Today we finally got a tour of the basement of our building, and were shown the store room we own. It was quite remarkably dungeonlike: unfinished brick, little cells, pipes with exposed wires overhead, small high-up window slits for ventilation and coal. But we have quite a large space down there, albeit one currently filled […]
Catching up
I spent Saturday catching up – sending emails, confirming work, and catching up most of all with the magazine of which I am an editor and which had some lingering matters I’d been putting off in the general swirl of work. Otherwise, a fairly uninteresting day, with one great tragedy: my favourite cake shop no […]
Tile decisions
After lunch, the GF and I took a ferry to Uskudar – I will never grow tired of the ferry – and then a taxi about 10km inland to Ataşehir, a satellite town full of skyscrapers. I understand it’s a fairly desirable place to live, but felt rather grotesque, with huge glassy skyscrapers and massive […]
Flat visits
I had two visits to the flat today, once in the morning to have the kitchen measured for cabinets, and once for the contractor to make payments for our windows. It snowed a great deal in the morning, so on the morning visit it was very slippery and hard to walk straight, and there were […]
White hair
It was very cold and bright this morning, though the flat was reasonably toasty. After a quiet start, the GF and I strolled out to see what is up with the flat, and found that the kitchen had been plastered and was looking very light and airy. It will be a shame to fill it […]
Virtues of broccoli
Overnight the weather changed, as forecast. Seemingly in the course of an hour, the temperature fell from 17 degrees to below zero, and when we woke up it was sleeting lightly. We woke up early, as we had to go to Tarabya as a friend had kindly volunteered to take us to a man who […]
Long overdue
This morning I went for a long overdue haircut. I don’t even have the lockdown excuse, really, just a dislike of going for haircuts which makes finding a hairdresser in new cities especially difficult. I became fed up yesterday, and spent about 20 minutes looking for a hairdresser who could cut short women’s hair. I […]
Ugh
More expenses have emerged around the flat, and the GF and I are feeling rather tender of wallet at the moment. Not, perhaps, the greatest surprise – it would have been quite remarkable to get through this whole business under budget, but still unpleasant. Oh well. May they not snowball. Aside from a very long […]
Along the walls
The plan this afternoon was to walk along the land walls of Byzantium. It was not the best devised plan, as I was a bit under the weather, so we got off at the wrong tram stop and then wandered through residential streets, along the tall walls of a graveyard we should have walked through, […]
Coming together
After a good bit of work this morning, I went off to run a couple of Friday errands, or rather one errand, to top up my phone. This done, I walked down Istiklal towards Taksim. It’s much, much warmer now, with barely any need for a coat, and very sunny. It was fairly crowded, though […]