Lettuce from America ?

It is November and I am eating strawberries grown in Turkey . If this is global warming then I am all for it. October was lovely and so far November is perfect. I haven't even lit my 'Soba' heater yet, so my curtains are safe for a while ( I set fire to them once trying to light the Soba ).
In England where I just came back from a short visit, It was grey skies and damp of course, but not cold. The supermarkets were full of perfectly formed foods from all over the world, christmas goods were on sale, but the television for once was giving global warming and environmental issues a break. Well they do have a full blown financial crisis to get hysterical about at the moment. Put the word 'meltdown' into any newspaper internet site and you get about 3 million references. Most of them now prefaced by "financial", though the ice caps get a look in occasionally as well. I'm surprised the word itself hasn't melted. (Actually you can't put 'meltdown' into the 'Sun' newspaper site, they only go up to words with 5 letters. )
I was in England on the day that the interest rates were cut by 1.5% . The news presenter on ITN, practically wet himself. 'This must be disaster' he kept on saying, his voice rising in pitch 'it must be the last chance', 'Minister , is this the last chance?'. Well, actually as rates were still 3% then it obviously wasn't the last chance, and as everyone had been saying that rates should come down, hard to see why it was disaster. But he's a journalist, and some 'expert' had probably told him it 'could' be bad, which journalists always love to hear. It must be a great time to be a journalist – lots of fun new phrases – credit crunch, sub prime lending, toxic debt, stock market plunge, meteoric fuel price rises, housing meltdown, Funny that nothing ever melts up .
Last month inflation was to be feared - fuel, food , everything going up in price. Now thats going down we have to be scared of deflation - prices going down! In some ways going back to England, although depressing, does remind me how nice it is here. The sun shines, food is cheap, and fresh, tomatoes dont have to be perfectly round, and you can get 20% interest in the bank ( how do they do that ?).
I've just sold my house so I can move to Marmaris. Yes, I am the person who has sold a house ! Apparently it is generally thought now not to be possible. Except for Emlaks selling houses in Marmaris who have a touching belief that the housing meltdown ( thats the 3million and 1st mention) won't affect here. I have looked at a few of the several thousand for rent or sale, with Lucy, my dog, and found that renters are very selective, and concerned that a dog would detract from the general ambience. The fact that plaster is falling from the ceiling and electric sockets hanging out is less important.
I guess it's a culture thing. I like cultural differences. The very word 'culture' can mean so much. It can mean the music of Mozart , and it can mean female circumcision. It can also mean newspapers on sale everywhere full of girls in bikinis, but a block on U-Tube because one site makes a passing reference somewhere to something a faceless censor doesn't like. And have you noticed a terrible disease is afflicting movie characters who smoke, on Digiturk channels . Their hands get all blurry and sort of disappear. I can understand that smoking is bad for your health and might damage your hands, but the same thing happens to girls who get their kit off. They go all fuzzy as well. Weird.
Actually a bit of censorship might be good occasionally. The power of the press is terrifying. And even more so because they have no accountability for their ability to destroy everything. To build up and tear down. I watched the US presidential elections in the UK. The media scared everyone with the spectre of Sarah Palin, lampooned mercilessly on 'Saturday night live', and presented as one heart beat away from 'old man' Mcain, And they built up Obama. Not difficult . He's Black, young and intelligent and personable. Quite the reverse of the current incumbent . But he has to take over when everything is so screwed up. And the media mob who were hailing his arrival will soon be blaming him for everything that is happening now. Including global warming .
pennysail@gmail.com

A Load of Kakapoo

Gday mites. I am back from down under and recovering from winter weather. And its raining in Dalyan now . Whats going on, its only the beginning of October ? For those of you of an adventurous turn of mind House swapping, which is how I got to go to Oz and New Zealand, is a bit like time share, except that you are in control of things. I had a lovely house near Christchurch in New Zealand, to live in,. It was a sort of farm and a bit remote, the nearest neighbours were 10 minutes walk away. Actually I got that wrong. The nearest neighbours were at the end of the garden in a paddock. My first morning I looked out and saw a very large sheep. No great surprise, New Zealand has 4million people and 40 million sheep. But this was VERY large, and had a long neck. I walked out to have closer look, thinking about a nice lamb chop, when three more came galloping toward me. They were Llamas, not indigenous to New Zealand, and not a lot of use really unless you want to scale the Andes, but very curious beasts and i got to quite like them. They had seven, so I met more of them than I did New Zealand men, who are very scarce. Possibly endangered like the Kakapoo. There are only 96 of them left and they now all live on a little island at the bottom of New Zealand. They are fat, plump, very friendly birds but they cant fly. Thats why there are only 96 left.
The men on the other hand aren’t fat and cant fly , though they did invent bungy jumping . They are friendly, but seem to spend a lot of time with the sheep, so you don’t get to see them much. I didn’t see any mountains either for three days. New Zealand is full of them, If you watch Lord of the Rings, filmed there, it is covered in them. Except for the bit around Christchurch, which is mostly covered in cloud. It was rather like being in England, same language, driving on the same side of the road. But when the cloud lifted it was a marvellous sight. The Canterbury plain is surrounded by a white gleaming wall of snow. Once you get away from the plain, and on nice days, the views are stunning. Mountains , lakes , ravines, Fjords, forests that look like rain forest , alongside high snow covered peaks.
I went whale watching and skiing in the same week. The skiing was great, a lot of snow around this year, and it is weird to whizz down and find a small green parrot flying alongside you. They are called Keas. They are common in the mountains , and they have a passion for roof racks and wind screen wiper blades. The signs that say ‘Do not feed the Keas’ are a bit useless when the car parks are full of appetising rubber ware.
The whales sadly eluded me again. Surprisingly they kept telling me it was too rough to go out ( the boat people not the whales) . I thought the descendants of Captain Cook would have been made of stouter stuff. Sperm Whales live near a place called Kaikora so I went up in a helicopter to see them. But they must have heard I was coming and dived. All I saw was a (not rough at all) ocean and few seals.
They wouldn’t let me leave Oz to go to NZ until I bought a return ticket, and the New Zealand immigration lady explained that though she was sure I was very nice, they had over done the immigration thing. When I left a different immigration lady apologised for the lack of whales. That I guess marks a real difference between there and probably everywhere else. Like all other Kiwis Immigration and airport security actually laugh and make jokes. They are nice human beings!
Braving the suspicious immigration man at Istanbul I got back to Dalyan late and next morning it was great to flop in the sun and get my tan back . Amazing how it had disappeared in just five weeks. Hope the rain stops soon.

“ WAS IT SOMETHING THEY ATE ?”

G’day Mites. Oim in bloody Orstralia. West bloody Orstralia. Its very flat. I drove from Perth to Albany. Almost dead straight road. Almost flat, just a few lumpy bits; single carriageway, but no worries as I didn’t see more than a dozen other cars and a few large lorries. I think I passed three towns, four petrol stations and I saw one police car in the 450k I travelled after I left Perth. I was a bit worried about running out of petrol and being attacked by wild dingos, but I didn’t see any of them either, just 3 or 4 dead kangaroos lying like large rabbits by the road side, and lots of green parrots.
I saw quite a few different sorts of parrot, had a baby kangaroo put his paws on my knee and got to prod a koala. I am not actually sure it was alive, or even real because it didn’t move at all. Apparently their diet of gum tree leaves is very low in most of the things you need to keep you spritely, so they don’t do a lot of moving. You’d think they would have found something else to eat by now . Kangaroos have got it cracked, they bound around like, well kangaroos .
I also met a Tazmanian devil , who sounded just like the cartoon character. I had better confess that these things didn’t happen in the wild. I went to a little game park. I did see wild roos tho, and a fox, but otherwise West Oz was pretty free of wild things. In fact it is probably the most orderly place I have ever been to. Everyone obeys speed limits and drives nicely. They occasionally have outbreaks of young men doing wheelies. They call them ‘hoons’, catch them and then publicly give them a severe ticking off which has them in tears.
There is no litter anywhere, I even saw a road sweeping wagon tidying up a beach. I didn’t see any cats, any beggars and very few dogs. Dogs are banned most places. They are allowed on some beaches in winter, and I was surprised to see owners carrying clubs - I assumed to beat the dogs into submission. The clubs turned out to be long handled poop scoopers, there is a big fine, possibly a flogging, if you let your dog crap anywhere.
Everyone really is friendly. I got the wrong ticket on a train. On the machine It said ‘concessions after 9.30’ it was 10.30 so I pressed that button. The ticket inspector explained slowly that I had to be a student or senior to qualify and have a concession card. He wouldn’t take the extra though, ‘no worries love’. Everyone is sports mad. The gyms are full of people - from sweating 20 somethings, to glowing geriatrics. The Olympics were shown on big screens in the towns and medallists are national heroes. Just opposite the house I stayed in Freemantle, was a large hard court area area where the whole day, every Saturday, about 40 teams played sports and crowds watched. The teams were all girls and the game was netball. The girls Olympic team wins as many medals as the boys. Overall from a population of 20m Australia came 6th in the medal table, just behind the UK with 20m population. Incidentally did anyone notice how the Saudi womens team got on. I didn’t notice them in the pole vault.
Freemantle and Perth were fun and I loved just mooching around there but I was obsessed with seeing a whale so hence the trip to Albany on the southern ocean to go whale watching. It turned out to be empty ocean watching. It is winter still, but I had great weather all the time in OZ apart from the 3 days in Albany. It was wet and windy first day and the little buggers wouldn’t come out, so as cap'n ''g'day oim Jason' said " you kin come agin tomorrer if you dont see a while terday" i didn't see any, just a few seals and some dolphin fins . They didn’t like the rain either and didn’t hang around for long , so I ‘ kime agin’. The weather was nicer, the sea was a bit rough, and we excitedly chased after reported whales but they always ducked out of sight. We didn’t have loud music playing on the boat all the time but the absence of whales may have been because we had a party of japanese tourists on board. The whales needn’t have worried the poor japs were huddled inside the boat looking sick and miserable – the whales revenge !
I was sorry not to see a whale but the southern coast is stunning, the seas are great and I took lots of pics of seals and Albert Rosses. The cottage I stayed at did have wild roos in the garden, and they produce great wine (not the roos).
I am off to New Zealand now a place where men are men and sheep have feelings too.

The Worktop of Doom.

Its bank holiday in England and The new Indiana Jones film is out. Still starring Harrison Ford, now aged 145, but with his son as the action man. And still fighting the same enemies. It's set in the 1950's so its still the cold war and Russians are the bad guys, Mcarthyism still rules America and its Ok to be sexist. It struck me that things haven't changed much. Fundamentalism has replaced Mcarthyism, Communists are no longer to be feared, but instead we have terrorists, and people still get blown up, shot, or otherwise traumatised by some 'ism or other. And because it the bank holiday the tv news will gloss over news of yet more atrocities.
In Indiana Jones good always triumphs over evil of course, and lots of baddies get squished, so thats OK. But is it ?
I am having a holiday at the moment. Not that I actually do anything remotely like work, but I was really relaxing and I was watching some ants. A brave little chap had found a piece of something on my kitchen worktop ( my cleaner has gone somewhere), and told all his mates, and they were lined up to cart it off back to the nest. I carelessly brushed some away, they all ran around madly , then formed a line again to get the bits I'd missed.
So I did it again; and they did it again. Impressive really. They didn't care about being squished, they were just doing their job - getting food for the tribe ( family? nation? – I'm not sure what ants collectively belong to).
It wasn't altruism - and it wasn't unselfish either, because they both imply some form of choice. They mean that when you could decide to look after yourself, you choose to put others first, AND you know the likely outcome of your actions. In the ants case the outcome was death, but they didn't choose it. They don't fear it, I bet they don't even have an ant word for it. I doubt they dream of ant heaven either. They just do what they do, and when one gets squished , another fills the gap. And I was doing the squishing ! I'm an evil threat to Antanity. Indiana Ant would squish me if he could !
Apart from ants, species generally try their hardest to live as long as they can. Animals don't know what death means, don't mull over the existence of a god or an everlasting soul, but they do try to stay around as long as possible.
Thankfully people aren't like ants are they? People do have a word for death and, mostly, they do fear it. They may act like ants scurrying to work, or on bank holiday trips to the coast, but they are individuals, not mindless automatons.
So how come people keep wanting to die for something? That one lot are forever at war with another lot. I find it strange that people who have developed, uniquely, the ability to think rationally, when they are faced with the realisation that death is the end, they invent or develop a belief in something beyond it to take away the fear. And then they promptly do what ants do - they die for something – for their 'ism, their tribe, their nation or their religion.
Having been given the ability to think , they try their hardest not to ! And Good and Bad alike get squished daily, in real life not movies.
--
Penny

Russian about all over the place.

I got fined for speeding recently. The policeman was really nice, and I should have known better – he is always stationed in the same place and I have often marvelled at people I see pulled up at the side of the road, for being daft enough to miss seeing him - then I did the same thing. But it wasn’t a bad experience; None of this being told to get in the back of the car, like they tell you to do in England now. It makes you feel like a cross between arch criminal Ernst Blofeld and one of the Kray twins. My policeman was very charming and said I didn’t look as old as my passport said I was. He told me that as I was doing over 100kph, the fine was 115 ytl. I didn’t have that – but I had a 50Euro note so he took that as payment and gave me a discount – all done very correctly and the speeding ticket, actually shows the reduction !
There are a few more police around at the moment it seems. Perhaps because the fleet is in, well one American battleship , or just more security because it’s the start of the tourist season. I know it’s the season because my boat dances to the beat of the music from Bar street. Now I like Bar street; it’s brash, it’s noisy, it’s fun and it’s not at all seedy or threatening in the way that places like London’s Soho or Amsterdam’s Rembrandtplein are. But, big BUT, disco music is fine in discos, or in music festival fields. It is very un-fine at 4.00am when your teeth vibrate, and you can hear the shouting from, presumably, megaphone hailers. There must be a way to confine or control the decibel count, so that the revellers can revel and the citizens, and more sedate visitors, in Marmaris can get some sleep.
At the other end of the ‘cultural’ life of Marmaris I went to a classical music concert – Vivaldi’s four seasons. It was lovely, and there was a packed house, though it was slightly marred by the sound of whirring air conditioning units. Hope they get that right next time. I was interviewed for the TV afterwards. I don’t think It’s the start of a film career though. The interviewer gave me the mike, then he said “lower please” so I stooped down, and he filmed the top of my head. He seemed a bit bemused by my posture – he meant I should hold the mike lower, I realised later.
The Russians are here as well as the Americans. About 250 of them are racing in yachts around the bay: And crashing into other yachts in the marina. The bay is ringing to shouts of правый борт судна*, in deep baritones. I have been rather hoping that one or two of them might crash into the American warship, that would be fun. They could battle it out in Bar street and no-one would hear them.
I always thought Boris Johnson, the newly elected Mayor of London, had a Russianness about him. Apart from his name, he has that careless enthusiasm, mixed with his upper class twitiness. I was surprised though to see a CNN report about his winning the election, and beating the evil Ken. It reported that Boris has in the past caused deep offense after labeling members of the Commonwealth "piccaninnies," referred to Africans as having "watermelon smiles"; and likened his party's internal conflicts "to Papua New Guinea-style orgies of cannibalism and chief-killing." It also mentioned that Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson (to give him his full name), although born in New York, is actually the great grandson of Turkish journalist and government minister Ali Kemal. Guess we can look forward to lots of Borisisms as the Olympics near, and a few more Kebab houses in North London .
I get CNN emailing snippets to me because I entered a key-word in their news site. To begin with I got lots about Bernard Matthews and I was deluged with emails at Christmas, then I change the t to T, and now I get the ones I want, which are about about Turkey. I got one last week showing police hosing demonstrators down at an illegal march in Istanbul. There are a few noisy DJ’s I would like to see hosed down but, it all seems a long way away from my nice policeman, giving me a discount on my speeding fine.
*starboard

What a load of Rubbish

My Storks are Back – It’s spring ! The nest on top of the nearby telegraph pole is being repaired after the storms and and soon we will hear the batter of tiny beaks. It is the best time of year. In the marina boats are being hauled out and scrubbed and painted, steel stanchions are being polished, hulls washed down and the smell of antifoul and polish pervades the air. The Scorpio bar is getting busier and Grace is getting stressed.
I am still exploring Marmaris and I have just found a perfect spot. I saw it first from the sea. A little beach nestling under a large rock outcrop called ‘White rock’ just south east of the marina. Lucydog and I went for lunch at a nice beach restaurant and then we went for a walk along the waterfront. After you leave the restaurant it becomes a shingle strip. The green of the pine trees contrasts with the red of the earth and the blue of the sea. The sun glints off the beer bottles strewn over the pebbles. Some broken and some intact. The gentle breeze rustles the plastic bags left after picnics. Plastic cartons and containers bob up and down in the gentle swell. The earth in places bears the scars of fire, some with the remains of the food packaging parcelled in them to be removed later by the wind and sea.
There is an enormous amount of debate and press comment at the moment about whether or not a woman should cover her head with a bit of material ?? Why isn’t there a thousand times more debate about the way in which the environment is treated ? This wasn’t the fault of tourists, they aren’t here at the moment. The people leaving the mess; the people whose children will cut their feet on broken bottles; the people who will swim in the litter strewn sea; the people who have to put up with the despoiling of the natural beauty of their country; are the same people who can’t be bothered to pick up their litter, put in the bags they bought the picnic in and take it away to be disposed of in rubbish bins. And they are Turkish people.
Some of the tourists coming here aren’t any better, but local and national government should get its priorities right and start to educate people in how to take care of the gorgeous natural environment entrusted to them. After all it is why tourists, Turkish and foreign, flock here in vast numbers.
I have now done my offshore yachtmaster exam, under the eagle eye of Admiral Tim. As well as sailing the boat in all sorts of situations, It also required the carrying out of lots of very involved calculations – secondary ports, tidal heights, dead reckoning, EP’s, UT,LAT, PMT ?! I am sure it is all important and necessary to make me a good sailor, but I am writing this listening to the Irish folk group the Dubliners. They sing old-time sea shanties, written to give seamen, real seamen, a rhythm to man capstans, weigh anchors and sail ships in appalling conditions. There is a line in one song - ‘The leaving of Liverpool’ that says ‘If a mans a seaman he’ll do right well. If he’s not he sure is in hell’
They didn’t have plastic in those days and I bet they didn’t know what ‘UT – 1’ meant. They couldn’t tell a secondary port from a grog of rum. They were ignorant and uncivilised, but they did respect the environment in which they lived, and in which they died . Take a walk along your local beach and look at it ! You think that’s civilised - Rubbish.

Sailing is such fun

When I said I would write for the Post I was in the process of buying a boat so editor, Dila, blessed be her name, called my column “The log book”. I have written twice about sailing, once when I fell in the marina and once when the propeller fell off, and It might have lead you to think that :
a. Sailing is dangerous to your health or
b. I am .
so to redress the balance I want to tell you about the sailing I did last week. It was nice.
Actually I was with three men who know what to do, Peter, Paul and Colin ( Mary couldn’t come ) so all I had to do was steer and make the coffee; And clean up the ash liberally sprinkled everywhere; And adjust the sails from time to time; And wash the floors afterwards and hose the boat down. But it was nice. It was the coldest spell in Marmaris for about 200 years. My lips were frozen. And there were strong winds of course, we couldn’t even get into Kumlu Buku to anchor. But it was nice.
We were training to take an exam so we sailed around practising man overboard with a fender (called Jim), and picking up buoys , a practise I am well used to. We’ve got the latest satellite navigation stuff on board but we will have to use paper and pencil for the exam and we have to know all about tidal effect tho’ there isn’t any here. We went to Ikincik and came back in the dark past a buoy with a light on it, but a light that isn’t marked on the charts and it isn’t turned on, which makes it a bit pointless really. I’d never sailed into Marmaris in the dark before, and I was surprised at how few lights there are for navigation so that most of the headlands are in hiding . But it was nice . Thank you P P and C.
Hope you enjoyed that nautical saga. Now more serious stuff. I caught the back end of a news broadcast “.............experts are predicting that 40000 people an hour will be dying in 10 years time” I didn’t catch what it was they were going to die of – ‘mad cowbird flue’ probably. And it might have been 40000 a year, but honestly, that phrase – “experts predict..!” Remember experts predicting that everywhere will be getting hotter. Have you noticed that since it’s started getting bloody cold, they have stopped referring to global warming and are calling it ‘ climate change’. Last week I was the coldest I have ever been here, and in parts of Turkey it was minus 30 or something. That is Cooooooold.
I thought it was a modern disease. This rush to find an ‘expert’ to foretell disaster every time someone sneezes. But In olden times they were just the same. They were called seers and oracles then . Disembowel a chicken or two and they would order up a punic war or a plague or Aunt Clymenestras sticky end. Journalists themselves are prone to a particular disease – its called ‘ Media awareness deficiency – ‘MAD’ . Its a disease of the circulatory system. Once they have it they print any old rubbish they are fed and believe that their circulation will go up.
I did get caught by it recently. I went to have an MOT at the Caria hospital. Got everything checked and found I have high cholesterol. There are it seems two sorts of cholesterol, good cholesterol and bad cholesterol. I have too many of the bad guys . So of course i went to the internet to get the expert view and scared myself silly. I just have to read an article about some disease and become convinced I have it. So I kept checking my pulse to see if my heart was slowing and came out in cold sweats at the thought of going from a sudden heart attack at my tender young age. Then the doc told me that “you are just at the top end of OK. You should cut down on red meat ( not a prob) and dairy products and .... “- Honestly he said this.”... And drink wine” . I can get pissed on doctors orders !!! That IS nice

Hi Ho Hi Ho

I had just finished reading a book called ‘The Book Thief’, and had had to wash the tears off my face, then i got this email –

“HOW THE FIGHT STARTED”

“I drove into the back of another car this morning.

So there we were alongside the road and slowly the driver got out of the car. . .
and you know how, when you get too stressed, that life seems to get funny?

Yes, well, I couldn’t believe it . . . he was a DWARF!

He stormed over to my car, looked up at me and said, 'I AM NOT HAPPY!'

So, I looked down at him and said, 'Well, which one are you then?'

.. . . and that's when the fight started . . .”

‘The Book Thief’ is about Germany during the war. It’s narrated by Death. As you will gather it isn’t exactly side splitting stuff, but it is funny as well as painful at times. There are a lot of good books around recently that see the funny side of life even though they are about tragedy. The other afternoon I was on my boat writing some emails when I heard a shout. I jumped and wondered who it was, then realised that my name was being called. The voice didn’t sound panicky, just a bit urgent, Well fairly urgent really, so I ran on deck and looked around. There was just a dwarf standing on the side of the pontoon. Strangely he looked like American John, but John isn’t a dwarf. It WAS American John. He wasn’t standing on the pontoon, he was in the water, just his top bit sticking out as he hung onto the side of the pontoon.
Mm. ‘Strange’ I thought.
I probably asked if he was ok. He clearly wasn’t, why would he willingly jump in the marina in February with his clothes on. But he politely asked me if i could help him out. It was a bit difficult, he is quite big, and the vacuum cleaner he was hanging onto got in the way.
After some heaving we got him out. I had to remove his vacuum cleaner, though. I asked if he would like to come to my boat and take his clothes off, but I guess the shock of being immersed made him shy and he ran off.
I fell in the marina last year, that was in January. The friend who was with me couldn’t stop laughing ..... for days, and when I next met John I am afraid I got the giggles. He was ok, his friend the vacuum cleaner still dripped a bit though.
I think its a pity that news programmes aren’t made to have someone shrieking with laughter after every report of doom and gloom. In England they did once try to have a good news slot after the news at ten. It didn’t last long - journalists don’t do good news. They are far too important and serious to laugh at anything. Bit like politicians and religious leaders. Look at the fuss over a cartoon in Denmark. In Australia of all places they passed a law forbidding the media to poke fun at politicians , and in the middle East they have just banned any comment or criticism of either. Actually of course you don’t need to say anything - politics and religion are the funniest things around. And Dwarves of course, though they don’t scare me as well.