Cukurbagli's Blog   My life in Turkey

This time of year we get some really interesting skies, I’m lucky being on my side of the valley because I get to see what’s happening for a hundred miles or so to the west of here. This is tonight’s show, tweaked a little bit to give it a bit more drama but essentially the same as it looked in real life.

Just got back from a ten day trip to France. I went to a place called Les Sables d’Olonne on the west coast in the Vendee region.

One of its claims to fame is that it is where the Vendée Glöbe round the world yacht race starts and finishes, it is also a place I visited nearly 20 years ago so it was interesting and a bit nostalgic to see a couple of the places that I’d been before, particularly a little white wall around the Puit D’Enfer car park that I had misjudged and ran into head on with my Jaguar XJ6, luckily I was parking and only going at a snail’s pace and it takes a lot more than that to upset a Jag, no harm was done to protagonist or defender.

Of course the intervening years have seen a lot more building going on but mostly in areas surrounding the town and the sea front area remains unspoilt to a large extent. The weather was cooler than Kas which helped me get over some sort of infection that I picked up in an airport or plane on the way and dampened my spirit a little bit for the first few days. I don’t really like travelling unless it can be by boat, car or motor cycle, I like being in other places and I really like flying but by air it’s a bit of a chore to have to get to airports and go through the rigmarole of queueing and waiting, check-in and waiting, baggage claim and waiting, immigration and waiting. To be honest I think I’ve had enough of it, I wonder how much it would cost to learn to fly and buy or hire my own aeroplane, no check-ins, no baggage claim, no worry about baggage being in Timbuktoo when I’m somewhere else. Wouldn’t that be fun? I’ll have to win the lottery first though. There’s the other option of going by train of course, I may well investigate it.

One of the attractions of the area is the Motor Car Museum with cars and motorcycles through the ages on display. A lot of the old French cars have the steering wheel on the right which would lead you to believe that they drove on the left like we do in UK.

Back in those days it is unlikely that there were many roads with markings and a tarmac surface so it is more likely that they just drove down the middle and moved over to allow room to pass each other.

There is another theory that has to do with travelling on horseback when men carried swords, you would have to be on the right of each other to be able to have a sword fight on horseback and the tradition of being on the left of the road was continued.

This car above was made in 1934 and as late as that they were still making right hand drive models! Whatever the reason for it, a construction regulation eventually put an end to the right-hand drive models in France and the rest of mainland Europe.

British bikes were exported to France too, here’s a nice Velocette.

I’ll post more about this trip in the next few days.

Yesterday I was sitting on my patio in the evening after the sun had gone down and I was stunned to see a pair of snakes writhing around each other in the act of mating. I didn’t know whether to photograph them, bash them with a shovel or throw a bucket of water over them. In the end I jumped up and down close to them and they shot off into the undergrowth. This morning I had a good look but couldn’t see any snakes however I thought I’d be ready if they came back so I put a shovel within handy reach and put my video camera on charge. Good job I did because I glanced out of the kitchen window late this afternoon and there they were again. I quietly but as quickly as I could put my boots on, grabbed my video camera and went out to try to film them. Well it worked. I couldn’t get too close because I didn’t want to scare them away too quickly but the video camera has a good zoom lens so it worked out ok. They’re not enormous, somewhere around 75cm and I don’t think they’re poisonous but this was quite exciting for me.

Here is a little video of them.

Well this all took a great deal longer than I expected, but that’s always the way when you repair things isn’t it, a five minute job usually takes at least an hour.

Painting all the panels for the scooter was pretty easy and apart from handling them carefully because they are fragile (crap Chinese plastic) it got completed in a few days.  Then I had to repair nearly all the fixing points because they had fallen apart, that involved shaping new pieces of good plastic to attach to the panels, making jigs to hold them in place while the glue set then drilling new holes to suit the screw or nut and bolt that held it in place. The result is panels that not only look good but are firmly attached and don’t rattle anymore.

Here is a photo of the finished scooter, I need to get a new seat cover now. With any luck it will tempt someone to buy it.

After having bought some paint to do the grey bit on my car I rather got carried away and bought some more to completely respray my scooter. It was looking really shabby, the strong sunlight does terrible things to paint here, and I was pretty ashamed of it. All the panels got taken off, rubbed down with fine wet and dry paper and sprayed the appropriate colour. No colour changes, I’m sticking exactly to the same colour scheme, don’t want any more problems with the vehicle testers. The yellow paint ran out so I’ll go and get some more tomorrow but everything is getting two or three coats of paint and then a couple of coats of clear lacquer. The finish is better than I expected so when I put it all back together I’ll put another picture to show the result.

People who know me or have read my writings will already know that when my life is in the doldrums, when it’s too quiet or needs livening up I am wont to attempt some Official Administrative jobs, like getting a residence permit or somesuch. Anything, in fact, that means I come into close contact with the Turkish version of a Jobsworth. About three weeks ago I tried livening up my life by paying the annual Building and Real Estate Tax on my property. I was surprised with the deviousness because as I stood at the chest high counter trying vainly to see the computer screen I was told that I had two properties in my name. Well all that had happened is that the one I had sold two years ago had been put onto the name of the buyer but had not been taken off my name. How could it be that I did not have the problem when I paid the tax last year? You may well ask, I didn’t bother. Well that got sorted out pretty easily so I had to find another, less easily sorted game. I was surprised how the opportunity just fell into my lap. My car had to go through its annual roadworthiness test a month ago and I had been surprised when it failed because the registration documents said it was in vehicle class M2 (should be N1) on one card and the colour was shown as Gri-Beyaz (grey-white) on both cards when it is actually completely white. The generally accepted wisdom at the time was forget about it for now, get the registration certificates changed a couple of days before the period of grace ran out and then present it for a retest, they’ll only check the documents and as it’s a retest you’ll be seen first so you won’t have to waste all day waiting. Sage nods all round and that’s what I did.

So, a couple of days before the retest I went to the Traffic Police office in Kaş to get the documents changed. It wasn’t possible because both registration cards had to be changed. You’ll have to get the form EK1 stamped by the vehicle testing people then bring it back here and we’ll change the cards. Seven kilometres up the hill in Ağullu, a village near my village, I presented the form EK1 and asked for the stamp. We don’t do that now, it changed in January but we’ll print out the correct instructions and you can take them back to the Taffic Police office in Kaş and they will print new ones for you, then you bring them back here and we’ll do the rest. Seven km back down in Kaş I decided it would be a good idea to involve a fluent English speaker’s assistance so I called Yılmaz and we went into the Traffic Police office. To have both cards changed was quite a serious thing and the fact that the car had not been painted was causing consternation so communication with head office in Antalya was required, an email was sent. We went for tea. A reply had been received when we returned and research was then carried out to find what colour the car had originally been registered as.

Grey.

It is obvious to anyone actually looking at the car that the original colour was white, all the normally hidden areas are white, there isn’t a trace of grey anywhere. More communication with head office, Yilmaz and I went for lunch.

An hour or so later a reply had been received. It was originally registered as grey and if it was now white that means that someone had painted it but not officially changed the colour on the documents so an offense might have been committed and a fine might be in order. Yilmaz then entered into deep conversation with the very helpful lady in the police office and I listened with increasing disbelief. My options were twofold, to get a (faked) receipt from a painter for having painted it white so that I could officially have two new cards or to paint a bit of it grey myself and just have one new card showing the correct vehicle class.

That is why my car now has a small panel and stripe in a metallic grey and everything conforms with the registration cards….for now.

I love doing things by myself that test me. It’s easy to get a friend to help and often I do….well…sometimes. But if I think I will need a hand and then manage by myself I’m doubly pleased at what I’ve achieved. So today I’m feeling pretty good.

The plastic base for a large sun umbrella had got cracked because the plastic had degraded in the sun, methinks the designers need a slap for this. It was the type that you fill up with water and of quite thin construction for the weight of water contained in it. Obviously as soon as it cracked it became scrap. It was badly made of poor quality materials but I had to come up with an answer. Various ideas sprang to mind but in the end I decided on the old school over-engineered approach and cast a concrete block incorporating the securing sleeve for the umbrella pole, it is plastic but much better quality and a lot thicker than the other stuff. I didn’t know how heavy concrete is when it set so rather than make one that might let the brolly blow over in a bit of a wind I erred on the side of “substantial”.

One of my philosophies in life refers to how I gauge value, if something is worth having it should be intrinsically valuable such as gold or precious stones or it should be big or heavy. Well I didn’t have any gold or precious stones handy, very rare that I do actually, but I could make this thing big and heavy without any difficulty at all, so I did.

The mould for the concrete was set up on the new improved bench incorporating the brolly pole sleeve and just to make it fancy I also added some tiles that were left over from the bathrooms. It was cast in an upside down orientation so that the tiles and sleeve could be kept in position simply by the weight of concrete. I was a bit surprised at how much concrete I had to make to fill the mould but felt quite satisfied that the resistance to falling over in a wind would impress Rear Admiral Sir Francis Beaufort (he of the Beaufort Scale). It was fine and I left it to harden for a couple of weeks. I also got the local metal fabricator, Ramazan, to make a frame with wheels so that it could be positioned as necessary.

When the time came to take it from the mould and put it on the wheels it became obvious that my over-engineered estimate of weight was seriously awry and what I had guessed would be about eighty or ninety kilograms turned out to be a lot more than double. I had to get a long piece of timber to lever up just one corner of the damn thing! Looking on the internet I found a concrete calculator into which I could put the size and find out the weight. I was a bit embarrassed to discover that the thing weighed more than a quarter of a metric tonne, mind you I was very pleased that my bench carried it easily.

Well getting this quarter tonne of concrete off the bench and turned over so that it could sit in the wheeled cradle was obviously not going to be the work of a few of minutes. A couple of friends had a look at it, all three of us had a heave at it together and the general consensus was “You built it, you move it!”

So it sat there imprisoning my lovely bench until today. I have sat in my spare room working on my computer with this thing sitting outside the window laughing at me for about eight months. I’ve drawn little sketches and imagined how it could be shifted and this morning I had enough of it and decided this was the day of the move.

Despite it’s ridiculous weight and the fact that the brolly pole sleeve is plastic and therefore breakable it ended up being fairly simple to achieve the desired result. You’ll note I said “simple” and not “easy”.

A couple of big pieces of timber formed a pair of slides and essentially it just slid down and was turned over using other timbers as levers. Stopping it from sliding and getting it turned over were juggling acts with smaller bits of wood and levers. It took a certain amount of effort and as I type this my shoulders and arms are still a bit shaky, think I might have a long hot bath tonight. Here are some photographs, being on my own it was not possible to photograph all the operations but you get the idea I’m sure.

The message? Oh yes….Bob you can come back now, I’ve done it.

The flat stone on the drive has now been finished all the way down to the gate leaving a section halfway along it to be finished with gravel to give it a bit of a rustic look (and to save me money). The middle will be filled in wıth soil and planted with wildflowers, I’ve got a couple of packets of seeds from UK. I decided to finish off the entrance from the road myself and that will be done in the next few weeks.

My neighbours Mustafa and Hanife were pleased to come and help chop down a lot of bushes at the bottom end of the garden so that they could take the thicker branches and trunks home for firewood. It’s a big step towards creating a little themed area down there, don’t know what the theme will be yet but the inclusion of a space to put a tent or chalet is in my mind. They brought their donkey to have a good feed on some of my grass and weeds too. Molly the dog took a liking to running round it barking which caused a certain amount of consternation to begin with then I understood that the donkey seemed to be having a bit of fun with it too so I left them alone. Their dog Aslan came too and there was much racing around the garden and noisy play-fighting.

In the evening Mustafa (left) and his brother in law came to load up the donkey with the wood and take it down to his house, the load was a bit lopsided and wobbled around a bit, I thought it was going to fall off at one point but it made it safely.

A great day today! I started work on my drive, well actually Suleyman and Ali started work on my drive, I’m keeping an eye on it in a supervisory capacity while I cut down bushes and burn the twigs. I’m really pleased about the drive being finished soon because it has been a bit of an eyesore, the entrance from the road particularly, and it will greatly improve the look of the place. They did about ten or eleven metres of it today so I’m hopeful that it will be finished by the middle of next week.

There are a lot of scrub oak bushes down the south boundary of my property that I am cutting back. My aim is to make a couple of places where I can make secluded gardens with different themes. Don’t really know how it’s going to work out and I can always modify the idea if I don’t like it. It’s something that I thought might be nice when I first bought the property but the guy with the excavator removed all the bushes from most of the land without asking. I should have been here to oversee the work, I’ve never let anyone work unsupervised since.  Anyway I didn’t bother taking any pictures of it because a picture of a space made by cutting down bushes has got to be the lamest excuse for a picture that I’ve ever heard. Instead here’s one of me enjoying a glass of wine with the dogs after the days work. Cheers!

I mentioned before that I was going to have an operation on my hand to reconstruct the middle finger of my left hand. Well a couple of weeks ago my friend Paul took me to Antalya for the first operation because I didn’t expect to be able to drive after it. The morning was freezing and so was the operating theatre, I had to wear one of those gowns that does up with poppers at the back which takes away the last shred of dignity you thought you had. The essence of the procedure was to create a flap on the base of my thumb that was stitched to the end of the finger. This flap would become a graft covering the area where flesh was torn off and would form a new fingerprint pad eventually. Here are some pictures, don’t click on the pictures unless you are happy with seeing the full size gory detail.

Two weeks with my finger stitched to my thumb was pretty frustrating as you might imagine, have you ever tried to wash dishes with one hand? I gave up and used my dishwasher, I knew I would be glad to have it one day but there are lots of other things that are difficult to do with only one hand, like chopping wood for the fire.

Then last Wednesday I had the second operation and my surgeon separated the flap from my thumb and sewed it to completely cover the area of missing tissue on my finger.

It looks a bit odd at the moment and of course I don’t have any sensation of touch yet but it will blend in to the correct shape and the nerves will connect over the next few months. The area on my thumb where the graft came from is healing up nicely and just has a bit of tightness which will disappear quickly once I am able to use the hand properly.

I have to say a big “thank you” to the operating team that did the job, plastic and reconstructive surgeon Betül Acar (right) and her assistant who did a very nice job and who also allowed me to take photographs in the operating theatre.

A big “thank you” to the reception staff and the translating staff too, they all looked after me very well.