Departure & Arrival

Wednesday 3rd December was spent completing the packing and booking a hotel at the airport for the night. 7:15am flights are so inconvenient!

How many items of clothing are needed for 5 months? I decided that the same amount as for a 2 week holiday would suffice.

In the evening I was dropped off at the railway station to catch a train to Charing Cross and on to Stansted.

The evening in the hotel was spent catching up with writing letters and Christmas cards. The last few weeks have been such a mad rush that there has not been much time to get all these sorted out.

Thursday morning was an early start. 5am wake up to catch the shuttle bus to the airport. Managed to get my two bags totalling 33kgs through check-in without having to pay a supplement.

Breakfast at Pret a Manger.

The EasyJet flight took off and landed without anything newsworthy, although I did scan the passengers to try to work out who were staff for the season.

Arriving at Lyon, the staff for my hotel started to gather together and I began to feel old. I am taking a very late gap year!

We were put onto a coach. I sat there reading the Daily Telegraph, wondering if working a ski season was such a good idea. I think the other staff wondered what this old git was doing on the coach. "He can't be staff, can he?"

Preparation & Packing

There seems so much to do before departing to the Alps. Packing up the flat and moving out. Tidying up all the lose ends at work. Throwing a party or two. Completing the tax return. Writing all those change of address letters. Christmas shopping. Christmas cards. I am not sure all of these will be done in time!

This morning started at 5am with completing the tax return. It is not a difficult thing to do, but involved setting off the burglar alarm in my older brother's house as I crept downstairs to rifle through storage boxes to find bank statements, dividend vouchers and letters from the Inland Revenue or whatever they now call themselves since they have merged with Customs and Excise.

This was followed by reading the newspapers on-line, checking Matt in the Telegraph and deciding to apply for a savings account with a good interest rate. All this from the comfort of the bed using my new mini notebook PC.