Guarding a snowman to no avail

Location Morzine one bed | Mood Homesick | Date 5 March 2006
Author (full name): 
Franny Armstrong
Morzine one bed
Pet Shop Boys, Closer to Heaven: "Have some faith, in the love we share. Is it fate or does darkness end in light?"
Soaking wet everything. Every item of clothing stinking. Feeling shaky like the beginning of flu.
5 March 2006
Current crisis: 
Lizzie in a strop
Current silver lining: 
Managed to get the last hotel bed in town. But only one.
Next job: 
Artifical snow machines doing their thing before the slopes open

Lugging gear in the rain (again)Lugging gear in the rain (again)

Photograph: Charlotte Rushton


Spent four hours today doing 45-minute alternate shifts with Lizzie guarding a snowman! We'd got some kids to make it on-camera for our time-lapse shot, and didn't want it getting squashed by a hoodie before we'd had a chance to film it with people doing night skiing behind. So we waited there in the -12 degrees, bitter wind, non-stop snowing, soaking wet feet, jumping up and down to keep warm.

Then we heard that the night skiing was cancelled and that we'd got hypothermia for nothing. This did not help the general temper.

Lizzie is anyway in a very rare black mood as she is missing her best friend's engagement party in London tonight. She'd come up with all sorts of complicated plans so she could make it back in time, but I had to overrule them and insist she stayed. Then we had to move out of our apartment and there were no hotel rooms to be had. Well, there was one, but it only had one (double) bed. I've shared beds, in the sleeping sense, with all sorts of weird and wonderful people over the years, so was quite happy to share with Lizzie. But she insisted on sleeping on the floor with no blankets. Perhaps she felt she needed penance to make up for missing the party.