A Sad Day and A Change of Plans

R -L - Nicholas, Uncle Rob, Michael, Andrew, Phil & his sons.

It's been a sad day and a quiet one as we recover from the news that we have lost another friend.

Uncle Rob, although not an uncle by birth, has was truly an uncle to Graeme in terms of the part he has played in the Oxley family life. For for nearly sixty years, Uncle Rob and Auntie June ("the Turnbulls") have been friends with Graeme's parents. And Graeme has had a friendship with their son Andrew, ever since his mother took him to meet the newborn Andrew when Graeme was only 18 months old.

There are so many stories, long standing tales and family legends which include Uncle Rob. Sharing a passion for cars, particularly MG's and Jag's, Graeme and his father always had a strong connection with Rob and his son Andrew. Uncle Rob, was a dynamic man. Life was to be lived at full pace, whether at work in his professional life or behind the wheel of a car.

Graeme will miss Uncle Rob dearly. As, of course, will his parents who have lost one of their dearest and closest friends.

Rest in peace, Uncle Rob. May the dear lord have a nice shiny MG TF awaiting you!

********

Today, was also a day to make some changes to our plans. There is no question in our minds that we would like to be back in Melbourne to support Andrew, Auntie June and Graeme's parents through this time. Fingers crossed that we will be able to change our flights and arrangements easily.

Reality Hits!

1/ We'll be finding our way home shortly. Good thing we don't have to use a map -
as you can see -we are a little challenged in that department!

Reality has hit today! In just over 2 weeks we will be leaving France and starting the long journey home. I'm not sure why we both felt it so keenly today.

Maybe it was because we went back to our French lessons today. We still have 2 to complete. And it was obvious how much we had regressed during the last two months! Aaah, we paid the price. Poor Liz, was totally frustrated at our efforts! "Must try harder" was stamped all over our homework.

As lunch drew near, we finished our french and relieved our poor Professor from further torture. Joining Hubert for a sunny lunch in the garden, neither of us felt much like doing anything. It was too late in the day for ski touring.

Over lunch we kept exclaiming to each other and Hubert "how the time had flown". Both Graeme and I are not coping well with the long sunny summer days of the last couple of weeks. It's been nearly 2.5 weeks of continuous blue skies and temperatures in the 20's in the French Alps. Not to mention that pesky daylight savings. Am I sounding like the equivalent of the Christmas Grinch yet?

Right oh! I'm back to the blog after a nice cup of tea and a lie down. Much better. Hubert has also cheered me up no end by warning us that this warm period is the "false spring". There will be another dump of snow before we go and the temperatures will plummet alarmingly. Excellent!

Back in Araches, but still pining for Mario!

1/ A delicious curry with David and Georgina in Les Carroz.
Forget the date - something wrong with their camera!!

Somehow, we actually managed to make it back to Araches after our long day of ski touring in Italy, shower, shave and change into clean clothes in time to join Lucy Sellick's sister (Georgina) and husband, David, for a casual curry dinner. G&D have rented an apartment in Les Carroz, just up the hill from us. Sans les enfants, they have enjoyed a tremendous week of good snow and glorious sunshine.

We must have been running on over-drive! Limbs aching and noses glowing from 3 days of snow & sunshine, we wolfed down Dave's delicious curry. G&D must have wondered "who" or rather "what creatures" they had invited to dinner!

As the night wore on, there was some vague plan hatched over the second bottle of wine about catching up for a ski with G&D around mid-morning in Les Carroz. At the time we must have felt invincible to make this suggestion. I certainly must have forgotten all about the grinding ache in my knees, blisters on my feet and a general light-headedness from too much the sun. Of course, that's what did it...too much sun!

Needless to say that by daybreak next morning, our grand plans of the night before had evaporated, leaving only the aforementioned sore knees, feet and heads! Not only that, but my feet were so badly blistered I couldn't put on normal shoes, let alone ski boots! We feel a little badly that we didn't get more of an opportunity to ski with G & D. We hope they will forgive us!!

So our day was spent with the usual domestics and a very early night. But all through the day we reminisced about our trip to the Mario Bezzi Refuge. Here's some more reflections on the trip!

2/ How cool! Mario Bezzi has his own monogrammed crockery!!
The funniest thing is that, Mario, does, actually look a bit like a marmot!

Christophe our Guide

Christophe is an excellent guide. He pushes us just enough to make us feel that we have achieved something without taking us beyond our limits. He is very safety conscious and explains why he is making a particular decision at a particular time. He is keen to share information with us but even more admirably he readily seeks out information from others he respects. His interaction with the Mario Bezzi, an old man of the mountains, was delightful.

He has a wicked sense of humour and the patience of a saint. Apart from having to nurse me up some of the more exposed parts of the mountain, he was also forced to listen to my tortured attempts at the French language. I figured, since we were going to be spending 3 days in close quarters, I had a perfect French tutor on hand.

However, Christophe quickly developed two very effective techniques to encourage silence from me. First, if my attempt at french conversation was getting too long, he would subtly increase the pace of skinning, slowly pulling further and further away from me. To keep up, I would have to markedly increase my leg speed, by which time I was huffing and puffing so much there was no chance of any further witty repartee.

His second technique was a lot less subtle. As I struggled to find the correct words or pronounciation he would initially feign interest and then suddenly drop his head making loud snoring noises. Hint taken!!

3/ A Christophe speciality: Crushed Crisps for lunch?

Another Christophe classic, was his choice of touring food. He had endless supply of pototo crips and would offer them to us at every opportunity. Take it from us, pototo crisps are not ideal ski touring food!! OK, I will concede that they're light, but if the packet doesn't burst from the reduced air pressure, the contents resemble oatmeal by the time they have been shoved repeatedly into a pack.

And the very last observation about our fearless leader, Christophe, is his habit of donating head torches to Refuges throughout the alps. At the Colle di Giasson, he was rummaging through his pack to discover that yet again he had left his head torch at Refuge Mario Bezzi. I am not completely sure about the exact translation, but I did understand that over the years, he has left 36 head torches at various refuges and mountain bivvies around the alps. He used to be sponsored by Petzl which covered the first 20 or so, but obviously (given the level of swear words) the "freebie days" are long gone!!

But all jokes and observations aside, we would seriously rate Christophe as a guide. He has a "nose for the snow" and we've thoroughly enjoyed our touring with him on this trip and also our first trip closer to home. We have been lucky to have found him as our guide.

4/ Our handsome guide - Christophe!!

Please..Send No More Tongs!!

Help! The tongs are breeding!!

Help the tongs are breeding!! No, seriously, thanks to all our friends and relatives who have kindly sent us tongs. We now have one for the meat, one for the fish and the other to chase the beans around the pot.

But please, don't send any more tongs! Graeme is finding new uses for them, which I would rather not encourage!

It was a shocker today. Officially, bad weather!! It's warmed up and all that lovely powder snow is being washed away by a deluge of rain. Accompanying the rain is some fairly strong wind. The locals here are calling it a gale - vent forte!! Little do they know about wind!! Now a good Canterbury Plains Nor'wester or a Southerly Buster on Bass Strait - now that's a vent forte!!

I will confess to having a lazy day. We had been invited to Gavin & Sue's for dinner last night and as usual it was a late one. Also another amazingly delicious dinner. I know these guys cook for a living, but it was just lovely. Blini's with tzatziki & tarasamalata, thai chicken curry and tropical pavlova for dessert. Yum! They were also intrigued about the controversy in Australia and NZ over which country can lay claim to inventing the delicious dessert.

I explained that unfortunately, as a nation settled originally by convicts, Australia has a bad-habit of "stealing" the limelight and claiming inventions and famous people, in particular, as "Aussies" when in fact they are from NZ. The most typical examples being the famous race horse - "Pharlap", the band "Crowded House" and the actor "Russell Crowe". There, have of course, been some other unfortunate events throughout history, like the infamous Chappell underarm bowling incident in cricket, which has rightly added fuel to the Kiwi's argument that Australia is always out to "steal their thunder". Despite all this, I'm not ready to concede that NZ invented the pavlova. Some internet research since the dinner party seems to support my view that Australia did indeed invent the pavlova. See for yourself - The Pavlova Debate.

It was a long walk home during the storm last night which will, of course account for my general lethargy this morning. Fortunately it was not raining when we left Gav & Sue, the only hazard while walking home were the slick footpaths and the great piles of wet snow dropping like bombs from the trees all around us. For some unknown reason (?) I remember feeling very concerned about the hedges. Apparantly I was worried that all the hedges in Araches were going to collapse under their heavy load of snow! Sensible comments from Graeme like "The hedges have been there for a while, dear! And every year they get covered in snow. Looks to me like they still survive!" and a little while later, "Please come away from the hedge, Andy!" and a bit later still.... "Seriously now, will you leave the hedge alone"...... "ANDY, WOULD YOU PUT DOWN YOUR POLE AND MOVE AWAY FROM THE HEDGE, NOW!!" I think the film he secretly captured says it all.

Housework = Exhaustion

1/ Afternoon sunshine glistening through the ice

Our secret is revealed! Whenever we say we've decided to stay home and do our housework ...read "we are totally exhausted!" Certainly the housework did need to be done and there is a good chance that we will be going on another big ski tour tomorrow, but the sad truth is that we are whimps!! Plan A had been to clean the flat in the morning, do our french homework, have lunch and then head off to Flaine for a ski in the afternoon. Somehow it just didn't happen. Shocking isn't it?

We decided to go for a walk around our little village instead. The sun was shining but the air temperature is below zero and drops even further when the sun sets! All around us the trees around us are covered in hoar frost and the roads and paths are all diabolically icy!!

Not only that ...we have to be "Prudent" at the moment in our village. Montgolfiere's are lurking everywhere..

Like Wanaka, this area of the Haute Savoie has been the subject of a building boom over the last 10 years. There are tell-tale signs in abundance: too many real estage agencies, "Vende" (For Sale signs) everywhere and the odd crane or two marring the skyline.

Fortunately it appears that the building code is very strict. New buildings must look like a traditional mountain chalet. The use of wood in these buidings is extensive both inside and out even if the inner construction is of concrete or block. They also strive to make the buildings look old by scorching the timber cladding.

But like the rest of the world, Araches/ Les Carroz is being affected by the global economic slowdown and it appears that many developments have been abandoned. While this might also be due to the cold winter conditions, many of the sites look like the workers have just downed tools and stopped work. Certainly, all the ski chalet operators are reporting that their English visitor numbers are down on previous years. January has been dead and while February is tradtionally busy, the March and April bookings are not strong. Interesting times ahead?

3/ A new chalet and a new "old chalet" with it's scorched exterior.

And finally to end today's blog, while wandering through the streets of Les Carroz, we came upon an exciting discovery! Monoski's now come with twin tips....and you can even hire them!! Oohh ...the temptation!!

4/ Twin Tipped Mono's Awesome!

Today, Absolutely Nothing Happened!!

I think this photo captures the mood of the day!

Aujourd'hui, il'n y a rien faire!!

Apparantly we share this kind of diary entry with that obtuse French King, Louis XVI who on 14 July 1789 used the word "rien" in his diary to describe his day. Pity he didn't notice that Parisian mobs had just invaded the Invalides and stormed the Bastille to commence the French Revolution.

This bit of trivia, which I found after reading my Lonely Planet guidebook got me to thinking. I wondered what else has happened on this day in history? A quick internet search pulled up some interesting results. Oh sure, the roman empire commenced on this day in 27 B.C and in 1957 the Wham-O company in the US, invented the frisbee, but actually 23 January throughout history appears to be an exceedingly dull kind of day!!

So with the rain falling steadily on the roof, we felt justified in keeping with history and having a dull kind of day too!! My body is thankful for the rest and it also gives us an opportunity to catch up on the french homework, house-cleaning and accounts. Oh what fun!!

While we managed to fix the camera we've really not been inspired to take any photos! So I'll confess to borrowing from the internet a little.

French Observation for the Day

The Great French Tong Conspiracy - Tongs!! An essential kitchen utensil wouldn't you think? Well for over 2 months I have been doing without tongs when cooking. I have been chasing steaks around a slippery fry pan with a fork and trying to flick string beans out of the pot with a spoon! Surely the food obsessed French would use tongs??? Well an in-depth search of the utensil section in Carrefours revealed only 2 types of tongs. Normally at Carrefours there is 5 of everything, and 500 different brands if you are talking about cheese!! One pair of tongs was long handled for the BBQ and the other had fancy silicon tips. Both were breathtakingly expensive. Consequently, I will be continuing my dexterous use of cutlery for the remainder of our stay.

So what gives? I will need to ask Liz or Marie for an explanation about the great French Tong Conspiracy!

And that's all for today. Fingers crossed that the rain will turn to snow overnight and we'll have some good skiing tomorrow.

SOMEONE left the camera behind!!

1/ The "Out-Takes" - My Rudolf: you've got a lovely red nose!

2/ One more wafer thin pastry Mr Creosote?

There are no live photos for today's blog because SOMEONE forgot to bring the camera!!

You know, forty-eight square metres is a very small space in which to spend nearly 10 days cooped up with SOMEONE!! But I guess everyone has SOMEONE living with them. They are the person who leaves the cap off the toothpaste, endlessly surfs the TV channels and forgets to put out the rubbish. Graeme reckons that SOMEONE never replaces the last toilet roll, doesn't listen properly and consequently asks really dumb questions.

But today we left SOMEONE behind (they were looking after the camera, of course!) and ventured out for a very tame ski on our little hill. With such cold temperatures, the snow is still in good condition after a top up overnight on Tuesday. It was also a relief to escape the temperature inversion and head into the sun!! I can't honestly say that we distinguished ourselves. We have both lost much of our fitness and it may take us a some time to bounce back. But it's a start and we're glad of it!!

Our only other activity today, was to torture our poor instructor Liz with our atrocious and laborious French. However, while typing up this diary for the day, I was able to catch a rare sight on film and provide at least one photo from today. The sighting is very special... one more scarce even than a Mono-Skier in NZ. Graeme in the kitchen.....preparing food.

Let me explain. Graeme does not "do food". He will help hunt and gather food (although he prefers to spend time in the wine aisle). He will eat most things and has an adventurous palate. He will also do the dishes and stack the diswasher. But he does not get involved in the preparatory work!! So I was amazed when he showed a willingness to help me "vitamise" the pumpkin soup I had made using the pressure cooker I had just found in the back of the cupboard. I suspect his keeness came from the ability to use some "equipment" for the job. Boy's do tend to love equipment don't they? Well the power of the "blender" took Graeme by surprise. According to Graeme, the blender causes a "turbo gravitational pull" towards the bottom of the pan! "Powerful little sucker ain't it?" he yelled over the loud buzzing. The mind boggles... but please note the "Ninja action stance" of Graeme while he blends the soup! Priceless!

3/ Careful of that "Turbo Gravitational Pull" Graeme!!