When it comes to setting composition topics, teachers often get stuck in a rut. At their Greek village school, my three sons were in turn driven mad by the subject The Almond Tree In Winter, which seemed to be a particular favourite. The most common Australian topic was similarly dreaded: What I Did In My Holidays.
It so happens that I've just returned from winter holidays, and am thinking about them. It seems to me now that in childhood I never pondered holidays, so that recall was often a difficult chore. My siblings and I took the long breaks for granted, and I'm sure most of our friends did the same. Those summer weeks were an idyllic interlude that would be unfailingly repeated: that was simply the way things were.
It seems incredible that there were ten of those summers, consecutive ones when three generations coexisted happily. My siblings and I had an idyllic Ocean Road beach practically all to ourselves, the men went fishing every afternoon, except when, to Grandfather's annoyance, an easterly was blowing, and the women, in time-honoured fashion, kept everybody fed.
It was basic living in a rough fishing shack, with a wood stove, Tilley lamps, and a shower made out of a kerosene tin and a hose nozzle. And there was always a lot of interaction between grandparents and grandchildren.
There were rules: butter was kept under a tank tap and draped in hessian, no sand was to be tracked into the kitchen, and men had always to clean the fish they caught. We children were expected to help with the setting of the table and the washing-up. Nine o'clock was the time set for the last cup of tea, after which we trailed off to bed, youngest first. Of course change was inevitable, although I didn't really believe it, and started with my grandmother's death. I was 19.
Decades later, I am now the grandmother. Three generations visited Crete, my daughter-in-law Nina's ancestral place, towards the end of the old year. The morning of our departure, northern Athens lay under a thick blanket of snow, resembled nothing so much as a German Christmas card, and was eerily silent. There was more snow near Heraklion, with an estimated four metres on Mt Ida. This break, I told myself, was as different from my early Antipodean ones as it could be.
But then I wondered. Nina's mother was the cook, and there was