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.
