Happy new year to one and all !!! Today is the 8th of January which as everyone knows is officially the last day of Xhristmas - what a Shame. I am back in Barcelona after a rather long and winding journey down through Europe in the ol' jalopy. Setting off at 10.30pm the day before New Years' Eve, I drove through the night, witnessing a great sunrise when passing through the Champagne region with the roads all to myself. How apt, I thought - Champagne for New Year's !!! "Champagne for my real friends, real pain for my sham friends" etc ... two hours later I was snoring in a traffic jam outside Dijon, which struck me as a bit more down to earth. Arrived in Bourg St. Maurice to meet Sebaaaastian and Brrrradders - was shattered but managed to pull through to see in the New Year at the Howell household with Seb's folks, Luke and new ladyfriend Emma. Many thanks to all of you for allowing me to remember New Year for the first time since I was 15 !!!

New Year's Day and I was very excited to be able to use my new snow chains on the car (see picture). We drove up to Val d'Isere to meet William and had a great day's skiing (for "skiing" read "lunch" however - we were on William's timetable). Seb and Bradders left that evening to head back to London and I stayed with Paul, Debs and Guillaume to ski another day before realising the back wheels on my car had completely frozen ! After sliding round Val for a couple of hours (it was like doing a constant handbrake turn around town - awesome) we eventually got the wheels unstuck with the help of monsieur Ogh-he-hogh (think that was his name) in the garage and off I set down to Barca. The drive down through France was "thimply wonderful" - was a shame my camera was broken as there were some pretty spectacular views dropping down through the Alps.

Have two days of Finance interviews coming up starting tomorrow - should really be studying the "Capital Asset Pricing Model" and "Weighted Average Cost of Capital" (zzzz) but golly it is tiresome. Anyway just wanted to stick up the photos that Sebbo sent over from New Year - thanks for them chief ... hasta luego !


Arrival in Val (note the snow chains)

Snow really was this deep !

Extreme off-piste action

A frozen lunch at la Fruitiere restaurant