Looking Out To Sea

Someone put a massive mountain there

Situation report from the scene, live as it happens! It’s 6pm on the end of my first day in the French Alps. The sun was bright and if the weather continues like this I’m going to be wearing a lot less on the slopes than I initially thought.

I spent the morning and afternoon with École du Ski Français as an “adulte debutant” — ie, adult beginner. I’m slowly dredging up bits of French and learning new words (batons for ski poles and casque for helmet). The instructors would translate things into English but on many occasions it wasn’t necessary.

For lunch I had croque monsieur, frites avec mayonnaise and biere. Again I tried to be quite confident and the words more or less made sense to everyone so that’s quite good.

It seems unlikely I will be able to co-ordinate a lunchtime meeting with Helen and her family as I’m totally without phone service both in the village and in the mountains. Hopefully we’re organise something in advance one day, although at the moment I’m still pretty much clueless about getting around. It’ll have to be a really obvious and central meeting point or I won’t have a clue.