Je Suis un Skieur

A chalet bitch friend once said to me "The quickest way to lose all faith in humanity is to serve it food and clear up after it..." Never a truer word was spoken as far as I'm concerned. It's astonishing some of the rancid living habits one is exposed to on a daily basis in this job. For example, why do some female guests feel it's perfectly acceptable to leave their dirty, stained period pants in the middle of the floor for you to pick up? Or leave a rank Gillette shaving razor on the sink with crops of (astonishingly long) pubic hairs sprouting out in all directions for you to see when you're cleaning up?

Some other choice grievances I have picked up in the last few weeks:

Towel thieves

If you're ever staying in a chalet never, I repeat NEVER take towels out of the cupboard without asking the chalet host. You must understand that you are interfering with a finely tuned system, here. There is a finite number of towels. There is a finite number of bathrobes. If you fuck with the system the host will run out of towels for the next changeover before the laundry comes back. This will mean she'll have to wash them herself, in house. And this will make her angry which in turn will make her clean the toilet with your toothbrush.

Bleeders

People that pick themselves in the night - spots, noses, scabs etc - and decorate the freshly laundered, crisp white sheets with specks of claret and puss. Fucking disgusting, can't you just leave yourself alone?

Fingerprinters

Retards who think it's necessary to open French windows by flattening their hand against the glass and pushing. Use the fucking handle, numb nuts. Furthermore, what is it with children and French windows? It's like, do they really need to dip themselves in butter and marmalade and then press themselves up against every available glass surface? Or lick the windows just after they've eaten maple syrup?

Child abusers

People who think it's fine to let their children play around your feet in the kitchen during service under the mistaken presumption that you think they're cute. I don't think they're cute. I'm seconds from cutting off each of their digits with a bread knife and serving them to you as a canapé.

Interferers

Those who take it upon themselves to rearrange things. Cleaning products in the cleaning box, items in the kitchen drawers, the contents of my dry goods cupboard. Be my guest! In fact perhaps I'll rearrange the set up in your bedroom while we're at it. I could swap the toilet with the wardrobe and take a shit in your knicker drawer.

As you can probably tell, after three months of this shit, fatigue has started to set in, not lessened by the crew of drunken oafs whose recent rambunctious behaviour has rendered the hot tub unusable for the rest of the season. Who knows what the disgusting foamy stuff that started appearing on the surface of the water was, but suffice to say, it got into the filter and now the thing won't heat up. Hot tubs, as the guy who installed it told me in no uncertain terms, are absolutely disgusting things. Basically a giant Petri dish of gunky old bathwater riddled with every other person who's ever been in it's bodily fluids. Small children have been in it too, so think on.  Luckily it's currently warm as toast outdoors (that disappointing noise of trickling water you hear when you go outside in the morning) but as soon as the temperature drops we're going to have a giant ice cube on our hands.

Anyhoo, it's not all bad. The skiing has been truly incredible. Unfortunately though, it's now got to that time of the season where seasonnaires, cocky from three months of every-day skiing, start getting a bit complacent and hurting themselves. Today, from the safety of the bubble lift, soaring a hundred feet above the piste below, I saw a guy without a helmet wipe the entire length of a run. From top to bottom, at bone-cracking speed on sheet ice, unable to stop. About half way down, his limp body hit an obstacle and began to tomahawk. After completing a course of two or three complete rotations he had pretty march yard saled his entire outfit, skis, goggles, gloves, poles. His body bounced like a child’s toy thrown down stairs. He eventually came to a stop in a forlorn, unmoving heap in the crevice below one of the steel chair-lift supports at the foot of the piste. Whatever he was, he certainly wasn’t conscious.

           

  Scenes like this remind me why skiing isn’t everyone’s cup of tea.

That said, I do firmly believe that people who won’t even try it are weedy pigeons.

I appreciate that to the uninitiated it looks like the occupation of a bunch of rich snobs with too much time and money on their hands. Ridiculous to nail oneself to a sharp plank covered in wax and then cry when one falls to one’s death off the side of an icy precipice. Having to spend weeks being cold, wet, terrified and having a bruised arse in order to ‘get the hang of it’. Hmmmm. No thanks. I hear you say. I’d rather coil one out on my own chest and then fester in soiled undergarments for a week.

Well, fair enough. But there’s a reason people love it so much. Singing, laughing, shouting your way down any accommodating hill you can find with a bunch of elated ski bum friends. Speed junkies that turn every run into a race, flat lining everything. Caution to the wind. I am a mountain worshipper. Je suis un skieur! That feeling of the sweeping turn, covering huge, epic expanses in only a few seconds. Freedom to explore places unreachable by others. Soaring on clouds. You can’t beat it. It’s the best feeling invented by humans since we discovered our genitals. In the same way that they leap out of aeroplanes and attend Glastonbury when it’s under eight feet of mud, people persist. Because it’s the best fun you can have that doesn’t involve some form of coitus.

The Common Freakery

Just lately, something has been preoccupying me. The something is a question.

 “What next?”

This friend of mine has got me into a panic because, as she quite rightly pointed out the other day over a vin chaud in the creperie, there are only about 8 weeks of the season left.

It is an unsettling idea when you feel you've only just settled in.

A text from my Dad a few days later fanned the flames:

“Poppetto. Hw’s life? Missing u. Hv fwdd ur post to chalet as rqsted. DD xx”

Good. This means he hasn’t been opening it all himself and reading it like he usually does. Also, in this age of unlimited text characters you have to love my Dad’s incredibly unnecessary and inventive attempts at txt spk.

I reply:

“Thanks Dad. Xx”

Then a few moments later, another text.

“Just wondered. Are you going to pay Southern Water? Only they’ve sent three or four demands now and they’re starting to get nasty...”

Oh fuck. Bills. Reality.  It has been all too easy to sink into the protective cocoon of routine around here, and forget, almost completely, that this life has a sell-by date, and that I have a past. The idea that only a couple of months ago I was living in a house with utility bills to pay seems totally alien, as if it was a life lived by some completely different person in a different dimension. I vaguely recall having had some notion I’d pay it off after the first chalet paycheque came in, but that idea went out of the window long before I spunked the entire amount on a new pair of ski boots.

I reply:

“How much?”

“£426.82”

Bollocks.  “Thanks – will deal with it. Don’t worry.”

I am now swimming in an emotional whirlpool of indecision.The age-old question. What to do next? The problem is I've been offered this amazing job back home and it's a beguiling thought at times. The posh office job, me tottering into work wearing a nice little pencil skirt and carrying a brand new laptop. I'm not immune to mid-season fatigue and homesickness. The thing is, I love my friends, really I do, and I miss my family like crazy but, you know, going home always seems like a great idea until I get there. And then after about 2 months I find that nothing has changed. Nothing.It’s just the same people doing the same shit coke at the same parties, having the same conversations because their lives are no different. Pleasure-seeking in darkened rooms or thinking up ways to avert the boredom, like getting hitched or popping out a sprog or buying a new sofa.

I have this friend. Lets call her Peaches. Elegant, refined, adored and revered by everyone around her. A brilliant career-woman, home-owner, mother…. Exquisitely beautiful.... And a kleptomaniac. Constantly five finger discounting objects of various value from large retail outlets, supermarkets and stores. Knows by heart her optimum thieving hours - what time the security guard switchover happens in John Lewis and they switch the cameras off for 15 minutes. A master at work.
“I have this impulse” she said to me over dinner once with a gleam in her eye, “When I stay at a friend’s house, to steal things. Small things that wouldn’t be immediately missed. Earrings, an ornament… Am I crazy?”

Then there’s DeeDee. Who confuses excitement with anxiety and therefore spends her entire life locked in a glass cage of emotion. Whose constant hunger for attention turns every day annoyances into a Shakespearian drama. Facebook is a stage for her very own real life soap opera, where every fart is photographed, documented and put on show with accompanying running commentary. She generates her own infamy online by tagging every tiny event in her life and posting a video about it.

I know a couple who spend every weekend blowing cocaine up other couple’s arses, consorting with sexual deviants of an evening while their baby son slumbers upstairs. They get no sleep but are up at out at 8am to take him out to the park or brunch or a parents' meeting as if they are as square as dice.

I know another woman, happily married with children – who has a secret double life as an internet pornographer. While her husband drives the length of the South selling software and bringing in the bacon, she cavorts on a four poster with two Chihuahuas acting out the fantasies of the hairy, the housebound and the kinky. She doesn’t need to do it. It’s all for shits and giggles.

Then there’s Brian, who claims the only thing getting me through the day is the knowledge that every shit he takes while working at his office is a paid shit.

Then there's me. I do seasons. I think part of me likes the to have the fear every six months...


But really, perhaps I should stop worrying. SbH doesn't seem in the least bit worried, after all. In fact all this reminds me of a moment in my first season. I’m walking down the road with SbH and two large bin bags feeling grubby and tired and suddenly I feel impelled to ask him:
“What are you going to do in the summer?”
He doesn’t hesitate for a moment. He knows. “Going down to Palma to look for a job on a yacht.”
“You won’t go back home then?”
“Maybe for a week or two. See the olds. But not for any length of time.”
For some reason this idea makes my heart sink. The thought of him being suddenly so far away from me and this cosy little intimacy that we have each evening makes me feel lost in the middle of a huge raging battle. A battle to keep good people in your life. I think of the vast ocean and him afloat on it somewhere miles away and feel tiny and insignificant and alone.
 “What will you do?” he asks.
I don’t know.
I burst into tears and squat down on my haunches in the middle of the road.
“Hey,” he crouches beside me and holds each of my shoulders. “Chin up,” He stands me back up and puts a comforting arm around me. “You worry too much.”
“I can’t help it. I don’t know where I’m going.”
“Worry less. Do more…” he says, with conviction and starts to guide me down the road again. I wonder at this certainty and at how untarnished by life he is. It strikes momentarily that he is naïve. Or then is it quite the opposite?

We continue down the road. As we walk towards the poubelle with our bin bags I look up and see between the crevice in two huge shoulders of the mountains butting together in the distance a fragment of moon shining almost too brightly to look at directly. We stop and watch as the earth visibly revolves under us and the moon creeps outwards, from just a chink of light, until eventually it hangs between the jagged jaws of the rocks, a full, dazzling pendant haloed in gold and bruising the clouds above it in maroon and silver.

Alarming ski fashion

Can someone please explain the thinking behind this to me?





The lavender. The green triangle patterns. The flying goggles. The pointy elf hat. The ancient boots. The bum bag. It's all there. It's like.....text book.

It was all I could do to stop myself from leaping onto this man, wrestling him to the floor and screaming "GIVE ME YOUR OUTFIT! IT MUST BE MINE!"

Do you think this bloke realises that in seasonnaire terms, he is a fucking style icon? A beacon of outstanding naff ski dressing in a world of stease and advanced technology that takes itself waaaaay to seriously?

Whoever you are young man, I salute you.

Giant Punter Slalom

I think it's safe to say I am skiing like a total retard at the moment.

It doesn't help that I am so terrified of shagging my knee off again that I have my din settings set to 5. This means they come off when I crash. Which is great. It also means they come off if I'm ever approaching a dip followed by a sudden rise in the piste at any kind of speed.  The problem is I don't trust my shaky technique enough to set them any higher, which basically means I'm just eating snow the entire time.

SbH has become annoyingly good on skis. He can do that thing where you ski on one leg and is always off 'hucking' things with various hairy reprobates one of which told us on the chairlift today with some pride that the evening before he had fallen asleep with his face still in the girl's growler. Excellent story. Glad to see modus operandi around here is just as it should be. Sadly, though, that was the extent of amusing chairlift chat for me today because shortly thereafter they whizzed off down the back of something steep and inaccessible which I had no hope of surviving intact and since I'm too mortally embarrassed to actually ski with anyone else I know I spent the rest of the afternoon sulking on my own. Well, that was until the aforementioned din-setting issue reared its ugly head again and I found my nose connecting with the piste most unexpectedly after executing a perfectly reasonable left hand turn.

To the obliging punter who retrieved my ski for me,  I'd like to say 'Thanks, but no thanks'. I knew he was going to fuck it up the moment he ground to an inexpert bandy-legged, splayed-armed halt a few feet from it and started prodding it ineffectually with his pole like a child poking a dead rat. He eventually managed to actually pick it up (you know, with his hands) and, you could call it - I wouldn't - skied towards me with it. Sadly though he found himself unable to stop. When he realised he was going to miss where I was by a good 20 metres he simply shied it at me with such incredible force that it bounced off my helmet then slid off again down the piste, ending up further away from me than it had been in the first place.

"Er....sorry," he said, as his compatriot came shooting past me and showered me with snow.
"Don't worry. Thanks" I said, waving a hand and wishing they would both just fuck off and stop making the situation worse / more humiliating.

This week there seems to be an inordinate number of fucktarded punters of this ilk veering about like lunatics with the sole intent of taking me out. Inevitably when skiing down a narrow pathway I always find I'm quite a bit faster than the average skier leaving me no choice but to stick to the very edge of the way or whizz through the gaps whenever possible. Why is it that just at the moment you do this, the aforementioned punter feels the need to put in another completely pointless traverse so that you are left no choice but to cut them up brutally and / or ski over their tips? I mean, how many fucking turns do you need to fit into this 3 metre-wide Norfolk-flat pathway? Are you going for a record?

...Oh and woe betide you if you're one of these types and you get caught in the path / slipstream of an express train of seasonnaires trying to do a 10 minute red run in 2 minutes 43 in order to get back to the chalet in time for tea. You'll be blown off the hill.

Some more pet hates....

Week 3:

Snow: More of it please. Less rain, would be a happy medium.
Toilets cleaned: 96
Miles of elephant bog roll used: 4 million

Well that's Christmas out the way. If you work in a chalet you will know well that Christmas is not a festive season of joy that one looks forward to with excitement and anticipation but a dreaded, tortuous fiasco that finds one sweltering in the kitchen amid towers of seething pots and pans while the guests overdose on champagne and spend Christmas night chundering all over the chalet while you cower in the kitchen in dread. Now that's over we just have the nightmare of New Years' Eve to contend with. I can almost feel the hangover already.

Anyway to mark this festive season I thought I'd put together a few more of my pet hates for your enjoyment. Now I'm a chalet bitch once again, ahhh it's all coming back to me. From the cupboard of despair (yes, our chalet has one) to hair clogging up the plug hole...Today, I would like to add the following to the list:

Porridge oats
Scoffed as a snack and left to crust on the rim of the bowl in the sink. Is there any adhesive more powerful known to mankind? Seriously? You could build car parks out of it. Can't you fuckers put your bowls in the dishwasher? How hard is it?

Reptiles
Those guests with apparently with no warm blood in their veins whatsoever. They simply have to put the heating on full 24/7 and then ask you to light the fire. Then they go and open the bloody window to let some air in. Well that's energy efficient! I spend the morning choking back the sick as I hoover in a sauna, dehydrated from last night's exertions nailing pints of 1 Euro wine with the Princess of Norway and the Foxy Chef. The heat is making me dizzy. I am going to chunder. It's not an if, it's a when.

Empty Vessels
Which, as the old adage goes, make the most noise. I remember the house keeper of one family we had staying - a sweet woman but as dense as an ingot of solid iron hewn from the cold heart of a distant comet. She spent the entire week hanging round the kitchen babbling at me in a hoarse whisper so her boss couldn't hear and asking inane questions like, "Are you going to put the dishwasher on?", "Is this a pomegranate?" (it was an apple) "How much butter have we got?", "Ooh isn't it snowy outside?" and "Oooh isn't it warm inside?" The thing is she was terribly sweet and helpful - refused to let me clean her room and helped with all the clearing up and I knew she was just trying to be friendly. She was a little like a small, cute puppy unaware that its yapping makes you want to attach kitchen utensils to its head with a nail gun.

...and finally, in true Christmas spirit:

Grandparents
Who sit around the house all day reading and asking for tea and don't go skiing so you can't play music while you're cleaning or drop a smelly beer fart if you need to. Damn them!

A small prolapse

A cloud is sitting at the foot of the mountains like a ghostly river flowing through the valley. I watch it evaporate in the sun gradually as I go about my chores. It's the exact shape of Will-o'-the-wisp, which makes me remember the cartoon so brilliantly narrated by Kenneth Williams with the witch called Edna that was also a TV and that weird caterpillar thing with the big red top knot.





Now that come to think of it, that was a bit fucking odd really, that cartoon, wasn't it? I used to love it though. I think we had a tape of it in the car that Mum used to play me on the way to school. Funny the things that you accept as completely normal when you're a kid. Like not cleaning your skid marks off the u-bend. Not naming any names.

I stop to rub some hand cream into the ends of my fingers. I already have chalet hands. Cuts, burns and general chapped dryness. Lemon juice is a real bitch. What's more, it appears this is not my only ailment. No. I'll cut right to the chase. I, Belle de Neige, have sprung what can only be described as an arse grape.

I was first made aware of it when I tried to wipe my backside a few evenings ago after a particularly satisfying sitting. The action was met with a shooting pain in one quarter of the sphincterial area followed by a yelp of pain by yours truly and shortly thereafter a frenzied, horrified self examination. I was mystified. According to the magnifying mirror everything down there looked perfectly normal even though it felt as if some one had attacked me with a lube-free rubber butt plug. At the very least I was expecting it to be an anal fissure.
I couldn't understand it.

"What the fuck?" I asked  The Foxy Chef, mystified, in the pub later on.
"Sounds like a hemorrhoid to me," she said sagely.
"Whaaaat?"
"Yep!"
"Fuck!! Like what old ladies get?"
"Yeah... have you been straining lately?"
"No! ....Well, not that I particularly recall."
"You must've sprung it when you stacked it the other day. Muscular spasm. Happened to me once..."
"What did you do?"
"I just pushed it back up inside"

Right.

Now that she came to mention it I had been through one or two butt-clenching experiences in the last 48 hours to which I could attribute this ailment. There was the unsolicited and completely un-prepared for 2 metre drop half way down a little gully the day before, where my ski tips hit the approaching lip of snow like a fork lift truck driving headlong into a polystyrene wall and dug in resulting in a double-eject face plant and then lots of scrabbling around trying to relocate said skis in 2 feet of powder. And then there was the slightly alarming torchless trudge home from the pub in the dark at midnight along the windy deserted road to our chalet. I was alone. The mountains to the north were backlit hauntingly by a sunken moon, tinged with red as if from a furnace within, like something out of Mordor. There was utter and complete silence of the sort you can find nowhere else but the mountains. The only sound is the tinnitus you didn't realise you had. Usually I would have appreciated the magnificence of it but four or five gins had given me the fear. All I could hear in the silence was my own heart thudding inside my chest, my blood entering my head like a sponge being squeezed from the uphill effort and I spent the entire 15 minute walk peering suspiciously over my shoulder in the hope of definitely not seeing a sinister dark figure tailing me with murder in mind. Then, ten yards from the safety of the front door, I paused to appreciate the view without fear, slipped on a patch of ice and fell smack, fully onto my back, winding myself.

...I reckon that's when it happened. The hemorrhoid, I mean...

"I wouldn't worry you can just push them back in with your finger after you've had a shit..." The Foxy Chef was saying, leaning on the bar. "It's quite soothing actually. Just push it back up inside and forget about it."
This I suppose, is not all that surprising, coming from the girl who nicknamed the cyst on her vagina 'Mini-me' last season. Hey. Sometimes it's just best to wear these things as a badge of honour, I guess.

Open Season

Ok, sorry, sorry, sorry. I've just been really fucking up to my tits in it, ok? Christ. I had to find a co-bitch, meet a massive freelance copywriting deadline whilst simultaneously trying to rent my house and also sell my house (long story), move out of it, deal with all the associated bullshit plus a small family crisis, then drive to another country with six month's worth of belongings - selecting capsule wardrobe for six months in mountains = biggest ball ache ever. Then once I got here I had to contend with a whole catalogue of nightmares which I won't go into in detail but suffice to say I've been back in the mountains for about two weeks now, and I have already:

1. Been involved in a small car crash

2. Almost sawn my finger off

2. Dropped a dress size

3. Double ejected and drowned face first in thigh deep powder after seriously misjudging the depth of snow on an un-bashed piste (failure to check din settings since lasts season's tentative foray back onto skis = humiliating yard sale just 10 yards into first run of first day of season. Note to self, must buy some beeps.)

4. Lost a set of keys

5, Dealt with a rodent infestation

6. Battled against a tide of puree poo liquid waste rising up through the floor of my bedroom (perennial plumbing issues relating to shoddy French Alpine workmanship)

5. Eaten my body weight in cheese

So, it's been busy.

The other reason I haven't been writing is that I've been in a quandary. You see, I am now faced with the complications of working in a private chalet - ergo one can't mention any specifics, which, for a writer makes life rather difficult. In fact one can't even mention vagueries, or anything remotely resembling a vaguery, for fear of incurring the wrath of one's boss / getting fired. The last word in private chalet-bitchdom is discretion and ski resorts are small. Fucking small. Everyone knows everyone. Their spies are everywhere and I've already been dropped in it enough times to know that when faced with any accusation of being Belle-de-Neige flat out denial is the only option. Especially since, due to more than one or two inebriated, rambling, bollocks conversations in more than one or two of the local late-night establishments my profile around these parts isn't exactly as low as it ought to be. On more than one occasion both SbH and I have been asked if we know who 'she' is by some unsuspecting acquaintance.

"D'you know who this Belle de Neige girl is then?" a friend's mother asked me the other week.

"Belle who? Sorry, never heard of her."

It's got so bad I've had to enlist the services of a mate of mine to act as a decoy and sent her off into the resort boasting loudly that she's Belle to anyone that will listen. She's rather attractive, slightly unhinged and extremely luminous - just the sort of character you'd expect to go around saying outrageous things about herself and everyone else and cleaning toilets with the toothbrushes of people who annoy her. Of course it helps that I'm actually a bit of a wall flower. Not the first girl you might notice in the room, shall we say. Blend easily into the background. Enjoy the odd sojourn on my tod. No one would ever suspect...

Anyway, here we are, back in the mountains and bugger me is there a lot of snow. Getting anything done is an absolute bitch. After almost two weeks now of almost wall to wall neiging we're practically drowning in the stuff. The trees outside the chalet are bowed and sagging with great armfuls of powdery loveliness. Today I ventured tentatively out with the Man of Leisure and his new lady friend The Princess of Norway (no, really...), looking very elegant on telemarks. We got lost in a toneless world of foam coming seemingly from the ground and the heavens simultaneously  You couldn't see for miles. I relished the blind simplicity of it after all the complications of home. A sense of uncertainty over the lay of the land only two feet in front of you has a tremendous focusing effect the mind - you can only meditate on floating across endless fields of formless white dunes up high and picking a safe line between the trees. The expanding foam of whiteness seemed to enter my brain and expand, pushing out the dark thoughts and concerns. For a moment I let the others go on ahead and stood among the trees. My hair had turned to chiming icicles on my shoulders. I put my face up so tiny, perfect flakes settled on my cheeks.

How to get a job as a chalet bitch. Dear Katie...

Dear Belle:

Love reading your blog, you remind me of a female Ricky Gervais. (I love him, I mean it as a compliment!) I'm currently sending out c.v's to tour operators to be a chalet host but have not had any luck so far. Is there anything in a c.v that makes a TO immediately want to hire someone? And things that make them immediately throw a c.v in the trash?

I'm 21, have worked as a waitress and I speak Spanish pretty well… but of course I have never worked a season... would they consider that as being not good enough or am I just applying too late in the game?

Any tips for what they look for would be really appreciated!

Katie

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Dear Katie

A female Ricky Gervais, eh? 

As you may or may not know I am exceedingly vain, and therefore anyone who showers me with compliments goes straight to the top of my VIP list. Give yourself a pat on the back. You are clearly awesome and flattery will get you everywhere, darling. I can tell you are a woman of sound judgement, impeccable taste and cultural sophistication. You’re a little older than the average Irksome Blonde 19 Year Old and you’ve had a bit of relevant experience with the waitress thing, so it shouldn’t be hard for you to land yourself a perfunctory season job, don’t you worry. That said it’s a little late in the game at this point so you might want to consider getting yourself on a reserve list with as many TOs as you can find so you’re ready to come to the rescue when (that’s WHEN not IF) the first spate of limp-wristed public school gappies drop out during Christmas week.

Sorry to say darling, but speaking Spanish will be about as useful as a cock flavoured lollipop unless you are applying to work in the Spanish Pyrenees, so I’d start there. That said, even thought they put it all over the job descriptions, 90% of Brit seasonal workers fail to make even a cursory attempt at speaking the local language (much to the chagrin of the natives) so I wouldn’t worry too much about that. The key thing for you, I think, is not to be picky. You can either be choosy about where you work, or what you do at this late stage in the game, not both.

On the subject of Tour Operators, I do have one or two pearls of wisdom to cast before you.

As the man himself once said, in the guise of David Brent:

“Trust, encouragement, reward, loyalty… satisfaction. Trust people and they’ll be true to you. Treat them greatly, and they will show themselves to be great.”

As a member of staff at one of the many great Alpine Tour Operators of the day, you can expect to experience absolutely diddly squat in the way of encouragement, reward, loyalty or satisfaction, let alone greatness. They will not trust you either. They will be suspicious of you, patronise you, suck you dry and discard you like an old, mouldy, bleach-damaged marigold at the end of the season (or half way through if you break your leg) without as much as a thank you. That said, you are not looking for congratulations, long-term job satisfaction or a career in toilet cleaning (and if you are, then I recommend you ditch the season idea entirely). Hopefully you are looking to ski? So as long as you remember at all times that this is a marriage of convenience you will be fine.

Is there anything in a c.v that makes a TO immediately want to hire someone? And things that make them immediately throw a c.v in the trash?

When I delve back into the foggy memories of the last few seasons I’m somewhat at a loss to answer this question. You would think that most TO’s would be on the look out for confident, capable, well-groomed, energetic, youthful individuals who have more than 72 hours’ cooking experience, and some vague competency in social situations. However going by the array of dribbling cretins I’ve worked among I cannot in all honesty say that these qualities are endemic among alp-workers. Not the majority of them, anyway. Which leads me to think that Tour Operators are pretty much open to anything as long as it’s able-bodied and can operate a hoover. Previous experience is certainly not an essential. Considering in general TO’s in search of reliable employees are choosing from a riff raff of drop outs, gap year coasters and mid-life crisis sufferers in general I don’t think there is anything specific that would immediately make then throw a CV in the bin. Whether you’re fat, thin, ugly, deformed, lame, gape-mouthed, fusty or just plain ignorant, only one thing is certain; they don’t want quitters. Ideally they want people who will quietly get on with it, handle their own shit, not get themselves paralytic every night and miss work / call in sick. In return they will (hopefully) give you a ski pass and leave you the fuck alone to get on with your job without breaking your balls (but don’t expect any praise.)

Therefore, if you do get an interview do not (as one of the people I spoke to over the phone last week did) spend the entire time moaning about your previous employer, whining dramatically that you never had enough free time and then round it off by admitting proudly that you quit your last job when the going got too tough for you. I couldn’t believe my ears!

What I recommend you exhibit:

1. The ability to boil an egg.

2. An anecdote about a situation in which you’ve successfully had to defuse a disgruntled customer of some sort.

3. A bit of backbone, flexibility and willingness to co-operate / help out in a crisis.

4. Cheerfulness / a rosy disposition

Katie, my advice to you at this stage in the year is that it’s a game of numbers. Scrape the barrel of your limited lifetime’s experience for anything that could be remotely relevant to the roles you’re applying for, write a (coherent, spelling mistake-free, non-vile and gushing) personal profile and cover letter, explaining what a practical, capable, energetic, friendly and enthusiastic person you are, willing to muck in, learn fast and get on with it. Crucially, explain why you want to do a season. Something along the lines of wanting to expand your horizons, challenge yourself and improve your winter-sports skills in the process should do the trick. Don’t forget to mention that you like skiing or have always wanted to learn and then apply for every job you can find. 

Of course you don’t have to work for a Tour Operator. You don’t have to be a chalet bitch or a ski rep. Failing all of the above, if you haven’t found any useful employ by mid-November get yourself out to Sierra Nevada and find yourself a nice gig in a restaurant somewhere. They pay better anyway.

…Something will come up. And when it does, grab it with both hands. It’ll be the best fun you’ve ever had.

Good luck m’dear.

Belle.

Interview Fail

 In the last two weeks I have been sent CVs of every colour and creed for the delightful privilege of potentially being my chalet co-bitch. Most of these, I have to say, have been a parade of ineptitude and twattery.

My core criteria for finding a decent partner in crime are not that complicated, you know…

-         Must not be a total retard (ideally should have more than 3/4s of an inch of brain)

-         Must be vaguely clean, presentable and professional – no acne, eyeball piercings or facial tattoos.

-         Must be able to cook. And by that I mean cook. Not boil stuff in a bag and then mix with baked beans.

-         Must not be a faffer /wet blanket / confrontational / defensive / arse clown / lazy bones / irksome blonde 19 year old/ need fag break every six seconds.

-         Must love mountains / skiing / snowboarding.

It’s a pretty simple formula. So it fascinates me the kind of shit expectant people put on their CVs. I mean, seriously, how can you get it that wrong? The internet is literally lousy with articles on ‘CV Tips’ and examples of how to do it correctly. Your CV is a 2D projection of your living, breathing self. It’s your personal emissary. The very first most basic, fundamental thing that you need to get right so that your potential employer doesn’t immediately brand you a dick and shout ‘Next!’. So surely, surely the very first thing you’d do is make sure the opening ‘personal profile’ gambit makes solid sense?

But no…

Take these two snippets, for instance:

“I am hope to more seasons, to enabled me to enjoy my love of mountain.”

Ah, I thought. Fair enough. She must be Spanish or something. Fair play for having a crack at the language. But no. There emblazoned proudly beneath the title ‘Curriculum Vitae’ was the proclamation that this person is in fact ‘British’.

Then there was this one:

“I thrive in making good to exceptional and have good communications skill.”

Oh. You do, do you?

The best one was the bloke who sent me a CV that was totally acceptable in every other way, fairly coherently written, no spelling mistakes, logically structured…but at the top of it he had pasted in a picture of himself. Not a nice, professional head and shoulders shot projecting a debonair, capable and impressive future employee, but an off-centre, grainy snap of what I can only describe as a portly chav with moobs, standing in a pub wearing a wife-beater t-shirt, looking not a little bit shifty and with…I shit you not…one hand on his crotch. It was as if someone had crept up on him with the camera and caught him having a wank.  

Oh yes, and also, if the job description stipulates ‘must be an excellent cook’ don’t admit to me straight off that your skills “aren’t too good in that area” and then go on the defensive with the words, “But I think it’d be fine as long as the other person’s an experienced chef.”

Right. Ok. So you’ll be fine as long as the other person does all the work. I see. Stop wasting my fucking time.

By the sounds of it Skater Boy hasn’t been having too much luck either.

“This came in today,” he told me on Skype last week. “18yr old. Under interests: ‘Analysing music to fully understand what the metaphors in the lyrics mean’…”

“You should hire him just for the comedy value, but then torture him by banning any music except Scouting for Girls.”

“I’m going to tell him I like One Direction.”

“Or N. Dubbs.”
“Can I call you?” he said. “I’m doing a Skype interview in a few minutes and I want to see what my background looks like on camera.”

This should be funny, I thought. “Ring away.”

He rang.

“Hmm. Background looks fine,” I said, looking at the vaulted oak ceiling of his parental home behind him. “It’s your barnet I’d be more worried about.”

“Funny,” he said shifting around and fiddling with something out of shot. “Oh the joys of Skype interviews,” he stood up to show me what he had on. “Top half smart, bottom half pyjamas.”

“I wouldn’t go quite so far as to call the top half smart, love” I said, noting the loose-knit sweater with holes in it and the freshly rolled cigarette he’d just shelved behind his ear with grubby-nailed fingers.

“Right, must go…” he said in business like fashion. “Interview to do.”

Working from home can be a lonely and isolating, if peaceful experience. Personally I don’t relish being around people 24/7, particularly office bods, who you invariably can’t stand and resent having to spend the best hours of your life with anyway, so it suits me fine. Still, I enjoy the odd interruption from the world outside. Luckily for me also I have a very sweet tooth, which starts to kick in around three o’clock in the afternoon giving me an excellent excuse to leave the house and go for a walk in search of something chocolate covered and satisfying. On this day at precisely that time the sun accommodatingly peeked its head out from behind an ominous grey smudge so I upped and went to the newsagents. There were a couple of preened, primped girls having a very loud argument about an overdraft or something financial or other on the corner of the street. It must be exhausting to be one of these women. Everything about them from their shouty voices to their coiffed piled-high hair, clown-pink cheeks, heavy handbags and agonisingly high heels is shrill and thunderous and pissed off. They seem to be in a constant state of high dudgeon about something or some boy or some injustice foisted on them by the world. Sometimes I think the best therapy for such people would be to rip their faux Gucci shades from their bonce, plonk them on top of a mountain and point out how big the rest of the world/galaxy/universe is compared to them. 

When I got back to the house Skater Boy rang again.

 “Got a sec?”

“Yep. How was it?”

“Nice girl. Fit.”

“Credentials?”
“Irrelevant. Won’t be taking the job.”

“Ah. No experience?”

“Non-skier. Don’t want to be stuck giving her free lessons all season.”

“Perish the thought.”

“Then there was the other thing,” he looked crestfallen.

“Oh?”

“I don’t think she’d take the job even if I offered it.”

“Why on earth not?”

He reached out of shot and brandished the mug he’d been merrily slurping tea from throughout the interview…

It was several minutes before I managed to regain my composure.

“Oh darling. That’s absolute pure, solid, comedy gold,”

 “I wondered why she had such an odd expression on her face.” He set the offending piece of crockery down on the table with a thunk.

“Oh well. At least it detracted attention away from your barnet.”

Your greatest fear: There is no PMT. This is just your personality

Rather forlorn today. I’m fighting a monthly urge to clean and tidy everything within three hundred feet of myself, coupled with a deep seated impulse to growl at innocent passers by like an angry mongrel bitch while trying to gnaw my own foot off because it’s annoying me. I knew immediately when I woke it was going to be one of those Mondays. I could hear the water spinning off the tyres outside, dripping off the window frame and bubbling in the drain. I turned over and put my forehead against the warm, soft skin on the back of SbH’s neck, enjoying the sub-duvet denial of daylight. He murmured something sleepy and reached for my hand. “Ah,” I thought, “How sweet,” ...until I realised he was just trying to manoeuvre my digits into position around his customary early-morning erection.

              So this afternoon, I ventured outdoors to collect a parcel for SbH from the post office (because fucking Royal Mail, of course, had to pick the one hour in the entire week that I was out last Friday to try to deliver the bloody thing). Even though the parcel allegedly contained a ‘surprise’ for me, a fifteen minute walk through the rain to the post office did nothing to improve my mood. Having spent most of the morning festering indoors at my desk I decided to treat myself to what turned out to only loosely resemble a coffee. Must remember never to do this again. The nearest street with shops and cafes on it is a loathsome pedestrian alleyway of Robert Dyas and W H Smiths outlets where every freak and mutant in the city seems to swarm like flies to an ugly festering turd. It’s actually quite fascinating; I mean, there are people who are at least four times larger than a human being ought to be or look as if they’ve had their features drawn on with a blunt mathematical compass by a one-eyed, three-fingered learning-impaired toddler in a darkened room.

Today I saw:

-         A 90 year-old lady with stud heels, a pink Chinese umbrella allowing her haughty Chihuahua to piss on someone’s bicycle.

-         A bald-headed man with a ‘coil’ comb-over like a cinnamon swirl

-         A woman who I am 98% convinced had three buttocks

Having forced down the tepid, bitter washing-up-bowl brown excuse for a coffee I decided to have a peek inside SbH’s package. Peeling off the sticky tape and rummaging within I withdrew the first object and surveyed it disbelievingly. How thoughtful of him. And now, here I am in the middle of a busy freak-infested coffee shop proudly, if inadvertently, brandishing a purple double-ended dildo for all to see. Fantastic.

Three buttocks gave me a sideways glance so I hurriedly returned it to the box.

Think how disappointed he’ll be when I tell him what time of the month it is.