Day 11-12. Dinner with 15.

After dropping off the Ukrainian hitchhikers, we carried on along the deserted road home.
Out of nowhere something appears against the sun, coming down the middle of the road towards the car. We get closer and it's an old woman, with a huge multi-coloured shawl wrapped all around her body and head. She's gesturing at us and all over the air around her and chanting in a manic language that sounded like nothing we'd heard, though our understanding of turkish is so poor she could quite easily have been chanting 'look at the weather look at the weather'. She doesn't move to the pavement, we stop the car and it looks like she's going to climb on top of the bonnet. She bashes her hands on the car, working her way around to my window, continuing the manic scream-chant. We look at each other, not knowing what we should do, does she want a lift? does she want money or is it insulting to offer her money? It didn't seem quite like she wanted any of those things as her disconnected chanting got more crazed. We made pathetic English apologies, trying to gesture that we can't understand what she is saying, and guiltily moved the car forward and towards home, making sure we didn't run over her toes.

On Friday evening Mesud invited 10 friends over for dinner, Jake, Nick and I had to cook for 15 people. Almost. Serving up a huge vegetable one-pot or chili sin carne isn't the acceptable 10+ person cooking here. After the standard of foodings we'd experienced so far, we would have to provide at least 5 vegetable dishes, a subtle and beautifully cooked meaty thing, a couple of salads, bread, olives, nuts, and some sort of desert along with a platter of fresh fruit. Thank fuck we were allocated as the clearer-upers, and each of the guests brought food. At one end of the dome room, Mesud has enough musical instruments to supply a 20 man band, including bongo drums, an electronic double bass, a keyboard, a xylophone, maracas... The coordinated 'jamming' of Otis Redding's 'Sitting on the Dock of Bay' and Ray Charles' 'What'd I Say' that went on on Friday probably makes up for the % of the year they spend sitting silent making the house seem like it's inhabitants are a huge bunch of partying musicians. Anyway, it was nice, and the smile on Mesud's face was great.
We have a really nice chat with a bedraggled Turkish man with fluffy hair who owns a house in Assos and has just given up the job he's done and been bored with for 15 years to open a sailing school. He has an overwhelmingly kind aura about him that makes you feel entirely at-ease. He jokes about his failed attempt at becoming an artist and invites the 3 of us over to his house tomorrow.
Jake and I make our exit as the coke-snorting, chauvinistic guy from Istanbul arrives in his Mustang. He comes through the door with a 100 mile per hour scuttling rat-dog-something or other that turns out to be the incestuous spawn of brother and sister jack russel dogs. He has missed dinner, but he pulls out the plate of 7 leftover steaks from the fridge and eats all of them.

Back at our little workaway home Jake sits on the decking to skype America and I decide it's time for MUSIC + DANCING, climb the shelves looking for the lead that plugs ipod into speakers, WHERE IS IT. spend 15 minutes jabbing every button on the three channel-changers trying to make the FUCKING tele work, try to fast forward through the 'Ray' film about Ray Charles in the DVD player, pressing stop when it looks like he's singing. Nick comes back from being keyboard player extraordinaire and we send him straight back over to steal the Amy Winehouse live in London DVD. Finally full-blast surround-sound Amy Winehouse, stamping hand shaking march dancing around the kitchen and I realise oh my god I am my mother.


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