Page 120 - Michael Frost-Voyages to Maturity-23531.indd

The days of skiing were effected with ski equipment that would now be
laughable. Skis were common to all, the generic boots were similarly uniform,
and the bindings occupied about two minutes to adjust. The T-bars took a bit of
work to utilise with ease, and the hills were by no means too steep for novices
to enjoy (not one person in either group, it would seem, had ever before even
thought of taking a skiing vacation), but quite quickly it was evident that skiing
was by no means what primarily interested both sides of the gender divide. The
issue, though it was not much of one, was that there was no privacy whatsoever,
but it became apparent to me that it was not a problem because all of the Lotharios
who boasted of their prowess were actually sexual neophytes, as practiced in the
ways of carnality as was I. There was also no excess drinking that I ever saw,
and none of us was in possession of sufficient funds to actively go out and seek
bacchanalian pleasures elsewhere. Which is not to say that things were not tiring,
for although we were all quite fit and young, skiing exercised parts of the body
which were unaccustomed to such rigours, and the evenings were devoted to
much socialising (when the alcohol was limited to jugs of gluehwein, a spicy
concoction that I then, and have since, found tends to be very cloying after a
glass or two. It is difficult to conceive actually getting intoxicated on the stuff, and
I never saw anybody try).

I decided one day that it was necessary to take the promised trip to Gstaad
and see whether there were glimmers of hope with Carole. This journey I
undertook by hitching, a means of transport that I had used occasionally in
England and found a good way to get around. But this was not so in Switzerland,
the Swiss apparently liking to keep themselves to themselves even more than
does the Englishman. Having phoned beforehand (no easy task in German,
I having failed ‘O’ level German) I met her for a coffee and found her to be
even more gorgeous than I remembered. But the discussion was short and not
very sweet; even I realised at that point that I wasn’t exactly a catch, although
I tried to be at my amusing best. I had actually reached the stage in life when
I could assess people reasonably well, at least I thought I had; the numerous
ships’ personnel, officers, crew, hangers-on, fellow cadets and passengers met
at cocktail parties and similar events, all required sometimes rapid evaluation.
It therefore dawned upon me that Carole and I were simply not on the same
wavelength, even though she could converse easily on virtually any subject (she
could even talk about ‘Eugene Onegin’, the first opera that I had attended in
London, and do so with intelligence). It all seemed a bit ‘coached’ however, and,
for me, palpably insincere. However, as a young man much taken by feminine
pulchritude, it was not easy to forego possibilities that had not yet actually been
foreclosed; the flame of hope was not to be entirely extinguished.

But all was not yet lost, there still being plenty of interesting people of both
sexes with whom to converse over the gluehwein. A couple of evenings later,
while sitting resting my sore muscles, I espied, some ten feet down the table, a

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