Winter is not my favourite season, not even an Australian winter which is no worse than a cool Teutonic summer.
I like the outside to be about the same as the inside. About 37°C is the human body's normal temperature, and about 37°C on the outside is also normal for me.
And that's what it should be right now in tropical Far North Queensland where I had gone after I'd thrown in my last expatriate job in sunny Greece following a badly misdiagnosed case of homesickness in 1985.
I settled again in Townsville but found I was still too highly strung to accept a life of idleness and so I fled to the financial fleshpots of Sydney and Canberra.
As Robert Frost put it so aptly in his poem 'The Road Not Taken', I kept the return to Far North Queensland for another day and yet knowing how way leads on to way and doubting if I should ever go back, I finally retired to the small coastal village of Nelligen.
And that, I am telling you with a sigh, has made all the difference.
And not only in temperature.
