I had a bad night last night, very anxious, and slept poorly. At some point during the night I became convinced that a piece of paint was going to fall off from ceiling onto the GF’s head, so when he came to bed I warned him anxiously. Then, I worried about why our visas are taking so long, and about electricity bills. One of the least pleasant nights in a while.
After finishing my work, the GF and I took a cab to, seemingly, the other end of the earth, though it was still in Istanbul. it was over an hour’s journey westwards, into what was once Thrace. There were some lovely bits early on, along the sea, with the shipping lanes on one side and the city walls on the other. But most of it was through suburbs and little outcrops of city. There was one particularly impressive moment when the car came over a ridge into a sort of bowl with houses and tall buildings climbing all sides. Not the nicest, but certainly atmospheric.
Wearing a mask in a car is really unpleasant. I was borderline carsick for much of the way.
We were going to what we had been told was a very good wooden flooring shop. We’d hoped for solid, but it turned out to be engineered, though on reflection that may be preferable to the solid stuff. Anyway, we picked out a couple of samples, both quite dark.
From here we took a cab to Sancaklar Cami, a modern mosque that we had been told was worth a visit. It certainly was: set into near countryside with fields, orchards and turkey flocks, after a number of desolate gated communities. There was a minaret visible and the rest was buried in the hillside, rounded walls of rough slate with thick green grass. All around, open terraced fields. It was very beautiful indeed and we arrived at a lovely time, just at sunset with a spectacular sky. A shame it is so very far – I would like to take visitors there. And such a pleasure to see a genuinely beautiful modern mosque.
While we were there a deal was announced and getting Brexit done has finally begun. It is both a relief and a cause of great sadness. What a terrible, terrible thing this is.
I just came across an article on the right way to load a dishwasher. Nothing particularly new in it, and perhaps out a sense of inadequacy it turned towards the end into an article on the mindfulness of dishwashing.