Tudor money

Had a bit of a tussle yesterday with money. Not mine, but theoretical money in the sixteenth century. I read letters from Sir Ralph Sadler in which he reported details of his time at the Scottish court to his master Henry VIII. He reported that the French had sent 30,000 crowns to the Queen Dowager of Scotland and while the question of who got the money and where it eventually went is fascinating, my problem was - how much was 30,000 crowns?

Mannlichen  slopes

If they were English crowns, then they were worth five shillings each. If they were Scottish crowns, then they were worth twenty-three shillings each. Quite a substantial difference - £7,500 or £34,500. Until 1707, the two countries had different monetary systems and they changed with each king. I can see now why lots of novelists ignore the question of money except in the roundest of round terms!

I decided that the French King would hardly bother to send three ships and an ambassador for a paltry £7,500 - and then remembered that when a groat (6d) was worth the equivalent of £10 today, even £7,500 was a considerable sum. I tried working out today's equivalent values for both sums, and gave up. I didn't believe what my calculator was telling me, and anyway, I've never been good at maths.

Perhaps I'll stick to round figures.

Best day

Friday was the best day of our week’s skiing. A lot of the cloud dispersed and that made visibility so much better, but it was -15 degrees even in the sunshine. Heaven knows what it was in the shade, but I can tell you that the hairs inside my nose froze and my eyebrows stood to attention each time I skied down the slope. Thanks goodness there was no wind.
We found our way to the start gate of the Lauberhorn World Cup run, with the little ramp out of the hut where Bodie Miller’s American trainer seems to be locked inside so he can yell encouragement at bodie as he launches down the slope. Small kids of six and seven were pushing each other down it and generally playing the fool in the sunshine.

Hotel Regina in Wengen

We skied the first really wide part without trouble. When it narrowed and dived off down the side of the mountain we chickened out and opted to take the red run down to the little bridge and then turned sharp right to ski home to Wengen. On the way we passed a party of young bucks daring each other to shuss down the black run beneath the bridge on which we stood. It looked more of a gully than a ski run, and we were quite happy to be up above and looking down, for there were no escape routes. Get it wrong, and they’d be going down the mountain on their noses.
In our hotel we had a gentleman of 78 who was still skiing, and lively company in the lounge after dinner. He was travelling alone, because his "wife’s knees had gone" (no longer allowed her to ski), and I hope we’re still skiing when we’re his age. We had a few extra drinks that night, since we knew we had to be up at 5am to get the train by 6.05am and the result was we slept like logs.

Wengen, Picoult and e-books

A week ago today we decided we wouldn’t ski as the runs were still treacherous because of cloud in the valleys. Instead we went up on the train and walked back to Wengen dorf – a distance of about 10 kilometres. I enjoyed it. Much more time to look around and enjoy the pretty scenery, the pace energetic enough to keep us warm, and the route mostly a downhill drop of 2,500 feet from Kleine Scheidegg. Lots of sledges whizzing about, though none of them made up more than halfway up the hill in the picture!

Sledging

Jodi Picoult, one of the best-selling female writers, happens to be in the UK promoting her latest offering. In the Sunday Times, 5/02/2012, she suggests that electronic publishing may be far from a salvation for writers as so many claim. Writers, she says, get a smaller chunk of the profit when a book is downloaded rather than selling in print format. “The difference could cut their income by as much as a third.”

I must admit my understanding was that e-book writers were offered a larger chunk of the royalties than print contracts. What do others think?

Picoult hopes writers will try and revive interest in the printed book among younger readers, and to that end has collaborated with her 16 year-old daughter in writing a book for young adults. She will be appearing at the Oxford Literary Festival on March 28th. I heard her speak at the Hexham Book Festival two years ago and enjoyed her performance. She speaks clearly, is entertaining and wonderfully professional. When her time was up she smiled, bid us all goodbye and exited smartly, leaving us all staring at the gap on the stage.

Wengen

Glad to be home!

We arrived in Wengen on 28^th February and stayed at the Regina, a family-run hotel of Old World Charm dating from 1894. We had a south-facing balcony but the weather was so cold we only opened the door long enough to take a photograph. With a little sunshine it would have been marvellous, but one look at the pics will tell you we could hardly see the village, let alone the surrounding mountains.

We took the Mӫnnlichen lift next morning, disappeared into thick cloud and eventually broke through into bright sunshine and blue skies at about 7000 feet. We skied the two blue runs, which proved fairly easy except that each run disappeared into the mist and for two thirds of the run we skied blind. We stopped a lot, unable to see the way ahead and sometimes not even the poles marking the left and right of the run.  When we saw someone ski by and head off into the murk as if they knew the way, we followed them!

Both runs dropped down the slope in front of the north face of the Eiger, but we couldn’t see it. Nor could we see the JungFrau. Coming back up on the chair lift, freezing in the cold dampness, we watched cloud drift across the slopes and by the time we reached the lift head, we were in so much cloud we couldn’t see more than a few feet.

Five minutes later, the cloud blew away from the peaks, and we stood in brilliant sunshine and looked out over a valley filled with mist. Weird experience; rather like skiing of the edge of the world. We went off for a hot chocolate. At least that was normal!