I am a nice person. Too nice.

I’m the girl that got sat next to the weird kid in school because I was the only the person that would be nice to her.

This ‘niceness’ is very evident in my assessment of movies, walking out of Pirates of the Carribean 4, just excited that there had a been a mermaid storyline. Which was the biggest oversight in the previous three if you ask me.

In my opinion, cynical moviegoers approach films with completely the wrong attitude. Judging from sitting and doing nothing while someone else creates.

Try walking into any film with the lowest expectations, and you’ll nearly always be pleasantly surprised (the ‘nearly’ there being reserved for Transformers 4, even I have to draw a line SOMEWHERE). And even if the film isn’t good, if you’re expecting trash, you will still be able to pull a few moments that were, that will save the show and put it above your expectations.

However, I do enjoy discussing movies. I like pointing out the good bits, reliving the laughs, and theorising. But I always get interrupted by the doom and gloom of the naysayers, saying I am simple, naive and unrealistic.

So here is where I will state my opinion on films. With NO FILTER.

A Silver Linings Movie Review

 

(P.S. I might slip a few shows in there too 😉 )

Should I do a ski season?

A question I was asking myself about 9 months ago.

In December last year, I went to Megeve, France as a chalet host. I was not cooking to be perfectly clear. This is the girl who set fire to porridge. I would just be serving the meals and maintaining the building and all the rooms.

I was in quite a small French resort, so my experience may be ever so slightly different to others. But general experiences tend to transfer. So if you’re thinking of doing a season. Be prepared for these 10 things.

Here are the top 5 things I hated and top 5 things I loved:

LOVE

1. The Skiing

Well here’s the obvious one. The skiing. The ability to go for a quick ski the way you’d pop to the shops back home is incredible. Just pick up your skis and walk to the lift. Any company worth a damn should give you all your ski gear so anyone doing a season should have the ability to enjoy this amazing winter sport.

The mountains are beautiful, however, the snow isn’t always. Nor the weather. Being there for a whole season means you can choose not to go out on a bad snow day, that on a week ski trip you’d force yourself to battle through.

It really is all it’s cracked up to be!

HATE

1. The hours

I have never been quite so tired as I was at the beginning of my season. Now I’m not an early mornings person, but even you folks ‘catching the worm’ would struggle. The beginning of my season was early mornings, late nights, and nothing but work in between. Pre-season prep is a killer. Sleep deprivation creeps up on you into every facet of your life. It makes everything seem harder and more stressful. Even the fun stuff.

It didn’t help me that we started the season with so many issues. Many staff firings and quittings. But also, a local bus had its throttle catch and a bus drove through the front window of one of our chalets.

This happened on Boxing day 😐

The worst part being you live on site, my bedroom next to my boss’s office. So at any moment I could be hauled in to do even more work.

So yeah, the hours are unpredictable and bananas long at times.

LOVE

2. The Camaraderie

Your wider ranger group. Outside of your work zone. This is most likely a bunch of people either from your company or from around the resort. These are people that are all stressed, tired, and overworked.

JUST LIKE YOU!

These people are your lifeline.

They will vent with you and distract you. After all, you have a big snowy playground outside with endless distractions! With all the tourists that stream in and out of the place constantly, it will feel like you are part of an extremely selective special little club.

I could go on, but there were a few people on my season who made me feel so much saner through all the craziness, reminded me that I was in the mountains, and to sometimes screw the dishes and to enjoy some fresh mountain air!

2. The Solitude

Now I can’t speak for all chalet hosts because my job description may be different, but on the flip side of your wide group, your chalet can be lonely. For me, I was working alone, with just a chef in my chalet. A man (or as it turned out in my case, a parade of losers that got fired one by one) who I didn’t know, and had no interest in being my friend or even teammate.

• The first guy was violent and got fired for punching another chef employed with the company (after having been threatening to do so for weeks as I had warned them).
• The second guy was a drug and alcohol addict who overslept and had to be woken up for shift many times and would then wander around in a drunken manner, laughing at me because he thought my stressed face was reminiscent of a headless chicken. (I will note that this man was being sick and unable to work for the few days of his job, but I’m now like 95% sure he was going through withdrawals until he found a new dealer in country).
• And the third and final guy was a man who was:
  • over 50 and felt it,
  • was 100% on the autistic spectrum
  • and was very low functioning.

Now I will NEVER judge a disabled person. I have spent a lot of time with disabled people in my life and it is very normal with me to not let anything they cannot control affect me. However, this is a very high-stress job, with a lot to do. I had to take on all of his organisational work as he was incapable. I was so overworked it was beyond ridiculous, this added stress, as a result of his presence, made it very hard for me to give him the extra slack and patience he obviously required.

This parade of people that I did not connect with being my only human connection for eight hours a day (and far longer at first), made me feel very isolated and stressed. Be prepared that at Christmas you will not be settled and missing home. The presence of happy families and friends have a whale of a time on holiday will not help.

LOVE

3. The Food

Put it this way, I miss the goat’s cheese more than I miss the skiing. The cheese fondu, the baguettes, the hot chocolate, the pastries……. I could go on. France has it’s fair share of incredible food. And you will try it all.

And as a chalet host, you are in control of the kitchen which is the best. It is a miracle I did not gain a tonne during the season!

But this is the wonderful extra hidden bonus of the food on a season. You’re working so hard, and skiing so hard, you will never see a micrometre of it on your waist. In fact you can eat as much as you can feasibly fit in your mouth and you’ll probably still get fitter and feel better. Just the result of having a beyond active lifestyle.

Eat all the food. Get fit. WIN WIN!

HATE

3. The Food

Yup this is two-faced coin.

This wonderful, incredible food is not made for you. It is made for the guests. You know, those people who are only there for a week.

This means that there is often only enough ‘variety’ to last a week. Each dish will be recycled and re-fed to you once a week.

Trust me, even Duck Confit will make you feel a bit ill when consumed once a week for half a year.

When you get home the pot noodle will be oddly refreshing.

LOVE

4. The Location

Let’s face it. You’re in the freakin Alps!

It beyond beautiful, and you get to see it transition through the seasons. You’ll come out knowing what snow is best, what time of year you prefer etc.

Plus it’s just cool. I couldn’t walk for 10 minutes without my phone dying in my pocket because it was -29 degrees Centigrade. IN THE VILLAGE! You might find that annoying if you’re from a normally cold place, but for someone from the greyest and most boring of weathered place. London. THIS was exciting.

The place is cold and beautiful and new. You get to explore a new world completely different than suburban London (in my case). I saw Golden Eagles flying above one of the higher runs, I rode a cable car where the visibility was zero, I navigated an icy driveway with many hilarious almost falls.

Living somewhere new is always cool. Especially when its the mountains.

HATE

4. The Ingratitude

Now, this is another aspect that is specific to my job. However, you WILL experience it in one way or another.

My boss. I could go on about my boss. But for my own mental health, as thinking of him takes me down a dark dark path, I will just say one thing. I did not receive one single piece of positive reinforcement the entire time I was there.

Not. One.

I am a people pleaser and am so motivated by feeling like I’ve done a good job and helped. He was not able to see this. So did not get the best out of me. This seems to me like a fault of his managerial skills not o—-SEE!

Dark dark place!!!!!!! I will spiral if I continue but you get the gist.

My advice, try not to care and stress about ungrateful people as much as I did. It won’t change anything. (That is good just general life advice btw 🙂 )

LOVE and HATE

5. The Lessons Learnt

I was homesick. BAD. This was completely new to me. My family drive me absolutely bonkers and normally time away from them is a holiday to be enjoyed. But I found myself desperately trying to find private spaces to cry. To not let myself imagine being at home because it was so so tempting to just up and quit. I saw people do it. But not me.

I am no quitter.

And as I persevered, the season got better. The LOVEs on this list became more prominent. The HATEs didn’t disappear, but I learned to deal with them. I got better and quicker at the work part. I got more sleep. I had time to socialise with people outside of my parade of losers, time to ski. I MADE time for myself to just relax.

It got better.

I persevered and I was rewarded for it. This is just one lesson. My season taught me more than I can begin to explain and this list gives you just an idea of the magnitude of what that is. Not just experiences and memories. But life lessons. It can teach you what you want and what you can do.

Most of all, I learnt that I am a tough little cookie. Life can throw what it wants at me and I will see the silver lining.

It’s who I am.

x

So I’m a scientist. Sort of.

Well that’s to say I graduated with a Marine Biology Masters. I’ve written long things with fancy sounding names like ‘dissertation’. However, in that world, I still feel like the little child walking around in their mummy’s heels. Like everyone else had a meeting about how to adult that I was never invited to. I struggled. Not because I didn’t work hard, but because I did and still felt like I was faking it.

I worked my butt off writing lab reports and fishery investigations, only to get mediocre results. I found myself questioning whether I was really suited to science. Hating all my super smart science friends for whom it just clicked with. I must be so stupid.

I had to work this hard because although I could read about science til the cows come home, I don’t write like a scientist. I have a very vivid imagination, and I LOVE the elegance of a good story and clever writing. My brain resisted the research formats with all it had.

I couldn’t write boring repetitive pieces of work when my brain wanted to weave osmosis of polychaete worms into the gruesome tale of my worm turning from a happy podgy pink to a gaunt dying grey and a singular spiral of blood curling to the bottom of the beaker of water. If we move past the horrific murder of a worm it was a good story. I would find myself laughing and telling the story to my friends and family of the grey hue starting at the tip of the tail and working its way slowly up the worm, like a disgusting Mexican wave.

Then in my final year, a miracle happened. My Russell group university (Research orientated universities), gave me an assignment that finally clicked. It was called the popular science article. We had to write a summary of our master’s thesis in 500 words so that anyone, with any background, could understand it. And guess what. I got the best result I’d ever received. All those things that people told me were SINS in my scientific work were suddenly things I had that they didn’t. I’d made it fun to read. After all those years I realised I’m not stupid.

Thus I knew I still loved science! But I’m not a scientist. Sort of.

I AM JUST A DIFFERENT KIND OF SMART

Your brain is your brain. It works how it works, and IT WILL work.

Don’t squander it in the wrong place.

You are a clever lil cookie 😉

x