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.