Yaramaz Went Away

This have slowly returned to a state of calm after last week’s frenzy of Doing Stuff (all day on a boat up to the Black Sea and back! Cycling and swimming and burning on Heybeliada! Late nights in Pano and on the balcony and being sociable in general! Dashing up to Levent Square for lunches at Naml or coffee at Kahve Dunyas! It’s harder than it sounds, especially amidst or on top of a million hour work-day…)

It is still very hot. The heat makes me sleep and gives D. insomnia. My sleep is quite dream-filled and mobile and I wake up half dreaming and exhausted and disoriented.  My stamina for X-File marathons at the weekend has weakened, and I’ve only been able to sit through one or two at a time before I have to run out to the balcony with a newspaper and stare at the huge, purpling new figs emerging from the huge, leafy fig trees in the Zen Garden and at Lola’s clone on the corrugated roof of the Shinto temple below.  Thoughts of bags and cat passports and possessions and deserts and timetables and bank cards and niggly details and chickpea curries and broken toilets fill my head. I need it all cleansed. I need to be cleansed and cleared and emptied. 

D. has been feeding me synapse-cushioning Omega 3 and Cod Liver Oil capsules every morning with my absurdly strong tea. I had forgotten them up in my cupboard- a leftover from my first session in Dubai, which had left me feeling quite healthy and well-yoga’d and toastily road-trip’d and aspiring to eat properly and do more yoga and stop doing all the bad, unhealthy things I do generally. Oddly, at some point in the week last week, John-boy blurted out, ‘Aren’t you ever going to get any fucking vices??’.  But I do have vices. I do. Steph even blogged about my vices and my corrupting influences on her.  After downing the Omegas both Saturday and Sunday, we trekked up the Very Steep Hill to the former home of Smile ADSL (now Dunkin Donuts!) and sat outside on their makeshift patio (separated from the street by fake potted plants in rib-high wooden planters) and drank quite decent filter coffee from nostalgically American donut-shop white ceramic mugs and nibbled on a lovely fresh morning donut and plotted our year ahead. It’s all very big and wide and open. 

We lived off my huge spud&chickpea curry and daily rounds of foil wrapped chicken tikka done in an overheated oven (I burned my left thumb, to go with my raw, scraped left-hand knuckles, victims of our stupid toilet).  I ate a lot of grapes. I read 2 weekends worth of Weekly Guardians and the latest issue of Bust (by subscription) and 2/3 of  The Man Who Ate Everything.  I handwashed so many of my light and flowy shirts and summer trousers that our balcony was well-shaded on all sides by Indian cotton shalwar kameezes blowing in the breeze and my flower dress and my burgundy and brown Home-Made Man pants. The fluttering cotton was a marvellous break from the 38 degree heat. We are both craving waking up to dark skies, rain, steaming hot coffee, a comfy sofa, comfort food.  The relentless perky hot sunny weather is really quite tedious and exhausting.