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
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