Dalyan 25th & 26th January

It was a lovely sunny day on Wednesday 25th January, I was concerned it would be a bad result today at Fat Club so I saved having lunch until after weigh-in. I did, however, have sausage cassoulet with potatoes for breakfast, saving some of the cassoulet in the fridge. I also made Charlie have 2 walks with me which he didn’t argue about. At Fat Club, I was extremely surprised to find I’d only put on 0.1kg this week which was a miracle and we were all sat around discussing our week in the Nil Lounge bar area.
Not everyone had arrived yet when, those of us who were there, felt the wooden floor start to move. The hanging cat basket behind me started to swing and Nil, the owner, recognised immediately that it was an earthquake. She evacuated the room, which is meant to be what you do, although I never had before, and we were all a bit surprised that it went on for over a minute. Luckily, it was over relatively quickly and wasn’t a big one in Dalyan. I believe it’s epicenter was 79km South West of Rhodes but had measured 5.9 so we had all felt it. It was definitely the first one I’d felt where it went on longer than a few seconds and we had to be evacuated as a precaution.
When I got back to Helen and Abi’s, the internet was off, Helen had warned me that it was due to expire around now and I’d have to manage for a few days without it. Coincidentally, my 4G on my phone had ran out today too so I needed to get more tomorrow. It also meant that I wouldn’t be watching any more TV while I was there.
I finally had my lunch at 4.30pm and had a lovely treat; the leftover meatballs from Egehan on my birthday, which I’d taken from the freezer and had with steamed rice. It was just as nice on the second time of eating it.
I spent time with Charlie on the sofa then got peckish about 8.30pm so I had leftover cassoulet and oven chips (from Helen’s freezer stash), as they needed eating up!

It was day 5 of Tet in Vietnam, on Thursday 26th January, Captain Caveman was due back at work tomorrow night and he’d had a nice time off. The weather was starting to turn a bit, here in Dalyan, and it looked like storms were coming. After walking Charlie, I had cheese on toast for breakfast so that I could use up some of Helen’s frozen sliced bread – I really enjoyed it too. In the afternoon the weather brightened up a lot and I even had to cloth off down to my vest top. Charlie and I sunbathed on the roof terrace but we both knew the rain was coming.
At 3pm I decided to take some stuff back over to Captain Caveman’s apartment, given that I was due to be moving back there this weekend. I checked to make sure there was no damage from yesterday’s earthquake and all was fine. Some friends had got broken ornaments in the tremors so we were lucky. I also noticed that the people renting the apartment opposite us were still there and the communal stairs were pretty dirty. I thought I could smell cat pee too which wasn’t pleasant. I bought more dog food for Charlie, this time just 1kg for 30 lira (£1.32) but this was the adult food from the King brand which the shop person assured me was the same as what Charlie had originally. Unfortunately, I had noticed today that Charlie had been eating only the original biscuits and leaving all the new ones which were mixed in. I purchased more 4G credit for my Turkish phone so that I could at least be in contact with people while I was still at Charlie’s. I was surprised to see that 5GB had gone up from 88 to 115 lira (£5.07), an increase of 30% since last month. After taking 2 backpacks full of stuff, between the 2 houses I walked past Jiks on my way back to Helen and Abi’s. Gay Gaz, Roy and Brian were having a drink there so I joined them for just the one beer. Roy had negotiated 60 lira (£2.64) for beers at Jiks, so I gave him my money to pay for mine when I left, otherwise I would get charged 20 lira more! When I got back I knocked on Katrina’s door to see if she’d mind me logging on to her internet, she very kindly gave me her password. Unfortunately, I could only get my phone to connect to her WiFi if I was stood near the front door or on the stairs. It was useful but would not have been good enough if I’d been needing it for work or to watch TV.
That evening, I had a real treat for dinner as I’d got my Bistro Blue leftover steak (from Christmas Day night) out of the freezer earlier. After a fairly long walk with Charlie, it was nice to make some beef steak fajita wraps, which I had with the pepper sauce. An amazing Thursday night dinner!
I checked on Charlie’s food bowl again and this time he’d decided to take out all the biscuits he didn’t like from the mixed bowl – how clever. He liked the new stuff so that was ok. That evening we had lots of Charlie cuddles as a storm had started, I didn’t get to sleep until 5am!