The Landlady’s out of the shower & into the pool

I am on a flight on the way back from a visit to Turkey. Given that when we left, the UK was still submerged in water after the recent torrential rainfall, my friend Disco N and I were delighted to be getting away for some sunshine, or at least some dry weather. Alas, it turned out that in a frying-pan and fire kind of way, we were destined to dive out of the shower and into the swimming pool. Throughout our week’s holiday, the weather became progressively worse, culminating in a downpour of stair rod-type rain, complete with thunder, lightning and high winds, which had us aquaplaning through a flooded Marmaris on our way back to the airport.

It didn’t really matter that the weather was so bad, because we had a busy roster of places to go and people to see. I had a ‘to do’ list as long as your arm, which mainly concerned buying things for my house. Unfortunately, we flung ourselves wholeheartedly into more of a ‘to don’t’ list, and on our first night out in my Turkish town, had to be driven home at 4am by the owner of the bar we were drinking in. Although I’ve only been to the town four times, I’ve already had to be driven home by respective bar owners twice, which is not a record I’m proud of, nor keen to continue adding to.

“By 4pm we had no food, no cutlery and no plates”

Having been treated to dinner by a few of the neighbours, I decided to invite seven people for dinner at my little house on the third evening. My cooking facilities comprise of two gas rings and a dubious looking oven which acts more like a radiator, viciously melting anything within a metre radius, while not seeming to cook the actual food inside it. My fridge was not working at all. Due to hangovers and much procrastination, by 4pm we had no food, no cutlery, nothing in which to boil the monster cauliflower we’d purchased at the market, and no plates. Then we turned on the tap to discover with increasing horror that the water had been turned off. After momentarily considering doing a runner, booking into a hotel and never going back, we managed to make a mercy dash into town in order to purchase all the necessary items for an evening of sparkling entertainment. With an hour in which to prepare, by which time the water had come back on, we were thrown into further panic when our guests started to arrive half an hour early, but we managed to distract them with wine and gin. In my little house, there is literally nowhere to hide, never mind nowhere to cook.

But in the end, as with all things Turkish, it all came together rather swimmingly. Swimmingly being the operative word.