SEASON OF DRIPS AND WELLIE BOOTFULNESS

For the past few days The Boss and I have been preparing the place for winter. We've moved everything - garden furniture and pots of plants - from the small back terrace to the more sheltered one at the front of the house.

In summer, our back terrace is the perfect retreat from the heat, with lovely cool breezes wafting up the valley. In winter, it gets no sunshine, is permanently damp (with an unattractive green film on the tiles) and is in the direct line of fire of any north wind whistling our way - and that wind can be mighty fierce. One night, we sat indoors on the sofa watching the French doors flinching in the chilly blast of gale-force winds. Expecting the doors to burst open at any moment, we hastily moved a piece of furniture up against them to act as ballast. Imagine what that kind of weather can do to a few pots of pelargoniums!

The wooden steamer chairs have been put away for the winter, along with the hammock in which I passed quite a few lazy hours reading and snoozing in the height of summer. And the BBQ has been wheeled away to a spot under cover. It all feels a little bit sad . . .

You've probably guessed that I'm not really an autumn person, which makes it somewhat ironic that the colours that suit me best are from the autumn palette! This is a time when we've probably seen the last of friends and family members coming to stay with us; we've had our last swim in the sea, and I've eaten my last fish finger lunch at our favourite beach café. (I'd never eat fish fingers at home, but for some reason they taste great by the sea.) It's a time when we get out the plastic buckets to catch the drips leaking through the roof into the sitting room (despite countless workmen climbing up there to try and fix the problem) and have to start using the generator more often to support our solar system.

But one thing compensates for all of this: it'll soon be time to light the wood-burning stove. In anticipation of cosy nights in front of the fire, the logs have been sorted and stacked and it'll take only a small drop in temperature for The Boss to whip out his box of matches. Soon the cats will be stretched out on the rug, basking in the heat of burning almond and olive wood.

Our first autumn here was chilly, damp and - without electricity - pretty uncomfortable. Memories of the super-efficient gas central heating system and inglenook fireplace we'd had back in the UK didn't help. So buying the wood-burner was probably the best investment we've made here.

And, as I discovered last year, it doesn't just heat the house. Tuck a couple of foil-wrapped potatoes inside, away from the flames, and about an hour later we can tuck into delicious steaming jacket spuds . . . and those are definitely something else that's great about autumn.