The Alpine high life has made me too fat to fly

Up through the passes we drove, winding our way to a slope high above the valley floor. As I strapped myself into the clumsy harness, my instructor spread out the canvas behind us on the mountain. “Run, Robert, run!” he shouted, as it ballooned out. Then: “No, Robert! Where are you going?” Slipping on the snow, I tried to adjust course, pounding sideways for a few more steps before I was running on nothing but air. And there we were – soaring through the Alpine skies. Except that we weren’t so much soaring as sinking. The Frenchman whose knees were digging into my back made a series of jerky movements, scraping us along the canyon walls to catch the thermals that would send us shooting up to join the other paragliders in our party. But it was not to be. As they swooped and banked and whirled, we started to feel the brush of pine trees against our feet. My instructor set course for a convenient patch of snow, and we crumpled to an ignominious crash-landing. “The air – it is crazy today,” he said, apologetically. What he really meant was: “Lose some weight, rosbif.” As we trundled back to the real landing site – to be met by the exhilarated grin of my travelling companion, who had enjoyed a rather more adrenalin-packed end to our skiing holiday – I realised that I’d reached a watershed, even if my paraglider hadn’t. I used to think of myself as a bit of a thrill-seeker, a guy who’d bungee-jumped and skydived with the best of them. I still evangelise about the bliss of freefall, conveniently forgetting the nerve-jangling terror and the landing straight out of Some Mothers Do ’Ave ’Em. But here I was, too fat to fly – and knowing that, despite having had a wonderful time on the ski slopes, I’d never really gone for a proper, out-of-control speed run, not out of fear of breaking something, but a bone-deep awareness of the effort it takes to propel a six-foot frame packed with good meals and exquisite cheeses back to its feet. The sad thing is that it’s not a case of the spirit being unwilling to seek a few thrills. It’s just that I’m increasingly aware of the toll that the high life can take, and all the little aches and pains that follow. Perhaps that’s the real definition of growing up: the moment when you stop taking aspirin to deal with a hangover, and start taking it to insure against all manner of long-term ills. Despite having come to France to ski, I’m ashamed to say we spent rather a lot of time staring at the TV. First, there was the idiosyncratic Six Nations coverage, in which boring things like highlights or tactical analysis were replaced by arty shots of the stadium roof and ultra-slo-mo, ultra-high-def replays of Aurélien Rougerie’s hair bouncing majestically from side to side. Then there was our communal addiction: Les Ch’tis font du Ski, roughly translated as “Yokels on Ice”. On the surface, it was a simple twist on the “mock the chavs” formula, with an assortment of wide boys and girls from northern France transplanted to a resort in the Tyrol, and an after-hours world of disco, debauchery and novelty lederhosen. But the blend of heavy drinking, adolescent romance and lurid ski gear made The Only Way Is Essex look like a vicarage tea party. A British version maintenant, s’il vous plait. Ludicrous conspiracy theory or brilliant hoax? Syrian TV has reportedly accused Lionel Messi of signalling to the rebels during a Barcelona match. Apparently, the path of his dribble matched the route of arms supplies from Lebanon. There’s only one argument to support such utter nonsense: Messi makes the godlike appear so mundane that he must need a challenge to keep life interesting.