Friday 9 April 2010

The difference between...

...skiing holidays pre and post children. (I thought I might lighten the mood after yesterday...)


Pre Children

  • You can ski all day
  • It doesn't matter if you wake up with a hangover, you can take as long as you want to get out of bed and even kid yourself that it's not the excess of alcohol curdling your brain, just your body reacting to the altitude
  • Lunch can be a long, leisurely affair on the side of the mountain, and may even - oh, those far-off halcyon days - be accompanied by wine
  • Vin chaud/gluhwine features as one of your of your five a day (What? It - sometimes - comes with fruit in the top. That qualifies in my book)
  • If you're in a relationship (or - I'm told - sometimes even if not), you may even get to partake of spontaneous nooky in the afternoon when everyone else is out on the slopes
  • You're only paying for yourself, so whilst skiing is never a cheap holiday, it doesn't break the bank
  • You get to experience the Apres-Ski to the full.
  • Dancing in ski boots in some badly lit slippery-wooden floored bar is good clean fun...
  • Did I mention you can ski all day?


Post children

  • Ski all day? You count yourself lucky if you manage an hour in the morning between the drop-off of weeping children and the collection of the ski-demons they have morphed into during your 2 hour absence
  • Hangover? Fat chance. Not only are you rarely awake long enough in the evening to down more than half a glass of wine, but the prospect of dealing with 2 squirming children unwilling to get into their ski clothes and traipse up the road to their lessons, whilst definitely enough to drive you to drink, is also enough to make you realise that adding a muzzy head to the mix would be a very bad idea indeed...
  • Lunch is a cling-film wrapped squashed ham sandwich discarded by your child after you pick them up from their ski lesson. They haven't eaten it as they are too full from snacking on all the biscuits and chocolate you used as bribes to persuade them to stay at their lesson in the first place.
  • Vin chaud (and accompanying fruit) is off the menu; you need a clear head to deal with your mini-menace children on the slopes as they simply point their skis down hill and go, ignoring your increasingly frantic pleas to 'put in a turn, for chrissake!' as you try desperately to keep up with them. If you both make it down the slope without ending up in the back of one of those first aid sleighs you see being transported down the mountain, you consider the experience a success.
  • Nooky? I'm not even going to dignify that suggestion with further comment.
  • By the time you've forked out for your children's ski hire, boot hire, helmet hire, thermal underwear, goggles, lessons, lift pass, and the badge they get when they finish the course (yes, you do have to pay for that), your second mortgage may need to be increased. And that's before you even think about the ruinously expensive plates of spaghetti bolognese they hoover up in the mountain side restaurants when they decide that they are hungry after their lesson after all. (Note to self - always carry extra squashed cling-film-wrapped ham sandwiches for such emergencies in the future...)
  • Apres ski? I've heard of it, but...

13 comments:

  1. Hahaha yup after one ski-ing holiday we've decided to leave the girls with my parents and sneak in a weekend on our own, at least that way we won't have to remortgage

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  2. It's even worse when one of your offspring is way younger than the other two and you can't bear to leave him crying in the nursery. I think I managed an hour per week on the slopes for the first three years of his life! No wonder I lost all my nerve.

    ReplyDelete
  3. A ski vacation? What is that? It sounds so alien to me. I have no idea what it is like.

    ReplyDelete
  4. MaM, sounds like a good plan to me!

    Brit, maybe we should ALL do as MAM does...

    EPM, I thought losing my nerve was simply down to getting older, heavier and realising that if I hurt myself badly I would still have to do the laundry and the washing up because no-one else would. But your excuse works for me too...

    Nora/Irene (it IS Irene, isn't it?), you're right of course. 'Ski' and 'vacation' are not really two words that should ever appear together...

    ReplyDelete
  5. How did you guess it was me? I there something very obvious about me?

    ReplyDelete
  6. Post children any type of holiday is cheaper and easier taken separately. Unfortunately I couldn't see this until ours were 14 and 9 years old when we went to France for a whole week without them. Car journeys with out the ubiquitous 'Are we there yet', 'I'm bored' or worse, 'I feel sick' (the younger one was a very poor traveller). The simple meal choices, the freedom to indulge in a little light alcoholic refreshment knowing a peaceful lay-in the next morning was a given..... And yes, I admit it, I missed them - but not enough to refrain from doing it again ;-)

    ReplyDelete
  7. I went on my first vacation with a kid last week. We took my 6 year old stepdaughter to Washington DC. She definitely had some different priorities!

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  8. And that is why I'm so happy my parents take us all skiing.

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  9. on the plus side, i quite enjoyed having an excuse not to feel you have to hit the apres ski or be a party pooper. and at least you're up early enough for the first lift. even if you're far too busy sorting out your offspring to get anything like the first lift.

    skiing and children: they just really don't mix, do they? unless you win the lottery, of course....

    ReplyDelete
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