Our Apartment In Turkey

18th December 2006 

 

I’m an early riser and on our first morning in Turkey I got up about six and went out for a walk, leaving The Trouble still slumbering in bed, probably dreaming about ways to avoid going to the lavatory during our three day stay.

The resort we stayed in is called Altinkum, on the Aegean Sea, and very nice it is too. It is very clean, there are several sandy beaches and the weather, even for December, was lovely. However the place is being developed on a massive scale and within a half mile radius of the hotel in which we stayed there are literally hundreds of apartment blocks being built, many of them finished and awaiting buyers. (In fact according to my information a high proportion of them have already been bought (Almost all by the British) while still unfinished).

All the apartment blocks are built to a high specification and finished on the exterior in a variety of ways. As I wandered around unmolested but for the ever present dogs you get in Turkey I noticed that while some of them were simply finished in cement rendering painted in a variety of pastel colours the majority were clad in marble tiles. Often the tiles made pictures of things like palm trees and beaches. They were all for the most part quite attractive-looking but the sight of one apartment block brought me to a halt with its bizarre ugliness. Its façade was composed of white and dark blue ceramic tiles in a variety of patterns and looked for all the world liked the inside of a particularly ornate Victorian public lavatory. So I had a piss on it and carried on.

The apartment we bought is something of a bargain. It cost us £44,000 inclusive of all legal fees and is fully furnished. (The accent is on ‘fully’ as it includes just about everything; fridge, freezer, cooker, washing machine, television, toaster, cutlery, table and chairs, three-piece suite, curtains, everything.) The accommodation comprises a large living room with kitchen area, two double bedrooms, a large fully-tiled bathroom with Jacuzzi and shower, and a large terrace. All the rooms are air conditioned. All the floors are marble. There is a swimming pool about ten yards from the terrace. An electric boiler is included for continuous hot water. Satellite TV is included and broadband is on tap for £7 a month. The sandy beach is 200 yards away in a little bay and there’s a frequent free bus service into Altinkum town centre about three miles away. The services of a Turkish belly dancer are available free of charge. A masseuse is available to the man of the household three times a week and will give hand relief for 2 euros, blow jobs for three and further services if required, fee to be negotiated. All right, I’m exaggerating. Only the living room has a marble floor, the bedrooms and bathroom have porcelain tiles. I can’t wait until it’s finished, next October. 

Ignore this if you have already read it. My books Dear Air 2000 and Football Crazy are now in print. They are priced at £8.99 each and are available from Amazon, but readers of my blog can buy them direct from me for £7.50 including p & p. Just send me a cheque and I will send the book/books by return. 

 

My address is – 

 

 

Terry Ravenscroft, 19 Ventura Court, Ollersett Avenue, New Mills, High Peak, SK22 4LL


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Razzamatazz

Hi. I’m Terry Ravenscroft, I’m aged 67 and…..whoooah, come back, I’m not ready to have the lid nailed down on my coffin just yet. Anyway I’m a very young 67. (About five years ago I went to see Pulp at the Manchester Evening News Arena. I was older than everyone else by at least 35 years. The eighteen-year-old next to me asked me if I’d ever been to the venue before. I replied ‘Yes I saw George Formby here once’. She’d never heard of him.) This blog is going to be about my life and the way I see things. Before I retired I was a comedy scriptwriter for Les Dawson and Smith and Jones amongst others so there’s a sporting chance that some of the things I write will be funny. One of the reasons I’m writing this blog, although by no means the only reason, is because I have a website www.topcomedy.co.uk which I hope you will log on to occasionally. I have yet to meet anybody who doesn’t like Dear Air 2000…. My hobbies are walking, playing crown green bowls, watching football, birdwatching , cooking, and, according to The Trouble, moaning. Oh, and I have a thing about Kristen Scott Thomas. A couple of people I will be mentioning from time to time are The Trouble and Atkins Down The Road. The Trouble is my wife. I don’t call her The Trouble because it’s cockney rhyming slang for ‘wife, trouble and strife’, but because she has the habit of starting sentences, especially to me, with the words ‘The trouble with you is….’ Then goes on to complete the rest of the sentence with words like ‘you never listen when I’m talking to you’ or ‘you never see the other person’s point of view’ or some such other frivolous complaint. Atkins Down The Road is my best friend and lives, not surprisingly, down the road. I started a weblog a couple of years ago but stopped doing it to write a novel about golf called ‘A Good Walk Spoiled.’ If you want to read the weblog it can be found on my website, if you want to read the novel it can be found on my other website, Razzamatazz, at www.razza.fsnet.co.uk along with lots of other things. Hi. I’m Terry Ravenscroft, I’m aged 67 and…..whoooah, come back, I’m not ready to have the lid nailed down on my coffin just yet. Anyway I’m a very young 67. (About five years ago I went to see Pulp at the Manchester Evening News Arena. I was older than everyone else by at least 35 years. The eighteen-year-old next to me asked me if I’d ever been to the venue before. I replied ‘Yes I saw George Formby here once’. She’d never heard of him.) This blog is going to be about my life and the way I see things. Before I retired I was a comedy scriptwriter for Les Dawson and Smith and Jones amongst others so there’s a sporting chance that some of the things I write will be funny. One of the reasons I’m writing this blog, although by no means the only reason, is because I have a website www.topcomedy.co.uk which I hope you will log on to occasionally. I have yet to meet anybody who doesn’t like Dear Air 2000…. My hobbies are walking, playing crown green bowls, watching football, birdwatching , cooking, and, according to The Trouble, moaning. Oh, and I have a thing about Kristen Scott Thomas. A couple of people I will be mentioning from time to time are The Trouble and Atkins Down The Road. The Trouble is my wife. I don’t call her The Trouble because it’s cockney rhyming slang for ‘wife, trouble and strife’, but because she has the habit of starting sentences, especially to me, with the words ‘The trouble with you is….’ Then goes on to complete the rest of the sentence with words like ‘you never listen when I’m talking to you’ or ‘you never see the other person’s point of view’ or some such other frivolous complaint. Atkins Down The Road is my best friend and lives, not surprisingly, down the road. I started a weblog a couple of years ago but stopped doing it to write a novel about golf called ‘A Good Walk Spoiled.’ If you want to read the weblog it can be found on my website, if you want to read the novel it can be found on my other website, Razzamatazz, at www.razza.fsnet.co.uk along with lots of other things.

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