Well, it’s nearly the end of 2007. The sun’s shining down out of a crystal clear blue sky, the odd daffodil bulb has thrown up some leaves thinking it’s Spring, and the blackbirds, robins and jays are struggling to be heard over the sound of rock-breaking “tack-tack” machines as the building frenzy gets back in full swing after the summer recess. Just as surely as mince pies in Sainsbury’s in September, this all means Christmas is coming and it’s time for me to settle down to my Noel Ramble!Nothing much to report on the house front. I tried to renew my lease early hoping to secure another 5 years, but Uncle was having none of it. I’m secure until December 2008 but after that, who knows, so I just keep fingers crossed. I really don't want to leave this lovely place but if the headlong rush to plant concrete dog- kennels on every vacant plot of land ever arrives on my doorstep, it would destroy everything that makes this place so enjoyable.
Lack of water and the antics of wild boars have given the orchard a hard time this year. We had very little rain last winter and this summer was long and exceptionally hot. As for the boar, those of you with mole-infested lawns take heart, it could be worse! This summer I had a wild boar infestation in my orchard - indeed it is the wild boars’ summer holiday resort of choice. Whole families arrive in the dead of night and dig deep and irregular holes round the base of the fruit trees, tearing up the roots. My orchard is not known for its truffles, so heaven knows what they are up to. Maybe it’s just a piggy equivalent of sand castles. Bless them! !
Yalikavak is going up-market. We are getting mains drainage! No more septic tanks, no more tankers, known locally as “honey wagons”, that empty them. Do our tourists know that their bath water – and worse – ends up being poured down the side of a mountain around in the next bay.
Naturally it is chaos! The whole of the village centre looked like the set of a “B” Western film (left). What fun it is driving into the unmarked trenches on a near daily basis trying to find our way home. No doubt our mayor thinks this improvement is a vote catcher for the local elections in February! Still he can count on one little lad’s vote: these sewage pipes make great play grounds (right).
But is it such a good idea to put the sewage processing plant on top of the nearby mountain, we wonder. We assume pumps will be involved at some point to feed the plant. Power cuts are a part of life here so dinner party talk has focussed on what happens when the power goes off. We’ve decided the contingency plan is that we will all be required to flush at the same moment, creating a sort of tsunami effect within the pipes.
On the travel front, I’ve been quite busy again this year. As a nice bit of serendipity, last Christmas Eve saw me in the place where the Santa Claus story was born, a little place called Demre (Myra) on the Mediterranean coast of Turkey. It seems St Nicholas, who served there as bishop most of his life, made his name by just being nice and performing the odd miracle. According to the guide books, during a famine he encouraged his flock to “borrow” wheat from visiting foreign ships, but
miraculously the levels in the holds never went down. Then there was the less miraculous business of him lobbing bags of gold down the chimney of the house of three poor sisters, none of whom could get married for lack of a dowry. Enough to get anyone immortalised as Santa I guess even though scholars are more doubtful about the authenticity of the stories.Demre is famous for tomatoes, it seems, but the giant scarlet plaster tomato
on Demre’s main roundabout did not fill me with confidence about the good taste of the local council. I was ready for hordes of Santa look-alikes terrorising the tourists. But the Santa connection was surprisingly understated. There is a statue of St Nicholas close to the church (left). There is also a Russian bronze of Father Christmas nearby and, more recently, a concrete, straight off the christmas card jolly red-suited version in the townsquare was added by the then Mayor. 
The Church of St Nicholas, built to house his tomb, was restored by order of Czarina Anna in 1885. Now, alas, the tomb is empty. St Nick’s bones were nicked by some Italians from Bari back in 1087. The few bones they overlooked are preserved in a small casket in the excellent museum in Antalya.
On this trip, my Turkish friend Metin and I travelled the stretch of coastline from Bodrum to Antalya known as the Turquoise coast (after the colour of the sea); it is both stunningly beautiful and incredibly rich in history. Greek, Byzantine and Roman ruins are round every corner but one special memory is of the massive amphitheatre at Aspendos. More serendipity: we happened to arrive just when a fellow tourist, a young Iranian girl (left) with a superb soprano voice, was singing a beautiful well-known aria.. Quite magical, the voice, the setting and the acoustic all just perfect. Just don’t ask me to name the aria.In the Spring, we undertook the longest trip we have ever done in Turkey, over 4000 kilometres in total. We retraced our steps down to Antalya and just kept going until the coast t
urns south to mark the eastern end of the Mediterranean. On the way we called in to Heaven and Hell near Anamur on the south coast of Turkey. Just in case you are wondering, Heaven is a very big hole in the ground (think mini Grand Canyon) with a cavern and a ruined Byzantine church at the bottom of several hundred very slippery steps. When we arrived finally back at the top and we recovered our ability to speak, we asked the ticket man if they had made a mistake with the signage as that descent and subsequent climb back up felt more like Hell. “No”, he said, “You must remember it is very hard to enter Heaven…… but it is easy to go to Hell”. And he was right…… Hell was another hole in the ground, but just a stroll by comparison.
The visit to Hatay (Antioch in the Bible) was a trip back in time in more than one sense for me. I last went there just after I first arrived in Turkey in October 1964. It was a weird feeling standing once again, 43 years on, in front of the Church of St Peter (left), said to be the earliest place where Christians met and prayed together in secret. Tradition says that the cave which makes up the church was the property of St Luke the Evangelist.
The museums of Hatay and Gazi Antep house some fabulous mosaics rescued from the ancient city of Zeugma before it was flooded as part of a huge project (known as GAP) to irrigate vast tracts of south eastern Turkey and to develop hydroelectric power to regenerate the region. As we entered the GAP region, the instant change from barren desert to lush green fields came as a visual shock. The museums housing the mosaics are a delight and a credit to the Turkish and international archaeologists who undertook this massive rescue operation. Incidentally, the mosaic on the left may be an unknown gypsy girl….. but some reckon it is Alexandra the Great. I’d love to think it’s Big “A” but take your pick! Şanlı Urfa was a delightfully different kind of place, it has a real Middle Eastern city feel with Arabic and Kurdish rivalling Turkish
as the language of the street and ancient market. The prevailing fashion in headdress was the lilac coloured "puşi" the Turkish version of the arabic keffiyeh. I bought one and can vouch for their efficacy at keeping one cool. I have the lilac one too but, despite plenty of street evidence to the contrary, the man in the bazaar said men must only wear the chequered one – which is why I am not in lilac here.Most famously, Urfa is the birth place of Abraham, known as the father of three religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Not surprisingly then, the most popular
tourist and pilgrimage site is Balikli Gölü, or Fish Lake, the artificial lake which represents the legend of Abraham being cast into the fire by King Nimrod for going around denegrating pagan gods. It seems God turned the flames into water and the burning coals into fish at the critical moment. Abraham was miraculously whisked up into the air at the moment of immolation and landed in a rose bed nearby. The giant carp in the pond are sacred and it is said that anyone foolish enough to eat one will become blind. They must be the chubbiest and most pampered carp in the world.Known as the city of Prophets, you can't it seems kick over a stone in Urfa without finding traces of one - in addition to Abraham, Job and Jethro lived there, Moses passed through, and one Şuayb lived nearby. Şanliurfa even claims endorsement by Jesus himself - allegedly he sent a letter with one of his disciples about the consecration of the city. Don't remember that bit from Sunday School Bible studies - in fact, I don't remember any stories of Jesus writing anything to anyone.
One day we visited Harran which is a stone’s throw from the Syrian border. Harran was a wild place with domed houses like bee hives (cunningly disguised Gift shops in fact, no one actually lives in them any more). The lady on the left is wearing the lilac colour that seems to dominate fashion in the region.
Another high point of the tour was our trip up to Nemrut Daği and its iconic statues. It seems King Antiochus, king of ancient Kommagane, erected the statues in front of a 50 metre tumulus for himself on the peak of Mount Nemrut, some 2100 metres above sea level. Originally the statues were 10 metres tall and, in addition to Antiochus, portraying the main classical gods of Greece and Persia. Earthquakes over the centuries have brought the heads down. The drive up was pretty hairy and the last 800 metre climb on foot was another good test for the heart. We witnessed a very amiable septuagenarian roly-poly American rolling down from the mountain peak. He came to a halt against a handy rock, got up, dusted himself off and carried on photographing the scenery.Apart from traveling, I still do the odd bit of writing, occasionally for a new English language newspaper, the Bodrum Observer. Those of you with time on their hands could look it up on their website, to get a flavour of life here: www.bodrumobserver.com .
Last winter our ebru (marbling) group came together every Friday for a jolly 3 hours of flicking paint around. The result is an even bigger box full of bits of ebru, ranging from the not too bad to the terrible, that I’ll have to find a use for one day.
In July, we had another international dance festival, mainly local and mainly contemporary dance. There was one delightful evening with a company from Korea, which was more folk dancing than ballet, but most enjoyable. The setting was, as always, brilliant: hard up against the wall of the 14th century castle
, formerly home to the Knights of St John. The castle dog appeared on the ramparts of the castle way up above us every night at curtain up and barked for 15 minutes in protest at the invasion of his patch, but despite this and the last call to prayer from the mosque immediately adjacent, ringing out during the quietest moments, we had some superb evenings.At the end of August we had a festival of classical music in a marina in Turgutreis. One real highlight was the Doğuş Children's Orchestra. They were just brilliant. They were made up of the cream of the conservatoires all over Turkey, youngsters aged between 12 and 15 years old. Seems they have to retire from the orchestra when they reach 16! A 15 year old lad knocked off Beethoven's 3rd piano concerto seemingly effortlessly, whilst smiling broadly at the audience and the conductor like he was Winifred Atwell or Russ Conway (if those names ring any bells with anyone reading this!). But the lad was just amazing!
No new pets to replace Jimmy and Josephine. However, I did see this notice in the village the other day. It might be the answer if I don’t want to make a full time commitment to a pet. But will it scare off the pigs?
Well it could only be found in Yalikavak, couldn't it?
