Eastward bound

So I am off to Istanbul (not Constantinople) tomorrow with Lovely Rita Meter Maid. ( Poor Rita every time I hear her name I think of this song. So does Phil  a colleague of mine at work. Curse those Beatles and their rhyming prowess.) I am very happy to be going on holidays and to have a bit of a gal adventure to boot but I feel a sort of anxiety about Istanbul. Nothing unusual about that I suppose - when don't I feel anxious? But I think  perhaps I am hoping for too much from this city and what it is exactly I am hoping for I am not entirely sure. Still it will be good to get away, it will be good to eat fresh rose-flavoured lokum and it will be good to be in a town where the cats run free and the Doy-Doy restaurant still prevails. Hopefully I'll be able to squeeze in a few games of Backgammon while I'm there too. I am quite good now - when the dice are with me and my opponent is sloppy.

A whirling dervish stone I painted