Mishaps, Accidents and Family Bust-Ups

Swiss cheese

I went skiing during half term. It is the thing to do. The only (and I mean only) time you will ever prise the British middle classes out of their Volvos and BMWs and onto a bus is during the spring half term break. Then, miraculously, you will find all the little Joshuas and Bettinas on a coach heading from Geneva airport into the Alps. During half term it is obligatory to have week of skiing and fondue. During the rest of the year we wouldn’t be seen dead on the megabus.

I was with my brother, sister and their families, we had a super time. Well almost super. I had a bust-up with my brother-in-law. We still aren’t speaking. (This isn’t true, but all the best stories get taller with the telling).

Responsible adults

My brother-in-law and I were left in charge of three, ten-year-old children. Our task was to navigate them up and down a handful of ski runs in the afternoon whilst our respective wives held forth in a sauna or spa somewhere.

It was all going well until my niece (his daughter) declared that she didn’t want to ski down any more runs and wanted to go and play in the snow park instead. The snow park is a wonderful thing if you are ten years old. If you are fifty-year-old bloke and have seen it five times already that day, it is about as much fun as a… [inset suitably crude term here]. I declined.

At this point my niece decided that I was not the man that she wanted to ski with for the rest of the afternoon. She adopted a pose that would have put Franz Klammer to shame and disappeared down the side of the Alp at a remarkable rate. My brother-in-law muttered something under his breath and gave chase, leaving me to shepherd the two remaining children down the mountain.

We weaved our way to the bottom of the piste, only to find that the last ski lift home had a queue two hundred people deep. I couldn’t see my brother-in-law and niece anywhere. I pulled out my phone and tried to call him, but Vodafone don’t do a great job in the middle of the Alpine wilderness. We waited for a couple of minutes. Then we waited a couple of minutes more. I asked the children if they had seen their cousin on the way down. We agreed that we hadn’t passed them. So we assumed they were buried somewhere in the queue ahead of us and joined the tail-back to be carried up the mountain. 

At the top my brother-in-law and niece were still nowhere to be seen, so we went to enjoy the après ski. (If you are a ten-year-old child this looks like a large hot chocolate with more whipped cream on the top of it than can be good for your arteries).

The big bust up

An hour and a half later I met my brother-in-law back in the chalet. He was — how can I best put it? — displeased. As far as he was concerned I had left him on the side of a mountain with an injured daughter and I should have been… [insert second suitably crude term here].

A Brother-in-laws tale

My daughter, who is only ten, took off down the side of the mountain. She isn’t great at the stopping part of skiing, so I gave chase. Unfortunately she skied right off the piste and then had a rather nasty fall. I was a bit frightened and gave her a good dressing down for being so reckless. James and the other children skied right past us, oblivious to our plight. 

We headed off to catch them, but now my daughter was scared and we made slow progress to the bottom. There was huge queue at the ski lift and no sign of James. I was a bit peeved that he had left us, but we caught the ski lift back up the side of the mountain so we could make the final descent home.

Unfortunately I am partially sighted and I missed the turning. We ended up in a small village 5 miles away from the chalet and I had to pay for a taxi home. When I flicked open WhatsApp on my phone  I wasn’t delighted to see a picture of the others grinning back at me over cups of hot chocolate.

It wasn’t that bad

He was right, I had left a partially sighted man on the side of the mountain with an injured child. I resisted the urge to bite back and tell him he should keep his daughter under control. You can imagine what that would have done for family harmony.

Fortunately we both had the sense to apologise and focus on the adult version of après ski instead. It is easy to see how family feuds start.

Blame isn’t the solution

When things go wrong there is rarely one reason why:

• If only I hadn’t declined the opportunity to go to the ski park.
• If only my niece was a more competent skier.
• If only she had stayed on the piste.
• If only I had one child to focus on not two.
• If only there had been fewer people in the lift queue.
• If only Vodafone had planted a telephone mast nearby.
• If only he hadn’t been short sighted.

So many “if onlys”

Accident prevention experts use the Swiss cheese analogy to explain how accidents happen. When you buy a packet of sliced Swiss cheese you can see the holes in the top slice and the second slice of cheese lying behind it. The holes aren’t in the same place on each slice. Very occasionally you can see right through the pack if all the holes have lined up. 

Accidents are the same. Often there will be a near miss, “if only” or hole, but the near misses only cause in an accident when they all happen at the same time.

So if you want to stop issues, accidents and family bust ups

Don’t go in for blame and punishment, it won’t help. Focus on the near misses or “if onlys” and systematically remove them. Either fill in the holes in the slices of Swiss Cheese or if you can’t, then add more slices (controls) to reduce the chances of all the failures happening at the same time.

This is what I intend to do next year. I’m going to take my brother-in-law and start the après ski early. My wife can look after the children.

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