I was 30 when I first went skiing, and up for absolutely anything. I was a successful party caterer who had just opened my first restaurant. I had a food column for the Daily Mail, and I was about to open Leith’s cookery school. I was sporty, played tennis every Tuesday, rode polo ponies on Ham Common on Fridays and I loved to dance. I thought I could do anything. Why wouldn’t I make a skier?
So when Harold Evans, renowned editor of the Sunday Times, was looking for journalists over 30 to report on learning to ski, I was a gung-ho volunteer. Harry had learnt to ski late, loved it, and as a result was on a mission to get everyone, however old, into the sport.
Each of us was sent to a different resort, at different altitudes, and stayed in different accommodation. We learnt by different methods: long skis, short skis, ski school, private lessons. I was sent to Wengen in the Swiss Alps, in a year with no snow on the nursery slopes. It was a complete disaster. I had long skis which kept coming off, and a 17-year-old Austrian instructress, whose flowing blonde hair and graceful moves disguised the hard-faced devil she was. She swooped down the icy slopes and I came tumbling after. She shouted; I cried.
On the second day of the trip, feeling pressure from irate skiers who were fed up with all the beginners in their way, I landed in a heap at the bottom of a ditch. Stomping sideways up the opposite slope, exhausted and tearful, I spied a chairlift.
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