life is tough. 

I’ve had two lessons and I actu­ally ski snow­plowed down a piste (actu­ally 2).  I can’t say it was the most fun I have ever had but I didn’t hate it and I’m still alive. 

Just to con­firm I’ll be back in the UK Sat­ur­day evening so I won’t be blog­ging til then.  This is mainly for my mother who was VERY con­cerned I hadn’t blogged since last Thurs­day– I guess she didn’t under­stand what I meant when I said– see ya next week!!

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