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Taking the big rubbish up to the tip in my pick-up is always a bit of an adventure for me. First there is the possibility of getting a puncture in one of the tyres because of all the broken glass there and then there is the conversation that I know will happen when they see me. It’s nice and the people up there are always welcoming, like everyone in Turkey really, their hospitality is legendary.
I took the first load up on Monday and had a chat with Mehmet, Ekrem and his boy. They come from Diyarbakır in the east of Turkey. I find these guys to be very helpful and always ready to smile so I count them among my friends here. Mehmet often says a few words to me in English, imagine a guy working in a rubbish tip in UK being able to speak Turkish eh? I took the remaining stuff up there today. The roofing material that I took was being put aside to use on the roofs of their own place. They build their own shanty type places with what they find amongst the rubbish or people give them so they were happy for me to bring it.
When I drove back past their shacks the children shouted to me so I stopped and took a couple of photos. Here they are, the little one always makes me laugh, she stands there so sure of herself.
Actually I had tried earlier in the day to take the stuff to the tip but was thwarted in my plan by some of the goatherders who were taking their herd up to the summer pastures in the mountains. They were all over the road and I couldn’t be bothered to disturb them by trying to push through, I wasn’t in any hurry so I went back home and had lunch.
Everyone in Kaş is working hard getting things ready for the tourist season and the new marina in is steadily taking shape. There are more pontoons ready now and work on the buildings is progressing quickly. There is a new road by-passing the marina too.
At this time of year the broom plant is in full bloom. There are fantastic patches of this plant all over the place and their wonderful yellow flowers are almost blinding in their intensity.
Halfway through my breakfast it occurred to me that it might make a photograph. I like the colours.
Last year I went to Izmir for the weekend. I’ve posted this photograph before but I like it so I’m posting it again. We were on a ferry going across Izmir bay in the evening, just in time to catch a nice sunset.
While I was over in Izmir I had a trip over to Çeşme, playground of the rich and famous. Anyway a friend of mine over there gave me some seeds from a few plants in her garden, I got round to planting them this spring and this is how one type came up. I thought it was interesting that the first pair of leaves were rounded and the next had jagged edges.
This happens a lot in nature I imagine but I thought this was quite a good example and I found it interesting. Trouble is I can’t remember what the mature plant looked like so I’m looking forward to watching them grow.
At this time of year when I’m out in the garden there is quite a bit of it going on here and there. Not the kind of bonking you’re thinking about though. This is part of the mating ritual of the tortoise. Lots of tortoises shelter for the winter amongst the bushes at the south end of the garden and they are keen to make some babies when they wake up in spring.
The male follows the trail of a female and when he catches up with her he gets up close and starts ramming her shell with his shell. It makes a dull “bonk” sound. It must be a very amorous thing for him to do and obviously it gets the female in the right mood too judging by the number of tortoises around here. I can’t tell you how it develops into mating because I haven’t seen it, I’ll take a chair next time I hear them and sit and watch what happens.
I could say they breed like rabbits but I think they might be offended by that, however there are plenty of them and more coming every year. The first spring that I was in residence here I numbered them when I found them and put them outside the fence, I got fed up when I reached about number thirty five and gave up. They all came back anyway.
The gestation period, that is the period between mating and laying of eggs is between three weeks and three years apparently. Waiting for conditions to be conducive I suppose. Some of the females lay their eggs in my sand pile and between eight and twelve weeks later they hatch. I’ve only seen a couple of the newly hatched ones, mainly because they seem to hatch at night and scurry off into the undergrowth until their shells harden. The traces of their egress from the sand pile are pretty obvious though.
I’ve been doing a bit more to my drive lately, laying more flat stone on a concrete bed, should be strong enough for a truck to drive over it by the time I’m finished. As I sit here typing now my shoulder muscles are letting me know that I’ve done some work today. It’s a nice feeling to be tired because of doing some physical work. Today being Sunday I took it easy and only did a bit.
Getting my car tested, Araç Muayene in Turkish.
07.45 Arrive at Erol’s garage where the testers set up their mobile test station. The trailer with the rolling road inside it was left there last night and there are a few cars and people hanging around. A guy that I know says to put my registration number on a piece of paper they have on someone’s windscreen. This is the list for the order we get tested in. It’s a beautiful morning, clear blue sky, slightly crisp and cold. I’m fourteenth on the list. I wander along the road and take a couple of photographs. Some lads with a new motorbike ask me how long it takes and what time they will start testing, I say they will probably start at 9.30, they look disappointed. We pass the time of day, they want to practice their English. They ask me how old I am, how much money I get for my pension and how many children I have.
08.45 The testing trailer unfolds to the warble of a warning siren and flashing red lights. The little crowd steps back and one or two people nod sagely and explain how it all works to their friends and what is going to happen next. Meanwhile the world around carries on, Mustafa’s carpentry workshop next door wanders into life, Omer’s restaurant chimney issue’s smoke in a vertical line indicating that tea will be ready soon and people start passing by going about their daily life.
09.00 Apart from setting up nothing much has happened yet. The air of expectation among the crowd has become more subdued and some people further down the list have retired to their cars to catch up on their sleep while they wait. When dealing with official administrative tasks the average Turk in this area seems to have an infinite capacity for waiting. There are probably people in the cities and towns that are impatient but around my village at least there never seems to be a rush. At traffic lights however the story is completely different. Any gap is used to squeeze to the front and line up four or five abreast.
09.30 The first car gets looked at by the testers. Ten minutes to do the test then wait for the certificate, looks like I’ll be here till lunchtime. I go to my car to catch up on some sleep.
09.50 A guy leans in through the passenger window and asks me what number on the list I am. Fourteen I tell him, his car is parked right behind me. He says no-one told him to put his registration number on the list until just now so he will be here all day. I sympathise but stifle a chuckle. I know I shouldn’t be amused but sometimes you can’t help it, that was me a few years ago. He asks me how old I am, how much money do I get for a pension and how many children I have.
10.35 My documentation is done, I pay the fee and go back to wait in the car. Mustafa from the carpentry workshops stops by to say hello.
Kas area had a new series of registration numbers alloted to it about eighteen months ago. The numbers used to 07 Y **** but now it’s 07 SA* *** so you see some some people driving around with 07 SAD *** or SAG etc. I saw a middle aged woman with a SAG plate a couple of days ago, I don’t think I’d like that much.
11.20 My estimate of getting the car looked at by lunchtime might be a little optimistic, fingers crossed. I wonder how the dogs are doing at home, it’s quite warm in the sun now but they’ve got plenty of water and can get out of the direct sun. A couple of people have dived off to get lunch somewhere and if they’re not back I might be done sooner.
12.40 They didn’t come back in time and I was done sooner, now I have the pass certificate and little pink sticker on my front number plate. Off home for lunch now, thumbs up to the lads with the motor bike, yippeeee!
Sitting in the tea garden (çay bahçesi) in Kaş with a friend today I was treated to a demonstration of useful mass communication. My friend was in the middle of a sentence when the public address system interrupted him. Most towns in Turkey have a public address system that is used to make official announcements and for foreigners it isn’t long before it becomes part of the general hubbub of the town to be ignored along with the barking of dogs and tooting of car horns. Of course ‘official’ can be a subjective term and is often treated to a liberal interpretation. Thus my friend was interrupted by the announcer saying that someone had found a digital camera somewhere in the town and if the owner came to the Municipal offices they could reclaim it. What a wonderful system, why don’t we do that in UK?.
Not long after the aforementioned broadcast the loudspeakers boomed into life again. The fishermen had landed a really good catch and fresh fish was on sale in the square.
Now these are examples of a public address system being used for the advantage of the public. I know, I know, it’s a novel concept but it was nice to see a service in Turkey showing the way to do it to the rest of the world.
My car is going in for it’s annual check this Saturday. I took it down for Erol to give it a thorough check over and do any necessary repairs. It cost me two hundred and thirty five lira but if it gets through first time it will be worth it. I was never a great one for administrative things but dealing with officialdom these days just wears me out. Everything seems to take forever and I shudder at the thought of it. Just one thing I’ve got to do myself, the connector for the back lights is a bit dodgy and occasionally they don’t work properly. I’ll take it apart, clean it up and tighten the connections.
The new marina is coming along well. Shells of buildings are ready for finishing, the main breakwater is done and bouys are marking the anchorage points for the pontoons.
It looks like it will make a big difference to Kas and probably bring in a lot more tourists. I hope it’s a success in every way.
This time of year my thoughts turn to smartening the place up after the wild weather of the winter. I’m making plans to do a lot more to the projects I’ve already started and hopefully I’ll get them finished this year. I’ve decided to do a bit to each of them each day. If I’m lucky that will mean things get done without too many injuries this year. I’ve had a lot of small injuries in the last couple of years that stopped me working to best effect so finally in my life I’m learning from my mistakes! Only took 61 years!
I have a small solar panel for charging batteries. Around this time of year I start thinking about using my scooter instead of the car so while the car was in Erol’s garage for two days I connected up the panel to my scooter battery and let it charge up. It worked well but when I tried to start it petrol came pouring out from underneath the fairing. A rubber hose had perished. It’s not like it was when I was a lad, then there was one pipe from the tank to the carburettor and replacing it was simple. On this scooter there are about five pipes and they go to strange little valves and things, you’ve also got to remove all the plastic fairing and stuff to get at it. A two minute job that takes an hour and a half. I called in at a motor accessory shop in Kas to get a new piece of pipe and after being sent to three different places I managed to get some. It was the wrong size and an astronomical price and when I got it home I couldn’t use it for the purpose intended. I managed to use one of the other pipes and the new one substituted for the one I cannibalised. Hope you followed that, the upshot is that I fixed the problem and I’m now using the scooter. It’s cheaper to run too so that makes me feel good.
I stopped at the corner in Ağullu a couple of weeks ago where a guy sells fruit and veg most days. While buying some of it I saw another guy selling jackets and I bought one that seemed as though it would be windproof. I wore it today on the scooter and it turned out to be an excellent buy, I’m very pleased with it. Of course it has a fake badge on it, Lacoste might object but I can say that even if it didn’t come from their factory they should be proud of it bearing their name. Not every fake is crap quality.
This is a photo of a very dear friend of mine called Rachel. She is American and lives in Houston, Texas.
Rachel is a professional restorer and conservator of ceramics and glass and if anybody out there needs help in this regard I can thoroughly recommend her. Her work is of the highest standard which is probably why she does work for museums. This is a link to her website. Every year there is an event in Houston called the Valley Lodge Trail Ride where groups of folk with horses ride in from outlying districts to the Rodeo Parade in Houston. Rachel’s group travel from Brookshire to Houston, seventy one miles on horseback looking like they’re headed for a roundup, this is so cool and I wish I could do it, and is she cute in that hat or what? Yeeehaaah, you go girl!
Social networking is a phenomenon that I’d managed to avoid to a large extent. Recently though a few people have been bending my ear and inviting me to join various sites so much that I felt I was being churlish in not wanting to. Consequently a few weeks ago I joined Facebook and have been amazed by all the friends I’ve connected with. It’s been very nice to see and link up with them but I’m still not particularly happy about joining it. Maybe it’s that I don’t really ‘get’ it. It seems that you have to be at your computer for a large part of your day to tell everybody what you are doing, what you have done, what you are going to do and comment on other people’s plans and achievements. Well I’m not usually in front of my computer that long and would rather write about what I have done and leave it at that. I’ll give it a try and see if I feel any benefit or get warm fluffy feelings about it but quite honestly I wonder if I’ll still be interested in it in three or four months time. I might get used to it though.
A new friend said that I should put a backward link to my earlier writings and photographs because they were missing out, so here it is.
Backward Link
Clicking on ‘View all blog entries’ and then clicking ‘older’ a few times will take you back to the beginning. Don’t expect too much, it’s only my jottings, but some of the photographs are quite nice..
Hi, I hope you found this place easily, I think it’s going to be better than previously because it seems to be easier to enter text and have it displayed as I want. Also the method of displaying photographs is far more sensible, this was the main reason for the move.
To those who followed me here, thank you for your loyalty, I shall do my best to post more and make the posts more interesting. I must get out more with my camera.
All the best for now, see you again soon.
I had a trip over to Fethiye last week when Rob took his dog Pancho to see the vet there and I ended up buying a strimmer. For those who don’t know the name it is a motorised weed cutter with a rotating head that cuts weeds with a plastic line. I think some places call them ‘weed whackers’ which is a bit more of a descriptive name. Well the one that I bought is driven by a 32cc petrol engine and works very well. I’ve laid waste to most of the weeds in the garden with it but it does have a drawback, well several particular to my garden actually. The first is that the plastic line that does the cutting gets broken easily by all the rock in the garden. I had used up the original line in the space of about twenty minutes, not a good start. My first modification was to get some plastic coated wire, similar to motorcycle brake or clutch cable. Far more durable and, with a bit more weight in it, it cut more effectively too.
The second drawback is that the guard on the cutting head doesn’t stop the bits of grass and weed being thrown all over your legs and even up to your shoulders and face when cutting. Well that would be ok if it was just bits of grass and weed but I have three dogs and they don’t always worry about where they have a poo. I realised after finishing one session that I needed to go and have a good shower and put my clothes in the washing machine, that’s a drawback that I have yet to solve, apart from wearing some safety spectacles, or maybe even my full-face motorcycle helmet with the visor lowered.
The third drawback that I found is that using it is addictive. Well I can live with that, I always like using powered tools so rather than gardening it is more like fun. The strong ‘woody’ bits have been left sticking out of a sea of weed bits so I’ll have to get them out with a pickaxe, not too pleased about that.
We’ve had a bit of bad weather recently so I’ll have to wait a while before I get out there with any other gardening chores. Nothing else much has been happening. Winter (cold and wet) seems to bring a halt to most other things I want to do in the garden.
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