Sitting in a deep snow trench in -10oC with bright sunlight that made the sky so ‘azzuro’ blue it was breathtaking; the old gits were actually as warm as recently roasted chestnuts soaking in a magical moment. The two boys, (actually they are in their mid-20s and now men; but it is difficult to appreciate that being an old git!), had behaved a touch strange in the morning with a lot of ‘furtive’ rummaging taking place behind our backs. As usual old gits think something is wrong and try and to stick their noses in places they shouldn’t, resulting in frustration from the young bucks.
A shovel placed along with the skis was a touch hard to disguise so we knew something serious was up! We were then ordered to go off and ski which we duly did, although as the New Year week had started and our once quiet pistes looked, from the mountain top, as if several ant nests had been disturbed. The old gits had forgotten what poor skiers they had once been and we mumbled under our breath as novices would suddenly turn right in front of you. If only they knew how much danger they were in as male old git thundered down upon them; parallel stops were still a relative novelty and far from perfected.
A shovel placed along with the skis was a touch hard to disguise so we knew something serious was up! We were then ordered to go off and ski which we duly did, although as the New Year week had started and our once quiet pistes looked, from the mountain top, as if several ant nests had been disturbed. The old gits had forgotten what poor skiers they had once been and we mumbled under our breath as novices would suddenly turn right in front of you. If only they knew how much danger they were in as male old git thundered down upon them; parallel stops were still a relative novelty and far from perfected.
My newly acquired French mobile phone rings (thereby another tale but not now) and we are instructed to a rendezvous point. We eventually reach the boys after standing in queues for what felt like hours and for a few hundred yards we skied to the edge of a busy piste. Unclipping skies we are escorted to a dining table, in a quiet clearing among trees, made from a huge snow drift; a bottle of Dom Perignon (The gift to the eldest for passing his final exams) cools smugly in the snow.
Laid out were four sandwiches, well to be truthful they looked more like ‘Dockers’ butties’, but nobody was complaining. We sat in relative quiet sipping the champagne, absorbed by the situation and surroundings: all too soon the champagne had slipped down quickly and we all agreed we should have bought another!
One lasting memory is younger sibling skiing down at full pelt with a shovel over his shoulder; you should have seen the looks!
Well done lads you knocked the socks off us with that one…
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