The first time I skied, in the early 1980s, I was five years old and mollycoddled by a landscape nourished by spring snow in Glen Coe, Scotland. A poorly focused photograph from the time shows me grinning while dressed in secondhand salopettes and oversized sunglasses. I loved every second of it, apparently.
Forty years later, I could recognise the same toothy smiles on my children’s faces the first time skiing really clicked for them. We were in Ischgl, Austria, and as the sun came and went and the Haribo vanished from my jacket pocket, I could tell my son and daughter – then aged six and four – liked the feeling of what was happening.
