Sitting in my study, whose windows are covered in icicles, one feels cocooned from the elements, as if in a prison cell with the doors unlocked. The snows have finally come, the horizons are totally white, clouds and snowy peaks intermingling in a rhapsody of white, green and blue, the last two provided by pine and sky.
Some 35 years ago, I took a ski-plane up the Jungfrau, landed on an upward slope and skied down to Kleine Scheidegg, a vertiginous trip that had one of our fellow skiers being sick while small avalanches hissed past us. Two people quit halfway down and asked for a chopper to pick them up. One was pregnant, but unaware of it, the mother of my children. The other was an Italian male friend, who pretended to accompany the lady in distress but in reality had had enough. Two stayed with the guide, Roman Polanski and yours truly.
Roman did complain a hell of a lot on the way down, but he’s a strong skier and just the right size for the dangerous terrain. It took us close to three hours but we arrived safely looking very green. Our guide was kind and full of praise for our endurance. The only thing I said was that, however tough the trip, it beat the foehn anytime.
The foehn winds of the Bernese Oberland can generate stunning power. They are said to contain a number of positive ions that can drive people nuts. When they blow, the suicide rate goes up, and it used to be said that the Swiss courts would take the winds into consideration for crimes committed during the foehn period. It is a dry, warm wind that makes one feel achy and bad-tempered, and I suppose it is nature’s revenge for the horrors we inflict on her mountains each and every day. Mind you, the real beauty of mountains is best appreciated at ground level, something available to almost everyone. Yet we still say that we have conquered a mountain once we have climbed it. I’ve been looking at the mountain I skied with Roman so long ago, and it looks a hell of a lot more impressive from the bottom than it did from the top.
Although I still ski downhill, I now prefer cross-country skiing, especially in Lauenen, a tiny village four miles east of here, a place I will finally end up in, as the rich and vulgar keep poring into Gstaad. All last week I cross-country skied in splendid, cold and piercing conditions, setting out late in the day when the trails are empty and the only sounds come from crows, mountain dogs and the swishing of my skis as I glide along. It is this spiritual element in the Alps that I find wonderful, but one has to be alone.
Last week, late in the day with darkness closing in, I was coming round towards the end of a trail that resembles a figure of eight when I thought I saw a bear. Now I’m not the bravest of men, but nor am I a coward. I simply could not turn around and beat a hasty retreat, and the bear is, after all, the Bernese Oberland’s symbol. So I toughed it out and glided towards the bear I thought I had seen behind the trees along my skiing trail.
That is when it happened. I saw this thing move and I stopped. I was breathless but I tried to show no fear and to take in air calmly. Whereupon the bear turned out to be an enormously fat woman of Saudi appearance wrapped in the biggest fur coat I’ve ever seen. Smiling at my fears, I asked her if she were lost and if I could help in any way. Incredibly, she waved me away, the way one dismisses a pest in a nightclub. So I went on my merry way wondering about the ‘bear’ and what she was up to. It remains a mystery.
And speaking of such ‘bears’, the Gulf states, which are essentially regal welfare states, are next in line. Their ruling élite assume that oil and gas profits belong to them to dispose of as they see fit — private jets, palaces, yachts and football clubs, but the winds of change are here to stay. The Qatari Al Thani ruling family is said to be eyeing Manchester United, which, if it happens, will mean that Abu Dhabi versus Qatar will be a northern derby soon.
But there’s something that bothers me. There is an unholy alliance between Sheikh Mansour, who owns Manchester City FC, and a low life named Robert Tchenguiz, a principal player in the collapse of the Icelandic Kaupthing Bank. The Tchenguiz brothers, Robbie and Vinny, as they style themselves, are certainly low lifes, two Iraqi Jewish boys who used their houses and boats in St Tropez to lure the Icelandic bank executives to grant them enormous loans. They are poster boys for everything that’s wrong with capitalism, and Manchester City FC cannot afford to be involved. Let some hungry rookie hack look into this. I am busy avoiding bears in Lauenen.
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