[The Old Groaner] Guilty and I apologize

I think it took a few days for the organization to kick in so it was not until about five days after the publication of the piece and its posting on the Internet that the first hydraulic breakers were heard in our town. Within a day or two all the roads in and around our tourist hubs were well and truly impassable to all motor vehicles and all but the most adventurous pedestrians. Our town has a very high water table so of course any excavation deeper than about half a meter must be pumped. The idea is presumably to pump such excavations dry and for the water to somehow reach the sea but as the small noisy pumps have only short discharge pipes, the water must find its own way down what gutters remain, towards the sea. It invariably does not achieve that but by dint of gravity finds its way into other trenches and after a brief rest, to the suction pipe of another pump.

Safety being paramount, a dozen or so traffic cones were scattered around town and a few meters of red and white tape were used to decorate the scene. Many cones were washed away but a few survived to remind anyone who was not knee-deep in water or at the bottom of a trench that something was happening. About 10 percent of the paving blocks were broken and a further 10 percent found their way to the bottom of the trenches.

A couple of weeks after the first flurry of road works came the second phase and soon after that had started came the children’s festival, an event which brought about the closing of all other roads of the town including the main roads in and out. Vehicles from the north were diverted by the town’s only “diversion” sign into the industrial estate, there to fight their way through the maze of small roads permanently occupied by static or moving lorries the size of houses driven by crazed Arabs or by ancient scooters driven by early-teen Turkish boys sitting on the pillion. I am guessing that only about 50 percent made it out of that bedlam, half back to their point of departure and half to their intended destination. (We have a fair sized city like that in England, it’s called Basingstoke, some vehicles have been trapped therein for years.)

Just about a week after the children’s gig we tried to drive through the town again. This time every road was closed and the traffic was being directed by about 200 men with whistles. These chaps had no identifying dress of any sort so I strongly suspect that they were augmented by an equal number of men who, having observed the goings on, had rushed out to buy their own whistles and selected a suitable spot to stand whistling whilst directing traffic hither and thither. The event turned out to be a cycle race.

Now, lest you think me grumpier than usual, let me tell you that the children’s festival was wonderful. Hundreds of the most beautiful children in the world had dressed in colorful costumes and marched and danced their way through the town to the delight of all. I need hardly describe the cycle race; it comprised a lot of tall thin men with shiny tight black trousers pumping furiously at their peddles. No music this time but a lovely sound, almost a purr, from the hundreds of well oiled chains riding smoothly over the cogs of derailleur gears.

On both those occasions we managed to find a parking place on the outskirts of town and took advantage of the deep wet trenches to burrow our way to our destination in the middle of town where we smugly observed the hundreds of cars stranded there for the day. That cycle race seemed to last for several days as friends who were to visit from Antalya a few days later eventually turned up hours late and told tales of barricades and men with whistles.

Now for a time frame. I think the first serious road works started on about the second week of April and I am writing this at the beginning of May. Yesterday we sat in a restaurant in the middle of town and struggled to converse against the noise of shop fitters cutting, sanding and hammering timber, aluminum and other materials to form restaurants, silver or gold shops and other retail outlets ready for “the season.” Our conversation eventually came to a complete stop when the owner of our restaurant started cutting marble slabs in an effort to improve his bar top which to us seemed perfectly adequate, though I concede that he has to serve over it for the next few months, not us.

Now I started this by apologizing for my column which drew the attention of our authorities to the arrival of tourists. In that piece I was suggesting that the Turkish weather was such that the tourist season could very easily be extended a little. I voiced my estimation that to extend the season by a month, say two weeks at springtime (when the wildflowers are at their best) and two weeks after the hot summer (when the sea is at its warmest) would benefit Turkey by about $2 billion a year. I still hold to that opinion but now add that giving the first batch of tourists a satisfactory holiday during the first few weeks of the official season (as is) might improve the chances of them returning in future years, possibly benefiting the country by a further half billion or so.