Melting
13 - 16 March, Ian
When I wrote the last entry the Audi was stuck in
the heavy snow outside. Shortly after, as I'd hoped, the sun melted enough of
the snow to enable us to drive out easily. Now the temperature has fallen from
-15.5 at the start of the week to only a few degrees below zero and the track up
to the chalet is even more treacherous: the snowmelt lubricates the underlying
ice and the surface is less reliable than the deep but even snow of previous
days.
On Monday - once we were able to drive out - Zoe and I went to a Mozart concert at Sion cathedral. It was given by the local Valais orchestra, who are clearly popular on their home turf. It was so busy that we had to take our seats about an hour before kick off, and I was relieved by how patiently Zoe waited on the wooden pews. I would have been much worse at her age. Even at twice her age I was worse. I recall attending a concert in a modern hall at Warwick University, where I studied. The hall had acoustics that were perhaps too good, and the stand of seats at the back where we sat were hypersensitive to any movement and seemed to rattle every time I fidgeted. A couple of old ladies sitting behind my friend and me tutted every time I moved, and when we left at the end my friend turned to them and, adopting his poshest voice, apologised for me, telling them that I had a terminal degenerative condition of the nervous system. They were shamed, it not occurring to them that someone would just invent such a story. These days I'm better at keeping still.
The concert at Sion was worth the wait. There were two short pieces and then a break, followed by the Requiem. This has a 12 track format like a pop CD that's conveniently familiar to the younger listener wanting to know how far through the performance we are. Behind the small orchestra stood a choir, half of men and half of women divided by gender down the middle. The men all looked very starchy in their tuxedoes. The women wore russet dresses with orange scarves that individually were not too successful but looked good en masse under the predominant royal blue of the stained glass windows. Unlike the stiff guys, each of the women bobbed around in her own style to the beat of the baton, giving the combined impression of a gentle sea.
There were also two solo singers of each gender. While the choir and some of the brass had to stay on stage for an entire piece in which they didn't feature, the soloists came on when needed and could repose in their seats until only a few bars before they had to sing. Then they moved centre stage. It was noticeable that the soprano, who had established her bona fides in the Exsultate Jubilate (which is essentially a short concerto for he soprano and the orchestra) before the break, stood further apart from the other three. This is, after all, a most status-conscious society. Until very recently the corporate grade of employees at Swiss banks (in Switzerland) was pegged to their rank in the army, national service being compulsory, with service calls every year.
Driving away from Sion up into the Val d'Herens, we had a spectacular view back over the town. In the foreground laid out across the valley floor were the lights of the city itself. Above this stand two illuminated castles, each atop a steep-sided hill. Beyond these were the mountains over the valley whose snowy peaks glowed eerily in the early night. This area of Switzerland includes all ten of the countries highest points, each of which is above 4,000 metres.
I'm pleased that Zoe enjoyed the Mozart, not simply because of the music itself but also because of its cultural importance, and the light that it can shed on the phenomenon of Christianity in Europe. When Zoe and Heidi reflect on the world religions more they'll come to realise that they don't auger too well for us. Any close reading of the New Testament will make clear that their parents are destined for eternal hell, not for the special quality of our sins (for everyone falls short) but for failing to keep up the club dues. Our prospects under Judaism and Islam are no better. In Buddhism we at least can keep getting more go-rounds until we wise up, though I suspect that as an eight-fold way ignorer I'd be lucky to have my next cycle as a higher mammal. But they can balance all of this bad karma against the splendour of Mozart.
Before they get so philosophical they can already contrast the gravitas of the Swiss in their places of worship with their get-up on the slopes. A few years ago Paula bought me, for Christmas, the skiing gear that I still use now. You might expect that I'd wear black (like Paula herself actually) but I have a Helly Hanson jacket and Columbia ski trousers, both in various greys. I like them very well - they're serious and look like the sort of clothes that you buy and expect to use for years, as though skiing were a branch of extreme-weather activity rather than of fashion. They're also very effective: when I was lying on my back in Banff waiting for a skidoo to arrive they kept the cold out perfectly. In fact, they're too heavy-duty to use for just about anything else, and, to answer a common question, our friend Craig dropped our ski gear off in Thyon, where we picked it up at the start of this month - we haven't carted it all around the world.
But these sober greys are not for the Swiss or for most other Europeans. Some of them cheekily wear Man U colours, implying that they're ski school instructors. Most, though, wear bright or pastel clothes - not just rosy-cheeked braided teenagers either, but grown ups with kids or even grandchildren. And, incredibly to me, they often sport these colours on salopettes or belted romper suits. I know that cool is in the eye of the beholder, and if they - or even you - feel chippy in a red romper suit with pink flashes, well more power to you! I'll just be the sad grey guy at the back, in my own zone.
The Swiss do have, if you go into the stores, some excellent gear that they could buy instead. There is that alpine snow-flake pattern that is often knit in reds, greys and whites. When I was young my Mom knitted me a pair of sweaters in this pattern in a couple of different colourways, and I'd be happy to wear them still if I could find them and they fit. Even now I wear a head band in the same pattern. Here it seems more common to see jester hats, although to be fair these are often worn by snowborders, who dress like a new species of rapper that has adapted to function outdoors.
Off the slopes, though, the Swiss have their own kind of more credible cool. We occasionally see them shuffling past the chalet, either in neat little plastic snow shows or on cross-country skies. They're almost always in couples and tend to be older - as readers of Heidi's newsletters will know, Switzerland has the highest median age of any country that we've visited this year. Bhutan, when you're there, is sometimes compared to Switzerland, but that comparison is never made here. Unlike Bhutan, in Switzerland they have roads in every canton, with the result that the infant mortality rate here doesn't rise anywhere close to Bhutan's astounding 10%. And here they're all comparatively rich and they all ski well, whatever they wear.
Our skiing has progressed to Week Two standard now. We've been out for half days this week at both Arolla and Thyon, and every day has been sunny and bright, although by the end of today with no recent snow some of the runs were starting to get a little scratchy. We're all skiing better and faster, and as yet have had no proper tumbles. I've had two knock-downs, both of which qualify as what the chuckling Dr Hibbert of The Simpsons terms "comedy traumas" or "traumedies". The first time I was standing waiting for the girls when Zoe, who usually has good control, came straight at me full pelt and took us both down. The second time I was giving Heidi some solemn advice when a returning button seat from the drag lift hit me on the head and knocked me clean over.
The other notable event of the last couple of days was the water going off throughout our district. Since yesterday morning we've had no water at all in the chalet. With the weather warming slightly one of the pipes carrying water down from the mountain reservoir has cracked and so far they haven't found it. From my time working at a Swiss bank (actually in Switzerland, not with my current employer that is to all intents and purposes American in my domain) I'm not surprised: urgency was not the watchword. People roundabouts seem fatalistically resigned to wait for the situation to get sorted in its own time, which is a great attitude if you can find it within yourself. Very Buddhist.
With the chalet surrounded by snow, which is a special state of water, looking out of the windows at the white landscape without being able to turn on a tap or flush the loo has been reminiscent of surveying the evening lights of Santiago from our hill-top refuge that had no electricity. Then we couldn't steal the electricity but here we can at least use the snow. For two days we've been shovelling it into a galvanised metal tub from outdoors then decanting it into saucepans and boiling it for domestic use. (But not for drinking - we're buying bottled mineral water in bulk for that.) This is a good way to appreciate just how much water is used simply to keep a house and family running, and a spur to take some eco action to reduce it next time we get a chance.
Here's a snap taken yesterday of the chalet viewed from above with Les Hauderes beyond it.
This evening, desperate for showers, we drove over to the thermal baths at Saillon. This is a nice trip to make, especially now. There is an indoor pool there but you really go for the three outdoor ones. There's a lap pool, but I was the only person in it when I cut a few quick lengths - swimming crawl your back and shoulders soon chill in the sub-zero temperatures. The other two pools are for hanging out and are adorned with a variety of water-spurting pipes to jazz them up. We arrived just after sunset and stayed until it started to get dark and it felt luxurious.
Driving there we listened to the latest Madonna album, in which she sings about New York but in which I can detect an Anglo/Mockney accent at times, and on the way back we listened to Michael Buble: Sway played as I swerved the car uncertainly up the track of melting ice.
Melting snow is a good metaphor for my state of mind as we prepare to return home. On the way to Saillon this evening I saw a BMW 840 - like mine only black instead of silver - and it was the first one I'd seen since leaving England. Mine is now in at the garage being serviced and MOT'ed ready for my return, and we're having to attend to other practical matters like sorting out the council tax and getting APEX train tickets for my first trips to London. In my more extreme moments I had thought of bumbling through the redundancy process and using my gardening leave - the period of notice serving during which you're not supposed to work for a competitor - for gardening, but I think I'll probably end up doing something more careery and prosaic. It reminds me of the excellent film, A Matter of Life and Death in which David Niven is called to heaven only to find that it was a timing error, and in any case he's called back to earth by love.
I'm also thawing a little regarding seeing all the people at home. One of the surprising things about being away has been that I communicate more with some people than I did before (through email) and less with others - for only a few people does it seem the same being away. Consequently returning looms as a quite scary prospect, though as the time draws nearer I can see that it will be okay. I do feel, though, like the inverse of the space traveller in those thought experiments about relativity - my year, I think, will seem to have been much longer than yours.
This is a good point at which to thank my good on-line friends Mike and Philippe et Line for clarifying that nonante is a word that exists in Swiss and Belgian French but not in modern French French. As they all told me, septante is likewise used here for 70, which I also discovered when buying this afternoon's ski pass.
On Monday - once we were able to drive out - Zoe and I went to a Mozart concert at Sion cathedral. It was given by the local Valais orchestra, who are clearly popular on their home turf. It was so busy that we had to take our seats about an hour before kick off, and I was relieved by how patiently Zoe waited on the wooden pews. I would have been much worse at her age. Even at twice her age I was worse. I recall attending a concert in a modern hall at Warwick University, where I studied. The hall had acoustics that were perhaps too good, and the stand of seats at the back where we sat were hypersensitive to any movement and seemed to rattle every time I fidgeted. A couple of old ladies sitting behind my friend and me tutted every time I moved, and when we left at the end my friend turned to them and, adopting his poshest voice, apologised for me, telling them that I had a terminal degenerative condition of the nervous system. They were shamed, it not occurring to them that someone would just invent such a story. These days I'm better at keeping still.
The concert at Sion was worth the wait. There were two short pieces and then a break, followed by the Requiem. This has a 12 track format like a pop CD that's conveniently familiar to the younger listener wanting to know how far through the performance we are. Behind the small orchestra stood a choir, half of men and half of women divided by gender down the middle. The men all looked very starchy in their tuxedoes. The women wore russet dresses with orange scarves that individually were not too successful but looked good en masse under the predominant royal blue of the stained glass windows. Unlike the stiff guys, each of the women bobbed around in her own style to the beat of the baton, giving the combined impression of a gentle sea.
There were also two solo singers of each gender. While the choir and some of the brass had to stay on stage for an entire piece in which they didn't feature, the soloists came on when needed and could repose in their seats until only a few bars before they had to sing. Then they moved centre stage. It was noticeable that the soprano, who had established her bona fides in the Exsultate Jubilate (which is essentially a short concerto for he soprano and the orchestra) before the break, stood further apart from the other three. This is, after all, a most status-conscious society. Until very recently the corporate grade of employees at Swiss banks (in Switzerland) was pegged to their rank in the army, national service being compulsory, with service calls every year.
Driving away from Sion up into the Val d'Herens, we had a spectacular view back over the town. In the foreground laid out across the valley floor were the lights of the city itself. Above this stand two illuminated castles, each atop a steep-sided hill. Beyond these were the mountains over the valley whose snowy peaks glowed eerily in the early night. This area of Switzerland includes all ten of the countries highest points, each of which is above 4,000 metres.
I'm pleased that Zoe enjoyed the Mozart, not simply because of the music itself but also because of its cultural importance, and the light that it can shed on the phenomenon of Christianity in Europe. When Zoe and Heidi reflect on the world religions more they'll come to realise that they don't auger too well for us. Any close reading of the New Testament will make clear that their parents are destined for eternal hell, not for the special quality of our sins (for everyone falls short) but for failing to keep up the club dues. Our prospects under Judaism and Islam are no better. In Buddhism we at least can keep getting more go-rounds until we wise up, though I suspect that as an eight-fold way ignorer I'd be lucky to have my next cycle as a higher mammal. But they can balance all of this bad karma against the splendour of Mozart.
Before they get so philosophical they can already contrast the gravitas of the Swiss in their places of worship with their get-up on the slopes. A few years ago Paula bought me, for Christmas, the skiing gear that I still use now. You might expect that I'd wear black (like Paula herself actually) but I have a Helly Hanson jacket and Columbia ski trousers, both in various greys. I like them very well - they're serious and look like the sort of clothes that you buy and expect to use for years, as though skiing were a branch of extreme-weather activity rather than of fashion. They're also very effective: when I was lying on my back in Banff waiting for a skidoo to arrive they kept the cold out perfectly. In fact, they're too heavy-duty to use for just about anything else, and, to answer a common question, our friend Craig dropped our ski gear off in Thyon, where we picked it up at the start of this month - we haven't carted it all around the world.
But these sober greys are not for the Swiss or for most other Europeans. Some of them cheekily wear Man U colours, implying that they're ski school instructors. Most, though, wear bright or pastel clothes - not just rosy-cheeked braided teenagers either, but grown ups with kids or even grandchildren. And, incredibly to me, they often sport these colours on salopettes or belted romper suits. I know that cool is in the eye of the beholder, and if they - or even you - feel chippy in a red romper suit with pink flashes, well more power to you! I'll just be the sad grey guy at the back, in my own zone.
The Swiss do have, if you go into the stores, some excellent gear that they could buy instead. There is that alpine snow-flake pattern that is often knit in reds, greys and whites. When I was young my Mom knitted me a pair of sweaters in this pattern in a couple of different colourways, and I'd be happy to wear them still if I could find them and they fit. Even now I wear a head band in the same pattern. Here it seems more common to see jester hats, although to be fair these are often worn by snowborders, who dress like a new species of rapper that has adapted to function outdoors.
Off the slopes, though, the Swiss have their own kind of more credible cool. We occasionally see them shuffling past the chalet, either in neat little plastic snow shows or on cross-country skies. They're almost always in couples and tend to be older - as readers of Heidi's newsletters will know, Switzerland has the highest median age of any country that we've visited this year. Bhutan, when you're there, is sometimes compared to Switzerland, but that comparison is never made here. Unlike Bhutan, in Switzerland they have roads in every canton, with the result that the infant mortality rate here doesn't rise anywhere close to Bhutan's astounding 10%. And here they're all comparatively rich and they all ski well, whatever they wear.
Our skiing has progressed to Week Two standard now. We've been out for half days this week at both Arolla and Thyon, and every day has been sunny and bright, although by the end of today with no recent snow some of the runs were starting to get a little scratchy. We're all skiing better and faster, and as yet have had no proper tumbles. I've had two knock-downs, both of which qualify as what the chuckling Dr Hibbert of The Simpsons terms "comedy traumas" or "traumedies". The first time I was standing waiting for the girls when Zoe, who usually has good control, came straight at me full pelt and took us both down. The second time I was giving Heidi some solemn advice when a returning button seat from the drag lift hit me on the head and knocked me clean over.
The other notable event of the last couple of days was the water going off throughout our district. Since yesterday morning we've had no water at all in the chalet. With the weather warming slightly one of the pipes carrying water down from the mountain reservoir has cracked and so far they haven't found it. From my time working at a Swiss bank (actually in Switzerland, not with my current employer that is to all intents and purposes American in my domain) I'm not surprised: urgency was not the watchword. People roundabouts seem fatalistically resigned to wait for the situation to get sorted in its own time, which is a great attitude if you can find it within yourself. Very Buddhist.
With the chalet surrounded by snow, which is a special state of water, looking out of the windows at the white landscape without being able to turn on a tap or flush the loo has been reminiscent of surveying the evening lights of Santiago from our hill-top refuge that had no electricity. Then we couldn't steal the electricity but here we can at least use the snow. For two days we've been shovelling it into a galvanised metal tub from outdoors then decanting it into saucepans and boiling it for domestic use. (But not for drinking - we're buying bottled mineral water in bulk for that.) This is a good way to appreciate just how much water is used simply to keep a house and family running, and a spur to take some eco action to reduce it next time we get a chance.
Here's a snap taken yesterday of the chalet viewed from above with Les Hauderes beyond it.
This evening, desperate for showers, we drove over to the thermal baths at Saillon. This is a nice trip to make, especially now. There is an indoor pool there but you really go for the three outdoor ones. There's a lap pool, but I was the only person in it when I cut a few quick lengths - swimming crawl your back and shoulders soon chill in the sub-zero temperatures. The other two pools are for hanging out and are adorned with a variety of water-spurting pipes to jazz them up. We arrived just after sunset and stayed until it started to get dark and it felt luxurious.
Driving there we listened to the latest Madonna album, in which she sings about New York but in which I can detect an Anglo/Mockney accent at times, and on the way back we listened to Michael Buble: Sway played as I swerved the car uncertainly up the track of melting ice.
Melting snow is a good metaphor for my state of mind as we prepare to return home. On the way to Saillon this evening I saw a BMW 840 - like mine only black instead of silver - and it was the first one I'd seen since leaving England. Mine is now in at the garage being serviced and MOT'ed ready for my return, and we're having to attend to other practical matters like sorting out the council tax and getting APEX train tickets for my first trips to London. In my more extreme moments I had thought of bumbling through the redundancy process and using my gardening leave - the period of notice serving during which you're not supposed to work for a competitor - for gardening, but I think I'll probably end up doing something more careery and prosaic. It reminds me of the excellent film, A Matter of Life and Death in which David Niven is called to heaven only to find that it was a timing error, and in any case he's called back to earth by love.
I'm also thawing a little regarding seeing all the people at home. One of the surprising things about being away has been that I communicate more with some people than I did before (through email) and less with others - for only a few people does it seem the same being away. Consequently returning looms as a quite scary prospect, though as the time draws nearer I can see that it will be okay. I do feel, though, like the inverse of the space traveller in those thought experiments about relativity - my year, I think, will seem to have been much longer than yours.
This is a good point at which to thank my good on-line friends Mike and Philippe et Line for clarifying that nonante is a word that exists in Swiss and Belgian French but not in modern French French. As they all told me, septante is likewise used here for 70, which I also discovered when buying this afternoon's ski pass.
Posted: Fri - March 17, 2006 at 09:10 AM
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Published On: Mar 17, 2006 09:11 AM
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Published On: Mar 17, 2006 09:11 AM