When I was about fourteen, I think, I went skiing with the school. I was persuaded, against my better judgement, that this would be a wonderful thing. I knew it was going to be rubbish from the start. I was very, very poor at games (mainly, I now realise because I couldn’t see), hated the cold, didn’t like group activities and had less desire to learn to ski than I had to learn underwater yak strangling.
Nevertheless, a pair of second hand, hardly-worn tweed trousers was obtained from my older cousin and the hems turned up. Within about two seconds of putting them on the reason for their excellent condition became very apparent – all the scratchy hairs were on the inside. They were going to keep me nice and warm all right; it was impossible to keep your legs still for a moment.
We boarded the ferry with me doing a sort of St Vitus’ dance and managing to be in exactly the right place downwind for two girls being ferry-sick upwind in quick succession. Nothing collects vomit like Harris tweed or hangs on to it all the way through France on couchettes and up, jolly fun, into Switzerland where the vomit froze, so that my legs clanged around in their trousers like the clappers.
Things cheered up a bit the first night when each place setting for each gal had a packet of three Sobranie cocktail cigarettes set at a jaunty angle to the plate accompanied by a colourful packet of matches. I thought it was going to be bearable after all until the Mistress accompanying the party summoned the waitress and, unfathomably, had them removed.
After that it was downhill all the way, unlike the piste. As our ski instructor someone had thoughtfully provided a teenage boy. I discovered in the first two minutes that if you fell over, he came to pick you up. So I was never going to learn to ski, was I? By the second week everyone else was coming down higher slopes at speed while I stayed, itchy trousered on the nursery slopes, where at least, unlike the distant hills, I could see the relatively flat ground, so I knew what to aim for. Sometimes, for a change, I watched three year old toddlers whizz by or skate backwards on one leg on the picturesque pond by the hotel. My room mates insisted on having the window open at night, which froze the toothpaste so I didn’t clean my teeth for a fortnight, not that I was opening my mouth because the heating was on full blast all night, which set my sinuses off, gave me headaches and I couldn’t breathe. I lay, shivering in my bed, breathing through my ears, frozen to the starchy white sheets, wishing a fortnight of my life away and longing for the return to school and something normal, like exams, that I could do.
All of which came flooding back in a rush when I finished the Swiss Miss dolls.
They turned out to be nothing like the Swiss Miss on our hot holiday and everything like a party from St Trinians on the slopes, skiied, sticked and dangerous. There’s even me at the back, look
supposed to be doing all those exercises where you lift the skis up on one foot and turn round, like all the other good little girls, but I am, as you can see, heading off down a minute slope in a panic stricken sort of way, eyes wide, sticks flailing, hoping if I fall over enough, I can break the stupid skis and go shopping round the gift shops for a music box instead.
Healthy outdoor sports and me? You know what? I think not.
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I’m apologise for the tardiness of this posting, I’ve just spent 24 hours in hospital with a suspected heart attack. It was actually a massive reaction to one small pill that sent the ECG all over the place. I’m fine, abnormal service will be resumed at once. (Despite the above, I have worked out an hour each day for the last ten years and I’m quite fit, I just don’t like snow – or diuretics, apparently.)
JaneLaverick.com – harder to get rid of than a double glazing salesman.
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