Category: Rain

Wash, Reset and Blowdry

Hanife, our formidable landlady, swung into rapid action to fix our unholy holey roof; she arranged for the leaks to be sealed by the contractor who originally built the house. He was incensed to find that the electricity company had illegally nailed power cables to our roof and punctured the bloody thing in the process. To add insult to injury, the cables were nothing to do with us; they were supplying an adjacent property. Our fuse box was brought back to life by a pixie-sized spark who dried out the box with a hairdryer plugged into our neighbour’s socket. We watched in horror as he perched precariously on a folding patio chair: one wrong move and his ankles would have been snapped off. Liam made tea while I went for a lie down in a darkened room. This is Turkey.

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That’s All Folks!

Whore’s Drawers

Strobe Lightning

Last night, the heavens opened and we were entertained by a real snap, crackle and pop of a storm. What is it about Turkish raindrops? They seem so much heavier than the Blighty variety as they fall to the ground like cluster bombs. As we watched the spectacle from our balcony, our courtyard became littered with adolescent olives and the road outside was overcome by a river of brown sludge that sloshed against our garden wall. We unplugged our fancy electricals as a precaution against the strobe lightning, positioned towels at vulnerable points around the house and hoped for the best.

At least the town’s first autumnal wash did douse the semi-parched garden. At the beginning of the summer, our neighbour took sole charge of our joint plot and made a valiant effort to keep it well watered. His initial enthusiasm eventually waned to half-hearted resentment; he seemed very pleased with the biblical downpour. We were less enthusiastic. Midway through the tempest, our roof sprang a leak and our fuse box, which is illogically located on an external wall, tripped. Compared to some, we got off lightly. We’re planning a joint birthday shindig this month; our birthdays are two weeks apart. At this rate it will be illuminated by candles and guests will be entertained by transistor radio while they sup warm white wine and dance around strategically placed buckets.
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The Windy City

Wild and windy weather suddenly blew into Bodrum battering gulets and propelling chips off dinner plates. However, the concrete tresses of the fawning waiters stayed resolutely in place. Hurricane Katrina wouldn’t disturb their gelled masterpieces. The cooling gusts were a welcome respite from the sopping humidity of the last few weeks but now every surface of the house is draped in a fine film of dust and sand. It’s too hot to mop. We awoke yesterday morning to find our courtyard covered in leaf litter and dislodged adolescent olives still attached to broken twigs. We also found our landlord supervising a burly man with shovel hands and bad teeth. The florid stranger decimated the shrubs, hacked back the bougainvillea and shaved the ground cover. By midday our garden had been well and truly scalped, pruned to within an inch of its life. Beril and Vadim, our Turkish neighbours, are due back from their Ramazan pilgrimage to Ankara tomorrow. Vadim has been lavishing attention on our shared plot all summer. What will he make of the drastic Ground Force makeover?

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Wacky Races

Clement invited us and Karen to inspect his new country pile. Charlotte, Alan and Charlotte’s mother, Lucia, were also asked along. They knew the way so we decided to follow them in their car. We took the Torba Road, one of the most perilous on the peninsula. It had been raining earlier in the day and the pot-holed, uncambered road was liberally puddled. As we approached a tight bend a coach conveying early bird tourists careered towards us. Liam slammed on the breaks. The car skated uncontrollably towards the coach, bounced off the side and performed a pirouette the great Margot Fontaine would have been proud of. Miraculously, the car came to rest neatly at the side of the road. Shaken but not stirred, Liam looked around to see which of his petrified charges had snuffed it. It was a relief that we were all still in the land of the living but my lower half had moistened uncontrollably.

Charlotte and Alan realised that we were no longing tailing them and returned to find us. They parked up on the opposite side of the road and crossed over to our car leaving Lucia in the front passenger seat. Within minutes, like a set piece from ‘Casualty’, a car sped around the same bend, skidded on the same oily wet patch and hurtled towards Lucia. The car ricocheted off the driver’s door and crashed into the ditched verge. Liam fretted that the driver had not survived the impact and ran to the rescue. Others ran towards Lucia fearing the worst. The ditched man climbed unscathed and smiling from his battered Fiat. It seemed he rather enjoyed the theatre of it all. Before we knew it we were all up to our ankles in mud attempting to haul his sorry wreck back onto the road. Lucia was extracted unharmed, a little shaken but otherwise in fine fettle. As the fiasco unfolded more cars joined the elaborate ice dance, skids and near misses piling up like a scene from ‘Wacky Races’. Fearful that she might join the casualty count Karen sensibly disappeared into the woods for safety. Lucia joined her.

The damage to both our cars was astonishingly slight and the matter was glossed over with the coach driver in a typically Turkish way – a nod, a wink, a half-hearted exchange of details and rounded off with a hearty handshake. Needless to say, we didn’t make it to Clement’s that day.

Grey Britain?

Peering out of the damp windows provides a timely and salutary reminder of one of the reasons we left Britain. The sea and sky are united in an unbroken dirty greyness disguising the horizon and cloaking the Greek islands in the far distance. We are confined by the persistent drizzle. There are many things I miss about London but the weather isn’t one of them though I was surprised to stumble across Interesting European Weather Facts that suggests that my home town has one of the most benign climates of the major European cities. It must be true. I read it on internet. Whatever the facts I’m glad of our regular city fix that enables us to have the best of both. Despite our warm and forgiving hosts, London is a place where we can genuinely breathe free. I can’t see us becoming diehard Blighty bashers unlike so many of our compatriots.

Everyone has a tale to tell and tell it they do. Many of the stories are depressingly similar – running away from something or someone and seeking renewal. It’s hard to fathom why poor old Blighty is so often blamed for their plight. Do people really think a faraway land offers a sure fire panacea for the demons who lie within? Liam and I have chosen to embrace our new life, not as a rejection of what had gone before, but as validation of our future. We are under no illusion that we can simply deposit our unwanted pasts at left luggage.

Sodden Bodrum

We were spited by a vengeful Old Testament deluge punctured by a spectacular light and sound show that lit up the sopping sky and cut the power. Prodigious pulses of horizontal rain assailed every crack and cranny, through every easterly window frame and beneath every threshold. Towels were requisitioned and old cushions commandeered to ebb the relentless biblical flow. The bucketing, biting blast blew over, a catastrophe was averted and we retired two by two.

The Great Flood

Tariq the Toothless, called at the house clutching a Red Crescent parcel from Jacqueline and hunky hubby, Angus. Jacqueline and I met at an interview in 1990. I was doing the interviewing and she got the job. She is a wonderfully undemanding friend who I may only see once a year. When we meet we simply carry on where we left off, mixing lascivious gossip with incisive social and political comment (or so we think).

Jacqueline’s package contained an assortment of magazines – cutting edge political commentary and Heat. The timing was impeccable. We are in dire need of extra kindling as we vainly attempt to keep warm during the wettest winter Asia Minor had seen since the Great Flood. I fear if the deluge continues our house may slowly slide down the hillside.

Rain, Rain Go Away…

Asia Minor is blessed with a soaring landscape wrought by tectonic movements over countless millennia that has created a jagged terrain of outstanding natural beauty. However, there is a definite downside to living half way up a mini mountain, even if this does afford an incomparable sea view. No-one warned us that the virtually vertical crumbling concrete access road leading to our house is impassable by car in the rain and treacherous by foot. During the cold weather monsoons, water teems down Mount Tepe transforming the drive into a fast moving stream swollen by dribbling tributaries from all corners of the site. Water continues to trickle for days. Not much fun when hauling up the monthly shop.

Whore’s Drawers

The pitiless Turkish winter is suddenly upon us and we are woefully unprepared. We are being mugged by a posse of violent electric storms processing across the horizon, a savage spectacle that crashes ashore trapping us inside. Generally, Turkish houses leak, have no insulation and precious little heating; and ours is no exception. Our double height living room is like a drafty village hall with a blazing open grate that only warms a few square yards. Towels are strategically placed against every crack and crevice to keep the water at bay. The power is up and down like whore’s drawers. I fail to see Turkey emerging as an economic powerhouse if the electricity company can’t keep the lights on. Fearing frostbite, we recline in double coated socks, mummified in a duvet and vie for possession of the hot water bottle.

It’s a striking reminder of my pre-central heating childhood days, when the bed was too cold to get into at night but too warm to get out of in the morning. We sprint to the loo for a morning pee, wear sexless layers and have reverted to copulating under cover.

Baby, It’s Cold Inside

It’s colder inside than out. This doesn’t bode well for the winter to come. The perfect storm rolled across the horizon and crashed ashore caging the house with fork lightening and cutting the power. Liam screamed like a girl. Brimming flat roofs discharged the deluge like mini Niagaras and the virtually vertical access road became a white water ride swollen by instant tributaries from across Mount Tepe. We feared a landslide. The storm abated as quickly as it had risen. Power restored, Liam returned to making his spicy sharon fruit chutney.