Part
One:
hanging around Courma, and at the rink
Last trip of the summer for my friends and me... on August 20th we
set out for Courmayeur, for another stop of the Stars on Ice tour.
The best thing about this trip was probably the fact that it would be
the occasion to reunite quite a bit of the group.. apart from Sissi and
me, our travelmates from Cerreto would be there (Mary, Anna, Filippo)
and some more... the twins from Viterbo Chiara and Francesca, our beloved
Lydia from Torino, plus I brought my mum too, and we met Mara from Torino
and Katia and Lucio from Icewire.it.... add some friends of Anna's, and
we were quite a group!!
We left Milan comfortably planning to be in Courmayeur for lunch... I
drove with my mum, Melly and Mary, while Filippo brought the twins, and
Sissi. Unfortunately I have to admit that we had better days in Courmayeur:
for a start, the weather was not that good, and we already knew we would
have almost no time to spend with the skaters, because they were coming
from Canazei which is exactly on the other side of northern Italy, so
we had no hopes they would arrive early.
As usual we drove directly to the ice rink and left our car in the back
parking lot with no intention of moving it anymore (thus securing a parking
spot while it was relatively empty), and went inside to say hello to Mr
Poli and to meet Filippo and Sissi, who had left the twins at the hotel
and met Katia and Lucio, who were there from the show too.
It was lunchtime, so we decided to head to town to choose a place where
to eat (though we had to leave Filippo there, as he preferred to wait
for the twins and we all felt he really preferred to go and eat at the
upstairs bar/restaurant at the rink, and not go into town). The sun was
cruel (as my grandmother used to say) and the uphill way to get to the
"corso" (that's the main road cutting across the town) was hard on all
of us... so it was a pleasure to sit down at a very nice-looking restaurant
that we had already used (actually the outside tables, where you could
eat sandwiches and salads). It is a pity that the waiter was so un-friendly....
because we ended up having a lovely meal, an not even spending as much
as we feared! We had fixed an appointment with Lydia for mid-afternoon,
so we took our time strolling up and down the corso, window-shopping,
taking in the view, enjoying the air, etc.
The weather was actually turning bad, so when we met Lidia we actually
sat down for a hot cup of tea, and then marched down to the rink... Lydia
and Filippo retrieved Lydia's car, Sissi, Mary, my mom and I barely managed
to make it to the rink before a downpour came down, and we lost touch
with the others... Melly and Fra had stopped in town to meet some of their
friends, and the same for Katia and Lucio...
We were facing quite a long wait: the rain wouldn't stop falling, and
we managed to hear from Babi that they were still far away, and planned
to arrive quite late; Lydia also spoke with Diego, Babi's hubby, who told
her he was coming too, with lovely little Giorgia (but they were going
to be late as well). We chatted a little with Karel's father (who is actually
named Karel himself), said hello to the physical trainer Mirco, and discussed
with Mr. Poli my chances of staying downstairs at the boards during the
show. After re-forming a bit the group - Anna arrived with two friends,
and Mara from torino as well - we headed upstairs for the bar to buy ourselves
some sandwiches for later, some water, and sat down eating some enormous
but very good fries. While we were there, also Melania and Fra made a
re-appearance, and in a few moment we accompanied them to settle down
on the tribunes and then Sissi and I went at the boards to leave our things.
(we also advised one of the technicians of the tour we kind of know, that
those bags were ours and were not a threat to anyone). Just then Babi
and the other skaters arrived, and in a few seconds Babi called at us
from the edge of the tunnel linking dressing rooms and rink, holding her
precious litte baby... Giorgia grows up so much that I am amazed every
time I see her!
Dressed up in our very blue Torino-2005-volunteer fleeces, we headed back
to the opening gates, where we'd offered to help out Mr. Poli, checking
the tickets for the public. No problem for me, as I am used to this -
being in an amateur teather company and in particular being in charge
of the booking and sales of tickets, I can do this blindfolded! The fleece
in particular came in handy, because its front pocket was the perfect
place to store those pieces fo ticket that we had to rip away for the
SIAE control...
Part 2 : I'm in Philippe-heaven!
In the end this meant that I totally missed the practices - not too bad since they had arrived so late that they didn't do much, no music, no program run-throughs, just some warm up. I ran down when the local kids' number started, and though I missed that (a pity because I was told it had been nice...) I was ready at my place, camera in hand, for the beginning of the show. I had long discussed with Sissi about how to better use the memory cards I had available (mines plus one of hers), what should I make a video of and what I'd try to take pictures of... I was supremely undecided about Philippe's D'Artagnan, because the video I did in Baselga was not too bad, but I couldn't avoid speaking a couple of times and that got caught in the recording.... but I also wished to enjoy the program for once... or maybe I'd even prefer to try to take some pictures, because even if I know that Sissi will give me hers, it's another thing to have taken them on my own... thankfully at the last minute I decided to take a few pics instead of making a new video, because... OMG I get a little over-excited just thinking about it, Philippe came up to me for the ring-kissing scene this time! I was totally unprepared, taking pics by the boards.. then I saw him coming in our direction, and thought "I'll take some close-ups!"... then he was too close, I couldn't focus well... I dropped my camera (of course I had the straps going round my neck, it's not like I dropped it on the floor!!) and looked up, and realized he was right in front of me, doing his little "scene"... and understood what was going to happen...he then offered me his hand bearing a big ring, and said "kiss it"... ok, of course I'll oblige... he smiled, said "thank you!" and then he was back away in the program... me, I was melting down behind the boards. awwwwwwwwww how cute was that! I was incredibly happy, because I have always dreamed of being for once the "victim" of one of Philippe's interactions with the public... and this is by far my favourite one! And how cute was that he directs you like on stage... and says thank you at the end! LOL I was walking 1 mt from the ground for the rest of the evening, and had this stupid grin till the next day! During the break between the two parts I even had some of the technicians joke about me, because they had seen "a young woman dissolving behind the boards" LOL they can say anything they want, I was sooo happy. I even managed to take some decent photos of the program.. eh eh eh , I was sooooo happy. Thinking about it later, it would have been funny if I had been doing the video of this program... I would have probably tried to step backward to keep the image in focus (on my camera I can't use the zoom once the video recording has started. I have to set it before, and that's it.)... so people would have seen Philippe coming towards a girl who is frantically trying to step backward... like she was escaping from him... THIS would have been embarassing!!
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I know
this is out of focus...
but he was coming up to me for the ring scene...
it's a precious memory!
thank you
Katia for taking this pic!
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Philippe's second number was again the matador thing, and I did a video of it this time... which was funny, because this time the victim of the "cape swooshing attack" was my friend Sissi and I tried to capture that on video, but again it is pretty much out of focus because it was too near to me, and it seems like the cape is swooshing on me too... eh eh eh ... Philippe must have enjoyed having Sissi as a victim, because his cape swooshes seemed to last forever.... he usually does a couple and goes away, this time I counted at least 6...it's funny to see that on video, because it's very realistic.. you hear crazy laughter, the camera moving.... also the second "attack" feels very much like "I'm in the arena, let's see what happpens"... you see me struggling to find him above the heads of the technicians, in the tribunes, and then back on the ice... and I was very happy not to be the victim of this attack, as if I had been melting down for the D'Artagnan one, I would have just self-combusted with embarassment for this one!!I was in a "Philippe-fan-heaven", it was a fab night for me!
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