Up an Alp and in the merde
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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in
jonnycowbells' LiveJournal:
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| Monday, March 9th, 2009 | | 10:29 pm |
Sell! Sell!
It's late, I have work to do, but heck if I didn't just feel the need to do the world a favour. The snow in Tignes is great at the moment and we still have 6 weeks between now and the end of the season when our apartment isn't let. 7 night, accom only for the whole apartment, not per person: 14th Mar €550 21st Mar €825 11th Apr €990 18th Apr €825 25th Apr €550 2nd May €440 Represents discounts of between 20% and 60% from our initial prices. Crikey guv I really am cutting my own throat here, cor blimey etc. et al Recent feedback from a customer: I’d just like to say a big thank you for renting us your apartment last weekend. We had a fabulous time, really enjoyed using it and thought it a great apartment in a great location in great condition.
I fully expect that we’ll be in touch again regarding the apartment.But don't take a complete stranger's word for it - ask skean, andygates, xeeny or fialta for a completely biased view as well! | | Wednesday, January 7th, 2009 | | 6:33 pm |
| | Friday, December 19th, 2008 | | 12:55 pm |
How to find somebody
This article reminded me of something: Man repays debt some years after the eventBack in 2000 (Friday, the 19th May 2000 to be precise) I was in Fiji with Mrs C. At about midday, we were in Nadi international airport and we urgently had to get to London. Unfortunately, this was going on as well. We needed some money (any currency) to pay the exit fee (a legitimate tax) but had spent all our remaining cash on getting internal flights from the capital to the international airport that morning. All lines in and out of the country had been cut, none of the cash points worked, none of our credit cards worked. We'd spent all our traveler's cheques a few months before somewhere between Goa and Singapore. The jobsworth behind the security desk wouldn't let us through and our begging fell on deaf ears, even when I pointed out that her country was falling apart and she should probably just let us through so she could go home and cower under her bed. I had two options - start a fight, or wander around the airport (that was rapidly descending into chaos) begging people for money. I chose the second. The first guy I asked was a well dressed young man in maybe his early to mid twenties. I seem to remember he had a good tan and was wearing a nicely tailored pink shirt. He had a very calm manner and was enquiring as to the likelihood of any airplanes taking off from Fiji ever again. He was caucasian and from the few words I heard him say, I guess he was either British, Australian or a New Zealander. He gave me 50 Australian dollars without me having to resort to any sort of derogatory behaviour. I mumbled some thanks and something about my buying him a beer when he next found himself in London, which he shrugged off with a laugh. I then had to run for my plane to Hawaii that should've taken off 30 minutes previously. That's the sum knowledge I have about the man, but I would really like to pay him back one day - if nothing else (and actually, there was a lot else) he restored my faith in humankind and the kindness of strangers. How would I go about finding him? | | Sunday, September 14th, 2008 | | 1:34 pm |
End of one era, Start of another
Well, as may have become apparent to some or most (especially those I've told) 2007/08 marked our third and, for the time being, final winter season living in Tignes. Baby Cowbells is taking up more and more of our time, other Cowbell family members would rather have him stay in the UK a bit more so they can see him, and running an expanding childcare business from a distance of 1000 Km is probably not the sort of thing to be trying when you want to be a stay-at-home-boarding-chick. Anyway, I'll still post when I find myself in the Alps with a bit of time on my hands, and we may still go and do another winter there when Baby C is old enough to ski and remember it. In the meantime, the exciting opportunity to rent Cowbell Towers now presents itself. More details can be found at www.tignes-lavachet.co.uk. It's kind of in 'soft launch' phase at the moment, so any comments on glaring errors, omissions and browser compatibility problems will be much appreciated. TTFN - La Famille Cowbell. Current Mood: determined | | Sunday, August 17th, 2008 | | 3:00 pm |
Alchitude strikes again
Frankly, I'm too tired to write about the last 8 days, but ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) andygates has done it for me, with some particularly gnarly photos for those of you with Facebook access. If we can get clearance from Barry Manilow and George Lucas, there'll probably be some training montage video available at some point. Right... can I get my head back into work mode..? Current Mood:  lonelyCurrent Music: Bryan Adams (eh?) | | Friday, July 11th, 2008 | | 5:23 pm |
Coming soon...
Exclusive reports from the 2008 Cowbells Triathlon Camp. We expect the word 'Camp' to be applicable in more than one sense. Stay tooned... | | Sunday, May 4th, 2008 | | 1:40 pm |
Last Chance Couchette
Anybody who wants to get some more European skiing in before having to wait until the end of June had best get on with it - this is your 7 day warning. Snow's still really nice, especially if you're boarding. Tonnes of the stuff still about and after about 9.30am it gets that nice spring slush feel to it. Much fun to be had. ( Stuff about trains... ) | | Friday, April 11th, 2008 | | 11:11 am |
La Nostalgie
Nothing to do with snowy mountains, but an article that echos my views: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7324556.stmI started on BBC Micros and Acorn Electrons before moving to Commodore Amigas. I made the computers in Harrods wail like banshees when adults pressed buttons, and used what I'd learned in Byte magazine to override the reset (some of the younger adults thought they knew a thing or two, you see) I loved the fact I knew pretty much everything there was to know about these machines even though I didn't yet know what one could do with the knowledge (vector transforms on polygons written in assembly = Elite. And it fitted in to 32K. This clicked during second year graphics at Uni.) That age is truly lost, and what a shame for the future of UK IT. | | Thursday, April 3rd, 2008 | | 5:25 pm |
| | Friday, March 21st, 2008 | | 11:26 am |
| | Sunday, March 9th, 2008 | | 6:01 pm |
More dusk
It's starting to snow again and the mountains are hidden in the clouds so I took a second look at those dusk photos again. These two didn't fit very well with the other composite but are worth a look for the nice sky colour.   For those that care, the lifts visible in the first picture are Merles on the left and Gratalu on the right (top stations of each) and we're North-East of them. The chimney and TV aerial are of the building opposite whose name I forget. | | Thursday, March 6th, 2008 | | 7:32 pm |
Le dusk
I was trying to fiddle about with the neat 'Hugin' tool that Andygates pointed me towards, but my photos weren't up to scratch. Seemed a shame to waste the photos though, so here's a rapidly stitched together thing using good old 'paint'.  Doesn't do the view justice I'm afraid. | | Friday, February 29th, 2008 | | 3:01 pm |
Buy High, Sell Low...
...altitude housing. At 2100 metres it's doing something approximating snowing. 300 metres lower in Les Boisses (and therefore La Plagne, Val d'Isere, La Rosiere, St Foye, Meribel, Courcheval etc. etc.) it's raining. | | Thursday, February 28th, 2008 | | 11:48 am |
Always with the waiting...
From the Tignes website English translation of the weather page: FRIDAY : CLOUDY. PERHAPS SOME SNOWFALLS. SATURDAY : CLOUDY WITH SOME SNOWFALLS FROM 1700M. FROM SUNDAY TO WEDNESDAY : SUNNY SUNDAY. THEN THE WINTER WILL BE BACK.I'm bringing winter back. Them other blogs don't know how to act. Oh, and it was a spoof of the Matrix, not Bourne, not JohnnyMnemonic, not Mission Impossible, not nothing at all. Jeez. I mean, I know I look like Matt Damon and Tom Cruise, but really. | | Wednesday, February 27th, 2008 | | 10:06 am |
Snow!
Yes! It snowed 1cm last night. I even witnessed it settling on part of the road at midnight. Of course it just looks a bit wet and miserable now, but the presence of menacing clouds is a welcome relief from all that darned sun. Mountains occasionally appear out of the gloom only to shuffle back into hiding a few seconds later. It's all quite gothic and lovely. Funny snow though - we pushed the buggy across the snowfront in Le Lac this morning and it was proper spring-like. That funny icing sugar consistency that's good for boarding and doesn't avalanche very easily. I imagine (and hope) it's still a bit harder the higher up you go, but I'll find out soon enough when Andy 'Boz' 'Gnarly' 'Slasher' Morris gets on it next week. We can compare our cartel bindings and everything. | | Tuesday, February 26th, 2008 | | 10:20 am |
Can't shine all the time
Apparently the Courcheval lifties are on strike over pay and conditions. Those pesky French, eh? Personally I can't understand the 'pay' bit - I mean there's no getting around the minimum wage is there Mortimer. Conditions - fair enough. Never mind the lift workers, the weather pixies are definitely on strike. The forecast snow is now looking suspiciously absent on the various weather websites. I'm still keeping my fingers crossed and frankly, if it doesn't come until next week then I'm not too bothered because all these punters should've finally disappeared. But I did briefly consider mowing the lawn outside our balcony this morning. Skean - what's the weather doing on the other side of Mt Blanc? | | Monday, February 25th, 2008 | | 10:16 am |
Ooh..!
Just time whilst my laptop logs in and Harry's bottle cools down to say "Hmmm... clouds." Haven't seen any of them in about 18 days, so I'm really quite excited. If the snow forecasts are correct this week (they haven't been recently) then Becs, Aidan, Jackie, Boz, Ronnie, Nick, Alison, Chris, Barney, Toby, Eleanor, Jonty, George and the others whose names I can't remember might actually have some decent snow to play in next week. They might even have a crash course in snow chains (this doesn't affect my quality of life like the snow might, but might make for some funny stories) We've still got a metre's depth in resort, but 3 weeks of European holiday haven't helped - everything's looking a bit churned up and positively springlike by the end of the afternoon, but the cold temperatures have kept things in pretty good nick. However, bring on the snow. | | Wednesday, February 20th, 2008 | | 6:29 pm |
| | Sunday, February 17th, 2008 | | 6:26 pm |
| | Tuesday, February 12th, 2008 | | 4:12 pm |
Je sais, je sais...
.. I'm being very poor at posting this season. I can give you lots of excuses, but you can probably guess them for yourselves. This post is also particularly poor in that it doesn't include any of my usual witty banter, but I read this article and found it interesting: http://pistehors.com/news/ski/comments/0809-ski-accidentology/I guess with the snow conditions being so good this year, the UK press were on the hunt for some ski-related doom and gloom. The more I read, the more I think, on the whole, they're ****s. |
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