3 feet under

I said, when I first started going out with my boyfriend, that I wouldn't do it. It wasn't for me, that I wouldn't feel comfortable with it, that it wasn't natural (no this isn't some depraved sexual activity, bear with me). That it was 'his thing'. I had my things: A band I loved dearly, far too much work, my dusty, abandoned but not forgotten writing.

It has been a year exactly since I threw myself down the rapidly depeleating snow covered mountains of northern Italy. I'd budge on that. Yes, snowboarding and The Webstress, it had a nice ring to it (or maybe that's just the tinnitus). I'd become a snowboarder, that could be 'our thing'.

I had a week to learn how to become A Snowboarder. I had previously attacked the indoor snows of Milton Keynes Xscape for a few taster lessons so I'd, in theory, be top of the class when it came to the real thing. I'd effortlessly glide through my morning classes and I'd be carving up virgin snow before the week was over, racing my boyfriend off piste, absorbing breathtaking views and generally feeling rather smug.

It didn't quite work out like that.

For a start, the snow was receding fast. Where there was wonderous, glorious, heavenly patches of snow it was unfriendly, severely compacted and unforgiving. Where there wasn't snow there was ice or, even worse, grass. I had never felt such a strong hatred to something organic before, least of all bloody grass. But there it was, struggling upwards, onwards, through the remnants of a sorrowful winter, bravely facing the harsh winds and triumphantly challenging the bitter chill. Only, after all that, to be faced with the acid tongued WebStress.

Had there been snow, soft, fresh, snow I may now be able to say I am, indeed, a snowboarder. But perhaps global warming saved me from otherwise harsh and painful jibes about my uselessness in this activity.

I did snowboard on snow, don’t get me wrong. There were pistes laden with dirty, abused flakes that my boyfriend tried to gently coax his tearful, aching, broken girlfriend down. But beneath those treacherous flakes, just inches away, lay bare rock and hard ground that my seemingly not cushioned enough arse fell on again and again. Xscape had been like falling onto a beautifully sprung mattress in comparison.

I returned from that holiday, an expert in long, lazy afternoon naps, in drinking buried in cozy corners of Italian pubs, in eating, in whining about the lack of snow. But not, sadly, in snowboarding.

This year I will try again, this time on the Dendex covered slopes of Plymouth’s ski centre. My sister, her boyfriend and I will take to the hills and begin the race to be hospitalised with the most exciting injury.

But as for ‘our thing’, so far the only activity my boyfriend and I have in common is dog walking, where he is usually striding ahead and I am left bringing up the rear, distracting Newfy from eating an array of distasteful objects, usually carrying a bag full of her faeces.

Now, as I said, I wasn’t ever going to do this. But, in the drunken confession that yes he might learn to salsa dance with me (that’s what I derived from it anyway, what he interpreted from exactly the same conversation was that he may consider at some stage in the distant future attend one class with me, possibly. But he’d have to check his diary. And he was booked up for years in advance.) I thought, what the hell.

In 2007 I was going to abandon my previously gladly accepted shackles of middleagedom and act my age, not my worryingly apparent wrinkles.

In 2007 I was going to be a cool girlfriend.

Not that my activity of choice, his passion, my terror, is cool, or attractive, or sexy, or alluring. In any way. Certainly not in UK climates anyhow.

Last night, yes I finally succumbed, I spent an hour in a swimming pool attempting to scuba dive with a wonderfully patient instructor, several hundred pubic hairs and at least seven plasters.

And I absolutely loved it.