I'm British so I talk about the weather

Last Sunday it was - by some freak of nature – the same temperature (16C) in Frankfurt and Adelaide. By the time my flight touches down in Adelaide in ten days time, the mercury should have risen to the mid-twenties or even higher.  In Frankfurt we are now promised snow - just in time for the start of the Weihnachtsmarkt next weekend.

Talk of snow takes my thoughts somewhat unwillingly back in time. To the winter that went on for ever and ever. Put simply, I don't do snow. I don't even get on with skiing due to a fundamentally incompatible phobia of moving downhill fast on a two thin slices of metal.  And no, I don't want to try it with a snowboard, thanks all the same.

Anyway, back in the mists of time (nine months ago), we experienced a two week period when our quiet suburban road looked like the surface of Mars. The time when a barely noticeable upward gradient suddenly seemed as challenging to navigate as the north face of Everest.  Particularly when behind the wheel of a BMW (a hovercraft would have been preferable).  For a week or so I simply abandoned my car at the nearest S-Bahn station, put on my wellies and trekked the last kilometer across the fields. In the pitch black at midnight (it was one of those weeks at work).

It was so bad even the council snowplough didn't fancy it. One Saturday morning I decided to take things into my own hands and, together with neighbour Bodo, spent three hours clearing the worst of the snow from the road. Rewarded for my endeavours with a Glühwein, I watched incredulously from the kitchen window as the snowplough finally made an appearance around lunchtime.  The next day one set of neighbours helped me remove my car from a huge snowdrift, only to watch equally incredulously as I reversed down the road into an even larger one. A different set of neighbours had to help me out of that one. It was not a good time.

So, last winter is one of the reasons why I decided to escape the Northern Hemisphere for six weeks this time around. There are lots of other reasons and we will come to these.