Terry's Christmas Ramble 2011

She was about my age, stooped and wearing billowing, floral pantaloons, several layers of mismatched woollies and a daintily embroidered cream head scarf. She was carrying a bouquet of empty plastic paint buckets, an enormous bundle of thick polythene sheeting and a sleepy grandchild. She was following her husband who was also about my age, also stooped, and wearing an old suit and a well-darned cardigan. He was carrying three long thin bamboo canes.

He greeted me as they plodded purposefully up my track. This could mean only one thing – it is olive gathering time. Hours later, in the failing light, I saw him in the next door field, still up in the branches of a gnarled olive tree, thwacking and flailing around with his poles. His wife, bent double and assisted by the family, was scrabbling around below, dodging the cascading twigs, leaves and insects dead and alive, as she gathered up the precious black shiny olives. Next time, when you reach for your bottles of olive oil in Waitrose just remember, if it has “virgin” in the title, this is how it must have started life.

Here in Yali, olive gathering is just one reminder of the onset of autumn. The season has felt much longer this year. The start of Ramadan, (advancing about 10 days every year) this time fell in an extremely hot August; 70 days after Ramadan, Kurban Bayram, the Feast of the Sacrifice took place. Thus the season was extended by a week or two. 

After Kurban Bayram, the tourists left, the wind dutifully turned round to the north, summer elided gently into autumn and thermals were taken out and inspected for moth. Village streets, crowded with tourists until merely a few days ago, are now deserted; little shops, cafes and bars are boarded up for the winter, the Turkish version of Virginia creeper sinks into deepest red, and yellowing figs leaves carpet the ground. The villagers breathe a collective exhausted sigh as they drift into seasonal hibernation.

How I wish cows and wild boar would hibernate but they don’t! The shock of green after the first rains of autumn encourages the animals to migrate to my orchard, where they gorge themselves on the fresh vegetation. As regular readers know, I “host” the odd cow in winter. Cows are called domestic animals, and yet they are certainly not (how shall I put it this?) potty trained. Why always at the garden entrance? Why just where I step out the car, to shut the gate, in the dark? Currently the cow (pregnant again) is fostering two orphaned bovine teenagers - they also favour the gate area.

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Regarding  the wild boar, you might expect from my frequent moans that we are on first name terms but until this year I had never actually set eyes on them. In July, though, I came across a whole sounder (or is it a singular?) of them - Mr Porker, Mrs Porker and about a dozen little Porkers - mincing down my lane as I drove up behind them late one night. The whole family had scaled an 8 foot, vertical embankment, before I could even say “bacon sandwich”. 

As

 if I have not got enough to keep me out of trouble, early in January, in a burst of keep fit enthusiasm, I bought a second hand Nintendo console with all the Wii Fit games. For a month or so I persevered with tennis and bowling, step aerobics and hoola hoop - as a child of the 50s, I excelled at this - and of course the balance exercises, including yoga.

Yoga was, I have to say, a challenge. Take the “Tree” pose for example.   

Now, if you are feeling strong, try to imagine me attempting this, in my study, in my local (off-white, woolly, itchy, smelling of moth balls) thermals. “You are doing fine”, the svelte , self righteous on-screen trainer purrs, “But you seem to be swaying a bit”. Swaying? I am careening round my study, bouncing off the bookshelves, the walls and the piano, in my vain attempt to remain vertical. Clearly the trainer and I are not in the same room. As a friend said, Wii Fits are the Breville Toasted Sandwich makers of their day except they gather dust next to the DVD player rather in the loft. Well, that’s where mine is anyway!

My new Kindle, on the other hand gathers no dust. I’ve said before, access to books here has always been a problem. No Smiths or Waterstones, no charity shop or library. So it’s down to Mr Amazon. He tries his best but the local postal service is a major stumbling block. He also feels compelled to charge about £8 p&p which soon mounts up. And besides, my books are rapidly taking over the house. The Kindle solves these problems at a stroke – and Mr Amazon even sells Kindle gift vouchers, thus solving birthday present problems too.

I m

entioned H3A last year, I think. Herodotus Third Age Academy – so called after a local lad who made a bit of a name for himself as the Father of History - is based on the idea of the University of the Third Age and is the only one of its kind in Turkey. See http://www.hero3a.com/ to learn what we get up to. 

 One important activity is our reading group but again we had the problem of obtaining books. Not any more – Kindle really comes into its own, and I can make notes on it too.

After our meetings, I record the views of our reading group on one of my blogs so if you want to know what we think of, say, Birds without Wings by Louis de Bernières or Portrait of a Turkish Family by Irfan Orga, or Forty Rules of Love by Elif Shafak, or From the Holy Mountain by William Dalrymple, or Arundhati Roy’s splendid God of Small Things, or Catch 22 (that was a trip too far down nostalgia lane for some of us), you had better click onto http://terryinturkey1.wordpress.com. If you are not interested, just pass swiftly on.

We’ve moved on a bit in our ebru group. We now call ourselves The Ebru Ensemble and last

summer we organised a one day exhibition in the garden of one of our members. It was a great success. “Short and sweet” is probably the best way to describe it – at just a few hours long, it was the shortest exhibition of the summer but attended by over 80 people. You can see more images of the day at the abovementioned blog. Short though it was, some attending managed to drink us all but dry whilst “admiring the art”; a number of visitors kindly bought some of our work. A couple of us, having become a bit bored with producing yet more classic ebru tulips, decided to use our vast collections of bits of ebru to make collages. I came up with collages featuring a few batty animals, Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, and a couple of janissaries – not in the same collage.Another one was based on a view across our bay and I was especially pleased when this one sold. Next year we are planning to have a couple more exhibitions in Yalikavak, one in a disused water cistern.

Ebru was very popular in Northern Europe from the 17^th century for lining and covering handmade books. In a pleasurable revival of that tradition, my good friend Hugh in Suffolk takes some of my ebrus and uses them in his bespoke book making, book binding and book repair business. If you are looking for a very special diary, journal or a beautifully bound version of your biography, Hugh is your man.

I would like to say that my piano playing is coming along in leaps and bounds..... but then sometimes we cannot say what we like and simultaneously tell the truth. The truth is that making progress on the piano project is at the top of my New Year’s resolution list.

On to real music now and this year we had the usual splendid summer of festivals, in Turgutreis, Gumusluk, and of course the Bodrum Ballet Festival.

Turgutreis festival began with a wonderful concert by the Tchaikovsky Moscow Radio Symphony orchestra with the magical cellist Mischa Maisky playing the Rococco Variations. Vladimir Fedoseyev breathed new life into the Polovtsian Dances, ably assisted by several Turkish matrons behind me who got carried away, thought they’d joined the cast of “Kismet”, and began to sing along - “takka myand ama sitiranja n paradayz” – at the appropriate moment.

G

umusluk festival had its moments and one of them was the final concert after the series of piano master classes. The youngsters taking part were terrifyingly good, not just with the standard repertoire but also with some Turkish contemporary pieces, full of violent, piano-leg-buckling, percussive passages interspersed with rests so long an elderly soloist could die in one of them.

T

he Bodrum Ballet festival as usual was a very international affair. There were six ballet companies taking part, two home-grown ones from Istanbul and Samsun, and four foreign ones, from St Petersburg, Schwerin, in North Germany, from Washington DC and one from Barcelona. The Russian company’s Don Quixote was outstanding – sadly, the German company’s Carmen seemed very staid by comparison. Of the two Turkish State companies, the Samsun State Ballet’s “The Call of Rumi” about the 13^th century mystic Mevlana, was spectacular except for the excessive use of dry ice so we spent most of the time peering through a fog. Another highlight was the Washington Ballet’s Rock & Roll, including a piece choreographed by Christopher Bruce, danced brilliantly to the Rolling Stones number “Red Rooster”.
 

As extra entertainment, during the interval of the American evening, a local loony got up on stage to entertain the guest of honour, the American ambassador to Turkey, with a “Yankee Go Home” style diatribe. We were mildly amused until we noticed how long it took the police, gendarme and the private security to react. Had the man been armed he had time to pick off half the audience. Now you don’t get that at Covent Garden.

It is always good to catch up with old friends and this year it was a special pleasure to welcome my friend and former colleague from the early days at Fairfield, Chris Taylor. She spent four very wet days in April exploring Istanbul before coming across the Sea of Marmara to Bursa where we met up. After a day touring the city, we drove back down to Bodrum, breaking the journey so we could visit the amazing ruins at Ephesus.The weather people pulled out the stops in Bodrum so we were able to relax and enjoy the Spring sunshine, touring around the area, eating outdoors and catching up on more years than either of us cares to admit to. Splendid!

F

nally, a couple of things that made me giggle this year.

Firstly, reflecting my love of Wales:

• On a beautiful summer's day, two American tourists were driving through Wales. They stopped for lunch at Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwyllllantysiliogogoch,and one of the tourists asked the waitress, 'Before we order, I wonder if you could settle an argument for us. Can you pronounce where we are, very,very, very slowly?'
  The girl leaned over and said:'Burrr … gurrr … king'

Second: 

• Yali abounds with lovely examples of “Tinglish” (Turkish English). The owner of this little boat got his words right – but he just needs to brush up on his euphemisms!

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Merry Christmas and a healthy, happy and peaceful 2012

A GENTLE STROLL TO THEANGELA

Recently, we have been enjoying something of an Indian Summer; the Turks call it a Pastrami Summer (Pastırma Yazı) because, in the ancient Anatolian city of Kayseri, they reckon it is the ideal weather for hanging out their famous pastrami to dry.

In Bodrum, the last of the tourists have gone, the oppressive heat has faded but the sun still shines warm and inviting.

On such a glorious Pastrami day a couple of Sundays ago, I had an early morning call from my friend Ursula. "We planned to go for Brunch today" she said, "But do you feel like going on an organised walk instead?". In fact I'd already read about this walk – it was arranged by the Heroditus Third Age Academy (a local variant on the University of the Third Age organisation). The blurb said we would be going to visit an ancient (3,000 year old) Lelegian city called Theangela, a few kilometres outside Bodrum. "Some gentle hill walking, wear sensible walking shoes, bring water, camera and binoculars", it said.

Well, with the new diet scheduled to start the next day I thought a bit of "gentle hill walking" would be just the thing to set the tone – give my body the right signal that things were about to change – so I agreed to meet Ursula within the hour.

We reached the rendezvous, and a multi-national party of some 28 of us, most of us on the wrong side of 55, plus dogs, drove in convoy to the start of the walk. Heads turned in stirred curiosity as we drove through several traditional villages on the way: could there be a wedding or circumcision party they'd missed out on – for round here, streams of cars generally means one or the other.

After passing through stunning Autumnal scenery for some kilometres we parked in a convenient lay-by close to the start of the walk. We listened as someone apparently more accustomed to walking than us, gave us a briefing on how to breath whilst climbing up hill: "slowly in to a count of 8, hold for 4, out to a count of 8". This was beginning to sound like something more than "gentle hills".

Off we set, having been exhorted to take it gently. Of course, the experienced walkers at the front set off at a lick, and those of us behind tried to keep up.... just to show we could, which we couldn't. However, it didn't matter because the pine forest setting was magnificent. The first rains of autumn had washed the earth clean and revealed, as if it were a restored Renaissance masterpiece, nature's canvas of forest greens and warm wholesome browns.

Here and there, the orangey-red mountain strawberries, like carefully crafted marzipan fruit, vied for attention with the exquisitely perfect purple-tinged white winter crocuses that stood proud along the track and on the forest floor.

We were following a forest track, a fire-break, that zig-zagged through pine trees in long, muscle-cramping ascending slopes across the face of this....let's face it, despite the blurb, this mountain. "Hill" it was certainly not! The leaders disappeared off round the next bend, and then the next, leaving the rest of us to be diverted by the bushes of mountain strawberries and the wild winter crocuses.

Various varieties of wild mushrooms were spotted, including some wonderfully sculpted specimens, looking as though they had been created by the props department for a Harry Potter film. Heated debates ensued between the various experts as to which ones could be safely consumed and which would see you off before you had got to 3 of your breathing cycle. As for me, I stayed out of it. I put my trust in the local supermarket when it comes to mushrooms – they may not taste wonderful but at least you live to see the next day.

So onwards and upwards!

Selçuk, the founder of Heroditus 3^rd Age Academy, kept us going by assuring us that we were "nearly there"..... and then again 15 breathy minutes later, that it was "just round the next bend". I was reminded of my father on family outings when I was a child whose standard answer to the whining "Is it much further" from the back seat was "It's just over that next hill".... it never was!

But eventually we reached the grassy summit and were surprised to find a quite substantial house up there, complete with an ex-taxi parked outside. No sign of of the driver so no chance of a lift back down the mountain I guess!

The only signs of Theangela was a mass of fallen debris in amongst which could be seen the odd recognisable bit of ancient wall. One of our archaeological experts had her book which indicated that Theangela marked the outermost limit of King Mausolus's satrapy. It seems he found a city of this size, right on the edge of his domain, too big to handle so he cut it in half by a great big wall. Well, there was a bit of wall, no one could deny that - but even our guides had serious doubts that we had found Theangela.

King Mausolos got fame by giving his name to something called the Mausoleum of Halicarnasus – one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World - which these days is to be found just down the road from Migros supermarket in Bodrum.

So we sat up on this peak for a bit, admiring the fabulous views and sharing mandarins and a packet of biscuits which someone had thoughtfully brought along. One packet between 28 (plus dogs) on top of a mountain - loaves and fishes came to mind, but no one seemed up to the task.

Then we retraced our steps back down, taking care not to lose any stragglers who were distracted by the prospect of wild mushroom risotto for supper.

And yes, it is true, going down is much harder on the knees than going up. At the bottom, a vendor of tempting Turkish sweets and pastries had pushed his cart out to this remote spot, sensing a sales opportunity. "How did you know we were here?" someone asked. "I was tipped off" he smiled. A sticky pastry would have been the perfect end to a superb day, but I remembered I was signalling to my body that change was afoot..... and resisted.