Landlady: Birthday BBQ

My dear friends and neighbours in Turkey are having to demolish half of their house as parts of it have been deemed ‘illegal’. Strange though it may seem, this is how they do things in Turkey, and millions of people are living in partially, if not wholly illegal houses. They chuck them up willy nilly, then if they get caught, they either have to demolish them or face years of court cases and fines in order to legalise them. It seems like total lunacy to me. My neighbours were in the process of moving anyway, but the added stress of having to amputate parts of their beloved house cannot be helping.

While we were in Turkey recently, The Cuban Boyfriend and I watched the house being lovingly deconstructed by a self-building couple who were buying bits of my neighbours’ house in order to give it a renaissance elsewhere.

The Cuban, who has a bee in his bonnet about building a BBQ in my Turkish garden, got wind of the fact that the stonework in my neighbours ‘ kitchen was to be ripped out and paid to have it all wheelbarrowed down to my house, along with a huge slab of marble that he plans to do who knows what with.

The BBQ idea came about because, one night, after a few too many Havana Clubs, I shouted at The Cuban for not buying me a birthday present. At this point, I had forgotten that he’d bought me a bottle of pink champagne, which I drunk, hence the forgetting, I suppose. The Cuban drew a line on the rum bottle and wrote Dalaman Airport beneath it. He said that one of us would be going there if the shouting continued.

The added stress of having to amputate parts of their beloved house cannot be helping

Still, the shouting seemed to do the trick as the next day, grand designs for a Birthday Barbeque were being drawn up, to be built with the reclaimed stone from my neighbours ‘ kitchen… bloody hell, a bunch of flowers would have done.