Air turning blue

I first met Dave, pictured above, as he was staggering towards me with his family down at Chaudanne on Sunday morning. He bellowed out in his strong Yorkshire accent "You must be Martin, f'*%* I'm chuffing bu&%*##d, that's the problem with being a fat b#%#*%$". Silence followed as his family closely watched to see my reaction to these expletives. Sweat was pouring off his face, as I burst out into laughter. His family looked relieved.

I've had one of the funniest weeks with the Johnson family. On skis, they were a mixture of complete beginners and blue to red run skiers.

Back home in Leeds they are a real mixture of professions: an accountant, two entertainers, a freight company director, a sparky, an ex pro boxer now tiler, a health advisor and others. Each morning I never really knew what physical state they would turn up in.

Thankfully, nothing matched some of the hangovers observed during their first morning!?!

One thing was guaranteed however, the daily Yorkshire expletives flowed freely, only from Dave's lips though I'm pleased to say. Even so I loved being with them, helping them on the pistes and sharing chairlifts and stories with them. I bet you can't guess which football team they worship?

I've also been skiing with Alex this week, a retail banking consultant in London. Alex is a strong skier on piste, especially high speed carving. But he realises that his technique suffers on other terrain, for example skiing on bumps, off piste and down steep couloirs.

We worked out that balance could be fine-tuned, and steering of the skis could become more accurate. Both of these points were tested when one afternoon I thought we should try some proper off piste the other side of Val Thorens. We explored down the 'Combe sans Nom', where even though the temperatures were still low, there was no powder to be found anywhere.

Alex and I were joined by his friend, Nash, who is a snowboarder. Although the snow conditions off piste were far from perfect, they really enjoyed the experience of being miles away from anywhere. Plus they loved the high altitude exercise when getting back to civilisation, even though Nash struggled on his board traversing sometimes!?!

The weather feels like Groundhog Day at the moment, sunny blue skies rule day after day, why bother checking the weather forecast at the moment? I can think of worst places to be right now.MartinP.S. I haven't done the fifteen word summary recently, so here goes;Expleting Yorkshire beginners entertain Méribel, Nash turned green snowboarding off piste with Alex, chuffing Banker !?!