Mother Nature is giving us her middle finger

I have never experienced such a long, continuous blizzard, and I’ve been coming here for 63 years. The ski lifts are closed, as are the hotels, and it’s been coming down for a week non-stop. My Portuguese handyman Fernando now lives on his snow plough, clearing the private road that leads to the house, as useless a task as trying to bail out the Titanic. By now I should be in London, enjoying my new rented house in Glebe Place. Instead I’m housebound and snowed in, a modern Prisoner of Zenda without the Ruritanian uniforms.

My only worries are the possibility of an avalanche, and my son’s insistence that he ski every day. Nowadays, that boy simply ignores anything I say and drives away muttering about old people being scared. If I could catch him, I’d teach him a sharp lesson. The trouble is he’s among the fastest skiers in the region, and I’m now among the slowest. He also has a nasty habit of leaving his dog with me and disappearing for the day, turning me into a walker, or whatever it is that people who walk dogs for money are called.

This is Mother Nature giving us her middle finger. The lifts have stopped in France, Italy and Switzerland, the resorts are closed, and she’s dumping on us as if this were Stalingrad. I don’t blame her. Up until 150 years ago, she was left alone in the Alps to organise her flora and fauna. Birds and furry things were undisturbed and when there was thunder and lightning the two-legged creatures below thought they were dragons spitting fire at each other. Then the Brits started to venture higher and higher and the Swiss built hospitals and hotels.