A shrill ring echoed round my flat earlier this morning, scything through the tarry darkness.

It was one of those calls that makes you sit bolt upright. There's something unmistakeable about a ringing phone at 3am. Something that makes you think the worst - makes you realise something significant must have happened . . .

My mind spiralled - a fast frenetic blurry kaleidoscope of all that's important . . .

Parents. Family. Friends. A crashing tidal wave on a New Orleans levee. A flaming aircraft engulfed by collapsing towers. Something so bad it was deemed important enough to justify calling me at this ungodly hour . . . all the wild kind of notions you'd expect from an overactive mind, weaned on an obscure childhood diet of Bruce Willis action flicks.

My hand lolled aimlessly from the bed guided by aural sense alone, swiping for anything that even mildly resembled a phone.

"Stu . . . Stu . . . ?"

Grunt . . .

"Stu . . . You awake bud . . . ", a fantastically redundant question considering my previous incoherent utterance.

"Stu . . . Tignes mate . . . Tignes . . . 2 metres of fresh in the last ten days . . . "

I'll confess, it hit me like a train. Forgive me Father for I hath truly sinned but this sounded to me like the single most important call I'd taken all year - or perhaps will take for the rest of the year for that matter.

And so it came to be that i'm forever going to wander a lonely, unforgiving path for my sins. I know there's really more important things in life but . . . and it really is a big 'but' . . . we're going riding in 2 metres of fresh pow for a week in Tignes :D. That, to me at least, is a fact of pretty huge import.

This, as you may have already surmised, is a somewhat longwinded way of saying that the offices of Deepblue will be closed from Sat 5th March to Sun 12th March inclusive while we go riding in the French resort of Tignes.

Full contact details are still applicable as we'll be on email every day and we'll also still be able to collect calls left on our voicemail. In cases of absolute emergency, Chris Ormiston of Deepblue can also be contacted - please call 07800 641070 for details.

Note - The video is of the main red from the Grande Motte glacier down to Tignes Val Claret, courtesy of Youtube.com. We'll beat that time, nae bother ;)