Fitba’
Managed to avoid most of the England games. Lay awake in our apartment listening to the roars and groans emanating from our English co-holidaymakers as they watched the England –Portugal game on the complex TV. Deduced from the looks on English coupons the next morning that all was well. Breathed sigh of relief, put on magnanimous face while secretly gibbering with joy.

Politics
Engaged a nice English couple in polite conversation before backing off as the chat turned to politics. Oh Lordy. Middle aged, middle class Home Counties political attitudes. Very scary, run away. Items:

• "You Scots run everything."
• I’m not racist but..."
• "UKIP are far too moderate."
• "The Queen does a marvellous job."
• "Everyone here is very polite (in Turkey), but we don’t want them coming to England."

White water Rafting
15 miles up the Dalyan River and feeling that I’ve been somewhat misled by the advert for this excursion. Advert talked about "drifting down the Dalyan River, linked arm in arm." Envisaged some big kiddies paddling pool thing safely steered by accommodating locals. The reality is a large rubber raft thing, helmets, lifejackets and a personal paddle. Listen very closely to instructions after instructor, in his welcome talk, casually introduces unwelcome concepts like "danger" and "risk."

Set off down the river, paddling like a bastard and hanging on for grim death. Twenty seconds into the trip, we hit the first rapids, I’m sitting at the front of the boat but risk turning round to tell my son to hang on tight. No son. Son has fallen into white maelstrom,

SO is screeching in a banshee-like fashion. Son reappears out of the white foam, with an air of insouciance. Spend the rest of the 15 mile trip trying to keep my son inside the boat.

He falls in again and then later, again. "You get used to it" he explains calmly. I promise myself a nervous breakdown after I’ve finished linking my hands around the throat of the gadgee who wrote the advert.

The Locals
Get into conversation with a guy working in one of the tourist shops. He’s 29, and at best manages six months of paid employment a year, selling stuff to people like me. He can’t afford to get married and will spend the off-season living on what he makes between April and October. The tourist trap works both ways.

A student kid working at the resort discovers I know a tiny bit about the life of Attaturk, he takes every opportunity to fill me in on the vast swathes of Attaturk’s life that I know nothing about. I also now know that (a) at one time the entire population of the world was Turkish and, consequently, (b) The Turks invented everything, which is fair enough I suppose.

Going Home
Way too hot. We’re all agreed that we’re ready for more northerly climes. Say goodbye to The Aegean, say hello to Glasgow Airport. It's freezing. All agree we’re already ready for more southerly climes.