Written in 2003:
Guess where I am. If you walk down the main street, past Prada, Gucci, Tiffany’s and the five star Palace Hotel, you may stumble across an ordinary tea shop with a cutesy little sign quietly announcing its obvious wares of ‘Coffee, Tea, Caviar’. Not Cake……Caviar. Yup, today’s broadcast from the Bald Crusader comes from St.Moritz, Switzerland. A small town at 1800 metres in the Engadin Valley, half an hour from the Italian border, a town where money CAN buy you love. If you have never set foot here or have never been subjected to anal banter from cruising socialites like myself, let me give you a brief description.
There are two main sides to this quaint little mountain resort. On the one side it is a ridiculous town made entirely out of class division and staggering wealth with a sprinkling of well-mannered servants such as myself to massage a few egos and deliver a belief that the world is, in fact, a fluffy fur-lined nappy into which the truly self-deceived can crap at will, as long as they pay for it…… Although this is not entirely a negative thing.
Just as the Americans and many rain-soaked Europeans have the belief that
Disneyland (Paris) represents the adorable purity and innocence that resides
within a child’s heart, where giant rats can hug and touch under-age minors, the
same very much goes for St.Mo and adults. It is a haven for grown-ups who believe
that, with money, any one of their desires can be fulfilled, and generally it is
true. Having said that, it is still not a place where you can saunter
into a bar, lock on to a female with the best pair of personalities and
initiate conversation with, “Wanna breed?“. Style and finesse is still much
needed for any hope of even the slightest bit of inter-gender relations.
some of the most talented, kind-hearted individuals meet and share knowledge and
friendship, without money being an issue. Generally, these people see through
the bullshit and just want to either save up enough money to pursue other dreams
or they ski. It would be fair to say that St.Mo is one of the few centres of the
world, one of those energy crossing points where sooner or later anything or
anyone of any interest or importance will make an appearance sooner or later. By
importance I refer to anything which is good gossip, such as Hugh Grant and Liz
Hurley leaving their skis in our shop a couple of weeks ago, or Martina Hingis
dancing next to us all in the bar on the mountain (she’s now shagging one of the
ski instructors here, pass it on). There are also other impressive events to
take note of, such as the Cartier World Polo Championships that is played here
on the frozen lake (on horse-back), night skiing every Friday night, and of course the FIS World Ski Championships that are now on your screens. But all of these things pale in comparison to my newest experience, The Cresta Run.
For those of you uneducated in the ways of the class elite, the Cresta Run is a unique skeleton run on which only men can ride. Described in simple turns, it is a long half-tube of ice (unique because it is made by hand), approximately 1 kilometre long and a metre wide, down which you hurtle at speeds close to 100km/h HEAD-FIRST on a metal sled weighing roughly thirty kilos with blades attached to the underside. The run also has a few kinks and bends in it just to make that little more frightening. After a jolly introduction talk (called the Death talk, for motivation) about all the
bones you can shatter (all of them) you are kitted up with a helmet and a few
pads to dull the pain when you hit a hard surface at Mach 4, as well as given
special shoes with rakes attached to the toes to give you the fanciful belief
that you can brake and slow slow down at the bends. My first couple of runs
puckered me up nice and tight, and would I have been filmed one would have seen
not only the marks of the rakes trying to bury themselves into the ground but also ten deep grooves where my fingernails were digging into the wall as I screamed like a girl from start to finish.
I mentioned before that only men can ride. This is because only men possess the
ability to lie to themselves that pain and death do not apply to them. As in every man, there is always still a little boy inside that has this unshakeable belief he is utterly invincible, able to defy Kryptonite and death, and having crunched into a wall of ice at high speed can retort with a hearty bellow to the rest of the Lads that “it’s only a flesh wound! Wash it in beer and put a plaster on it! Now let’s go and kill some small furry animals. Hurrah!!!!“ I myself can attest to this phenomena, when on my third run I experienced a testosterone rush and thought that I would be able to steer the course safely with the aid of my unfeasibly large testicles. How wrong I was, and how I wished that I had had large plums to soften the blow when I flew out on one of the corners and went arse over tit, digging a deep groove several metres long into the snow with my face.
Strangely enough, women are incapable of such self-deception and fantasy, and so are banned from taking part in case they spoil all the fun for the rest of us.
The Last Of The Seburai 