Je Suis Sur Les Pistes

Last night in Verbier I was the only Brit at a dinner with three Spanish, three Swiss and an Indonesian.  We were all speaking English as my Javanese is a bit rusty and one of the Spanish ladies did not speak French.  It is an uplifting experience to think that there we all were,  with completely different backgrounds – where were they when I was watching Blue Peter and eating beans on toast for tea after a hockey game in the twilight autumn of 1978? – religions, food, everything and yet still we are friends.  I suppose that dinner table would be my wish for 2010.  That we are all more tolerant of each other, embracing the rich diversity of different cultures, languages, religions, age, colour and race. 

New Year’s Eve was Mr. Jules and I, four teenagers and Lexi in diamanté basking in the glory of being surrounded by “big” friends.  We ate foie gras, filet de boeuf cooked  for two hours at 85 degrees (cooking tip!  But you have to  like what we in the family call mouse meat), gratin de pommes de terre and crême brulée from the best cheese shop in town.  This year there were fireworks on the baby slope outside our chalet so we all went outside to watch the show.  One firework took off sideways and a chorus of “cooooooooool” was heard from the young flesh wrapped in blankets on our terrace.  When Sophie-G’s party hat caught fire from an errant spark that was not so coooooool.

“It could only happen to me!”  She wailed half crying, half laughing as she patted her torched head searching for burnt hair and I, in mother duck frantically protecting her off-spring mode, stamped the flames out in the snow. 

At 11.45 they all went off into town for the countdown on the Place Centrale, which Ollie’s friend Perry from Uni would later describe as “well good“.  Ollie had his first ever sober New Year’s Eve due to events that I am not allowed to recount but involved beer, a crashed mini, and a lot of shouting.  I sat with the dog in the cellar with the washing machine set on the spin cycle to disguise the cacophonous tirade of midnight fireworks for which Verbier is famous and for which Molly is not appreciative.  I’m not a big New Year’s Eve fan and this is likely to be Molly’s last NYE as her back legs have now started to weaken and she has, unwittingly, taken to tobogganing on the ice.   She deserved the company and quite frankly 2009 didn’t deserve a better sending off. 

2010 will be a good year. 

PS Saw Jakob Hlasek the Swiss tennis champion buying light bulbs. Last year it was Amanda Wakely OBE, looking gorgeous picking up doggie pooh with her pink pooh bag.  Still get a kick out of seeing famous people doing ordinary things like us mere mortals.  What next Tiger Woods at the bottle bank?