The difference between...

...skiing holidays pre and post children. (I thought I might lighten the mood after yesterday...)

Pre Children

• You can ski all day
• It doesn't matter if you wake up with a hangover, you can take as long as you want to get out of bed and even kid yourself that it's not the excess of alcohol curdling your brain, just your body reacting to the altitude
• Lunch can be a long, leisurely affair on the side of the mountain, and may even - oh, those far-off halcyon days - be accompanied by wine
• Vin chaud/gluhwine features as one of your of your five a day (What? It - sometimes - comes with fruit in the top. That qualifies in my book)
• If you're in a relationship (or - I'm told - sometimes even if not), you may even get to partake of spontaneous nooky in the afternoon when everyone else is out on the slopes
• You're only paying for yourself, so whilst skiing is never a cheap holiday, it doesn't break the bank
• You get to experience the Apres-Ski to the full.
• Dancing in ski boots in some badly lit slippery-wooden floored bar is good clean fun...
• Did I mention you can ski all day?

Post children

• Ski all day? You count yourself lucky if you manage an hour in the morning between the drop-off of weeping children and the collection of the ski-demons they have morphed into during your 2 hour absence
• Hangover? Fat chance. Not only are you rarely awake long enough in the evening to down more than half a glass of wine, but the prospect of dealing with 2 squirming children unwilling to get into their ski clothes and traipse up the road to their lessons, whilst definitely enough to drive you to drink, is also enough to make you realise that adding a muzzy head to the mix would be a very bad idea indeed...
• Lunch is a cling-film wrapped squashed ham sandwich discarded by your child after you pick them up from their ski lesson. They haven't eaten it as they are too full from snacking on all the biscuits and chocolate you used as bribes to persuade them to stay at their lesson in the first place.
• Vin chaud (and accompanying fruit) is off the menu; you need a clear head to deal with your mini-menace children on the slopes as they simply point their skis down hill and go, ignoring your increasingly frantic pleas to 'put in a turn, for chrissake!' as you try desperately to keep up with them. If you both make it down the slope without ending up in the back of one of those first aid sleighs you see being transported down the mountain, you consider the experience a success.
• Nooky? I'm not even going to dignify that suggestion with further comment.
• By the time you've forked out for your children's ski hire, boot hire, helmet hire, thermal underwear, goggles, lessons, lift pass, and the badge they get when they finish the course (yes, you do have to pay for that), your second mortgage may need to be increased. And that's before you even think about the ruinously expensive plates of spaghetti bolognese they hoover up in the mountain side restaurants when they decide that they are hungry after their lesson after all. (Note to self - always carry extra squashed cling-film-wrapped ham sandwiches for such emergencies in the future...)
• Apres ski? I've heard of it, but...