How a skiing trip turned me into a megalomaniac

In the instant I first became aware of the unpleasant nature of the cosmos we all infest, my megalomaniac nature and a desire to marry Rupert Murdoch, I was on a school trip to Gstaad. Now and then the night train stopped at snow-capped stations, which I could see from my lower bunk. My teenage illusions of glamour were invested in that journey: echoes of Sidney Lumet’s Murder on the Orient Express – Hungarian counts looking like Michael York, imperious German princesses with toy dogs in the dining car…

My expectations were rudely curtailed when someone threw up. Two splodges of vomit landed on my stomach, before sliding to the floor where they lay there staring at me. ‘Oh God,’ said the 15-year-old schoolgirl responsible. ‘Too many mixers. Somebody clean it up.’ She vomited again. My fellow classmates seemed ossified, like little people in jars. ‘Petrashit will do it,’ giggled a sharp-faced girl who thought it amusing to give me toxic nicknames.