Just look at those Russian abs. They knew how to make you, umm, feel impressed upon.

Last weekend I got back from a week of learning to snowboard in Les Arcs 1800, in the French Alps. Really good fun, although pretty painful – the first few days were just warm enough for everything to go slushy during the day, and then freeze solid at night. It snowed heavily on the Wednesday and then stayed between -5°C and -18°C for the rest of the week – but by that time the damage was done, and I had to pull out of our final day’s expedition to La Plagne since I was in agony every time I sat down…

Everyone there (and people like Hickman who went elsewhere) can only talk about one thing – the growing problem of a lack of snow in Europe. It’s getting pretty noticeable, and there were grand plans in Les Arcs to vastly expand their artificial snow making capacity (including building a big reservoir) – it’s ironic, of course, how much power gets consumed trying to paper over the effects of climate change.

Apart from that, the resort was great, especially the Double Mountain burgers in the Tex Mex place we (eventually) found – I might have had them two or three times during the week. The instructors were cool too – François and especially Hervey, who pranced around on his board looking like a ballerina, distinguishable from kilometres away as he leaned back and forth with his arms outstretched (”I go to the pylon, I go to the chalet. I go to the pylon…”). Both were on that verge of making things look exasperatingly easy, but I was getting there by the end of the week and it was fun, even if I did suck a bit!

I haven’t got any photos of the group of us snowboarding, since I didn’t really fancy taking an SLR on the slopes – but Paul Stark had his camera, so you can see his photos instead. I especially like the group photo – now all we need is an album, and that can be the cover!

(And please join in with Mr T’s call for a caption competition!)

Think about this – it will eventually jump the species barrier, but where is that more likely to happen – here, where poultry farming is highly industrialised, or where people and animals share houses and streets with one another? And so if it’s going to jump the species barrier somewhere in South East Asia, what does it matter if migratory birds have flu in Greece? If there’s going to be a pandemic, then it’ll start somewhere, and arrive at Heathrow a day or two later. The newspapers seem to be making it out that we’re be doomed once it reaches our shores, and only when it reaches our shores, which is utter nonsense.

Moreover, why is this suddenly such a big deal? Has it escaped everyone’s notice that it’s been going on for years now? Has it become something montrously different now that some birds are dying – (gasp) in Europe?

Generally, we’re all pretty pathetic. Under-educated, over-sensitive, easily agitated, lacking in common sense and needing to brush up a bit on our sense of fatalism.

Still, in Britain we’re over a decade behind France when it comes to using PINs at points of sale, and when I was travelling around Australia and New Zealand I was grateful that many British tourists ahead of me had got all the checkout assistants well trained – as soon as they recognised a card from a British bank, they used the fall-back signature verification. Interestingly, PINs work fine in cashpoints, but even though I knew them for my cards, their point-of-sale network obviously wasn’t connected up to our PIN verification network (or however it all really works), since I had to sign for everything. Maybe next time it’ll all be joined up better.

When I was in Geelong (in Victoria, Aus), one of the Conservation Volunteers I had been working with a few weeks earlier caught up with me, and gave me a book that he reckoned I would like reading. War and Peace. A stunningly long, long-winded, long, long book, that I had been planning on reading for quite a few years. Since I was on holiday, still had a few months left, and had plenty of beaches ahead of me, I gave it a go. It took me until I got to Christchuch, NZ to finish it. Four days before the end of my holiday, and almost two months after I started. But it was worth it.

Anyone out there who’s read it? If you have, and if you can remember what the point of the whole thing is, then you might see what I’m driving at in the first paragraph. For those of you who haven’t, it’s a long and involved tale of some people, doing some stuff, and is a not-even-slightly disguised piece of philosophy by Leo Tolstoy. The gist of it (if it’s possible to summarise the Longest Book I’ve Ever Read), is that the more important the decision, and the higher up the chain of Power that you are, the less choice you actually have, and the less influence you have on the course of events. And in general, things are going to happen the way they are going to happen anyway, and there’s practically nothing that anyone can do about it. Reading it was probably the single most useful thing I’ve done over the past year, and I’m glad that the chance to do so popped out of nowhere. Thanks Dan.

I’d recommend it to lots of people (especially if you’ve ever tried to Change The World, even slightly), and I can guarantee that you’ll find it valuable, and finish it by Christmas.

Christmas 2009.

I’m proud to say that I bucked the trend amongst the travellertariat, and didn’t keep a diary along the way. Well, I tried in Peru, gave up quickly, and I have to say that it was more turgid than my usual rantings. So I’m hoping that time will act as a kind of filter, and only the most interesting stuff will remain. But don’t expect me to remember anyone’s name. I can’t do that at the best of times, never mind when I was meeting new people pretty much every day for months on end. So over the next few months (and years), the Travel section will hopefully fill with all the interesting little anecdotes about life abroad. I guess I’ll need to work fairly quickly though, since I’m already stroking my chin, and eyeing up which places are next on my hitlist…