Wednesday, March 06, 2013

Skiing and not skiing

It's half term at the moment down here in rainy Montpellier (typical!). Any French family worth their French family salt has either come back from skiing or is skiing this week. In other areas of France they will either have already finished the half term holiday and are now back at school, or have just started. Thus the ski season with school-age kids is spread out over six weeks. This is good news for ski resorts - a longer busy season, it's good news for skiers - the queues are not as long as they could be, it's good news for drivers - the roads could be even worse if everyone was on them at the same time, so everyone's happy.

I quite enjoy skiing but get bored after two days. This is proof that I am not French. If I were really French, I would rent a chalet or, even better, stay in a relation's chalet or even a friend's chalet, with them, for a week. As I do not have the money to rent chalets and am sadly lacking in friends and relations I can abuse, I just don't go skiing. It would also kill me to have to wear my excruciatingly painful ski boots for more than two days. I think that this, added to the boredom factor, nails it on the French factor. Oh well.

One of the things I would do if I were very rich would be to have custom-made ski boots. They would be moulded to my feet and lined with something soft and warm. I'm not keen enough though to make it happen...

In the meantime, not skiing and having no boys in the house means I have total control of the tele remote. I haven't noticed anything particularly worthy of attention on French tele recently now that Monroe has finished (no surprise there), so I have been able to devote myself entirely to iPlayer and my Sky digibox.

This week's viewing goes something like this: Mr Selfridge, Broadchurch, Mayday, catch-up Death in Paradise, Doc Martin and last week's Mr Selfridge, Saturday Kitchen, odd episodes of Poirot, Rosemary & Thyme, Murder She Wrote, and so on. I made some ginger snaps, and have them handy with a cup of tea, my feet up under a black furry blanket and totally hog the tele when I come in from work. Luxury!

Other plans for the week because I don't just watch tele you know:

  • lunch with friend - check (yesterday)
  • buy a new bread machine because my current one is on its last legs - check. I found one in the local small ads on le Bon Coin down the road, a Riviera & Bar model for €50 (retails at €150 - bargain or what!). Check out this little beauty (currently preparing some dough):

  • write a Slim the Ogre word game app on the difference between lose/loose, they're/their/there, where/were/we're, etc. (any others?) or rather maybe split it up into two or three apps to make more money. They're dead cheap so it's no big deal.
  • sort out all the printed recipes from the internet into folders for meat/fish/vegetarian etc. as I now have so many I have to look through it seems like hundreds of papers to find a particular recipe. It's currently quicker to look it up on the internet again. 
  • chuck out crappy old recipe books I haven't used in ten years.
  • eat fish suppers that my boys would moan about, like sardines and mackerel. 
I'd be lying if I said I wish the sun was shining so I could go out for a lovely walk because it was shining at the weekend and all I did was watch tele. I've now got to the age (finally) where I really do as I like even if I know I should be doing something else (like a hearty walk). And, I don't even feel guilty any more.

I'm also reading a gripping thriller on my Kindle about a mad scientist who plans to let off a nuclear bomb under the Pacific somewhere which will result in a temperature rise of 1.8°C over America's bread basket region, leading to drought, starvation, civil unrest and so on, just for his personal amusement. It's a bit far-fetched but he's so awful I keep reading. Set in Italy, it also has a rather suave Italian Bond-type figure, Dante Passoni, whose job it becomes to save the world when he's not engaging in a little light romance with a beautiful woman. It's called SAVE ITALY! by Tommy Vilar.

By the way, the latest issue of BBBmidi magazine is out with articles on what to do if your Kindle dies, a book series review of the thrilling and intriguing, action-packed Rizwan Sabir stories (page 15) and all sorts of Languedoc-related bits and bobs. Some great artwork in there too, do pop on over.

15 comments:

  1. Sounds fabulous to be alone from time to time- mission impossible in this house. It's going to be hard when the boys get back; are you selling tickets for The Great Battle of The Remote Control? I'm just polishing up a post about the school holidays too; being cooped up with non-skiing offspring is a nightmare. This weather is strangely reminiscent of the Cornish drizzle I had as a kid....

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    1. It's one of the advantages of being divorced, having the place to myself from time to time. And greatly appreciated it is too.

      When the boys get back, they'll just go straight back to their tele-hogging routine to use the XBox. As I refuse to put a tele in their rooms, I can't complain too much that they use the one downstairs... *sigh*

      I used to send mine to the centre aeré before they got old enough to stay home by themselves. Our local one was pretty good.

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  2. I do that thing with recipes too. I have a blue folder with some plastic inserts but I print off recipes, or tear out of magazines, and shove the bits of paper in the back of the folder so there's no easy way to find what I'm looking for.
    We like Death in Paradise - nice easy watching but a bit quirky too.
    The lose/loose/their/there app idea sounds great. I see so much sloppy grammar about, especially on the internet (reads carefully through comment to check for typos)

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    1. It looks a bit smarter in my kitchen now what with the little box folders instead of a messy plastic thing bulging with paper, and the worktop rearranged and tidied up to make room for the bread machine.

      I find it's actually a surprise when you find 'loose/lose' used correctly.

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  3. How funny - all the private schools here in the Bay Area, California have "ski week" - my two kids at the Oakland public school do not. I think that's wise on your part re the skiing. I tell people if you don't love it don't do it, it's frightening how much per day it costs (and even more if you count all those lost gloves etc)

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    1. Yes, and kids grow out of ski clothes every year! We have a tiny little resort about an hour and a half away but there's no snow there. Shame... :)

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    2. Save your energy for the summer!

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  4. I've never skied in my life, sarah, and the days of half-term are long gone, but I can truly identify with the occasional joy of having the house and the TV remote to myself, when DH is away. You and I appear to have remarkably similar tastes in programmes..... :-)

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    1. I'm sure it's the novelty factor of being alone. If I was alone the whole time I'd probably feel differently. :)

      Well if we ever had to live together, there'd be no fighting over the remote. That's nice to know. :)

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  5. I've never skied either and too many friends have sustained too many horrible injuries for me to consider it nowadays. A colleague was moaning about being alone when her daughter is out riding every Saturday - I thought she was mad! There's nothing I like better than a few hours on my tod!

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    1. Exactly! I don't understand people who have to have their partners or their kids around all the time and moan if they are left alone.

      I'm skipping round the room punching the air and shouting 'YAY'!!! :)

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  6. Well, I might be French but I don't really go skiing. I long for a week like yours, doing nothing and without children in the house. Pure bliss.
    I was surprised to read that you need a bread machines. I thought that there were boulangeries at every corner of the street in France. Am I wrong?

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    1. You don't really go skiing? Hello, fellow Brit! :)

      I make my own bread because buying baguettes every day would kill me. It's not in my blood to go to the boulangerie every day, and the rate my boys eat bread, it would also cost a fortune!

      And, to be honest, it's difficult to find a decent boulangerie these days. We have two in the village and neither are very good. I have to go down the road to the next village, which is frankly too much of a fag.

      My bread machine bread is yummy though - I get the cereal flour so it's also nice and healthy.

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  7. We do a mini "clean out" once a year. Major throw always happen every four.

    Enjoy your free time, Sarah. When our son was younger, I flew him to his grandparents in Germany, twice a year. Once in the winter and again during the summer.

    Not a big fan of sardines, unfortunately. They're slimy and smelly. Honestly, I don't see how people eat them.

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    1. Fresh sardines are delicious. It's best to barbecue them really as the smell of fish in the house does tend to linger. :)

      I had a lovely week, now the boys are back and things are back to normal. :)

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