How far is Ararat ....................

My diary has a useless usefull note for every day of the year. Today in 1974 they started the search for Lord lucan and next Tuesday was the day in 1759, admiral Hawke won the battle of Quiberon bay. However it also told me that Sunday Nov 25th in 2348 BC , according to genesis 6.9 , was the day the flood started. So they had global warming then ?
Where I live in Dalyan its happening again. My garden is a lake after 36hrs non stop, and more is forecast tomorrow. Roads are rivers, rivers are torrents and fields have become lakes. Part of the reason is that the Ariks (ditches) have been filled in to make way for development of new villas, mostly for foreign owners. There has been some muttering as these villas are mostly built on concrete platforms and are above the water, but a lot of the older turkish houses arent, and are awash. I feel sorry for the owners but noticed that the mutterers are driving around in new cars, paid for by land they sold for development building, and for work they carried out building them. And guess who filled in the Ariks, and built the roads up !
The council are now digging trenches across roads, to take away the water. Pity they didn’t think about what they were doing when they allowed the building and authorised the arik destruction “to eliminate mosquitos”.
Still if its global warming, then they cant be blamed. Mind you last year when we didn’t get much rain, that was global warming as well ! And this summer was so hot here because of global warming, and it was also so awful - wet and cold , throughout most of europe because of - you guessed it, global warming. Confusing ? I remember hot summers , and wet ones , and cold winters and warm ones. That was Ok until the experts discovered their power to scare and confuse us all. It seems that they are never wrong - they will tell us that you have to take a long term view , and go off to another conference to discuss it all. It will be in an exotic location of course, because those are the most threatened.


Well I've got news for them ! This planet started about 4.5 billion years ago, it’s warmed, cooled, warmed and cooled again a few times since, not to mention the occasional giant meteorite zapping into it . But it’s still around thanks… and will be for few more billion years. But We won’t.
We’ve been here about 100,000 years, ( bit less if you believe Irish bishop James Ussher who in 1650 worked out that the bible made the creation of everything about 6000 years ago - on oct 26th, day before my birthday)
The simple fact is that we aren’t damaging the planet, but we are damaging our ability to live on it. Or our great grandchildren’s. But lets face it given the mess we make of simple things like not over populating it, or just feeding everyone, perhaps we don’t deserve to last that long.
The dinosaurs did a better job, I bet they probably farted out more global warming gasses than we ever produce, but they didn’t have conferences about it. They might not have had the ability to reason but they lasted about 150 million years , and it was an unforeseen event, a large piece of rock, that did for them. Flatulence didn’t come into it.
The good thing of course is that though we may mourn here in our beautiful environment in the Dalyan delta, the destruction of the ditches , the levelling of hedge rows, the surging swell of hundreds of river boats, the effect we have, in global terms , won’t last that long. The arrogance that makes us think we are top of the evolutionary tree, and believe in an everlasting human soul, also overestimates the impact of what we do. Granted we have produced the music of Mozart, the prose of Shakespeare and the art of Michelangelo, which the dinosaurs probably didn’t manage, but we have also invented an infinite variety of ways and reasons for killing ourselves and other species, from the spear to the neutron bomb, and we are still doing it.
It must be great to be an expert. To know so much about so little. All you have to do is pick a theme then fit everything to it. I heard one on the radio forecasting a recession next year in the UK. He said everyone will find life harder. As it was national radio and the press and other experts are also saying it, lots of people will worry. They will probably put off buying things, taking holidays and generally spending less so things will slow down. Then of course some businesses will fail, people will be out of work, everyone will spend less, and have less to spend. Hang on – that’s a recession ! Golly arent experts marvellous, pity they never forecast good things.
I suppose that Noah was the first environmental expert. Saying that god told him was a neat idea, carries lots of weight, but without television and newspapers to spread the panic, no-one noticed I suppose - and look what happened! Arent we lucky to have the media to warn us all – I’m off to mount ararat tomorrow, anyone know where I can find a pair of Ardvaarks

WHEN IN ROME....................

I drove to Cappadocia recently, a trip taking about 13hrs, with a friend who shared the driving. He was a bit nervous, he hadn’t driven in Turkey before, and he asked me for a few tips on driving, which I gave to him. We had a very pleasant trip, the scenery on the way was stunning, and afterwards he said I should pass on my hints – so here goes.
The First thing you have to remember that you are the Only person on the road, and it all belongs to you. When you have an obstruction on your side, say a parked car or a pedestrian, - you can pull out and it is up to any traffic which may be coming towards you to get out of your way.
Similarly when overtaking, particularly on bends, you can pull out whenever you want to. If someone overtakes you, you should move towards them as they go past, to see who they are.
When driving around bends -use the entire road, in fact the middle of the road is the best place to stay, it shortens the journey and it is less tiring for you to drive. It is also easier to talk on your mobile phone as there is less steering to do. One useful tip is to use the double white lines as a guide, a wheel either side is ideal, and people will often wave cheerily at you as you come towards them on their side of the road.
At traffic lights , the sequence is – green , which means GO, followed by orange, meaning GO, then red - that means GO, If someone stops in front of you at lights, you must hoot your horn furiously ,then hoot again when the count down gets to 8, so you can get away at 3.
At ‘T’ junctions you stop when YOU are level with the end of your road. That means that the front of your car is protruding into the junction, and gives you the best view of traffic braking or swerving to avoid you.
On dual carriageways and at roundabouts, or crossroads, be careful as taxis have special privileges, for them the left hand lane is for turning right, and the right hand lane is for turning left. The middle lanes can be used for either direction or for turning
Remember that Pedestrians have special rights. They have to walk with their backs to traffic; that way you cannot hit them because they cannot see you. Scooters also have specific rules, No less than 3 people and no more than 7 are allowed on any one scooter at the same time. They don’t need to give signals and when they hit you from behind it’s your fault, you should NOT have stopped, - how could they see you when they were turning round to talk to their friend behind them.
Have fun and drive carefully - iyi yolcluklar.

That Sinking feeling !

It caught my eye - a report in a Fethiye paper about a group of British expats arrested in Didim for illegal gambling.
Imagine the scene. Dissolute characters sitting in a smoke filled den, pension books clutched in gnarled, clammy hands. In the corner a group of grannies perform an erotic (no erratic. Ed.) line dance. The tension mounts as a man from Izmir calls out the numbers. “On Uc, give us a smooch”, “ Doksan dokuz, big pair o………” suddenly the door bursts open. It’s a raid! Zimmer frames go flying, G & T’s hurriedly gulped down, as the sordid group tries to make a run for it. All to no avail. Off to the pen, 6 hours form filling and 117ytl fine. Crime doesn’t pay in Didim!
It does, it seems, in England, I am there for 10 days at the moment. The TV is reporting a British proposal to give shorter sentences to foreign law breakers, and then ship them back to their homeland! Sounds like a good way to encourage crooks to come here in the first place. Nip over, rob a bank, bed and board for a couple of years, then fare home to enjoy the proceeds!
There seems to be a lot of concern about immigration. People tell me you can’t move for Poles, Serbians, and Uzbekistanis. Sounds great - places develop with influxes of new attitudes, merging of cultures and nationalities. There is a forecast that the population will grow to 77m in the next 10 years. Apparently the US state of Wyoming is about the same size as Britain. That has about a 600,000 population, that’s right just 5 zeros. Not a Serb in sight I imagine.
Of course the British media love to stir this up, and dwell on the negative side. But I had to sort out some things here - bank, utilities, travel arrangements. In every case the telephone was answered promptly, my problem resolved quickly and Irhan, Vlad and Carmella were all very helpful and courteous. And in Britain there will be lots of new babies! As most of the old miseries are moving out to warmer, less crowded places, (to play bingo); I think it all sounds pretty positive.
There is also of course great media hysteria about global warming - experts are behind every doorway to tell you that you are doomed. Everyone is jumping on the environmental band wagon. M&S are going green (they’ve changed their packaging colour to that - not sure if it helps much, but good for sales!)and at my house here we have four, Yes FOUR, rubbish bins, one for kitchen waste that has to be separated from any packaging or containers, yeuk, one for recyclable, one for plastic and one for bottles.
Hang on, as the bins are large and plastic, and they have to come round 4 times to collect them - doesn’t that add to the problem?
There are even more cars now though, and they are now going to let people drive on the hard shoulder, that’s to ease congestion - and make room for yet more cars I guess. But child road deaths have diminished, mostly cos children don’t walk anywhere. They are glued to their x-boxes, ipods, MP3 s, PSP s. etc. In two generations people will have weedy little legs, large eyes and very large thumbs. I reckon with global warming raising sea levels, and with the weight of more and more people, Britain is going to sink in approx 6.7 years, Britannia won’t rule the waves, she will be under them! I still love visiting England, its history, its diversity and its culture, but I never liked bingo so I can’t wait to get back to Turkey!

First Impressions

Do you know the plural of Elvis is Elvi ? Did you even know that Elvis can be pluralized ? I found out because I got a text from my sister to say that in England she was watching a Turkish contestant in an international Elvis impersonator contest. It’s sad isn’t it, that intelligent people should spend their evenings watching even sadder people wanting to be like a long-dead pop idol. I suppose that it is good when people from all nations can join together in something, instead of fighting each other, just I cant help feeling there must be worthier ways of doing it.
I suppose ELVI could stand for Extremely Laboured Vacuous Idiots . I was a systems analyst once, and that was when I discovered acronyms. ERNIE was a famous one, the premium bond number machine. It stood for ‘Electronic Random Number Indicator equipment’. My most notable effort was a new accounting system, I called it ‘Computer Reconciled Accounting Premium System’. The finance director got cross, he didn’t want a CRAP system, he said. Actually it was, it never worked properly, and we finished with BOTTOMS – ‘Back On To The Old Manual System’ !
A friend was talking recently about CHAV’s , they are strange creatures wearing hoods and permanently plugged into a thing called an IPOD. I have no idea what that stands for, but CHAV is apparently ‘Council House And Van’, and we got to thinking about a good acronym for the disparate group ( that is disparate not desperate) who make up the expat community here. I rejected ‘Sold House, In Turkey’ for obvious reasons and ended up with BERT – ‘ British Emigrant, Resident Turkey’. To be totally PC (Politically Correct) and with due reference to the EU – ‘European ….. (OK, OK you know that one), directive on equal rights, we also have BERTHAS ‘British Emigrant, Resident Turkey, Helps Animals’ , or in my case ‘British Emigrant, Resident Turkey, Happily Alcoholic
So my fellow BERTS and BERTHAS, I would like to invite you to join me and become members of a new club, totally informal of course, no committee or structure or rules, no membership fees or annual meeting, just a feeling of belonging, of being Bertish. It will be called the BBC - the ‘British Bert Club’, , and all you have to do is to pour a drink at sundown, every day, shout out, “we love the BBC”, and repeat the daily moan, which we can take it in turns to nominate. Things like – “when I first came here you could see the mountains, now its all new villas”; “why don’t they make the day trippers wear shirts”; “tattoos should be outlawed”, “one time you could buy a pide, and a beer and still have change out of 5 million lire”, etc etc.
My son and his girl friend just left, so I am writing to fill the empty space they have left. It was the first time they had been for two years, and it was interesting to hear their views on how Dalyan has changed. They actually didn’t think it had that much ! They liked the paved boulevards, were appalled at the idea of moving the market, and reawakened a liking for Pide. They didn’t think prices had changed much, and loved the fantastic view of the delta they had from the microlite trip they took. I don’t think they noticed the villas that have sprung up !
Perhaps when you live somewhere its too easy to notice and criticize change, when in reality there is still so much that is lovely and appreciated by visitors getting their first impressions.
Pennysail@gmail.com

DALAMANIA

Whoever is in charge at Dalaman airport obviously doesn’t care about tourist numbers declining in this part of Turkey.
If you are leaving at the height of, and in the hottest part of, the season, you have to queue outside in searing heat, to get through security. There is a large and very impressive looking area inside, but of course you can’t get to that until you have gone through the scanners.
Once through check-in the only places to sit are in the bars and cafes. Last Monday, at 8.00 pm I went to one of the bars for a drink. No other customers and no-one was serving, though I could see two pairs of legs behind the kitchen area door. So I went to the next bar. One barman behind the counter, four in front of it chatting with him and having a smoke. There was customer there though, just one !
I wanted a G&T - , 24 ytl! that’s about £9 ! It’s the same for all the spirits . Beers were equally expensive. The barman said that the prices had been increased again this year from the high levels last year.
In the three other bars I counted a further 6 customers, and 7 more bar staff, chatting or cleaning and obviously bored. So I saw a total of 8 customers and 14 bar staff. But that evening there were a lot of flights and 8.00pm is a time when people generally welcome a drink.
The laughably called duty free shops were also pretty empty, but then my favourite night cream costs more there than it does in Boots in the UK high street.
Most of the travellers go straight to the departure gate to get a seat. These are obviously designed to dissuade people from doing that, but sitting on uncomfortable, hard. wooden ribs is better than paying the airport prices in the bars and cafes.
The tannoy system reminded me of British rail, unintelligible, and the departure staff have to shout out instructions.
How can the people who run the airport,get it so wrong !
This is time when Turkey needs tourism but Dalaman airport - the last place visited by holiday makers and their last memory of Turkey, is, I think most would say, the last place they would want to visit again.

A LITTLE BIT OF TURKISH

Is a Dangerous thing !
Eric Morecombe famously said , when told by Andre Previn that he was playing the wrong notes. ‘I am playing the right notes but not necessarily in the right order.’
Let me start at the beginning. I have a dog - Lucy, . You might have seen her around. White with brown patches, matches my curtains that’s why I chose her, big feet, nice eyes. Very clever, bit naughty and a slight tendency to bark at passing folk. She likes to sit outside my gate and see off marauding cars , scooters etc. She means well and wouldn’t hurt a fly really, but I have had to occasionally extract visitors from bushes and behind trees. That’s why when my neighbour called to me and said ‘Lucy’, I assumed the worst. I know a bit of Turkish, I discovered early on that ‘hiyar’ means small cucumber and is not to be said to boat captains, you say ‘hayir’ to mean ‘No’, so I get by. I got her gist. “Lucy”, “kopek” (dog) , “cocuk” ( child) with asthma ( choking mime holding throat) , with pregnant mother ( round belly mime) and the beladiye ( the council) Oh no! Lucy had frightened a child who had had an asthma attack and its pregnant mother had complained to the authorities. Lanet Olsen (B….y hell).
I resolved to keep Lucy locked up, and tried to explain that. But the reference to the Beladiye worried me. So when a turkish friend called, I seized the chance to go round and find out what the outcome of the complaint was. Would they remove lucy, take her into care ?
She told my neighbour about my concern, great expositions and worried protestations resulted, then they both started to laugh. I had got the right words , but they were definitely not in the right order. There had been a doggie friend of Lucy’s round, a pregnant dog, a dog whose collar was too tight and she was in danger of choking. The neighbour was thinking of asking the Beladiye to catch it to help it, but on seeing me had tried to enlist my help. No pregnant mum, no choking child, definitely no complaint. Oops , took me ages to explain to Lucy why she was tied to my balcony railings for so long !

Lost in Translation

I suppose it was fitting that the maiden voyage of my new yacht - Serafina Pekkala (the queen of the witches from Phillip Pullmas ‘dark materials’) should have an all girl crew, though afterwards as I nursed my aches and pains I felt that at least one male, if not a wizard, would have been useful.
We were very international –Jutta and her daughter Lisa from Germany, Anna the Dane, and me English of Viking extraction ( I love pillage, not sure about rape).
As they hadn’t sailed before, ever, I was a little nervous, I don’t know the boat that well yet, but we were only going round the Marmaris bay to anchor behind the island and have a picnic and a swim.
Before we left I was very careful to explain what happened when we had to anchor and especially when we came back in and parked. Both Jutta and Anna have good English, but nauticalese – that’s a different matter!
“ OK Jutta the marina man will hand you the slime line, you hand him the stern line and pass Anna the slime line. Anna you take it forward outside everything hauling it in as you go, and then put it through the fairlead, haul in hard then secure it to the deck cleat. Jutta the marina man will hand you back the stern line, attach that to a the cleat, then do the same with the other one. “ easy peasy.
“Vot is a cleat please?”, from Jutta, a bemused “ Penny there are so many ropes!” from Anna. I should have drawn a diagram. Oh well, I’ll explain again later.
We had a lovely day, Anna found steering difficult, problem between left and right, they should never have changed the side of the road they drive on; but we anchored OK. I stopped Jutta flambéing lunch, (GRP plastic boats burn amazingly well), and we had a nice salad and a bottle of wine. Then a swim and a lounge feeling superior watching the day-trippers getting drunk on nearby gullets. Then off to sail as the wind picked up. Well almost. The anchor is hauled up round an electrically powered windlass. Only this one jammed after hauling up half the chain, I pressed the reset button but nothing. With half the chain up we were now drifting slowly towards a nearby gullet. Nothing for it but girl power, so the international ladies tug of war team set to work. The wine we had had didn’t help but we eventually got it all up (the chain, not the wine) before we hit the gullet, trippers looking on interestedly at the sight of three grunting, sweaty females.
The sail back was fun, the wind between the islands suddenly gusts, then changes direction, so explaining how to sail wasn’t easy, doing it wasn’t that easy either. We had to tack a few times .
“Ve are going to attack? attack vot ?”
. “Penny, why are we going the wrong way, Marmaris is over there ?”
Then I went through the parking procedure again :
“This -cleat, this - mooring rope, this -deck, this - stern, – Ok “
“Vot?”
She’s not from Barcelona, but Hamburg must be similar !
I reversed in beautifully; Jutta took the slime ( bow) line from the marina man, she gave it to Anna and gave him the stern line. Great. I breathed a sigh of relief, turned away, and then back to see Anna, lying on her back along the deck, doing a passable caretta turtle imitation, with the bow line wrapped around her leg. I leapt forward to take it from her. Anna determinedly hung on behind me, so I dragged her and the line forward.
Hauling it in was hard, as Anna was hauling it as well, but in the opposite direction to me. Fortunately the nice marina man came up, gently removed Anna from the line, gave me a nice smile and hauled it tight and secure. He didn’t actually pat me on the head, but his look suggested he wanted to.
Back at the stern, Jutta had the other end of the rope back now, and was happily holding it, as the boat drifted from the pontoon.
“Tie it round the cleat”,
“ pardon me?”,
“round the cleat, that thing on the deck”.
Jutta looked around for the deck,
I suppose when you are faced with new and slightly alarming things happening your brain reverts to your native tongue -
“ By your foot”,
Jutta looked around for her foot.
I suppose naming a boat after a witch was asking for trouble. The windlass worked perfectly later.

WHAT A PIECE OF WORK IS MAN
How noble in reason! How infinite in faculty!
In form, in moving, how express and admirable!
In action how like an angel! In apprehension how like a god!
The beauty of the world!
William Shakespeare. Hamlet
Oh dear, William, you really got it wrong. I know you wrote it 400 years ago, but really ! The Elizabethan England you lived in wasn’t exactly a paradise. Heads rolled pretty frequently, not to mention public disembowelments and the odd spate of burning at the stake.
Look at today, this ‘godlike….piece of work’ isn’t doing too well is he. Africa is starving, Europe has food mountains, China is building a new power station every 10 seconds and America is ruled by George Bush !! Finland is ok, but its dark most of the time.
Still we are all terribly concerned about global warming, and we are running lots of conferences to save the planet. Have I got news for you ! This planet started about 4.5 billion years ago, it’s warmed, cooled, warmed and cooled again a few times since, not to mention the occasional giant meteorite zapping into it . But it’s still around thanks… and will be for few more billion years.
We won’t.
We’ve been here about 100,000 years, ( bit less if you believe Irish bishop James Ussher who in 1650 worked out that the bible made it about 6000 years ago - on oct 26th, day before my birthday) – ‘how noble in reason ??.
The simple fact is that we aren’t damaging the planet, but we are damaging our ability to live on it. Or our great grandchildren’s. But lets face it given the mess we make of simple things like not over populating it, or just feeding everyone, perhaps we don’t deserve to last that long.
The dinosaurs did a better job, I bet they probably farted out more global warming gasses than we ever produce, but they didn’t have conferences about it. They might not have had the ability to reason but they lasted about 150 million years , and it was an unforeseen event, a large piece of rock, that did for them. Flatulence didn’t come into it.
Granted we have produced the music of Mozart, the prose of Shakespeare and the art of Michelangelo, which the dinosaurs probably didn’t manage, but we have also invented an infinite variety of ways and reasons for killing ourselves and other species, from the spear to the neutron bomb, and we are still doing it.
The good thing of course is that though we may mourn here in our beautiful environment in Dalyan delta, the destruction of the ditches , the levelling of hedge rows, the surging swell of hundreds of river boats, the effect we have, in global terms , won’t last that long. The arrogance that makes us think we are top of the evolutionary tree, and believe in an everlasting human soul, also overestimates the impact of what we do.What a piece of work is man ? Sorry Will - great prose, but we aren’t the beauty of the world . Not yet any way.

“It is better to travel than to arrive”

Obviously whoever said that had never been on a charter flight for 4 ½ hours.

I cannot understand how the airline concluded that the average passenger is about 12inches wide and doesn’t have any legs. That’s who the seats appear to be designed for. Then when you have wedged yourself into the strangely inhumanly shaped seat you have to endure Jonathon Woss or somebody warbling on about avoiding the sun and foweign food. Didn’t anyone tell them we are flying to Turkey ?

You now have to pay extra for a meal that my cats wouldn’t eat, and they eat anything. You have to specifically say you don’t want the meal, to avoid being charged extra. And of course there are now other extra s - drinks, earphones, scratch cards (why do you need a card to scratch with ?), seats by the exits, the normal luggage allowance, airport taxes , fuel supplements,, airport fuel tax supplements, tips for the pilot and crew, lifejackets etc etc . all provided at extra cost because .. ‘ we are dedicated to helping you enjoy your holiday’ Yeah.

I assume they are working on the premise that the passengers are so enraptured with the treats ahead they will put up with anything. To be fair that may be true. On most flights a large proportion are would-be Shirley Valentines : pension books clutched in hand they waft towards the handsome young turk waiting ( as he was when they met) to enrich their lives. I feel sorry for them – the waiters not the Shirleys.
And children.. I’ve nothing against children per se. I was one myself once, but the ones on charter flights are a special breed. I think most of them are having a holiday as a reward for getting through the auditions for one of those dreadful ‘reality’ tv shows. The ones about children who are beyond control, featuring parents who clearly shouldn’t be allowed to even bring up a hamster.

The journey starts of course at the airport where you all enter one big queue about 3 miles long. That makes it more fun for the staff I guess. There are normally twice as many men with loud hailers and clipboards organising the queues as there are booking clerks. That cant be an easy job. They have to look at your passport, put a sticker on your case and ask you if you packed your luggage yourself and if anyone gave you anything, to put in it . Bet that stumps Al Quaeda agents. There is more interest for them now though as they get more chance to charge for excess baggage now the allowances are less and you are allowed only one piece of hand luggage , including your handbag,. Because of ‘heightened security’ you have to put your dangerous items – lipstick, mascara, nail polish, perfume, into a clear plastic bag now so they can see them, What are the X-ray machines for then ?; have Chanel perfected a perfume bottle impervious to them ?
You aren’t allowed to be cheeky either; a posse of security men, waiting behind the baggage conveyer, (hey they could do booking in whilst they wait!) are poised ready to drag off anyone suggesting that its all a bit silly really.
In the 19th century intrepid explores carved out the British Empire travelling to far corners of the world. They suffered incredible hardships with stoicism and courage. If charter flights had existed then, there wouldn’t have been an Empire : Even doughty Victorian matrons would have broken down in tears before they got out of duty free (only twice the price) at Gatwick. .

A Tail of Two Kitties

I was going as cat woman, everything black except the tail. I had managed to find a suitable piece of rope as the 'spine' but the only material was a tie belt off a nice spotted top, so I was a a spotted black pantherish cat woman. A schizophrenic pussy.
Multi cultured in the modern parlance, and so was the event. A Fashing evening. It's the occasion for Germans to indulge in a pre-fast binge before giving up saurkraut and bratworst for Lent. Probably dates back to pagan times but now its a part of the culture. We were the usual Dalyan mixture, Germans, Brits, Turks and Dutch. The Germans all threw themselves into the spirit of things, made an effort , had great costumes and thoroughly enjoyed the chance to look silly. The Brits mostly tried, but looked a bit embarrassed , the Dutch didn't and sat separately, and the Turks, well they don't need fancy dress to enjoy themselves. So they partied.
I haven’t quite figured out this culture thing . There are differences, traits , which make being with different nationalities interesting. Cultural differences particularly surround any foreigner who comes to live in a different country. some are positive, some are negative and sometimes the phrase is just a convenient excuse for poor behaviour. I recently was used and badly let down by someone who I trusted, and I thought was a good friend. Friends have said it's a cultural thing, They say “It's always happening, 'Wealthy' foreigners are here to be taken advantage of.” Well certainly in any tourist area the visitors are often regarded as fair game, with more money than sense. That happens whether its Bodrum or Blackpool, Bogota or Barcelona. But that isn't a culture thing any more than the loutish behaviour of football hooligans makes yobbism a part of British culture. Culture is often taken to be the traditions and customs that have developed over a long time. It can and should be though, a set of values, and I don't believe that anywhere has values that involve deceit, cheating, hooliganism or violence.
By contrast when I had a puncture last week. I took my car to a little local tyre/car valet place. The young man there called the owner away from his house, late Sunday afternoon, to do the repair. He arrived still chewing the meal he had been called away from. The repair would take an hour, it was chilly so he offered me his scooter so I could go home whilst he worked. His time and trouble cost me about £2.50. In my car were some chairs, I had admired them and Turkish friends had insisted I took them, they were going to get some more anyway they said !
The sorry tales of woe, the antics of yobs , don't spring from culture or race or creed. Some people just aren't very nice, but most are lovely, especially here. Miaaaaow.

Hints on Buying A yacht in Turkey

There are four basic rules
1. Check the boarding ladder is secured
2. Don’t even look at a boat with a name like ‘Jessica’, it’s asking for trouble
3. Don’t take your dog with you
4. Do make sure you have with you a friend wearing a twin set , or layers of some sort
I love Sailing but I haven’t owned a boat since my divorce when I lost my crew, so I went over to Marmaris to look at a couple that were for sale. The second one was lying alongside in Netsell marina. A quite pretty Oceanis 32. Ex-charter. I had gone there with Lucy dog and a friend Joanne, with the intention of doing a bit of shopping as well. You can get some real bargains this time of the year in Marmaris.
We all went on board , Lucy was a bit nervous about the gangplank, but made it ok. The boat was a bit used but quite nice, and they said the one next to it, its twin, called Jessica, was also for sale. The broker chap just shoved the gang plank across to it at a slant. Joanne didn’t come on board and Lucy was wary, but I went on, had a look around, then heard Lucy whining and went back on deck to find she was still on shore but had knocked one end of the plank, the boat end, into the water. So I stepped down onto the sugar scoop to retrieve it. That’s the platform you jump off into the cool Mediterranean waters in July and August. You get back on by the boarding ladder which when not in use is secured up, by a piece of rope or a clip of some sort..
I had to bend down to reach the plank, so I held onto the boarding ladder, the thing which when not in use is secured up, by a piece of rope or a clip of some sort.. This one wasn’t.
Joanne who was watching said I described a very graceful backward roll into the gap between the pontoon and the boat. Then disappeared.
I have been in car accidents and when they happen everything slows down. That’s what happened here. I watched interestedly as the boarding ladder, me attached to it , did what it is supposed to do and went down into the water. I didn’t let go, so I went down with it. If I had thought I could have checked the underside of the boat. The water wasn’t at all cold. It didn’t taste too good, but it wasn’t cold. By the time I surfaced and pulled myself out, up the conveniently placed boarding ladder, Joanne had stepped down to help me out, but unfortunately she was too hysterical to help. That’s hysterical with laughter.
But her twin set came in useful, I had the cardigan, she the top, and her wrap , elegantly fringed, made a nice skirt. Bit drafty without knickers, and my sodden leather trainers didn’t really set off the ensemble, but at least I could get to the shops. The ones at the marina are really good, the Tommy Hilfiger trousers were half price, and OK the jewelled top and butterfly ear rings from a marvellous shop called Petite, weren’t essential, but I was in shock.
There are some other things to think about when buying a boat. Vat, ownership documents,country of registration, engine logs and so on. You can find out about those from lots of web sites. But NONE of them mention the importance of a twin set.

Woe to be in England

OK its not April yet, though it seems like it now I am back in Turkey. Spring seems to have come early, must be global warming, or cooling or emissions, or the sunami. It’s the worst/best/shortest/longest winter for 83 years, experts say.
But a January trip to England was warm, wet, windy and woeful. I went back to sort out selling my house there. I managed to lock myself out of it, AND got a parking ticket for staying 10 mins in a zoned` area. The zoned area was outside my house. It is residents only parking.That is my fault. I organised the petition to make it that when I lived there.
It had taken me 3 ½ hrs to drive the 120 miles from my sisters where I was staying. I had locked myself out of that too, on that morning, that’s why I was late and didn’t have time to arrange a parking permit. The delay was because the QE2 bridge at Dartford was closed because of high winds (do you get low winds on a bridge ??).The winds were the worst/best/shortest/longest for 47 years experts say.
QE2, named for Queen Elizabeth II. I had watched the film ‘The Queen’ the night before, the film was funny but also sad. The queen was confused because she thought she knew ‘her people’, and how they would react to the death of Princess Diana. She says ‘… we know how to grieve, quietly and with restraint’. She was wrong it seems. I had watched the news also that night. Gordon Brown (A Scot - Is he the Prime Minister now ???) apologising because someone called Jade had insulted a female Indian film star. The country that the Queen thought was dignified and restrained, once put its idiots on public display in asylums. Now it puts them on TV in ‘Big Brother’, and publishes their ignorance to the world, which thinks they represent Brits generally.
I also watched the film ‘Borat’. Apparently Kazakhstan complained because it insults them. It is a funny film. Every stereotype is there, but the Kazakhs didn’t get it. It does laugh, but at cultural divides and ignorance and bigotry. I like the British ability to laugh at themselves, I like the cultural diversity, I liked the tolerance and quiet dignity . I hope they don’t disappear.
I didn’t like though the fact that to sell a house you don’t just have to prove you own it. Just to get an estate agent to put it on her books you have to prove you are you. Its about money laundering, which apparently having an electricity bill with your name on it, prevents ! The only people able to afford to buy houses in London now are foreigners – particularly Russian oil barons and Middle eastern potentates – in Turkey of course its Brits buying, and locals saying they can’t - , strange world ?
I came back via Istanbul . I stopped a couple of days and found myself in the middle of a procession behind a funeral cortege.. A notable journalist had been killed. Shot by someone who was probably ignorant and bigoted. Who wasn't capable of seeing the humour in differences, who couldn't tolerate a different point of view. The procession and the grief, was quiet and dignified and very moving.
It isn’t just the climate that is changing.