After some days of wonderful Spring weather, heavy showers last night arrived to water the garden and, today, back to warm sunny weather with just a hint of a chilly wind. Hopefully the rain last night was clean and washed away all the Gaddafi muck from the previous one. It only rained because I had previously watered all the pots. I read in the paper that the UK is having its coldest winter for twenty eight years. Brrr! And that disposes of the weather, though the thought of it being so cold did make me think of Hollings Farm and the winter when we were snowed in and had six foot long stalactites hanging from the eaves. The animals went out for a pee and disappeared under a blanket of white. I still do miss that beautiful house, even after all these years and can think of it only with nostalgia. I remember Chris and I standing on the access road one day, looking down at it and Chris saying, “Aren’t we lucky?” And we certainly were. It is the only thing in England that I do miss and I can remember every detail of every single room. It’s not that I regret for one moment coming to live in Crete. That was the best decision ever but it wasn’t until I had left it that I realised just how much I loved Hollings Farm. Isn’t that always the way? We got a good price for it at the time which enabled us to buy here for cash and not be lumbered with a mortgage as so many ex-pats seem to be, sometimes two mortgages, one in England still being paid off and one here and the cause of much financial hardship. With the astronomical rise of property prices in the UK the farm must be worth a pretty penny now. We could never afford to buy it back even if we wanted to.
To think the first house I bought in Hackney, four floors of Victoriana and large garden, set me back £6500 and was sold ten years later for £135000 and so it went on, prices rising year by year. When Jeremy Nightingale bought his house in Hackney a few roads down and paid £90000 for it we thought he was out of his mind. Little did we know! The Richmond Road property at the last count was going for just a fraction under a million. Crazy, or what? But that £6500 was a wonderful investment. If it hadn’t been for that we would not be here today but probably still living in London in rented accommodating. And the rise in property prices on Crete means we certainly wouldn’t be in a position to buy today. Is there a destiny that shapes our ends? I believe there is but who can rightly say?