If you could relive one year of your life, which one would it be?
If I could relive one year of my life, I think I’d choose 1980.
As years go, it was pretty spectacular.
I was eighteen. I nailed my exams, fell in love, was accepted to read History at Oxford, and ended the year turning up at a five-star hotel in Val d’Isère with a job that would keep me in the French Alps until the end of the ski season.
That is quite a lot to squeeze into twelve months.
There was the intensity of being eighteen, too: everything mattered enormously and everything seemed possible. Exams weren’t simply exams; they might determine what happened next. Falling in love wasn’t something to be fitted conveniently around the rest of life. And getting into Oxford felt like an extraordinary door opening onto a future I could barely imagine.
Then, almost as soon as that future had been secured, I did something rather different. Instead of heading directly towards university, I packed my bags and went to the Alps.
I arrived in Val d’Isère at the end of the year to work in a five-star hotel, with months of skiing ahead of me. Oxford could wait.
Of course there have been many wonderful years since. I met my fiancée and future wife on the slopes in France. There followed our passion for each other and for life, marriage, children, homes, adventures and the building of a life together.
But that isn’t really a year.
That’s decades.
So if I’m allowed just twelve months to live again, I’ll stick with 1980 for now.
Eighteen years old, in love, Oxford ahead of me and the French Alps under my feet.
Not a bad year at all.
Leave a Reply