This lockdown business is not suiting me at all. That said, it doesn’t seem to be suiting anyone else either. This morning I woke and saw a ghostly moving figure outside on one of the picturesque streets leading towards the Galata Tower. There I saw a young woman in a flowing white dress posing for […]
See you on the other side
Metaphorically speaking, of course. The weekend lockdown starts tonight so the GF and I decided to take Friday as our weekend (well, I did anyway; the GF just moved his working day to the evening). It was a lovely sunny afternoon and we went to get supplies for the next couple of days, having decided […]
Lockdown
Over dinner last night I mentioned to the GF that rumour has it a lockdown is imminent. After dinner I put the dishes in the dishwasher and went for a shower. Came out to learn that a lockdown has been announced: weeknight curfews and weekend lockdown. Not too onerous still, but I hope this is […]
Goodbye sunshine
After a warm, sunny long weekend, today the clouds have returned. It is grey and heavy outside, befitting Turkey’s coronavirus figures, speeding towards the top of the global charts. It would be quite something if the GF and I were to have stayed in both the best and the worst places to be during this […]
Some progress
For the last little while the GF and I have been banging our heads against various forms of bureaucracy, most recently the bank – our ATM cards are blocked, can only be unblocked by telephone, to use the telephone service we need a telephone pin, the pin is sent to our registered phone number, we’ve […]
Pandemic lunching
We were out of groceries and it was a sunny, if chilly, afternoon, so we decided to go out for lunch. It turned out to be very pleasant: we went to Cihangir, to a little hipster street food place. Under the new regulations there is no dining in, so we took our food to the […]
Assassins we have known
A curious dinner party last night, replete with tales of assassins we have known told by one of the other guests, advice on where to buy ‘illegal meat’ (i.e. not slaughtered in an abattoir), and the best duck in Turkey which, it appears, is available at Ikea. All this over a rather spectacular dinner of […]
Things that are keeping me up at night
Will there be an earthquake and the flat fall down? Will something go terribly wrong with the renovation? Will it go over budget? Will there be a problem with our visa application? Will someone in my family get COVID and I won’t be able to travel to them? Will there be a hard lockdown here […]
Two more mosques
Today was a funny, dissatisfied sort of day, though a pleasant one. Soon after the GF woke we went back to the Syrian place for a chickpea-based meal, again very delicious and this time there was no wait. Sadly they were out of the fatteh or rather, out of nuts to put on the fatteh […]
The landed gentry
This morning I woke early, as we were moving flat. Away from the mosquitos, the dripping fridge, the foetid kitchen sink, the oddly placed shower. Off to Galata, to the same building we lived in when we first arrived in Istanbul, but a lower floor. Also, no hot water, for there was none this morning […]