Happy New Year - bling is back!

First of all, a belated Happy New Year - it's been a busy week, but on the 1st January we were blessed with the most beautiful deep blue skies and sunshine, and for the first time in six years not too hungover after Hogmanay revelling. I'd love to say we headed up Grand Couloir or something equally worthy (OK, I just don't do grand couloir.....ever) but we'd booked a table at our favourite spot 'Le Bel Air' and were treating ourselves to New Years lunch. And what a lovely time we had....

Later on, in the evening, we watched the New Years ski display, complete with hanglider and parapenters flying in, a skier adorned with (too many!) fireworks skiing in, and around 200 ESF instructors carrying torches, in their jazzy new uniforms (shame they still lose small children on a regular basis, but hey don't they just look great!) . Then a pretty good fireworks display - I never tire of this sort of thing, despite having seen it many times.....

And so to today, where I spent a lovely day skiing with our friends and clients, the Falkinghams. The slopes are getting rocky/icy and we desperately need some snow, but I still had a great day and some runs were better than others. I saw many tiny tots skiing today, and had the pleasure of taking a chairlift with a wee one who was three years old that day, with his grandma and grandpa who were both ski instructors - how lovely is that? Then, at the end of the day, I was just about to hop off the very lively Loze draglift halfway (strictly forbidden!) when the tiny tot in front of me fell off. Only 4/5 years old, he was struggling to get up the tiny incline onto a flat bit where I was stood waiting on the others. So I held out my pole 'Tenez!' and hauled him up to where he could stand on his skis. We established that his 'monetrice' was still on the lift up ahead, probably completely oblivious to the fact that he'd fallen off, and despite me shouting to all passing instructors to tell the monetrice at the top that her missing child had fallen off and we'd wait there for her, no one appeared. Did she even know she'd lost him? Fortunately an older instructor who I recognised from the Bozel bus (!) hopped off with her private client, and took the poor wee mite back to the ski school.

And so tomorrow in Courchevel we celebrate the Orthodox Christmas Day, which means lots of bling, and more of the same torchlit descent stuff (600 instructors they have promised!), more fireworks, and with a bit of luck, more free vin chaud. Happy Christmas - again!