Ever hopeful

Let's start April on a positive note to try and allay the general feeling of unease that pervades the country.

In the mid 1990s Teo and I visited the village of Ekinanbar to photograph storks. The village was famous for having a stork nest around every corner. Some villagers couldn't light their fires in the winter because they had a nest on top of the chimney.  The atmosphere in the village was doom ridden. The new Bodrum Milas airport was being built on their door step. As we drove out of the village, we doubted the storks or the village would survive.

I went back to the village on Thursday and the airport is indeed as close as possible without having cows as baggage handlers but there is no sense of gloom. In fact the village is one of the most cheerful places I've been to in a long time.  Nearly every house is surrounded by a profuse mixture of flowers and vegetables. Barns full of cows abound and the two central coffee houses are full of chattering men while the women are in the gardens making börek or sweet fritters. We lost count of the number of times we were asked in for tea. 

We did finally accept an offer of tea at village school, which has 40 pupils in Years 1 to 4, and gave this young lad a chance to try binoculars for the first time.  When he got them the right way round, he was impressed. 

And the storks are still there, not in the great numbers of the past, but there. 

However big the obstacles look, whether they are the size of wind turbines or as small as a cross on a ballot paper we should always choose to look on the bright side.  Our worst fears may never happen and it's a terrible waste of precious time to worry about them.