The Slippery Slope

The Imminently Ex-Mrs Pither is expected round at The Towers this weekend having just returned from holiday. She’s been skiing in France.

I wasn’t allowed to know the exact location in case I phoned up where she was staying, pretended to be from “the clinic” and left a message to say that her vaginal wart cream was ready for collection. She didn’t laugh the last time I did it. No, the location was kept a secret from me – but I surmised that it was somewhere hilly, maybe even mountainous, and probably cold.

Pither can’t afford skiing holidays. Besides, Pither is allergic to mittens, reflective sunglasses and people with toothpaste advert smiles. To tell the truth, skiing strikes him as a bit…..a bit…..well…..well……..wanky. All those wannabes and trendies talking about their shoes, their handbags or how they’ve adjusted the overhead torque on their new baby so that she’s now purring like a kitten. “Mwa, mwa!! Miss you already!”

Quite what the appeal is of sliding down a hill on two sawn-off floorboards while freezing your tits off only to be dragged back up to the top so you can slide down again remains a mystery to me. It’s sort of the Alpine equivalent of a dog chasing its tail.

I can’t really see that IEMP would have slid seamlessly into that set either, let alone down a frozen incline which does not lead directly to a bar. It’s just not her – or at least it wasn’t. She went, however, with her new man. Perhaps that was the attraction? Skiing certainly fits with what I know of him. He works in computers, you see, and so the concept of sliding must seem mind-blowingly exciting to him. This is the man, dear readers, who, when asked by Pither, some years ago now, who his comedy heroes were, replied “I don’t like old comedy”. If it’s trendy, it’s for him.

"If you’ve never been skiing then how can you comment?" I hear you ask. Well, smartarses, I did go once! It was the obligatory, cut-price, school skiing trip. I was 17 and saved up out of my holiday job, pumping gas at a petrol station, to split the cost with my mother.

In all the years previously kids from my school had gone to Italy, France, Switzerland or Austria. They returned will tales of girls, illicit booze and snogs in the snow. I wanted a bit of that. I thought the slopes needed Pither. I thought the continent in general needed him. I needed to know if bras could be unfastened with one hand in foreign climes, just as they could be in England. Did Eurobirds kiss like English girls? Were a Snoopy doll and a poster of David Cassidy a universal currency which would grant access to “third base”? Had Britain’s entry into Europe really cemented a trading alliance to rival the USA? All these questions needed to be answered.

“Italy this year,” said the geography teacher leading the trip. That’ll do for me, I thought. I bought an Italian phrase book and desperately tried to piece together sentences such as “You have big tits for a vegetarian” and “Bet I can guess the colour of the pants you’re wearing just by licking them while blindfolded?”

I paid my deposit and then began counting the days. I couldn’t wait. I should have known, however. Nothing runs smoothly in Pither’s life. Four weeks before we were due to go there was a change of plan. “We’re not going to Italy after all,” said the geography teacher. “No, we’ve decided to have a complete change this time. We’re going instead to………………………Bulgaria!”

"Bul-Fucking-Garia?!” I enquired, with barely disguised incredulity. "Bul-Fucking-Garia?!!! You’re ‘aving a laarf, aren’t you? If God wanted to give the world an enema he'd stick the tube in Bulgaria!”

“Now, now Pither,” said the teacher. “We’re going there because it’s unspoilt.”

“There are reasons for that,” I said. “Firstly, it’s impossible to spoil it anymore than it's already been spoilt! Secondly, it’s unspoilt because no-one wants to go there on account of the fact they know it’s a shithole! Thirdly, those who do go aren’t allowed out again anyway and, finally and on a purely personal note, have you ever seen a photograph of a Bulgarian woman? They’re all like Geoff Capes with tits!”

My comments were duly noted – and ignored – and so Bulgaria was where we went.

This was 1977, bear in mind. Not only was the Berlin Wall still up, it was being re-rendered every month! The Soviet Union was still very much a massive power, the Iron Curtain showed not one iota of rust and the Eastern Bloc was about as geared up for tourism as Saturn is for a miniature golf tournament. Holland would have been a better destination for a skiing holiday.

If you were fascinated by potatoes and beetroot then Bulgaria was the get-away destination of a lifetime! Outside of root vegetables and apart from snow there was…….there was…….well, fuck all! Seemingly endless days of sliding down state-owned mountains, being dragged back up to the top and the obligatory statue of Lenin, then back down again. Hour in, hour out, day in, day out. On top of it all, I couldn’t even ski! I was shite!! I was also too logical for skiing.

“Hope you don’t mind me asking this, Sir, but why, having slid and fallen hundreds of feet down this freezing fucking mountain, would I want to get dragged back up to the top and do it again? I mean, if I was run over by a bus, would you expect me to ask the driver to hang on a sec while I got up, walked down the road and lay down so he could do it again?”

The only bright moment arrived one night, just before the end of this trip from Hell, when a woman from the kitchens at the prison camp where we were staying let herself into my room using a pass key. She then took off all her clothes and got into bed with me! Sounds like a teenage fantasy, I know, but I swear it is true. I’ve no doubt she looked like a bulldog chewing a wasp but, Hell, it was dark, any Comunist port in a snow storm and at 17 you don't look at the mantlepiece when you're poking the fire, I thought. She didn't speak a word of English either but, then again, I wasn't in the mood to discuss the merits of Dostoyevsky or CSKA Sofia's decision to switch to a conventional 4-4-2 for European games. What happened? What fucking happened?!! Just as she was about play the pink oboe there was a fucking fire drill! Honest. I know this sounds made up but it DID happen. We all had to get dressed and go outside. She disappeared into the crowd and I was left standing there, pantless and in my tracksuit bottoms, looking like an organic T-square! Not even the biting cold eased the situation. Those of you who know my real surname will no doubt be able to imagine the laughter which followed when my name was read out in the roll call and I had to answer.

She never wrote, never phoned......

No, skiing’s not for Pither. I shall still, however, listen with feigned interest to IEMP’s tales of her holiday on the piste – safe in the knowledge that I have sent Alpine sports to Grantham.