I have just got back from a snowboarding holiday. I say holiday beacuse I wasn’t working.

I suspect that most people wouldn’t consider continually falling on their backside and face with a board attached to both feet as fun. They’d be right.

There are some things that you do cause you know you’re going to enjoy them and there are others that you do because someone tells you you’re going to enjoy them.  Snowboarding is a sport that only people who can actually snowboard will enjoy. If you’re like me and you’re average bordering on utter rubbish then every trip down the mountain will be punctuated by several falls. These falls will either be extremely painful eg.  attempting to turn on sheet ice only to land heavily on your right knee causing an agonising bolt of pain to shoot up your leg straight through your body and out of your nose and eyes culminating in a 34 year old woman weeping, dribbling and snotting herself on a mountain while attempting not to be run over by a wall of German skiiers shouting pigeon French to get out the way. Good times I hear you cry! No. The other type of fall may not hurt as much but it will be spectacular,  it involves something like a somersault. It’s likely that you will be in a heap and awake to find your head next to your backside and your arms wrapped round your neck. Whilst extricating yourself from your yogic position you will be humiliated by a 6 year old on skis who will race past you at 100 miles an hour spraying snow in your face whilst singing along to the Black Eyed Peas. Yeah “I gotta feeling” too and that is if I hear that song again it’s going to make me punch someone in the face… not the 6 year old obviously…ok maybe the 6 year old.

The truth is when you go skiing or snowboarding, you’re not going on a skiing holiday ‘with’ people because essentially no one else is on your skis or board apart from you.  So, while they may be having the time of their lives carving up the black slopes and really connecting with the mountain man! You may well find yourself connecting with the mountain, but on your face.  So whilst I wasn’t having the time of my life, my girlfriend was having a whale of a time speeding down on her skis.  As a good and supportive partner I obviously thought, “Hey at least she’s having a good time, that’s the most important thing..?. Right? What are you stupid? OF COURSE IT ISN’T!! If I’m having a crap time, she has to have a crap time too. Those are the rules, I don’t make them up but I’m sure as hell going to follow them!  I found myself willing her to fall as she shot by me ” Fall for God’s sake…FALL!!!” Is it bad that I set up three booby traps? Don’t panic! She missed all of them, the six year old on the other hand…I’m kidding! Jeez.

I think there are lessons to be learned from any new experience and the lesson I learned above everything else is that the next holiday I go on has to be doing something that I’m brilliant at and my girfriend hates. Who said ‘petty?’  It’s the natural order of things and it’s time to redress the balance!