High life
• Bottle on the slopes
Taki
Gstaad
readread somewhere that Swissair was the third best airline in the world. Not surpri- singly, I disagree. If the Swiss national . airline isn't by far the best, I'll eat my ski poles. The service is the kind one used to get on transatlantic liners during the good old days, before socialism made the paying customer low man on the totem pole. Better yet, for some strange reason Swiss- air is more often than not on time. Last Friday Swissair left on time from Kennedy Airport in New York and, buck- ing strong headwinds all the way, still made it on time to Geneva seven hours later. Throughout the trip I didn't feel a thing. Literally. The excellent Dole red I had with my dinner helped, as did my seating arrangement. The best of all, however, was the lack of chatter by the captain. Although the Swiss are trilingual, the pilot spoke once upon departure, and a second time in order to announce that we were about to land. C'est tout. There was none of the American habit of pointing out cities on one's left or right while 30,000 feet up in the air and in pitch darkness. Nor did the stewardess wake me up in order to tell me the no smoking sign was on. Finally, there were no brats on board. Now that my children are past diaper age, I've once again become violently anti children that cry throughout aeroplane journeys. I sus- pect Swiss children are born and become adults almost immediately, because although there were some little people on board, I didn't hear a single yodel. And, for once, my timing was perfect. Just as I landed in Geneva, the sun came out and has stayed out ever since. A friend drove me up to the Buckley château, and after a delicious lunch Bill Buckley and I hit the slopes with a vengeance. I've skied so much in my life that it takes me one run to get my timing back. What one cannot as easily recover is the old bottle. I heard there was an Eagle Club race that after- noon, and so I entered it thinking that I just might get lucky and pull it off. But I had as much chance of winning as being elected Chancellor of Oxford. In fact I had less. I finished all right, but was 20 full seconds off the winner's time. Incidentally, the winner's disgusting age was 21. Courage is an essential part of skiing, especially when racing. On a fast giant slalom, he who takes the most chances wins. One takes chances by cutting down the angles between gates, which means one is taking a chance of hitting the poles at high speed. If one makes sure one goes through the gates a la Taki last Friday, one finishes safe and sound, but well out of the money. Thinking about it afterwards ruined a perfect afternoon. Where once upon a time I took everything straight and lost through lack of technique, I am now too scared to fall, and resemble a Greek Miss Haversham rocking up and down the Bernese Oberland slopes, with no risk of catching fire either. This is not the case at night, however. The Greengo is still the swingiest club in Gstaad, and I was among the best once the drinking contest began. There is no danger of a hangover in the mountains. All one has to do is drag oneself out of bed and hit the slopes. Along with the absence of hangovers, there are also no Arabs this year in Gstaad. At least not now. Not even Adnan Oggi, as the once-rich Adnan Kashoggi is known now that he has no more cash.
Who is here is my friend Christopher Buckley, Bill's son, as good a writer as his dad, and certainly a better skier than most of us. So is Alistair Horne, the historian who is about to publish the definitive biography of Supermac, and who has yet to fall into any holes — or Greek traps, as he calls them — due to his monogamous nature. Last but not least, Professor Gal- braith, no longer a skier, thank God, but with as sharp a tongue about the evils of Gstaad capitalism as ever. The snow has never been better, nor the company more pleasant. So what if it costs $120 for a cappuccino? As Adnan Oggi used to say, easy come, easy go.
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