Craic On

The snow this week prompted the son and I to remember a freezing February when he lent out of his bedroom window and broke stalagmites off the edge of the roof to suck on like lollies. We remembered building igloos and snowmen, and lying in the snow at dusk, flapping our arms and legs to see if our bodies could make the shape of angels. We could not. We generated a nondescript imprint that looked more like an accident than divine intervention. This isn’t my only brush with the white stuff. When I was six my parents introduced me to the ski slopes. We went to Klosters and stayed at the Wynegg Hotel where I met the legendary Ruth Guler. It was the sixties and everyone was glamorous. That is to say everyone except me. I was wearing a sort of baby pink bonnet affair and a pair of huge yellow goggles. My ski gloves hung out of the cuffs of my ski jacket on a bit of elastic. While others stood around on their ski poles looking relaxed, I mustered all the grace of a new born giraffe. My parents were un-phas