Alpine Disaster

I've been away. Out of the country even. This meant the unenviable task of returning to the airport after seven months of cold turkey. It was as if my traveling companions, and bookers of the holiday, were force-feeding me smack. I'll get back to my airport experience, but first I must describe the holiday:

It was a skiing holiday, a luxurious foray to the French Alps with fully-catered, maximum comfort accommodation, an exclusive hot tub, cake and hot wine waiting for us when we returned from the slopes, to be followed by a lip-smacking evening meal with yet more wine, all the time entering into thrilling and stimulating conversation with our chalet-mates, before heading out to sample the aprés-ski in the surrounding, well-renowned bars. Ah, the utter indulgence of the whole affair. But wait, this doesn't sound like me. Why am I writing about something that worked out so gosh-darned well? Settle down and I'll tell you.
This, of course, is how our holiday should have been. It was planned months in advance to celebrate two of our party reaching those special ages where it is only appropriate to do something such as go on a luxurious holiday you can barely afford. I say should have been because we received a phone call just as we were preparing to leave for the airport. Our bags were in the driveway and we had booked a taxi, when we were informed by my brother that our holiday had been cancelled. Of course, we all laughed. There's always one who feels the need to joke about when money has been spent and holidays have been looked forward to. But this was no joke. The chalet company had phoned to tell us that, the previous night, our chalet, our luxury snow-mansion where we were to gorge ourselves like mini-Henry VIIIs and shrivel our scrotums in the bubbling outdoor hot tub, had burnt down. We stood, jaws hanging, as we were told that we had been given a full refund as there was nowhere else we could stay. This is why I rarely go on holiday. My luck, coupled with my bad karma, tripled with my overwhelming deficit of deserving anything nice, will always scupper the best-laid plans.
After we received this crushing news, I was prepared for a week lying in my own bed and moaning - the perfect antidote to this kind of mishap. But my brother jumped into action, eventually securing us some accommodation. Our taxi arrived, blaring the Blue Oyster Cult's (Don't) Fear the Reaper into the cockpit, an ominous choice of soundtrack if ever I heard one. We arrived at the airport. in good time for our (now free) flight.

The airport hadn't changed at all. I still saw all the same faces milling around, their eyes glazed and soft-focussed, their jaws slack and lolling, their limbs moving underwater slow as they went about their business. On the concourse I spotted no less that eight familiar people. It was an odd feeling; one that set my soul screaming in a most uncivilised way, but also one that was comfortably familiar. Why must we all be victim to nostalgia, that sloppy invention that only leads to irrational yearning, and an outrageous belief that it wasn't all so bad. Well, I reminded myself that, yes, it was that bad. It was a miserable hole that I wasted five years of my youth. One trip to the lamentably understocked, stinkingly stale toilets saw to that. Later on I saw an ex-colleague, Minnefield, who was looking dejected and heartsick. He filled me with tales of such horror, that my nostalgiac bubble was burst for good. It seems the only source of light in that place is the fact that they are all going to lose their jobs in a few months - the joy radiated from Minnefield's face as he detailed The Company's downfall. He obviously spared some time to lay into the foul and bleak void who was once my manager. She's still there, of course, infecting good cheer and humanity with her own horrible brand of negativity. Thank God she was in a different terminal...

Anyway, after an uneventful flight, we arrived at the resort. I would like you to take a moment to re-read my description of what the chalet should have been like. It would have been a hideous picture of white, middle-class people stuffing food and drink down their mouths and gabbing on about how wonderfully luxurious it all is here in the French Alps. It would have been wonderful!
On arrival we were taken to a gigantic concrete tower names Le Santel. I can only assume that is French for "Directly from the early-Seventies, surrounded by dog shit and as pathetically sorry-looking as a urinating octogenarian". Oh well, we thought, it can only be better inside. It wasn't.
Eight of us had to share a tiny apartment, with four of us on children's bunk beds (including all 6ft 7in of Yours Truly), two in a double bed that sagged dangerously in the middle, and two on a fold-out sofa in what we assumed was the lounge area. We had to assume, because it had a kitchen in it. A kitchen with an electric hot-plate balanced precariously on a broken hob. The bathroom (orange and brown plastic was the order of the day here) was so awful it pains me to remember it, but let me just say that wet feet made the linoleum tiles stick to the soles and operate as a kind of stowaway flip-flop. We all vowed we were not going to spend any more time than we had to in there. This was harder than we realised. It was so far out of the resort, that we had to take a bus to get to any of the bars or restaurants and, after a day's skiing we all were crippled with fatigue.
On the last night we booked into a hotel in order to award ourselves for surviving such a miserable place. I had a room to myself, which I silently cheered, after spending far too long on a bottom bunk. It had a bath too, so I could soak my aching limbs. Alas, when I surveyed the room I found the bath was that kind of half-size thing they are so fond of on the continent. That night I bathed with my knees round my ears and my own bollocks inches from my nose. An injustice I probably could have coped better with at any other time.

The resort itself was disappointing, only because that, for a French town, it was crushingly English. There were English accents everywhere, and all the bars served Guinness and Magners. I guess people want that kind of reassuring familiarity, but I felt imprisoned by my own nationality. I wanted to drink wine and eat baguettes, but all the restaurants had the same menu - Pizza, Burgers or Pasta - and they were full of guffawing plums called Henry and Vivienne. It seems there is no place for culture in a ski resort...

But we went to ski, and ski we did. I did come away with fond memories, not least one lunchtime when I was presented with an ice-cold bottle of Erdinger, which I drank on the veranda of a mountain-top bar in the pure Alpine sunshine. It's just a shame that, after we returned home, we were all desperately in need of a holiday...