The perils of a sex party

I cross-country ski the old-fashioned way, not skating but on machine-made narrow tracks. It is known to be the best exercise in the world. Both upper and lower body get the maximum workout as one churns along a beautiful course in Lauenen, a tiny nearby village that looks like Gstaad did 60 years ago. I used to bring my children to the lake here during the summer, warning them time and again about a horrible monster that lived underwater and specialised in grabbing little kids. They screamed and screamed in terror until they got a bit older, told me to stop talking nonsense and swam to their heart’s content. Disrespectful little jerks, but such are the joys of fatherhood.

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Rod Liddle

British Steel and the death of dim-witted globalisation

I now ski cross-country more than downhill, if only because it’s such a bore putting the boots on. Even worse is the fear of falling, something I actually enjoyed doing at speed when I was young. The snow is still good — for Gstaad, that is — and the weather ditto. I used to know everybody in this town but no longer. The place is full of unfamiliar faces, some of them not so friendly, a modern-day phenomenon that is indicative of new money, at least as far as I’m concerned. Will some modern-day Waugh (or Sinclair Lewis, for that matter) describe their pretensions and how pathetic their swashbuckling looks to an expert eye? Probably not; novelists nowadays are more concerned with their own feelings.

I ran into my old friend Nicolas Anouilh, son of the great French playwright Jean, the other day while we were both sliding and sweating in Lauenen and we gossiped about the new arrivals. Nicolas prides himself on being a misanthrope, and I’m about to join his club.