Avaragado's blog

Just returned from seeing my surgeon for the last time. He’s happy with my progress, doesn’t want to see me again, and will send an invoice…

As expected I’m not allowed to do badminton for another three months, or to lift heavy weights ever again. I’m also excused digging and any repetitive lifting. There goes my career as a builder. I could still be a foreman though…

…are at Chris and Melanie’s web site.

I’ve retro-blogged our skiing holiday to Verbier. It’s easiest to start at January 10th and read down the page… and the photos do actually fit the text, they’re not random…

If you can’t be bothered with all this wordy nonsense then just look at the photos.

Video will follow…

The Chef Express drops me off home. Ah, normality.

When do we do it all again?

Channel, Dover, London, stack, clouds, whee, bumpy landing.
The plane taxis to a stand just outside Newmarket, I think.
We find our way to baggage reclaim and wait ages for it to wake
up and reclaim us. Walk, bus, car.

We’re early. Our flight hasn’t got a check-in desk yet. Being
British, we see a queue and join it. The screen above the desk
mentions Swissair, which is good, but also Alitalia and “telephone
check-in”, which is not so good. Never mind, Chef’s in charge.

At about 11:30 we reach the front of the queue and Chef asks
whether we can check in to our flight here. Yeah, no problem. Then the
usual airport routine: food, shops, queues, shops, security, plastic
seating, queues, impatience (“Could you just let us through?” says a
woman as Chris causes her a millisecond’s delay by callously taking
his assigned seat on board the aircraft), delay, safety film, here
here and here, taxi, engines, speed, height.

It’s snowing buckets again. We pack, tidy, wipe, rearrange.
Amazingly we’re picked up right on time. Our driver – English – whisks
us along snowy, winding roads down the mountainside. If this were
Britain there’d be bumper cars and ditches full of Ford Fiestas.

Once into the valley it’s a blur of villages (snowy/wet), Lake
Geneva (grey today), Montreux (probably nicer in Summer) and Lausanne
(a dump by the look of it) before we’re dropped at Geneva airport.

Mikey comes round and helps our attempt to finish our booze and
Pringles. We’re eating in again, mainly due to the number of unopened
wine bottles that need attention.

Before bed we do most of the tidying up – we’re being collected at
9am tomorrow.

We return our skis, boots and poles to the hire shop, arriving as
it opens (we’re a touch too enthusiastic to stop skiing, I
think). Divested of kit, it’s feet up with the Chablis back at the
apartment.

Chef puts on Buffalo 66 from the video collection. After
a shower I start to pack.

Vin chaud time. Then five or six more runs of Les Esserts before we
stop for lunch (cheese omelette for me). Melanie gets a call from Chef
– he’s given up and is waiting for us outside the apartment (we only
have one key). We finish off and ski back to the bus stop, the bus
arriving as we do.