Simon Hoggart's Week

It almost made me want to cry. We have been in Austria, on a week's skiing holiday. My family are good at skiing; I am not. There had been very little snow, and in spite of her skill, our daughter slipped, fell and banged her head on a sheet of ice. The pain got worse rather than better, so on Tuesday evening at 5.30 we found ourselves at a clinic in the small Tyrolean town where we were staying.

Friendly young women in crisp white uniforms worked on the reception desk. We explained that our daughter was in pain, and was there a chance she could see a doctor? They looked mildly puzzled at the request, rather as a greengrocer might if a customer arrived pleading frantically for apples. "Yes, of course," they said, with the implication being, that's what we're here for. We're a clinic; we have doctors who see sick people. This is a concept which the health secretary might consider for his next and 879th reorganisation of the NHS.

Five minutes later she was ushered in, and 40 minutes after that she emerged X-rayed, with a neck collar and almost a pharmacy full of drugs. They brushed aside anxieties about payment; it would be easily sorted out through our holiday insurance. They hoped she'd be back on the slopes soon, as she was, a day later.

On Thursday I had to leave the family and go back to London for the first in the latest series of The News Quiz. (If you missed it last night, it's on Radio 4 again this lunchtime.) I like to think this shows my great loyalty to the show; in fact, it's because I'm scared that whoever replaced me would do much better. So, to get down from the mountains to Munich, the nearest serious airport, required three trains. Every one was precisely on time. There was a five minute connection at a place called Worgl. Luckily the express which crosses Austria from west to east had arrived two minutes early. I sank gratefully into a second class seat, which was comfier and cleaner than our first. My last segment was due into Munich at 9.58. We travelled through a blizzard, but just as the train pulled in the platform clock clicked up to 9.58. It was on time to the second.

Thirteen hours later I was going home from Waterloo, where hundreds of travellers were gazing up at the indicator boards like shipwrecked mariners desperate for a sail. But the boards brought only news of delays and cancellations. Why does nothing work here? If the Austrians can do it, surely we can?

I wish I could ski, but I can't, and it's something I can live with. For the first 2 days I was with a beginners group, but soon they were sailing down the mountains like condors riding the thermals and I was just falling down. So they demoted me, very politely, to a class of duffers. There were people in the group whose greatest achievement, after half the course, was getting off the rope lift in an upright position. Often the scene at the top of the rope lift resembled the Retreat from Moscow. If you didn't get up there first, you'd arrive to find total mayhem: sticks, skis, arms and legs, strewn at random over the snow, like a gigantic human game of pick-up-sticks. Since there was no way of avoiding the scene you were obliged to join in the chaos.

Watching some of us trying to ski was a little cruel, as if some malign god had persuaded wheelchair-users to go bungee jumping. You had to admire everyone's spirit, but not their attainment. People would start very, very slowly, then suddenly the slope would take control, a look of utter panic would appear, they'd go straight into a snowplough shaped like a quarter-pizza, and over they'd go, usually face forward. I soon discovered a trick: start off when the instructor was talking to someone else. That way he wouldn't see you and single you out for calm, patient advice which you would immediately forget.

The trip started badly when we arrived at check-in, as instructed, before 4.30am, only to hear that our flight would not be leaving till 12.40. Eight hours at Gatwick is as near to purgatory as you could find outside Camp X-Ray. You try to sleep, but the chairs are - I suppose deliberately - very uncomfy. Every 15 minutes, just as you're near to dozing off, an incredibly loud voice booms: "Hi! Alice from the airport here! I don't know about you, but waiting in an airport terminal always makes me thirsty and peckish. Luckily, upstairs you'll find a fantastic selection of..." Then you close your eyes for a few merciful moments until another shrieking burst of music announces Alice's return. We heard her more than 30 times.

Once on board the flight attendant charged £3.25 for a gin and tonic. I asked why, since we were running eight hours late. She said that Monarch airlines charged for drinks on all their flights. There was a note of pride in her voice, as if she was telling me they had all the latest safety equipment. "And," she said triumphantly, "I'm told you were given an £8 voucher for food!" The fact that I'd have remortgaged our house to avoid that wait didn't trouble her. Will we fly on this ghastly airline again? Of course. These package tour airlines are all as bad, and usually there's no choice.

I got home to find Frank Skinner reviled in all the tabloids for his compering of The Brits. I didn't think he was so bad, and some of the jokes - the filthy ones, mostly cut from the broadcast - seem to have been quite funny. But others, such as "I'm just back from France, where I'm now known as Euro Skinner!" (as opposed to "franc") were appalling. Anyhow, the performance has been officially designated by the tabs a Great National Disaster.

Since Skinner is a multi-millionaire, and probably the highest paid comedian on TV by a long way, I expected other comedians to be covered in schadenfreude, as they say in Austria when the group hotshot falls in the snow. But they weren't. Instead they thought it was a suitable measure of his contempt for The Brits; to have produced a set of good jokes for the event would have been terminally uncool.

I suspect they're wrong. A high-profile calamity like that clings to a career and can never be extirpated. Like Prince Charles and the tampax, it's at the back of your mind every time you see or hear him.

I loved the final of the women's curling, especially the artless joy displayed by the winners. None of this supercilious, it's-no-more-than-I-deserve sneer some athletes favour us with. I specially liked the commentary with its strange specialised language ("you will never see a better stone under greater pressure") which you would never normally hear but can just work out. Where do they keep these commentators? Is there a Voice Of Curling, the equivalent of John Motson or Murray Walker? And is he normally heard on Curl Up and Die, a sports and obituary programme broadcast at 11.50 on Sunday nights (Grampian region only)? Suddenly he has his biggest audience ever and he must be torn between addressing us ignoramuses and risking the contempt of aficionados who despise this sudden success and are fearful of what it will do to their sport, the ideal game for a neurotic housewife who enjoys bowls.