Not going skiing.

Email just arrived from Oliver’s school detailing next year’s skiing trip. When I scrolled through it it looked surprisingly civilised for a crowd of small rascally boys: gorgeous pictures of skiing and sunshine: but also pictures of the hotel’s sauna, swimming facilities and splendidly sophisticated restaurant and bar. This seemed a bit much even for public school boys: and when I read the instructions I realised that the idea was not that you give your kids some new goggles and fifty quid and shove them on a coach with instructions that if they do manage to get any duty free it needs to be cognac and if they come back with cigarettes you will make them eat them: the plan was that you all go together. This was the description:

We envisage that after breakfast together there will follow a morning of ski tuition for children and free skiing for adults.

We will then all meet for lunch at the hotel. The afternoon will be spent skiing with your children at your leisure accompanied by staff if you wish.

After skiing for the afternoon staff will arrange and accompany children for their evening meal, leaving parents free to relax and enjoy a sociable drink. Following boys’ supper there will be a daily prize giving after which staff will prepare children for evening activities whilst parents enjoy dinner together. Boys will then be put to bed by staff in their rooms.

I could hardly believe the wonderfulness of that idea. What a brilliant way to do a school trip. Of course I immediately wanted to go very, very much indeed, and turned to Mark with my best optimistic ‘shall I book it now?’ look: but he has a heart of stone sometimes.

“You can’t ski,” he said, “and you don’t like the cold and so we don’t have any ski clothes and nor do the children. So you would have to learn to ski at least a little bit first, and you have got the co-ordination of a Shetland pony on a bicycle. Then you would want to spend a fortune buying over-trousers and jackets and hats and gloves for everybody: and then if you read the bottom bit here it says the trip will cost £2, 350 for grown-ups, and £1,995 for children. Two adults, two children, that’s eight thousand seven hundred pounds before you start on the rest of it, and they want a deposit this week of five hundred quid each. Remind me: have we paid your tax demand yet?”

So that was that. But if we win the lottery this week I can jolly well tell you what I shall be doing with it. We will be going on a school trip.