Skiing

So I woke up this morning full of beans. I’d had a lovely sleep and thankfully my alarm clock chimed at exactly the right moment when I breached deep sleep and was just dozing. I love it when that happens and I positively jump out of bed feeling particularly energised. It’s interesting how sometimes one wakes feeling tired but having had more sleep than on an occasion when one wakes feeling refreshed. Apparently it’s all to do with deep sleep cycles and they’re usually about 4 hours long. Theory goes, I think, that if your cycle is four hours and you wake after four/ eight/ twelve (my personal favourite but rarely achieved these days) hours you’re going to be more refreshed than when you wake after six/ seven/ nine/ ten hours. It’s more of a wrench to pull yourself from deep sleep, and you lose the benefit of the extra hour because you have a disturbed exit from sleep.

Anyway, I bounded out of bed into a lovely warm room, and pulled the curtains back to reveal white sparkly snow glistening in the early morning sunshine. Isn’t snow fantastic? I broke my sunnies on honeymoon and have yet to replace them so am borrowing Mr W’s spare set, and I'll need them today. At lunchtime or after the lifts close I might go and pick up some damn-I'm-cool, look-at-me, new shades that cover half of my face, but right now Mr W's are fine.

The snow was so inviting, and when I opened the window the air was so bitingly cold and fresh that all internal cobwebs from a night of beer-swilling and too-late snacks were instantly blown away. I pulled on my dressing gown and (after shutting the window!) left the cat sleeping and went in search of breakfast. Hopefully this afternoon we would be ice-diving, and I wasn’t about to do that without a full stomach!

Breakfast was functional, if lovely. Muesli and peppermint tea, and a banana stuck in the pocket for mid-morning. Bitter experience has taught me that when selecting a banana for consumption later, it’s best not to choose the ripest, blackest one in the bunch, so I went for a sensibly green one.

A dash back upstairs to kiss Mr W, get into my ski kit, obsessively check my accessories - lip balm, multiple packets of tissues, sun glasses cleaner, piste map, mobile telephone, several hundred dollars (I was probably going to have a hot cider at some point during the morning), health insurance card and drivers licence (to prove I am in fact well over 21 if I decide to convert the cider to a litre of vodka) – and I’m out of the starting gates, heading down to the ski lockers.

The snow outside my window was glistening, the snow outside the house was blindingly bright. Some of the snow that fell in yesterday’s Big Dump had frozen overnight but had stopped being quite so treacherous where the sun had been warming it for a while. This is just as well really, because I hate skiing on ice.

All in all, the morning boded well. It boded with style and panache, actually, and with the air of confidence one expects from a morning that probably has no self-confidence issues and looks in the mirror as it says “you rock, baby”, simulatenously snapping what passes for some fingers. It boded as if it wore a black leather jacket - collar up (natch) - and mirrored shades.