Inbetween kid's classes Yasmin was writing a handover form for me about the Thursday night businessmen I'll be getting as of next week. I looked over to see what she'd written and the first line - all that I could see - said: "Lovely little balls"
So I said, out loud "What?" and then everyone else came to have a look. What it actually said was "Lovely little balls of cotton wool and cotton socks!"
Yasmin said "What's wrong with that? And I said "I could only see the first three words - I knew you liked them, but not that much!"
We then had to explain this to half the rest of the room.
Jeremy said, "Does cotton socks mean anything?"
Fife said, "It means they're lovely cotton socks!"
Jeremy said, "So it's not, like, rhyming slang or anything?"
Yasmin said, "For what?" And then blurted out the first word that fitted, which was: "Cocks?"
Jeremy said, "Err."
I said, "Oh take it, it's the best explanation you're going to get."
Jeremy said, "What? Take the cocks?"
I said, "Yes. Balls. Cocks. Everything!"

And at this point the conversation had to stop because most of us were laughing too hard to get a sentence out.

It must be Monday.

Why am I still here? Writing reports, sending out test results, procrastinating... when there is beer and tavla waiting at Yasmin's. So I shall desperately try to finish now. And then I am gone!

* posted by nat 6:41 PM

We tried doing yoga at four o'clock yesterday afternoon, and various forms of gymnastics, and despite me being all hurt and extremely out of practice I still seem to be more flexible than most of the ten year olds. Oh dear.

Then we went to the pub to watch the football. Besiktas 1 Fenerbahçe 3 woot! - the pub was packed and there was a lot of wild jumping around at goal times. Sayed crashed into me rather too exuberantly at one point which was a bit jarring, Mustafa protected the beer by hugging all the glasses together in the middle of the table and hiding there motionless until everyone was sitting back down again; about two minutes of jumping around, but most of the time we just ignored the game and watched all the other fans packed into the pub gazing all glazed over at the screen (or occassionally shouting at it). They did this from an hour before the match started, which was a little bizarre as it was showing rally-driving at the time. I promised myself I was only going to drink one small beer; I had three. And Nachos. With double salsa. Well, you have to. Honest.

I should currently be running around like a headless chicken trying to sort everything out as I am about to take a week off work (YAYYAYYAY!) as the godsister is coming and there will be so much talking to I shall not have time to go to work. Obviously. But I am not running around, instead I am eating olive-ly simit and doodling on pieces of paper. I think I had better do my Turkish homework at the very least.

* posted by nat 9:31 AM

Sunday, April 25, 2004

On Thursday night I went to see a Russian film called Chic, which for some reason has got itself called 'The Suit' in English. This is fine, because it is about a suit, but you would think that had the film-makers wanted to call the film 'Smokin' or whatever it is in Russian they would have done so. Not that that matters a lot; it was a very good film.

On Friday I just about made it to the sofa where I collapsed in an undignified heap and ate vast amounts of chocolate and watched I Capture The Castle in order to cheer myself up, because there is not much point planning exciting expeditions when you can't get to the other end of your own flat.

I have also discovered a way in which I can finally watch an episode of The Office without ending up taking a vow never to set foot in England again.
i. Borrow Ben's DVD of said series.
ii. Stuff it in computer.
iii. Fast forward through anything that does not involve Tim and Lucy.
iv. Even better, get someone else to fast forward it so I can keep my eyes closed.
v. Keep reminding myself that I have not had a sense of humour failure, because it is not just me who is finding it al too painfully accurate.

Yesterday Efe (aged 11) called me 'canım' at the end of a direct question (which means 'my dear', and covers the same range of meanings that it does in English). I took one step closer to him and he evidently decided he'd gone too far. "I was just joking you know I didn't mean it really really really!" I gave up and laughed; you have to when it's the kids. Besides, they've only got one month of school left until their summer holidays start, so things are beginning to wind down.

On a test paper from this morning: "My brother is more or fewer the same height as me." I suppose this is an effort to redress the imbalance caused by the overuse of 'less' in General English. However, the entire class managed to form the question 'Did you use to...' correctly, whereas Lynne Truss, who spends half her time worrying about apostrophes and the like (which 95% of the time don't impede meaning at all whether they're in or out) writes 'Did you used to...' and caused her book to go flying across the room. Honestly, it's no good being nit-picky when you can't get basic stuff like that right.

* posted by nat 11:35 AM

Thursday, April 22, 2004

Yasmin and I drove mother off to the airport this morning; the sun is out now. We have spent most of the week eating and I have managed to read three books, which is A Good Thing, and have sent about ten books and all my winter jumpers home.

We also went to see a Czech film called Pupendo which was part of the film festival and was woooooonderful. (Given it was a Hrejbek film and it had the usual crowd of Bolek Polívka, Eva Holubová and Jaroslav Dusek acting in it it was always going to be.) I think it might be time to do some internet DVD shopping. I need to own Pelisky, for starters.

Also I have drunk far too much alcohol this past week and I don't think my tablets are working very well at all. Also it is cold and damp, but I am very achy.

In other news, mostly about school, BLOODY HELL.

I want to go travelling now, not in three months! I am still planning and now reckon it will take about a year to do Turkey properly. Is there anyone who likes driving cars on bumpy unsurfaced roads and wants to come exploring Georgian and Armenian churches in the east in September? I need someone who can drive! At the end of that there will be Van, which is gorgeous. I also have to go to Batman just because. Then sometime after that there will be some involvement with the Lycian Way: much walking and possibly sleeping up trees. And then I will probably run out of time because it will be Christmas and I shall go home to eat chestnut stuffing, and after that the frogs are calling.

Or Mayan ruins.

Well, something is calling, anyway.

* posted by nat 2:30 PM

Thursday, April 15, 2004

One AP is on her way here but the weather is way ahead of her. It's cold and it's wet and it's raining. Naturally. Ew.

Also I shall be keeping the door of the kitchen firmly shut. That might work.

* posted by nat 10:55 AM

Wednesday, April 14, 2004

The film festival is here, and unlike last year I have managed to go to two films already. It is so nice to see something non-Hollywood. I even went all the way over to Beyoglu today to see Pieces of April, which was quite an expedition. I treated myself to badem ezmesi as well (Almond paste. Yum.) which I didn't really need - but that is besides the point. I also saw Coffee and Cigarettes which was bizarre and very beautiful, and also included Bill Murray.

I was wandering through Kadıköy halfway home, I went to The End looking for DVDs. Bahariye High Street was its usual busy packed self, everyone rushing about� just with half an eye on the grey clouds overhead. Once the first drops of rain started to fall the crowd just parted like the Red Sea to take cover under the awnings on either side of the street, all orderly, almost as if it were some kind of drill.

And then we had a two minute hailstorm.

As you do.

It then turned into a boring rainstorm, so I decided as I was standing outside the Mudo outlet store, I might as well go in and try things on. So I did.

* posted by nat 7:34 PM

Monday, April 12, 2004

We seem to be in the middle of a heatwave. It is, naturally, due to end on Thursday, as that is when my mother is due to arrive. (I am party central: after my mother comes the godsister, after her Katka will be jaunting through sometime in May - she's currently somewhere in Pakistan, I think - after her both parents make a return visit, and then some ex-pikers are making noises about visiting perhaps in June. The good weather, naturally, will arrange itself around them!)

So yesterday was the festival of chocolate, although I did my best not to go overboard. I bought a huge Paskalya bun (almond sweet-bread) from the bakery which was delicious, and managed to limit myself to three Kinder surprises.

The kids were quite interested in Easter and asked me lots of questions (mostly in Turkish, but some in English) about it. And we finished off Wallace and Gromit, which they worked really hard at, so in the last fifteen minutes I donated each of them a Kinder Surprise. Hazar, naturally, won the race for eating his chocolate the fastest, then we all played with the toys for a bit, and then we got onto the best part of Kinder eggs.

Children in Turkey seem to be no different when it comes to the eggs; the little plastic capsules that the toys come in make great ammunition. Hold one end and squeeze to fire the other end off. One small pitched battle later (having just learnt the words 'aim', 'shoot', 'hit' and 'miss' we got a lot of practice in!) and then we all calmed down and made shadow puppets on the board from the projector light. It was good.

We had a minor incident on Saturday when they all tried to sneak up behind me to find out my password as I logged on to the classroom computer, and when I turned around they jumped and Hazar and Aytek collided heads father fast making a very loud noise. Hazar has come out of it with an absolute shiner of a black eye - this is the tantrum throwing child - and was extraordinarily quiet about it, grinning and going to sit down, rather quietly and sheepishly, in his seat. (Go me, I have control!!!) Aytek on the other hand thought about it, then decided to go and sit down and wail rather theatrically that Hazar had hit him on purpose, which was greeted with complete derision by the rest of the class and started them off on some (worryingly hilarious) amateur dramatics which I had to stop fast for fear of starting to laugh.

So I stuck Wallace and Gromit on and the wailing stopped instantly. View the power of video!

* posted by nat 9:40 AM

Saturday, April 10, 2004

False alarm! Cooker is apparently working again. It seems to work when Jeremy uses it, which is good to know!

It is now definitely summer, as they have started digging up the road just outside school.

Again.

* posted by nat 11:34 AM

Friday, April 09, 2004

Our stove has broken. Most unfair, as the freezer is full of soup.

It needs to be mended as I have got a recipe for topik (Néa found it, I translated half of it, and Nese confirmed the weird bits for me.) and it needs the stove to work so I can boil the chickpeas and potatoes.

If not, well, summer is coming and I'm sure I can live on salad wraps for a good long while. Or just eat out. I know summer is coming because the Salı Pazarı is full of stalls selling horrific polka-dot bikinis.

And Sunday is chocolate-allowed-again day! I am getting cravings, but they are being held back by a daily dose of the first season of ER, as well as vast amounts of strawberries.

* posted by nat 12:20 PM

Thursday, April 08, 2004

When I was nineteen and travelling with a backpack (it belonged to my brother, I believe) which was rather too big and excruciatingly uncomfortable, I spent the first week or so of March in Croatia. I took the overnight train from Zagreb, wherein a man came into my compartment in the middle of the night and tried to steal a small bottle of coke, which didn't even have much coke left in it. When I, rather startled out of sleep, attempted to object, he took a large wooden crucifix which was hanging round his neck and thrust it in front of my face. If this happened to me these days, I would probably just give it to him, but at the time I was rather thirsty and more than slightly confused, so I held onto my coke and off he went. Given as most slightly mad men on the Eastern European night trains tended to walk in and inquire if I was offering sex (I said I wasn't, and they just shrugged and went away again), it made for a change.

So I arrived in Split, and met Ivona, and we wore sunglasses and promenaded along the seafront out in front of Diocletian's palace walls, and I felt distinctly unfashionable and rather overwarm - having spent a couple of weeks on a diet of coke and chocolate which was doing my teeth no good at all but for some reason meant the weight was falling off, and also having not allowed for the fact that spring might arrive - I was walking around in a pair of jeans that fell down so that the cuffs scuffed under my heels and the waistband was turned outwards and down, and a too-thick jumper with the sleeves rolled up to mid-arm length.

And inside the walls she rang a doorbell and we went up a small crumbling spiraling staircase that finished in a small cafe called Le Petit Prince, with tall green plants all in pots by the window, and the walls dark blue and covered in murals from the books - the prince and the planet and the sheep and the flower and the elephant that has been eaten by a snake, and I drank fruit juice, and we talked about several things - the future and the past - and St. Exupery was one of those subjects; he had to be given the surroundings.

And I suppose that every so often mysteries get solved, because people are interested and people want to know, and some people don't. This one has probably worked out in the way that ought to leave everybody content, but I should imagine will leave nobody content.

When I got home from that trip I bought a new rucksack, which I have had ever since, although for the next trip I am planning I am hoping to be able to take at the most a 30 litre backpack. I am convinced I can do three months from that; it will be hot for most of the time.

I am planning. And I will go.

* posted by nat 10:55 AM

Sunday, April 04, 2004

Why our household should be barred from watching Westerns:

You get a line like: "Oh I'm mad I'm good and mad and why shouldn't I be?!"

And this has formed about 50% of our conversation since.

Also, apparently there are no cactuses in the desert, which makes me feel very cheated.

* posted by nat 11:46 AM

Saturday, April 03, 2004

So The Swedes (as they have become known around here) are on their way back to the grizzly-bearless land and I am going home to die.

Yesterday evening the dinner of mushrooming guests took place in bostancı (the list grew from 6 to 14) and was very nice. Later, Jeremy's father phoned up and apologised for him being born, which was very nice of him, but it threw me a bit. It always throws me a bit when Jeremy's father phones up because he sounds very like Mark (the intonation rather than the accent) and I spend the first few seconds in extreme confusion. It doesn't help that he always phones up late at night.

Anyhow I probably speak to Jeremy's dad more than I speak to my own father on the phone. But this is mostly because Jeremy's dad won't shut up. Now I know where Jeremy gets it from!

* posted by nat 3:24 PM

Thursday, April 01, 2004

New timetable starts today hurrah hurrah hurrah no travelling!

My flat is one big liquorice den. My 1-2-1 student has started me eating olive-spread toasties in the mornings. I blame him. I also blame him for keeping the weather on the chilly side, as his sales are better when the weather is cooler. However, it has been quite gorgeous and sunny, and we went to Aya Sofya again (and I got in for the local price, go me!) and drank far too much apple tea, which I shouldn't have, and had a very delicious meze and fish and rakı dinner on Nevizade, and yesterday we went to Termal and I soaked around in the lovely hot pool. Tried the outside hot pool too, which at 1.65m deep was just too deep and so I went back inside and lounged around. There was much lounging. Yes.

And GRIZZLY BEARS LOVE LINGONBERRIES. We are still waiting for them to ring the doorbell and demand the liqueur. No really. If you have lingonberries you should be warned!

Time for conversation, which will involve liquorice.

* posted by nat 11:10 AM