I was stationed at The Yeti, a 'value' hotel. Think Tesco. The wages were negligible but food, a lift pass and accommodation was provided - even if it was two single beds in a glass room above a nightclub. My day started at 7 o'clock, making breakfast, cleaning the bedrooms, the lounge and stairs and, of course, the toilets. Not the nicest way to start the day!

After a few days I found the best approach was to pour in buckets of bleach, look away, stick in the toilet brush and swish it around. After a couple of moments it was usually safe to look back.

But at 11 o'clock the first part of the working day was over. I came intending to ski but was offered a snowboarding lesson after a few days. A week later I was unable to sit down properly but absolutely hooked. When it worked it was wonderful - swooping down slopes at speed, it felt almost like dancing. When it worked. When it didn't it was extremely painful on the knees and the backside. Too late I realized it is possible to buy special padded pants, I'd resorted to stuffing a wad of foam down the back of my salopettes.

Serre Chevalier is in the southern Alps, a stone's throw from the Italian border. Unlike many French ski resorts, Serre Chevalier - or Serre Che to the locals - is a collection of villages that have retained their original stone buildings and traditional feel. Although there are hotels and chalets, in the main they are built sympathetically from wood. The high-rise monstrosities, which mar many a purpose-built ski resort, are nowhere to be seen. Briancon - reputedly Europe's sunniest city - is the lowest point of the resort at 1,200 metres.

Four villages and several villagettes on you come to tiny Monetier at 1,500 metres. There's some 250km of skiable terrain, from nursery slopes to the Luc Alphand - an Olympic piste used in the .. Games and named after local hero, World Champion and now rally driver. The only drawback to Serre Che is actually it's greatest plus. It has a rather antiquated lift system, with several drag lifts. But happily this means many tourists stay away, preferring the bigger, more modern resorts, leaving Serre Che's pistes pleasantly under crowded and queue-free.

I had wondered if it would be difficult working and living in such close proximity with people mainly a decade younger than me. It was odd sharing a room after several years of either living on my own or with a partner. Odd, but not unpleasant. In fact, I rather enjoyed chatting late into the night, getting ready to go out with someone and sharing cosmetics and clothes again. I don't think I'd want to share forever but for a few months it was like stepping back to my student days. Of course, I was lucky that I got on with my roommate. There was a 13-year age gap between us and it could have been very different.

At least that's what he said. But after blowing virtually his entire wages on a new board, he proceeded to spend most days in bed. Apparently he didn't want to damage the board. But even he did more boarding than Dave. Dave and I arrived on the same day and shared a snowboard lesson. Dave couldn't make it up the first lift so decided to call it a day. After much grief from the rest of the snow sports-mad workers he booked a ski lesson. That was a bit more successful but obviously not successful enough because after that he devoted himself wholeheartedly to playing pool, which, admittedly, he did get very good at.

As a student I had done my fair share of waitressing but either kitchen life in my local Little Chef wasn't very representative of catering as a whole or things had changed. I soon found out you needed a tough skin and an almost pathological attachment to the linguistic practice of inserting swear words inside other words. Insults and food flew in the Yeti kitchen. Us girls had it easy, too. The chefs - all male - reserved their worst teasing for the other boys. I saw one lad all but in tears after hours of relentless re-enactment of a rather embarrassing après-too-much-tequila incident involving a couple of local French guys, some cultural misunderstandings and his eventual rescue by one of the chalet girls. I suppose when you fill a kitchen with several men in their late teens/early twenties and you are bound to get a surfeit of testosterone. Obscene gestures with knives - the bigger the better, obviously, who-could-chop-fastest competitions, were commonplace although, happily, I saw no disgusting practices with the food. Perhaps that was because the food was of a low enough standard anyway.

A year later I am back in Serre Chevalier but with a few changes. I found work as a journalist in France, allowing me to limit toilet cleaning to my own home. But I have fantastic memories of my season in the snow. It had been a long time since I had had the time to take up a new hobby and thoroughly indulge it. It won't be so long next time.

By Andrea Bolitho-Taylor