December 1973… a village called Oberjoch (over the hill) in the Bavarian Alps. Six feet of snow! I was learning to ski with a six-man unit from 49 Field Regiment, Royal Artillery.

     It was a two-week course and we manage to ski fairly well down the smaller slopes at the beginning of the second week, but the first few days were difficult. I wasn’t particularly athletic and spent much of the time sprawled in an undignified heap on my backside.

     Mid-way through day two, I fell for the umpteenth time, badly-fitted skis detached and legs akimbo, when a boy of about eight years skied proficiently to a halt beside me and enquired in a concerned voice, “Was ist falsch?”

     I understood some German, but couldn’t speak it very well, so I was only able to reply, “I keep falling over.”

     He pointed to my skis and asked, “Sind sie kaputt?

     “Nein”, I answered, “Ich bin kaputt.”

     He gave me a strange look, chuckled to himself, then whizzed off with an expertise I could only dream of acquiring. He quickly got up to speed and I heard him yelling something like, “Onderlay, onderlay, onderlay!”

     “Little show-off!” I shouted after him… but he was out of earshot.

     After a hard day’s training on the slopes, we’d visit a gasthaus in the village for a meal and a few beers. The locals had a tradition of singing folk songs and we joined in with gusto… getting the hang of the tunes and lyrics by the second week. One of our party was a Scottish lad who had a good singing voice and a larger-than-life personality. His bawdy version of ‘Donald Where’s Yer Troosers’ went down a storm and his soulful rendition of ‘Danny Boy’ caused couples to hug each other and left the rest of us with a moist-eyed yearning for something intangible.

     One night, we bumped into some young ladies from a local finishing school. They were chaperoned by a formidable matron and a bull of a middle-aged male teacher. The girls were 16/17, giggling and fluttering in our direction. We were late teens/early twenties, sinking our beer and girding our loins. The matron was glaring at us. As if to break the tension, the male teacher produced a guitar and started singing the Leonard Cohen song ‘So Long Marianne’ in perfect English. Everyone joined in: six callow soldiers, ski instructor, young ladies, matron, mien host, busty barmaid and all.

     And if memory serves me right… in the confusion of ‘goodbyes’ and ‘fare-thee-wells’… when the male teacher was packing away his guitar… when the matron was distracted… I stole a kiss from the prettiest girl in the room.

.

time trundles on…

always forgetting

to pray for the angels