Let’s face it one of the main reasons we do this sport is because we get to dress flash. Our pasty British skin doesn’t look good unless we are smothered in layers of clothes, so this is our ideal sport.

With the new season almost here, there will be some of you looking at this year’s range of heinous snowboarding fashion and scratching your heads. Fear not, it will all make sense if you understand that it’s a kind of uniform, a classic example of a non-conformist snowboarding conformity. Here are some basic rules that might just explain how it all works.

Fiction is not something you’re normally going to read about on this site, but the other day I came across a book that grabbed my attention. I’m a pretty keen exponent of judging a book by its cover and this one ticked a lot of my boxes…

Judging the book by its cover

1. The cover has a silhouette of a snowboarder – A rarely seen feature in book cover design but always a good sign… in my book.
2. Said snowboarder is jibbing Mont Blanc – Getting better
3. There loads of purple circles and dots everywhere - I really hate the colour purple. It is the most untrustworthy of colours. This is a set-back.

Despite the warning signs of the purple design, on the whole the front cover is good.


I forged on and decided to investigate the very depths of cover judging, by reading the back

(*Some of the following may actually be the truth). The history of illicit snowboarding is the history of snowboarding itself. It all started on the tiny island of Zanzibar, off the coast of Africa on the 26th August 1896. On the death of the Sultan a lad called Khalid bin Barghash rightfully succeeded the throne. The new sultan had done this without the permission of the British though and they were a tad miffed by his impertinence. The British declared war and 40 minutes later, after opening a can o’ wup-ass, the war finished with a decisive British victory. It was the shortest war in history...