to ski, or not to ski: that is the question

I waited many years to enjoy skiing holidays. My first pair of skis were a disaster. My parents, neither poor nor mean, but never known to waste money, and, not being skiers themselves, bought a second hand pair advertised in a newspaper. They were wooden, a mile long, and came with a pair of lace up boots. It therefore took roughly a week to do up the laces, step into the skis and attach the elasticated bindings round the boots followed by the safety straps. (Step in bindings hadn't been invented then). The additional length might have been great for acquiring speed but useless when it came to turning in the narrow mogul-infested gullies of the Cairngorms. My parents' thinking on this was somewhat flawed: there wasn't much point in spending a lot of money on a sport I might not continue. The opposing view would have been: with better equipment I could have become a competent skier.














Learning to ski in the mountains of Scotland had little to recommend it. Cheaper, of course than Switzerland, but otherwise a disaster. My memories were of long queues at the chairlifts - twenty minutes perhaps, with wind and rain, and all for a five minute run.











There were the occasional end of season days where the ski slopes were blessed with sunshine, it was warm enough for a t-shirt to be adequate wear on the top half, and the late afternoon light over Loch Morlich was memorable, but these were few.











Overall I hated these holidays. One particular year, I realised that the best day was when the bus to the slopes got stuck in snow. We spent most of the day in the bus. I had a lovely picnic lunch: tomato and egg sandwiches and orange club biscuits.










My first venture abroad to ski showed me how different a skiing holiday could be. There were four of us. Two beginners. And two marginally more experienced skiiers. The location was Söll in Austria, a charming original village. H. and I joined a ski class with a delightful German speaking instructor. The class was conducted in German. He would issue instructions, then turn to H. and me and say 'One after ze ozzer'. At lunch time we would ski down to the chalet for thick home made soup, before returning to the slopes.









My second foray on foreign ski slopes was in New Zealand where an ex and I spent a year. Within a week of arriving in that far flung country, we found ourself on the ski slopes. N. was always gung ho - why hold back when you could just go for it? Unfortunately, we had failed to listen to the snow reports that morning, warning of bad conditions and advising only expert skiiers to venture up the mountain. N. insisted we took the chairlift up to the very top - despite my most vocal concern. He started down the icy slope, falling immediately. He picked himself up - more or less - only to fall again. Essentially, he fell all the way down the run. Knowing he wasn't injured, I almost laughed myself to death.











After that there were several visits to Glencoe and memories of spending two hours side stepping down a slope I wasn't competent to ski on. Such days....

In France, I purchased another pair of skis, second hand, greatly reduced and wonderfully short. And apart from tearing a ligament in my thumb on our second year there, haven't looked back. This is not to say that I'm a good skiier. I will always be too frightened just to go for it, and most people I ski with wish I would speed up. However, I actually enjoy going moderately slowly, turning regularly rather than bombing down the slopes as my son does.







So, my pleasure from skiing has come at a relatively late age. This last holiday was brilliant, as I've blogged and twitted about. It therefore feels like a small price to pay that I've returned home with a bug which has confined me to bed when I'm not inhaling steam, rubbing my neck and chest with Vicks, swallowing disgusting cough medicine, sucking Strepsils, taking paracetamol, wretching in the bathroom basin, resting my voice and trying to avoid dairy products.




Obviously I picked up this mesophyllic organism on the ski slopes - there was some warmth from the sun after the first bitterly cold day ( -10 degrees). It could have arrived during the holiday and lost me several days skiing. For once, my timing was right.

Splutteringly yours


Jane