Turkish Delight (and other yummy sweeties!)

2009-11-26, 7:28 p.m.
Omigoodness! Where to begin?

The biggest BIGGEST news is that the Slaveboy/Stepfie team is back together again!!!!!

This brings me immeasurable joy and I am resolutely refusing to admit how much I have missed having the spiteful old queen about. Here's the story:

Slaveboy phoned me in my office a few days ago and told me he'd got laid off from his job. He hated that job anyways but wasn�t expecting to get laid off and, with only being in the job for a couple of months, wasn�t due any kind of payoff. This kind of coincided with me losing my rag with my assistant who, tho sweet, just wasn�t really dynamic enough to stop me wanting to stab her.

Case in point, while I was away on holiday, she had access to all my training course records. That means she could see that I only had two delegates booked onto one course but she still didn�t have the wit to cancel it, saying she thought she'd better wait until I got back cos she didn�t know what Id want to do. Yeh. Cos running a training course where the trainers outnumber the delegates is really going to be economically viable isn�t it? You klutz. Of course, 'when I get back' was only two days before the course was due to start, leaving me with a bucketload of cancellation fees which I wouldn�t have had to pay if she'd been a bit more on the ball.

Anyhow, I managed to offload her onto a simpler project, taking place in a satellite office near her house, and within three days I had interviewed and appointed Slaveboy as my new potboy and general factotum! Yay! A three month temporary contract, admittedly, but Yay all the same. Its so nice to be able to say 'fix this' and dump a load of stuff on his desk and it come back a few hours later, if not fixed, then at least with a sensible reason why it is totally fubar. The coffee has made marked improvements, too�.mostly in that I now don�t have to make it myself, which is always good.

My boss is utterly charmed by Slaveboy and I have had to tell her that he is shiftless, bitchy little toe-rag lest she decide to keep him and get rid of me but, no matter, she has given us free rein to spend a big chunk of charity funds on stuff to make us 'more corporate'. It will. It will also have the happy side effect of reducing our general workload down to a manageable level for a change and make one or two of my more bone idle counterparts instantly accountable for their inactions.


No news from Superdrug. *shrugs* Whatever. I've said my piece and thanks very much to all of you who took time to be outraged on my behalf. I ((squeeeeeze)) you all.



I said I�d tell you all about my holiday but, to be honest, there hasn�t been a day since I was last here when I have really felt like writing. My back has been almost permanently painful, especially when I'm sitting down, which has meant that by the time I get home from work all I have really been able to do is potter about in the kitchen and then lie down on the sofa (or sometimes just go to bed).


Either that or the kids have been poorly (or having birthdays) or L has been poorly (an ongoing type of poorly which means he is quite grumpy. Grumpy L + Backpain Stepfie = sighing, shouting and a fair measure of door slamming) or I've been just too darned busy.


Anyway, I'm here now. Actually, I'm in my office but, as I've demonstrated on many many occasions throughout my illustrious corporate career, typing very fast looks like work. It doesn�t actually have to BE work.
I've started this entry a couple of times over the last week or so, so if it appears to jump around a bit from one thing to another, bear with me, yeh?


Let me tell you something about my holiday. When the drinks are free, there is a good chance that you will spend a certain part of each day a little bit giggly and stupid, which might mean you might make rash decisions. Or, if not actually �rash� then certainly �not really thought through to their natural conclusion�.


Two smiling brown-faced, white teethed 20 somethings bounded up on one such afternoon and asked if I was going to take any spa treatments while I was staying in the hotel. I'm not keen on spa treatments here in the UK. I've made unkind references here in this very blog to orange faced, quasi-medical bitches in faux uniforms, tutting over the size of my pores and fiddling about with me in a way that just makes me want to smack their silly heads off. Hell, I'm not even very patient or kind when I'm getting my hair cut!


Anyway, I don�t know if it was the sunshine, or the free drink or the very smiley brown faced white teethed boys but before you could say �I am a middle aged woman with a husband and a couple of kids, you need not flirt with me so shamelessly� I had bought myself more therapies than a detoxing A-lister and was handing over enormous wads of Turkish lire at a most shocking rate of exchange � be warned fellow travellers, they�re just not interested in their own currency. The might Euro is king here and most prices will not be quoted to you in lire. Should you have been dumb enough to suppose that you ought to take Turkish lire on a holiday to..err..Turkey, you will find yourself at the mercies of a kind of ERM piracy which will see you spending far more than you meant to as complicated and utterly spurious high-speed calculations are entered into before you are given a price. You could haggle, but they really are so smiley and brown faced and white teethed that it hardly seems worth it.


Next day, sober and hesitant, I pitched up at the spa � expecting to see some tut-tutting bitch ready to look down her nose at me with an air of �WTF am I supposed to do with THAT?�.


At the front desk was another smiley brown faced blah blah blah who shyly handed me a Madras check tea towel type thingy and beckoned for me to go with him. �Hallo madam, please� he said �I Ahmet, you go here change things� and pointed to a little door whilst miming the shopkeeper from Mr Benn. I figured the Madras tea towel wasn�t for me to do any drying up so I went through the little door and found a bank of lockers. I had my bikini on and a sundress over the top. What was I supposed to leave on? I settled for just the bikini bottoms and wrapped the tea towel thingy around me, sarong style. When I came out of the changing room, Ahmet was waiting. �Hallo madam please� he said, TAKING MY HAND(!) and walking me down the corridor. �Step small madam, fall down slippy� he said, handing me gingerly along the marble hall. He smiled a lot. I guess he was about the same size as Jooj and maybe 18 or 19.


Next stop � the sauna. Several large hairy German men had taken all the top shelves so I sat meekly at the bottom and got very red in the face while I waited to see what would happen next. After about five minutes, Ahmet�s smiling face appeared at the door. �Hallo madam please� he said and beckoned me out into the marble hall again and into a large room containing just two large marble�umm�plinths? No. Sort of big blocks of marble like tables but right down to the ground, no legs. I�ll think of the word in a minute and then I�ll feel silly. The only other thing in the room was a large marble sink with water overflowing out of it and onto the floor. An ornate tap on the wall kept the water coming � there didn�t appear to be any way of turning it off. Everything was damp and warm and scented with herbs of some sort (maybe rosemary, I don�t know).


Ahmet beckoned for me to lie down on my back on one of the slab table thingys. I figured this was so he could go and fetch the mean, lemon -mouthed therapy bitches. �Close eyes. Relax.� He said, soothingly. �Turkish bath now�. He stepped out of the room for a second and returned, wearing one of the Madras tea towel things around his waist, pleated in the front like an Egyptian slave. That was all he had on.


I don�t know what I was expecting from a Turkish bath. I'm fairly certain it wasn�t what amounted to a strip wash from a semi-naked Turkish teenager.


The sauna, I�d like to think, was to start the cleansing process. It also had the happy effect of making my face the colour of a beetroot which saved me the trouble of turning exactly that shade as Ahmet unwrapped me from my tea towel and spread the cloth out neatly underneath me. I now looked like a giant boiled ham on a picnic tablecloth and was rigid with embarrassment. And fear.


Smiling Ahmet took a sort of mitten and wrapped it around his hand, then he soaked it in scented oily stuff and began to gently scrub, starting with my fingers and gradually working his way over my body, humming softly to himself as he worked.


I started a mantra in my head �It's his job. He�s seen worse. It's his job. Its not pervy. It's his job. Be grown up. It's his job etc etc etc� and by the time he had done both arms, both legs, both feet (I yanked my foot away at one point �Hurt you madam?� he said, concerned and looking right into my face. �Ticklish� I said, stupidly and put my foot back where it had been. �Heehee� he said and wiggled my toe playfully. I nearly cried.).


Smiling Ahmet scrubbed my stomach and my chest, leaving just enough of my front unscrubbed for it not to be sexual assault and then made a smiley little rolling mime for me to turn over.


Ahmet is only little. I am not huge but it was unlikely that he would be able to reach all of me without assistance and so I figure THAT is why he then hopped up onto the table and settled himself between my thighs to wash my back, my shoulders and the backs of my legs.


My now Id entered a kind of dream-state of toe-curling embarrassment and utter euphoria. I am aware that I am making a Turkish bath sound like an horrific experience. It is not. It is wonderful. I could feel the grime of 43 years being sloughed off my body with every smiley humming little stroke of Ahmet�s miracle mitten and by the time he got to the bit where he yanked the sides of my bikini bottoms up my bum crack so he could scrub my bum cheeks Id almost forgotten that I'm old enough to be his mum.


Shame had nearly gone out of the window when Ahmet produced a giant pillowcase which he wafted theatrically around until it was filled with air, before sort of squeezing it out over me. Some kind of soapy solution billowed thousands of creamy bubbles out of the pillowcase as he squeezed and I was soon looking like a refugee from an Ibizan nightclub. Ahmet dutifully swooshed and smoothed all the bubbles over me, lifting my arms to smooth my armpits turning me over a couple of times and again, JUST missing the few tiny bits of me which would have had me shrieking and calling for a policeman. Once he was sure that I was all bubbly, he massaged the foam into my skin, hopping up and down on the marble slab and occasionally letting out little grunts as he pummelled my flesh into submission. At one point, as I lay on my front with him kneeling between my legs, I felt a firm but gentle �thwump thwump thwump� up and down my spine. My eyes were closed. I very much hope it was his forearm.


He crossed to the overflowing sink and filled a flat metal dish with water. Gently he poured the water over me until all the bubbles were gone. �Sit up madam please� he said with a cheery smile. I did. I might have even managed a smile myself at that point. The dishes of water were poured over my head this time; warm , cooler, cool�until they were icy cold and I gasped and giggled like a silly schoolgirl. Ahmet giggled too and did one more for luck. He took my hand again and motioned for me to stand up. Out of nowhere appeared a whole bundle of warm soft towels and before I knew it, Ahmet had dried me and wrapped me up like a cocoon. Then he started fiddling with my hair. If you have dishes of water repeatedly tipped over your head, your coiffure tends to take a bit of a bashing. I said �I think it�s a bit late for that�. �No� said Ahmet, as though he�d never heard anything so ridiculous �Make again beautiful.� And I sat there and let him flick my hair around my forehead until he was satisfied that I looked OK.


Outside the Turkish bath, Ahmet gave me a glass of water and I had a lie down on a comfy lounger. About ten minutes later, he reappeared, this time dressed in the funny little sailor suit that all the Hotel Titanic staff seem to wear. He smiled and held out his hand for me to take.


�Massage now� he said.


I vaguely remember paying for the �intensive massage� in my slightly tipsy state the day before, thinking it might help sort out my neck problems and my shoulder problems and my back problems.


Oh boy. Oh boy oh boy. That boy Ahmet, he is STRONG! He�s only a little fella but BOY, he has hands of steel! Not in a bad way. Not in an �ow ow you�re hurting� kind of way but more in a �my body has now melted into this couch and we are now one. All my bones are as jello and my flesh just crumbled away to dust and blown away into the Taurus mountains� kind of way. He spent extra time pounding my shoulder where The Knot Which Wont Be Undone has been sitting since the days of Married To Shagnasty. He even had a little gasp of surprise that it was tangled so tight. That little knot was fizzing with fury but wouldn�t be undone. By the time Ahmet had finished stroking and squeezing and pounding and cajoling and generally moulding me into shapes hitherto only experienced by a toddler with a particularly expensive playdoh fun factory I was, quite literally, putty in his iron little hands.


He tried to explain something to me afterwards � it involved him squeezing my hand and saying "See. Hard. Tension" and then inviting me to squeeze his hand and saying "See my hand, soft, relaxy no stress." But I wasn�t sure what point he was making so, once I was dressed again he took me out to the reception "See. My friend. He good Englishes. Speak madam for Ahmet"


In astonishingly fast Turkish he gabbled instructions to his colleague, who nodded sagely and made concerned faces. Then he translated, while Ahmet jabbed his fingers into relevant parts of my body.
"Ahmet he say, too many tensions your work at home. You tensions here (JAB), make a you hurting here (JAB), make a you make tension mores here (JAB), more hurt here (JAB), here (JAB) and here (JAB). Ahmet more massage you a fix all hurts. AND headache you get here (JAB). Come three times Ahmet fix a you"
Ahmet was looking at me earnestly and nodding, with an encouraging little smile. I thought about how much money it would cost to go back three times for Ahmet to 'a fix all hurts' and how quickly all his good work would be undone once I got back to the UK, back to the 'too many tensions your work at home'. And, dear readers, I used the shameful get-out clause despised of all right-thinking women but always accepted without question by men in Muslim and Arabic countries. I said "I'll have to ask my husband".


My skin stayed soft, smooth and silky for a good ten days. The tension and knots in my shoulders came straight back before Id even got on the plane back to England.


Where can I find a funny little half naked teenage Turkish masseur in Chigley?


*sigh*


Oh, and he gave me the mitten. "I make you this present nice and clean you" he said, smiling.
Anyhoo. Lets check out the pictures, shall we? Photobucket was being a git earlier in the week and was only letting me look at SOME of the pictures at a time, so apologies if it hates you too and wont let you look.

Lest you should think that the next slideshow shows a weeks worth of confectionary goodness, I would like to point out that all those pictures were taken on the same night and so show only ONE NIGHTS desserts. Actually, they show the more spectacular of one nights desserts. There were probably around forty or so dishes of various, unremarkable puds, cakies and pastries abounding, as well as the ones my kids chose to photograph. In short, dear readers, it was cakey heaven. I will even go so far as to say that, by the end of the week, I had started to look around wistfully in case someone had mistakenly laid out a Mr Kipling Cherry Bakewell or perhaps a little pot of Munch Bunch. I had Spectacular Cakey Overload. *shakes head at the shame of it*. I don�t even like Cherry Bakewells.

Of course, if you're still hungry you could pop down to the "Otag Tent". I don�t know why its called the "Otag Tent" as "Otag" means�.umm�"Tent". So, basically, it�s the tent tent. I thought, because I am an idiot that it was a tent where they make Otags, cos that�s what I though these things are. But they're Gozleme. So, really it�s a Gozleme Tent. Or a Gozleme Otag, I guess. Look at me, I'm practically fluent.

Next time, I'll tell you how I, the world's MOST scared-of-water person ended up taking an overloaded dinghy ride into the spray of a waterfall. Dear readers, I haven�t screamed so much since�.well, EVER, actually.

Later
S
x





back - forth