Waiting to start the long journey home. No connection so this is just a draft on my phone. A week away. A week where again I’ve annoyed myself by not really getting any writing done. Then, I’m not the most logical of people at times, I mean it’s so obvious a diabetic ME sufferer just has to go on a ski holiday in the Pyrenees.
I come and I look at the sky. I love the sky here – the blue so pale, the contrast with the white on the spines of the mountains. Somehow it feels like potential.
I don’t ski too much now. I’m limited in what I can do because of the inevitable fatigue that follows making too much effort. I am the lazy one on blades, the one who makes a run look like a nonchalant glide as I try not to over-tire quadriceps that, most days, even have trouble getting up a flight of stairs.
Sometimes now I wonder if I should have these weeks. Skiing can be an expensive holiday when you have to stay in places big enough to live in on the days you shouldn’t move. Not for me any more the real skiers hotels of rooms just big enough to sleep in, where they expect you to be up the mountain most of the day and eat like a horse at night. Now it’s an aparthotel with dvds and wifi and space to just do nothing without crowding my other half. In theory I should be writing at these times but brain goes when legs go. Is £1600 worth less than 4 days on snow and 1000 words?
But then there is the sky. And the sky calls me. And those times when my legs work ok, and I have no pain … the feel of gliding, the sound of the snow under your blades. Nothing but the white and the sky.
If you ski in Soldeu, Andorra, next year look out for me. I’m the one in vintage Guantanamo orange Roxy, probably with blue hair, and I’ll still be making it look easy.
… 10pm. Home & knackered. Work in the morning. Tipping down in Manchester. Reality sucks.