Out on the piste with the Dancing Men

I hope you'll excuse a bit of Proud Daddery with this pic of my son and heir Rhys, aged 13, receiving his first lesson in skiing from girlfriend Claire. At this point, the lad was still a tad wobbly on his pins, hence the somewhat bowed right leg. But we were thrilled to find that after about half an hour he stopped falling over, and zoomed off madly in all directions while remaining largely vertical.

It didn't greatly surprise me because the S&H is remarkably good at sports; a slightly bizarre state of affairs considering that he's related to me, but there you have it. I was deeply grateful to Claire for getting him started. It's wonderful when you can introduce your kids to something they can really enjoy and never had the chance to do before. Besides, it's unfair to inflict too many hours of adult boredom on the young-and-still-alive, during a week's holiday.

I strongly suspect that ma jolie femme de la montagne is a real whizz on the slerps. After all, she lived right up in the Pyrenees for the better part of 48 years. Unfortunately, Claire is recovering from a knee injury so it will probably be next winter before Dangerwoman is once again unleashed on an unsuspecting world.

It does at least save my blushes, as I've never tried skiing, being outstandingly bad at sport. But I must admit to having felt the odd regret that I'd never given it a go in the eight years that I've lived here. I think I must try it sometime when no-one is looking (except the mountain rescue team). Well, as they say: Break a leg. I probably will.

Anyway, The S&H had such a whale of a time the first day, that I couldn't resist offering him another go, so the first pic is taken at Formiguères and the second at Camurac, two of our nearby skiing stations.

I rather liked the row of bods waiting for the ski-lift. Despite some impressive lies on the part of the camera, it was actually so eye-piercingly bright that the queue was reduced to a line of blackened silhouettes; just like Sherlock Holmes's Dancing Men or maybe Captain Flint's secret message in Arthur Ransome's Missee Lee.

Perhaps childhood is different these days. I didn't get to do things like skiing, I didn't even get out of the UK until I was 20, though you could say that I made up for lost time later by emigrating . . . It doesn't bother me, I think it's great that kids can do these things. But I seem to recall a lot via favourite books; as Ransome said: Nothing ever happens in winter holidays.

I admit that I'm rambling on about all this kids' stuff to give me the excuse to mourn the passing of Lionel Jeffries, director of the all-time classic The Railway Children. I first saw the film at the flicks in Cannock, aged nine, when it came out in 1970. It remains that very rare animal, a true family film which also improves on the book.

Edith Nesbit's original is a rather scruffy affair, written quickly for cash, and containing a couple of chapters' worth of padding to swell the always perilously-low Nesbit coffers. Jeffries's script is a gem, cutting out the rubbish, adding in all those great one-liners and lovely, poignant throwaway lines, suggesting various intriguing possibilities that are never explained.

And 40 years on, that bit where Jenny Agutter says "Daddy, my daddy!" still has the power to make grown men cry. Makes me bite the old lip a bit just thinking about it. Who says les anglais are always ze cold feesh?

I wonder if this most English of stories could translate into French. Girlfriend Claire's unfondest memoires of train travel involve spending six deeply tedious hours per weekend coming home from boarding school on the delightfully antique but fearsomely slow Train Jaune, bump and grinding its way, as near as dammit vertically, back into the Pyrenees. Bit of a nul point there, I think.

Mind you, we are supposed to be getting a steam-hauled special, visiting Limoux for the famous carnival in a week or two. The loco should be a 141R, a serious piece of kit by British standards; a vast green and gleaming monster. It is a dragon, I always knew it was . . .