Le Franco Phoney

All things French as seen by an outsider…

How to leave a ski resort April 4, 2009 @ 11:39 am

 

So, you’ve been skiing for a week. You’ve had a great time with some fantastic snow conditions, and even the sun shone during the day while the snow fell at night. You’ve enjoyed the company of the lovely friends you haven’t seen in ages, and you ate lots of cheese and spent far too much money on some wild nights out. You just don’t want to leave. Alas, the time has come when the cleaning lady kicks you out of your apartment and you have to go home.When I was a kid, I remember these days well. I remember watching the last bit of snow disappear from view as we wound our way down the mountainous roads of Falls Creek in Australia, often annoyed that the fresh snow was falling on the day that we were leaving, when we had spent all week avoiding rocks and grass on the “amazing 35cm of snow” that the weather reporter had lied to us about. It was never a happy day even if the snow was minimal. I guess that’s how a lot of people, both young and old, feel when their holiday ends.

So, what can be done to overcome these feelings? Well, I decided not to leave the resort, but if that’s not an option for you, what about taking the snow away with you? That’s what these people did when I saw them leaving the resort the other day. That’s right: that’s a snowman (a “bonhomme de neige” in French, or “good man of snow”) on top of a car. It’s definitely a man (kids, look away now). Judging by the happy smiles of the car’s occupants, the snowman did indeed relieve the departing holiday-makers of that sinking feeling. You have to go back to work? No worries: just build a snowman on your car and watch the frown disappear! You didn’t do your schoolwork while you were on holiday? Not a problem: dump it next to the snowman and get him to do it on the drive home. He’s likely to have lost his head and probably all his body too, but what better excuse is there than: “Sorry miss, but the snowman lost my homework when he fell off our car.” Complete this with some sobs, and the bonhomme de neige has come up trumps again.

As I mentioned, I decided not to leave the resort, so technically, I don’t need a snowman. But maybe a snowman-on-a-car is a solution to every-day situations we don’t want to have to deal with. For example, my car keeps breaking down lately, and I’m now wondering if a snowman on the soft top is actually the way forward. The car won’t accelerate? No problem: I have this great snowman on the roof and he’s way more fun than driving to Annecy to see the accountant. The flywheel has lost its teeth? Hah: the snowman up top there could do with some teeth, and finding something suitable is a treat compared with hitting the supermarket for some fresh fruit and veg. The ignition key hole has seized? Don’t worry: use that VW key as half a moustache, and the spare as the other half. After all, they’re useless to you right now.

So, next time you’re leaving a ski resort, consider the humble snowman as a roof ornament. The car behind might like the surprise when the snowman’s head splats on their windscreen. Who wouldn’t?

 Snowman on a carSnowman on a car 2
 


Being a chalet girl March 30, 2009 @ 10:54 pm

Some friends asked me to look after their chalet last weekend so they could watch their son ski in a competition elsewhere. They only had two guests and they had cooked all the meals, so all I had to do was serve them, and drop the guests off in town. No worries, right? Maybe less worries if my VW Golf was reliable. It’s an old car, but I love it because I can pop the roof down in summer and really enjoy driving in such a beautiful place. There was no enjoyment last weekend. With a piece of corroded rubber preventing the accelerator cable from working, I hitched up to the chalet with a friend who, visiting for the weekend, had a hire car. The guests arrived before us, but luckily the chalet owners’ other son was there to greet them. The three of us fumbled through serving dinner despite the frozen salad and the absence of milk for coffee.

Breakfast the next morning was fun. I had driven the chalet van down to my place the night before so I could get back to the chalet, but with 15cm of snow on my steep driveway and no snow tyres, the van only made it half way up the hill before the wheels spun. I tried to reverse it but managed to stall it, then flood the engine. I rolled it down the driveway where it was avoidable to other cars but still in the way. It wouldn’t restart and I wondered if I’d killed the battery. I borrowed my friend’s hire car which apparently did have snow tyres, drove past the dumped van and my broken Golf and waited for the guests to wake up. They didn’t. The pressure was on to catch first lifts with my friend at 9am and it was now 8.15am. I knocked on the guests’ door and asked if they were coming down for breakfast. As I’d guessed, they had forgotten that the clocks went forward an hour the night before. Eggs poached, toast made, guests tired but full, I avoided explaining that there was no van to drop them off. Instead, I opted to yell out a farewell while they got changed into the ski clothes.

The chalet owners returned just before dessert that night, which was lucky because we couldn’t find it. Panic over and guests fed, I’d even managed to get the van back to the chalet. The problem? I hadn’t taken it out of gear when starting it. A chalet girl I am not.

 


Human kindness and its opposite July 1, 2008 @ 11:52 am

The steering on my car felt funny this morning so I stopped and saw a flat front tyre. I was pretty sure driving on it would ruin the tyre and the wheel, but being impatient, I decided to drive in first gear to the close-by garage with an air pump. Within ten metres, the wheel started making loud noises, and the farmer from across the road looked over. He saw the tyre and said he had an air pump. Actually, I didn’t understand his French, but he motioned me to the next driveway where he pulled out an air pump to fill the tyre. Sadly, it stayed flat so I got out my spare tyre. Old VW Golfs have this ‘compact’ tyre-wheel combo that you fill up to a high pressure and drive at a moderate speed to the closest tyre shop. It saves room and weight, but this farmer and his mate who arrived were not convinced. They told me to get one of my winter tyres. I sprinted back up the road, then realised my keys were in the car. It was 25 degrees outside so I was baking. I walked back down, collected the keys, walked back up, collected the tyre, and walked back down with my hands  covered in grease from the tyre.

When I got back, two problems arose: firstly, the snow tyre had no wheel attached and the farmers had no tools to switch tyres; and secondly, the ratchet thingy that came with my car did not fit the wheel nuts, so the wheel was stuck on the car anyway. Eventually, one of the farmers realised that the nuts had plastic covers on them and that the ratchet thingy was indeed the right size. So, back to the emergency wheel/tyre. The two farmers popped it on, tightened it up and discovered it too was flat. They pumped in some air and the tyre inflated. Relief! The lovely farmers spent more than an hour sorting out a tyre for a girl they didn’t even know. Of course, this happened at midday, which meant I’d have to wait until 2pm before the shops re-opened from lunch. No worries: it was already after 1pm by the time the emergency wheel went on and I repacked my car’s boot to fit the flat tyre, then loaded the winter tyre in the back seat (that tyre was of no use to anyone, but it had a lovely day cruising Annecy with the roof down as my passenger).

The closest tyre shop is ten minutes away. I managed to take sixteen minutes on my emergency tyre, driving at a moderate speed and waving cars past, so I didn’t have long to wait until 2pm. A boy there told me I would have to buy two new front tyres (the law in France states that your front two tyres must be the same model and your back two tyres must be the same model, even if the two at the back are different from the two at the front). I asked him why they couldn’t just repair my existing tyre. He said that when tyres get “close” to not being road-worthy, the shop is legally bound to change them. When I told him they were only five months old, he backed down, and eventually, his boss fixed the problem (something to do with the seal between the tyre and the wheel) and charged me €15 which probably went straight into his pocket since no receipt was offered or given (or requested - I really didn’t care at this point). I chucked the ‘compact’ tyre back in the boot and decided close enough was good enough when trying to get the jack back in the tiny compartment with the spare.

The two farmers were so generous their precious time, yet these two blokes just saw a presumably clueless girl and tried to make a profit. Anyway, I now know how to change my (rather specific) spare wheel and that I can hold my ground against less generous French men. I might make the farmers a cake or something. Suggestions welcome!