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21/08/2010
Issue 27

Jennifer shows her bumps technique in Chamonix. photo courtesy of Adam www.photoski.eu

As I'm back in the UK, where there is little alpine inspiration I thought I would reminisce about the past. I know it’s unfair to pick on one specific person when trying to make a point but as I will only use her initials it should grant her a certain amount of anonymity.

As a rule the less work I can do to create each issue of the enquirer the better. To that end I always welcome submissions from other people. Luckily every year there are always a couple of fresh-faced people who “want to be a journalist”. I know it’s crap to put that in quotes but it covers nearly every eventuality.

These can be put into three distinct categories. The ones that regular as clockwork write me a couple of paragraphs. The ones that after an initial enthusiasm do absolutely nothing and I never hear from them again. And the final group that need to be constantly badgered in order to get even one article out of them. Because a ski resort is such a small place it’s difficult not to bump into everybody on a nearly daily basis and when you do it’s interesting to hear their excuses that usually involve alcohol in some way. Something along the lines of “my toffee vodka ate my homework”.

The year was 2005, Labour were still in government, South east asia was recovering from a massive tsunami and a young lady of 23 started work for Scott Dunn, we shall call her CkF. To confuse matters, throughout the season, I regularly misspelled her first name with a K. After regular criticisms of my weekly paper which ranged from pointing out obvious spelling (see above) and grammar errors (which can only come from the fact that she had a teaching background and probably carries a red marking pen to underline mistakes and write “D- could do better”) to comparing it to something produced by a disabled dyslexic monkey at an old typewriter she let out that she could do better. Not only had she promised to write something for me before the following week but as the deadline passed I started to, for want of a better word, gloat at her tardiness hoping that her humility would get the better of her. As the weeks passed, words like “unreliable” were used every time we met. Luckily she gave in before I did so obviously I was right and for that week at least I had one less story to write.

The editor

The Apple store in Covent Garden is full of very helpful people.
who fixed a key on my keyboard that kept jumping off.