What a carve up
Taki
Ancona
Iam here on a pilgrimage, honouring the descendants of this greatest of Italian towns, men like Galileo, Michelangelo, Dante and, of course, Matthew d’Ancona, considered among those in the know the greatest Anconan of them all. Just kidding. I’m in Gstaad, and just did three runs before breakfast, because the plebs have arrived for the high season and the slopes are as crowded as the mosques in Tottenham during Ramadan. The trick is to wake up early, put on the boots, ski for about an hour, and then head for home. Easier said than done, needless to say. At my age the hangovers are terrible, but the mountain air does help. Mind you, what’s good about Gstaad is that very few people ski. But, when the schools are out for midterm, every snow boarder west of Tehran seems to end up in Gstaad, and snow boarders are to us skiers what Danish cartoons are to Abu Hamza.
I am told that in America there are designated mountains, keeping snow boarders and skiers separate, but over here, in egalitarian Switzerland, everyone’s thrown in together and to hell with a few broken bones. The local docs actually like it. Nothing like a good crash for fattening up one’s bank balance. Of course, this carving business doesn’t help. Carving means skiing like a snow boarder, across the fall line, using up much more space. I grew up skiing down the fall line, in short turns, up and down, always in control. Now it’s across the slope, even turning uphill at speed, and to hell with what’s coming down behind you.
And, speaking of crashing into people, why is it that old age makes one so chicken? I used to ski pretty fast, but now it’s safety first. Very humiliating and hardly the way to pick up any women. The Eagle club has a handicap system for racing, one not based on age but on intelligence. Here’s how it goes: a member registers with the sport committee, competes for the first time, and is given a handicap based on his or her time. That handicap applies until the member’s death or dismemberment on the slopes. And this is where I disagree and refuse to race. About ten years or so ago, I was waiting for my number to be called, when I saw a fellow member skiing almost uphill during a giant slalom. The wily fellow (a Greek) was trying to establish his handicap, which meant he took about an hour to go down. He has never lost a race since. With such a handicap he would win five gold medals in Torino, and then some, as they used to say in Sun Valley.
Next year is the Eagle’s 50th anniversary, and everyone’s busy organising the festivities. I have been asked to write the ‘scandalous’ history of the club, which actually does not present a problem. There have been three major scandals, and I was involved in all of them. I shall only recount one this time. And it’s already been published in these here pages. Stuck for a subject about 20 years or so ago, I looked around the terrace and thought I noticed that most of the children of members looked very much like the then head waiter, Angelo. So I sat down and wrote my observations, and one week later, on a particularly sunny day, went up to the club after a hard morning’s skiing. As they say in Brooklyn, I shoulda stood in bed. Many boring members — and we’ve got lots of them — were Orlando Furiosos, and were demanding my scalp. Boy, did they protest too much. When I went into the kitchen, Angelo was being toasted by the staff for the greatest Italian victory since the Battle of Lepanto. Although some of the bores insisted on an apology, I adamantly refused, and friends like Bill Buckley and Roger Moore told them to lay off. After all, I had not named anyone, except for Angelo, who was over the moon with pride.
Angelo was forced to retire about ten years ago, but it had nothing to do with fathering children. Something about withholding tips from the staff that once cheered him. But he was always a great friend of mine, because, no matter how badly my buddies and I behaved in the club, he would always lie like hell to the bores who demanded to know how many rules had been broken. He always answered as follows: ‘I can assure the committee that, although everyone enjoyed themselves, absolutely no rules were broken ... ’ You’d think that as he always said the same thing someone would have figured it out, but if I thought he had fathered my children, I, too, would keep my mouth shut.
Again, just kidding, at least I hope I am. People are getting touchier by the minute, and even the local paper refused to run a column of mine about an Arab who refused to pay a poor masseur to whom he owed 40,000 big ones. The Arab used to be big around here, but then something went wrong and he hasn’t been around lately. So I demanded that the locals raid his chalet and pay the poor Sudeten German what he was owed. But that would be illegal, said the local biggie. Not as illegal as stiffing a poor man who makes his living rubbing fat rich ones. When the rich owe the poor, the devil laughs, as they used to say in Hades.
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