Home alone

Staying behind when Archaeologist Husband travels to fulfil his salaried contracts in Turkey would go much smoother if he had not ended up having ‘adventures’ at the beginning of both stints. The first time around his luggage – containing his laptop and camera – went haywire for days resulting with him not having any change and us being worried about a possible loss of equipment. There are enough outgoings in the near future without any that kind of unexpected expenses. The reason for suspecting that the luggage had truly disappeared – being nicked – was that he had an internal flight to the south-east. There was an indication to the contrary, however, since a group of passengers had lost their luggage from the same flight. This suggested that one cart full of suitcases had got lost somewhere, perhaps in Istanbul in transit. Luckily, it turned out that the suitcase had never left Gatwick and after a week of stinking Archaeologist Husband got his clothes back.

This second time around the situation seemed much scarier. I knew that Archaeologist Husband had changed planes at Istanbul and had landed safely. Then he did not meet the rest of the team and decided to take bus to the site that was supposed to be nearby. I did not suspect anything unusual although I was wondering why he left the airport so quickly without waiting a phone call. Thenl I got a mysterious phone call that turned out to be his host from the excavations. He was checking if he had the right mobile phone number since he had been unable to reach Archaeologist Husband. After this call my imagination got better of me and I could imagine a clueless Englishman with a sunhat and Galaxy Notebook being fleeced in the dark evening countryside. I could not reach him either but luckily my text message got answered pretty soon. Archaeologist Husband was safe but continued zigzagging the countryside for some hours after this incident. I hope this taught him waiting for just a little b it longer the next time.

A very British summer

In the meantime I was wondering if the village is to be cut off one day or another. The local brook had burst from its stream and the sports field of the local elementary school was under water together with many of the surrounding flood plains. The current weather patterns are not necessarily totally untypical but their reason is. It is sunny and unusually hot in the Mediterranean whereas the central and northern Europe is chilly and wet due to the horizontal position of the Jet Stream in the atmosphere. Thus, the British summer is a washout. Luckily I had my few sunny days in Rome...