Poor Gwynnie. She’s in the dock in Utah at the moment channelling serious ‘I only eat bone broth’ energy where she is being sued by a retired optometrist who says she skiied into him. He says the opposite.
It’s all pretty grim slash highly amusing. One highlight was when her accuser said she came down the hill with a “blood-curdling scream” and compared it to a noise made by ‘King Kong’. Excruciating.
He only wants £300k, she’s worth squillions. I’d have just saved myself the embarrassment and handed it over. This is worse than telling people you sell £12,000 gold dildos for a living.
But, mainly, why would anyone ever go skiing? I’ve never been in my life, which I realise to my middle-class friends is like saying I can’t read or I can’t swim, but I’ve just never understood why anyone would want to go.
We already live in a country that’s cold and wet most of the year. Why go somewhere even colder and wetter?
Growing up, girls at my school were always going to Zermatt or Aspen or wherever wasn’t crowded with naff people at the time (quite a lot of snobbery in this game), but we never went.
My father used to tell us that we’d never go skiing because it was for poor, tasteless vulgarians who did it in a pathetic attempt to show off about having money, not smart people like us. Later I realised we just couldn’t afford it. Who can afford it? For a family you’re looking at around £10,000 a week.
During this brief, awful holiday she’s now in court for, Gwynnie spent $9,000 just on ski instructors for her kids.
It’s not just the expense of it all. The lessons, the ski-life passes, the endless kit you need. It sounds like such a lot of hard work. Isn’t the whole point of a holiday to re-charge and do nothing? Am I the only person in west London who just wants to go to a nice beach in the sun and read a book?
And yes, this means I haven’t stepped foot in a chalet and yes, when friends were talking about ‘raclette’ at a dinner party recently and I said I’d never heard of it they looked at me like I’d just escaped from London zoo (I’ve since seen it on TikTok — it looks gross and incredibly fattening). I must admit I did used to like fondue (what happened to that?) and I can get gluhwein in Acton before Christmas, so whatevs.
The thing I can’t get my head round is how incredibly dangerous skiing is — and still people want to do it. So many people come back with broken limbs and a family friend got caught in an avalanche and died. And this is not uncommon. DYING ON HOLIDAY — why would you risk it? I work every day of my life except the six weeks a year I’m on parole. I don’t want to die during that time. Or have some lunatic man ski at me at 40 miles per hour and then sue me in a court in Utah while journalists snigger at how incredibly ridiculous my life is, even though they’re secretly just very, very jealous of my unbelievably expensive jumpers.
Give Great Expectations a break
I was sad to see Steven Knight’s BBC adaptation of Great Expectations get panned. My beloved colleague Melanie McDonagh led the charge in this paper, calling it ‘irredeemably awful’, adding “I can’t think of an adaptation I’ve hated more”.
I have to say I enjoyed it hugely.
I thought Tom Sweet, who plays Pip, had a most interesting face and I adored the portrayal of his tortured relationship with his sister, who clearly loves him despite her barbarism. She is played to perfection by Hayley Squires.
The cinematography is pleasingly rough hewn and dark with the mood everywhere as bleak and suffocating as the surrounding marshes. The characters are complex and the series sheds a modern lens on issues such as sexism, race and slavery.
Dream Sunday night viewing, if you ask me.
