It was 7 years ago Caroline and I stayed in Crete over a winter – our first and last winter there. The joys of that time were struggling to heat the house with the stove and perpetually having to take the pipes down to unblock them, a roof that simply would not stop leaking – many a night was spent with the sound of water dripping into buckets. On New Year’s Eve it rained for 10 hours solid, and I am not talking about gentle rain but a monsoon. We went to a party and didn’t come back till 5 in the morning. I drove back through pebbled streams across the road and had to circumvent about four car-killing boulders that had tumbled down from the mountains. When we got back it was to find the house flooded. The builders had not properly sealed a back wall that is buried about 6 feet into the ground since the house is set in a mountain. In fact they’d dug out a trench to do a crappy job and refilled that with rubbish. With the rain it also filled with water which then came through the back wall. I remember mopping up to the wall and then just watching more water pour out.

That year it snowed. I don’t remember if that was before or after Christmas. The temperature went down to 2C and the snow didn’t last very long. Since then it hasn’t snowed there in the winter until this year.

Of course the house is well sealed now. The roofs don’t leak (fingers crossed). And my thanks to Anna Lexaki for these pictures.