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10. A love like blood
Entry 13 of 34 | show all | print this entry |
After our top holiday in Austria, Kay and I felt the urge to travel again and this time Kay introduced me to the joy of skiing. What a fantastic way to spend a week. It hasn't snowed properly in England for years. Plus, when we do get more than about 30cms of snow, the entire transport network grinds to a halt and after two days most of what's left is grey sludge. (Sorry, did I say 30? I meant "3"). Go to the mountains though, and its a different story. The snow is white and it stays white. It falls in meters. Meters! That never happens here. We didn't even have meters until the 60s and I bet its because we never had snow worth measuring. Or mountains. I mean, I know we have some, but to paraphrase my friend Lou: They're not very big are they? The nearest thing we have have down here in the south is Leith Hill. It's oooh, that close to the requisite 1,000 feet. Someone has built a tower on the top to make up the difference, but to be honest, it's really not the same.
Anyway, I'm digressing. Kay and I reminisced on this ski adventure the other week and what we really remember is blood. Yes, it turned out that the altitude and probably the flying did unkind things to my hooter and I got a nose bleed pretty much every day. One day we went to Andorra La Vella as a little day trip and I got an absolute gusher on the coach home. It would not stop. Kay had to run up and down the aisle blagging tissues off people, which I crammed to my face in an ever increasing ball. When we got back to our room I peeled it from my face and dropped the whole lot into the bath, leaving a scene not disimilar to the shower in Psycho. When I took my coat off it turned out that quite a lot of blood had gathered in my sleeves, so I was able to tip that out into a nice little puddle.
A day or two later I was standing outside a cafe next to a fence. As any skier will know, a fence by a cafe has been put there for no other purpose than to stack your skis while you are inside enjoying a hot chocolate and crepe. As I stood there, some buffoon knocked over the skis furthest away from me... and like a row of dominos, they all fell, with the last pair hitting me squarely in the face. It was not pretty. Luckily, I had a good supply of tissues about my person....
In between donor sessions, I did fit in some skiing and learned to love it, if not display any real aptitude. Kay had skied before, as had her sister and brother-in-law, who also came on the trip. So, luckily I was in the numpty beginners' class on my own and didn't have any witnesses to my bad skiing. Well, obviously there were 7 or 8 other learners in my class, but I didn't know them, so they didn't count. Besides, I may have been poor, but another, more mature lady, was pititfully bad, so she was an excellent decoy.
Back in the bad old days, I only had the lolly for one trip a year and had to choose between skiing and sun. Boo. It was another 6 years before I got to ski again and by this time I was married. I had 6 days' skiing under my belt, but it was 6 days more than Mr Monksan, which have been paying off ever since. While he headed off to the learners' class, I was learning how to paralell turn and spray snow over stationary boarders. That trip was back to Arinsal, taken with our good friends Captain Sadness and his wife.
The Captain entertained us all by demonstrating why you don't stop with your skis pointing uphill. I am smiling now as I think of his surprised expression, as he slid backwards towards the precipice. Don't worry, he fell over long before he got there.
A couple of years later, we went back to Andorra one last time, to the resort of Pas de la Casa, which had the enormous advantage of being about 2 hours closer to the airport. It's also linked to Grau Roig ("Graw Rojsh"), which is a bit prettier.
By this time, we were firmly bitten by the skiing bug and have gone as often as we can muster since.
Now, chronologically, my next two trips were to Turkey and Greece in '89 and '90, but I come up against a couple of issues. Most obviously, the larger part of Turkey is not in Europe, its in Asia, so I'm not sure whether that visit should really count. Maybe only a trip to Istanbul or west-of should allow me to tick that box. The other issue is the fact that I travelled there (and to Greece) ...... with a boyfriend. This is prior to meeting Mr Monksan in 91 of course. However, in the interests of marital harmony, I will pretend that those trips never happened and move on..
Conincidentally enough, moving chronologically forward, the next new country I encounter is... Greece: yes, it's that most glorious of events: our honeymoon on Skiathos. But that's for another entry.
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