Carol’s Column

The day I received advice from above

GOD spoke to me.

It happened two weeks ago when I happened to be lying upside down on a ski slope just a snowdrop away from Mont Blanc in the French Alps.

"Stay absolutely still," She said, "do not move."

Not that I could, of course. My left ear, and thus half my head, was buried in the snow, while my derriere was balanced precipitously in the air. My skis stuck out at a sharp angle, making it impossible to move my legs or feet. Which was just as well, because it seemed as if I was there forever — like Lot's wife.

"Okay, God, I'm listening, I'm not going anywhere," I muttered.

I swivelled my eyeball upstairs in order to communicate directly with God.

Mistake. It wasn't Big Momma Herself, it was Olivier, my ski instructor, stuck in a chairlift overhead.

"I am coming," he yelled, "wait for me."

What a relief. I'd wondered why God had singled me out at that particular moment. Perhaps I was getting a heavenly sneak preview prior to falling off the slope into an endless crevasse. But it was not to be. I was to be spared to fall down the ski slopes of France for the following two weeks.

Albeit keen and enthusiastic, I started skiing at a disadvantage. I realised this when I joined my class on the nursery slopes and observed that I looked different. It wasn't the fact that my oldest son's anorak flapped around my knees. No, it was my second son's baggy rainproof cycling pants ballooning in the breeze that made me look more like the abominable snowman than a skier. The others in their trim one-piece ski-suits looked so efficient, so professional.

Skiing is not for the faint of heart, the fat or the unfit. I am all of these.

"Follow me," said our ski instructor as he skied off into the great White Beyond. In a line, the others snaked off after him. I pushed my batons, put my feet together, bent my legs, pointed in a downhill direction and shot off like a Concorde in full flight with breathtaking lack of control.

Due to the genetic deformity of knock-knees, I was unable to snowplough gracefully to a halt, which is why I found myself balancing upside-down on a four metre pile of snow and ice built at the end of the ski run.

Each day we'd take to the pistes — a piste being the technical term for the ski run — and we'd ski merrily, improving by the minute. Well, some of us would improve. From green pistes we graduated to blue and from blue to red, each colour denoting greater difficulty. And I fell on them all.

While my class skied neatly away, zig-zagging down the mountain, I'd find myself entwined in the Dayglo orange nets placed strategically on the outer boundaries of the piste to stop errant skiers falling down the mountain.

Alternatively, I'd hear Olivier shouting: "Au revoir, Carol," as I'd ski off-piste and disappear.

"Where are you?" I'd hear him wail.

"Je suis ici," I'd reply from across the mountain. Voices carry in the crisp air.

The most difficult thing about skiing is not the actual staying upright with the skis pointing in the same direction. On the contrary, it's the getting up a mountain in order to go down again.

The French have devised the most cunning contraptions by which the dedicated are ferried upwards. Take the teleski, a long pole with a round metal blob to be inserted between your legs. In theory, the pole, attached to a pulley, would pull you gently uphill as you relaxed and kept your skis parallel. If you sat, you were done for and would find yourself in the middle of nowhere.

Then there were the chairlifts. Standing in a queue of other competent skiers, you'd find yourself at a little gate which would snap open frighteningly, leaving you one second to manoeuvre yourself into a position so that the chair could thwack you on the back of your thighs, causing you to collapse on the seat. In which position you were borne up, up and away.

A T-bar is indescribable but it will suffice to say that a T-bar was built to discourage beginners. Even worse was trying to extricate yourself in an upright position from such devilish devices and then remain upright.

The most damaging to the psyche was the sight of four-year-olds whizzing past with the greatest of ease.

So why, you may ask, did I persevere? Because there is nothing as exhilarating as skiing down a great mountain, the wind blowing through your drip-dry acrylic wig kept in place by a scarf. It's the challenge of the sky, the mountain, the snow and you and your thermal underwear.

Woman against the elements.

On our last day, we were taken up La Grand Motte, the highest peak in the area. So high was it that I was sure I saw an angel sitting on a cloud.

I knew how Jonathan Livingstone Seagull felt before his first great flight into the unknown. Apprehensive but eager, terrified but resolute, I adjusted my false teeth and kissed my class farewell. It was a moving moment.

It was the finest ski of my life. No matter that I fell 35 times, no matter that there was not a part of my anatomy that remained unbruised, no matter that I lost my wig and my false teeth.

When I reached the bottom, like Sir Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tensing, I knew I'd achieved the ultimate.

"Carol, you were wonderful," said my ski instructor. I blushed modestly.

"In fact," he continued, "we are so impressed with your skiing prowess that we are considering putting your name forward for the Winter Olympic Games."

I blushed with pride.

"For there is no doubt that you are the fastest upside-down skier in the northern hemisphere," he said.

I think he was trying to tell me something.

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