Troisieme sous-sol

As we flock to ski resorts in search of white fluff where we can expedite our hips in
swerving directions, the dire task -before negotiating slopes and frenzied down hillers-
is to find a lodging. And so clicking with confidence I found the reasonable find, 10 snowmen from the chairlift with a recycling pit for clear, brown and green glass nearby.
Size did not matter since we knew it had 4 beds but a surprise sent a snowflake down our spines when we saw it had no real windows! This charming studio we rented turned out to be a 3rd floor underground with the boiler above us churning to heat the entire post-card chalet. So astutely designed it did provide the most magnificent view of a sunflowerin full bloom under a halogen lamp. For 7 days and 7 nights a message of hope and lightness of spring countered the rudeness of winter, the laden roofs that threatened passersby and even those enjoying a drink or a bite seemed miles away.


But maybe the real story was my recent discovery of diclofenac, a wondrous cream that I could rub into my jolly arthritic knee; enabling my body to take to the slopes in a non-truculent fashion, down the darkest, black escarpments, challenging the parabolic paradigm of two boards on two legs!

Indeed, everyday I rubbed and smeared that white substance of envy, and boldly gaited to a fair chairlift to take me up heaven's way,



Until one day I learned with disgrace that my arthritic intermezzo was at the cost of an expiring species: the vulture. It was simple: having leafed through the "unpleasant effects" of the above mentioned molecule, it appears that for those who choose to depart this world on a Tower of Silence, where the body is lain to be naturally devoured by vultures, these later

mentioned creatures of the sky are plummeting stone dead due to this molecule that attacks their livers. Nay, nay! to such a cream that disrespecteth the ritual of the dead;



and so I hang my boards and switch on the TV to watch an avalanche of bad news and dwindling economies, except for a lucky few such as Nestle, who, against all odds, are selling more chocolate in 2009 than ever before.