The Wandering Blair

Do you believe in curses? Do you believe that there are those condemned by fate to wander the world, never resting, never able to put down roots, moving, always moving? I’m sure most people will be familiar with the story of the Wandering Jew or the crew of the Flying Dutchman. Let me add a third; let me add Tony Blair, the erstwhile Prime Minister, who appears to be labouring under a similar burden, destined to become more unfortunate than either the Jew or the Dutchman; destined to pass into legend as Cosmopolitan Man.

They seek him here, they seek him there; people seek him everywhere. Is he in heaven or is he in hell? Well, yes, I suppose he is in a kind of hell, a limbo not quite of this world; a rootless refugee, a habitué of airport lounges and luxury hotels, always on the move, haunted, pursued by his own nightmares. There he is, a figure widely disparaged in his own country, widely disparaged even in his own political party, notwithstanding the fact that he was their most successful leader by far.

The reason for his peculiar fate is not at all hard to detect. He sought to shape the world anew, a world in his own image; a brave new world that had such people like him in it. He went to war, in Africa, in Europe, in Asia . Time and again he created desolation and called it peace and human rights; he created Afghanistan ; he created Iraq ; he created Kosovo.

It was once said that all political careers end in failure. But who would have thought that Blair’s many failures would become so obvious and so quickly; who would have believed that the mirages he created would turn out to be dust. Look at the demons he associates with or conjured up. There is Paul Kagame, president of Rwanda , whom he described as a “visionary” and a “good friend”. This ‘visionary’ and ‘friend’ stands at the head of an army that has now been accused of committing a series of gross atrocities in the neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo, atrocities against Hutus in everyway as bad as those committed against the Tutsis in the infamous genocide of 1994.

That’s one of Blair’s chums. To this magic circle one can add Victor Dahdaleh, the Jordanian-born tycoon involved in bribery allegations; there is Thaksin Shinawatra the former prime minister of Thailand, another billionaire and corrupt wheeler-dealer; there is Mummar Gaddafi, the Libyan dictator and all round oddball for whom Blair acts as an advisor, a cosy relationship that had nothing whatsoever to do with oil deals. There are murderous tyrants and shady businessmen in the entourage of Cosmopolitan Man…and there is Hashim Thaçi, prime minister of Kosovo and alleged farmer of human organs.

Last summer Blair recalled a military adventure, using a refrain with which we are all so familiar: “I did what was right. I did what was just. I did not regret it then. I do not regret it now.” He was not speaking of Iraq ; he was speaking of Kosovo. This twilight state and criminal empire is now led Thaçi, another of the Blair set, who, when he was a leader in the Kosovo Liberation Army, was known as The Snake, which might give you some clue as to his character.

In a recent Council of Europe report he stands accused of heading a mafia-like criminal network linked to organ trafficking. He stands accused of smuggling Serb captives into northern Albania where they were butchered, their kidneys removed for sale on the black market. The prisoners are said to have begged not to be ‘chopped to pieces’ before they were shot. The worst thing about this is that Western governments seem to have known of Thaçi’s actions before military intervention in the Kosovo War. Kidneys and narcotics, these were the trades favoured by this war criminal, Blair’s best friend.

Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.

I really hope that Cosmopolitan Man is seen perpetually in the half-light, wandering from one ghastly airport lounge to another, verily unto the trump of doom.

The Ghosts of Towton

Not much has changed since that bleak Palm Sunday long ago. The land between the villages of Saxton and Towton in Yorkshire is still largely open country, just as it was on 29 March, 1461. It was here, on a day churned with driving snow and freezing winds, that Englishman faced Englishman in the bloodiest battle ever fought on English soil, though the event is now largely absent from popular imagination. Even the battlefield memorial, a fifteenth century stone cross, is easy to miss, situated behind a hedge just off the B1217, a minor road leading from Towton to Garforth.

The Battle of Towton was part of the dynastic struggle between the houses of Lancaster and York that we now refer to as the Wars of the Roses. The origins of the conflict go back to 1399, when Henry Bolingbroke, duke of Lancaster, deposed his cousin, Richard II, ruling in his stead. It was an act that broke established notions of primogeniture and legitimate, divinely ordained, succession, with consequences that were still being felt deep into the reign of Henry VIII in the sixteenth century.

The immediate cause of the struggle was the complete incapacity of Henry VI, Bolingbroke’s grandson, for government. A rival party grew up headed by Richard, duke of York, whose claim to the throne was as strong, if not stronger, than that of Lancaster. The war began as a kind of aristocratic family quarrel. The early battles had really been no more than a series of skirmishes: the casualties had been modest and the rank and file largely spared.

All this changed in December 1460. Richard of York, who had previously been proclaimed as Henry’s heir, an uneasy political compromise, was killed in battle at Wakefield. Not just that but his head was then removed and, adorned with a paper crown, displayed in the city of York. His eldest son then threw off all pretence of loyalty to Henry VI, taking the crown as Edward IV and marching north in pursuit of the Lancastrian army, finally intercepted at Towton. There would be no quarter that day.

Towton was a crushing victory for the Yorkists, a battle fought with murderous bitterness. If the fighting, which lasted all day, was bad the pursuit was even worse, little more than a bloody slaughter. In the late 1990s a mass grave was discovered at Towton Hall, whole skeletons, in some cases. Subsequent investigations have shown how these men died. Details are given of the findings in the December issue of The Economist (Nasty, brutish and not that short). One soldier, known simply as Towton 25, suffered eight head wounds from a variety of weapons. The details are truly grisly;

The precise order can be worked out from the directions of the fractures on his skull…the first five blows were delivered by a bladed weapon to the left-hand side of his head, presumably by a right-handed opponent standing in front of him. None is likely to have been lethal.

The next one almost certainly was. From behind someone had swung a blade towards his skull, carving a down-to-up trajectory through the air. The blow opened a huge horizontal gash into the back of his head – picture a slit you could post an envelope through. Fractures raced down to the base of the skull and around the sides of his head. Fragments of bone were forced into Towton 25’s brain, felling him.

His enemies were not done yet. Another small blow to the right and back of his head may have been enough to turn him over on to his back. Finally another blade arced towards him. This one bisected his face, opening a crevice that ran from his left eye to his right jaw. It cut deep: the edge of the blade reached the back of his throat.

The conclusion is simple enough: this was a methodical slaughter, far too sustained and systematic to be mere battlefield blows. Towton 25 and his comrades are almost certainly a party of Lancastrians on the run from the battle, intercepted and massacred in the vicinity of the Hall and then buried in a mass grave. Even at this distance the violence is shocking – “It’s almost as if they were trying to remove their opponents identities”, one of the field archaeologists said of the attacker’s savage assault.

Close up his eyes, and draw the curtain close;
And let us all to meditation.

Look into the dark

In the course of any life there are remarkable discoveries to be made, sometimes quite by accident. I first became aware of the strange, enigmatic and atmospheric work of Godfried Schalcken, a Dutch genre painter of the seventeenth and eighteenth century, through a short story, a story that I will come to in a moment, though you may have already guessed the title and the author.

Schalcken painted in the precise and exquisitely detailed manner of the Leiden Fijnschilders, literally fine painters. His particular specialty was portraits or intimate scenes by night, the figures illuminated only by candle light. The first thing one notices is images captured by light, faces and figures; the second the dark beyond, impenetrable and slightly threatening.

His paintings are wonderfully atmospheric, but the enigma and strangeness is for me a way of seeing, a psychological frame, if you like, given by a reading of Strange Event in the Life of Schalken the Painter (sic), a gothic horror story written by Sheridan Le Fanu. I came across this in an anthology when I was twelve, a time I was passing through my own peculiar gothic phase, and it gave me a quite delicious sense of terror! I still look into the darkness of Schalcken’s paintings with a slight sense of unease, even after all these years.


If you don’t know the story it tells of kinship betrayed by avarice, of love frustrated, of heartless bargains; it tells of an unnatural union between life and death. It was originally published in The Purcell Papers, purporting to be manuscripts of the late Rev. Francis Purcell, an Irish priest, who tells of a visit to a Dutch friend;

I had often been struck, while visiting Vandael, by a remarkable picture, in which, though no connoisseur myself, I could not fail to discern some very strong peculiarities, particularly in the distribution of light and shade, as also a certain oddity in the design itself, which interested my curiosity. It represented the interior of what might be a chamber in some antique religious building--the foreground was occupied by a female figure, arrayed in a species of white robe, part of which is arranged so as to form a veil. The dress, however, is not strictly that of any religious order. In its hand the figure bears a lamp, by whose light alone the form and face are illuminated; the features are marked by an arch smile, such as pretty women wear when engaged in successfully practising some roguish trick; in the background, and, excepting where the dim red light of an expiring fire serves to define the form, totally in the shade, stands the figure of a man equipped in the old fashion, with doublet and so forth, in an attitude of alarm, his hand being placed upon the hilt of his sword, which he appears to be in the act of drawing.

'There are some pictures,' said I to my friend, 'which impress one, I know not how, with a conviction that they represent not the mere ideal shapes and combinations which have floated through the imagination of the artist, but scenes, faces, and situations which have actually existed. When I look upon that picture, something assures me that I behold the representation of a reality.'

The Dutchman immediately confirms the impression and begins to unravel the tragic and terrible story of Rose Vanderklaust, the niece and ward of the painter Gerard Douw- another real Dutch master-, to whom Schalken was apprenticed. She was, by the light of the author’s imagination, to be the painter’s first and only love, given away, as it turns out, like a chattel as a matter of profit and loss to a mysterious rival, a certain Mynher Vanderhausen of Rotterdam. But Vanderhausen is not just mysterious; he is something else altogether. If you want to know exactly what, if you want to know what happens to Rose, do read the story for yourself. I certainly don’t want to spoil it for you!

Le Fanu’s prose is superlative. He uses words in the same precise way that the Dutch master uses paint, a style which excites the imagination, a technique which adds to the atmosphere and the general mood of tension. Above all he has the most intimate understanding of the work of the real Schalcken, which has enabled him to weave a life into a macabre legend in a masterly and seamless fashion.

I should say, just in case you set off in pursuit, that the painting referred to in the story does not actually exist; it merely represents a kind of amalgam of Schlacken’s work. However, given the references in the story I am convinced that the central model Le Fanu had in mind, Rose with her arch smile, is that of Girl with a Candle, with the dark threatening to envelop a guarded and uncertain light.

Nigger Jim and the Devil

Thanks to a discussion thread on BlogCatalog I now know that New South, a publishing house in Montgomery, Alabama, has produced a bowdlerised version of one the great classics of American literature. Huckleberry Finn has been sanitised, or is it whitewashed? Whitewash, how can I use such a racist expression? It has rather been blackwashed, meaning the word 'nigger' has been washed out! Jim is no longer a 'nigger', a word, incidentally, used by both Huck and Tom Sawyer without any kind of malice or derogatory intent. No, he is simply a 'slave'.

What arrogance, what appalling conceit to start removing words, words chosen with care by the author, a particular word chosen by Mark Twain, simply because it does not meet with contemporary standards of good taste or political correctness. In my response I suggested the next step is to start a wholesale process of going through the literature of the world, removing the words and phrases we do not like, as directed, of course, by the Ministry of Truth. Even the titles of books will have to be changed, including The Black Person of the Narcissus though in the States that will doubtless appear as The African-American of the Narcissus! Once you start this where does it end? Those concerned about ageism will also start to demand repackaging. Let's hear it for The Mature Man and the Sea. You don’t like war and rumours of wars? OK, let's have Peace and Peace.

I suppose it’s of some significance that this censored version has appeared in Montgomery of all places, the first capital of the Confederacy, on the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the outbreak of the Civil War. I think they doth protest too much, and by their embarrassment over words shall ye know them. New South would seem to be anxious to bury the Old South, to bury history by corrupting literature, by corrupting the message and the meaning behind literature.

The blogger who raised this raised something else - on his own web page - which exercises my intellect and imagination, namely the alleged anti-Semitism of The Merchant of Venice. The author, Ian Thal, an American Jew, writes "...no matter how often nice liberal do-gooders try to pretend that Shakespeare had liberal attitudes towards Jews, we need to confront how many times his heroes compare Shylock to the Devil..." Before proceeding I should make it clear that he is not calling for censorship; no, he is arguing that work, even allegedly anti-Semitic work, should be read and understood in context.

Those who know me will understand that I'm about as far from being 'a nice liberal do-gooder' as a lion is from a polar bear! But words are so important. To use liberal or illiberal, anti-Semitic or pro-Semitic in relation to Shakespeare is, quite frankly, meaningless. On the balance of probability it's highly unlikely that Shakespeare ever met a Jew, officially absent from England from the expulsion of the late thirteenth to the readmission in the mid-seventeenth centuries. So the attitudes, and the words, the comparison of Shylock, and by implication all Jews, with the Devil is merely a reflection of the prejudices and the caricatures of the day, based, most likely, on stock demonic figures drawn from Medieval morality plays.

The other error here is to read any work of literature as biography, or as a mirror of the author's views; that Antonio and his crowd somehow reflect the attitudes and outlook of Shakespeare himself. It's lazy thinking based on no evidence at all. Think of Shylock, think of the subtlety of his character. Yes, he has malevolent and vengeful qualities but he is not unremittingly bad like Marlow's Barabas; he is not an archetype. He is vengeful because he has reason to be vengeful. He has been insulted all his life by the fops around Antonio, who both need him, need his capital, but treat him with condescension and contempt. Who would not be angry in such circumstances? But look how Shakespeare treats him, giving him some of the most eloquent lines in the whole play;

Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs,
dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with
the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject
to the same diseases, heal'd by the same means,
warm'd and cool'd by the same winter and summer
as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed?
If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us,
do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?
If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that.
If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility?
Revenge. If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his
sufferance be by Christian example? Why, revenge.
The villainy you teach me, I will execute,
and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction.

This is not a devil: this is a human being; this is a man. More than that, his appearance on the stage probably marks the first time in history that the English were urged to look at a Jew as a man and not as a demon. Such a defence in the Middle Ages would have been unthinkable. In the end he is also a man betrayed, betrayed even by his own daughter, so far as I am concerned one of the most worthless characters in drama, totally without nobility, compassion or a sense of duty towards her elderly father. This may be my modern sensibilities but I like to think it was not that far from Shakespeare's intention. The Merchant of Venice is a great play, full of complex emotions and characterisation. It deserves to be better understood. It is better understood, and not simply by 'nice liberal do-gooders.'

The dead hand of welfare

The one certain consequence of aid, of any kind of welfare, is poverty. Look at this country, look at the dreadful Dependency State, a financial burden that has crippled us for years and resulted in a form of entrenched, institutionalised socialism, almost impossible to shift, no matter the political complexion of any given government. Billions of pounds have been spent and we are not a step closer to ending poverty.

No, instead we have created welfare-dependency ghettos peopled by a sub-class; places where one’s expectations of a meaningful and fulfilling life are low to non-existent. Instead time passes with cheap alcohol, a haze of cigarette smoke, visits to the doctor, daytime TV and endless ennui, only relieved by an early death; it’s the subterranean world of the Morlock. America look to Britain; look to your socialist future.

I’ve expressed these views before, so there is nothing really new here. But I was inspired to take this path again by an article in the Sunday Telegraph about the work of Dambisa Moyo, a Zambian-born economist who has previously written Dead Aid, a book pointing the extent to which African economies have been crippled by foreign aid programmes, just the reverse of the outcome intended.

Now she has published How the West was Lost: Fifty Years of Economic Folly – And the Stark Choices Ahead. In this she accuses the West of squandering its economic advantages by a series of wrong-headed policies. America, she believes, is in danger of losing all entrepreneurial edge and becoming a “bona fide welfare state” as the century progresses.

Her warning is timely. England and America both built their power and greatness on free enterprise, on a buccaneering economic spirit. In this country a growing lack of self-confidence, a sharp decline in forms of nineteenth century self-belief, resulted last century in a major shift in economic and social priorities. No longer able to do things for ourselves the state had to do them for us, to remove all of the dangers and risks that make work and enterprise worth doing and life worth living.

Our suicide was planned. American freedom and American enterprise, in contrast, are in danger of dying by slow and haphazard degrees. “The US”, Moyo argues, “is on a path to creating the worst and most venal form of welfare state – one born of desperation from many years of flawed economic policies and a society that rapaciously feeds on itself”.

I have to say am both amused and bemused by the irony of some of our present economic and political realities. If one wants to look at our past look to the Indian and Chinese present, countries advancing by the most imaginative forms of investment and enterprise, countries unburdened by huge state expenditure on welfare, by any state welfare, for that matter. What a supreme irony it is that China, a country ruled by communists, has become a perfect example of classical capitalism!

I think it worthwhile to take Moyo’s thesis, advanced in her two books, as an intellectual continuum. In other words, to take the British example, successive governments have treated the country as if it was holding out a Third World begging bowl, with welfare expenditure in the place of foreign aid. This has involved the transfer of productive to unproductive sectors of the economy to nobody’s benefit, especially not the poor. Welfare, in other words, cripples, just as aid cripples.

It’s not all black, though; there is time, Moyo believes, to address these problems, if one is prepared to make difficult choices. The Republican victory in the mid-term elections will go some way to reversing the socialism of the White House, though it has to be seen if the long term drift can be halted.

Here our present coalition government – which was never my ideal – is taking a path of austerity, absolutely necessary in our circumstances, not just a sustained legacy of wasteful welfare spending but a crippling burden of debt bequeathed by a criminally incompetent Labour administration. There is resistance and the will to change may yet be broken, though I believe the consequences will be dire. Our problem is more deeply based than that of America. We have to change not just economic policies but an attitude of mind, an attitude that says the state will always provide. It will not; it cannot.

Odyssey

The Way Back is based on a true story, or creative fiction, or a pack of lies, depending on your point of view. Directed by Peter Weir, the movie tells of the escape in 1940 by a disparate group of prisoners from a Soviet labour camp somewhere to the north of Lake Baikal, recording their subsequent trek through the frozen wastes of Siberia, across the parched Gobi Desert, on to Tibet – China seems to be almost completely missed apart from the brief passage of the Great Wall – through the Himalayas – just as mysteriously incidental – and on to India and freedom.

It’s an impressive movie on a visual level, beautifully shot. It’s far less impressive on a human level, with almost no psychological depth or insight. Most of the characters failed to engage me, apart from Ed Harris as the enigmatic Mister Smith, an American engineer caught up in a Stalinist nightmare, and Colin Farrell, the tough, murderous Valka, a Russian zec or criminal inmate who escapes with the ‘politicos’ because his indebtedness to some of his fellow gangsters puts him in danger of his own life. Jim Sturgess as Janusz, a Polish officer and the leader of the group, sent to the gulag as a spy on the forced evidence of his wife, was far too tepid and unbelievable for my taste. The rest of the group left virtually no impression at all.

I should also mention Saoirse Ronan playing Irena, a Polish escapee from a collective farm, who meets up with the group in the neighbourhood of Lake Baikal, the female interest, added, I suppose, to get the guys to come out a little more about themselves and their individual destinies.

I think I’m beginning to sound a tad too negative. This is a good film, one I enjoyed, one that works as a personal and political odyssey, away from communism and towards freedom, in a literal and metaphorical sense. The early scenes in the gulag are good, showing the sheer horror of these places; the horror of logging in arctic conditions on an inadequate diet and the even greater horror of the mines. Life is not cheap here: it has no value at all. In one review I read the author said of Mister Smith – he never gives his first name- that he did not know why he was in prison. That’s just the thing about the gulag system under Stalin: many of the inmates had no idea why they were there either.

The journey itself is compellingly dramatic, though it requires a major leap of imagination to believe that anyone could survive a trek across a four thousand mile wilderness with almost no food apart from occasional game, fish and other scraps picked up along the way. The only natural survivor in the group is the knife-wielding Valka, responsible for the most effective foraging and ruthless enough to contemplate the possibility of cannibalism. But he, paradoxically the only one of the group who actually believes in the lying nonsense of communism – he has Lenin and Stalin tattooed on his chest rather than his arse, as another of the group suggests – refuses to leave Russia.

Yes, the journey is compelling, though it has a tendency to drop into too many triumph-over-adversity clichés. Besides it’s long, too long, as is the movie, almost becoming trudgingly tiresome. In the end even Weir seems exhausted, taking us in a rush through the wintery Himalayas, potentially the most gruelling part of all, down into happy Indian valleys.

The final reception by the tea-pickers is one of only three encounters with human groups in the whole trip. There are the monks of Tibet and before that some mounted Mongolian herdsmen. Then, just before entering the Gobi, the group, with Mister Smith as their spokesman, pass themselves off as American Buddhist pilgrims on their way to Lhasa. American pilgrims in 1940 in the middle of communist-occupied Mongolia on their way south to a Buddhist Mecca, that doesn’t test disbelief, it murders it!

The movie finishes on a rather obvious note, newsreel footage, shown under a pair of trudging feet, just in case anyone missed the message about the other journey, that of history. The footage shows the rise and fall of communism in Soviet-occupied Poland and other parts of Eastern Europe, until the whole corrupt and corrupting edifice collapsed in the late 1980s. Janusz, now in old age, is finally reunited with his wife, forced to betray him all those years before, a moment of pure sentimentality!

Overall nature is the real star of The Way Back, set against an unconvincing script and shallow characterisation. Still, it has an old-fashioned epic feel that has almost completely vanished from contemporary cinema, obsessed, as it mostly is, with rom coms, claustrophobic realism, instant thrills and shallow special effects. It’s a worthwhile, worthy, perhaps, piece of cinema, a generally good movie. With a little more imagination on the part of the script writers, a little more discipline on the part of the director, it might even have been a great one.

There and back again

Snow nuts on skies and boards
Showing off for all their friends
Winter sports at altitude,
Acrobatic leaps and bends.

And then the day ends.
With what result?
WHO CARES!

They had their winter fun
Under a winter blazing sun
Sliding on winter snow.
Living!
Now!

I’m missing it already! Yes, here I am, back for a New Year, back from a spot of truly exhilarating skiing in the Austrian resort of Sankt Anton am Arlberg. I’ve met all sorts on my various skiing trips but there are no allsorts like the Anton Allsorts, ski bums one and all! Sorry, I mean a really great crowd of enthusiasts in a place to be enthusiastic about. It’s not better than Val-d'Isère, where I was last year, just different, more demanding in some parts, less demanding in others.

For those of you in the know I would say that Saint Anton’s off-piste is among the best I have had, with some superb powder runs (do hire a guide, though). The place is also incomparable for mogul skiing. There are some reasonably easy bunny runs for beginners – far too busy- but in general this is a place best enjoyed by those at a more advanced level, with some good blue runs.



Combining the whole area of Arlberg, including St Anton, Lech, Zurs, St Christoph and St Jakob there are more miles of ground than one could ever manage in a week or several! It you are really serious go for the Tanzboden and the Kapall, the best powder experience I have ever had. I also tried a spot of night skiing, another first for me.


I have to say as a general rule that there is something really crazy about the skiing crowd, something that gets crazier every time I immerse myself among them. The après-ski in St Anton is not so much relaxation as organised insanity. All I have say here is Mooserwirt and Krazy Kangruh. If you have been you will know exactly what I mean! If you ever go you simply must drop in for a beer or two. Be advised, though, that they are both on-piste, so there is a short run back to town, perhaps not best covered in an inebriate state! I did enjoy both places – the atmosphere was pulsing – but I really preferred Bar Cuba, the place where we saw in 2011.

During the day I tended to keep my eating fairly light, nothing more complicated than gulaschesuppe. Evening, really, was the time for some serious dining and there were lots of good places to go, places serving traditional Austrian and German food. If you like sausages Saint Anton is sure to delight you, particularly those served in the Sporthotel, along with kartoffeln and sauerkraut. For a slightly more refined dining experience I thought the food served in St Antoner Hof was truly excellent. I should also give a mention to the Farnerstube, great for local Tyrolean cuisine.

As always I made some lovely new friends, mostly Americans (it’s always Americans!) as well as some really sweet Swedish guys (I now have a firm invitation to visit Stockholm!). New Year was mad, madder, if possible, than last year in Val-d'Isère, with fireworks thrown freely in the streets, falling at my feet. Thereafter it was a Bar Cuba for a heavy night of excess and delight – I honestly can’t remember when, or if, I got out of bed the following day. With what result? WHO CARES! I had my winter fun, loving in the winter sun, feeling more alive than ever, feeling that powder blow into my face. Bliss is it in this dawn to be alive but to be young – and a skier – is very heaven. Happy New Year!