I will not watch the news on TV, it distresses me. Not the pictures (well, actually, yes, the pictures, because the next time I see that person with a big wall of water coming towards them desperately trying to capture it on their camcorder instead of running like mad in the opposite direction I will go out and commit mindless acts of violence in Dixons, but anyway) but more the overwhelming attitude of "Why wasn't there an early response system in place?" (You can't beat nature. Sorry.) and "Why aren't the Foreign Office answering our calls more quickly?" (WATCH THE PICTURES, PEOPLE!) and - argh.

Time for a cup of Roibosch and a lie down.

* posted by nat 1:54 AM

Tuesday, December 28, 2004

Unless you count the garage, which I don't, I have not set foot outside the house since going up to church on Christmas Eve, (the midnight service taking place at a respectable middle-class 10pm), although I did look outside a few times, especially once it snowed. It has been cold. Cold. Cold.

Christmas was spent eating too many things with chestnuts in and taking forever to get round to anything, which was very nice. We had a chocolate-liqueur fuelled attempt at the King William Quiz, getting most of the answers out of the mass reference library that makes up the bookshelf in the lounge (better than Google!). We probably had the best time with the section on the Shipping Forecast.

Since then there was been professional standard sofa-lounging going on, and I continue to eat my way slowly through nut roast, which is one of the few things I have made so far that does not include alcohol. (Alcohol in the gravy, in the cranberry sauce, and a record-breaking amount of alcohol in the Tiramisu - almost up to fire-breathing levels. I'm getting there.)

I shall now put far too many layers on and venture outside.

* posted by nat 1:45 PM

Wednesday, December 22, 2004

I can actually fix the datestamp of this thing (although now I have pointed this out there would be, as it were, no point), to convince my mother that I actually did go to bed at midnight or so, and am not still sitting up at gone 1:30 having reasonably inane conversations about the release date for Harry Potter 6 (July 16th, if you don't already know). I think there might be RP around, though, so bedtime is not an option even though I'm dead.

However, after a visit to the doctor's today I now have my party bag of tablets from the chemists, and have been told to cut back on the Naproxen. Apparently I'm overdosing (I've been up to 4x500mg in 24 hours since I've been home, and I shouldn't be doing over 2. And I've been on 3 for the past couple of months). So why doesn't it feel like enough, even then?

* posted by nat 1:28 AM

Monday, December 20, 2004

1. Confession: I really like Dragostea Din Tei. Yes, really. (I have frequently found myself singing it when I put the kettle on. Nu ma nu ma iei!)

2. My Romanian is not quite as bad as this, but almost: A very silly video. Sing along!

... I'm addicted. I shall not sleep tonight. (Not to mention there is RP going on! I have been so deprived! RP! Whee!)

* posted by nat 1:36 AM

Sunday, December 19, 2004

I went over to Vanessa's place on Saturday for vegeterian friends-Christmas (like family Christmas but without the arguments!) Mmm. Parsnips. Parsnips! No-one seems to have changed at all which is all very nice, although they keep saying "And it's so nice now you're back" and I just choose not to say anything at all... We were definitely playing at being grown-ups but it did all disintegrate when we decided to play spoons after dinner. Which was a Good Thing.

I do not like the 122 bus which left me out last night for over half an hour in the rain grumbling something about a lack of dolmus. Or bus. Or anything, frankly. However, the B13 and I are becoming fast friends.

Today up for more Christmas-type meals with Grandpa. His atlas has a tiny map of Turkey, but for some reason the town of Egirdir[1] (which was still written as the old name of Egridir[2]) is marked. Population 12,000. The fourth largest city in Turkey is not marked! (Mustafa, meanwhile, sends me emails which translate something like: "Climbed mountain today but only went up to 2700m as the wind was very strong. Lots of snow though!")

Tomorrow, up to the parents'. Which is good, as with much more time in the same house as my brother I would be starting to plot murder.

[1]He/She/It's spinning
[2]He/She/It's bent

* posted by nat 9:19 PM

Friday, December 17, 2004

Central London is wet, cold and scary. Luckily I was with Vanessa who stopped me from spending too much time in bookshops (long enough to browse happily, not enough time to commit to purchasing half of the store), and instead dragged me into lovely places such as Muji, Heals and Liberty where I was happier just to look. We had lunch with Kat, and most of the talk was about Christmas presents.

I am a bit beyond Christmas presents, really. I would just like people to stop saying 'sorry' when they walk within a metre of me and swearing at me if I walk within a metre of them. I appreciate it has yet to get light in this country since I have got back but really, what is wrong with everybody?

However, I have soya milk, so I am bearing up.

* posted by nat 11:12 PM

Thursday, December 16, 2004

I went driving this morning in the drizzle and only nearly had one accident. 25mph is a perfectly reasonable speed. Found a farm shop. Hurrah farm shop! It is right next to Lord Castlereagh's place. I imagine it was a much nicer place a couple of fundred years ago. No dual carriageway, for one thing.

I have also been practising with public transport as I went up to see El this evening. We pushed slices of lime into bottles of beer, cooked Mexican food and then vegetated on the couch. We rock.

* posted by nat 11:18 PM

Wednesday, December 15, 2004

So I had to take my shoes off to go through the x-ray machine, unpack my bag twice, check in my hand luggage and pay for 7 kilos of excess luggage... although frankly I was not complaining because I had over 20k of it!

However I got my (metal) crochet needle onto the plane no trouble. (It hadn't actually occured to me that there might be trouble!) So I crocheted for a bit, drank a few G&Ts, and listened to the business people next to me having a terribly scary conversation:

"It's like you go through stages in life, isn't it? Thirty grand, forty grand, a hundred grand..."

"Well obviously I don't need all the money I earn... I could live on a lot less."

"Oh yes - you'd have to make choices though."

"Mmm. Like funding the kids through college."

At which point I was having slight crochet needle rage so I went down to the back of the plane for a natter with the air hostesses which turned into a half an hour long random chat and was much more fun.

When we got close to London the plane on the tracking monitor in the cabin did an about face and for one hopeful moment I thought we might be going back, but no, we went into a holding pattern around Heathrow instead. Lots of cloud and flashing lights.

Then we landed and taxied round the concrete for a bit. You can tell you have landed in the UK because no-one seems capable of smiling even remotely convincingly. I flounced out of arrivals and bought a packet of kettle crisps which didn't really do much to improve my mood.

The house is in rather a random state, and I am likely to fall off the stairs into the hall any time soon. My brother has a thing called an x-box which appears to be a games console that you plug into the television and then play over the internet with the person who is sitting right next to you. I don't get it.

Today I had baked beans for breakfast and sat around and waited for it to get light. At eleven o'clock I realised it was not going to get light. However I have now discovered how to make my mobile phone work again and have organised the rest of my week very effectively.

Inbetween crocheting.

* posted by nat 9:15 PM

Monday, December 13, 2004

I DON'T WANT TO GO WAH!

When your mother on the phone says "So shall I get a microwavable curry or something for your dinner tomorrow night?" and your first thought is "Microwave ready meals nooooooooooo I wonder if it's too late to cancel the flight?" (ok, so perhaps that is two thoughts) you know that tomorrow is going to be a bad, bad day.

I had lots of jobs to do today so naturally I spent three hours playing saz with Turan and then down to Otantik for lunch where all the waiters said "Woo you've come back!" and I said "Wah I am going!" and they said "When are you coming back?"

Which is what everyone says.

I have to come back, anyway. Yesterday, after leaving Mustafa fishing on the banks of the Bosphorus (that's Yasmin's Mustafa, not fisherman Mustafa, even though Mustafa was fishing, ok?)Yasmin and I went up to Çamlıca to get spinach goözleme for I had never had them up on said hill, and lo and behold they were out of spinach.

That's reason enough.

* posted by nat 6:52 PM

Thursday, December 09, 2004

On Monday lunchtime Mustafa said, "Ok - so you go off tomorrow night and I'll go to Konya at the same time." Which sounded reasonable.

By the evening this had mutated to taking the 1.30pm bus. Which was less reasonable.

We therefore spent Tuesday morning screaming at each other as he said he might not pop into say goodbye between fishing and the bus and I said this was not reasonable at all and he accused me of not understanding him and I burst into tears.

At breakfast time he phoned the terrace phone to inform me that he was halfway to Konya at which point I yelled down the phone at him that I understood exactly what he was doing and would he come back right now, please-you-bastard.

"Tomorrow check out!" he said brightly down the phone, and then we got into a futile "No!" "Yes!" dialogue until I slammed the phone down in a huff.

I then stormed down to the bus station (I think small children jumped to get out of the way!) - and bought a ticket for Tuesday night.

Everyone else was pleased, at least, and we all hid in the kitchen and drank sahlep and giggled and Müslüm did me for a free English lesson ("The salt and pepper is on the shelf under the TV", "She's sitting in the corner" etc.) and I decided that this was all the fault of PMS. And Mustafa.

Mustafa banged on my window at 6:30am on Tuesday morning to say sorry but he had met his friend who was going to Konya who had offered to give him a lift and that was why he had gone at that point and thank you thank you you're still here. I explained that it would have helped if he had tried to tell me this down the phone when I screamed "Why why why?" down it.

"Do you want to marry me?" he asked.

"NO!" I said.

"Ok," he said, "Because I'd marry you if you wanted me to."

Gah, gah, gah.

*

Later on Mustafa decided he needed to consolidate all these random words and phrases I have been teaching him and so attempted to write a few of them down. Now ever since Mustafa wrote AY VONT YU on a napkin and shoved it under my face during a football match (I blew my nose on it) I have known his spelling is a little awry, but some of these are really something special, to give a few examples:

Ven viyil yu kantı Egirdir?
Ayv gota hedeyk
Ayam goink fisink tumoro - duyu vontı kam?
Kenay coin yu?
tigedir
Givmiya hagk (my personal favourite!)

*

Now I am back in Istanbul, by means of the Mercedes Benz 2005 bus which came with plug in headphones so we could all choose whether to listen to music, the football match on the radio, or watch the film, and it was all very state of the art. Spent the whole morning drinking tea and then went to visit Murat the dentist for pain, torture, amusing witty asides, and remembering that injections hardly ever work for me ("Am I injecting water?" Murat wondered at one point.) and two more fillings - but I can now say that the dental work is finished! Hurray!

I am off home to throw more clothes out of my suitcase. It is oddly fun.

* posted by nat 4:50 PM

Monday, December 06, 2004

No prizes for guessing where I am!

Via freezing cold Konya, grey Ankara (which has the fabulous, fabulous museum of ancient civilisations, yum yum) - where I refused to go to Anıt Kabır out of principle as all Turks seem to think this is a place I should see, and Afyon, which was very pretty, and would have been even prettier had there not been constant drizzle and fog.

So I arrive back in Egirdir to discover bright sunshine and I only need to go out in a long sleeved shirt and we opened all the windows on the terrace and I have to find the sun cream again.

I was woken up at about 5 o'clock this morning by Mustafa murmuring in my ear in English, which he very rarely uses, "Do you want to come?"

"Go away," I said, thumping him.

"WHAT?" he said. "FISHING do you want to come?"

* posted by nat 5:27 PM

Saturday, December 04, 2004

chocolate is love
brought to you by the isLove Generator

Too right.

* posted by nat 3:40 PM

Thursday, December 02, 2004

We tried making a snowman but the snow was far too powdery, so instead we made a snow fairy chimney. It's sitting there in the courtyard at Shoestring happily melting away.

A couple of days ago we climbed up to the top of the kale at Uçhisar - or rather Mustafa hauled me up - and after I had fallen into a hole or two and he had finished making silly poses under the Turkish flag we settled down and had a look at the view.

"I don't know why people say this place is so pretty," Mustafa said. "I mean look at it. It was beautiful, but some idiot Turks have gone and built nasty concrete houses all over it! Why did they go and do that?"

"Quite," I said. "There's perfectly inhabitable caves."

He looked at me. "If we were living a hundred years ago," he said, "I'd buy you a camel."

*

Sometimes you have to love Turkey. When Hasan offered me a cigarette and I said "I don't smoke," he instantly asked "Why not?"

We got the nargile out a little later instead and I got pleasantly head-spinningly wobbly. I curled up next to Mustafa and he told me silly stories. He is very good at silly stories.

Argh.

*

I am in Konya now, as Mustafa insisted on taking me to see the Mevlana Museum, and was very patient while I salivated over some wonderful copies of the Koran before he dragged me in front of the Mevlana's tomb (which was really what he wanted me to see). He has been bundling me all over the place today as yesterday my legs more or less stopped working so it has all been slightly hard going. I have upped the pill numbers and seem to have improved.

Tomorrow, all being well, I am going to Ankara, because I am craving, craving, craving a museum.

* posted by nat 5:31 PM