I know I have been evil. I haven't written  anything for ages. I am sitting here at Heathrow writing  this on my new Ipaq. My birthday present for Paula and her parents, thankyou very much! By the way after a paragraph or so I moved back to the laptop as the keyboard I bought for the Ipaq didnt come with the right drivers. Bugger!

Well an enormous amount  has happened since I wrote last. First story is my second skiing holiday. It was a planning session and skiing trip with work. We went up to Åre, Sweden's most famous resort. Skiing was great except the first day when Mårten, our CTO, kindly lent me a set of skis and boots. All fine and good but the skis weren't beginner skis. They were 205cm long and the edges weren't exactly perfect. Of course I had to shoot my mouth off when we were on the train on the way up and tell them I had skied black run last time I went. Well that was all the encouragement the boys needed. They, on the second run, threw me onto the second nastiest (nastiest one open) run at Åre. This is no small comment. Nice 45 degree black run. It is nice and wide though. Of course I was not feeling too confident, edged over the start of the run after a huge amount of crying, whinging and general pissing about and almost instantly turned into a human snowball. I slide on my arse, skis first, all the way down the 2-300 metre steep section. Very humorous for everyone (including me as I was unhurt). I instantly thanked (read abused) the lads especially Mårten and went straight to the ski shop for some more appropriate skis. The boots were great though.

The rest of the trip was magic though. Even the work was fun. As it happened a womens world cup event was on the weekend we were there. We bumped into, and some of us chatted up, the Italian ski team. A lot a fun. The best part happened on the last skiing day. The night before somehow the subject of running from the top of the mountain to the bottom naked came up, as it does. Well one of the board members was keen on his chances and asked how much it was worth to us. We all threw in a couple of hundred kronor or A$50 or so in and came up with 2500SEK or A$500 for him to run from the top to the bottom in underwear and running shoes with the jocks pulled up his arse. Well sure enough the next morning we went up the mountain taking the 700 odd metre snow mobile pull up to the absolute top of the mountain, took all his clothes off him and set off. Well it is a few kms from the top to the bottom and it took him 40 mins. The crowds were very curious although there was far to little laughing, pointing and comments for my liking. It was great also when he did a snow angel half way down.