Hazards and Celebrations
In July we continued planting up our garden and trying to get the lawn to grow. When we first seeded it we covered it in flishy-flashy objects to scare off the birds. However, it wasn't the birds that were the problem, it was the ants. As fast as we seeded it, the ants ran away with the seed.
Ants 10 Us 0.
We consulted our Turkish neighbours and a certain powder was recommended. We mixed the seed with the ant-killer and that had the desired effect. The wild-life has certainly been running amok. Sue lifted up a rock whilst weeding only to find a nest of scorpions underneath it. Now we know why our Turkish neighbours told us to wear gloves.
We also took advantage of the season to take a bus down to Bodrum. This service is only available in the summer. The shops in Bodrum are just that much better and offer more scope than Altinkum. A long and exhausting trip by bus but worth the effort.
After Sue's little game with the scorpions, she decided to branch out a bit. We were just coming back to the house after an afternoon out, when a 4 foot black snake came out of next door's drive right in front of her. Pity the Olympics have finished; we could have entered her in the long-jump (do they allow you to jump backwards in that?). The next time (and there was a next time) we saw it, it was under our canoe, the neighbours spotted it.
Then, a couple of days later, we were both taking refuge in the living room, in the cool of the air-conditioner, when we spotted the snake trying to join us.
It had got inside the burglar bars and was pushing on the fly-screen trying to break through into the house. Well, this time Sue beat all high jump records and was at the top of the stairs before David could blink let alone get up from his seat. He shushed it from the flyscreen, but it climbed up the burglar bars, coiled itself around them and there it stayed, so we had to seek some assistance. That was when Sue beat the 100 m sprint record as well, as she had to pass it to get to the road. Our neighbour Nejdet came to the rescue and said we should aim a jet of water at it, which we did and presto! it vanished ... well actually it slithered over the road. Then all the neighbourhood came out on a snake hunt. We hacked away the undergrowth, squirted water in all the holes and generally made a mess, but no snake. Nejdet brought us some powder to put around the front entrance which apparently dissuades snakes from crossing the line .... so far, so good.
We did a bit more exploring and came across Iassos, near Bodrum. It's very pretty, but is now scarred by a big development of apartments and a hotel which sits alongside this beautiful little village and towers over it. The village itself has quite a history, as it was a large Roman town for a long time with amphitheatre and temple etc. Before that it was an important town in the Bronze age.It used to be an island but the channels around it got silted up, so it lost it's strategic importance and ended up as a Greek farm. In 1929 it was sold and a fishin
g village sprang up, but now this development sprawls up the hillside alongside it and has totally wrecked the ambiance. These photos were taken from the little restaurant where we had a really good lunch.We were trying to arrange to have our road built and also we had many friends coming out to visit their houses and they all wanted us to do something for them.
Take the road. All the efforts of our Turkish neighbour came to nothing when he went back home to England and omitted to leave his contact details. We are sure that he was trying to do the impossible in that, he would slip a council official a "bung" and in return the road would be done cheaply. So cheap in fact that the Turkish people across the road wouldn't pay anything and the tab would be picked up by the Brits. Everything here is done this way, and if you can't live with it then you will not survive in Turkey.
However, in the middle of August another road was started here in Yesilkent, so we went to speak with the people living in the road. We found one young Turkish lad who could speak a little English, and he explained that they had all paid and hired a firm in Didim to lay the road. We asked how much, and although the figure was quite high, we set about persuading the other house owners in our road to contribute. Well there is always one isn't there? Our Irish neighbours? ... no problem. The detached house next door? ... wanted all the T's crossed and i's dotted, and that just ain't gonna happen here in Turkey. The sticking point came with the other house in the road ... the unsold one. We just couldn't persuade the builder to contribute, even though it would help his house to sell. In the end, we decided that we wanted the road enough to pay his share ourselves.
So we contracted the firm to come and build our road. It was completed in the first two weeks of September, but, it's a good job we don't work here, because we had to stand over the workers all day long and make sure they didn't cut corners, make sure they didn't slope off. It was like being an unpaid foreman. When one of their machines broke today, we had to fix it, otherwise they were about to leave .... any excuse. The Turkish family who we originally spoke to about this have helped us a lot, otherwise we don't think it would have happened at all. We had the police here one night because somebody had complained they were still working at 10 o' clock at night .... but as the workers didn't turn up till 4pm, so we had kept them here as long as we could.
At the same time, as we said, we had friends arriving. Our friends Don and Anthea were coming out, so we checked out their flat for them, and found one wall with a large crack in it, and the flat was a mess. We let them know so that they could arrange to have the problems sorted before they arrived. When they did arrive, they wanted the things they had stored in our house returned ... that took two trips on the motorbike.
We had an email from another friend to say they had been told there was a roof tile that was in a dangerous position on their roof, could we go an have a look. We did, and David went up on the roof to replace it.
Our Irish neighbours were coming out and they asked us to get some provisions in the house and the fridge to be turned on. We have also been doing some DIY for Mary at the house behind us, and acting as the local internet café and airline ticket office for several people. Never a dull moment here in Turkey, and you all wonder what we do all day. While all this was going on, we had a visit from a very elderly Turkish neighbour (91) who wanted to see our garden. We see her every morning when we go to buy our bread, and she swims everyday, sometimes twice a day. Well she stayed for half an hour.
We also had Nigel staying with us some of the time because Yo was back in UK as her mother had been taken ill, and the stress of that had caused her father, who has Parkinson's, to have a relapse. And Brian arrived on Monday 11th September at 3 o'clock in the morning, so Sue had his room to make up, and we did a general clean up to lose the dust that had blown in from the road-building. We were also trying to organise a party for Tuesday 12th as it was the 1st anniversary of our Turkish adventure.
To cap it all, we had the neighbours from hell staying next door for that fortnight. You know the sort, Fat loud obnoxious, foul mouthed, no respect for anyone else or their property, and SIX children that are out of control and seem to do nothing but scream at each other from morning till night. They'd only been here 2 days ... and it seemed like a lifetime.We think Gary who owns the house could regret this. The count so far (that we know of) is one broken patio umbrella, 3 glasses, one rug. Such a shame as all the other renters have been really nice people, and most of them still email us.
Well we made it ..... one whole year in Turkey, and we're still loving every moment. In honour of the day, we decided we would have a party and set about inviting all our new friends and neighbours, English, Irish and Turkish. It was hard work but well worth the effort.It started at 8 and finished at 3.30am and most of the guests were there from start to finish. Everybody had a good time and the booze didn't run out (thank goodness).
We had to borrow furniture from neighbours all around in order to have enough seating for everyone.
The party doubled as a road opening party. As the only permanent residents in this road, the burden of finding a contractor, negotiating the price, and acting as foreman builders, fell to us. But, we did it and the road is now complete. Hooray ... no more mud.
And this is the road opening ceremony with our Irish neighbours Nicky and Mary who were on holiday and were able to help us with the final stages ..... including the grouting of the road, which the construction firm left for us to do.
Well here's to the next year ... and who knows what new skills we'll be learning then.
The heat is took it's toll on Brian though as he didn't get up until 8.30 (normally he's up at 6) and he was in bed again by 10.30pm (normally midnight). He reckoned he was getting the best night's kip he'd ever had. Trouble was he missed all the night life ... many of the evening's social activities don't start till 10.30ish. He was also still clock watching ... something we cast aside long ago. It wasn't till he arrived that we realised we never know what time of day it is .... we eat when we're hungry, wake up when we're refreshed and go to sleep when we're tired. Let's face it, most of the time we don't even know what day it is. One day back in early summer we were in the supermarket with some friends having a heated discussion as to whether it was Tuesday or Wednesday ... it was Thursday.
posted by David and Sue @ 8:45 pm
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