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.