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

cute. but thick as planks

Wednesday, May 21st, 2008

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The middle of the inter-season in a ski resort like Chamonix is a strange time. After many months of high-adrenaline winter sports it can be quite a crash to suddenly not have anything to do except pick up the pieces of your life that you dropped during the winter.

I’ve been feeling that crash, and I know some of my friends have too, so the other evening my mate Mark and I did something different. We went fishing. There’s a small lake calledChavant up in Les Houches. It’s stocked with a zillion trout and people can pay to fish there. To be honest we were assuming that the game-keeper geezer wouldn’t be there and we’dyoink a few trout out of the lake for our dinner for free.

The grumpy old bugger was there however, and came over to give us some grief and make sure that we knew we’d be paying EUR 8 per kilo for the fish we took out. No bother, though - we were happy to pay for what we caught. The lake was heaving with fish - they were flapping about all over the place and all we really had to do was cast a baited hook into the middle of the feeding frenzy and yank ‘em out. The hardest bit was not spilling our beers.

So in an hour we had 2 perfect eating-sized trout - 650g in total. We paid the grumpy old git his 5 bucks and were off home to make dinner. Mark gutted ‘em I prepared ‘em with an improvised chili-Cajun dressing with plenty of lemon and coriander ready for 20 mins of baking in a hot oven. Eaten with a few vegetables and nice bottle of white it was delicious. A proper delicacy.

So thank you, fishies. For providing me with some great entertainment and then dinner too.

Gone fishin'

Posted in Hooning about, Good Food & Health, life's a bit like that sometimes | Comments Off

Life admin needed

Thursday, May 8th, 2008

Ever had that feeling that your life is coming apart a little bit and you need to get back on top of things? You car’s dirty, rusty & in need of a being a bit fixed. All your clothes are piled up in the corner waiting to be washed. You haven’t opened your mail for a month and there’s no food in the house. After a prolonged period of BBQ’s, drinking and parties to mark the end of the winter I’ve been doing a bit of life admin over the past few days.

Yesterday was the day to go and find a lawyer. I’m not in trouble or anything - I just needed to get a document notarised for a a German thing that’s going on. But as it happens I have been wondering how to find a French lawyer for a while now. I need to set up a French limited company this summer and I’m also planning to buy some property. The chap I met yesterday in Sallanches tells me he is known as ‘The EnglishNotary’ here in the Chamonix valley. Not because he is English, but he speaks it perfectly and has over 200 Ros Bif clients on his books, so hurrah. He’s the man.

Next the van. I took my skis and winter equipment out of it for the first time since December, cleaned out the inside, washed it, oiled it and generally sorted the thing out a bit. I’ll take it in for a little service in good time, but just for now a bit of air in the tires and a wash is all it needs for the weekend when I’m going off camping in Italy for a few days with my girlfriend. Just through the Mont Blanc tunnel & down to the coast, it’s only 3 hours or so away. I might even get the chance to do a dive two.

Now if I can just get on top of the work I’m doing, get my washing done and stop getting ridiculously drunk all the time…..

Posted in Travel, holidays, life's a bit like that sometimes | Comments Off

10th Chamonix Freeride Day

Monday, May 5th, 2008

I bought a new video camera recently and havebeen making films for a few days. Incognito as you can tell from the picture of me at the Marmotton Bar yesterday afternoon. You int sin me.

Click on the picture to see the film on youTube

Posted in life's a bit like that sometimes | 2 Comments »

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cute. but thick as planks

Gone Fishin’

Life admin needed

10th Chamonix Freeride Day

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