On The Island

Saturday 1^st March

Sunny – we woke up and handed our car key in, had breakfast and decided we would sit by the pool in the sun, but by the time we had finished breakfast, the clouds appeared so instead we opted for a walk. Having said that, we still went out in T-shirts. We walked through Riverside and up towards Old Milos. This is a restaurant we went to about 5 years ago and later, when we were looking for land, we were taken up there and found that Old Milos had been flooded and ruined. Although the land we looked at then was in a lovely position we really didn’t like the road up to it (very narrow and even then it was crumbling). A wise decision, more of the road had dropped away and we really don’t know how we would have got furniture up there – on the back of a donkey perhaps. We continued our walk back through Alsancak village and onto Riverside. Mal was completely lost by now. A good thing I have a good sense of direction. It was quite chilly by the time we got back to the villa, so all heaters went back on again. The weather may not have been marvellous but at least we feel as though we have achieved something this holiday.

February Freezing Holiday!

Sunday 23^rd February

Plane left on time from Stansted. We had a small plane this time with the benefit that we had plenty of legroom. About an hour stop at Antalya and eventually we reached Riverside (we were the last drop as usual) at about 11.15 pm. We were shown to our upgraded villa and told that we had a sandwich waiting there for us. Not a bad villa, right next to one of the pools and close to the restaurant. Went to bed about 1.30am (2 hours ahead of our time). Mal spent ages rigging up the PC to speakers so we could play music he had loaded on to it.

Monday 24^th February

It rained and rained during the night and we woke up to rain, no, not just rain, it was pouring down and that was the order of the day. We ventured to breakfast and although we had macs on we got soaked and later in the day we went to the shop in the Riverside but it was shut so we had to ring reception and to open it for us! We bought our milk, wine and other essential things. and about 4 o’clock the rain stopped and so we were considering going for a walk, lucky we didn’t as 10 minutes later it started again. So, most of the day was very relaxing, reading and staying out of the rain, with all the heaters up full in the villa!

Mal rang Guray to check on the land progress. He said it was all in hand and that all the paperwork has gone through and Selcuk is doing all the legal paper work on it… and it should happen this week, forgive us if we didn’t get excited. It was pointless ringing Hakan yet as we would all need wellies to get on to the land so we decided to leave our visit to the land until hopefully things had dried out!

Went to the Ranch Bar in the evening for Happy Hour and when Mal went to sign for the bill they said it was now after Happy Hour (half price drinks) and so they were full price. Of course Mal wouldn’t sign the bill until it was amended to half price, after all we had all the drinks during Happy Hour!! Went to the restaurant and had soup, meze, fish and then a dessert, piggies as we are. Quite good considering. There enormous lakes (puddles) were everywhere and when we sat in the bar, Ali was saying this is the most rain for 10 years and for 9 years there has been 5 days rain a year max (global warming I presume) AND it was cold. Nice to hear from Rhys that it is sunny at home!! It seems this is exceptional weather and the amount of snow in Turkey is exceptional. Everyone talking about the decision being made on Friday about the EC and Cyprus joining it. Denktas seems to be on every channel on the TV but unfortunately it is all in Turkish. Hope for a dry day tomorrow BUT they say it isn’t changing until Thursday.

Tuesday 25^th February

Woke up to a bit of sun. Had breakfast and decided to make the most of the dry weather to walk up to the land. It wasn’t until this morning, when the mountains weren’t totally covered in cloud, that we saw all the snow on the mountains!!! That is the first time we have seen any snow in TRNC.

We walked up to the land and had a few hailstones on the way but at least it wasn’t more torrential rain. Having said that, we almost had to wade through the water on the road just below the land where it has rained so much. Got to the land to find nothing, not even stakes, some nice flowers growing but no stakes, no foundations. So, OK we know that bulldozers couldn’t even go on the land because they would just sink in. Walked back down to Riverside and went in the Estate Agency there just to have a look at ready built houses (very tempting at this stage!!) Had a long chat with Tanya and her husband who said she would help us with getting Barney over here if need be. . That was useful.

Back to the villa and Mal rang Guray. Seems the papers now have to go to Guzelyurt and at the moment they are with Selcuk. So we have to go and see Selcuk tomorrow. This is getting to be the same old routine each visit. Then we called Hakan. He re-confirmed that he couldn’t submit the plans until he has the kocan confirming our ownership. However, we will meet him on Friday to get our copy of the new plans. Whilst all this is going on, the heavens have opened again and it is pouring down. Thunder and lightning too. At least we are under no illusion that TRNC is always perfect weather. We have seen it at its worst hopefully). We are just a bit annoyed because if we don’t get any nearer to getting the kocan this holiday then we could have gone on holiday somewhere warmer instead! Still, we are determined to take a ‘cypriot’ attitude this time and let things run their course, with just a bit of nudging along, hopefully. The last holiday was full of stress and we aren’t going to do that again, are we, we’re not stupid.

In spite of saying that we did get stressed and decided to ring Selcuk. Of course the office had shut. We went to dinner and tried to forget it all.

Our minds kept returning to the idea of a camper van touring Europe to find a ‘ready built’ house anywhere but here.

Wednesday 26^th February

Woke up to sun, we went to breakfast and then picked up our hire car. Drove into Girne and waited to see Selcuk who was ‘busy’. Eventually he came down the stairs. We were waiting there with a planned speech asking him to explain why he was incapable of doing this work and should we get someone who knew what they were doing, to take over, and then to tell him that this was the third wasted trip over here and we may as well have stayed home etc. However, he walked towards us, shook hands and said we are to meet him tomorrow at 11am and he will have the papers. This rather took the wind out of our sails, so we said fine see you tomorrow at 11am. So, for the time being we will believe him, what else could we do – he’s a solicitor and has to tell the truth.

We then went and handed over the new compass we bought with us to the man in the watch shop who had kindly given us his when we were here last. He seemed quite amazed that we had remembered and was very grateful, if a little bemused. Perhaps we should toy with the idea of opening a compass shop!! We then went to the hole in the wall and started drawing out millions of Turkish Lira; in the hope that we will be paying the land tax this week, then on to the supermarket and then back to the villa. A bit cloudy this afternoon but at least we have seen some sun and we can go out without getting drenched through. We have decided that if this does go through this week then we will go out for a celebration meal. We are not booking anything yet!!!!

Thursday 27^th February

Woke earlyish and went to breakfast early and got all excited in anticipation of the drive into Girne to see Selcuk and to at last collect the kocan. We were sitting in his reception area in plenty of time for our 11 o’clock appointment, along with eight other people. Four of them gave up and made an appointment for this afternoon. The guy Mal was sitting next to, called Peter, got chatting and he seemed really nice. Then the phone call came from Selcuk and the phone was handed over to Mal. Well, what do you know the concluding part for our paperwork could not be completed today as all the government office staff, along with most of the population of TRNC had all shut shop and joined a demo in Lefkosa. The demo is for the TRNC joining the EC. In a nutshell, the population want to join and Denktas (President) is saying no so the peasants are revolting, this was to coincide with the talks with Kofi Anan in Lefkosa. The decision should have been made tomorrow but now we understand that there is now another week’s grace.

So, we now have an appointment for 12pm tomorrow with Selcuk, after all this is not his fault that they have all left their desks for the day, its just our bad luck. The upside of this is that we bumped into Peter again outside and he gave us his telephone number and him and his wife Gwen invited us to visit. They had already given us lots of info but were offering more. They have lived here for two years and so know all there is to know about their local ways and how to get round things. They told us where they lived on the outskirts of Alsancak and so they will not be too far away when we move here. Anyway, we did a bit of shopping and then went back to the villa. We have now been told that Tuesday was the coldest day in TRNC’s weather history, it was typical that we should be here now to experience it, something we would have preferred to miss. We watched a bit of the demo on TV but found it very difficult to translate what they were chanting but presumed it was something like ‘get Denktas out’!!

Later on in the afternoon we decided to go for a walk along where Gwen and Peter live, just to see where it was. As we walked along the road, we saw Peter coming out of one of the Australian built houses and ended up back at their house!! Well, we had a few cups of coffee and found out lots more about how to get the builder to channel in for the phone line, to transport dogs through Stansted, which is much cheaper than Heathrow and lots more besides. They were really nice people and we suddenly noticed it had got dark and we had walked a long way, including through what was now a river (because of all the rain). That was fine in daylight but we did have our doubts about crossing it in the dark, Mal is a very weak swimmer. So, Peter very kindly offered to drive us back. We thanked them for their hospitality and are invited to go and see them again on our next visit. Mal came away with part of their family tree, which he said he will investigate on the net when he gets back home. So, although we don’t have the documents yet, a very rewarding day in other ways.

Friday 28^th February

Sunny today, shame we have things to sort out. Arrived in Girne for our appointment with Selcuk. In fact by now we had managed to get into the Cypriot way of doing things and we were late so Mal jumped out of the car while I went and found somewhere to park the car. Proceedings had already begun by the time I reached Selcuk’s office. It seems all the paper work has been sorted out at long last and so all we had to do was hand over the land/property tax money to Selcuk. They have had the land valued at £10,000, so our tax was £600 (6% of value). This is not bad as land prices have shot up and you can now expect to pay about 20K-25K a donum. Seeing as we have one and two thirds donums and only paid 15K for the lot, we are feeling pretty chuffed. Selcuk is then going to pay it for us at the land registry and then he will prepare the new land ownership certificate. All this should be complete by next Thursday (March 6th) but to be on the safe side we said that we would arrange for Hakan to collect it from him next Friday. Well, that is the nearest we have been but neither of us will be content until we see our names and the official stamp on the Kocan. It was with a feeling of relief that we left his office.

We then decided to go for some lunch before meeting Hakan at Stringers. So, we went to Serenity in Karaglanalou. A big mistake. Our ‘snack’ turned into a full blown meze followed by chicken, chips and salad and Mal had a mixed grill. We also had a bottle of water and two fresh orange juices. He then wanted to give us Turkish coffees but we said that we didn’t have time as we had to meet Hakan. Trouble was that we left 2 hours for lunch but because there are very few people eating out this weather, he had to fire up the barby!! The whole lot was around a tenner!!

Drove along the road to Stringer’s and chatted to Julie, then Phil came in, followed eventually by Tracy who had been on site with Hakan. It was nice o see them again and we said we had stayed away because we always seemed to be ‘popping in’ to see them. It seems trade is still brisk for them, more and more Brits trying to escape the UK.

When Hakan arrived we told him the good news and asked when he could start. Obviously because of all the recent rain, there has been no building. He tried taking diggers up to Catalkoy and they ended up getting stuck. Seems as though they have had record rain too, 4 inches in Girne. He seems to think he can have it done by the end of October but we are being much more cautious on this one! We did make him promise that we will see something on the land when we come back in April. He said ‘of course’.

Although it has been warm this morning, the temperature started dropping about 5pm. so we decided to go to Henson’s restaurant. Maggie and Bob opened this last April when we were one of their first customers. They remembered us and Maggie said ‘oh yes, you sat at the bar drinking Baileys all night!’ (Me not Mal!). Good memory. They made us very welcome and Mal had a ‘special’ T Bone that they had ‘got from the other side’!! I had delicious fish in garlic. We promised to go back and see them in April and then we went back to the villa.

January 2003
We are now living in rented accommodation, Birchcroft in Minster. We still own St Paul’s in Margate but Rhys & Ange intend buying that within seven years. It will be our official UK residence once we move to North Cyprus, whenever they might be.

Friday 27th December
After a very  hectic time of moving and Christmas etc, we left Birchcroft at around 9.15am.  I thought it was far too late, considering the Christmas sales were on. We got stuck in a jam on the M2 with a 4 mile queue to Bluewater but with a bit of welly we managed to reach Stansted at about 11am. We parked the car, caught the bus to the airport and checked in straight away. We then did a bit of shopping before going through to our boarding gate.

Mal bought a PC notebook to try out.  Perhaps I should mention at this point that you can purchase an item from Dixon’s at Stansted (tax free), if it is not satisfactory then you can return it to any branch of Dixon’s within 90 days and you will be given a full refund.   This is the third time we have tried this, the first was a world radio that really did not work well in TRNC and the next time a palmtop, which Mal decided this was no good because the keyboard didn’t work and the version of word was not good.  Duly, we returned them to Margate and they refunded our money. However I digress, Mal had with him his USB key Christmas present.

Didn’t have too much time to spare as the plane left on time. Stopped at Izmir.   North Cyprus is 2 hours ahead of us in time. We arrived at Getikele at about 10pm, local time. Bought cigarettes, £7.50 for 200.  Lira is about 2.64m=£1.  It seemed a long journey to the Hideaway but when we got here we were taken to our Connoisseur garden suite, room number 1.  Really nice and all the heaters were on ready for us.  We didn’t even unpack but went straight down to the bar and had a brandy sour and an Efes and were given toasted sandwiches. Back to room, unpacked and got to bed about 1.15 am.

Saturday 28th December
We didn’t wake up until 10 am so, in frantic rush, we threw some clothes on and caught breakfast before it finished at 10.30. We also had to hand our tickets to the rep (should be 10 am).  We managed it, as our rep was sitting in the bar.  Good breakfast with a choice.

Booked in at reception and met the co-owners Alf and Oya (?).   Said that if there was anything we needed just to let them know.  Back to the room and played with the laptop a bit, bathed, showered etc and lazed for a bit!

Mal then decided to get the real show on the road and start things moving as soon as possible.  He called Guy who had some fairly good news (but we never hold our breath).  The executors have now paid their death duties (apparently is the word that Mal is using). Guy is going to Nicosia on Monday to get the final piece of paper, which is the proof of the payment of the duties and Guy is going to pay the rates (which had previously been paid by John Torris!), they are £3 (oh no they weren’t and oh no he didn’t), and we are going to reimburse him.  We will see Guy on Monday.  Next the phone call to Hakan.  We explained what Guy had said.  He told us that once the paperwork has been received and we have paid the tax, then Selcuk fills in the forms for change of ownership and the transfer of the deeds into our names.  This should take about 7 days but Hakan knows people in the Land office and he may be able to speed this through (!!!). We have to ring Hakan on Monday morning to arrange to meet him in the afternoon to sort out the orientation of the land.  So, at least now we have (apparently) got things moving. Perhaps Sunday can now be an easy day.

Mal suggested that we went to find a rental car but I thought it was better to leave this until Monday (or we will never walk anywhere)  So, we decided to walk down to Karalanawhatsit where we bought some food and drink and then walked back.  The walk was fine until we got to the last little bit uphill when it really pulls on the muscles on the back of your legs.

Later we ate in the poolside bar and then had a few drinks, pretty good Brandy Sours.

Sunday 29th December
We seemed to spend most of this day just spacing out, I think the last few weeks, with moving and phone calls over here chasing the documents caught up with us a little.  We did have a short walk behind the hotel and managed to find somewhere to have dinner but that was about it.  The pair of us kept nodding off, recharging our batteries for the onslaught ahead.  It was a cloudy, rainy day anyway, so we felt we hadn’t lost much.  We did speak to Alf to see if he could get us a hire car.

Monday 30th December
Batteries recharged and ready to go, out hire car arrived at 9:45am, from Pine Bay.  A new Corsa for £15 a day, including CDW.  Then went to have breakfast just as the rain came down with a vengeance.  As we left the restaurant Manuel (our name for him, so use your imagination) came chasing after us with an umbrella, courtesy of the hotel, but we were assured that the sun will be out tomorrow!

We called Hakan and mutually agreed owing to the weather, that Thursday would be a more favourable day to go on the land for the orientation.

So, we drive into Girne and to see Selcuk. He just says he is waiting for the ‘piece of paper’, yes we all are but, having spoken to Guy on Saturday, this should have been in our hands by this afternoon at the latest so the next step was to go and see Guy.  His office has now expanded since our last visit, obviously the volume of prospective purchasers!  Guess what? He hasn’t been to Lefkosa with ‘the man’ to get the piece of paper we need as ‘the man’ was too busy doing a job.  This we could understand had we not been waiting since September 26^th for this piece of paper. A ‘debate’ then ensued between Mal and Guy, trying to establish why he has not yet paid the death duties on the land.  According to Guy he is an ‘untidy man’ by which we understood to mean that his affairs were no way in order and after all what incentive was there for him to sort this out, he has our money so what is the rush. Guy then told us they would be going to Lefkosa tomorrow.  At this point, Mal said he didn’t believe that the man had any intention of going and sorting it out and in fact he was now thinking of calling it all off and getting our money back and £5,000 compensation before it all drags on for another 2 years or so.  I was a little taken aback by this but what can we do?

We then went along to Stringers and talked to Julie, who was astounded at what had happened, saying that it usually took 2 weeks (that is what we thought too). Julie then asked us if we had held any money back, no we hadn’t, were advised by Guy and our (his) solicitor, that you pay the money and then checks are done and then the land is yours.  Simple. We then started looking at what ready built properties they have on their books, some of which Hakan was building for them.  This now has to be considered.  Julie very kindly said that she would speak to their solicitor this afternoon as she was seeing her anyway and see what options we have.

A little disheartened we drove up to the land and remembered why this patch was our dream, we clambered up the muddy ‘driveway’ and even in the rain it looked lovely.  All we could hear was the birds singing and nothing else, OK there were clouds at the top of the mountains and we were getting wet but we are still holding on to that dream.  What do they say?  Nothing worth waiting for ever comes easy but having just gone through a 5 day gap between exchange and completion (on Sevenscore) the week before Christmas and threatening three times to pull out, we had hoped for a little more luck with this.  Our October holiday was wasted with visits here there and everywhere and we are really hoping we are not going to have the same happen again.  Well we won’t, something will have to be done this time.   We will be seeing Stringer’s entourage tomorrow as they are all here at the Hideaway and we have already had a disclaimer from Julie for what she may say or do or the way she may behave (New Years Eve).  We will just have to catch her at the beginning of the evening to see what the solicitor said. Let’s hope that the New Year brings us the news we want to hear.

Mal  has just got the contract out to check it and is says ‘it is a condition of this contract that the property is freehold and at the time of completion is free of any encumbrances……a breech of this condition will constitute a breach of this contract……………….giving effect to clause 7 of this contract. (clause 2).  Clause 4 says ‘Within 14 days from the date of decision of the council of Ministers granting permission for the purchasers to buy the said property, the transfer of the title deeds shall be effected’. Clause 7 says ‘if any of the parties to this contract fail to comply with their obligations (they) will pay to the other party £5,000 as agreed damages as well as the court expenses.’  Our conclusion now is that the fella is refusing to give us the paperwork and he is now in breach of contract (but we discovered later that taking him to court would take years, and probably would still fail – makes you wonder why we bothered with a solicitor).

Friday 1^st November
Our rep called and said that we were on the earlier plane going home… no we are not! She has already checked our tickets and returned them to us.  We know CTA overbook their planes but they can find another mug to change planes because we aren’t!!!  She then arrived to take our tickets and we wouldn’t give them to her and a full row ensued with us saying that we are not going on the later plane.  She left saying we would have to get the earlier plane, and that was that.  So, we ended up calling Osman in London who said he would sort it out for us.

Arranged to meet Hakan at the land at 1pm and he said he was bringing the main tapu man who had just retired but he knows every bit of land on the island.  Yes, did he (or so we thought).  He looked for one of main markers (marked by a stone????? Or some old relic!)  He could not find the one on our land, he said it had probably been destroyed by the bulldozer levelling the land. He did find another marker on the land next to ours and then measured from there.  He was excellent (or so we thought he was) but every time we saw his tape measure cutting away a bit more of our land where we planned to have the house, I felt more and more miserable (if only we had realised at the time that he’d added a bit of next door’s land).  Yes, we were right, the ledge is part of our land and pretty useless at that!  We have decided now the land looks more like a boomerang than a boot so will have to change the name from Cesme.  Having said that it looks as though we may own a bit of the road as well so I suppose we could always put a tollgate up!  Hakan assured us the house would still fit in where we want it but we won’t have quite so much garden. This isn’t so bad as we have had second thoughts about maintaining so much garden.  We still have room for a large enough hard stand for cars (oh no we haven’t) and have access (may or may not be ours, if not it is the governments and they have stolen some of ours for the new road, so we see it as quits and were told the Turkish Cypriots see it that way too – unfortunately we found out later that the access belongs to someone).  Both of us are totally exhausted.

Back to hotel where we received a phone call from our rep, yes we would be on the later flight (good old Osman… from Travel world that is, a good company.)

Saturday 2^nd November
Really hot, and so we sat by the pool. Returned the jeep about 1.00pm and bought Turkish delight to fill our cases.  Caught the dolmus back.  I love it, all the locals cramming on and anywhere you want to go, just shout and they stop and all for about 40p!  Great system.

Spent our last evening talking to Sam.

Sunday 3^rd November
Alarm call at 4am. Taken to the temporary airport.  Back on the plane.  Awful journey.  For some reason the plane took 4¾ hours to travel from Turkey to the UK, and that was without the stopover time at Antalya and the flight from Cyprus.  We were both knackered and felt we had achieved very little.  Better luck hopefully in December.

Monday 2nd September
We met Hakan again and he had amended the contract which we then signed, with Phil as witness…….phew!!!!!!!!

We are hoping that our permission to purchase will come through when we return on the 27^th October and the land and the house positions will be staked out ready for the footings to go in while we are still there… if you are still with me well done!!!!!!!  We did actually enjoy ourselves although it was hard work and stressful, but I am sure there is far worse to come. We will have to visit every available holiday in order to keep a check on the progress of the house.

Wednesday 25th September
We have been told that we now have permission to purchase. This is a strange system where you wait 6 months just to find out whether you are allowed to buy! The contracts are written so that if permission is refused then your deposit is returned, or alternatively you could put the property in trust with your solicitor acting as trustee.

Wednesday 14^th August
Well, here it is the saga of the next stage of our house purchase!

We arrived at the LA Hotel (CTA – Cyprus Turkish Airlines- having changed our hotel 2 weeks before our departure!) at about midnight (3 hour delay going out there).  No food (even though we had booked half board!) so Mal had a go at them and then we did get fed.  Having booked a villa, to say that we were disappointed with our accommodation was a gross understatement.  So, we decided then and there we would not be staying and crawled into bed without unpacking our suitcases.  Our rep was due at 10 so we waited for her and told her that we were not staying as the room was awful and we had booked a villa and that was what we wanted.  Please note at this stage that there was a big notice on the wall of the room saying that NO food or drink was to be brought into the hotel, in other words, pay quadruple the price to buy it from the hotel!  Yeah right!

Olga, our rep arrived and we told her we were not staying and she would have to find us a villa.  There were a few villas at this location but it appeared that the air con had packed up and as it was about 43^oC we decided we didn’t want to roast in their villas.  It would be fixed by Friday, we were told, (this being Wednesday) but Mal reminded her that he knew how Cypriot workers kept to deadlines!  Please note here that the villas still had no air con when we left three weeks later!  Wise move not going into one of those.  Olga told us there were no villas available on the island as it was peak season.  Like we believed her!  Then the Manager of the hotel came out and asked what the problem was and we said it was nothing to do with him, this was CTA’s problem, they had messed up the booking.  Anyway, he took us into his office and said he would like us to stay and offered us his personal suite.  He took us up there to see if it was suitable, it had a large fridge, and he told us we could bring anything we liked into the hotel!! This certainly was more like it so we agreed.  All through our stay, whenever he saw us, he kept checking everything was OK.  Nice man, very nice man.

Thursday 15^th August
We went into Stringers Estate Agency to see the owners, Phil and Tracy (English).  They are a young couple who tried to find us some land in April. They are also building their own house and as they are further ahead of us we thought they would be helpful in giving us advice. Every time you ask people a question out there you get about 10 different answers! At least we knew with them that they had gone through the stages so would be up to date with the current situation.  The first bit of useful info was that you can get the land permission speeded up if you paid extra fees!! We also asked them if they knew of any architects and builders they could recommend

Friday 16^th August
We were introduced to a really nice builder called Musa.  Shame about his architect!!!!!  Prior to seeing his architect Musa was helpful and took us up to the land and we tried once again to work out its boundaries, for those of you who have forgotten or who have not been told, our land is shaped like a boot and is on varying levels so it is difficult to establish where it begins and ends! On going to see the land we were very impressed that since our last visit the government had replaced the bumpy pot holed road with a new tarmac one but we were not too impressed that they had gouged out the edge of our land to make some of it!   One of the problems with this entire boundaries saga is that the land registry map we had is about 80 years old and some of the roads have moved.

That evening Musa’s architect, Mehmet, and Ahmet from the land registry met us on site. Mehmet and Ahmet had a disagreement as to where the boundaries were and a full blown argument ensued in the middle of the road. I think you could say that it was about to become pistols at dawn.  Musa I think, bless him, tried to translate to cover his embarrassment.   They were each telling the other not to tell them what their job was and not to question it and that each was an idiot and not to show them up in front of us!  This must have gone on for about half an hour with us standing on the sidelines twiddling our thumbs.  In the end Mehmet stormed off saying he was doing nothing until the land had been staked out.  It was agreed that Ahmet would return and stake out the land.

We were told the weather changes on 15^th August and tomorrow would be winter!  They were right; it cooled down to about 35^oC and a very pleasant breeze.

Saturday 17^th August
We met Hakan, another architect recommended by Tracey and Phil. His wife is a Civil Engineer and he has his own builders…this sounds more like it!  He took us to view the land and then onto to some holiday home projects that he was doing.  We were quite impressed.

Sunday 18^th August
We were supposed to be meeting Musa and Ahmet (land registry) to go and stake the land out but Musa arrived saying he could not get hold of Ahmet, his mobile was off. We were a bit pee-ed off by this but found out later that poor Ahmet had been in a car accident and written his Pajero off (that’s a car).  He was OKish, which was the main thing, but obviously not working!

Tuesday 20^th August
Went to see Selcuk (our solicitor substitute) to get our land application number but he wasn’t there. Returned to the land with Mehmet, Musa and Phil. Had a good walk around and seemed to be getting a better idea of what was and was not ours, and the positioning of the house.  Phil was a big help and said he wished he had bought this parcel of land and it seems to have increased in value by about 10K since we bought it.  Kept being told to mind the snakes. We were not sure whether they were referring to the reptile family or to the human kind.

Wednesday 21^st August
In between all this we did get to use the hotel beach in the mornings and do a lot of swimming, eating and drinking!

We went to see Mehmet in his offices and talked designs and prices.  This resulted in Mal running out of his offices saying quick get in the jeep before he sees me laughing! The reason for this was the fact he told us he wanted £700 for preliminary drawings (which we could do on a ncomputer!), £2,200 for submitting the drawings and another £2,200 to oversee the project!  He has obviously already worked with a lot of ‘stupid’ English people and thought we would follow suit! We immediately decided he was not the one for us which was a shame because we knew we could have worked with Musa.  I think Phil is going to suggest to him that he changes architects.

We then spent a lot of time, with the help of a newly purchased graph pad, deciding what it was that we wanted.

Thursday 22^nd August

Mal drew to scale what we thought we wanted, with the help of counting out the squares on the floor of our suite!!!!!! This was hard work. ‘Do you want the kitchen this big or this big’ (as Mal paced out the squares!!) Then of course we ended up with the bathroom facing onto the pool etc etc.

Met Hakan again and he had some good ideas, like high ceilings (cooler in the summer) and to put beams in the ceilings and also to have a bay window at the front of the property to catch the winter sun. This room is to be the winter lounge/study/third bedroom.  Also we decided on arches internally to cut out a lot of the wasted space for corridors.  He definitely appeared to be on our wavelength.

We left Hakan and went back to try and track Selcuck down so we could get our land permission number.  We were successful this visit, it is number 125.  It appears 99 has not yet gone through but 150 has, so we enlisted the help of Phil who knows a man…

Friday 23^rd August
Seemed like at last we were getting somewhere and so decided to have a day off.  We drove to Bellapais Abbey (my favourite place) and had lunch up there in the grounds.  Remember, this is peak season and yet there were only about two other couples up there.  In the evening we went out to dinner and went to see Tanner who owns Cesme restaurant.  This was the first place we ever went to during our first visit and we go back and visit him every time and he is always seems so pleased to see us.  He does THE best meze (about £10 for both of us including drinks, Turkish coffee etc!) He seemed pleased that we are moving out there.

Saturday 24^th August
More house designing, this time thinking of lighting etc.

Sunday 25^th August
Mal discovered Kilkenny (beer!) a close relation to Guinness which he said was a relief from the ‘fizzy’ Effes.

Tuesday 27^th August
Back to Stringers to meet Hakan again. Phil had some news concerning our land. ‘It had been held up’. We are now both wondering what we paid the solicitor £700 for? But the process is now starting to move again (this ‘moving’ is actually bits of paper being passed from one desk to another in the land registry!)

Hakan had the preliminary plans but, as asked, he had enquired about the electricity to the site (originally we were told that the pole right next to our land was electricity but this trip we discovered it was the phone line!) and as we half expected it was going to be expensive, it didn’t come as too much of a shock to Mal (but it did to me!)… £10,000 to bring it to our land!   I think my jaw was still touching the ground as we left the office.  However Hakan’s drawings were good and we made some alterations, like incorporating a utility room and having folding doors on the winter lounge so that the room could be left open in the summer.

Wednesday 28^th August
We decided to drive to Guzelyurt where we found a furniture shop with ridiculously cheap good furniture.  This was a funny experience because the assistants couldn’t speak English and our Turkish is very limited but at least we learnt masa is table etc.  It appears with everything you buy you get a free TV!!  We are seriously thinking now of buying a lot of furniture out there as everything we take we will have to pay import duty of 2%, 3%, 13%, 16% or 19%, again depending on who you are talking to.  Along with these variations on taxes etc, there will be an election out there this month and they tend to change the laws then, so all may change!

Thursday 29^th August
Along with the drawings, Hakan had produced a ‘contract’ in the loosest sense of the term.  Not quite the spec we were hoping for.  So today was spent drafting our own contract. We went to the Internet cafe with Mal typing it up to the smallest detail we could think of and meanwhile I was searching the net for folding doors as Hakan didn’t quite understand what we meant.   The Internet was so slow you would not believe it.

Friday 30^th August
Turkish Independence Day – lots of flags everywhere and celebrating and fireworks.

Met Hakan again, having emailed him our version of what we thought the contract should contain!  I was a bit nervous about it all and this was a heavy meeting with lots of bargaining between Mal and Hakan.  Mal has cleverly included the electricity connection to be Hakan’s responsibility (now I think we are down to about £8,500!) but then mains water will be another £1,500, also included in his responsibilities. Having said that, Hakan had amended that we supply the folding doors as he doesn’t understand them (oh yeah, we take them over in our suitcases??!) So we compromised and are now having a bit of wall each side and double opening doors to the winter lounge… now his responsibility!  So the contract now had masses of crossings out and amendments but although this is much more than we first originally planned we have decided to go the whole hog and get Hakan to do a swimming pool too and the drive etc. I just kept telling myself not to think about the money.  Mal also wrote into the contract that the last phase was to be complete by 15 August 2003 so we can holiday in it next summer (sleeping on lilos I think!)  I am not holding my breath.

Saturday 31^st August
A bit of light relief, went into have a chat with Phil and Tracy and they told us to go up and see a hotel, The Hideaway where they are spending Christmas and the New Year, and asked if we wanted to join them there for New Year.  So we went to see it and Lynn showed us one of the suites.  What luxury.  It really is like a Country club AND you get served your choice of 6 breakfasts on your balcony when you phone for it! We seemed to have forgotten that we were talking about December and Janbuary.