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A short walk in the Kitzbühel Kush
Today our eldest daughter, Charlotte, returns
from her winter season teaching skiing at Mount Hutt in the
South Island of New Zealand. The last months since the
earthquake, which shook her out of bed, have been difficult. The epicentre was only a few miles away, roughly halfway between Methven and Christchurch, and,
as a result, many of the expected ski parties either went
elsewhere or simply did not show up. It is understandable, for in
common with motor racing, skiing is dangerous, even without the
threat of a sudden quake. However, unlike
motor racing, you can’t really put a sign up at the lift station
telling everyone who ventures up the mountain that this is so,
because it would deter those of a less enthusiastic
disposition or bold nature, and ski teachers like Charlotte would find it even
more difficult to make a living.
Somehow, motor racing and skiing seem to sit well
together. I guess it’s the speed, the accuracy of movement, the
combination of translating the image of the route ahead into the
physical reactions required to progress down it, and maybe even the
challenge of compressing all these factors into a brief time
span that make them so attractive. These days, one would
suppose, skiing does not necessarily sit so well with motor
racing drivers; a poorly executed turn on the slopes could so
easily mean missing a considerable chunk of the Grand Prix
season. Yet, when thinking of the two I am often reminded of a
tale my father once told.
The early days of his life in the motor trade ‘seemed
to me to be just an amusing way of making some money to be spent
on a lotus eating life in the south of France or skiing’.
Can’t fault that really! But on one particular occasion, he and
his friend Kurt Hirschfeld were taking a breather at the Steilhang, one of the more testing sections of the Streif,
the Hahnenkamm downhill course in Kitzbühel, Austria.
As they stood in the shadow of the mountain and
looked over the walled, medieval town below, they heard a groan.
Surely, they thought, there would be no one else out on the
slopes this late. They glanced at each other and listened hard
for a while. Surely it must have been some furry animal of the
forest disturbed from its slumbers. The silence was vast and
eerie. No, they decided, it must have been some trick of the
mountain. But, just as they were about to set off, there came
another groan from somewhere behind them. Rather reluctantly
they took off their skis and trudged through the deeper snow
into the pines, stopping every now and then to listen and to
locate the source of the sound. After a time-consuming and
energy sapping search they concluded that there was no one
about, and that they had better return to the piste before the
light deserted them. But just as they set off back up the slope
they heard one final and very distressed groan from very close
by. They looked about them and could see not a soul, and then at
the same time it dawned on them that there was a body hanging
upside-down in the branches of the pine beneath which they were
standing.
After some debate as to the best course, they
managed to drag the fellow down from his suspension and manhandled
him back up to the slope. He was half-conscious, bruised and
battered having attempted the course at too great a pace and
literally flown off the piste, and it was some considerable time
before enough blood drained from his head that he could stand. He
was British and, in a manner true to his nationality, profoundly
embarrassed that he should need to be rescued from such
indignity.
He cringed, muttered his thanks, and shot off down the mountain
again at breakneck speed; a child fallen off his bike.
Kurt and my father were more than a little
nonplussed at the man’s departure, having expected at least one,
or, at a stretch, a couple of glühweins for their trouble. And yet they
understood the man’s embarrassment - they would have to buy their
own.
A few years later - you’ll have to excuse the
expression, I cannot remember how much time had passed, but it
was not long - my father delivered a Jaguar to Harrogate, to a
man who had agreed the purchase on the telephone. My father
found the address; a well-to-do house in the Bilton area. The
customer was mild, charming and pleasantly grateful. They
concluded their business and the customer drove my father into
town to catch the train. Nearing their destination the customer,
pleased with his purchase and no doubt keen to show how adept he
was at driving, misjudged a corner and clipped the
kerb. He groaned.
My father had thought him familiar when he had
first clapped his eyes on the fellow. But, it was only when he
groaned that my father managed to place him. This was the very
same man who he and Kurt Hirschfeld had rescued from hanging in
the pine beside the Steilhang.
Naturally, my father could not help but mention
it, gently, to the driver.
The man coloured and fell silent. But by the time
they arrived at Harrogate station he had managed to overcome his discomfort, or what he perceived to be his humiliation,
and thanked my father for the trouble he had gone to in finding
him that evening on the Streif. The fellow had realised soon afterwards that the pine tree
had been both his saviour and just possibly his executioner. If
his skis had not caught in the branches of the tree, he would
very possibly have been killed by the fall. But if Kurt and my father
not found him, he would without doubt have frozen to death
through the night, totally helpless as he was in his state of
suspended animation.
There is no great moral weight to this tale,
except perhaps that recognising at the time how lucky one has
been when one is rescued by a stranger, is far better than
having to atone for the sin of not doing so until, some time
down the line, it is unavoidable.
But then my father used to run into people all
over the place – and I don’t mean run into in the motoring
sense. He used annually to visit a doctor somewhere near Sloane
Street for his flying medical. The doctor retired in due course.
Some years later, whilst on a business trip round Australia, my
father bumped into said medic in a bar in Alice Springs.
Extraordinary or coincidence, or both? It matters not. It’s the
fun of it.
Charlotte is off, I think, to Park City in Utah
for the coming winter season. I wonder who she’ll bump into
there – probably my brother.
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