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11/09/2010
Issue 30

A mouse having a drink

Une Rendezvous

I freely admit that in the summer I can be really lazy. In France this is probably down to living in a ski resort out of season with very few other people around. Put it this way, you know that 60 minute makeover program? Well after 6 years I'm still performing DIY (that could have been done by a team of builders in 1 hour) on my apartment. When I come back to the UK everyone I know is doing their own thing and you really need the cosmic alignment of the planets to catch people. So the highlight of my week, nay year, was having lunch with a seasonnaire I haven’t seen since her last season in 2000. Not only was it good to see her again but It turned out to be one of those days where a lunchtime drink turned into lunch which turned into “is that the time?” For 5 hours we reminisced, we chatted, we had some who, what, when, and where. And then some whither, whether, whence, and wherefore to follow, and one big side order of why? And many other inexplicable topics that are best not repeated.

With such an overload of reminiscence it got me thinking about what I could write about this week. In the end I thought what was the one think that make a season in the alps bearable.

Is it A) Fresh powder, B) Job satisfaction or C) Meaningless sex with chalet girls.

The correct answer was actually D) Alcohol (thank you for playing). In Tony Blair’s recent memoirs he described how being prime minister drove him to drink… half a bottle of wine at dinner. It’s lucky Tony didn’t decide to spend a winter working in a chalet otherwise he would have found out what real alcohol abuse is. With “unlimited” wine for the guests in the chalets, après ski and many bars where workers can numb the pain caused by your annoying guests with copious jaeger bombs and mutzig. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t exceed the recommended weekly allowance on a daily basis.

Now to do this subject justice you really have to go into further detail you would have to look at what people drink and how they recover from drinking too much of it. As the recovery involves water and beroca in suitable quantities, depending on the age of the person, here is the what.

To understand what people drink you first have to think where it comes from. There is of course chalet wine, which can range from liquids that would be better sprinkled on fish and chips to stuff that doesn't cause your taste buds to constrict in pain. It all depends on a number of factors, primarily the budget of the tour op. Does the wine come in a 10 liter plastic barrel with a label marked Wine - RED (do not expose to sunlight or naked flames), a wine box or heaven forbid an actual glass bottle with a cork.

Then there is beer. Not being a beer drinker myself I cannot comment on it's taste but as it's cheaper than bottled water goes someway to describe it's quality. Outside of a bar most seasonnaires only drink whichever 26 pack is cheapest in the supermarket. In a bar it's either a pint of Kronenberg or a demi of Mutzig. Never a demi panache!

For spirits it all depends what leftovers the guests leave behind. Although most seaonnaires would drink meths or worse(see Marc de Savoie) if they had to, their accommodation does end up accumulating the strangest collection of booze which is only fit for the nastiest of drinking games. The locally produced herbal digestif Genepi is an acquired taste, which by January most will have acquired too much.

The editor