Snow began floating down as I started this blog post, a story of snow and winter sports, of humour in the trials and tribulations of learning to ski.

I couldn't have written this book without first living it.

• To have the experience of falling over in a tangle of ski equipment and feeling like a stranded bug in the snow.
• To know what it's like to walk in ski boots, with unruly skis and poles sliding off my shoulder.
• To be scooped up by a ski lift, and deposited at the top of the ski slope where the options were to ski or fall over.
• To learn to snowplough only to hit an unforgiving patch of ice and slide away at the whim of the mountain.
• But the exhilaration of when everything came together, snowplough controlling my speed, skis going in the direction I told them, that is the joy that I poured into this book, with the added imagination of Iver No-Idea and HB gatecrashing the holiday...