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

There was a time in my life where the kind of sops that would make me salivate were on Tottenham Court Road in London. Video cameras, computers, MP3 players and all new technology. Even a high street Dixons branch (now Curry Digital) would lure me in.

Now it’s all about sports equipment. I went shopping for the rest of the stuff I want to start the season with today. It’s been a shop I’ve been planning for a while, and was waiting for a day where I didn’t have too much to do, and felt rich. I bought:

A new ski-jacket. A good one this time. A thin waterproof skin layer and removable down jacket layer underneath. Black. Salomon. Nice.

New gloves, a thin under pair and a waterproof mitten layer. Base layer – 3 really good running tops to wear next to the skin. Bits and bobs for ski-touring; adhesive for the skins some crazy looking blades that go under your feet and dig into the ice when you’re traversing something steep and icy. Special crampons which fit ski boots for walking ridges in ski-boots with your skis on your back. You need those at the top of the Aiguille lift to get to the Vallee blanche. Sometimes there’s a fixed rope, but sometimes not. That’s a knife-edge path with drops of thousands of metres on each side. Crampons are recommended.

Some safety gear for getting out of crevasses. Ice screws, carabineers and the like. I have quite a lot of climbing equipment from the summer, harnesses and ropes etc.

And lastly, and only because I was getting a bit carried away. An ice Axe. Because you’ve just got to have an ice axe.

So now I’ve really got all the gear and no idea. As soon as possible I’m going to do some mountaineering back-country training with a guide I’ve been talking to about the Cham Valley website.

Actually, thinking about it, and looking at all this kit I’m also going to make a will.

I helped my mate move into his new place this morning, and wow. Proper Heidi country it is. He’s renting the top floor of a chalet from a friend of ours, Andy. Andy bought the place earlier this year and has a plan to convert the place into a top shelf holiday chalet over the next few years. It’s something he and his girlfriend have already done before with this place;

They are currently living in the bottom floor of the new place with their 3 dogs, and my mate has taken on the top floor for a wile. It’s a really beautiful thing, this chalet, right out the back of Les Houches, up the hill and looking down onto the valley below you can see right down into Chamonix and the Houches. It’s secluded, and remote – the steep winding road up there is going to need snow-chains at least in the winter, but it might even only be accessible by 4×4.

I’m jealous. I want one of those! I’ve got my current place until June next year, but when that comes up, I’d really like to be in the position to buy a chalet like that. I don’t think I want to convert it into a ski-chalet for punters though – I want to live there.

As the weather starts to get colder, it’s just starting to really hit home that I really do live in a proper world-class ski resort and am about to have my first full winter season of skiing. To that end, it’s time to shape up a bit. I’ve been walking every day, and have upped that to running on some days now too. Sort the diet out, and a bit of basic yoga wouldn’t go amiss as I’m very bent and stiff from too much time in the office in front of the computer.

The lifts probably won’t open till mid- December, but they start fake-snowing the bottom pistes as soon as the weather is cold enough to hold the snow, and in good Chamonix tradition I’m going to be skinning up those pistes on my new touring skis as soon as there is enough snow and well before the lifts actually open.

Chamonix’s been a getting a bit sketchy over the past week. Some fallings out with friends/colleagues, too much work, and not enough sleep so I needed a change of scene to break it up a bit.

Driving out to Geneva to pick up my friend and business partner, Andy from the airport did the trick. I left early so I could go shopping on the way. There’s a shopping mall on the French side of the border near Geneva.

I love being here in the valley, but living in a picture postcard where everyone knows each other can be a bit much at times. So just finding myself on a normal Thursday afternoon doofing around in a crappy shopping centre was such a relief. Anonymous and unchallenging.

One of the things that has been a little stressful recently is that Andy decided to move to Prague in the Czech Republic for a while. Of course, we can still work together remotely, but would be such a shame to see him go. As we drove back up through the valley and took the scenic route through the autumn trees behind Les Houches, I could sense Andy was feeling ambiguous about his decision to leave. Later on when I met him in the pub he declared that he’d decided to stay. Which is really brilliant news.

Later on we both had dinner with our friends Fred and Katy, played a bit of poker for a big pot of random foreign cash for a laugh. I even won the pot at the end of the night, and everything suddenly seems right with the world again.

Sometimes things get a bit tough. All you can do is grit your teeth and bear it.