The hills are alive

Turn!

Keep pushing your knees forward so you can feel the front of your calves against the top of the boots.

Woah!

Keep your ankles together and ‘edge’ the skis into the ice. Keep breathing.

And another!

Keep concentrating! Don’t think about that kid who just shot past you. How? Don’t look up!

One more…!

Get ready to make the next, probably on that bit of loose snow about ten feet away. Jab your pole into the ice so that the weight comes off the back of your skis, lifting up and…

Swoosh round!

Come down on the metal edges so you don’t slide and get ready for the next one. Never enough time. You’re always going too fast! But you’re in a rhythm now and…

Go!

Don’t look down: you can’t afford to get scared at how steep this is, even though you can hear the front of the skis clattering together as you try, desperately, not to let them cross because…well…don’t even go there!

Hup. Yes!

Keep leaning downhill even though your body says it’s insane to let your weight carry you down on this kind of slope. If you lean back, you’ll lose control. Ready? No!

Do it!

You’re 100% engaged in just surviving. Your legs are working at the max. Adrenaline is pumping through you and all your senses are fully alert. You see everything. You hear everything. You feel very, very alive.

You don’t have to have had any of those ‘life flashing before the eyes’ moments to know that the mind can speed up at times of crisis. So it was somehow not surprising that, in the midst of these hectic few minutes, a series of completely unnecessary phrases popped into my already bursting consciousness.

As I approached the end of the high-speed run, I found myself shouting with joy at what I was not doing: ‘Not shopping!’. Turn. Edge those skis. ‘Not driving!’ Turn. Keep it tight. ‘Not cooking!’ Turn. Keep the weight forward. ‘Not in meetings!’ Turn. Focus and remember to breathe. ‘Not on the computer!’

You get the idea. Some people get their kicks from driving fast; others from singing in choirs. But, for me, the adrenaline rush I got from blasting perhaps 1000m down the Arbis run at Morzine was as good as it gets, combining as it does the natural elements of the purest air, the absence of a motor of any kind, and the simple, if jaw-dropping, effect of gravity.

A lifetime ago, at the top of this little corner of France, I had witnessed a panoramic view that is considered by some to be the best in the Alps. And, as I arrived at the bottom, whooping with excitement, what should I find but a small hut that served undoubtedly the best vin chaud in the whole of Les Portes du Soleil.

A la prochaine!

Indecisive? Moi?

I recently did two things that I’ve never done before.

The first came about when I was using a well-known online search engine to try to look up the location of a pub. I had already found the postcode and was on the verge of typing it into the search box, when my fingers faltered. There followed a short but significant pause as a number of conflicting messages passed between my brain and my hands, the latter of which were hovering expectantly over the keyboard. Eventually a life-changing decision was reached, chemicals flashed across nerve synapses and my muscles reacted, causing me to type the following momentous combination: bs228ly.

As someone who takes a keen interest in the whole process of using words to say exactly what I mean, I’ve always been particular about the finer points of punctuation, spelling and grammar because they make it possible for me to express exactly what I’m trying to say to the widest number of people. Well, all three of you at least. That’s not the same thing as being a pedant, though I probably get ticks in that box as well. It’s just that I want my life to be simple

The proliferation of new media, starting with emails, then SMS texts, instant-messaging services, and now twitter (not Twitter… I checked), has opened up new questions for the baby boomer generation, of which I am fortunate to be a part. Are we going to bother? Are we going to try to be cool? And, most importantly, does it matter if we use capital letters for postcodes? To which the answers are Yes, too young to give up; No, too young to start; and… well, it seems I may have answered that last question already.

My first step down this particular slippery slope came when I worked out that your average search engine is unconcerned with how I phrase my questions; it will perform its work equally well however I type in my query. It was some time ago when I graduated from searches such as ‘Can I make a banana cake without using eggs?’ to ‘no egg cake banana’. So maybe the die is already cast. If you do nothing else after reading this, go and reacquaint yourself with George Eliot’s masterpiece, Middlemarch, one of whose main themes is how we avoid explicitly making decisions until we find that life has, somehow, made them for us.

I blame technology, not myself, for my continued decline, because your average search engine, in addition to being blind to poor syntax, is also completely un-judgemental about spelling. It will, for example, without critical comment of any kind, happily ask whether you meant to type ‘asymmetrical parallel capacitor’ instead of ‘asmetrical paralllel kapasitor’. Whatever is the point of knowing how to spell parallel if no-one cares?

I know that I’ve been swimming against the tide for some time, labouring under the misapprehension that you get better exercise that way. However, it was, as I say, a significant and completely new moment for me when I chose to stop paddling and go with the flow. bs228ly was that landmark moment. wtvr nxt?

Did I mention two new things? Before I reveal the second, I’ll have to ask you to sign a confidentiality clause because my reputation is on the line with this one. It’s not that I have split an infinitive or forgotten my gerunds. It’s another momentous decision that appears to have been reached somewhere in my mind when I was looking the other way. As you know, I’ve been battling with some pretty low temperatures in this house recently. After many years of declaring that hell would freeze over before…, without any announcement or fanfare, I quietly switched on the electric blanket on the other, unvisited side of my bed and, an hour later, got in accompanied by a hot-water bottle. Sssssh – can you hear the sound of ice forming?