What happened was very simple. I fell while getting off a chairlift. “HAHA! Punter!” I hear you cry! Fair play, it was a schoolboy move – and the mockery is well-deserved, despite a multitude of excuses that I won’t bore you with. But there was a far greater error besides the actual fall that took place. I had absent-mindedly forgotten to fold down my high-back before I got on the chairlift. Avoidable injuries are the worst and if this is something you do on a regular basis, I guarantee after reading this you will NEVER do it again. I assume I put my foot out to steady myself, but instead slipped in some hard pack ice, causing an involuntary splits-type manoeuvre. Legs akimbo and off balance, I slipped backwards and literally sat on my high back. By which I mean – it was jammed right up my foof.  Yep. Ouch.

My lovely cousin (obviously totally distraught) was doubled up in hysterics. I swiftly righted myself, trying as much as possible to avoid any Michael Jackson crotch grabbing, and scooted off, my goggles hiding the tears of pain now streaming from my eyes. I gathered up my damaged pride and, once my cousin had recovered from her uncontrollable (and somewhat uncalled for) fit of giggles, we continued our tour of Le Trois Vallees.

“Sure enough, everywhere I had sat down, the white snow had turned a bright and unmistakable crimson”

It was two hours later before anything untoward was noticed: “Um… are you bleeding?” Sure enough, everywhere I had sat down, the white snow had turned a bright and unmistakable crimson. Worse still, I was wearing some very pale snowboard pants, leading to some altogether misleading staining. I thought it best to seek the privacy of a close-by mountain restaurant to check out the err… situation. What I discovered was horrific.

Puddles of blood had formed in my thermals, streamed all down my legs, it had even soaked into my socks and boots (when I rinsed my clothes later that night in the chalet’s bathtub and it looked like the scene from Psycho.) How I had failed to noticed this level of blood loss was beyond me – I was in clear need of medical assistance – and by now far across the valley in Val Thorens, some distance from our chalet in Courchevel. With no desire to share my predicament with ski patrol, I decided I would snowboard down to the town and catch a bus back to our chalet. I gallantly raided the restaurants first aid box, rather unceremoniously stuffed a bunch of bandages and gauze down my knickers and me and my blood-stained behind continued down the mountain undeterred.

“I was far from stoked about this – there were already way too many characters in this vagina story for my liking”

Back in Courchevel, and now in my mother’s care (strangely, one of the more comforting places to be when you’re suffering from an embarrassing case of “broken vagina”) I was marched to the medical centre, only to be told I definitely needed a hospital. I was far from stoked about this – there were already way too many characters in this vagina story for my liking. With little choice, we journeyed down the valley to where a few more medical professionals would poke and prod their way around my wounded lady-land.

They weren’t too hot on privacy in this hospital – on a couple of occasions my doctor abandoned me, spread-eagled on the bed, with nothing to protect my modesty, and failed to close the door to the busy corridor behind her (I can only apologise to any passers-by!) Eventually, two nurses were charged with the job of repairing me. As they stood either side of the bed, gossiping in motor-mouth French over my naked bottom-half, legs spread and at their total mercy, in one last and final humiliation, the nurse brandishing a needle and thread said: “Now, I prick.”

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