Meribel 2019/2020.

So it’s now the evening of Thursday 2nd January 2020. Greg has control of the music via Sonos. So far we have experienced Swedish Heavy Metal and Mongolian Throat music. I do wonder about that boy sometimes! Eventually, suitable background music was selected. Not sure what it was but I seem to recall thinking it was Sade without Sade. Bear in mind that several glasses of wine had been consumed before we sat down to eat so everything was a bit vague. One of the pleasures of staying in a catered ski chalet is that it comes with staff. A bloke to drive you to the ski lifts who coincidentally was the sports massage therapist and K taping specialist, someone to tidy up after you and assist with serving of wine, beer and food and a chef who prepared breakfast and an evening meal. Our chef, Dane, is from that world renowned centre of culinary excellence – Sunderland. So in amongst the ‘Whey aye man’ and ‘Canny like’ coming from the kitchen area, (Yes I know that’s Geordie, but it’s close enough) Dane cooked up a veritable delight of food for us. Every evening we all ended up completely stuffed and with a fine selection of wines, slightly inebriated as well. On his day off, we made a reservation at one of the many restaurants in the area, Le Cèpe, and had a meal there. Le Cèpe specialises in, but not exclusively, meals with cèpes or porcini mushrooms that they forage for locally. I had a really rather nice scollop risotto with a substantial amount of assorted mushrooms. The rest of the tribe had a variety of mains, some with mushrooms and some without which is fortunate as both CJ and Greg don’t like them. Highlight of the meal however was not the dessert that CJ ordered. Unknown to us, the restaurants chef would appear to be heavily influenced by that Blumenthal bloke and she ended up with a nice dollop of mushroom ice cream! Not well received! I like mushrooms and I thought it was gross. Despite that, we had a very nice if expensive meal. It has to be said though that we all much prefer the grub back at the chalet.

The point of this holiday though is not so much about the food and drink although that does play a part, but in Ed, Greg and CJ disappearing each morning just after 9am when the lifts open, going up whichever mountain or area they have decided on, spend several hours skiing a variety of runs until they stop for a lunch time meal and drink at one of several mountain top bars and restaurants and then spend another few hours skiing down even more mountains before returning to the chalet just before dark and jumping in the hot tub before dinner. After eating we will continue with our leisure activities that I hope leads to a dramatic improvement in my ability to play Uno and maybe even winning a hand or two. Would help if the rules didn’t keep changing

PIL and I have spent our time doing stuff that is difficult to do in the course of our normal day to day activities. I have accomplished a lot towards my personal objectives for the next few years and the fruit of that labour will appear to the world very soon now. Just a couple of things to finish off which I will have completed this week. We have both had the opportunity to recharge our batteries  and to spend time with our three children laughing, playing, arguing and squabbling. I can’t think of a better way to spend the day.

There now follows a shed load of photographs and short movie clips. I hope you enjoy them.

Have a lovely day wherever you may be.

More Dick soon.