Fiction Failures

While I was in Zermatt I did a lot of reading - Kate Morton's Forgotten Garden, to be precise, and enjoyed it until I got to the very end and couldn't believe in the reason  the child was alone on the ship. I don't want to say more of the storyline, but those of you who have read it may agree with me. That mystery had been a thread throughout the whole book, and I wanted so very badly to know why it had happened.  I'm afraid the weak raison d'etre cast the entire story into doubt.
Then I read Goddard's Set in Stone. Again, a wonderfully atmospheric story about a house that twists people's minds, but then in the last few pages - a railway ticket in the post and I couldn't understand it's significance. I obviously ought to have understood - but I didn't.

 It is things like these that make me so very wary in own writing. Is the basic plot both strong and believable? Am I expressing character in the way I should? Is everything in my head clear on the page? Will readers close the book and toss it aside, saying Rubbish! because they couldn't figure out what was happening?

So now I've begun Trollope's The Other Family, and noticed something that has been annoying me for ages. It's the increasing frequency of sentences like this: "it was perfectly possible to hand-wash most stuff, not take it to the dry-cleaner's." I would rather the sentence read 'dry-cleaner.' Why add the apostrophe, which indicates the writer means the dry-cleaner's shop, if said writer cannot be bother to add the word itself?
I hope it is not the modern trend to write novels in the same sloppy, slangy way we speak. One of the things I love about reading is discovering the astonishing beauty of clear prose and I would hate to lose that for the sake of being trendy.

Zermatt - some hotels pick up guests from the Bahnhof (station) in carriages that look like the Wells Fargo stage in cowboy films. The thunder of hooves and rolling wheels as they trot down the snowy streets is exciting to watch, and then the whiff of horse as they go by -  wonderful!

Looks can be deceiving

Mountains can look unappealing in poor weather, when the sky and the snow merge into one strangely blank expanse of grey.
Visibility was poor on our first day. We took our skiis on the train and ventured up to Rotenboden (unforgettably dubbed Rottenbottom by a couple of seven-year-old English children on a previous holiday), thinking that our "favourite" run would be easy enough.

The run descends to Riffelberg and is a swooping rollercoaster of a run that leads directly to the sun terrace of the Riffelberg hotel where hot chocolate awaits. The problems began right away - my skiis would not slide. Very odd. I stood on a slope, pointing down the fall line, and did not move. Dh finally admitted he'd coated the skiis with WD40 when he stowed them in the garage after our last trip.

So, there followed much swishing of skiis back and forth in the snow until the wretched WD40 was polished off. We earned strange looks from other skiers, I can tell you. Then we could ski. We set off and soon found we'd descended into mist, cloud, call it what you will. Skiing palls for me when I cannot see more than ten feet ahead of me, when the snow suddenly disappears under your skiis and you land with a thump somewhere down the hill you couldn't see.

We got down, had a hot chocolate and waited to see if the weather would clear, but if anything it got worse. In perfect agreement, we got the train down to Zermatt and headed for the leisure pool and two jacuzzis at the hotel. Call it cowardice if you like. We prefer to say there's always tomorrow.

Winter Holidays

I've just had a week's holiday without a computer and you know what that means - no blogging, no working on the story, no dipping into Facebook or Twitter and guess what - did I miss it? Not at all!

It may have had something to do with the holiday being an active one. We went skiing in Zermatt and given my current levels of fitness, plus the fact that for the ten days before we flew I'd had the most abysmal bug which kept me in bed for almost a week, seven days skiing took every ounce of energy I had. I am not as fit as I used to be, that's for sure!

We took off on the 19th with doubt in our minds. Would Geneva be snowbound or not? We landed safely and were then presented with a trek to the Inghams coach. The walk was long enough not to be recommended even when unencumbered, but with suitcases, ski boots and skis to manage, definitely a no-no situation. The coach, which was supermodern and only a third full, no doubt a reflection on the current financial climate, took us to Tasch, from which point no automobiles are allowed further up the valley to Zermatt. Trouble was, our train tickets were with the Inghams rep, who was not there to meet us! He arrived half an hour later, full of apologies, blaming miscommunication between reps. We were not impressed. When we arrived in Zermatt we had another ten minute wait for the hotel taxi, and standing around at night in sub-zero temperatures is no joke. Picture us even less pleased than before.

It was only when we got to the Park Hotel Beau-Site in Zermatt and walked into the warmth and light that we felt we could relax. We thawed out and went down to dinner. The food is always terrific there, and the Swiss wines are astonishingly good. It's only a pity they never make it out of Switzerland. They do so that the Swiss are the heaviest wine drinkers in Europe, but I don't know if that is true. Their diet is heavy in cheese and fat in all forms, but strangely, they also hold the record for the healthiest nation in Europe. Must have something to do with the altitude, and maybe the cold.

Next year, we shall book with the hotel and make out own travel arrangements.