Saturday, 12 April 1975
After eight days of skiing, we said our goodbyes. Going over the jump for the last time fast, I swerved to miss a post Ski stuck in the snow drift. My leg snapped painfully, and about one hour later, wearing an embarrassing 430, I broke my leg.
Isola 2000
Mum had a package holiday that included flights, transfers, a self-catering apartment, and lessons. There were three of us kids and Mum. We went down to Stevenage very early one night, stopped over at an old RGS friend of hers, and then took the flight from Stansted to Nice. Avalanches had blocked the road to the resort, so we spent a night in a hotel in Nice while the roads were cleared. The snow piled beside the road was far higher than the top of the bus. Isola 2000 looked like a Jerry Anderson Moon Colony transported to Earth, a Byker Wall of apartments along one side of a gentle mountain slope.
The Jump
This was a low bump more than a jump. Off to one side of the run, someone had pushed the snow into a mound. There was a little bit of a drop onto softer snow beyond. We could get ‘air’ for a moment. We had no tuition on this. It made me think of similar leaps on our bikes cycling around the woods of Gosforth Park.
Nick had spotted this jump, and as it was off the nursery slopes by the resort, we’d have a go on it coming in for lunch or returning later in the afternoon. We’d place ourselves higher up the run to get some pit, hit the bump, take off, land on the other side and side it out. What could go wrong?
The Break
Usually, after completing this ‘jump,’ we skied back onto the nursery slope. We continued a short distance to the entrance of the building, returned our skis, and went back to the apartment. The French employed the ‘ski évolutif’ system, which provided us with slightly longer skis every day or so. The quality of the release between the boot and ski was crucial; mine was unreliable, but I only discovered this when my leg broke.
Having come off the bump a little too fast, I landed on the back of my skis and continued down the slope. Unable to stand up, I was now being propelled down the slope as if squatting on a sledge, with my feet bound into the skis. I was headed for a metal ESF pole, swerved to miss it, but my left ski dug into the snow, and the binding did not break- my leg did: tibia and fibula. A spiral compound fracture. No pain at first. My boot and ski had fallen to the left; my knee pointed up. Something was wrong. Nick didn’t believe me when I told him I’d broken my leg. I had. Clear as day.
Pain
I felt embarrassed. Ashamed. We’d had such a successful week. We’d made tremendous progress. I’d learnt to ski. I embraced it. I loved it. Adored it. That mix of cross-country running and dancing. The sensations of movement and speed. The joy of being in nature. The beauty of the mountains. The brightness of the snow. The warmth of the sun. The clear blue skies. It was France.
I was on the slope with a broken leg, next to the meeting point for ski lessons each morning. I was 100 meters from the Cabinet Medical. A ‘blood wagon’ sledge still came out. They placed me on the sledge, secured me into it, and took me the 100 meters down to the surgery. Hardly a thrilling ride. We’d seen injuries being rescued from distant parts of the resort; that was a ride. Not this. I felt as if I were being wheeled off the slope. They could have walked out of the building and rolled me straight into X-ray.
I wore black salopettes, which were cut through on the left leg. I do not know how they removed the boot. Getting it off must have been painful. I felt curious as I went through the X-ray. All of this happened within the first hour, and I have yet to feel any pain. I’m more upset about the stupidity of the situation, the inconvenience, and the fact that I let my instructor down. His name will come to me. He was a young man, the type my older sister would have liked, probably only in his mid to late twenties.
The sun had been so strong that I’d burned my face despite using sun cream. I had a tube of cream in my pocket to apply regularly and keep my skin soft. I’m told I looked like a traffic accident as I scratched the skin on my face. By the time they got me back to England, it was assumed I had either fallen off a motorbike or had been a passenger in a car that had been crushed.
The question hung there, somewhere between the pain finally arriving and Mum trying to mask her panic with practicality. There were options. Keep me in France. Send me to the French-American hospital in Nice. A metal plate in my leg, a week of rest, then fly home. That was the default option.
But we had a flight booked the next day. Mum didn’t like unknown hospitals. She didn’t like unknown doctors. She wanted Newcastle. She wanted home. She wanted someone she could trust with my leg. And so, the plan shifted.
An ambulance would take me to the airport, then home on the plane—me broken and braced, bundled through customs with a bottle of pills, and carried back into the North East. I’m not sure anyone asked what I wanted. The plane from Heathrow to Newcastle was delayed, and I was wheeled off somewhere and abandoned to my pain and the pills. I took a lot of them and passed out.
Mum had someone in mind in Newcastle. A name, a face, a connection. An orthopaedic surgeon she knew. A family friend. “Big Jane’s father,” she said. That’s how I knew him—not by any professional title, but through his daughter, who had babysat us once or twice at Beadnell. She was a few years older than my sister Jane. And I’d adored her.
When I was four or five, I remember clinging to her leg—refusing to let go—and declaring, in front of my siblings, that she was mine. I meant it. I claimed her the way you’d claim a space on the sofa. She was mine.
That memory floated up through the haze as plans were made. Big Jane’s dad would fix me. That was enough.
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