Saturday.
A man is standing at the top of the escalator at Gatwick Airport, he is subject to internal debate, should he go for a cup of coffee in Apostrophe or should he go for a "cup of coffee" in Wetherspoon's? Wetherspoon's wins, so Steve stomps off to Wetherspoon's leaving Steve and Liz with Nick, in Apostrophe. Too many Steves, I shall call Wetherspoon Steve "Clunes".
I had arrived earlier and so, after a whisky and a Jageermeister before 8.00 o'clock, I had settled into a corner with my book, and had pauses to watch the recycling team. He, for such was the team, very carefully combined the bags of all the bins into one bag, and replaced the bags, he then moved off with the trolley (the rest of the team) to continue his green crusade around the rest of the airport.
The nice people at Apostrophe filled up my water bottle for me, as, since Christmas, the iniquitous bastards at BAA have removed the drinking fountains, forcing one to indulge in overpriced planet-busting bottled water.
The plane was caught, it flew, my prediction of Sheperd's Pie being sadly confirmed, though the ejaculatory sticky toffee pudding proved interesting, and viscous, or is it vicious? It landed, with me not endearing myself to the man who refused to turn off his computer until the cabin crew told him to, again, thanks to my intervention. I rehearsed,"It may well not interfere at all mate, but I'd rather you didn't test it out on my flight." for the ten minutes cruise through the Alps before landing while trying to memorise exactly how the Ali Shuffle was done (early moonwalking I think). Fortunately there were no fisticuffs, and Steve (not Clunes) agreed with me that it, the computing, was irresponsible, and he'd been in the RAF so he should know. In fact it was a holiday with three people knowing everything, and two women and John.
At Innsbruck, the sun is out, the sky is clear, the transfer rep is called Ruth Cluness, and is obviously a relation of Clunes, "Oh yes we dropped the 's' when we moved to the UK in 1814." We get in the coach and roar up the Ziller valley to Mayrhofen. On the way it transpires that my "Snowhouse" has mutated into a room in Caroline's hotel, though I am not allowed to eat with the others due to "contractual obligations", serendipitously this saves me a bar bill of titanic proportions. At the Landhaus Roscher I am met by Mein Host, Gunther, a tall spare man sporting luxuriant hair and a moustache stolen from a Mexican, who gives me a key and shows me the lift. As I unpack I hear Caroline arrive and pop down to say, "Hello", Gunther gives her a key and allows me to show her the lift.
Her room sports a hob and 'fridge', "Oh good! We can fill it with beer!". At 3.30 the next morning the 'fridge will be turned off having been labelled a liability on the somnolence front. It must have been a doozy of a compressor to cut through the alcohol-induced coma of the typical skiing holiday.
We meet up, go to the shop and get skis, and go to the cafe and get beer, followed by more beer before we split up to eat. My soup is very nice. I meet up with the rest later, assist them in drinking their wine, and then head off to the bar. Eventually I've had enough, and go home leaving Caroline to chat up Billy the Fireman from Belfast. At 2.00 a.m my phone goes off,
"I'm lost."
In high dudgeon I don clothes and set off to the rescue.
Sunday.
Breakfast is a subdued affair, rather like the mountains around the town, a cloud has settled on it. We meet up, fight our way on to the Gondola and ascend. At the top the cloud is undiminished so we have a ski around the mountain by braille. Then we pick up John and watch him use braille as it is designed to be used, i.e. he scans the mountain with his hands, hips, thighs and arse, to find out what it is saying to him; generally it is saying, "Get Off!". Steve (who as well as being a know-it-all is a ski instructor) takes John under his wing, and so the party factions a bit.
In the afternoon I end up with Caroline (Caroline's motto is "Work hard. Play hard." which leaves me at a considerable disadvantage), totally lost, falling and pulling my neck, by being convinced I was stationary, when I was, in fact, travelling sideways at speed. We find a cafe, and stop for a coffee, discover that we're at the top of the gondola and so move to beer. The cafe is a giant umbrella surmounting windows, as the afternoon wears on, the volume of music gets higher, Europop interspersed with Austrian Oompah, the latter being very popular, sporting a suspiciously martial beat.
We descend, and an 8 year old tries to kill me by forcing me off the step of the gondola into the pit, if this doesn't kill me it will merely screw my legs off, the child is from Belfast, and after she has made sure of a seat by force of buttocks, his mother eyes her little lad indulgently. I eye the little lad indignantly, and Caroline, who is standing, eyes the mother - well, Caroline just eyes her, think cobra and passing rodent.
Back at our Hotel:
"I've lost my fucking skibag!"
"!?"
"It was brand new!"
"Where did you have it?"
"In the locker room."
"Perhaps it's still there."
"Aaach!"
"Aaach!" is a fair summation of Caroline's feeling for her fellow human beings, it is a syllable that can encompass, hatred, despair, resignation and mild discomfort, we will hear it a lot, in several manifestations over the next few days.
I return with her to the other hotel, before heading off for my dinner, there, on the bench, in the middle of the locker room is a skibag, the resultant change in atmospheric pressure will account for the weather the next day. Several beers later, I head off for my eatery and meet my table mate Rob. From Northern Ireland, a programmer with Microsoft. I have a slightly slipshod conversation with him, before staggering back to the others. A slightly earlier night is declared.
Monday.
The view at breakfast is uninspiring, the mountains are cloud clad again. We troop to the Gondola and ascend, halfway up we pop through the cloud into bright sunshine. The snow is good, the weather is good, cor! John's lessons continue, and we venture over the top of the next peak, to a point where Caroline decides we should go up the World's longest T-Bar (for an exposition on the T bar see "In the Dark" two posts previously). John who had previously been up a short T-Bar, well, partially up actually, was now familiar with their foibles. I drew the short straw and accompanied him, on the left, my right thigh locked into screaming agony as I tried to stop him forcing my skis off the track. Now the T-Bar is not my favourite device but John did his best to put my mind at ease, the litany of diverse profanity and blasphemy that accompanied our ascent acting as a distraction.
Such is the beauty of the scenery, that we only pause briefly at the site of the Panorama restaurant, and admire the way that the blue of the smoke from its smouldering carcasse contrasts nicely with that of the sky. We then stop for Jagertee and beer before descending.
Jagertee: herbal tea with a liberal dose of Stroh rum and a lot of sugar, the last time I was in Austria I was convinced it helped my skiing, by the end of this week I knew that it didn't. At this point Caroline noticed a girl drinking something red with berries floating in it, I dispatched myself to find out. There followed an uneasy conversation until I managed to move my syntax away from, "What are you having to drink?", and on to, "What is the name of the drink that you are drinking?". I reported back, much to their relief.
"It's a Himberboller."
"A HIMMLER BALL!"
"Ha ha. Shut Up! Ha ha ha. No, a himberbolle, rasberry schnapps with sparkling wine, the himmlerbolle has a double and the hitlerbolle only one shot (dimuendo, followed by rapid retreat).
In the evening Rob tells me that he is a Malthusian, I nod assent, immediately deciding to ask Clunes what the hell they are in case of a test later in the week. The rest of the evening is spent listening to the free entertainment and grumbling about the Austrian lack of anti-smoking laws (next January apparently).
Tuesday.
Another glorious day, the sky is blue, the snow is great, I volunteer to look after John on the blue runs, and Clunes, after a morning with Caroline and the "keen" skiers, decides to join us for the afternoon. The first run from the restaurant is a hard-packed road, John takes it first and fails to make any impression with his snowplough, me second, similar, Clunes the same but sadly decides to stop by running into the bank rather than off the edge. The bank has been there for three months, thawing and freezing into the sort of solid mass that puts concrete to shame. Having finally come to a halt, I turn round, Clunes is lying on the track, his skis are neatly arranged behind him.
"Are you alright?"
"My ankle!"
"Bollocks!"
"Bollocks!"
We come back to the body and watch with trepidation as he rises to his feet.
"Bollocks! Bollocks! Bollocks!"
"Shall I go and call out the ski patrol?"
"No I'll try."
And try he does. We take a long, slow, minimal turn route down the mountain, fortuitously meet up with the others and all descend. The Doctor is a "Doe-eyed Beauty" who for a large fee, declares the ankle chipped, pops it into a splint and signs the insurance forms, sadly she does not say, "For you Mister Clunes, the skiing is over."
At my eatery, I wish Rob, "Happy Paddy's Day!", comment on his circumspection on the alcohol front and am told that his psychiatrist has advised against spirits.
Wednesday.
Another subdued breakfast, after which Caroline again hits the Spar to work her way through the selection of rehydration therapies. Today we decide to go up the Ahorn, on the other side of the valley. We stagger to the cable car, and are whisked up the mountain to uncrowded slopes, brilliant sunshine and the blockhouse of the combined WC and weather station (I could go on about gale force winds and scattered precipitation but I won't*).
A man is standing at the top of the escalator at Gatwick Airport, he is subject to internal debate, should he go for a cup of coffee in Apostrophe or should he go for a "cup of coffee" in Wetherspoon's? Wetherspoon's wins, so Steve stomps off to Wetherspoon's leaving Steve and Liz with Nick, in Apostrophe. Too many Steves, I shall call Wetherspoon Steve "Clunes".
I had arrived earlier and so, after a whisky and a Jageermeister before 8.00 o'clock, I had settled into a corner with my book, and had pauses to watch the recycling team. He, for such was the team, very carefully combined the bags of all the bins into one bag, and replaced the bags, he then moved off with the trolley (the rest of the team) to continue his green crusade around the rest of the airport.
The nice people at Apostrophe filled up my water bottle for me, as, since Christmas, the iniquitous bastards at BAA have removed the drinking fountains, forcing one to indulge in overpriced planet-busting bottled water.
The plane was caught, it flew, my prediction of Sheperd's Pie being sadly confirmed, though the ejaculatory sticky toffee pudding proved interesting, and viscous, or is it vicious? It landed, with me not endearing myself to the man who refused to turn off his computer until the cabin crew told him to, again, thanks to my intervention. I rehearsed,"It may well not interfere at all mate, but I'd rather you didn't test it out on my flight." for the ten minutes cruise through the Alps before landing while trying to memorise exactly how the Ali Shuffle was done (early moonwalking I think). Fortunately there were no fisticuffs, and Steve (not Clunes) agreed with me that it, the computing, was irresponsible, and he'd been in the RAF so he should know. In fact it was a holiday with three people knowing everything, and two women and John.
At Innsbruck, the sun is out, the sky is clear, the transfer rep is called Ruth Cluness, and is obviously a relation of Clunes, "Oh yes we dropped the 's' when we moved to the UK in 1814." We get in the coach and roar up the Ziller valley to Mayrhofen. On the way it transpires that my "Snowhouse" has mutated into a room in Caroline's hotel, though I am not allowed to eat with the others due to "contractual obligations", serendipitously this saves me a bar bill of titanic proportions. At the Landhaus Roscher I am met by Mein Host, Gunther, a tall spare man sporting luxuriant hair and a moustache stolen from a Mexican, who gives me a key and shows me the lift. As I unpack I hear Caroline arrive and pop down to say, "Hello", Gunther gives her a key and allows me to show her the lift.
Her room sports a hob and 'fridge', "Oh good! We can fill it with beer!". At 3.30 the next morning the 'fridge will be turned off having been labelled a liability on the somnolence front. It must have been a doozy of a compressor to cut through the alcohol-induced coma of the typical skiing holiday.
We meet up, go to the shop and get skis, and go to the cafe and get beer, followed by more beer before we split up to eat. My soup is very nice. I meet up with the rest later, assist them in drinking their wine, and then head off to the bar. Eventually I've had enough, and go home leaving Caroline to chat up Billy the Fireman from Belfast. At 2.00 a.m my phone goes off,
"I'm lost."
In high dudgeon I don clothes and set off to the rescue.
Sunday.
Breakfast is a subdued affair, rather like the mountains around the town, a cloud has settled on it. We meet up, fight our way on to the Gondola and ascend. At the top the cloud is undiminished so we have a ski around the mountain by braille. Then we pick up John and watch him use braille as it is designed to be used, i.e. he scans the mountain with his hands, hips, thighs and arse, to find out what it is saying to him; generally it is saying, "Get Off!". Steve (who as well as being a know-it-all is a ski instructor) takes John under his wing, and so the party factions a bit.
In the afternoon I end up with Caroline (Caroline's motto is "Work hard. Play hard." which leaves me at a considerable disadvantage), totally lost, falling and pulling my neck, by being convinced I was stationary, when I was, in fact, travelling sideways at speed. We find a cafe, and stop for a coffee, discover that we're at the top of the gondola and so move to beer. The cafe is a giant umbrella surmounting windows, as the afternoon wears on, the volume of music gets higher, Europop interspersed with Austrian Oompah, the latter being very popular, sporting a suspiciously martial beat.
We descend, and an 8 year old tries to kill me by forcing me off the step of the gondola into the pit, if this doesn't kill me it will merely screw my legs off, the child is from Belfast, and after she has made sure of a seat by force of buttocks, his mother eyes her little lad indulgently. I eye the little lad indignantly, and Caroline, who is standing, eyes the mother - well, Caroline just eyes her, think cobra and passing rodent.
Back at our Hotel:
"I've lost my fucking skibag!"
"!?"
"It was brand new!"
"Where did you have it?"
"In the locker room."
"Perhaps it's still there."
"Aaach!"
"Aaach!" is a fair summation of Caroline's feeling for her fellow human beings, it is a syllable that can encompass, hatred, despair, resignation and mild discomfort, we will hear it a lot, in several manifestations over the next few days.
I return with her to the other hotel, before heading off for my dinner, there, on the bench, in the middle of the locker room is a skibag, the resultant change in atmospheric pressure will account for the weather the next day. Several beers later, I head off for my eatery and meet my table mate Rob. From Northern Ireland, a programmer with Microsoft. I have a slightly slipshod conversation with him, before staggering back to the others. A slightly earlier night is declared.
Monday.
The view at breakfast is uninspiring, the mountains are cloud clad again. We troop to the Gondola and ascend, halfway up we pop through the cloud into bright sunshine. The snow is good, the weather is good, cor! John's lessons continue, and we venture over the top of the next peak, to a point where Caroline decides we should go up the World's longest T-Bar (for an exposition on the T bar see "In the Dark" two posts previously). John who had previously been up a short T-Bar, well, partially up actually, was now familiar with their foibles. I drew the short straw and accompanied him, on the left, my right thigh locked into screaming agony as I tried to stop him forcing my skis off the track. Now the T-Bar is not my favourite device but John did his best to put my mind at ease, the litany of diverse profanity and blasphemy that accompanied our ascent acting as a distraction.
Such is the beauty of the scenery, that we only pause briefly at the site of the Panorama restaurant, and admire the way that the blue of the smoke from its smouldering carcasse contrasts nicely with that of the sky. We then stop for Jagertee and beer before descending.
Jagertee: herbal tea with a liberal dose of Stroh rum and a lot of sugar, the last time I was in Austria I was convinced it helped my skiing, by the end of this week I knew that it didn't. At this point Caroline noticed a girl drinking something red with berries floating in it, I dispatched myself to find out. There followed an uneasy conversation until I managed to move my syntax away from, "What are you having to drink?", and on to, "What is the name of the drink that you are drinking?". I reported back, much to their relief.
"It's a Himberboller."
"A HIMMLER BALL!"
"Ha ha. Shut Up! Ha ha ha. No, a himberbolle, rasberry schnapps with sparkling wine, the himmlerbolle has a double and the hitlerbolle only one shot (dimuendo, followed by rapid retreat).
In the evening Rob tells me that he is a Malthusian, I nod assent, immediately deciding to ask Clunes what the hell they are in case of a test later in the week. The rest of the evening is spent listening to the free entertainment and grumbling about the Austrian lack of anti-smoking laws (next January apparently).
Tuesday.
Another glorious day, the sky is blue, the snow is great, I volunteer to look after John on the blue runs, and Clunes, after a morning with Caroline and the "keen" skiers, decides to join us for the afternoon. The first run from the restaurant is a hard-packed road, John takes it first and fails to make any impression with his snowplough, me second, similar, Clunes the same but sadly decides to stop by running into the bank rather than off the edge. The bank has been there for three months, thawing and freezing into the sort of solid mass that puts concrete to shame. Having finally come to a halt, I turn round, Clunes is lying on the track, his skis are neatly arranged behind him.
"Are you alright?"
"My ankle!"
"Bollocks!"
"Bollocks!"
We come back to the body and watch with trepidation as he rises to his feet.
"Bollocks! Bollocks! Bollocks!"
"Shall I go and call out the ski patrol?"
"No I'll try."
And try he does. We take a long, slow, minimal turn route down the mountain, fortuitously meet up with the others and all descend. The Doctor is a "Doe-eyed Beauty" who for a large fee, declares the ankle chipped, pops it into a splint and signs the insurance forms, sadly she does not say, "For you Mister Clunes, the skiing is over."
At my eatery, I wish Rob, "Happy Paddy's Day!", comment on his circumspection on the alcohol front and am told that his psychiatrist has advised against spirits.
Wednesday.
Another subdued breakfast, after which Caroline again hits the Spar to work her way through the selection of rehydration therapies. Today we decide to go up the Ahorn, on the other side of the valley. We stagger to the cable car, and are whisked up the mountain to uncrowded slopes, brilliant sunshine and the blockhouse of the combined WC and weather station (I could go on about gale force winds and scattered precipitation but I won't*).
*However, I include a comment from Liz: "The terrible farting with which some of the party were afflicted - ie those who drank more than (say) 5 litres of beer a day mixed with Jagermeister, cream, chocolate and red wine. I think that would act somewhat like a Coke Float - violent fizzing (resulting in a mixture able to restore rusty metal to shining newness), followed by an explosive secondary fermentation (tertiary fermentation? can't recall if that's possible). The blame was laid on the beetroot or the carrot salad. Every day.
I (Liz) am the control in the experiment as I only drank small quantities of beer but plenty of red wine, ate everything everyone else ate and was fine.Therefore, it was the beer not the beetroot or carrots that was the responsible factor."
Liz has, of course, forgotten that she is in fact a girl, and that girls do not do that sort of thing!
The morning is spent getting John more confident, and storming down the top blue, after which a red run and side-slipping is thrown into the pot. John gets down and we re-ascend up the T-bar, which, as he ascends with Caroline, he falls off, she, ungallantly in my opinion, stays upright and leaves his flailing body behind. As we pass I make an offer,
"Stay at the bottom and I'll come up with you."
"No. I'll be alright."
We gather at the top and eventually spot him, he waves - with both hands.
"How did he do that?"
"Oh God he's straddled it!"
He has indeed straddled it, despite the notice at the bottom, "No Straddling", despite my telling him, "No Straddling". We stand at the top waiting for disaster, will he be capsized and dragged off down the mountain or will he merely be impaled on the poles put there to stop the bar digging into the snow. With waxing anxiety, we wonder whether we should get out the cameras. As he crests the top there is a mounting chorus of "Get off. Get off! GET OFF!" Amazingly he does and grins round at us in triumph. There is now a mounting chorus of, "Let go. Let go! LET GO!" as he is dragged towards a harsh encounter with the poles. At the last minute he does, the pisteur comes out of the hut and soundly berates him in German, it is at this point that John truly becomes a British Skier, "Yeah, yeah." he replies dismissively.
After some more skiing we visit the Ice Bar for a Gluwein (which comes out of a 10 litre pressurised vessel - how romantic) or a cup of tea (which comes as hot water and choice of teabag). Perhaps John is a little more fazed by his experience than we thought, firstly he gets lost by the simple process of looking in the wrong direction as everyone else skis off (though to be fair I did give him instructions contrary to what we actually did), and secondly upon being handed his tea,
"Where's the milk?",
I point at a glass bottle full of white stuff,
"There, in the milk bottle."
"D'you think so?"
We sit in the sun and have a mooch around the ice hotel before committing to the descent, down the red run back to the town, it is a long way. As we descend it gets warmer and the snow turns to porridge. The slope is one of those that has been banged in so that it is possible to "ski back to the resort", there is a huge, incredibly steep slope just before the bottom, the top of which is littered with people summoning up courage. As we stand summoning ours and waiting for John, I notice Steve looking down the slope and then back at John's approaching figure:
"Oh shit.... Aha!" (broad grin)
"There you are. So what we're going to do here i....".
At the far side of the slope Liz, yelping, rolls down in the arms of a skateboarder.
"...s side slip down to there (she alright?) and then turn and head off to there. Follow me."
Thus John is subverted from watching one of the "experienced skiers" screaming her way down the first twenty yards of the slope. Halfway down Liz falls again, and Caroline and I are treated to a masterclass of how inflection can change the meaning of a phrase, viz:
"Oh shit!" - I have fallen over - Anger.
"Oh shit!" - Now I am sliding out of control down the hill - Despair.
"Oh shit!" - I'm heading straight for that tree - Fear.
But she stopped, and eventually, we got down, at the bottom there was a schuss and after that a bar.
Steve, "Well thank God we're down that in one piece, that's never a red run."
I merely point, at the start of the schuss there is Caroline, and next to her a pile of clothes and skiing accouterments that used to be John. He is fortunately unharmed, and has just had one of those explosive speed skiing accidents that leave you naked, surrounded by debris.
In the evening Caroline and I visit the spa (not the Spar) for a swim, there is a bubble pool, which when working fills my trunks to a degree previously only promised by Cialis, causing great consternation. We find Clunes and ask him about his day, he replies that he has made a great discovery in the Spar; the "Kellermeister" range of 25cl bottles of wine,and that he has commenced his oenous world tour. The rest of the evening is fairly subdued, though as we get within an ace of the Hotel, Clunes summons us back to look at his foot. We look, undo the bandages and do them back up again, the first-aid equivalent of a turning it off and then turning it back on again. We then tell him to keep his leg up at all times, he looks at us - amazed, "That's exactly what the Doe-Eyed Beauty said! I'll do that then."
Thursday.
After the exigies of the previous day, John elected to have a day off, leaving the rest of us (the upright ones) to take a trip, the rep sold us Zell-am-Zimmer, "as the glacier can be very exposed". So it was that we caught skibus B and arrived at the station ten minutes later than it would have taken us to walk there. From there, another bus to Zell station, and yet another to the gondola. Caroline squares her shoulders, gets in the car in front, gets off at the mid-station,
"GET ON!",
and so joins us for the last section to the top Here there is the familiar low cloud but we persevere catching a long run along the crest of the mountain, that on a good day would be fabulous, as it is, it's blowing a gale, is unpisted, and has no visibility, everyone falls, well nearly everyone, modesty forbids me pointing out who didn't.
To move on I am forced down a black, and then, to add insult, I am deserted at a four man chair, and ascend in the freezing wind by myself, my usual sunny disposition evaporates as I experience a "sense-of-humour-failure". At some point I stump off leaving the other miserable bastards to disport themselves on the slopes, I sit in a small hut drinking coffee inhaling pipesmoke. After this anything looks good, so I rejoin the merry throng, and we begin to make our way back, this involves a chair that runs along the route of the ridge track that 75% of the party found so taxing, by the far end of the chair most of us are frozen in place and my cheeks have become baby-soft from the scouring of wind and ice pellets - well thank goodness we didn't go to the exposed glacier! We descend in about ten metres of visibility, it is horrid, so horrid that when we arrive back in Mayrhofen we have to have a beer. The evening will be short, attrition having taken its toll. Clunes has spent the day talking to his insurance company, trying to convince them that Austria has had self-determination (with a small hiatus between 1939 and 1945) and is, in fact not part of Germany, where all the details have been sent.
Friday.
Having looked at the cloud encasing the mountain, Caroline has declared a "not very good for skiing day" and is sitting at breakfast in her normal clothes.
"Look Caroline, it's clear on top!"
"Oh fuck! Well I'll go and change then."
My phone rings:
"I've lost my goggles!"
"When did you last have them?"
"On my hat."
"Perhaps they'll be in the hotel like your skibag."
"Pffft!"
"Pffft!" is equivalent to "Aaach!" but is reserved specifically for inanimate objects.
We meet up to stagger down to the others' hotel.
"Guess what?"
"You don't want to go skiing?
You have a hangover?
You feel sick?
You've found your goggles?"
"Yes. Under my coat."
Up the Penken gondola and over the top, where we find deep heavy snow and an unpisted slope. Steve decides to show off his powder skills and then (because I couldn't be arsed to walk back up) so do I. My tips disappear vertically downward into a metre of snow and I come to a grinding halt, well actually my skis come to a grinding halt, sadly I continue for a bit ripping a muscle in my calf. It takes me twenty minutes to dig myself out, from there the day went downhill (haha). Caroline leaves her camera in the lunchtime stop.
Saturday.
Caroline has left in the ungodly hours, the family from Northern Ireland in our hotel obligingly telling the taxi driver that there is no-one else expected, so that she has had to carry everything to the coach pick-up. this will not endear them to her. "Aaach!"
I, as Butler and companion, am picked up in Clunes cab, and we are soon whisked down the valley with the odd diversion to avoid traffic. It is very pretty, and we learn a lot from our driver (also very pretty) like, you can tell which diocese the church belongs to by the colour of its steeple. At the airport, at loading time, Clunes is escorted into the Innsbruck Airport Medical Lift by two pimply youths (probably doing National Service) and a policeman with a submachine gun (just in case he can't bear to leave Austria and makes a break for it), where he is strapped into a chair and driven out to the plane. The lift then mechanically hoists its trousers, and an x-frame expands to deposit himself (and several others) at plane height.
The inflight meal hit an all time low, even for the airline culinary circuit, the nadir of airline food - sausage and mash.
We arrive and wait for the plane to empty before transferring to an electric buggy, which proves great fun up to the point where I realise I have left my book and my journal on the plane. When I get back to the plane, someone (the people sitting next to me, in fact) have nicked the book. I walk Clunes to his car to await the arrival of his driver, and then head home for a little lie down.
