The Beautiful House

Now you know that I am a lucky girl, I have the beautiful children, the beautiful friends, the fabulous job and you have had a mention of the beautiful parents. I am also lucky enough to own the beautiful house. It is a villa on the Turquoise coast in Turkey. It is dearly dearly loved by me and I feel more attached to it than any other house I've ever lived in.

At the moment the beautiful parents are spending a 2 week holiday there. They very kindly go out at this time each year and check that everything is ok as usually it has been closed up for a few months over the winter. They are always extremely kind and get the house into order for the paying guests who rent our villa over the summer. I usually have several quite confusing conversations with my mother as to what they've done and why. She speaks with machine gun speed and about several topics at once and hangs up really quickly as she's conscious of the credit on her mobile running out. Then she switches her phone off and I can never really get a full understanding of what's going on so I try and ring back but it's no good, the phone is switched off, she never checks her voicemail and she can't read text messages. In short I worry more about my house when TBP are there than with any other guests.

In the week they have been there, my parents ( well, really my gadget mad dad ) have replaced my satellite dish, installed an upgraded form of cable tv and then uninstalled it as it contained fairly graphic pornography channels. How I would have loved to see my pensioner mother trying to find that phrase in her Turkish for Beginners book !!!

They have upgraded the garden lighting and the pool lighting which was kept basic as electricity is shockingly expensive in Turkey, and really when guests are on holiday they don't check if they've switched off all the lights etc they just get drunk and go to bed leaving every bloody light in the place on. Fair enough I've done it myself when I've rented someone elses villa.

The most bizarre thing of all is that they've changed my front door locks, why I don't know. This has necessitated having the electric card re soldered to the key ( so you can't leave all the air con units on when you're out, which people do ), a new spare set of keys cut for the property management agents and another set cut for me. Whilst I was trying to organise this from England (as I know that my mother will have just gone out and got a new front door lock) I had to send several e mails to the agents and my next door neighbours in Turkey because my mother has her phone switched off, I rang my sister to say if mum phoned her would she get her to call me. When I explained this all to her she told me that in all probability there would be nothing wrong with the door. When my sister and her family went with TBP to the villa last year, neither of the parents could open the door, so my brother in law had to do it. Sometimes my sister would arrive home and find them waiting in the garden having been back for ages ..........

So before my head twirls round 3 times and explodes from the stress of having 2 people who really shouldn't be allowed out by themselves never mind leave the country "helping" me out, I just have to look again at the pictures. Incidentally the 2 little people on the beach are The Beautiful Son and Beautiful Baby Daughter.