The Bad, The Ugly & The Good

The less said about the start of the weekend the better, but I won't ignore it completely. Friday's weather forecasts had promised blazing sunshine for many days ahead, so on Saturday I woke feeling quite chirpy at the thought of a couple of lunch time pints watching the dippers get thrashed at Old Trafford, followed by a day in the sun. So, in the De Danu Irish pub again, and a full Irish breakfast to start with. After that though it all went pear shaped quite quickly, and was even more unrecognisable by the end of the match. The so called beautiful game, summed up by the dippers' heroes with the phrase "pass & move" had been hijacked by a couple of set pieces and two hopeless punts down the pitch by a keeper fit for fuck all else. That said, the silver lining here, and I will find one if it kills me, is that there are now estates all over Liverpool feeling all smug that the title race is back on, and when they come back down to Earth in May, the crash will be all the harder. Shame. And long live the Manchester Ship Canal.

I did manage to get out & about in the sun afterwards though, and had a potter around Toulouse. It is smaller than Manchester I think, or at least Manchester seems to have several focal points, whereas Toulouse only has one main centre point. I squeezed in another haircut and tried to locate a decent gym in the evening, which is proving quite hard. Nothing here opens early, in case I haven't made that clear yet. The working day doesn't really start in the office until after lunch, there are no shops open other than the bakeries when I set off to work, and there are no gyms open before 9AM. In Manchester the gyms have queues at the doors at 6:30AM, mainly silvertops who wake up with the birds after 3 hours sleep, but usually with a light scattering of professional types who can't fit a session in anywhere else. Here things are different and while it's not as hopeless as Greece for getting things done, it takes some getting use to. I imagine the Germans would be horrified. I still don't understand how they lost the war(s), and I've read the books. My gym choice has boiled down to one really, a chain, which would entitle me to use any of their facilites throughout Toulouse, whenever I can find one that is open, and all for the reasonable price of 110 euros a month of 600 a year. WTF!? Well over twice what I would expect to pay at home. I haven't decided yet; partly because I now seem to be on a one month rolling contract, which makes proper planning a problem.

Sunday was to bring lesson 4 in my skiing carrer - obviously without an instructor. I chose Guzet this time, as it is supposedly a bit nearer than the previous two places I'd been to. In fact, it took longer to get to because more of the journey was off the motorway, but it did have the cute advantage of taking me off at the exit just before the toll booths and after a free 80 mile blast. I also got to see some fantastic countryside with picture postcard villages and great scenery. At one point I was stopping to take pictures so often I was in danger of not making it to the resort for a decent time. Guzet itself is comprised of three resorts in one, and I was aiming for the very top, where the slopes were flatter (presumably before heading into vertical drops down the sides of the mountain). I'm still impressed at this stage that my car is running so well - a true testament to German engineering, as it will be twelve this year and there's been fuck all wrong with it, ever. It's still bloody quick and goes round corners on rails, and it halls itself up these mountains like it was 6 months old. It takes nearly half an hour to get from the foot of the mountains to the resorts on top, as the roads are pretty twisty and there's a fair height to make up.

When I did climb out of the car, I found a pretty small resort, but one I immediately liked. Everything was in easy reach - important if you're wearing ski boots - there was plenty space to park, and it was clearly a beginner's atmosphere. I'm not generally thrilled to be surrounded by ankle snappers, but I make an exception for skiing, as it seems to indicate a lack of anything too dangerous. Says he. I started with a few laps of the warm up slopes, and then decided to tackle something a bit steeper. A bit too much steeper as it happened. I reckon I got about halfway down before I hit the deck - none of it controlled and speed increasing all the time. It's a good job I hit a bump really, as at least I hadn't yet reached terminal velocity. I spent a minute lying on my back when a couple of attractive female skiers sauntered by, very slowly, and controlled, and they seemed amused to be greeted by a middle aged man saying "bonjour" whilst lying on his back halfway down a mountain. I got to practice my 'getting up again' technique, which I had perfected by the end of the day. Basically you push yourself up with both your skii sticks, and it reminds me how you do can do a similar thing with the paddle to right a canoe that you've gotten out of shape. I tried this slope 7 times in all, and it didn't get much better as things went on. All I managed to get right in the end was that I didn't overshoot the lift to get back to the top again after the first few attempts. I ended the session going back to the practice slopes for some skills training. Here, on a gentle slope I found I was pretty good now, compared to four visits ago, but translating this into something meaningful is proving a bit harder.

I quit about 4:30PM with a beer, and by the time I had got changed, the second half of the England vs Francy Rugby match was about to start in the bar. The slopes shut at 5PM, so the bar also filled up with the ski instructors. We couldn't believe our eyes, as England were 28-0 up at half time. The South of France is seriously into rugby, and there were a lot of unhappy bunnies in that bar. England then scored a try a few minutes into the second half, and my cover was blown. The locals thought this single cheer was quite funny though, and I was spared being thrown off the mountain. More fun can be had with this at work too, so the weekend ended better than it started :-)

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