Snow joke in darkest Peru!

 

SNOW JOKE IN DARKEST PERU!

 

PHEW! There must be easier ways of tackling a mid-life crisis than climbing snow-clad mountains in the High Andes with altitude sickness. 

In a bid to turn the clock back 20 years and regain my hopelessly mis-spent youth, Smith on Saturday decided to hit the hippy trail by backpacking in darkest Peru. 

But two days into our intrepid trek, our motley crew of teachers, accountants and young farmers found itself dramatically stranded some 14,000 feet above the Sacred Valley of the Incas! 

 

Overnight a freak summer snow blitz - only the second in almost 40 years - blanketed our camp and made turning back too treacherous an option for our ill-equipped expedition. 

Our leader Gonzalo (aka "The Great Gonzo”) decided to engage the local ‘man of the mountains’ to guide us safely over the next pass - an awesome 1,000 feet climb in blizzard conditions without crampons. 

In sub-zero temperatures, it took five hours of huffing and puffing and slipping and sliding to reach the next valley. Incredibly our substitute guide wore just a woolly hat, flowing cape and open-toed sandals! 

 

 

The next day our cooks, who had no sunglasses, were snow-blind, whilst the rest of us had red-raw faces from the intense glare and one poor woman was treated for FIRST DEGREE burns. And this was supposed to be a holiday? 

Predictably the remainder of the four-day trek was abandoned along with Smithy’s ambitions of playing the part of Nanouk of the North. 

Next year I shall stick to something simpler and safer - like wrestling with crocodiles in the Amazon. Watch this space!

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TO BE PERFECTLY FRANK...

 

 

AMID all the latest phone-tapping, toe-sucking and Squidgy-kissing revelations over last week were press pictures of the disgraced TV presenter Frank Bough up to his old antics visiting a so-called “sex dungeon.” 

OK, Boughie’s not an MP or a member of the Royal Family, but a plain old TV personality who wears hideous jumpers. Is it really fair to make an example of him agai

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THE NAKED TRUTH

 ABOUT THOSE VIDEOS

MUCH has been made this week of a police chief’s attack on laws which allow pornographic videos to go on sale masquerading as ’sex education.’ 

Det Supt Michael Hames of Scotland Yard says some films with explicit scenes would be illegal if the commentary was replaced with a storyline. 

Excuse me, officer, but since when did porno movies have storylines?

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(This column was originally published in the Northamptonshire Evening Telegraph on Saturday, 5 September, 1992)