Elon Musk's Birthday Party and Writing in The Alps
Moments from around a year ago
In late 2022, I was working in a restaurant as a sommelier. It was and still is called The Vineyard. It’s a 5-star hotel, part of the Relais et Châteaux group *shrugs shoulders* - it's no big deal really. It’s full of expensive art: a Henry Moore sculpture, a portrait by Edgar Degas. It was founded by the guy who started Classic FM and who made a sweet dime creating the CGI software used for the first Avatar film. He bought a vineyard in California and made his hotel a reflection of it in sleepy old Stockcross, near Newbury. The man in particular is called Peter Michael - I call him Pierre Michel when I feel like it. In the restaurant, he’d have fancy shooting dinners with his son and guests such as Lord Carnarvon - the owner of Highclere Castle and the descendant of the chap who helped discover Tutankhamun. A certain tech billionaire who likes space and electric cars (nudge, nudge) had his birthday party in the hotel around six years ago. He apparently paid millions to redesign the entire interior as a spaceship (I’m genuinely not joking) and during the actual night he mostly stayed in his hotel room - though not alone as a cheeky Italian coworker told me.
Kate Middleton also often visits the hotel for spa days with her family - no one really cares about her though.
In childhood, I used to come for dinners at this hotel with my parents. It is such an amazing space and all aspects of it reveal decades of intention. Every piece of furniture, every detail is so carefully and lovingly chosen such as the iron railing, resembling vine leaves and the malleability of metal, stretching for over 50 metres but with each cm having been sculpted by hand. When you enter, double doors open automatically and you behold a glass wine vault and, in the room beyond, a painting depicting The Judgement of Paris - the greatest event in the history of Californian wine. It’s not all sunshine and roses working in the restaurant business, but I am so fond of the time I spent working there last year and I am so grateful to have met so many lovely people who really influenced my life.
I had told my boss, Sommelier of The Year 2019, that I wouldn’t be able to work on New Year’s Eve. He had expressed frustration but said if the flights had already been booked, there was not much he could do. I felt like crying out “What about my ooman rights?”. I didn’t say that and I headed off to Lausanne to spend New Year’s with my girlfriend and her tribe of friends from home. They are all great people and primarily friends of her brothers. They have a loving bond wrought from years of knowing each other and it is always fascinating to observe them, the different personalities, the uncomfortable yet loving kinships, and those members who seem obliged to show their faces, there out of familial duty less than actual desire.
I stayed a few days with my girlfriend, braving the jump into a freezing Lake Geneva as an initiation into her family. I took a train to Dijon to meet my Dad, his friend Dick, and Dick’s nephew Will. We stayed a night in a cheap Ibis and then made our way to the Alps, a resort called Sainte-Foy to ski for a week. Dick was a retired PE teacher, expert windsurfer, whom my Dad had met back in his youth. I’ve always loved his humour, the way he speaks, and the wisdom acquired from extensive travels, love, and tragedy. I always feel he is a secret holy-man, a yogi, hidden under values of drinking, sport, and masculinity.
His nephew Will takes some of his uncle’s traits but is more of a free-spirit, living for his punk-band, his friends, also drinking, and most importantly Chelsea FC. He is an utter fanatic, the best day of his life was when Chelsea won the Champions League in 2012 and he and others opened Champagne outside the gates of Stamford Bridge. While on holiday we headed to one of the few bars in town to watch a weak Chelsea team get pounded by Man City. When they scored a third goal, Will suddenly shouted “for fuck’s sake Chelsea,” seething with anger and sadness. There was no filter in this cry, no jokey tone to disguise his frustrations in front of other people. He didn’t care if we thought he had no decorum, Chelsea FC was his life and he couldn’t believe they weren’t performing as well as they should have been. After we left the pub and in the following months, my Dad and I would often look back on that moment and relive our shock at how obsessed Will is with Chelsea. But I greatly admire the way he wears his heart on his sleeve.
The snow was good and we had days in Les Arcs and in Tignes. My favourite moments however, apart from fresh pow constantly being refashioned between the trees of Sainte-Foy, have to be in those first calm hours before we hit the slopes. Each morning, I’d rise before everyone else and head to the little boulangerie, across the snow and in the town. It would usually be fairly empty at that time, and so I’d buy our baguettes and croissants and then take a seat at a table and write in my journal. I’d start writing in French and change into English after I had written a page. I’d chat to the guy behind the till, who had just arrived in town to begin his season and after thirty minutes, I’d wander back to people beginning to stir in our apartment. Will would always be the latest to rise and as he was sleeping in the kitchen, we’d try and make a pot of coffee ready, so that he’d at least get something out of our disturbance.
I don’t know why I felt so great writing in my journal early in that boulangerie. Perhaps it was the calm, the sense that a new day was dawning and I was here alive and detailing my presence in it. Maybe it was the grounding sensation of my pen on the fine paper and my awful handwriting.
