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

Since starting this blog over a year ago there are some topics which I intentionally haven’t written about. One of those topics is something that has always been a part of my life - depression.

There’s no real reason not to mention it here except for the fact that it tends to freak people out a bit. I’m not talking about major depressive episodes here – that’s another story for another bottle of vodka. Nor am I talking about ‘feeling a bit low’ or ‘having the blues’. It’s nothing to do with sadness.

The depression I live with is a fairly simple illness. I’m less good than an average person at producing serotonin in my brain and now and again I get a bit ill. It’s a bit like having a cold or iron deficiency when pregnant, just a bit of temporary brain chemistry discombobulation which passes in a matter of days.

Over the years I have learned to manage the illness much better, mainly by becoming much more aware of life factors like diet, stress, tiredness And the like. Not running around like a mentalist, drinking and doing lots of drugs helps too. There are signs I can pick up on – drinking too much without getting drunk, certain trains of thought which only crop up at these moments, and strangely - physical symptoms like getting eczema on the palms of my hands. All these are simply warning signs that simply mean I need to slow things down, relax, eat better and generally look after myself.

Now and again, however another factor which is out of my control might crop up at the wrong time. In this case it was a solid dose of the flu when I was in the UK over the weekend when some of the warning signs were already in the post.

It will have passed in a few days and normal life will resume. In the mean time I just have to accept that I can’t really get much work done, that I’m a bit quiet and weird to be around and that I find it difficult to focus on anything.

So with those limitations in mind, and seeing as it was a beautiful sunny day I decided it would be best spent on Grande Montets with Sarah and Johnny Slippers getting a tan and not skiing too hard.

I often like to storm up the mountain with military precision, ski for a couple of hours and then get on with the rest of my day, but today it was really good to just slowly get my stuff together, get up the hill and just hang out for the rest of the day in no rush. Good for whatever ails you.

Travelling back to Suffolk went smoothly all the way through to passport control in Stanstead airport. It looked like this in all directions:

It took about 45 mins to get through passport control and the officers whose job it was to stare out at a bank of 1000 irate travellers were looking a bit nervous. Apparantly it’s something to do with the influx of eastern european immigrants from the new EU nations or something. Let ‘em in I say. Stops me having to wait around in a queue to get into the UK.

I’m off back to the UK for the weekend tommorrow morning. Bit sad to be leaving the snow – I went skiing at le Tour this morning with my friends who are on holiday here and it was stunning – but I’m excited to see the family. Also, a couple of days away from Chamonix to think things through is probably going to be pretty nice.

My sister Karen is going travelling for a year with her boyfriend on Monday, so we’re all meeting up in Suffolk to see them off. They’re going to be flying to Moscow and taking the Trans Siberian Railway to China before spending the rest of the year in New Zealand – a trip they’ve been planning for years.

So as a leaving gift, I’ve made them a blog website so they can document their trip and keep n touch with their friends and family.

www.ak-travels.co.uk
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It’s great to have Martin out here, he’s settling in and enjoying Chamonix. It was getting a bit boring being here in the office on my own. Computers are in short supply though. There are several in the post from the UK, but that might take a few more days so in the meantime, there’s just a trashed laptop covered in stickers in bits on the desk that we’re trying to solder back together and get to work.

Also – it’s snowing. A Lot. Winter has arrived finally and it’s -8 C and dumped about a meter of snow in the last 24 hours. The place is finally starting to look & feel like a ski resort.