Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus.The ski-school edition.

I’ve only ever read one self-help book. Only one. And I only read it cos everyone was talking about it. It was the BOTM ... book of the moment. It was everywhere. It was supposedly revolutionary. 


Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus. 


It said that men and women are different. It took 300 pages to get there. If that isn’t enough to cause a revolution, I don’t know what is. Arab Spring eat your heart out. 

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not anti self-help books. It’s each to their own in the world of self-help. They’re just not for me. But then again, neither is massage.

These days when you pop to get your hair cut in Sydney, they throw in a head-massage. I’m convinced it’s to justify what they’re charging you for snipping at the mop on your noggin’ for 15-minutes. Anyway, it took me about 6 visits to pluck up the courage to say that I didn’t want the head massage. She thought I was insane. I thought she was going to call whoever you call when you’ve got an insane person on your hands, or in your hair salon. (It used to be a barbers. They re-branded a while ago).  Head massages gives me the right royal gips; they make me feel antsy & stressed. I’ve got no idea why. It’s the same with body massages. I don’t relax at all. Not one bit. I just lie there feeling more and more tense, wishing the massage would stop. The whole time the masseuse is saying ‘you’re really tense, you’re probably working too hard’. I’m not working too hard. I’m tense cos I’m being massaged when I’d rather be at work, working. 

Back to self-help books. Men and women are different. I didn’t need a 300-page book to tell me that. I just needed a 10-day skiing holiday. I’m sure you’ve spotted the same gender differences in other ways and during other activities. Like asking for directions. Or reading instructions. Or building stuff from IKEA. 


Well, my epiphany came on the white slopes of New Zealand. 

I took Picky to Queenstown. It’s billed as 'the best skiing in the southern hemisphere'. Far be it for me to pour cold water on marketing campaigns, but lots of things in Australia & New Zealand come with a ‘best in the southern hemisphere’ tag. The clever marketing bods think we don’t all know that there’s not much in the southern hemisphere, except for Australia and New Zealand (apologies to Argentina, South Africa and a few random islands in the South Pacific).  

As holidays go this one was pretty significant. I proposed to Eileen. Popped the question, right there & then. She said ‘yes’, and the rest is history. Ah & something else. I’d never skied before. Ever. Picky had. She’s German. They go to school on skis in Germany. Even if there’s no snow. Over in Queenstown we’d booked 4 full-days in ski-school. Level 1.

Level 1 is basically for chimps, apes, other members of the monkey family, very tiny kids ... and me. Plus Eileen. She said that she’d do ski-school with me; to hold my hand. That’s the kind of couple we are. Plus I had an engagement ring with me, she suspected as much and was keen to get her hands on it later in the week. As such, she was staying very close with a keen eye on my pocket.

In ski-school, at the very start of the very first Level 1 lesson - right at the bit where the nice lady is saying that the long thing attached to the bottom of your foot is called a ‘ski’ - I thought ‘bugger this’. I started doing little walking circles. It wasn’t long before I was off, away, skiing all over the place. It was a piece of cake. Easier than ‘a piece of cake’. A doddle. EASY. With a capital E. I was up the moving walkway, off at the top and down the hill within ten minutes of the lesson starting. 

I say ‘down the hill’. It wasn’t quite a hill. Yet. Maybe in 300million years. If you’d have popped a spirit level on the snow, the little bubble would have just - just - moved ever so slightly to the left. Still, I was off. Proper skiing. No fuss, no hassle. Skiing. Easy. Take me to the black run. NOW.

Meanwhile, over in ski-school ... Picky was listening-up & doing exactly what she was told, lining up where she was told, taking it all in and generally being a right Miss Goody Two-Shoes. Goody Two-Ski Boots.

We went for lunch and Picky suggested that I might want to listen-up in the afternoon class so that we could enjoy an hour on the easy green run before we went home for the day. Easy green run?! She was havin’ a bloomin’ giraffe. Stuff the greens ... I'd seen the greens. And I'd already decided we could skip them. We could move straight to the blacks. The blacker the better.

The afternoon lesson was more of the same. Blah blah blah. Line up, wiggle your bum, bend you knees, transfer the weight. Hells bells. GET ON WITH IT. The chimp and the ape might learn at this speed, but not me. I was off again. Up the magic carpet and down the hill, up and down, up and down, up and down.   EASY    AS     PIE.

After the lesson Picky suggested we start ‘proper skiing’ on the really easy green run. Fair enough. She was clearly nervous. Rusty. They get like that sometimes. Women. Germans. German women. Fair do’s. I’ll whizz down a quick green, just to help with your nerves. Just to build your confidence. I gave her a few tips as we were waiting for the chairlift. A little pep talk. The benefit of my experience. I’d been whizzing around all day. She’d been stuck in ski-school bending her knees, transferring the weight and wiggling her bum.

It all started to go wrong on the chairlift. 

Picky was fine. She’d been in the lesson when they’d covered ‘entering and exiting chairlifts’. I hadn’t. I did manage to get off the chair-lift. Just. It wasn’t elegant, and the people on the chair behind us had to stay on, and go all the way back down the mountain, because I was lying in a heap slap-bang in the middle of the exit ramp. 

Standing at the top of the easiest green run, three things hit me like a train - like three trains; it was steeper than it looked from the bottom, it was all downhill and - the real shocker - it wasn’t straight. There were bends, corners, wiggles. I looked at Picky. I was white. So was the snow. I was surprised she could see me. I’d blended to the surroundings.

How do I turn? HOW DO I TURN?  ...       Before you go   ...       HOW  DO   I   T   U   R   N

Picky disappeared around the first bend.

Turning was in lesson 1 &  lesson 2 of Ski-School Level 1. It was important. Critical. That’s what all the knee-bending was about. And the wiggling the bum. I’d seen the chimps and the apes doing it as I was halfway up the magic carpet. They had looked like they were doing warm-up squats. I didn’t need to do warm up squats. I was warmed up from all the whizzing down the flat hill in a dead-straight line.

When you go down a ski run of any colour, and you have absolutely no idea how to turn because you’ve spent all day going in a straight line down a slope that really does the word ‘slope’ a major disservice, the only way to execute a turn is to fall on your bum to stop, get up, wobble down another 10m, fall on your bum...repeat to fade. Repeat all the way to the bottom of the easiest green run.

Picky knew this was coming. The ski-instructor had told her that some beginners are like this. Men from Mars mostly. There’s no major hills on Mars, so there’s no need to turn when you ski down them. Venus on the other hand is full of hills with very tricky turns. 

The following day, I re-joined the apes and chimps. Level 1, lesson 1. Again. I had to repeat. My tail was firmly between my legs.  I knew it was a ski that was attached to my foot, but that was just about all I knew about skiing.

Turning. It took me four days to finally get it. To finally do it without my bum being part of the manoerve. I still struggled with 'consistent inelegant exits' from the chairlifts. & of course we stayed green. I might give a black run a nudge next time. When I’ve learnt how to stop without swallowing snow.

Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus? I’m not sure. I know we’re different sometimes. That we often do things differently; approach things from different angles. At work, at home, with the kid(s). I suppose it’s about finding a compromise and learning from each other. Often there’s no actual ‘right’ way. But sometimes there’s an easy way and a hard way. 


The only exception is way up there on the ski-slopes. Then you’d do well to listen and learn. It’ll save you a very bruised bum and an equally-bruised ego.


hope you had a super weekend. pip pip