Tales from the slopes (in which I over-share about facial hair)

Six words from my beloved guaranteed to send me to the nearest beauty counter in search of cosmetic assistance:

'You've got snow on your moustache.'

For goodness' sake. That has to be one of the last things one needs to hear when trying to ski through a snow-storm, surely? For whilst, on the one hand, it is most certainly something one would prefer to know about (and which perhaps explains some of the strange looks I had been getting from skiers around me), it is rather off-putting to be trying to stay upright on skis with some semblance of expertise - in itself is something of a lost cause in my case - whilst simultaneously trying to surreptitiously keep one's upper lip clear of the biggest snow flakes I had ever seen.

I don't know who I thought I was kidding with the 'surreptitious' bit though. There's nothing surreptitious about wobbling precariously down a slope whilst raising your right hand - incidentally waving a 3 foot long bright blue ski pole in a sort of semaphore styley- and sweeping it across your face every 30 seconds or so. Why so frequently? Well, I'm amongst friends here (glances nervously from side to side) I hope, so I have to admit that I had rather forgotten to tend to those pesky rather-darker-than-they-should-be hairs under my nose in the weeks running up to our ski holiday. Normally I would have been fine - wax those little blighters out of existence the moment they appear is my usual modus operandi - but for some reason the hairs that had recently come through were quite light, not very noticeable, and so I had forgotten all about them.

All very well, and probably much better for one's skin, until the damn things turned in to some kind of sink tidy for snow.

And of course the kicker was that until the flakes started to melt - which they weren't about to do in -8degC or whatever it was - I didn't even know that they were there, what with their sitting very slightly above the skin. Instead, until Husband took pity on me and shared the dreadful news, I skied merrily and messily through said snow storm, congratulating myself on staying upright and wondering if - perhaps - I had finally acquired enough technique to attract the somewhat surprised attention of other skiers. All the time with my own white beer-foam-accessorised top lip - but without, sadly, the beer.

I've said it before and no doubt will again. My life? So glamorous, it hurts.