Quit your day job. Go on. I dare you.

Deal with electricity board, get the electrics switched back on in the office. tick (ish - should have lights by friday).
Phone company - half a tick. Have faxed them, they’ll turn the old line off and set up a new one. Could be doing better there - that’s the vital part.
Organise bankers draft to pay the deposit. tick.
Measure up office for furniture order. tick.
Order the furniture and get it delivered. Um….. working on that still.
Get really autistic with the development of the publishing product for the London guys….. tick. Was up at 2-am coding last night and am on the right track. Much more to be done there.
Deal with all usual incoming stresses at the same time. Phone calls from pimps (recruiters) in London still coming in at a rate of 2 per day. Am getting very short with people on the phone. Not great.

My friend sent me something today that made me laugh. So chuckling at this and posting it on my blog makes me a bit of a chauvinist ……. I don’t care.

“Sometimes you need to go to the mattresses, this is one of those times. Tell the women and children to get out the way, there’s man’s work to be done, and you will be back in 3 months.”

It was a struggle, but the Chamonix Collective (Mike, Andy and myself) managed to haul ourselves down to Century 21 in Chamonix for 11am to make our appointment with Monsieur Chevalier to sign the lease on our new office. It was a struggle mostly because of the drunken night at the clubhouse the night before, but that’s another story.

So while the nice French lady dug out and prepared the contracts, Mr Chevalier took us to the property to show us all round formally. It was the first time anyone apart from myself had seen it, so I had to hope that it was as right as it seemed when I first found it.

Andy saw the space where we’d put the sofa bed (he lives in Les Houches, and doesn’t have a car so will be crashing at the office from time to time) and he was happy. Mike saw a space where he could set himself up and not have to drag his laptop everywhere with him and work from random wi-fi hotspots around town, so he was happy. Then we opened the large window/door out to the garden and saw the sun-trap out back with a view on the Aguille du midi, and everyone knew…. This was our office.

So back at the agency, we went through the French contract thoroughly and signed the 6 month lease taking us through to the end of the year. There’s still plenty of work to be done, we need furniture, electricity, phone line, broadband, a TV, a sofa bed, and to fill the fridge with beer and champagne for the opening party.

We’re even allowed to have one of those little gold plaques on the front of the building too – suddenly it’s looking as though the business we’re setting up here in the Alps has gravitas.

Caroline, our content editor, managed to stop by to see the place later in the evening once her hangover had worn off a bit and she loved it too. She’s going to be working with us part-time and is going to add a sophisticated touch to the décor. Both with her presence and with her choices when she goes to ikea next week.

I’m happy. Obviously I’m pleased to be moving my work environment out of my flat – working from home is always hard- but more because taking on the lease on this office marks something for me personally. It means I’m staying here. Whatever doubts I have had about living her in the Alps are behind me. I’m staying. And that’s all there is to it.

Have a look at this website by Philips. It’s hilarious, but it also shows a use of flash that starts to blur the line between the web and television that actually swings things in the web’s favour. We’ve come a long way from skip intro.

http://www.shaveeverywhere.com

Parapenting has been one of those things a bit like the ice diving back at New Years, a study in determination. It takes time to organise the time off, the course, to pay for it and unless it’s a priority it doesn’t happen.

But every day there are fliers up in the sky about Chamonix, and I can’t keep my eyes off them, so it became a priority and yesterday I had my first day’s training.

Turned up to my Clem, my instructor at 8:30am. Hung-over, coffee in hand. He was running around looking up at the Brevant yakking into a radio and tells me to grab the rucksack cos we’re off to the ski lift. What? No theory first, just jump straight off a cliff? Ah…. Why not. A tandem jump of course. Half an hour later we’re standing at the take off point 2000m above sea level and a vertical drop to the landing zone of several thousand feet.

see the rest of the photos

And then we were flying. As soon as we were in the air Clem gave me control of the brakes and talked me through flying the thing. It’s dead easy. Just pull down left and you go left. Bosh.

It’s the closest thing to pure flying I’ve ever come across. I’ve parachuted, sky dived, flown a fixed wing glider and a twin seater aircraft, but this is something else. The wind is in your face and nothing else – you don’t notice the canopy unless you look up and there’s nothing blocking your view of the valley below. The harness seat is pretty comfortable, and I was swinging my legs about at one point. Till Clem told me to stop because I was rocking the glider 

The rest of the day was all about the training. Practical canopy control on the ground and basic flight theory. Turns out the hardest part of the sport is not landing as I assumed, but getting the thing off the ground. Yanking a great bit chute into the air getting it over your head and under control and building enough speed to take off. Doing all that in the 4-5 second that you are running towards the edge of a cliff, you can see that you have to get it right 100% of the time.

I had it sorted by the end of the day, but I was so bashed up. I can barely walk today and my bruising is spectacular. On top of my tramampalining bruises I look like I’ve been in a car crash.

3 more days training to go. A lot more canopy control training and 5 or 6 more tandem flights and within a week or so I should be ready to make my first solo flight. That will be the end of the course, but I’ll be qualified to borrow their equipment and thrown myself off the aguille du midi. Wow.

My friend Sib is coming out to stay in a month. I’m going to organise a tandem flight for her with an instructor and fly solo myself at the same time. Exciting times.