When
I was writing last year’s Ramble, there was a youth in my garden with a JCB
rearranging the boulders. It turned out
he was creating terraces, the better to conserve water for the ancient olive
trees that grow there. No doubt the
olive trees were delighted, but I was not so thrilled. The steep slope between the garden gate and
my house, a distance of about 300 yards, meant that, when it rained, the newly
disturbed earth formed a mud-slick which slithered its way down the path to my
front door. Still, I got quite nifty at
slaloming up and down the slope in my Tofas - a Turkish hero of a car with the
motor of a Fiat.
The
great wall of Geriş
has done the trick - no more wild boars in my garden! They
are still around though. I nearly hit
one on the track outside my gate. The size of a large sheep, he bounded over a
neighbour’s wall and, in the blink of an eye, he had scaled the eight foot embankment
on the other side. A second or two
earlier and the bonnet of my car would have been his stepping stone. Even my Tofas would have felt that one. To remind me of my years being plagued by
porkers, my dear friend Carol sent me a wonderful metal sculpture of a wild boar
for Christmas. Here he is – all he
needs is a name. Any suggestions?
As
if the industrialised landscaping of my garden was not enough, the track
outside the gate also got a make-over.
The local council was persuaded by a famous Turkish newsreader, who had
built a retreat nearby, that he and his rich Istanbul friends couldn’t risk
their shiny Mercedes 4x4s on our dirt track.
The Council caved in, fearing an
adverse mention on national news perhaps, and surfaced the track with “concrete
parquet” - whilst Mr Big was away of course.
For the three weeks it took, we were more or less trapped in our houses
by piles of parquet paving. I’m no
expert, but could the slow progress have arisen from trying to bed concrete
blocks on sand, on a slope, in the pouring rain? Surprise, surprise, the sand kept getting
washed away. The result is a surface
that makes the Big Dipper at Blackpool Pleasure Beach look like a lesson in
flatness by comparison. Oh what fun!
When
Landlord told me “Sabri Usta” was going to decorate the outside of the house, I
knew what to expect. I should explain that
“Usta” (pronounced oostah) originally
meant something like “Master” as in the master craftsmen of the medieval guilds. Stonemasons, builders, painters, carpenters (even
barbers) here still use the old terms. Youngsters
started as a çırak (apprentice), progessed to kalfa
(journeyman) and some became ustas. Presumably in the
past, there was a guild mechanism that regulated this progression but now it seems the term usta is often merely honorific. Younger workers might call their older
colleague “Mehmet Usta”, simply out of respect.
A cynic might say that the usta uses the title to justify higher rates;
his customer uses it to flatter the usta into dropping his price. Rarely does
it guarantee a higher standard of skill.
Sabri usta arrived in a battered
transit van, with his wife and young daughter.
A man about my age, he settled down to chat with Uncle about the finer
points of the job whilst his family unloaded the van, set up the camping stove,
brewed the tea, borrowed my buckets and step ladders, mixed paint and generally
made ready for the usta to perform. In the three days he was there, I picked up some
fascinating püf nokta (tricks of the
trade) from this usta. For example:
always use a tiny rusty old spatula
tied loosely to a 10 foot bendy pole to remove flaking paint; or if obviously blown plaster doesn’t actually
fall off when you touch it with a brush, paint over it; or if
1½ tons of logs are blocking a wall you ought to paint, get the tenant to move
them immediately (he’s your çırak, your apprentice) or, if no-one is present, paint
around them. I opted to move
the logs. The list could
go on… and he charged Uncle a fortune.
Lord, save us from ustas.
But
by chance I really did learn something from Sabri usta. When he brushed some “iffy” plaster a bit
too hard, it fell off, revealing an old stone wall underneath. Most of my house is modern, made of concrete,
bricks and plaster, but we discovered that its foundations are the remains of a
traditional Bodrum stone house. This
was confirmed recently, when I evicted sundry wildlife and rubbish from the
cellar below the bottom terrace so I could use it as a store. The back wall of
the cellar was made of stone and in perfect condition. When I mentioned it to my neighbour, he came
up with some photographs of the original house (right). Interestingly the old
fig tree in the picture now abuts my terrace. If they had restored it, I might now
be sitting in a much warmer if somewhat smaller house. With their pitched roofs
and thick walls, these old houses are drier and more energy efficient. The larger
ones used the ground floor as a byre in winter, the cows providing free under
floor heating. “Smell? What smell? Sheep don’t smell” a shepherd
smelling very strongly of sheep once told me indignantly. Also true of cows
perhaps?
But
did I fare any better than Uncle when, later in the summer, I hired someone to
decorate the interior of the house? Of
course not! The person I hired I’ve known for years so he thinks of me
as “his mate”. As his mate, his çırak, I am supposed to admire his
skills with a paint roller – after all it takes a special talent to create that
narrow rag-rolled smudge effect where the coloured wall meets the white ceiling. As his mate, it is my job to prepare
the room beforehand – remove pictures, deploy dust sheets etc - and my job to clear
up afterwards and restore order, before preparing the next day’s work areas. (In fairness, he did help occasionally, like
replacing this clock on the wall but look closely). As his mate, I’m supposed to be understanding
when he drops paint down the length of a roller blind and then wipes it off
with a dirty rag (“it was the roller, Terry
mate”). When the job is done, as his mate in the other
sense, I am supposed to nod approvingly and cough up when he tries to charge me
double the standard rate. “Well you know
how much Uncle paid Sabri usta, Terry mate”.
Not all paint spots are bad. As
most readers know by now, I spend hours flicking paint around as a hobby – it’s
called ebru in Turkish and marbelling in English. Our group, The Ebru Ensemble, had another
exhibition in the pretty garden of one of our members this year. There
are worse ways, I suppose, of spending a
couple of hours on a warm Sunday afternoon than wandering around a shady garden
with a glass of rosé looking at ebrus.
For many images of the exhibition
and more about ebru see The Ebru
Ensemble Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/theebruensemble .
Once again we had our summer feast of
music. As a curtain raiser, in the Roman
amphitheatre in Bodrum, we had a concert by a chamber orchestra composed of
amateur and professional musicians. The opening piece, Handel’s Trumpet Concerto,
came with an accompaniment not envisaged by George Frederick, a spring breeze which
the unnecessary microphones amplified into a bass-laden gale. Two soloists resorted to pegging their music between
their stands like washing on a line to stop it flying away. Soon the music stands were sailing across the
platform. Later, a huge beetle joined
the concert, landing close to the feet of an elderly woman cellist – the audience was spell-bound
but, before it reached her foot, it took
off again. A few circuits later, it narrowly missed being
swallowed by the young baritone who was midway through the Papageno-Papagana
duet. The baritone – a sight indeed
in his long shorts, multi-coloured bird feathers and pink flip-flops – didn’t
flinch but when it landed next to his foot, the tension was palpable. Would
he or wouldn’t he? He stayed his flip-flop and the beetle
survived. What a star!
Turgutreis
classical music festival opened with the Turkish Presidential Symphony Orchestra
and soloists Angela Gheorghiu and her fellow Rumanian, a
young tenor called Teodor Ilincai. Angela
looked stunning in an electric blue ball gown and suitably operatic
makeup. Teodor looked scared to death. In their duets, Diva Angela would grab his
hand when he least expected it and clutch it to her décolletage; the big screens showed his eyes anxiously denying
all responsibility for his errant hand. When she went in for a mock kiss, his face pleaded
“But Angela, we didn’t do this in rehearsal”.
With each costume change, Angela became ever bolder and when she slunk
on in a white draped Greek goddess number, was it the frock or Teordor’s final
undoing that got the applause? We had
seven encores, which included Teodor’s impersonation of Mario Lanza singing “Be my Lerve” and Angela‘s version of, so
she said, “'the most beautiful piece any composer ever wroted (sic)' ‘o mio
babbino caro'. After the last encore,
Diva Angela made impatient shooing gestures at us as she led a visibly shaken
Teodor off stage.
I
have often mentioned my concerns about safety at the Gümüşlük festival. Now, the festival has changed venue from the
old Byzantine chapel to an even more ancient historical site. This year it took place in the atmospheric
setting of a stone quarry near the beach.
It was from this quarry in 353 BC
that the stone was hewn for the tomb of King Mausolus; later known as the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus,
the tomb was regarded by Antipater of
Sidon as one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. The quarry is located less than 10 minutes’
drive from my house but I did not even know it existed. The organisers had arranged raked seating, a
large platform area, a bar and even a computerised box office – not bad
considering there is neither electricity nor water nearby.
The honey-coloured cliffs, which
remain as the king’s workers probably left them 2,350 years ago, tower above
the stage and provide a perfect backdrop, both visually and acoustically for
the music. It was a magical experience
to listen to Pierre
Réach playing the Goldberg Variations or the Endellion Quartet and Gulsin Onay
performing the Schumann Piano Quintet as the moon rose above the cliffs. Incidentally,
a few weeks prior to this event, Gulsin Onay had been amongst many Turkish artistes who lent their support
to the protesters in Gezi Park. For
many, her performance of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata under a full moon, is an
abiding memory of those alarming but inspiring days. However,
“inspiring” isn’t the word I’d use about an Istanbul university a cappella Jazz
Choir that also took part in the festival. I enjoy jazz and was hoping for some really
clever innovative music – a cappella versions of Walls of Jericho don’t count - but maybe a cappella’s just not for
me.
As the festivals around here have grown in
quality and prestige, they have become “must be seen at” events for nouveau
riche Turks who now descend upon the area in droves during the summer. Like parvenu the world over, they have all of
the money and none of the taste. They don’t come for the music of course, or so
it seems, for they talk loudly throughout the concert and graze their smart
phones for entertainment. Their
favourite playground is the new marina here in Yali. Built by an extraordinarily rich Azerbaijani
- with its huge yachts, so-called high-end shops, outrageously expensive food
and drinks, marina taxis (helicopters) and a beach venue called, without a hint
of irony, The Billionaires’ Club – it is vulgarity at its worst. What’s happened to the little fishing
village I settled in 14 years ago?
In May,
my good friend Christine came over and we had a splendid time touring around
the Turkish Lake district. First Pamukkale, named after the “cotton wool tower”
rock formations there. We slithered and
slipped our way bare-foot up the wet, mineral rich rocks, and swam in an
ancient thermal pool. We visited nearby
Aphrodisias, renowned for its academy for sculptors, where I checked out the
workmanship (see first photo). On to Lake
Eğirdir, staying in the quirky but totally delightful Charly’s Pension http://www.charlyspension.com/ . Christine bravely drove us
up a scary narrow mountain road to visit the ancient city of Sagalassos. Dramatically
set high on the terraced slopes of White Mountain it is one of the most
important ancient sites in the Mediterranean area. Famous for once repulsing
the great Alexander in 333 BC, Sagalassos is exciting to archaeologists because
its remote mountain location deterred later settlers from using it as a source
of building material. (This happened to the Halicarnassus Mausoleum; the
Knights of St John plundered the ruins to build their castle).The picture
(left shows the magnificent Nymphaeum, a sort of municipal fountain. Impressive!.
Speaking of fountains and water, my domestic
water comes from a well which was up near the gate. To fill the tanks on my roof, I had to trek
up to the well and start the motor…. such fun, especially when the water dried up
mid-shower! This well was running dry and recently some men with a huge
drilling rig arrived to drill a new one.
Uncle’s nephew, a water diviner, found water about 30 metres from my
front door and 140 metres underground and drilling began. I knew it would be noisy and messy but I had
not reckoned with the ocean of grey foam - a by-product of the drilling process
- which engulfed my garden and half the orchard. The drillers even wore fisherman’s waders to slop
around in this stuff. They struck water
at 190 metres and I now have a well nearer the house.
Our H3A reading groups continue to keep the
little grey cells active: our non-fiction
reading ranged over subjects as diverse as the fall of Constantinople in 1453,
the “moral molecule” oxytocin and what a palaeontologist has termed “our inner
fish”; in fiction we travelled from Texas with Lonesome Dove to Australia with Illywaker
and Lillian’s Story via Holland with Girl with a Pearl Earring. But undoubtedly my favourite was a real gem
of a book called The Elegance of the
Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery. As the
blurb says,”Resistance is futile … you
may as well buy it before someone recommends it”.
Finally, I have a new skill to offer – hamster
habitat design! Some months ago, Metin
bought a hamster and naturally it came in a small cage. The problem was that Pış Pış is easily bored and bored
hamsters gnaw at their cages and try to escape. The answer?
A bigger and more entertaining home for him. Commercial hamster homes are very expensive,
so we had a go at making one ourselves, with the aid of a number of sites on
the internet. The result is one happy
active hamster who no longer dreams of being a little Houdini
MERRY
CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY, HEALTHY AND PEACEFUL 2014
And now for a Christmas Singalong
(you know the tune)
Mud
slides and foam slicks and ustas and
hamsters
Hedgehogs
and bodgers and roads built by gangsters
Cotton
wool castles, Gezi chapullings*
These
are a few of the year’s many things
Stone
walls and deep wells and dark dingy cellars
Sopranos and tenors and choir a
cappellas
Paint
spots of ebru and quarries for kings
These
are a few of the year’s many things
Posh
marinas, teasing divas, Billionaires’ Club, no jest
Then
I remember it’s old Yali I’m in,
And
say to myself “Well, I’m blessed!”
