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06/09/2009
Issue S5

The only time the editor will pull a helli.

After slagging off, or rather pointing out the inadequacies of Courchevel’s financial and environmental management I suddenly understood what they were doing. Using the principles of Gordon Brown’s Labour party spending I realised this was all part of Courchevel’s fiscal stimulus package. For those of you not familiar let me explain basically you spend all the money you have and then spend some more that you don’t have using the principle that the world’s economy will inflate into another bubble and the resort will get flooded with a tsunami of billionaires and their entourage of hookers, sorry “students”.

Alex, the editor.

Something to ask Santa for

If you are currently looking for a Christmas present for the cooking member of your family and are looking for something different from the usual Jamie Oliver book. Former Courchevel seasonnaire (2000) and very talented chef Marianne Lumb has just released her first cookbook called Kitchen Knife Skills. This 176 page tome will look equally in place in the kitchen or on fashionable coffee tables. You can order it from Amazon here and most other book shops.

Prepare to the stimulated

So just before I left I decided to see what parts of resort had been “stimulated”. This drew me to the tunnel, which leads the main Croisette area past le Kalico and towards 1550. Now over the past ten years I’ve always said to myself that the bland white painted concrete sides of the tunnel would look so much better if they were clad with stone to make it look like the structure had been built in the 17th century. No doubt this process takes a lot of skill and carries a suitably high price tag. The irony is that looking at the state of the peeling paint and rotten wood cladding on the bridge it ALREADY looks like it was originally built in the 17th century.

Another unwritten rule when it comes to stimulus packages, especially in ski resorts, is that priority should be given to any relative of the marie when they tender a quote so any work can be kept in the family.

With that in mind a strange semicircular extension has been added to the bus stop area in 1850. What its exact use is is unknown but obviously someones cousin has a fledgling walling business that needs a little help.