Day 1:
In which I fell over a lot
Standing upright on a snowboard for the first time must be a little like standing upright for the first time - you know that the state of vertical-ness is the ideal end result but you have no real idea how to get there. If you actually manage to get your rear-end off the ground, the snow board has a nasty tendency to start moving at speed, and as nobody has had the decency to tell you how to stop the darn thing, you find yourself heading in a distinctly uninvited fashion for the second floor balcony of a chocolate-box chalet.
Admittedly, the problem is resolved pretty quickly when some minute movement (perhaps the windmill-like flailing of your arms) flips you head over heels into a snowdrift. All you can think is: "I must be mad."
For me, the madness first began last September when a group of friends were booking their annual ski and snowboard holiday in Italy, and in a fit of giddiness I decided to join them. Never having done either sport before, I decided that I would learn to snowboard, prompted largely by mental images of myself doing complex mid-air twists wearing nice baggy pants. Sitting in a pile of snow in Cortina d'Ampezzo in the Italian Dolomites my confidence begins to desert me a little. Lessons start the next day, but I had decided to hit the slopes in order to "get a feel of the board". This was a tad optimistic - the only thing I get a feel for is pitching headlong into piles of snow, laughing like a fool.
DAY 2:
In which we meet Oscar
First day of school and once again, I am brimming with the confidence of the naive and foolish. Arriving at the nursery slopes, I meet Oscar, my instructor for the week, who is suitably handsome and charming but has the most interesting interpretation of the English language. This becomes a bit of a problem when I first take to the slope as although I'm rather impressed that I'm moving at all, Oscar obviously thinks I'm doing several things wrong at once.
Standing halfway down the slope, he starts shouting a number of instructions in what he presumably feels is crystal clear English but which sounds something like "Tar boh, tar boh, tar boh". If I knew what tar boh-ing was, I would do it with pleasure but as I don't, I can't.
Oscar obeys the time-honoured tradition of those faced with the brute stupidity of foreigners and shouts it even louder: "TAR BOH, TAR BOH!" I get flustered, I fall over, Oscar smiles beatifically and says "See Louise, you mus' tar boh." Things are not going well.
Eventually I work out that "tar boh" means "turn your board" but even this revelation is not particularily helpful as my attempts to turn the board somehow has the effect of aiming it for the steepest part of the slope. Still, by the end of the day I can just about manage to slowly traverse the slope, fall over, flip the board over so I'm facing the right direction again, stand up and make another slow diagonal. Although this is the equivalent of driving a car to a bend in the road, getting out and pushing it until it faces the right way, I am fairly content with my progress.
DAY 3:
In which I get down-hearted
Having discovered the joys of apres-ski, I am feeling a little delicate. It is not a good time to discover that all my hearty prognostications that a hangover will disappear in such bracing air are completely unfounded. My balance, which isn't great at the best of times, has disappeared completely and I am falling over more than ever. By now the bruises on my knees and behind (there are only two ways to fall if you're strapped on to a board, forward or backwards) are well-established and when I fall, I tend to indulge in some colourful cursing rather than laughing.
Although Cortina is everything you could ask for of a ski resort - a typically Italian village nestling in a scoop of snowclad mountains with plenty of restaurants, ski-lifts and atmosphere - it has the distinct disadvantage for the beginner of being considered very chic by the Italians. Fur-clad mavens clutch mobile phones and miniature dogs at all times, the children wear bobble hats by Armani and everyone, including three month-old babies, is very good at skiing. While this makes for great people-watching, it makes falling, and generally looking like a toddler on a tea-tray, that bit more humiliating. From the look on their faces I can tell that they just don't understand how I can continue breathing when I look this bad.
DAY 4:
In which I learn how to stop
Finally, it seems that some logic is beginning to break through. Snowboarding is not in itself a particularily difficult sport, or at least it's not difficult to do badly. However it does help if you've done one, if not all of what you could call parallel disciplines - skiing, skateboarding, surfing, even inline skating - which use similar techniques. As I had never attempted any such sports, I comforted myself that my position was a little like that of the proverbial talking dog - the miracle is not that I was good at it but that I did it at all. The first breakthrough was learning how to control my speed which is done by leaning on which ever side of the board is facing uphill as you traverse the slope: heels if you're facing forward, toes if you're facing backward. This is further confused by whether you naturally lead with your left or right foot, something determined at birth along with your starsign, whether you're right-handed and whether you like the BeeGees. My new-found ability to control my speed cheered me up no end but it did result in me becoming the Robin Reliant of the ski slope, who wouldn't move at 3mph if 2mph was possible.
I was quite happy with this small progress, so learning how to stop on the same day was quite a bonus. Until now, I had finished each careful amble down the slope by falling over - it was a "good" stop if I fell over on purpose, a bad one if I crashed into a three year-old child. Now that I knew how to slow down, I realised that digging in and curving the board towards the incline of the slope brought me to a slightly more dignified stop.
DAY 5:
In which things didn't click
This is the day when everybody had promised me "things would click". I believed this fervently so I can only suppose that I have an innate contrary streak as things most definitely did not click. If anything, things un-clicked. I lurched out of control all over the slope, fell down with increasing regularity and failed to even come close to mastering the art of turning left and right, a skill rather essential for going down a normal slope. Overcome by a paranoid belief that all the other kids were laughing at me, I stomped off to have a coffee and to wallow in the rather gloomy realisation that all the other kids were laughing at me. Only stop feeling sorry for myself when I tune into CNN that evening and see footage of the horrendous avalanches that have swept through other ski resorts. Even in the sunny, calm whiteness of Cortina it is not hard to imagine how terrifying the "white death" would be. Counting blessings is a severely underestimated activity.
DAY 6:
In which I nearly get it
By the final day of the lessons, it must be said that even the ever-patient Oscar has given up on me a little. This actually works out rather well as it allows me to potter down the slopes at my own speed and to practise this turning thing on my own. I progress much better and even manage three or four consecutive turns but unfortunately, every time Oscar does shout some mangled instruction at me, I get distracted and fall down.
We part with mutual goodwill - I am impressed that he has not lost his patience once, while he is impressed that somebody could manage to be so bad at something so easy. I meander down the slope one last time and catch myself wondering what colour baggy pants I'll invest in for next year's holiday. Oh dear, I may be bad but I'm hooked.