March 13th - Half term

Forgive me Father for I have sinned. It is exactly three weeks since my last post.

There are, of course, mitigating circumstances for my lack of news.I have been a busy little bee.

Despite the shrinking snow line, half term passed off without any major incidents or injuries. With temperatures exceeding 17°C in the car park at 1600m on most days, the pisteurs had their work cut out keeping the resort open for the holiday hoards. Driving over the Col de Peyrasourde, the pistes at Les Agudes looked like thin white ribbons against increasingly brown hillsides. The snow had the consistency of mashed potato even at 10am, but this was the kids’ best chance of skiing this season, and they were not about to be deterred. And, having initially worried about losing other people’s children in the crowd, I quickly learned to spot their unique silhouettes: Suzy, the only snowboarder amongst us, Catwoman with a green wooly hat and goggles; Claudia, all long legs and pigtails; Flora, a diminutive 60’s starlet in dark glasses and pink angora cowl - an image quickly dispelled thanks to frequent noisy collisions with Claudia; and William, whose skiing style defies all laws of physics, being a cross between Mr Bendy and a flying starfish.

With the exception of Claudia and Flora, who seemed to have an almost magnetic attraction to one another, the rest of the party managed to avoid any serious collisions. This, when you consider the very limited skiable domain and the number of out-of-control maniacs wearing helmets and snow-blades, was nothing short of miraculous. At 2pm each day I would breath a sign of relief as I handed over responsibility for the kids’ safety to Vincent and Alex, their snowboard and ski instructors. I had done my best to get my ski legs back for their benefit, but my knees were, it has to be said, no match for the ligament-wrenching snow conditions. We had previously agreed that Tuesday’s lesson would be the last skiing of the holiday. But, when Flora announced that she needed the bathroom shortly after 1pm, less than 15 minutes after saying there was too much of a queue to bother to wait, I felt no remorse escorting them all back to the base station half an hour early.

On Wednesday, Billy and Mrs F came over to collect Stripes, or “Stumpy No Nuts”, as he has rather unkindly been rechristened, and I got down to the serious business of catching up with some household chores. Top of the list was to deodourise our car which, since collecting the cats from the vet the previous week, was smelling less than fragrant. I was due to drive back to the UK the following day to retrieve my husband, and I knew that John was likely to have a severe sense-of-humour-failure if the car smelled of pee-pee du chat.

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