WORST WINTER EVER

OK, it's official (in my book). This is the longest, nastiest, winter ever. We have had rain, more rain, freezing rain, power cut offs and regular soakings, colds and 'flu. And the bathroom roof leaks. Boo!

Mr Crozier had a nasty fall and damaged his ribs along with a badly cut leg. Having fallen when Ma Crozier was in town for the morning, he stayed on the floor until her return. Despite daily dressings, the cut did not heal and he ended up in hospital for a week on IV antibiotics and a minor clean up op. In case you don't know, families have to provide all the hands-on care in Greek hospitals. So that I was still doing all the daily dressings, washings, clothes changings and bed makings, but away from home in ghastly weather. So exhausting and a challenge to a mending ankle! Now home again, the rain keeps falling with thunder and lightning going on for hours and the router needs to be turned off at regular intervals inter-dispersed with lightning tripping out the power in between. We will soon be on to our third wood supply of the winter as the log burner is the only thing to stand between us and the elements without central heating and power supplies being so unreliable. ….... Any chance of help with winter fuel payments if you retire abroad?  No, not for us, although we paid for it along with everyone else. The prefecture of Chania declared a state of emergency as the storms were so bad.

Utterly, utterly ... had enough of this winter of discontent.

The backdrop to this is the need to get all sorts of documents that we never needed before to prepare for a possible hard Brexit. If the UK is no longer in the EU, none of our EU docs or UK docs will give sufficient security for us to be treated as we were before. Gov UK via the British Embassy, keep sending us emails to tell us of new information which are couched in 'government speak' and really difficult to sort out. Once you glean through the links and paragraphs, nothing seems any different from the last email. As a precaution, all our driving licences were surrendered and new Greek ones applied for at great cost. A trip to the Police Station to convert our existing residence permits to ones denoting settled status is 'strongly recommended'. Some Police Stations are welcoming and easy-going … but not ours. Our local Wild West Police Station is requiring all depth of jobsworth paper trails. We need five years of Accountant's certificates, house and land documents along with photos, passport copies, original permit and over 5 years of utility bills. We are all tearing about in between storm clouds and drenchings to comply with bureaucratic stuff. Our Accountant helped us with our documents and recommended taking a Greek person with us to act as a translator. We also realise that the IKA book, recently queued for and updated will necessitate another trip as Mr C's passport was renewed recently and the numbers will not add up. Greeks are frankly non-plussed by all this activity initiated by the UK, not Greek Government. Getting able bodied people backwards and forwards is irksome enough, but getting K up and down stairs to various offices is really difficult.  Joy it is not!

Half the filing cabinet to take with us ...

Such comings and goings to hospital with bags and supplies and the regular soakings resulted in the loss of my local bank card. I had moved so many bags, bowls, bandages and food backwards and forwards, I had no idea where it could be and turned every bag and basket upside down. So this resulted another queue at the Bank, a trip back to get an Accountant's certificate plus passport in order to cancel the lost card and get a new one. After lengthy queuing, the nice lady supplied me with a new card and just as I had signed various docs and packed all my papers away, she asked me for my mobile number. I reached into the phone pocket of my bag and just spotted an extra zip tucked away behind the flap – the little purse with my original bank card inside! Bother, bother, bother!

Perhaps this is a message about all the frenetic activity we are involved in at the moment. Nothing we can do or re-arrange is any better than what we have already. Just wasted, wasted effort for something so much worse for everyone!

B*!!*x to Brexit! Hopefully there will be an end to all this and life will settle down again.

We know that under the olive trees of our region are the yellow clovery flowers and anemones growing wild. We can't wait to get out of doors to enjoy them again.

Roll on Spring!

WORST CASE SCENARIO

It was with some regret that on Monday I surrendered my decades old clean UK driving licence to comply with local laws. I had hoped to keep my UK licence to use with an International Licence, but despite a visit to three post offices in England, whilst stuck with a broken ankle, I could not get to any of the ones dispensing licences.   So that was item one. Item two was medical cover for the next year which requires visits to the Accountant for a form and a second trip into town and a long queue at each place. Worried Brits in Europe are chasing their tails and trying not lose sleep about a situation which is entirely out of their control.

However, Ex-Pat life bordered on full scale panic mode this week as all our friends have been exchanging advice over swapping UK driving licences for Greek licences - with varying requirements according to your local town or village. Why? As the exchange renewal would no longer be automatic after a no-deal Brexit and none of us can face the ordeal of a Greek driving test or want to be stopped on the road with an invalid licence from a non-EU country, we were advised to act before March 29. We need to do our annual pilgrimage to the IKA Health Insurance Office to renew our books this week which would normally ensure health treatment for the next year. Now we do not know if and how long this cover will remain and how long we would survive here without health cover. This will certainly cease with no co-ordinated agreements and the situation is especially worrying as we all grow older and more vulnerable. In our case we are in the middle of cancer treatment and not sure how easy it would be to leave Greece so I am taking deep breaths and treading down the growing anxiety day by day.  Happily, the IKA Office renewed our books, so we are OK until next February.

The British Embassy keep emailing us complicated updates about contingency plans. It feels like Armageddon. We have been visiting dozens of offices about all these documents and permissions. We have been examining our residence permits to see if they are valid. The locals are frankly goggling at us wondering why we are renewing stuff that has not expired since the implications of Brexit mean nothing to them and they shrug when we say “Brexit”. Nobody I know here wanted it and few were given the option to vote. The local photographers are doing a roaring trade in all the passport photos needed for all these transactions. Photocopiers are working overtime on copies of passports and household bills to prove how long we have been here. We are spending hundreds of euros paying out for all these contingencies and not getting much sleep.  I have managed to have medicals and eye examinations also to back up the driving licence application.  It's all go!

Living as a UK pensioner in Greece after a Brexit with no deal will be hard for most and calamitous for many of us and I feel stressed at the waste of it all. The health care provision is the crunch point.  Without that cover which was automatic within the EU, many could not get private insurance and find themselves stranded with long term health care needs.  Trying to sell up would be extremely hard and other European buyers would certainly cash in on our self-induced fire sale wondering why the Brits took such a crazy decision.  We are hopeful that it won't come to that but we are praying for a deal to sort all this out.  

Otherwise ....

Our pensions, which have already been badly devalued by the fall in the value of the pound would not be given annual increases according to inflation, and we receive none of the benefits that UK pensioners receive anyway. We worked, paid our way for as long as any pensioners who remained in the UK. We pay our taxes in both countries, we are honest and hard working and did not lawfully settle in another country to live the life of Riley. Many of us had smallish pensions and thought that we could live more simply and less expensively as Europeans elsewhere in Europe. For the most part, our hosts have treated us well and welcomed us as good neighbours.  So, if the worst happens, there will be an awful lot of impoverished people landing at home to add to the woes of the National Health System and homelessness in the UK. What a self-induced mess! 

 I had an extraordinary conversation with a visiting UK Brexiteer who talked about "regaining our sovreignty" in one breath and then talked enthusiastically about the possible break up of the United Kingdom and saving money. I wondered what "sovreignty" actually meant to this person because it obviously meant something completely different to me. I asked what in particular from European law had impinged on their life. "Unelected representatives" (what about MEPs?) and some water restrictions in Wales were the only contributions to the debate. We were on completely opposite sides of a divide trying to argue that Black was White and vice versa. I had to stand back from the front line and try to pour oil on the troubled waters. There was no way that we were ever going to agree about anything. The pound has not devalued at all according to this family. What planet are they on? Our UK pension has decreased steadily as the exchange rate plummeted over the previous two years.

Apologies, dear reader that I am feeling so gutted by it all, and that this blog is no longer taken up in the dear little stone house in Crete and our life here. It could well be that the retirement dream is in danger. It would be hard to walk away from our little house and a last resort to contemplate leaving all our wonderful friends and neighbours here in Crete. It would be devastating to have it taken away from us by disenchanted Brits who wanted to make a protest and had been fed a whole raft of lies by the media. We feel as if we have been shafted by a totally disillusioned electorate who put the blame on the wrong people and ended up pushing the self-destruct button. 

Oh well, you can fool all the people half the time and half the people all the time ... but you cannot fool all the people all the time.  We will see what the history books make of this debacle in the fullness of time.  Here in Crete, we need some resolution to these contingencies;  we assume that the UK Prime Minister is doing the best she can but no one could blame us for wishing that the whole caboodle had never happened!  

Winter seems to have gone on for ever this year and we are in need of some fresh air and sunshine to blow all these cares and cobwebs away.  

Kalomina!