Chapter 17

My first ski trip was with my brother Pete and his friend Bob Steele way back in 1983. We did a short course at the Hillingdon ski Centre before going, which I thought was a big hill at the time, but the shock I felt when confronted with the enormity of a full-sized mountain is still with me. This first trip was to Saint-Lary-Soulon in the French Pyrenees. We thought we knew it all, so we took the chair lift to the top of the mountain but then spent most of the day snow ploughing to the bottom. I thought it would never end, and we had ten more days to go. In retrospect this first holiday was far too long, we all suffered with fatigue and injury, so we took a couple of days off in the middle to recover. My brother also picked up some sort of bug and was very unwell and asked the travel Rep if he could get an early plane home but that was not possible. He probably only skied half the time that I did, and he never skied again. I also met one of my school acquaintances on this trip. Julian Norman-Taylor was in my class, but we had different interests, he was not involved in drama or sport or engineering. He said that he was a junior doctor and was enjoying it a lot. I did an internet search recently and found that in later years he became a very successful consultant gynecologist in London.

The next few ski trips were with Cass and various other hangers on from work or people that Cass knew. I don't have many memories of these trips, but I knew that I loved the mountains, and I loved the snow, which is why I went skiing of course. I always rented skis and poles, and at the beginning I also rented the boots. It wasn't until later that I thought it would be worthwhile buying a pair.

Another group of skiers was one organised by Jerry Lanchbury and Penny. I did a few trips with them, and again the details have become a bit blurry over the years. One notable event was when we took a day off from skiing at Schladming to take a train trip into Salzburg. Here we took a tour of the town and the castle above it. I was very impressed with Salzburg in the snow, which to my mind must have looked very similar to when Mozart lived there.

It was in the mid-1990s, while I was working at Orbitel that I latched on to Pete's Ski club, which was my final group of skiers. Mark Owen invited me to join the club, and I went on six very enjoyable holidays with these guys, or a sub-set of them. A lot of the members were skydivers or ex-skydivers like me, but there was also a scattering of others who were opted in from elsewhere. The group was always large, around twenty was the normal number of people, and this sometimes enabled us to take over entire chalets. To keep costs down, and to make it a bit more of an adventure we always took the train from Waterloo through the Eurotunnel and then caught the overnight sleeper from Gare du Nord in Paris. The train journey was always a constant party, which was great fun but unfortunately did not involve much sleeping. The train arrived at its destination in the early morning which meant that we could hit the slopes straight away. Compared to flying we always got two extra days skiing by taking the train.

I recall these trips being very drunken and loud affairs, but I was fit enough in those days to be able to get out of bed after a heavy night and be ready for the first lift up the mountain. I was also usually the last home in the evening since it was my habit, along with a few other people, to be in a café at the furthest point that it was possible to ski home from after all the lifts had shut, then ski down in the failing light with a fair amount of mulled wine in my blood stream. It never went wrong.

By this time, I was a proficient piste skier. I skied with by boots always touching which meant that my skis were always close together and parallel. I also skied with a face mask covering my mouth and nose. I had learnt that I was susceptible to cold sores which love bright sunshine, cold weather and stress, and the mask was very effective at blocking two of those triggers. While skiing, ice and slush did not bother me at all, what I couldn't do was powder. Powder required very different skills which I never mastered because I rarely saw the conditions where I could practice, and off-piste didn't do Michael Schumacher any good. The other thing I never tried was snowboarding. This was a trend that was just gathering pace when I was skiing, and I had seen too many bad snow-board crashes and tumbles for it to appeal to me.

Broken ribs
Regarding skiing injuries, I had seen a few through the years, broken legs and arms and even a broken neck. Graham Heywood, who was on my skydiving team for a while, skied off a cliff and broke his leg. Kate, Glynn Thomas's girlfriend at the time fell over on a flat piste and cracked a bone in her neck that bothered her for years. And then there was my accident. I was skiing down a steep piste with a few other guys, weaving from side to side to control speed, and occasionally doing a jink to avoid other skiers. I was aware of someone parallel to me on the way down and when we both needed to avoid skiers at the same time, we jinked towards each other and collided. The collision wasn't hard, but it was at speed and because I fell on my ski pole, I cracked just about every rib I had on my right front ribcage. It didn't hurt too much at the start but got gradually worse. I was determined not to stop skiing, so I hung around with the girls for the last two days and really took it easy. I filled myself up with pain killers and plenty of red wine to ease the pain. It did not help that I could feel that I was starting to get a cold as well.

The train journey on the way home was one of the longest of my life. The cold and the ribs were getting worse in parallel, and then I sneezed. I had never known that much pain before, and it took a while to recover from it. I resolved that I must not sneeze again. When I finally got home, I immediately went to accident and emergency and explained what had happened. I was told that none of the ribs were out of place and my only option was to go home and wait it out, so I did just that. I had to take another week off work and just sat in my armchair for days desperately and constantly trying not to sneeze. I also had to sleep upright propped up with pillows on my bed. It was too painful to lie down. When I did return to work, I had to tip-toe around for another week. I think the healing process turned a corner when I unthinkingly jumped down the last two steps on the staircase at work. I felt a crack and a sharp pain in my ribs. After that, the pain and stiffness subsided, and I rapidly got better.

Pete's ski club came to an end when Pete and his wife Sue had a very public separation on the train on the way home from the next ski trip. Pete had met a girl who was ten years younger than him while skydiving, and she was on the trip. I did not know this at the time and quite fancied her myself. We were looking forward to the usual party on the train home when it all kicked off. I think Sue had begun to suspect something and when she realised that they had both gone missing she broke. The tears flowed and the wailing started, which continued for the rest of the journey. When Pete did turn up and was confronted, he admitted it and told Sue that they were through. We tried to make the best of it but the answer for most people was to go to bed early.

I think that it was on the same trip that Mark met his future wife, Louise. She and her friend joined the group that year and Mark hitched up with Louise and I got the friend. I cannot remember her name anymore but from what I heard about her later, I had dodged a bullet. I had met a couple of other girls while on skiing holidays, but they also never lasted.

My last ski trip was with Sue's Ski Club in March of 2001. I had met Ruth by then and if I had not already paid my money I probably would not have gone. I had done skiing, and the interest was beginning to wane, however I never lost the wonder and amazement I felt when seeing again the beauty and grandeur of the high snowy alpine mountains.

Chapter 17: Skiing