Fair game?

They hunt in packs, you know… they deliberately destroy the pistes and then block them by lying for a rest side by side across the entire breadth of the mountain.

Snow boarders can be a menace really. I mean, I know some and love them dearly, but they don’t board in groups of 327 and then hide round corners which they have deliberately scrubbed clean of snow so that an unexpecting group of skiers come slithering round clinging tentatively to life on the back of one ski desperately trying to remain vaguely upright and then find themselves with precisely 10.7mm of pistes left uncluttered by lounging boarders.

Neither do they slide ponderously slowly down long traverses and wait until the exact moment that some poor innocent skier has committed themselves to passing them several metres to their left and then decide that it’s time to jerk to the left with the elegance and predictability of a baboon on heat.

The question we have been pondering, therefore, as a group of skiers, is whether boarders are fair game. Is it justifiable to observe a prostrate boarder from afar and choose to turn vigorously just uphill, unfortunately causing a shower of snow which wouldn’t matter at all to anyone who was actually on their feet?

Unfortunately I have to come to the conclusion that I might be biased in this regard. I can see my favourite snowboard enthusiast’s face in my mind’s eye, and I know what he would say… and he’s right.

However many encounters we may have, they are just another tribe, having fun just like we are. I happen to be reading a book about Northern Ireland at the moment. It is salutary to think how quickly and unpredictably tribalism can escalate. Identity is good, but only with love. Love is patient, kind, not easily angered, keeps no record of wrongs, and so on.

So… screw your courage to the sticking place and let’s go love some boarders…