Last week, I snowboarded for the first time. And I learned that it's not my thing. I grew up, you see, in a bog. There are no hills and if you trip, heather breaks your fall. I dislike snow as it makes navigating the bog treacherous, what with all the hidden holes. That's how we lost granddad. I've had no exposure to extreme sports, except fishing and the other gun sports. So, as you can imagine, sliding down mountains is about as natural an activity for me as astronomy is for bats. Trouble is, like the bat that wasted its life screeching at the moon, I realised this only when it was too late.

I was dangling with complete strangers in a chairlift about 100 feet above a snow-capped mountain. Below me a skier hurtled past. He lost control and flew off piste, bouncing off rocks like a pinball. He managed to scream a dozen times in less than a second. Then he stopped moving. I felt sick. I'd never seen a corpse before. Relentlessly the lift moved upwards, with all the foreboding of those contraptions evil geniuses use to slowly crush the life out of James Bond. My ears popped. The only other time I'd experienced that was on the plane over. And it wasn't so bad then because some nice woman came along and gave me sucky sweets. And duty free. This was different. I was surrounded by steepness. I could sense gravity rub its hands and leer at me. I needed reassurance, but Ma wasn't with me. I felt alone - like a worm in a fish farm. I wanted out.

And, remarkably, as tears welled in my eyes and goose bumps that deserved trainer bras blossomed pubescently on my skin, I was sufficiently lucid to spot a possible escape. Chairlifts are driven by pulleys, and operate in the same way as the clothes lines people in high-rise apartments use. On one side chairs ascend and on the other side chairs descend. The only thing a passenger has to do to get from the ascending side to the descending side is to not get off. My God - the simplicity of it! I would stay on the chairlift! Like a prisoner listening on a hot summer day to the distant chiming of a Mr Whippy van, I peered across at the descending chairs and dreamt about life on the other side. It was meant to be a nice dream, like those you have after watching Baywatch. Unfortunately, just as the dream was getting to the point where it might have been worth while turning on the video recorder, I was interrupted by a heartbreaking realisation.

There was nobody on the descending side of the chairlift! People had come here to ski. They couldn't wait to get off this thing and onto the slopes. To them, the chairlift was an inconvenience that had to be endured. I viewed it as a fairground ride that had taken me to the edge and was now about to whisk me dramatically away. I felt that the designers really understand the roots of fear and should be congratulated on their genius.

Nevertheless, sitting over there on my own would give everybody reason to deduce, logically, that I can't ski. Which is fine, except when has logic ever been sufficient when it comes to judging an individual who has an entire side of a chairlift to himself? Being human, and with nothing better to do, they would extend the litany of my lackings. They would conclude that I have no friends and less personality. They would see the flakes of snow in my hair as chronic dandruff, which is generally accompanied by BO, bad breath and a dislike of water. I couldn't have that. It would be almost as bad as publicly admitting that I record sections of Baywatch. It would be worse than sitting backwards in Mass. It would be more embarrassing than naked karaoke on a cold day. I quickly realised there was only one thing for it. I would have to ski. I didn't have the bottle to cop out. The chairlift reached the top. I prepared myself for dismount. And fell face first into the snow.

When I had dusted myself off I noticed that I was surrounded by snowboarders. They were staring. I could see my reflection in one hundred pairs of wrap-around shades. I looked very small. I think I had interrupted some group conversation. I felt pressured to say "hi.". Every one of them looked cool. It seems to be a snowboarding thing. The dress code, to my mind, is based on the guiding principle that if you were to lose control at some point during your descent (like, yeah dude) and shoot past the bouncers into a disco, you shouldn't look out of place. These people wore "Quicksilver" hats, "Da Kine" backpacks, "Animal" jackets, "No Fear" pants, "Trespass" gloves. They were models on an inclined catwalk. And then there was me.

My jacket was yellow and too small for me and my pants were sky blue with a white stripe down each leg. They were ripped in the crotch area, for reasons more to do with poor stitching than unrestrainable manhood. I had a t-shirt me Da gave me. It depicted a cow with a painfully swollen udder and the words "Leo Yellow Mastitis Dip" printed in bold letters below. I didn't have a backpack. I'd eaten all my sandwiches at the bottom. I did, by some amazing stoke of luck, have an "Animal" hat stuffed into my pocket. I reached for it, slowly, placed it on my head and smiled at the crowd. They still stared. Thinking back on it, I realise it must have been my shades.

I've only ever had one pair of shades in my life. I got them one Christmas in a "CHiPs" set. I was about ten and wanted to look like John Baker from the TV show. Sadly, they still make me look like John Baker. There he was, like a ghost, brandishing his 1980's shades proudly on the highest mountain in Spain and ready at a moment's notice to tear off down the Californian Highway to bust crime. The Spanish snowboarders were unimpressed. They must have never seen the show.

So, as I stood there with the colour coordination of neopolitan ice-cream, a wave of defiance coursed my veins. I wanted to show these guys that I didn't care what they thought. I rigged up my gear and vowed to board to the bottom. I adjusted my shades and took a deep breath. I was going to do this for John.

I recited what the instructor told me. "Just twist your body in the direction you want to go." So I pointed at the restaurant opposite me, leaned into it, and disappeared down a hill. Soon I was going very, very fast. The streaks of light that I saw passing me reminded me of what guys on the Enterprise see when they engage the warp drive. My hair, even though I'm nearly bald, stretched out behind me and flapped in the breeze. It was quite a rush. I was about to enjoy it. I felt gallant. For a short while at least.

If you ever get a snowboarder talking over a few pints of Pepsi Max, he'll tell you it's all about the edges. What he means by this is that it is very important to ensure the uphill edge is always in contact with the snow. Putting the downhill edge in contact with the snow will stop you. Unfortunately, this is what I did while travelling at about 800mph. Allow me to explain what happens in this case. The physics are interesting.

Well the first thing that happens is that you stop. Or more accurately, the board stops. The human on board isn't capable of instantaneous braking. So, given that I was facing slightly uphill and the board stopped, it is natural that I should have pivoted backwards from my ankles. This stage of the fall ended when my coccyx was levered into the snow. Following that, my head sunk down into my shoulders such that my neck disappeared. My torso compressed to about six inches long, in the manner of an accordion falling from a plane. Then, in reaction to the compression, my torso expanded to about one and half times its normal length before returning to its original shape. This was stage one of the fall and it left me in the seated position of a six month old baby who is immobilised by underdeveloped muscles and the weight of a soiled nappy. Manly indeed.

So, with my buttocks fused to rock, I began to pivot backwards from the hips until the back of my head buried itself in the snow. My eyes continued their downward journey, until I was afforded a view of myself from the inside, then they popped back out again to allow me a glimpse of my shades marking where I'd been a split second earlier. They hovered for a moment then floated to the ground.

The whole experience stretched and mutilated my body so much that it was like a session of insanely intensive yoga. And it happened so quickly that, the whole way through it, I still wore the smile I acquired when I was beginning to feel confident. The last thing I remember, as I drifted into unconsciousness, was the blurred image of a group of snowboarders laughing and exchanging high-fives. I fumbled for something to throw. Then it all went black.

I awoke in my hotel room, surrounded by an enormous Spanish doctor. I asked him for morphine. He gave me paracetemol. Bloody quack. He told me that he had found both my contact lenses in one eye and he had left them in the bathroom. I was to stay in bed for the whole day. Which is what I did. I fell asleep and dreamt of fairgrounds, flat surfaces and episodes of Baywatch. The next day, having being nursed for twenty four hours by a squad of buxom lifeguards and about 15 paracetemol, I felt better and wanted to do something. I'd given up on the whole snowboarding thing, so I decided to do a bit of shopping. That too was quite an experience. So much so, in fact, that you could say it's a whole other story.