Of course, I forgot to mention yesterday the other BIG thing about skiing, once the horrors of ‘pre-par-ay-shun’ are done and you’re ready to head downhill. It pays just to spend a few seconds looking around. Because although you go ‘downhill’, it’s actually a mountain. One of many, cos they hunt in packs, these Alps. And the entire, 360 degree panorama is just spectacular. Beautiful. Clean. Fresh. And more beautiful. And so clear and bright and sunny that you can’t understand how there’s still snow on the ground. But you realise the answer is that there are teams of French people working all night long preserving what is left and adding to it with artificial snow cannons. Because it’s hot out here. Like really hot. So by after (long) lunch, there’s not a lot of life in the lower slopes. But that’s the price you pay for skiing in sunshine.

And as I skied I wondered about the actual process. As I’m flying down a mountainside at, what, 40kph? 50??, I’m reacting to every curve, every turn, twist, bump and change in surface quality and incline. But here’s the best bit: I don’t have to think it and ‘operate the system’, it is fully autonomic. An autonomous car needs about 150 CPUs to keep it straight and true and avoid killing too many people. And we do the same thing. With just one CPU. I’m not saying it’s perfect, otherwise I wouldn’t have had just a minor spill this morning. I say minor because I didn’t even suffer a bruise as my ski caught some rut or other and over I went. Ok, a little bruise to the ego but I can cope with that. Maybe my legs were tired? Maybe old people shouldn’t ski? Or maybe my CPU just went awol for a fraction of a second. I landed on my bum and, even more important than avoiding concussion, the ski that came off stopped right next to me and didn’t go accelerating down the run, so I could continue.

So is the ability to ski so amazing (which it is) that it must be attributed to an Absolute Creator, who made us complete and able to ski whilst sending a text message simultaneously, or is that just proof of evolution and ‘how far we’ve come’? If God had wanted us to ski would we not have 4 foot long feet? Made of wood? Or carbon fibre, better?

So many questions. But it’s not about philosophy, nor theology. It’s about adrenaline. The best drug in the world. Other than statins. Ozempic…

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx