Time to write!
The place I have chosen to live, Fethiye, is very popular as a holiday destination. This means that in the summer months, the place fills up with visitors from the UK, Russia and Europe as well as Turkish tourists. The season lasts from May until October.
From November through to April, it is a quite different place. The heat haze of summer is replaced by bright, clear skies, intermittent but torrential rain and impressive electric storms. There are few visitors, many hotels and restaurants close and a lot of staff return to their homes in the east of Türkiye. After six months of working long hours, sometimes seven days a week, many of the people working in tourism spend the winter sleeping late, catching up with friends and maybe doing a bit of gentle fishing.
My life, too, has been governed by these contrasting seasons as we own a hotel and for the last fifteen years, I have been involved in the day-to-day management of it. In the summer I have been at the hotel by 8am every day (getting up at 5.30 to walk the dogs and get ready) and spent the day cooking, gardening, talking to guests, sometimes cleaning the pool or helping with the laundry. I have often done twelve-hour shifts because when it’s your own business, you do.
In the winter, when the hotel was not exactly closed but could manage without me, I taught English to locals and Turkish to expats. In recent years I have chosen to teach more Turkish, preferring the more laid-back atmosphere of lessons where the aim is usually to be able to chat to neighbours and order a meal. Achieving this aim is not as simple as it might sound in a language whose grammar and sounds are so different from most European languages.
Anyway, things are about to change for me! I am stepping back from the hotel, and for this winter at least (I may take it up again later) I am not giving lessons. This means I will finally have time – whole days even – to dedicate to getting these books published and to writing more. So as the season comes to an end and the days get shorter, for me it is the start of something new!
I also have time to get back to some of the things I enjoy. Last week I hiked the section of the Lycian Way (a hiking trail between Fethiye and Antalya, chosen by the Sunday Times as one of the ten best in the world) from Ovacık to Kabak beach. The views are stunning and despite some development, the villages along the way remind me of the village of Ortakoy in The Kismet Pension.
At the weekend I visited Kalkan and Kaş, two pretty towns along the coast from Fethiye. Though also popular with tourists, these are both smaller and much quainter, with a distinct architecture thanks to the large Ottoman-Greek population that lived there before Turkish Independence.
Yesterday I went horse riding. The ride took us down through beautiful woodland and a plantation of Liquidamber trees to a quiet beach, where we rode the horses in the shallow water. I have been a keen rider since I was young and have ridden in a whole variety of places (desert, African bush, Virginian plantation) but this was a first for me. I won’t say it was a baptism, but it felt especially good to start this new phase of my life with a new experience – as you can probably see from the smile on my face!
I have also been enjoying having more time to read. I loved Maggie O’Farrell’s wonderful family saga This Must Be the Place and I have just finished Laura Shepherd-Robinson’s The Square of Sevens, which was fascinating both for its subject matter and the number of plot twists. In complete contrast, Playing for Freedom – The Journey of a Young Afghan Girl, by Zarifa Adiba and Anne Chaon, is an incredible story of bravery and resilience, and puts into perspective the obstacles most of us face in following our dreams.
