Although I'm selling ski holidays, I just can't understand how people can afford to ski in Euroland this winter.

I've nearly finished paying for the two week ski instructors' exam starting this Saturday but there is still the transfer from Geneva up to Courchevel - 126 euros and rising by the day unless I pay tonight which I can't as the pound slips to 92 pence to the euro and I have to wait for a few more commission dues to come in. And then there is the lift pass still to buy at 475 euros... oh woe. All totalled this little jape is going to cost £2000 so I'd better pass the exam, which more and more people tell me is 'very, very difficult and incredibly intense'.

Last week I was told by the consultant at Gobowen Hospital that 'your left hip is completely knackered and your right hip is knackered,' so it's a new left hip in August. I've forgotten my right knee, which will have to be done between the two hips. The consultant just laughed when he saw the x-rays and shook his head in disbelief. I'm fairly sure it was disbelief but it could have been something stuck in his ear.

The two paperback BASI instruction manuals arrived last week as well - they weigh in at just over four pounds and cost £45. That was a special price for members of BASI, which stands for the British Association of Snowsport Instructors. There is no qualification for building igloos and snowmen, which is a pity as I'd get the certificate by default.

These manuals are in fact full of good stuff - how to survive in an avalanche and save some of your class too, how to do parallel turns, something I've yet to master but maybe the course will put me right, and how to tell if a pupil is psychotic before he stabs you with a ski pole. All jolly useful things I'd say.

The exam starts on the Monday after arriving and goes on for ten whole days and I'm seriously wondering if I'll get through it without the said knackered joints calling it a day. If I use them as an excuse they'll just say they've heard it all before. Hangovers certainly won't be a problem with beer at £6 a litre. Nobody will have one!

My bag was just under 20 kilos at the EasyJet check in the other day. This time it's going to be over and so I'll have to carry the books with me. I think I'll put them in a brown paper bag because if anyone sees me limping around Geneva airport and recognises me with the titles showing, it'll be all round the area that Simon is still learning to ski. This is true but I'd rather give the impression that I'm an expert...

Took Kate to the airport on Monday yet again. This time she went off to Champery in Switzerland to cook in a chalet for a week.

We got up at 0445 as she likes to be a good two days early in the departure lounge. She can usually read quite a thick book during this time and always takes at least three in her bag for a week away. This time she skimped as she was taking her ski boots too. She was muttering a lot about how she hates skiing and she was going to be cooking all day anyway for her friends, who are very nice but are terribly, terribly rich. One of the main reasons for marrying her was that she was a very good skier.

She hasn't used the ski boots since the early nineties; they were state of the art in 1989 but are now definitely retro. We checked them to see if the rats or mice had eaten the insides as the inside of a Salomon SX91E is well known to gourmand rats and mice as the icing on the gateaux as far as three star eating goes. They were spotless if a bit musty and I could tell she was a little disappointed. I said goodbye to her and hoped she had a good week and that the skiing was good. 'I've told you - I hate skiing - I'm not going to enjoy this one little bit!!'. With that she strode off towards the  magnificent facade of the John Lennon Airport entrance, where I could see a few early morning smokers discreetly puffing away in the raw Mersey air.

Very rare SX91 Equipes

My youngest son Fred told me this story a couple of days ago. He thought it was me who had told him and that I was the actor in the piece, but I wasn't.

When this ski bum was hungry up in Courchevel 1850, he would hang around the smart open restaurants and wait until a table of replete diners got up to go. There would usually be someone who hadn't finished their plate, or there would be some salad around and some bread, and he would sit down and help himself. Often, I imagine, the waiter wouldn't notice that he was just one of the original guests hanging around.

I wonder what he did say to the waiter when he was challenged. Perhaps he had the nerve of the businessman in the old Frank Sinatra joke. This fellow, Gerry, was at a big charity dinner and on his way to his allotted table passes Frank sitting with his friends. He leans down to him and after introducing himself as Gerry says 'I wonder Mr Sinatra whether you could possibly do me a big favour. I'm sitting over there with some colleagues and they would be mightily impressed with me if you could just acknowledge me on your way out - you know the kind of thing -'

'Don't mention it', says Sinatra. At the end of the dinner after the speeches and a nice song or three, he walks past Gerry's table, pats him on the back and says 'Hi there Gerry, long time no see, howya doin?'

Gerry was in mid conversation and hardly looking up from the table replies 'Frankie baby, why don't you fuck off - can't you see I'm busy'.

This is a tale about Ismael.

He was riding on the Riggli chairlift above Murren last Thursday with three other thirteen year old class mates and I was coming up behind him with his instructor. We were about eight chairs behind when they came to a stop. Nothing unusual in that because beginners often have a tricky job getting off this lift.

Most high speed chairs come in at speed, slow down at the landing area, allow punters to stand up and ski off, and then move slowly round the wheel and off down the mountain. With this one you have to wait till it's turned at right angles round the wheel before getting off, otherwise there's a two foot drop to the landing area. (Click the pic with Jessica conveniently posing)

Ismael and his classmates were caught in the trap, and in the ensuing tangle of their skis, poles and bodies which should have stayed on but didn't and then those that tried to get off but couldn't, he joined the second category. I've seen it all before as I learnt some years ago that to see them tidily off this chairlift one needs to be first up to help them. There is no lift operator to give a helping hand. He sits in his nice warm cabin dreaming about Heidi and lunch. After all this is Switzerland not America. In Switzerland you wipe your own arse. So Ismael is still on the chair but from where we are sitting seems to be lying face down on it holding the back of the seat with his arms. His

Top of the Riggli chair

Piz Gloria - alt 9600ft

I get my lot off the lift and direct them to the top of the mountain Piz Gloria restaurant for their lunch. I then go back to see how Ismael is getting on. He's now laughing and joking with his mates so I ask him if anyone got some good pictures I could put on my website. 'Yeah man I fink so, they'll cost yer'. That's when I discover he's called Ismael and after a bit more banter I ask him how much? 'Twenty million three billion and ninety six pounds man'. His negotiating skills run rings round his arithmetic.

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