As everyone knows, the definition of serendipity is searching for a needle in a haystack, and instead finding a farmer’s daughter. Not so fast, as they say. I live among farmers and haystacks up here in the Alps, and I’ve yet to run into a farmer’s daughter who is worth the buckshot in the bottom. I was thinking of such matters all last week while skiing with my son and his two children, and how happy I feel now, surrounded by wife and children and grandchildren, something I’ve avoided throughout my life while chasing daughters.
Incidentally, the little turd Taki, who just turned 13, is such a good skier, the “race of the generations” was called off. He’s just too fast and I’m just too old and too slow. My son J.T. took pity and announced the race will take place sometime in the future. The higher virtue of pity prevailed over the sin of pride. Yet I found delight in watching the most ordinary and most basic of occurrences: grandchildren schussing down mountains (I really am getting old). I also found an old book by Andrea von Stumm, Free Lies, 4, published by the ex-chairman of The Spectator, which brought back so many memories I called the author and reminisced like mad.
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Yep, it’s a funny old world, with youngsters now throwing off constraints and living the life of maximum self-expression, or so they believe while making fools of themselves. Constraints are good, and I was reminded of them when a bunch of old British friends arrived in Rougemont, the village next to this “shithole,” and presented me with a baseball cap with a “Make Gstaad Great Again” logo on it. They’re all Brexiteers but did not go overboard in describing the…