Cukurbagli's Blog   My life in Turkey

Ah! Spring! The time when the sap rises and a boy’s interest turns to…..concrete! Well a boy probably also has other things on his mind and concrete may not be top of the list but beggars can’t be choosers, so, in the absence of something warm, soft and cuddly, I finally got round to making another major improvement that has been on my mind for a couple of years.

My wooden veranda floor has done well to put up with neglect and the ravages of the weather here, being alternately soaked and baked dry during the winter and brought nearly to spontaneous combustion during the summers. Most of the wood is still in good condition however the fixings suffer more than anything. The constant movement of the wood due to large temperature changes plays hell with the security of nails and also breaks screws with the expansion of the wood when it gets wet. Thus I decided to put phase three into operation. I had planned to employ two of my local friends, Suleyman and Ali, to help me and I had a timeframe at the back of my mind however last Tuesday Suleyman told me to dismantle the veranda on Wednesday as they were coming to bring tractor loads of rock to make a foundation for the new patio.

Forced into action I spent all day Wednesday slaving away painstakingly taking it apart in order to have useful wood rather than a pile of broken bits. In all I spent about 12 hours with only a couple of breaks to eat and managed to get it cleared away enough for the stone to laid. It’s a strange phenomenon that happens here, you can sit around and chew the fat for weeks on end sometimes but once one of the guys makes a decision it means total dedication to the job in hand.

Anyway that sets the scene and frustrated as I was about being catapulted into all this back-breaking labour I was pleased that it was being done. Ali had to leave the village here and go up to the yayla in a few days so my thoughts of the three of us mixing concrete by hand and the camaraderie of shared work had to go out of the window to be replaced by a delivery of ready-mix concrete poured into place by boom pump.

I had expected the job to take about three weeks, as I write three days later it is all over bar the shouting, the fat lady has finished the last chorus and I’ve been able to sit around today and recover my wits a bit (not that there are that many to recover anyway) I’ve even had a phone call to talk about “that wood you want to get rid of”!

Here are a couple of pictures, before and after, showing the rock and shuttering (formwork):

and the concrete going off in the evening light. Because the concrete is a base for flat stone being laid on it we didn’t need to smooth it all off to a perfect finish, minor ripples and unevenness are therefore not important.

I have a friend who spends most of her life in the east of the Antalya region in a place called Side. She decided to sell her house there and put it on the market a couple of years ago, since then she has steadily reduced the price until now it is only £53k. For this ridiculously low price some lucky person will get a beautiful villa located in Akdeniz Sitesi just off the Side to Kumkoy road, overlooking a communal swimming pool. Very few foreigners have places on the complex, most are owned by Turkish families – so they are at work all day and the pool is yours! Just a 10 minute walk to the beach and 5 minutes to shops, bars and restaurants. There is a bus stop right outside on the main road by the complex.

Walk along the beach to Old Town Side in 30 minutes or take the dolmus there in 10 minutes for just a couple of Lira.

The villa has 2 bedrooms + 2 bathrooms (one on ground floor and one on first floor) and has planning permission for another 2 bedrooms to be built on the big flat roof however she preferred to use the roof-top as a party area or a romantic place under the stars at night with a glass of wine and someone special.

Both bedrooms and the living room have full air conditioning/heating installed and there are new shutters throughout. Included in the price is a 3-piece suite that doubles up as a double bed and 2 single beds (all with full storage below) a big TV, video, DVD player, microwave, toaster, jug kettle, patio furniture on 3 levels, ground, first floor and roof-top; a little fenced garden all around including pomegranate trees, roses and palm trees. Also included in sale are freestanding wardrobes and kitchen cupboards, gas hob with gas cylinder, water cooler unit, cutlery, glasses, mugs, plates, beach towels, duvets, duvet covers, – – everything you need to move in tomorrow. Here are a couple of pictures:

Seriously people, this is a bargain, I’ve seen it and she is giving it away at this price!

UPDATE 13-6-2011  The house is now sold! Yippeeee!

I’ve been really fed up with with the injury to the fingers of my left hand but, surprise surprise, I can report that most of the detached piece that was sewn back on has re-attached itself. I was convinced that it was going to work so I’m glad that my thoughts have been confounded. There is still quite a bit of discomfort from it but when I hold the hand palm upwards it looks as if I’ve got a black button balanced on the end of the middle finger. As it heals and the black part separates I’m gently trimming it off with a sharp knife, it’s now covering about one third of the original wound area and there is sensation through the black bit.  It’s never going to look too good but I won’t have to lose the end of the finger that is now for sure. It still looks pretty awful though so to save turning your stomachs over I’m not going to post any photographs of it yet, after all one or two of you might be eating while looking at this.

Very upsetting and painful couple of days just passed. The goatherder’s dogs came into the garden on Wednesday morning and of course my two wanted to go and see them. Minnie was no problem because she wasn’t on a lead anyway but when I took off Wilf’s choke chain he lunged forward and started to run off. Unfortunately just about the time he reached top speed I realised that he had the rope around his chest and was pulling hard at it, two of the fingers of my left hand were still in the loop of the choke chain which inevitably tightened ripping off part of my middle finger and causing a cut down to the bone on my third finger. After dancing around in agony for about fifteen seconds I noticed the ripped off part of my finger lying on the veranda so I picked it up and phoned a friend who very kindly came and took me down to Kaş to the doctor. I spent an hour or so getting my third finger stitched up there and then we went to the hospital about five hundred yards away and got the other finger repaired with the bit I’d picked up.

I agonised overnight and decided that Wilf would have to go to the animal shelter in Ağullu and took him there yesterday. I’m really upset about doing this because I love him but he’s now caused three serious injuries and shows no sign of calming down. He rushes down to the gate and scares all of the locals who walk past my house, sooner or later someone is going to complain to the Jandarma (village police) and they will have him shot. He’s already been poisoned a couple of times but I managed to get some yoghurt into him and neutralise it before it killed him so I think he is now in the safest place for him.

Minnie is still with me but I’m sad about Wilf and hope that my injury heals well although I doubt that I’m going to be able to play the guitar for a long time if ever. Having said that Jango Rheinhart did alright with only two and a half fingers didn’t he?

Here’s a picture of Minnie enjoying some warm sunshine on New Year’s Eve.

Happy New Year to everybody, I hope it brings everything you wish for. I was surprised today when a friend phoned me to say that there was a solar eclipse occurring, just goes to show how far off the pulse my finger gets sometimes eh? So I went out have a look with my sunglasses and camera. Of course the sun was still far too strong for me to be able to look directly at it even with the sunglasses so I tried to take some photographs. Nope that was no good either but I’ll post one of them here because a lot of people have said nice things about my photography and I just want to show that I do have some failures.

But one of the photos turned into a rather pleasing abstract what with the lens flare and the colours.

I was walking at the back of the house on the penultimate day of 2010 and heard a buzzing sound. In spring you can often hear it if you are anywhere near the almond trees because of the number of bees around the blossoms, looking up I found that it was bees this time too. There are a couple of young eucalyptus trees that had their little white flowers open and the bees were having a fine old time buzzing around collecting the pollen.

I’m going on a trip to France next week so look out for very different pictures before long.

The house is now sold I am very glad to say.

My black dog Alfred picked up some poison this morning while we were walking, he found a small polythene bag and was chewing it, he wouldn’t let me get near enough to him to take it off him. On the way back to the house he started to stagger and then ran off into the bushes. He was dead soon after.

One of the villagers puts poison around the top of the village to kill wild boar. Why he does it I don’t know, there aren’t enough to do much harm to anything and so far he has killed about seven or eight dogs to my knowledge. I imagine the couple of brain cells he has must have collided with each other and sparked off an idea sometime in the past. Something has got to be done about him.

So it’s a very sad day at my place today, Alfie was a real softie, scared of nearly everybody and everything, I will miss him a lot.

R.I.P. Alfred

Last Tuesday I went to the World Eye Centre hospital in Antalya and had laser surgery on my eyes to correct astigmatism that I have suffered with all my life. I now no longer wear spectacles. just normal sunglasses. It was a strange feeling having it done, not painful, just a slight discomfort and lots of unusual and new sensations. As soon as the operation had finished I could tell that my sight would be better but it wasn’t until the protective contact lenses came out the next morning that I realised just how much better it would be. I was perfectly able to drive myself home and since then my sight has fluctuated slightly (as they said it would) as the muscles relearn how to adjust and focus. I can read a newspaper without reading glasses and see details on the mountain opposite my home that I could not even see with glasses before. To say I am delighted would be a gross understatement, I am also sad that it wasn’t available when I was in my teens, how different would my life have been?

If you have ever considered undergoing this treatment I would wholeheartedly recommend it, providing you can find a good hospital. The cost here in Turkey was about 1,200 Euro for both eyes.

Being warm here in summer is quite normal, temperatures of 40C and higher happen regularly but I’m posting this picture of a weather forecast site because I like the terminology. Not for these folk to say ‘very warm’ or very sunny’, check out Friday’s forecast.

Now THAT’S what I call a forecast, tell it like it is lads.