Dalyan – 31st March

Captain Caveman arrived at his Dalyan apartment at about 1.30am on Monday 31st March. His flight had been delayed by 4.5hours and they had to change on to a different plane. There was a quick welcome kiss but we had more pressing things to attend to. Captain Caveman emptied the case of the frozen and chilled products which had been wrapped in the Metro newspaper. We needed to get the bacon and sausage in the freezer, the cheese and chorizo in the fridge. The rest of the stuff could wait until morning! He had brought so much stuff and the only things he couldn’t get from my list was bouillon and a particular coconut powder. After the coldest wares had been attended to, we ate cheese pasties and finished off the wine before finally going to bed at stupid o’clock! Miraculously, we slept in until about 8.30am!!! Captain Caveman had taken the day off work, as well as tomorrow, but had decided to check if he could log in to do work while in Turkey. Unfortunately, he couldn’t join the morning team meeting but he did have access to files so he would need to get that fixed if he wanted to be able to do work while visiting me. By 10.20am, Captain Caveman had unpacked the rest of the goodies and we had a full kitchen table of them. My old stick blender had broken so I was so excited to get a new one, plus a silicon liner for the air fryer.
Captain Caveman had also brought out my freebie copy of a book, from Charlie Day of The Sales Agency. I’d been following her and had helped with some lead generation work. It was about making sales without being aggressively salesy and was right up my street. I couldn’t wait to read it but I wasn’t about to take it back to London with me. Captain Caveman was meant to have brought a couple of copies of my book out for Sezgin and Debbie but he couldn’t get them in time so I had ordered them to come to London.
Captain Caveman made himself some breakfast with eggs and I had overnight oats with a cup of tea. It was raining and the wind was getting up a bit so Captain Caveman had resigned himself to the fact that we were going nowhere. For lunch we had homemade soup with cheese pasties and bread. We also marked the occasion with a beer each, mine a gluten free one as normal Efes no longer sits right with me.  While Captain Caveman opened boxes from storage and rearranged all his belongings, I attended the next session of Claire Clarke’s Planner Ideation course.  This is where I decided I needed a white board, some marker pens and highlighters adding to my office. I had another project on the go and was excited to see where that would lead. Captain Caveman also managed to squeeze in a trip to the barbers.
It was my Dad’s birthday and they were enjoying their last day away so we had a video call and said Happy Birthday. Dad seemed to be enjoying himself and was impressed by the dessert selection on offer. 

At 5.30pm, despite the grey skies and threatening rain, I suggested to Captain Caveman that we go for a walk. I knew we needed to be at Sezgin and Nur’s house for 6.30pm for the surprise dinner and drinks. Somehow I needed to get the chocolate, rakı and wine round there too so I said I needed to drop something off along the way. I tried to be a bit vague as I shoved it all in a rucksack while Captain Caveman wasn’t looking. Once on the walk, which Captain Caveman decided we were going by the river for but we needed to be heading to Gülpınar, he wanted to carry the bag! I think he could tell something was up as he suggested we go to Heybe for a drink and to say hi to Donny. I knew we were going to be late but I had to make it look casual, so we stopped off. We noticed that Retro bar was close to being reopened for the start of the season and now had a massive statue – it was certainly going to stand out and be a bit different to how it looked before. We carried on walking as I pretended we were just passing near where Debbie & Mike lived and I said we could perhaps stop by and say hello, knowing they were already at Sezgin’s for the surprise party. We ended up getting a bit lost (on purpose) and were late so I had to say we would just say hello to Sezgin and Nur, as we just happened to be passing! Everyone was so glad to see Captain Caveman and I think he realised what was going on but didn’t say anything. Nur had cooked an amazing meal with börek, salad and Baba ghanoush for starters. Then for main we had liver with rice which was delicious – Captain Caveman ate two lots. For dessert we had creme caramel which was delicious too. There was lots of wine for me, I’d taken red, white for Nur, plus the big bottle of rakı for Captain Caveman to share. We had a great night with lots of laughter and music. I think it was about 1am when we finally went home, having danced and drank whisky. Why do I do this on the night before a flight!?
It was the last day of the month and I’d been too busy today to see how I’d done against my monthly budget of £300 – I suspected I had gone over, though!

Gratitude List
1. Captain Caveman finally making it to Dalyan for 34 hours!
2. Being brought lots of goodies from the UK
3. A great ‘surprise’ party for Captain Caveman at Sezgin and Nur’s place.