A ski star? I look like an arthritic Stormtrooper!
MY WARINESS about skiing dates from an article I read as a child in my grandmother’s Reader’s Digest. It was an account of an accident on the slopes, and included the fact that the unfortunate skier’s scrotum swelled to the size of a volleyball. That sort of detail tends to make an impression on a fellow.
Nevertheless my partner Jo and I, having clocked up 90 years on this planet between us without ever wearing skis, decided to take our six-year-old son Barney on holiday to Valloire in the French Alps, where we could all try the sport for the first time.
Our first task was to hire some equipment. The ski boots I was given were white, meaning I looked like a Stormtrooper, which was cool. Then I tried walking in them, and looked like a Stormtrooper with arthritis, which wasn’t.
Within seconds of our first lesson beginning, I knew I could ski. A few seconds after that, I knew I couldn’t stop. My exit from the smooth powder of the practice slope on to the messy brown slush at its side was bad enough. The fact that I couldn’t then get back up was worse. No matter where I put my hands to provide leverage, the skis shot me in the opposite direction.
Eventually Pierre, our instructor, came to the rescue. By this stage Jo could barely breathe for laughing. Instead of checking that our travel insurance covered us for bumps and bruises, I should have enquired about her split sides.
But gradually I got the hang of the snowplough manoeuvre, in which pushing the backs of your skis apart brings you to a halt.
I never entirely mastered it, certainly not as well as Jo. This was because she is shorter than me, lighter than me, and, most crucially, less incompetent than me.
Needless to say Barney was easily the best skier of the three of us, so much so that he found the children’s group too basic. Pierre took one look and let Barney join us in the adult group – probably because he thought that he could teach his parents a thing or two.
By the end of the week, Barney was bombing down runs that had Jo and me quaking. The sight of him effortlessly taking a corner in his AC/DC T-shirt and wraparound shades is one I’ll cherish for ever.
Valloire is a lovely town for the first-time skier – friendly and unpretentious. There are good restaurants (we particularly enjoyed La Grange), and staying in a self-catering apartment meant we could also eat in when we felt like it. The town’s main hotel, the Christiania, is named after an advanced skiing turn. It’s not one Jo and I attempted.
On our last day, we tackled a run where the final 100 yards are much steeper than the rest. Viewing it from the ridge at the top, I felt in need of a helicopter rather than a pair of skis. But we all managed it in our different ways.
Jo edged down sideways, not minding that she looked like a pen waited sioner nervously descending a staircase. I tried with all my might to do what Pierre had taught us: use the full width of the run to wind my way down gradually. But halfway through, gravity took over, and I executed the movement known to seasoned skiers as ‘coming a right pearler’.
Barney, meanwhile, knocked the descent off without thinking, and patiently at the bottom to ask if he could have an ice cream. Once Jo and I had recovered the power of speech, we let him.