Norcenni: A customer find, a Flintstones tribute act and another game of ‘guess the Happy Camp person’
Fiona, Penny and Jess (the lovely ladies at Norcenni who sent me a picture of their feet a couple of months ago), have just emailed me some more great pictures for the blog. Fiona has been trying to send these to me for about a week, I think – they got here in the end, one by one! 🙂
First up, I am told this was a fantastic customer find, but I’m afraid I can’t actually see what it is! It looks a bit like a bottle of olive oil, but as all couriers in Italy end up with at least ten of those in their live by the end of the season I wouldn’t have thought it was that exciting! Maybe something a bit stronger? Grappa? Limoncello? Another new cleaning product for 2011? Answers on a tacky Italian postcard, please.
Secondly, a Wilma Flintstone tribute act appear to have (Bed)rocked up on Norcenni (see what I did there? If you didn’t, don’t worry, it’s probably for the best) and taken over the Happy Camp reception for the day. Looking fabulous, by the way!
Yabbadabbadooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!
Yabbadabbadoooooooooooooooo!!
Next up, having a bit of a Playschool moment here (yes, I AM old, thanks for noticing) Let’s have a look through the round window. I think there’s a bit of a Happy Camp theme going on here too. Can you guess which sunglasses belong to which courier?
I’m going to move on to the next picture before I start sounding like Floella Benjamin.
Finally, the caption the girls sent me for this one was “You ain’t seen me, right?”
Match the glasses to the feet!
And with this, I think the mystery of the feet has been revealed!! Have a look at the picture in the right-hand column of this blog (under “A ‘step’ too far?”) and see if you can decide…
Rais Gerbi have been airing their dirty laundry in public…
…but only due to adverse weather conditions! Here’s the latest update from Pat & Eric:
This is my Brad returns (yes dirty linen – no not dirty women) hanging out to dry after our reception tent was waterlogged for four consecutive days following continual torrential rain and horrendous thunder and lightening storms. Our paradise isle turned into a nightmare. It was not a pretty sight I can assure you. Hey ho the joys of being a Happy Camp Park Manager.
Rais Gerbi's dirty linen (not women)
Poll: New cleaning product for 2011
The following product has been submitted by Andy & Loretta at Baia Domizia as a suggestion for next year’s list of cleaning products:
Baia Domizia's Bum Bum
Please let us know your thoughts!
Eric’s got piles
No, not those kind of piles; piles of pine needles swept up from around our mobiles!!!!
Eric's piles
Thanks to Pat in Sicily for this one xx
What do you do in the winter? (From Dave & Caz Gibson, Free Beach, Tuscany)
The following post was sent to me by two of our Park Managers in Tuscany and gives a lot of very useful information on what it’s like to do a ski season. This is all in their own words. If you’d like some more info, you can leave a comment at the end of this post and I’ll let the Park Managers know. Thanks very much, Dave & Caz 🙂 xx
“What do you do in the winter?
For those who have to find work during the winter months there are plenty of opportunities to do a “Ski Season” for us mature couples. More and more winter tour operators are employing older couples as chalet hosts.
Of course, firstly, you have to enjoy ski-ing and the whole Alpine experience and then we started by gleaning information from fellow summer couriers who had already done winter seasons to get an idea of which companies to approach and which resorts would suit us the best. Another qualification has to be a love of cooking. Don’t worry that you have no previous experience of cooking for large numbers (most chalets cater for 12+), there are specific ski chalet cookery courses that give you the relevant diploma as well as CIEH (Chartered Institute of Environmental Health) level 2 awards in Food Safety in Catering, which all reputable Ski companies require. Look on the internet to see what is available. I did my course after returning home from Cisano/San Vito last October with a company called Natives, who also act as a recruitment agency.
The internet is also a good place to find out which companies are advertising for winter recruitment. We approached “Ski Beat” – a company recommended to us by a fellow “mature” motorhome/sking/cooking enthusiast. We submitted application forms, CV’s and a 6 day menu plan and were lucky to secure an interview in March before returning to Italy. Soon after arriving at Free Beach, Ski Beat confirmed our job in the family resort of La Rosiere on the French/Italian border. We will be living in our chalet which has 6 guest bedrooms, (all en suite), catering for up to 14 adults and children, and working a 6 day week. We are given full training at the beginning of December in La Plagne before going on to our resort to montage the chalet and practice cooking some of the 3 course meals given to us as our 6 day menu plan to get used to our chalet kitchen and feed fellow resort couriers prior to opening. Also included are hot breakfast options and afternoon cakes – home made, of course; cooking cakes at altitude is totally different to sea level!
With Ski Beat, one of the chalet hosts is also a Ski Host for the guests, (so long as the guests are competent skiers on at least red runs), acting as a ski guide at the beginning of their holiday for two days to show them the ski area etc. Dave is looking forward to this bit the most, but in return he will be my “chalet bitch”, but already having an honours degree in cleaning from Happy Camp, doing 6 bedrooms + bathrooms per day will not be too arduous in return fora guaranteed two days ski-ing every week! Helping prep the food may cause a few more problems as BBQ’s and pasta are his current limits!
As with all courier type jobs the pay is low but the perks more than make up for this – free food and wine (as you eat every night with your guests), a full seasons ski pass and ski hire, free ski lessons, medical insurance cover, transport out and back from the UK (overnight coach from/to London) and if you go that little bit further to make your guests as comfortable as possible, tips earned can really add up AND it beats a wet dull dark winter in the UK spent shelf filling in Sainsburys!”
Caravan for sale!!!!!
Hi everyone,
Please have a look at the following message from Dick & Maggie in France & let me know if you are interested.
Caravan 2 berth for sale. 1997 Coachman 390/2 V.I.P.
Very tidy condition with bathroom, full oven, fridge, heater, alarm and Tyron wheel bands.
Comes with awning, electric cable, spare tyre and carrier.
€2,300
We are selling because my sister is going to Australia and we are buying their newer and bigger caravan. We are at Le Soleil. France and would like to sell the caravan in Europe. You can contact us through Laura. Sorry we can’t post any photos as we don’t have a digital camera.
Misunderstandings and the joy of customer finds (or Lost and Found. And Eaten)
The Big Story Of The Day on Monday came from Sicily, who I have to say are providing us with some great tales of campsite life this year. Thanks guys 🙂
Some Italian clients emailed our booking office on Monday to advise that they had left several different types of cheese in the fridge in their mobile home, and is there any way we could send it back to them.
Unfortunately, there were a number of problems that prevented us from meeting this special request. I’m sure you can guess what one of them is before scrolling down.
• The cheese is bound to get a bit sweaty when you send it in the post. Have you ever left a block of cheese out of the fridge for a bit too long? I don’t want to think about what it would have looked like when it got back!
• The clients live in TURIN. That’s quite a big distance from Sicily. I don’t think you could get much further away whilst still being in the same country.
• Eric, Pat, & Pat’s sister have already eaten it. I’m sure that was the one you’d already guessed.
For those who are interested to know what sort of cheese was on offer, I am advised that there was a delicious-sounding ‘piccante’ cheese which probably had bits of peperoncino (chilli pepper?) in it, and some sort of yellow cheese which, I am told, resembled half a testicle. I’m sure it tasted a lot better than it looked!
Myself and the girls in the booking office had a bit of a hysterical five minutes over this one before composing ourselves so that someone could ring the client back and tell them that there’d been a big misunderstanding. We decided that honesty was the best policy and, luckily, they ended up taking it pretty well.
So, that’s the story of the cheese, and the story of how the Park Managers found out I knew the word for ‘testicle’ in Italian (I was describing the cheese to the girls in the office). Whoops.
If you have more excellent stories like this one, drop me a line!
Take care,
Laura xxx
A surprise arrival on Marina di Venezia
“Yes, I’ve booked with Happy Camp. What do you mean, you don’t accept woodpeckers?”
(Thanks to Roy and Carol for this one – they said they heard him knocking on their roof and managed to get this great photo through the caravan window!)
Overly optimistic shopping lists
When setting up your live area on a campsite, you want it to look good, don’t you? It’s your own little space outside of work and once you’ve got it to a point where it feels like home, you can just relax and get on with having a great season.
When you live in a tent, it’s a bit more of a challenge. You haven’t bought your own caravan or motor home that you’re used to living in already, and most of the stuff in your live area has probably been cobbled together with whatever was in stock – some bits of old inventory, sofa cushions from seasons past, as much leftover carpet as you can get your hands on and a lot of fold-down sets of shelves that have been stored away in a mobile for five months – it often requires disturbing a small family of spiders before you can put those up. When I worked as a courier, the practise of blinging your tent (i.e. getting it into a habitable state) was an enjoyable part of the process, in particular for the younger seasonal workers, and it became a bit of a competition as to who could get hold of the best stuff. “You’ve got a proper carpet!” “You’ve got a proper place to keep your shoes!” etc.
Sometimes, though, you arrive on a new site with no inventory, no live tent and no proper carpet, and you have to ask for a bit of help from an Area Manager, Sites Director or Logistics Director, a contact within the company but outside of the campsite who can get hold of the stuff you need, a bit like Red from The Shawshank Redemption (ok, not EXACTLY like Red from The Shawshank Redemption, I don’t want to get in trouble with anyone here). This is exactly what our new Park Managers on Torre del Porticciolo did when they contacted our Logistics Director with a list of items needed for their live area.
The list started off with all the stuff you’d expect – live tent, double bed, sofa cushions etc, all of which John knew that they’d need and was ready to stick on the Luton. Then came the twist; the list became less and less serious as it went along, with requests including “leather corner unit, wardrobes, 50′ LED TV, BMW x 5, large mobile telephone aerial and 20 cases of Bacardi”. Separate from the list, our maintenance man also asked for a few cases of Newcastle Brown. No prizes for guessing the maintenance man in question.
When this list was relayed to John over the phone, it was met with a less than enthusiastic response, but it was also met with a chuckle. Needless to say, the stuff has been delivered to Torre del Porticciolo without the more expensive items. Huge thanks to Ken and Cath for giving us a laugh 🙂
Laura xxxx
I love this story!
Seasonal work is fantastic. Glorious sunshine, the chance to work in a beautiful setting and meet new people from all over Europe, and if you’re lucky you’ll make some great friends from it too. I had another lovely email from Eric and Pat the other week that described just that:
“A pre-season ‘meeting’ was held at the Gough’s (Eric and Pat, Sicily) in La Manga. The meeting was fluid and flowing and held in excellent companionship. There was no agenda and no minutes were taken. Only one motion was carried and that was to re-convene at the same time and place next year. The meeting dried up with everyone feeling refreshed and motivated for the onset of the new season. ”
From left to right are; Gill and Andy, Sardinia, Carol and Roy, Marina de Venezia and Eric.
Thanks for this one!
How's your season going? 