Back in Bodrum one year on.

A mill pond stillness descends on Bodrum Harbour on Sunday

Süt Liman

literally

"milk harbour"  

I have inadvertently ignored the one year anniversary of arriving back in Bodrum and starting this blog so I should refer to the milestone as it whizzes into the distance.  We are continuing to enjoy being back in Turkey and that is probably the best reason to celebrate.  It still seems like a homecoming and I enjoy catching sight of faces from my past life.  Just today walking around Bodrum I said hello to a grocer who used to work in the marina in 1982,  a friend my husband knocked around with in Ankara in the 1960s,  a basketball coach who's team was supreme in Bodrum in 1990,  the best mayor we ever had (1994 -1999) and the the last sponge diver in Bodrum who was varnishing his boat.  This continuity is very comforting in a country that is changing so fast. Bodrum has grown like Topsy; Anatolia is encroaching on its Aegean heart and the Bodrum peninsula is fast disappearing under concrete and stone. This is nothing new - those living here have been making the same complaint since I arrived 31 years ago and I'm sure my daughter will be voicing the same concerns when she's my age.  We shall continue to "go with the flow" as befits two pisceans (almost) living the life of Riley.


Looking back over my 129 posts I'm embarrassed to find that there are not many pictures of Bodrum Town.  My first new year's resolution was to take better pictures, my second is to take them of Bodrum.   Here's a few to start as I mean to go on.

Bulldozer at Breakfast

The rumble of a bulldozer is quite unmistakable and it's never a welcome sound and especially not so at 7:30 am. This one appeared to be heading towards our garden wall. I watched it with mounting dread as I drank my morning tea on the terrace. Earlier in the year a whole swath of forest had been cleared next to us and a new road put in.  As I've said before in this blog, we built our house 20 years ago and still have no near neighbours, so consider ourselves very lucky to have escaped Bodrum's building boom but realise that this blissful state can't last for ever.  That said, I was already constructing a very high imaginary garden wall to keep out what ever this dozer driver's employers had in store for us.  Despite the mechanical beast's noise and the dog's hysterical barking, my husband had slept through the row and as 3 men appeared at our wall with GPS machines and maps, I decided it was time to get him involved.  I watched from a distance as hands were shaken. A cigarette break ensued. The machine stopped and the driver jumped down. The dog was introduced to the bulldozer which stopped the barking.  Peace reigned. A lot of pointing went on and maps were waved about, much pacing up and down and gesticulating followed. The digger then started up and backed off the way it had come. Hubby and dog came back both looking very pleased with themselves.
It turns out that the new road put in 9 months ago had, unintentionally, been driven through private rather than forestry land so had to be moved. The three chaps with maps had decided to direct it towards us but listened to hubby when he suggested that they could send it up to the existing forest road and keep it well away from our garden wall, and surprisingly agreed to move it again. And that was that - no hassle - they redrew the map and the bulldozer started again on a different tangent.  If that wasn't good enough news, we found out that the area is to be replanted with "fire-resistant trees" what ever they are, so our nightmares of industrial estates and factories can be put to bed for a few more years.