Mother Nature is giving us her middle finger

I have never experienced such a long, continuous blizzard, and I’ve been coming here for 63 years. The ski lifts are closed, as are the hotels, and it’s been coming down for a week non-stop. My Portuguese handyman Fernando now lives on his snow plough, clearing the private road that leads to the house, as useless a task as trying to bail out the Titanic. By now I should be in London, enjoying my new rented house in Glebe Place. Instead I’m housebound and snowed in, a modern Prisoner of Zenda without the Ruritanian uniforms.

My only worries are the possibility of an avalanche, and my son’s insistence that he ski every day. Nowadays, that boy simply ignores anything I say and drives away muttering about old people being scared. If I could catch him, I’d teach him a sharp lesson. The trouble is he’s among the fastest skiers in the region, and I’m now among the slowest.