You can’t trust a tortoise! Just when you think you’ve made a little friend because you’ve fed him some water a few times and he doesn’t run away from you now, even rescued him from the jaws of death, well the jaws of my new dog anyway, and put him back on his feet, even given him some tomato and lettuce to munch, what does he do? He bites off your flowers at the bottom of the stem, that’s what he does, ungrateful little bugger! Well the next time the dog is harrassing him he can fight his own battle!
Sitting on my smaller patio at the end of the house late a few nights ago I spotted a dark shape moving around. It was a roundish thing about nine inches long (no I’m not metricated yet) and shuffled around sniffing and rootling in the grass. It was a hedgehog! It’s the first live one I’ve seen here in seven years, I’ve seen the odd dead one on the road but never a live one before, I’m absolutely delighted that he/she chooses to live here or at least visit for the time being. I can’t leave food out for him because of attracting mice and rats so I’ll sit out and wait to see it again and feed it then, it didn!t want the carrot that I gave it, maybe I’ll get some meaty dog food.
As I was coming out of town the other day I spotted a display of solar water equipment on the back of large pick-up truck. I stopped and
had a chat with the salesman, the upshot of that being a team of guys fitted it on a tower at my house last Tuesday afternoon. The whole set up including the tower cost me 1200 lira (about £430 at today’s exchange rate). I’m well pleased with it, the water is scalding hot and I’m looking forward to a big reduction in my electricity bills now that I’m not running the electric water heater 24/7/365. I’m also looking forward to some long hot baths during next winter. Click the picture to see the large version.
My friend Suleyman has had a truck as long as I’ve known him. For some years now he has wanted to give up the heavy job of loading and driving it and get a car that he do a bit of private hire driving with, a few airport transfers and the like. Yesterday he came up my drive tooting the horn on his new car pleased as punch with himself. It’s a 2002 Fiat Doblo with 151,000 kilometers on the clock and he got it for TL14,500. It’s very clean and tidy and looks like he got a bargain.
Cukurbagli's Blog 
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