Kapitano

Turkish Delight

21:20 Monday July 2nd 2018

A middle aged man isn't supposed to cry uncontrollably for an hour. At least, not because he misses his mother. At least, not if it's only been a week since he last saw her. At least, not if it's 24 hours since her last email.

And he's certainly not supposed to do it in front of young children. Not when he's supposed to be an authority figure of some kind.

I should probably explain.

I'm in Turkey - again. Food good, scenery scenic, locals friendly if more than a touch parochial, mod cons minimal but comfortable, internet access close to non-existant.

Okay, I should probably explain a bit more.

Seven days ago, my friend and sometime employer Jamal contacted my by WhatsApp, saying that job offer he'd made six months ago, involving me teaching English to his various offspring by his two wives, while they were on an extended vacation in Iskanderon, a rural part of Turkey where wife number two lives, while simultaneously attempting to set up a longer term job doing the same kind of teaching to locals...

...yeah, that offer. Well it was all happening right now so could I leave on a jet plane the following day - at 07:10 hours from the unpleasantly unreachable Standsted airport, after 2+ hours on a coach and a sleepless night of panicked packing. On a airline that couldn't handle hold luggage, just a rucksack of essentials.

Well, we compromised. In the form of two airlines that <i>did</i> allow emigration-size luggage, on wednesday. From the easily reachable Gatwick airport. Just so long as I didn't mind (1) checking out the luggage at the connecting Izmir airport, only to check it back in again with a different airline at the same airport. And (2) a 14 hour stopover before the latter.

At Gatwick, you are permitted to carry up to 100ml of water (one fifth of a small plastic bottle) through security, just in case the water turns out to be a bomb. So once you've disposed of your bottles of water in the handy recepticles provided, you can buy identical (but more expensive) bottles of water in the waiting area.

Some airlines try to sell you stuff in flight - usually food and drink. Thomas Cook airlines try to sell you food and drink, and devices on which to watch movies and TV shows and incredibly boring documentaries...and then the media product itself. And their own brand of lottery tickets. And other things, all through the damn 2.5 hour flight.

They do this to families who've brought their own tablet devices, loaded with their own movies. Some of who inexplicably pay to dollar - well, top sterling - to watch episodes of Spongebob Squarepants and The Big Bang Theory on greatly inferior, airline rented devices.

So, at Izmir airport, I spent the first 15 of my 500 Turkish Lire (or is it Lira?) on a quite excellent toasted cheese sandwich at an open air cafe...and settled down with my 16.7kg hold luggage (of an absolute maximum permitted 15kg), and my 7kg hand luggage (of an absolute maximum permitter 5kg).

Ever slept on airport seating? I can attest that it's certainly possible. Just not for more than 10 minutes at a time. Now, I have quite a large collection of audiobooks, many of them classics that I'm always intending to listen to one day. Including Joseph Conrad's <i>Heart of Darkness</i>, which took up a good five hours - at double tempo.

It's about the bureaucratic insanity that comes with maintaining a colonial empire. And it's about the search for the mysterious "Kurtz", the kind of whackjob who can become hyper-charismatic to the subjects of such an empire. Really, it's a series of character sketches connected by a loose plot. It's worth the effort, just for them.

And so, onto the provincial airport of Hatay province, where I'm met, fed, and shown gratefully to bed by my host.

And a week later I suddenly can't stop crying. For a solid hour. Then suddenly I'm alright again, but those blog posts I've been putting off writing - I really feel the need to start writing them.

Maybe more on the last week later. There's no way I can post these as I'm writing - it's a rural area with almost no net infrastructure. There's electricity by pylons, and windfarms, and decent housing. But we are halfway up a mountain, and apparently there's wild pigs roaming around.

One thing: It happened as I was writing an email to my mother. One I didn't know when I'd be able to send. And I suddenly realised how much I missed her. Even though it's only been a week, and there's been SMS messages and a few emails.

I don't know. But someone once said most thinking is done by talking. This is my version of talking. So this is my version of figuring it out.

Turkey Trot

I've been living and working in Turkey for about a month. And I've been keeping a sort of diary.

Internet access here in the mountains is by phone only, and my phone is a bit rubbish. But I'm going to try and post what I've written so far.

My old friend and sometime employer Jamal has a second wife here, plus a house. He's taking a three month working holiday, with four daughters and a son by wife number one, a baby son by wife number two who has a much younger brother, plus there's a housekeeper with son and daughter.

Result: A lot of children on holiday, combined with an ambition they learn english.

Do we in know any ESL teachers? For preference with experience working in the middle east, popular with children, flexible in the classroom and interested in a little tourism? Perhaps known to the world as "Kapitano"?

So here I am.

More, if I can figure out how, to come.

Food Glorious Food

My attempts to do a 48 hour fast.

05/05 06:00
Actually start the fast, in the easiest way possible. Going to sleep.

05/05 12:30
Wake up. There's hungry as in "empty growling stomach", hungry as in "I'm bored so I'll eat something to pass the time", hungry as in "cravings", and hungry as in "I just feel like tasting something". I've got number 4. The bathroom scales tell me I'm exactly 15 stone (210 lbs). At the risk of becomming obsessed with how much I weigh at any given moment, my bathroom scales have become my bedroom scales.

05/05 13:30
The trouble with headaches is, so many things cause them, and usually you've got no idea which it is. Do I have a hunger headache, an "I slept in an awkward position" headache, an "I ate too much before going to bed last night" headache, or what? Let's assume dehydration, on the grounds that it's hard to go wrong drinking water.

05/05 14:30
Okay, according to most intermittant fasting plans, I'm allowed up to 500 calories per day. So, a stick of celery, some beetroot, two pickles, a dozen olives, and three glasses of water. Now feeling up to the task. Anything you eat produces a spike in insulin, taking at least an hour to return to baseline. Chocolate gives a big spike and a slow return, foods that are basically celulose and water the opposite.

05/05 16:20
I think I picked a good day to do this. It's sunday, and tomorrow's a bank holiday. The weather's bright and warm, there's a small crowd of children playing happily outside, I have no other pressing engagements...and thanks to the miracle of Tivo, I'm binge-watching season 3 of Babylon 5.

05/05 17:30
There is a moment when the empty stomach stops complaining. I'm not sure of the physiological details, but there's a definite shifting feeling in the digestive tract. But I can't tell if it's the stomach contracting, matter passing into the deuodenum, or into the small intestine proper, or the large. Something else to research, but whatever it is, it's just happened. So, provisional rule-of-thumb: It takes about 12 hours to stop feeling hungry.

Still got this damn headache though. Fortunately, there's no dietry restriction on ibuprofen.

05/05 18:00
Sleep for two hours.

05/05 21:00 - Celery, olives, pickle, beetroot, and onion. Didn't actually need to do that.

07/05 00:00
Hmm. Rather seriously fell off the proverbial wagon around 11pm. As in, an entire bar of galaxy caramel chocolate, snaffled in 10 minutes. Om nom nom. Maybe having a 24-hour headache isn't so good for the willpower.

Many years ago, I tried the Atkins diet with mother, for seven days. Apart from the mental constipation at one end, and non-mental conspipation at the other, it was seven days of non-stop head pain. Well, as of this moment, try again.

07/05 09:50
Once again I'm starting the day at 210 lbs - having evidently lost 2 lbs overnight. Once again the children playing outside, and the pleasant weather. But this time, no growling stomach and no pain behind the eyes.

07/05 14:15
I'm feeling absolutely fine, I've lost another pound while dozing, and I'm not even thirsty. My urine is clear, so according to some of the less insane youtube videos I've watched on how to do fasting, I'm not living off fat stores yet.

So in all, I wonder if I'm doing something wrong. Many years ago, when I joined a gym at age 27, I adopted the mantra: "If it hurts a little, you're probably doing it right. If it hurts a lot, you're probably doing it wrong.". Well this doesn't hurt at all.

07/05 15:30
I'm not, strictly speaking, supposed to have milk in tea during a fast. Because although tea has zero calories, a splash of milk has a few.

But, a few points. First, if this process is so delicate that two grams of (semi-skimmed) milk ruins it, then this process is too delicate to be performed in the real world. Second, there's little point in being on a diet you don't enjoy. The virtuous feeling of "I'm don't like this, so it must be good for me, aren't I so noble" is (a) hard to maintain and (b) bullshit.

I'm sufficiently british to not like black tea. I'm sufficiently middle-class to like lemon tea, or lime tea, or green tea. And I'm sufficiently eccentric to have a row or sugar-free fruit squash concentrates (lemon, lime, peach) specifically for putting in tea. Except...I've found that during a fast, I don't like sweet drinks. So, milky it is.

07/05 18:00
It's been 18 hours, and I've just eaten some slices of beetroot, in vinegar. Those four types of hunger I talked about - this was number four, "I just feel like tasting something". Being on guard against one doesn't mean you're guarded against the others. Fighting a war on four fronts - not easy. Knowing which fronts you need to fight, and which will take care of themselves - necessary.

07/05 19:30
207 lbs. Feeling moderately pleased about that.

Parents are tucking into a fry-up. Mashed potato, miscellaneous vegetables, slices of pork, all crisped in too much fat. Smells and looks very tempting. I've asked them to save me some, for if I really really want it later. "Later" being four hours or so.

Not a food/diet related item but: I've spent the day discovering the joys of pre-packaged background noise. Recordings of rivers, rain, thunderstorms, electric heaters and fans, distant traffic, birdsong etc. Exactly why the sound of rain pattering onto a tent roof should help you drift off to sleep, I'm not sure. And why underwater bubbling should enhance a podcast reviewing 90s sci-fi shows, I couldn't say. But they do. It's like the best part of ambient music is...not the music.

07/05 21:00
It's between 9 and 10PM - 21 hours in - that I generally get really hungry. That's in the first sense, of "growling, empty stomach". And drinking lots of tea or water doesn't help. This is the time I weaken and break the fast - and when I break it, I break it good and hard.

So, what to do? Try to get through it? Eat something small and vegetable, trying not to eat more? Try to sleep through it? See if I can keep myself distracted? I don't know yet.

07/05 22:30
I've just eaten an apple. On autopilot. The first bite was swallowed before I noticed what I was doing.

07/05 23:00
One pound is 453.6 grams. The scales have just informed me that eating one apple has taken me from 207 pounds back up to 210. So I'm 95,256 grams. And therefore 95.256 kilograms. My eventual target is 168 pounds, or 76,205 grams.

My BMI by the way is just under 33, which is officially "obese". My BMR ("Base Metabolic Rate") is supposedly 1,768 - the number of calories I need per day to just live. And one pound of fat is apparently equivalent to 3,500 calories.

I'm fairly sure these numbers don't mean much.

07/05 23:30
Everything I read today about ketosis contradicts everything I read yesterday about ketosis. Yesterday, Dr Google said it takes 12 hours to start in a water fast. Today, Dr Google says...3 days?

That fry-up I mentioned? I'll put it in the microwave, ready to reheat, anytime after midnight. Possibly after sunrise.

08/05 00:30
I'm going to try to sleep.

08/05 02:30
Can't sleep. A small experiment:

Me without clothes, and emptied bladder: 206 lbs
Me with clothes: 208
Me with clothes, and 3 cups of water: 210 lbs
Me with clothes, and re-emptied bladder: Don't know. Two hours later and it still hasn't filtered through.

Conclusion: I have really heavy clothes. And drinking water makes me hungry again. Bugger.

08/05 06:30
Well. One day and six hours. 30 hours. Looks like I might actually manage the full 48. Have another go at sleep.

07/05 09:00
Wake up to empty the bladder and do a quick weigh. 106 lbs. Feel quite pleased, and go back to bed.

07/05 12:00
Wake up properly and do a quick weigh. 105 lbs. Feel quite pleased again.

There are plenty of fasting vlogs on youtube - "My 8 day water fast", "What they don't tell you about not eating for 21 days", and the like. One common item is that days 3-5 are especially difficult. So far, I can tell you, in very round numbers:

* First 20 hours - Slightly difficult
* Next 8 hours - Significantly more difficult
* Next 8 hours - A lot easier. The temptation to eat through boredom, or just for pleasure, is still there. There is still a kind of empty stomach feeling, and it isn't pleasant, but it's more like a slight itch than an insistent pain. My stomach does feel delicate, as though it would react badly to a sudden heavy meal now.

As for the next 12 hours, we'll see. Another common item is increased mental clarity. That's part of it, but I spent a few hours last night listening to music, and that also was somehow clearer, more defined, sweeter, as though hearing through better quality speakers. This might be my version of hypoglycemic ephoria. Well, there's one way to check that.

06/05 16:30
I used to have a blood-sugar test gizmo, but it broke. So I got myself a new one today, and my blood glucose level, 40 hours into my first ever 48 hour fast is: 7.9.

So. Given the "normal" range is 5-10, and the last test I did using a borrowed kit after 22 hours of not eating gave me 11.5...I must have spent the last 30 years with blood you could ice a cake with.

08/05 16:45
Permit myself a salady snack. 1 slice of beetroot, two small pickled gherkins, and about a dozen green olives - plus the usual cups of water. First, it tasted amazing. Second, I now feel slightly overfull. This may be the way forward. It doesn't take much food to satisfy all the types of hunger I've mentioned, and (I rather suspect) the practical difference between hardcore water-fasting and occasional small low-carb meals is not much.

08/05 19:30
Second blood-glucose test out of curiosity. 9.2.

08/05 20:00
Maybe the snack wasn't such a good idea after all. Because I've got the growling stomach again, saying "You woke me up for that little tidbit? Where's the rest?"

08/05 21:00
In front of me is a 1 litre plastic bottle of fruit squash concentrate. It's Robinsons peach squash, with "No Added Sugar". It claims that a diluted 250ml serving contains 25 kilojoules, or 5 kilocalories. Which is absurd. 5000 calories? That's bodybuilder levels of intake over a day...in one small cup? The labeling defines "diluted" as 1 parts squash in 4 parts water, which is way more concentrated that I have it.

Five calories in a cup, that's believable. And indeed a quick google search finds calorie listing websites that agree. So, either the "5kcal" on the label means something entirely unconventional, or I'm missing something stunningly obvious, or the good people of Robinsons (which surely ought to have an apostrophe?) are no good at basic science nomenclature. Or fruit squash is the unhealthiest foodstuff in the universe.

Anyway, the upshot is: If you want to do a water fast, the indulgence of slight flavouring in your water is probably okay.

Especially if you live in southern england, which has horrible tap water.

08/05 22:15
This has been an experiment, and I think a largely successful one - in that I've learned a few things about what I can do, what I can't do, and what I can do but with difficulty. There's no point in drawing up a diet plan you can't follow. No firm conclusions yet.

09/05 00:00
There is now a large plate of fried food waiting for me. If the last three days have been for fasting...today is for slowing.

Double the Trouble

I have now done two 24 hour fasts, alternating with days of normal eating. And I can tell you a few things:

* It's remarkably easy to not eat for 24 hours.

* It's remarkably hard to not overindulge when not on fast days.

* Fasting really does make you feel better.

* Overindulging really does make you feel awful.

* What I said about 48 hour fasts...may not have been accurate.

So, starting at midnight, a further modification of my experiment:

* Zero calorie intake for 24 hours

* Then if I feel up to it, another 12 hours

* Then if I feel up to it, another 12 hours.

* After the 24/36/48 hours, a gentle reintroduction of calories.

* There's a big bar of chocolate waiting at the end...if I feel like it.

On and Off

On Sunday I weighed 210 pounds. For three days I've spent 16 hours a day not eating, and the rest trying to eat sensibly. I now weigh 215 pounds.

So, a new approach. When I start eating, it's easy to find an excuse to not stop. And when I haven't eaten for a while...the temptation to start isn't out of hunger; it's more out not having anything better to do.

My relationship to food is like other people's relationship to television. In fact, it's like my relationship to television. Binge-watching.

Where was I? Oh yes. I'm going to try alternate-day fasting. One day with no calories, the next with a little of whatever seems appealing, and so on.

This psyllium stuff. The packaging tells me I should take two capsules three times a day. It also informs me that six capsules contain 3000 milligrams. Which is an unnecessarily roundabout way of saying one capsule contains, on average, 500 milligrams. Which by a certain inexorable logic means the prescribed dose contains 1000 milligrams. Which is one gram.

Psyllium can absorb (so I read) up to 14 times it's own mass in water, so one saturated gram of psyllium is 15 grams. Which is about the weight of two sugarcubes. Which isn't very much.

Okay: Weight, mass, and size - not the same things. But it's still not very much.

It certainly does no harm in the digestion department, but as an appetite supressant...well, it isn't. And as a food bulker...it's just a little oversold. I shouldn't be surprised.

What I said about not having anything better to do. I've spent so many years spending so many hours of the day feeling rubbish, having 1 or 2 hours out of 24 when I felt up to doing anything...it's a bit daunting having a whole 8 hours of energy. Or even 12.

It's possibly a bit late in life to discover most of the day can be used for doing things. Seeing as I'm now 46.

Who could have guessed? All you need to get your life back is to do less of that thing you always enjoyed less than you expected.

Please shoot me before I turn into a celibate vegan spiritual-but-not-religious nofapper.

Fast Thinking

Ask any muslim, and they'll tell you. Fasting for 12 hours gives you energy, clear-headedness, focus. The benefits of ramadan fasting are one of the reasons they give for islam being true.

Which is a little strange, as they don't show any great willingness to fast outside of ramadan. And the point of ramadan is to give sympathy for those with nothing to eat. And the fasting is more than offset by the feasting with family at sunset. And I've spent time with muslim students during ramadan, eating and drinking in coffeeshops and resteraunts, hiding from each other, all pretending they don't know they're all breaking the rules. And everyone knows sales of stockpilable snacks go through the roof in the week leading up to the month of no snacking.

But they are right about giving your body the chance to use its supplies of creatine, glycogen, and fat. Diabetics can tell you about "paradoxical euphoria" - a result of low blood sugar. I've experienced it, though for me it's more a kind of sentimentality - a state I also enter when drunk.

Ask any soldier, and they'll tell you about training exercises where you're denied food. After 36 hours - certainly 48 - they've got no energy, no intellect, no willpower. If you want to know what clinical depression feels like, don't eat for two days.

So there's a sweet spot, between "digging into reserves" and "scraping the barrel". Between "Oh, so that's what being alive is supposed to feel like - I didn't realise I'd been feeling like shit for the last few decades" and "Somebody seems to have stolen my brain".

I reckon it's between 8 and 24 hours. But more empirical research needed. After supper.

Thought for Food

Intermittant Fasting is a diet plan for fat loss, where each day is split into two parts.

In the larger window you eat nothing, and in the smaller you eat sensibly. The larger is typically 16 hours, running from (say) midnight when you go to bed, through to 16:00, giving you an 8 hour window to eat at your discretion until the next cycle. Some people make it 20 and 4 hours, or other variations. You can do it every day, every second day, every weekday, or whatever suits you.

I've been trying it for a month, and can now reveal that: I lost a stone. Then gained two pounds.

My problem is not a sweet tooth. It's that once I start eating, I don't want to stop. Even if it's good healthy food with no carbohydrates, something in my brain says too much is not enough.

Two things I can tell you about the human digestive tract:

(1) It's completely incapable of digesting celulose. Dietry fibre as it's known, it makes up about 5% of most vegetables, almost all of the rest being water. It is nothing but bulk, making you feel fuller...and generating quite a lot of gas as a by-product when your gut tries to digest it. So yeah, it can make you feel bloated. And fart.

(2) If you don't eat it, you get constipated. As in: literal tough shit.

So, if you want to avoid a growling empty stomach, and an easy time on the toilet, eat plenty of vegetables. Or a fibre supplement like Psillium Husks. These are basically an edible sponge - absorbing supposedly 14 times their dry mass of liquid, first filling out your stomach with calorieless bulk, then giving your intestines a nice smooth flow.

You can eat them as grains or powder suspended in water or fruit juice, or as capsules. Either way, drink a glass (250ml) of water before, and 2 or 3 glasses immediately afterwards. Skimp on the water, and you can ironically wind up constipated again.

You can use them to replace meals, or as a starter which takes care of the initial hunger, making the meal itself a small-scale indulgence.

The problem is: most of us don't eat because we've got an empty stomach. We eat because we're bored, or because the clock says it's time for food, or the food's there in front of us, or we just like the taste. Or for night owls like me, because we're tired. Exactly what idiot god designed humans to get peckish when sleepy, I don't know. Presumably one invented before electric lights.

You can either think, or digest, but not both. So it makes sense to schedule your food according to when you'll need to be mentally active...or vice versa.

So, as if today, my new diet plan.

(1) A 16:8 day. In the 8-hour windows, one large normal meal. Keep carbs to a minimum. Zero sugar if possible. Sugar-free sweets allowed. Occasional psillium as needed, with at least 1 litre of water.

(2) In the 16-hour window, fast for as long as reasonably possible. When I really need to eat something, one dose (2-4 500mg capsules) of psillium with water. Sugar-free squash allowed.

(3) Tea/Coffee/Water/Squash at any time.

(4) Get enough sleep.

Not good. I start again.

"Photographing is an act of non-intervention." - Susan Sontag

"There is nothing like an insane asylum to tenderly incubate death." - Antonin Artaud

"Happy people make boring television." - Joss Whedon

"I only enjoy accomplishing impossible things." - Ted V Mikels

"It's just as hard to be wrong about everything as it is to be right about everything." - Kurt Godel

Advice to my young self #29: Be honest and trustworthy. Assume no one else is.

"Beware of whores who say they don't want money." - William Burroughs

"Satire is a lesson. Parody is a game." - Vladimir Nabokov

"I do not feel that gender is sufficient to explain all of human life." - Camille Paglia

"The universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper." - Eden Phillpotts

"Self-pity is the ugliest emotion." - Stephen Fry

Advice to my young self #95: Idiots moralise because they can't afford to grasp the facts. Manipulators moralise because they can't afford for you to grasp them.

Advice to my young self #98: Two levels of wisdom: To forgive oneself for being wrong, and to forgive the other for being right.

Advice to my young self #44: Shallow people make shallow mistakes. Profound people make profound mistakes.

Advice to my young self #70: Stupid people are not those who ask stupid questions. They are those committed to stupid answers.

Advice to my young self #06: Politics is not secularised religion. Religion is mystified politics.

Advice to my young self #58: Neutralise fanatics by giving them something trivial to be fanatical about.

Advice to my young self #50: All human interaction is tactical. Even when there is nothing to fight over.

Advice to my young self #62: Selling out looks a lot like winning.

Advice to my young self #30: A deep insight is one which destroys a deep illusion.

"Hate comes from offence. Offence is feeling personally attacked." - Unknown

"Those who have cautiously done no more than they believed possible have never taken a single step forward." - Mikhail Bakunin

"A trifle consoles us because a trifle upsets us." - Blaise Pascal

"The worst government is the most moral." - HL Mencken

"Plagarism only occurs if the work is not bettered by the borrower." - John Milton

Advice to my young self #97: For those obsessed with purity, nothing is ever pure enough.

Advice to my young self #28: Everyone is either trapped or satisfied.

Advice to my young self #81: Often the best answer is: The question is meaningless.

Advice to my young self #22: Sanity is a moral category.

Advice to my young self #71: The bigger the ego, the more delicate.

Hubbard's Law of Conspiracies: Every conspiracy theory expands to
include child sex grooming.

Miscaviage's Corollory: This includes sex-obsessed conspiracy theories
about sex-obsessed conspiracy theorists.

Penned

Penn Gillette is entertaining, which is not the same as interesting.

Kim Kardashian, Alex Jones spinning another conspiracy theory, and Charlie Sheen going into meltdown are entertaining. Noam Chomsky explaining political euphemisms, HL Mencken dissecting democracy, even Robert Price making his case against abortion - these are interesting, even if you fundamentally disagree with them.

But in "Presto!" - Penn Gillette's book about how you can get thin if you have exactly the psychological peculiarities of Penn Gillette - he makes an interesting observation in passing.

There are, he says, two ways to achive - to be a juggler, or a magician.

Juggling, fire eating, contortionism - these are skills, not tricks. You can pretend to be able to juggle, but you can't fake the ability. Jugglers are those who get things done by painfully mastering a difficult skill.

Magicians...find ways to make hard tasks easy. Or by extension, to make the impossible possible. Inventors, programmers, and engineers are magicians. So are scientists and philosophers - but not religious mystics.

Penn's diet involves eating nothing but plain baked potatoes for two weeks, bulldozing through the consequent illness and mental fog to lose two pounds per day. It works. If you can do it. Which almost no one can.

But then, Penn is one of those people with heroic willpower who thinks what the world needs is more people with heroic willpower. He also seems to think you can develop heroic willpower by an effort of heroic willpower.

I'm a magician - one of those people who will spend weeks of effort to save minutes of effort every day thereafter. And I think the world needs more technicians. I also catch myself thinking you can become technically minded by approaching the world with a technical mind.

We use the word "bored" to mean both "not interested" and "not entertained". Perhaps we shouldn't. Because when we think we want to be entertained, often we really want to be interested.

Advice to my young self #32: There is no problem to which tears are the solution.

Advice to my young self #73: Every moral asbolute is a fossilised tactic from a defunct power struggle.

Dreams never make sense when you try to explain them.

Don't go wandering off.

Watch out, you might get what you're after. Strange but not a stranger.

Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water.

People sound different on the phone....

Places have souls. Even if people don't.

The public wants what the public gets ... going underground.

In Soviet Russia, tree climbs you.

Advice to my young self #94: To approach a goal, love the journey. To finish the journey, drop the love.

Adventures on the high seas. Or adventures while high on C.

The Dark side of the moon.

What's the difference between terrible and horrible?

Let's not take the train.

I've men gods and demi-gods and would-be gods....

Yeah, as if....

Advice to my young self #66: Almost everyone is a fraud.

Almost no one knows what they're talking about, or what they're doing. They don't know enough to know they don't know. It takes courage, not intellect, to recognise one's own incompetence.

If you can manage to be not a fraud, you're already among the best.

In another world, he can wear a dress.

Choose your parents wisely.

Why I'm not a cat person.

Too much reading makes you go blind.

Lovecraft says you can't trust Poles.

Advice to my young self #52: If your mentor doesn't eventually disappoint you, they haven't done their job.

Beware shady Egyptian businessmen.

"Optimism is a political strategy." - Nick Sagan

"All failure is lack of concentration." - Bruce Lee

"Strange times call for strange comforts." - Bryan Lambert

"The people who must never have power are the humourless." - Christopher Hitchens

"Marriage is the attempt to make something lasting out of an incident." - Albert Einstein

I'd like to try Wyrd Mystic Door One, please Monty.

Advice to my young self #69: If you wait until you're ready, you'll never be ready.

Advice to my young self #36: Stupidity always has a purpose.

Everyone has the facilities to understand why their beliefs are false and their actions counterproductive. Stupidity is the refusal the use these facilities, and the motive is fear.

To make someone intelligent, help them work through their fears.

The Naked Ape is still an ape.

The lonliness is getting to Robinson Crusoe....

Tonight's bedtime story is a joke about bad sci-fi.

"Rage doesn't need effort." - Former People

"We don't want upheaval, we just want an upgrade." - Caitlin Moran

"The wonderful thing about children is, they grow up." - Lawrence Krauss

"Men are born ignorant, not stupid; they are made stupid by education." - Bertrand Russell

"The framing of the innocent axiomatically involves the exculpation of the guilty." - Christopher Hitchens

I read "Azathoth", by HP Lovecraft.

"The literal mind does not understand the ironic mind, and sees it always as a source of danger." - Christopher Hitchens

"Schools are where you send your child to be brought up by other children." - Alan Watts

"When you see something stupid, call someone stupid." - Keith Olbermann

"An idea isn't responsible for the people who believe it." - Don Marquis

"A hero is a man who would argue with the gods." - Norman Mailer

Advice to my young self #26: Evasion is admission

You can't avoid the point without seeing it. You can't shift the blame without recognising it. You can't dodge the question without understanding it.

To evade is to admit. First that there is a problem, and second that you can't solve it.

"He that is good for making excuses is seldom good for anything else." - Benjamin Franklin

"Cynicism is an evasion." - Noam Chomsky

"Identity politics is what we're left with when we no longer have a personality." - Will Self

"Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people." - Eleanor Roosevelt

"We have to do God's work when there is no god." - Penn Gillette

More is Less

I have eaten almost nothing but salad for the last three months. And I can tell you three things:

(1) It's remarkably easy to get used to eating salad. To the extent that you don't crave cakes, chocolates etc.
(2) I now no longer feel ill and exhausted all the time. In fact I didn't realise how lousy I'd been feeling for years - just putting it down to the general malaise of middle age, diabetes, and being born with rubbish genes.
(3) I weigh exactly the same as I did two months ago. And my reflection in the mirror is just as rounded in all the wrong places and not bulging in the nice places at all.

So, on the basis that I'm doing something right, but not enough of it, from today the menu is:

* Leuttice and other green leafy things (lots)
* Cucumber (lots)
* Carrots (lots)
* Onion (lots)
* Beetroot (because why not)
* Kidney beans (a few)
* Chick peas (a few)
* Pepper, salt, flaked red peppers, plus whatever other condiments or herbs I stumble upon
* Vineger, lemon juice or lime juice when the mood takes me (small splashes)
* Less olive oil than previously. Ditto rappa oil, mustard seed oil, ground nut oil, and whatever wild and wonderful oils remain to be discovered in the Mediterrainian supermarket. (if there's a puddle on the plate when nothing else is left, there was too much to begin with)
* Fish - mackerel, sardines etc. (occasional)
* Water (including in tea)

There's absolutely no point in restricting yourself to food you don't like, and there's nothing noble about going hungry. So the plan is to be an utter pig...but a choosy one.

Harry

One of our dogs died today.

Harry, a six year old Maltese who was happy so long as he had a human to lie down next to. Or on. If you lay down, he liked to climb on top of your chest and...plonk down. A small dog, but solid, with heavy muscle.

Or if you were sitting up, he'd settle for wedging himself against you...and turning upside down, legs and nose in the air, mouth open. He could manage to do this if you were sitting in an armchair.

Two weeks ago, he developed constipation. We gave him cod liver oil but it didn't help. Whenever he tried to take a dump, he howled in pain and nothing came out. His rear end was swollen, but all the pain was on the inside.

One week ago, the vet said he had a colonic hernia - viscera protruding through muscle, blocking the passage.

Four days ago, he had an operation to correct it. He was happier, not in pain, but refused to eat anything. We managed to get him to swallow his medicines by squirting them into his mouth - and he actually seemed to enjoy it.

He drank plenty of water, but then always brought it up again. Yesterday he was lethargic and weak, barely able to walk, but starting to be able to crouch and defacate in the garden - without obvious discomfort.

Then this evening...he just didn't wake up from a nap.

Another vet is storing the body until we can have him cremated.

These are the facts. And that's the easy part.

Maybe the truma of the surgery was too much, maybe there was just too much wrong to fix. There's no easy way to tell, and that's...okay.

I'm 45. My father is 82. I don't think I've ever seen him cry before. What am I supposed to make of this?

Checking for a pulse, feeling for slight breathing, noting how the flesh was turning cold. A slightly uncomfortable sensation, but nothing difficult to cope with. Seeing how rigour mortis had stiffened his legs when we moved him - that was deeply unsettling.

The other dogs - sometimes they barked or growled when Harry was wolfing down food from their plates, or splayed on their favourite cushion - no one could splay like Harry. But when confronted with his body, it was as if they couldn't see it. It wasn't him to them.

So I'm left with a scattering of mundane memories, that suddenly have an extra colouring. That time we sent him to have his coat trimmed, and he came back almost with a buzzcut, which seemed to puzzle him. The time our youngest dog Rosie was in season, and Harry followed her around, wagging frantically.

And the ritual every night when Harry recognised the signs that we were preparing to sleep, and he got over excited, running around and barking, trying to decide whose bed he would sleep on.

Yes, I'll miss that. Goodnight Harry.

Inventory

Monday 6th February. Morning.

If all goes well, I leave today.

So apparently I'm supposed to reflect, and draw out life lessons from my recent experiences.

I came here with a cold in the head, and I'm leaving with a different one.

I came knowing exactly one word of Turkish, and I leave having learned I was mispronouncing it.

I came expecting to work for a charitable business, and I leave expecting to work for a business disguised as a charity.

I came with luggage full of casual clothes, and GBP200 in lira. Anything I don't spend or especially want to wear can go to my hosts - they can probably find a better use for the running shoes that always chafed.

I've managed to aquire three jackets, five pairs of trousers, seven shirts and a tie - which can all stay right here in storage.

The fashion is like the TV. 40 years out of date, and the reason you can enjoy it ironically is that it's incapable of grasping irony.

The food is simple fare, expertly prepared. And I have a curious yearning for fish and chips.

The people...I've barely met any actual turks in Turkey. Everyone's been kurdish, syrian, russian etc. But turks seem parochial rather than xenophobic. If you like heavily built men with a casual attitude to sex but a horror of admitting it, this could be the holiday destination for you.

I'll be back.

Inside, looking out. Away, looking back.

Rapping Up

Saturday 4th February. Night.

Plans for amateur child psychology scuppered by visit from a Turkish businessman and offspring. He speaks Arabic and French in addition to native Turkish, and wanted some English vocabulary.

So I got to eat Kabsa with a man who finds the words "Food" and "Belly" hilarious. Foooood. Be...ellleeeee.

There's so many things I want to get on with when I get back home. But that's not quite the same as being glad to leave.

I suppose the point of a holiday is to rest, recuperate, recharge, renew, revivify, and maybe other approximate synonyms beginning with R.

As well as review, recapitulate, reconsider, ratiocinate and reconnoitre with relish. No, really.

Red Cabbage.

Something else beginning with R.

I Do Linguistics

Saturday 4th February. Morning.

I took the opportunity during a hour of internet access to download some Arabic tutorials - including "Arabic for Dummies". And I've never read such a load of smug, inaccurate bollocks outside of, well, muslim apologetics.

It claims to use an internationally recognised system of transcription - one that mixes up several sounds, misdescribes others, and doesn't even try to indicate syllable stress or vowel length. Oh, and I've never seen it used outside this book, which gives the word for "Student" as not "taalib" but "tilmiidh" which it then says is pronounced "teel-mee-zah".

Arabic is bonkers enough without frauds presenting themselves as experts. Grammatical gender and adjectival agreement are minor inconveniences, but when the numbers 13-19, and 11 but not 12 must have gender disagreement, then we're dealing with a language designed by drunken committee.

Oh yes, the word for "drunk" is /sekre:n/. I learned that last night, for the price of a whisky and coke. And a headache later.

My absolute favourite culinary discovery in Turkey. And it's not Turkish. From, Syria, Makdous. Eggplant, stuffed with pulverised walnuts, red pepper and garlic. It may look like a larval form of Cthulu, but until I can get somewhere with the Unfeasibly Sexy Mustafa, this is the best thing I put in my mouth.

Kooky

Friday 3rd February.

Wassam has excellent fine motor control, shows problem solving intelligence, seems to understand a small range of gestures, and enjoys being picked up and cuddled.

He also never makes eye contact, and appears to have no spoken language at all. What kind of environment or neurological disorder could lead to both complete aphasia and prosopagnosia?

Yesterday he bit me - simply as though curious what I tasted like. He gets distressed - and placated - easily enough, but seems incapable of aggression.

What could lead to a three year old child (1) being able to work out that an adult pointing to a particular part of a toy-puzzle is a hint that this peg and not that is the one the orange but not the green or purple hoop should next go over, but (2) not grasping that spoken words refer to things.

And how could spending the first two years of life watching kids music television lead to this?

And how do you fix it?

I've been asked to spend the weekend with Wassam, to try to gather some clues.

"Khookh". Imagine apricot jam, with fatally large amounts of added sugar.

Olive/Branch

Thursday 2nd February.

That first charity we interviewed with. The one for who we were insufficiently islamic. Turns out they've decided they do want something from us after all.

They want to spread overseas, including the UK. Which means they want someone to take care of all the confusing, non-quran inspired paperwork in the UK...so they can send three of their people over to run it.

In return for which, they'll give a lump sum equivalent to one half of the running costs of this here refugee camp, for one year.

So basically, my job is to do some google searches, memorise and summarise UK charity law, act as their agent...and find some cheap premises to rent.

After which, their people will need some english lessons. But they haven't thought that far ahead.

Oh, and I'm to advise them on how to get accredited with "OUTSCHA" - a UN run authority that's the Better Business Bureau of charities. Except according to google, there's no such organisation. Another small detail to work out.

Edit: It turns out to be OCHA. And it seems to be easier for some companies to employ another company to employ an english-speaking researcher to read the english-language version of the relavent UN documents and summarise them in english to be translated into arabic...than to do a bit of reading in their own native language.

Spot...

...the difference.

Kinda

Wednesday February 1st. Afternoon.

Two small acts of kindness. Compare and contrast.

IHH are a Benevolent foundation. That's with a capital B, meaning they have an enormous heap of money, which they donate to various charities.

To apply for a donation, go to their high-tech, military-style complex. To get in, you must surrender your citizenship card, passport, or equivalent documentation. This gets you past the guarded turnstile, and into a large prefabricated building, where you plead your worthiness.

In this case, after half an hour of mission-statement regurgitation (in which I spoke five words), we were told it would take a long time to process and consider our application. That's code for "Piss off, you're not prestigious enough for us."

After retrieving our documents from IHH border control, we drove disconsolately away.

Now, before all this, we stopped at a coffeeshop, where I was gently but persistently pestered by a girl of about seven. Homeless, and begging for cash. I gave her the contents of my pocket - five lira in coins. That was act number one.

So, my tent is cold. In fact, bloody cold because the air conditioning broke. In fact, abolutely fucking freezing. But last night I was warm because the families occupying the next tent along donated their heater.

Leaving them absolutely fucking freezing.

So today I bought them a new heater - 90 lira.

Five lira to make a beggar go away, versus 90 so I don't feel like quite such an imperial colonialist bastard. For the next three days.

Samboukas. Which are not the same as Samosas, apparently. Simple home pleasures are better if you can save some for a midnight snack.

I Do Politics

Wednesday February 1st. Morning.

Apparently I'm only fun to be around when I'm drunk. Possibly unsurprising, as painting and sculpture only speak to me in the same condition.

I'm also the unofficially official (or vice versa) local expert on such vexed political matter as:

* Why did Britain brexit? (Possibly, they didn't want to support Greece and Italy, now the european economy was failing. Or they hoped to silence the movement to leave by holding a referendum, with an unexpected result. Or...something else.)

* Is a third world war coming? (More like dozens of small wars.)

* Will Donald Trump cause it? (Only if his handlers lose control completely, and he really is that stupid and insane.)

* Why did America support Saddam Hussein? (He was useful at the time, particularly against Iran.)

* Why does America support Assad? (They're split, but enough think he's useful for now.)

* Is it true Hitler respected Muslims? (He used them, but planned to destroy them later.)

* What do you think of Isreal? (Even if its role and funding disappeared tomorrow, it wouldn't disappear any time soon.)

(My marxist friends used to hold debates on "Does Isreal Have The Right To Exist", to which I think the answer is: "The right as conferred by which power?")

Maybe I should drink more.

A foaming flagon of cool, crisp, refreshing...thin yoghurt.

Jobby

Tuesday January 31st. Morning.

On the other hand, sometimes your semi-paranoid imaginings can be prophetic. For instance, one thought was that a charity would offer a "probationary period" of, say, one month, during which I would do my job free of charge, after which they'd look and see whether there was a chance of paid employment.

To which my considered response would be "Fuck off, did you think I was born yesterday?".

Well, guess what happened.

It looks like I'm here till Saturday, which apart from the suddenly broken air conditioning and consequent need for me to type this wearing three thick layers of clothing...is fine.

Imagine eggplant, stuffed with spicy, crunchy peanut butter. Now imagine flat bread, dipped in olive oil, and coated in a powder of pungent herbs. Or the same bread, dipped in sweet oil of dates. All washed down with a strong, dark tea.

That's my breakfast. Now imagine a meal where you fill up with a first course of a dozen varieties of salad - finely chopped onion and leutice with a dusting of paprika, black and green olives, leafy kale coated in lemon juice, goat's cheese, hummous...each on its own little plate, for you to mix and try as you wish.

Then the main course, lamb or sometimes beef, grilled with peppers. Or, a plate of spicy chicken wings. Rice is an expensive option, as is pasta. It's a small stroke of genius that your actual hunger is taken care of by extensive starters, so the literal meat of the meal is a leasurely self-indulgence - much as a dessert course is for us.

You can finish off with sweet tea or a dose of caffine in the form of almost viscous coffee.

This is a typical resteraunt meal. I think one reason we get obese in the west is that we don't actually like our food very much.

Cornflakes, baked beans, sausage and mashed potato - convenience food. But also...boring. So we eat more, hoping the pleasure hit will come on the next bite.

Here, living in a cold tent in a Syrian refugee camp, breakfast is something to look forward to. As opposed to something you unthinkingly do while watching the breakfast TV news.

Yellow Soup.

Red Soup.

Decisions, Decisions

Monday January 30th.

Today was supposed to be the day we decide what to do for the next year. The options are:

1) Finish negotiations with an already existing charity. Arrange accommodation, transport and teaching space for me, start immediately, and at some point visit England to fetch all the hardware, software and data needed to upgrade teaching from basic.

2) Strike out on our own. I go home to get my stuff, Jamal squeezes business types in Saudi for funding, and when we're both done, get back to Turkey. My preferred option.

3) Give up the whole thing as a bad idea.

But, seeing as this is not just the middle east where nothing runs on schedule, but Turkey, where all meetings are a delicate dance of finding out what the terms of a verbal contract even mean...we've still got no idea what we're doing.

I don't like uncertainty, and I've got a very bad habit in uncertain situations. I tend to pace up and down, imagining scenarios where everyone else is being the most incompetent assholes in the world. And me coming up with strategies to deal with them.

Unfortunately, if you could reason with an asshole, they wouldn't be an asshole, by definition. That's why, however charitable your view on human nature, the only way to deal with bullies is to bully them. You deal with obstructive bureaucrats by obstructing them. And you defeat trolls by humiliating them - though whether that's best done by ignoring them is another matter.

That's why shouting works when pleading doesn't. It's why you deflate pomposity with ridicule, not debate. It's why blackmail, an appeal to the least enlightened form of self-interest, works better than appeals to, well, enlightened self-interest.

But pacing and fuming only leads to more pacing and fuming.

Unless you're debating creationists, flat earthers, or Trump supporters in the real world, obviously. Swivel-eyed loons can't be de-programmed, only smashed.

Taking afternoon tea on the lawn.

Eeey, Meeny...

Saturday 28th January, Sunday 29th January

If you've ever wondered how muslims know which way to face when praying, wonder no more. How do they know which direction is Mecca? They guess.

Another of life's little mysteries solved, when the most obvious answer turns out to be the right one.

Apart from that, a decidedly uneventful weekend. Most of it spent trying to figure out the rules of which vowels go where in arabic words. And once again the obvious answer is true: there aren't any rules.

Which means, on the principle that the long vowel or diphthong is in the emphasised syllable, and if there isn't a long vowel, the emphsais is on the first syllable of di- or tri-syllables, and the ante-penultimate syllable if there's more than three...

...this means there aren't any rules for determining word stress from the written form either, and the above principle is therefore meaningless.

So, why don't arabic dictionaries and wordlists aimed at the beginners include vowel points? Children's books do it. The quran does it. Inspiring messages spelled out in sequins on cushions do it.

"Hot" is /ha:r/. "Cold" is /ba:rd/. Or /ba:rad/, or /ba:rid/, or /ba:rud/, or possibly even /ba:raid/ or /ba:raud/. But my list of 1000 most useful arabic words won't tell me which.

Could the most obvious explanation be right, that professional teachers of arabic are just as useless as professional teachers of english when it comes to knowing what students need? Probably.

Is this the reason Arabic disco sounds different to western glitchcore?

I May Be Some Time

Friday 27th January

It took a day of hangover to get over the evening of drinking. Then we got stuck in a snowdrift. And then the car could only manage to drive halfway home. And so we walked, in the freezing cold, through 25cm thick snow, up a mountain.

Left to my own devices, I'd have stayed in the car, slept there in the warm, and seen if things looked better in the morning. But instead we walked. And left to my own devices, I'd probably have died.

You see, I'm not very good with pain. And I'm especially not good with exhaustion, even when not combined with cold. And I do get exhausted quite easily. So I was tempted, really tempted many times, to just lie down in the snow and...what? Sleep through it? Give up? I don't know.

After a great deal of stress and shouting, we finally got to the house I'm calling home for the moment. It was probably only a half hour journey, but it felt timeless. Then I stepped in through the front door, and promptly slipped on the ice, nearly braining myself against the wall.

A bit more stress and a bit more shouting, and another half hour of lying on the floor of the living room, gasping to get breath back, slowly recovering in front of the heater.

Multiple cups of hot sweet tea, and a change out of cold wet clothes. And then, somewhat inevitably, a blackout. All electricity gone, and, it turned out, water too. No more heater, no more lights.

But at least plenty of wooly, fleecy blankets to sleep under.

In the morning, power restored, sun shining, and almost all the snow magically melted away.

Hot days, cold nights, hot summers, cold winters - that's the middle east climate. I'm writing this at 8pm on Saturday, with thermal underwear, a hoodie, socks folded on my feet for double thickness, and air conditioning on full hot blast. There's four thick blankets available, and I'm thinking of making the bed and crawling under them, just to be comfortable.

What I hallucinated from the cold. Or the alcohol. Either that, or art galleries with surrealist Happenings have nothing on tacky hotel lobbies. Which do you think is more likely?

Drink, Drank, Drunk.

Thurdsay 26th January. Afternoon.

Two more interviews with local companies, hawking our educational vapourware product. It was only on leaving the second company's office we realised: We have absolutely no clue what they do.

Just a bare white cube of an office, with the standard belaptopped understatedly plush desk in one corner, a suited man behind it with the regulation ultra-neatly trimmed five-day beard...and the equally regulation office boy in immaculate jeans and leather jacket to bring tea.

I'm thinking management consultants. One company (them) managing outsourcing of another company (us) to employ a third company (me) to teach managers of a fourth company to, er, manage.

And then...we downed half a bottle of red wine each. Followed by several hours of Jamal's slightly eratic driving, and me being violently ill. Must remember not to do that again. Ever.

I have to admit, I really do enjoy arabic daytime soap operas. The plot beats are so clearly signposted, and the characters so broadly drawn, you can follow it without knowing a word of the language.

There's the overprotective mother, and her gaggle of saccharine young children. The mean older sister, and the lachrymose younger one. The nieve young buck, and the scheming businessman - complete with twirlable moustache.

All played with total sincerity, with not a hint of self-parody, yet instantly self-parodying. You can't have a concept of camp without one of kitsch, and kitsch is a product of class warfare. But on TV, everyone is a decent struggling worker, living in an aristocratic mansion, doing a vague middle-class, middle management job.

...because a cup is more stylish than a syringe.

The Bullshit Economy

Wednesday 25th January. Afternoon.

The unfeasibly sexy Mustafa is going away to study in Sparta. Which, in open defiance of what I learned in Classical Civilisation classes, is no longer in Greece. Shocking.

Ah well. I should see him again in about three months, and maybe feel like a giddy schoolgirl again. Or a slightly dodgy old perv. I always get those two confused.

Meanwhile, an impromptu interview/presentation with, well, a businessman. The Montgolfier brothers were baloonist-papermakers. Benedictus Spinoza was a heretic-lensgrinder. This fellow is a cisconetwork-manager-coffeeshop-owner. Meaning, he wears a suit to give orders to young employees in stylishly ripped jeans to solve technical problems he doesn't understand, and they don't bother explaining the reality to him.

But, like all people who like to pretend they understand computers, he thinks matters like photoshop layering and database management are incredibly arcane and difficult to learn.

Actually, they can be, but not if all you want is a company logo or a payroll record.

And so, the fifteen point list of "things Kapitano can teach apart from English", which constitutes our company's mission statement, has to be translated into English, for purely legal reasons, for no one to read.

This list started life as my notes on the back of an envelope, which got translated into Arabic pseudo-legalese. So now we feed the result into google translate, and I edit the resulting mess into English pseudo-legalese.

Here's our first three promises:

1) Provide training in modern video conferencing and webinar presentation techniques, in both English and Arabic languages.

2) Facilitate effective communication with western charitable organisations, to present the client business organisation effectively, thus enabling smooth project development.

3) Contribute actively to sourcing of a suitable environment, to assist the client organisation in legally performing its activities in the United Kingdom, to remove obstacles to success in business.

Aren't you glad no one's ever going to read it?

Part of our well-deserved reward for writing the above.

A Puzzle

Wednesday 25th January. Morning.

What looks a bit like autism in a 3 year old boy? What does it mean when he's skilled with iphone and laptop...but has no words at all, and doesn't know his name? Loves to be hugged, especially by father. We think we have an answer.

It's the first world problem of children raised by television. From as soon as he could sit, his mother left him sat in front of the TV - leaving him calm, happy, and seemingly engaged and learning.

Result: A 3 year old boy with the mind of an 18 month old baby. Not slow, in fact very quick, but delayed. The treatment seems obvious - lots of interaction with lots of familiar people. Basically, an extended loving family. Which is exactly what he's got.

But is it actually possible for him to catch up? With this delayed start, how far can he even run? I don't know, and the research seems uncertain.

What happens when you introduce the electric light bulb to a culture that lives in tents? You get storytelling, debate and gossip that can extend into the night, instead of finishing when the sun goes down.

What happens when you introduce iPhones and internet? You get families sitting around a tray of fingerfood in the evening, each eating their fill...and then wordlessly browsing facebook for their storytelling, debate and gossip.

What happens when you introduce 24-hour multi-channel TV? The elderly can stay mentally active and entertained, without being a burden. The debate and gossip is about world events, not just the latest family scandel. You just also get boys like Wasaam.

Though to be fair, if I were a mother tasked with non-stop shopping, cooking, cleaning and care for five children, I'd be tempted to outsource the childcare to the magic window in the corner too.

He decided I was a soft and comfortable mattress. And he really didn't want to wake up.

Shoed Out

Tuesday January 24th. Evening.

The first charity we spoke to promised to get back to us in four days. They didn't. We emailed and called. They didn't answer. Which is rather an insult in islamic culture. We decided we didn't want them, not least because their overtly islamic image seemed to be, shall we say, trying a little too hard. Then they email to say they didn't want us. Because...we're not Islamic enough for them.

Your shoes are shiny. They're shinier than you can imagine.

Church, and State Rooms

Tuesday January 24th. Afternoon.

Antioch! Which isn't actually called Antioch! And is dirt poor but has a small industry in christian tourism because it's got a very early christian church, built into a natural cave and viewable for 15 lira...!

I'm fairly sure the early, oppressed and illegal christian church couldn't afford solid stone alters with nicely carved symbolic alphas and omegas. Or improbably kitsch statues of Saint Paul. Or an escape route with a neat square doorway. So there may be a little artistic licence, to go with the souvenir shop.

Which has mosaics and statues showing christian themes. And islamic themes. And hindu themes. And hybrids of the above. Because why not.

I'd like to try Door Number 1, please Monty.

But nearby...

The Savon Hotel. Very high class. How high class? Most hotels in Turkey have the word "Otel" in illuminated letters on the front. This one is too posh for illuminations, and transliterates the english correctly.

Inside, rooms that boast showers...and hairdryers, according to the prospectus, with the sales pitch given in seven languages. Two rooms have jaccuzis, and the foyer has spotless white ceilings designed like church spandrels, tables of finely carved dark wood with polished glass tops, and seat-covers that would make William Morris say, "It's a little too ornate."

It also has a particular smell. "Savon" is Turkish for "Soap" - the Arabic equilvalent is "Sabon", cognate to "Saponification". The place was a soap factory from 1850 - or as I was first told, a "Soup Factory" - and since its refurbishment as a hotel in 2001, this little fact has become central to the sales literature.

The smell...is the scent of scented soap, without the soap. The pretence being that naturally odourless soap naturally has this smell, and it survives over decades and extensive building work. "Sound and perfume swirl in the evening air" wrote Baudalaire, and here the sound is the most hideously inoffensive piano-and-saxaphone smooth jazz.

Except I recognised one of the tunes. "Comment te dir adieu". Whose lyrics are about anal sex.

The best teabag I've ever encountered. Never been teabagged like it before.

Which I listened to while drinking my 7-lira "Herbs Tea". I mean I listened to the muzak, not...anyway. The tea was praeternaturally excellent, but didn't quite compare to...

The Ottoman Hotel. A hotel so grand it doesn't even need to show its name on the front. 100 lira will get you entry to the ground floor swimming baths, which, we are proudly told several times, are kept at exactly 42 degrees celsius. For maximum effectiveness at...something.

These apparently are phosphate baths, like the ones I frolicked in recently. As to which phosphate, or even if it's the same one, we still don't know.

An actual dunk may cost you dear, but a bit of charm will get you a free guided tour. So we got to see what made cubic spaces of blue cholorinated water so special, apart from the rich elderly men in blue trunks floating in them.

Deep carpeting in the corridors, chrome handrails polished to a high sheen...and pseudo-medieval paintings with vaguely virtuous implied meanings on the walls. If you can't justify the price by improving the product, you can add window dressing.

Everything says quality, but quality what, exactly?

Bonk

Monday January 23rd. Afternoon.

It's Paul Smith - the name of the bar that's named after the apparantly high-fashion clothing line. The one I've never heard of.

And the owner is, equally apparently, a Kurdish Turk, who isn't German after all but spent some formative years in Germany. And who thinks it's a jolly good idea to install an english language school as an additional side-attraction in his bar, to counterbalance the shisha-smoking section. And who's confident my teenager-friendly, video based method of teaching would fit right in. Which I think is bonkers, but, well, what the bleep do I know?

But. Buuuuuut...he isn't sure about planning permission to build partitions. Or rather, isn't sure the relavent local buraucrats can be persuaded. Or rather, isn't sure what their bribe level is.

He's Plan B - the fallback position of Plan A, which is to work with local charities to use a language school to raise money to maintain shelters for syrian refugees. Which is, IMHO, slightly less bonkers.

But...there's a Plan C! Which is the use the existing multi-purpose business to set up an additional charity which will raise some of its funds by running a language school, staffed by the same guy who does all the IT stuff, after he spends a few weeks back in england putting together all the materials for both. Which is...averagely bonkers for Turkey.

Oh yes, I've asked a fair few Syrians to explain the war to me. Like, how many factions are there, and who could form a provisional government, and how can people be so gullible as to kill members of their own close family over hairline differences created by a few weeks of propaganda broadcasts. And the answer is, everyone gave up guesssing a long time ago. So the situation could be described as...yes.

Tea...with all the trimmings.

Living in a Material World

Monday January 23rd. Morning.

If you build a house halfway up a mountain, what are your preferred building materials? There are a lot of mountains in Turkey, so a lot of halfways, and quite a lot of houses. And they're all bloody freezing.

Why use blocks of stone when you could use blocks of breezeblock? Because stone is cheap and local, while breezeblocks are seemingly so-far not. Why use marble for the staircases when you could use textured concrete that (a) you don't frelling slip on and (b) can at least be fitted easier with carpet, so it's not cold as, well, marble? So far as I can tell: Tradition.

So why make all the doors out of cold, heavy, clanging sheet steel? The same reason you fit the windows with bars. Thieves Operate In This Area. And even if they don't, the fear of thieves does.

There's no shortage of wood for doors, windowframes etc. I've been watching a house get built, and the scaffolding is wood, not steel. But wood is too fragile, and quite possibly too quiet, to deter thieves with crowbars.

The other view from my tent. Showcasing other building materials.

Hanging Out at the Mall

Sunday, January 22nd. Afternoon.

What do bustling middle eastern metropolises (metropoliti? metropoles?) have in common with sleepy english villages? To travel between them, you need a private car, and the patience to drive for hours at a time.

So, after two hours on the road, I got to (a) see the incredibly expensive Sherrington hotel, and (b) walk around the nearby incredibly expensive shopping mall. Which is exactly like every other shopping mall in the world, in that it's rows of over-specialist shops set into a stark white background whith insipid muzak and weak perfume everywhere.

Oh, and (c) I met with two of Jamal's endless supply of cousins. One's an engineer, and the other...is a human rights lawyer, with an extensive collection of evidenced atrocities committed by the Assad regime. Which is probably why his family were kidnapped and imprisoned. Though probably not the reason why a missile struck a meter in front of his car, nearly killing him.

He wanted to know the best way to get accepted into the UK. I said economic refugees get the lowest preference, with political ones slightly higher. But if you don't want to be an illegal migrant doing all the horrible jobs while being invisible and defenceless, universities love high paying foreign students, especially in highly skilled areas that natives don't do so well in.

The same in America of course, but more so.

It may be true that an expert is an ordinary person, far from home. But I'm not sure I'm ordinary enough to be an expert.

If spectacle is a by-product of industry, you can imply industry by creating spectacle.

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