The second most dreaded holiday of the year is approaching, from a clothing perspective – skiing. Trying on ski gear is trumped only by bikinis for inducing depression. When I put on Salopettes my legs always look like 2 giant Clonakilty Puddings, particularly when compared with the ski bunny girls who wear Lycra gear so tight you could count their body hair, if they had any.

Men of course manage to look much more attractive in their ski gear. During a lesson last year I was with this tall, ski tanned bloke with black spiky hair and super cool gear. Later that night, one of guys beside me at diner started chatting away. He had balding brown hair, northern European blue skin, was average height and wearing a brown, ribbed, zip-up cardigan. I was curious why he was so familiar until he mentioned how much he enjoyed skiing with me. The Connect 4 line joined in my mind.

Turns out the black spiky hair was a “fun� ski hat (I blame snow blindness) his skin appeared tanned because of the tint in my ski goggles and the height was due to massive boots and bindings. I could have forgiven almost everything about his off slope look - except the cardigan.

I now know how guys feel when they wake up in the morning to discover the stunner they met the previous evening is more Bett Lynch than Pamela Anderson. A woman can be a crafted artifice of fake hair, nails and eyelashes combined with skillful make-up and Houdini underwear that makes parts of the body appear and disappear at will.

The same level of attractiveness can be achieved with far less effort and cost by alcohol. A girl that is a 5/10 at 9pm will be 7/10 by midnight and 9/10 at 3am, but a bloke will only increase by around 1 point irrespective of alcholol consumed by the female. Proving that women should be buying men a drink if they want to score and not the other way around!

So as long as everyone is good and drunk at the ski resort no one will care what I look like in my ski gear. I suspect it was a women that invented Apres Ski !

Never start drinking cosmo’s at 3am.

Never add champagne to a cosmo, it won’t be considered as a legitimate scientific experiment no matter how many times you say it.

Never share a cab with a guy whose trousers are tighter than yours.

I’m not sure if there is a place called hedonism, but Galway was front of the pack to win the title at the races last week. Everyone you met seemed to be ‘living it large’. Most were involved in property development, irrespective of if that meant a shed in your back garden or a full scale development. A few had naturally done well having scored millions off building and selling estates built entirely from bubblegum and toilet roll inserts. These players were determined to spend the proceeds of success on drinking, snorting and shagging their way into ever higher states of hedonistic pleasure.

At one stage the champagne was being wheelbarrow-ed into the marquee at the races and just opened directly - no chilling! The five deep crowd hurled €100’s over the counter for a bog standard bottle of warm Moet. (money really can’t buy taste). When people eventually tired of the drink the demands for other stimulants started to increase.

The first few times I went to the loo people winked and pointed at their nose. Naturally I assumed there was something green and unsavoury in the area. After doing repeated inspections all appeared clear. As I look nothing like a coke dealer it became obvious that people were looking to score off anyone they passed. The coke washed up in Cork may actually have been destined for Galway and not mainland Europe. Demand certainly outstripped supply in the city of the high tribes.

Of course there can be only one thing that follows such artificial highs and that’s an attempt at a natural one. Every married bloke seemed determined to break his vow of fidelity – repeatedly. By this stage the girls, of which there were many, had given up on finding a husband and were just settling for anyone that could score them another drink. At any cost. The next morning the streets were like a women’s mini marathon of shame with girls in high heels and skewed hats making their way home from the previous night’s debauchery.

Now generally it is just the local Galway folk (Sweary) who are disgusted by the crowd and behaviour at the races, but this year they had an unusual ally. The original ‘property developers’, who balk at the title and insist on calling themselves investors, were horrified. One thing having these people push in on their business and lower margins, but hanging out in their summer playground was completely unacceptable. Most hid out in suites (the ones that weren’t already booked out by Russian prostitutes) or friends houses and castles around the city. You couldn’t really blame them. The crowd was slightly different this year, a bit younger, a bit rougher and a lot more full on. Everyone seemed to treat Galway as the last hurrah - maybe it was as I certainly peaked.

Well who would have thought that I would ever say the following: Apparently you can have too much champagne. Whenever the DT’s stop the details will follow.