You can't condemn it until you've tried it – at least three times...

Well, I should hope there are actually some things we would condemn without trying them first; torturing puppies, playing tag with the cars on the motorway, filing our teeth to points and then lurking in dark corners pretending to be vampires – I could go on...

But what about those things that we completely write out of our lives without trying first? These are things that are not illegal, immoral, unaffordable or even just silly; but things that we just dismiss as "not for me, thank you."

Skiing was definitely "not for me". If you had asked me a month ago, I could have listed for you at least fifty different ways I would have preferred to break my leg rather than by skiing. No, you were never, but NEVER, going to get me on a ski slope!

So why am I now three lessons in on a "learn to ski" course?

It's all the fault of my ridiculously sporty daughter. She's going skiing with the school next February and her father decided that it would be good if she learned at least the basics of skiing first, before venturing out onto a high and snowy Austrian Alp.

Excellent thinking, darling. I agree.

Then he thought it would also be a good idea if the rest of the family learned to ski too, and promptly booked us all in on this "learn to ski" course at our local dry ski slope.

I understand (because I've looked it up) that booking your wife into skiing lessons does not constitute unreasonable behaviour adequate for divorce.

So, there we all are, uncomfortable in tight boots with five feet of sole sticking out, shuffling our way through what seems like a million bottle-brushes sewn together in a grid pattern. I daren't look up because I'll cross these skis and fall over before we've even started. And this is before we even begin sliding slowly, ever so slowly, down the nursery slopes.

"ARGHHH!" – Thump. Yes, that was me falling over.

Oh I hated it the first time.

I hated it the second time.

I really wanted to hate it the third time, but, you know what? I actually have to concede that I was having fun.

My family have taken to it like Penguins to an ice-slide and love every minute. I still resemble a hippo emulating Bambi in the frozen lake scene; the moment when I skied straight off the side of the slope into the patch of ninja stinging nettles ranks as the funniest thing the instructor has seen all week.

But it is kind of fun. And I'm sort of glad hubby booked me in too.

Even if I'm not quite prepared for us all to swap February in Tenerife for Austria just yet.

Mary

A Moodscope member.