Today the NHS was on top form, with no queue for the car park, a 15 minute wait for the correct injection, and the tea trolley came round while I was waiting, and I was offered a sandwich lunch. I was in school for a planning day so shot there after dropping girls off, and then to hospital and then back to school, then back to get girls, for a Bitterne tastic errand run. Library, as usual the surly customer service you get to know and love at both Thornhill and Bitterne libraries, when the librarian looks annoyed at you for interupting her life. Sadly no dry cleaners any more in Bitterne, so I lugged my coat and the odd assortment of very heavy shopping around with the girls lugging the light bits. Luckily there is a new piece of play equipment in bitterne to help ease the monotony. Here goes:
library books, including my heavy novels as I have found an author I like! Rose Tremain.
a bag of peat free compost for growing orange pips in
a 3l bottle of lemonade
one pink coat
a loaf of bread and packet of weetabix
some medicine for our sick neighbours (not very heavy)

A did her promise at Rainbows tonight, so that's 2 girls sworn into guiding and destined to follow their mother into eating cheap jam and spam burnt with dumplings round a fire. I have many many happy memories of guiding, but many many more which involve being cold, damp and dirty. Actually, they are mostly positive, and guiding is the reason I am such an expert on adventure sports, having taken part, through guides, in potholing, canoeing, abseiling and rock climbing, pony trekking and cycling, and having visited Spain, Andorra, Paris and Holland.

Which links nicely to my subject of adventure sports - namely skiing, in which I am now world famous and seen regularly on Eurosport. We spent the last week in Engelberg, a town in the mountains of Switzerland, which I can recommend as a holiday resort in the summer too - as long as you don't know the exchange rate and don't think about what you are spending. We flew way too early on the outward and inward, so two Sundays in a row had to get up at 3 or 4am. Yuk. Flights great, although A was subtly sick on the flight home, but we had split seats so I was miles away tucked neatly in between an obese American man and the window over the wing, so a great view of the de icing operation at Zurich, but little breathing space.

Our accomodation was spartan, think youth hostel rather than The Berkeley - well it is 'Fab Feb' after all, so in the spirit of post consumerism we went for the cheap option in going with a Christian group and sleeping in bunk beds. However, the food was fine, the kids were unexpecetedly entertained each day for an hour before tea with a kids club, and half an hour after tea with a film - Happy Feet - I caught the last bit and its a message film bigtime! Whoa!

The girls' ski lessons coincided with ours, which was good as it meant we had to leave A sobbing in a heap in the snow and shouting about her skis falling off while we learnt to side step up a hill. Then in the afternoons we did some practising, the nursery slopes were across a car park from our hostel, which meant we could ski along a path and down the slope, or in fact ski across the car park! After just one day we were taken on some real skiiing adventures, down trails through woods with heavy snow fall - I honestly never imagined we would be doing anything other than snow ploughing down the nursery slope all week. I expected Mr Tumnus to pop out from behind a tree. So quiet and beautiful but cold, and some really steep turns leading to comedy moments when all 7 of our beginners class skied off into a field, followed by some good skiers who thought that was the way to go as so many of us had gone that way! We had some bad times, mainly feeling like we were at the start of that programme 999, expecting to hear Michael Burke voicing over: 'The family of hopelessly ill equipped and inexperienced skiers set out to achieve reaching the top of a T bar lift and skiing across a ridge to get a cable car home. Sadly, their youngest child kept falling off the lift into snow deeper than she was tall and it took an hour to get her up the lift, with her parents unable to control their own skis as they tried to help.' That kind of thing. Still, all alive, only bruises to show for it and most of them were from the sledging - H and I went back for more, it was brilliant fun falling off. I really didn't like going on chair lifts - I made the girls sit completely still and ranted at them for as much as turning their heads. Not so keen on the cable car either - don't look down - or up at the spindly cable attaching it. But got the hang of the rush to get your skis etc in - as R said before, just like getting the girls and bikes on a train. Easy. Ha. We went up on three cable cars to the top of the mountain one very sunny day to admire the views and watch the black run brigade. Also had my first experience of tubing - or Ringos - which was like sledging only safer. We all mainly enjoyed practising what we learnt over and over again on the handy nursery slopes near 'home' - H can do great turns and so can R and I - whilst A goes for the downhill record by pointing her skis at the bottom of the slope and heading straight down, regardless of other people, bumps or anything as dull as turning. I REALLY REALLY loved the whole week and R said he would choose skiing over a summer holiday every time! Which is great cos so would I! I am trying to work out how we could wangle another ski trip this year and am looking for a job in the Alps! As a ski instructor, obviously. It was such fun being out in the cold and working so hard on concentrating and the girls loving it - it was all I hoped for. Apart from the bunk beds.

Down to Heathrow with a bump - Granny Mary was picking us up and had suffered a puncture(not personally) and our car was suffering from brakes making a bad smell and smoke and not working. The RAC (Clubcard points paid for that!) came to our rescue within minutes and carted R off to a garage that work on Sundays, for new back brakes to be fitted so we could drive home in comparative safety.

I meant to tell you about the weird band we saw - well, actually we were trapped in a cafe while they played all around us - very loud rock anthems played on brass instruments and drums by young people in fur coats who all clearly loved their music, and had been spotted by other of our party at other cafes. They were really loud, but an interesting experience, and great to see a gang of young people loving making music together for no particular reason other than fun. As you can imagine, not A's kinda thing. The other guests on our trip were mostly fun, mainly families, about 7 or 8 girls ranging from 5 to 12 which meant H and A had a perfect selection of playmates at all times, and some really nice teenagers, who all hung out together and were nice to everyone, giving me great hope for the future. The only annoying thing about the set up was the boring evening meetings, which involved a lovely guy playing classical style to 80s Christian songs while adults limply sang along. Luckily I only went to 2 and a half, as had headache and tummy ache, (can't believe I am finding a positive slant when I felt so rough) and just had to leave the last one as I couldn't sit through another talk on 'How to talk to your friends about your faith'. The talks were based on the Purpose Driven Life, a book and philosophy I have no time for at the best of times, let alone on my holiday. Somehow the one meeting I did attend in entirety I was in the drama, which I fundamentally disagreed with, as it suggested that someone should give up pottery classes to 'serve the Lord' in 'ministry'. AARGH. However, I got a number of favourable comments about my delivery of the lines, which buoys me up in my quest to take part in a panto with the hope of an Oscar still there in the wings.

So here I am back to 'normal life' with the prospect tomorrow of another £750 injection in my derriere. And 7 loads of washing in states of drying around the whole house.