I am sure no one needs reminding of the well-known expression ‘one step forward, two steps back.’ Well, it seems that this could be applied to the spring’s efforts to oust the winter this year. I don’t know whether it’s all down to climate change, because there have always been unusual ‘highs’ and ‘lows’ in weather patterns, but this winter’s certainly been a rum one. After a January and most of February that resembled spring, with warm sunshine and very little cloud, wind or rain, ever since the middle of March we seem to have been regressing to what we usually expect of the middle of winter. Lately we’re getting a couple of days of sunny weather and climbing temperatures, then the clouds come, the rain falls (delighting the Greeks, at least, since they think primarily about next winter’s olive harvest and the water supply situation, for starters) and the temperatures drop to what we’d consider low even in January.

This is our 19th winter living in Greece, and we’ve so far never had any heating on, or needed any, once we got past the first week of March, simply because the mean temperatures in the southern Aegean don’t necessitate it. This year, however, just when we think about putting the ‘calorifers‘ away for the summer, we find ourselves sitting on the sofa of an evening and rubbing our calves (not to mention my earlobes), since they feel cold. I write this on April 11th and the top temperature we’ve seen today, when we’ve had some sunshine for part of the time, has only been around 15ºC. That’s lower than the average daytime temperature in January if there’s some sunshine to be had. At 9.00am this morning it was only 11ºC, when by rights it ought to have been already in the mid-teens. April daytime temperatures usually are well into the lower 20’s and we’ve only seen that once or twice this past couple of weeks.

I know what’s going to happen though, some day soon we’ll wake up and feel that summer is upon us. Whatever the weather does over here, every year we seem to find that the summer tends to arrive instantly, and we whip out the shorts to do some gardening and think about iced coffees on the terrace instead of making a filter. I do feel sorry for the early tourists this year, though. Those few that we’ve seen, while we, like all the locals, have been drinking coffee on the waterfront in our jeans and fleeces, have been strolling along in shorts, sandals and t-shirts making us feel positively frozen at the thought. Still, I usually say that the weather here’s got to be better than it is in Northern Europe anyway, right? Not necessarily. I exchanged messages with someone in Germany a couple of days ago, when we were taking refuge inside the house all day long owing to the dull sky and frequent rainfall, not to mention disappointing temperatures, and she replied that it was gloriously sunny and warm over there. How dare they, eh?

Best thing to do is start posting some photos…

Above: Our neighbour Christina’s been at it again, she turned up the other day with these. They’re called ‘Kalitsounia‘ and they’re a Cretan speciality. There are quite a few versions of them and they’re usually sweet-tasting, although containing cheese, often Misithra.

Above: This one was taken on March 25th. It was another of those days when we were fooled into thinking that spring was upon us. I actually dug the ‘sail’ out and put it up fo the first time this season.

Above: These were taken at Elounda at around 11.30am on April 6th. It was yet another day when the weather regressed to what we’d expect on a worse-than-average day in January. Local folk were out painting chairs and tables, setting them out in order to get their restaurants open for Greek Easter (which is this week, as you probably know). Mind you, we still found it warm enough to sit beside the sea with a Freddo espresso, so I oughtn’t to complain too loudly. We were there to visit the Eklektos bookstore, which is sadly going to close its doors this coming July in all probability. For more information about that, check out my ‘John Manuel – The Books’ Facebook page, where I posted quite a long piece about this recently. It’s the post that begins, “Some sad news that will affect you if you are an avid reader...”

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And here’s the link to the new short story “Outage.”