Fish Hooks

I have a phobia against fish hooks. I think it started when I was a child and the boy sitting next to me told me about the time he got one stuck in his hand and had to have it pulled all the way through to get it out. Since then, nothing frightens me more than a fish hook flying through the air like a guided comet. In fact once I even chose to sit on the alligator/ snake/ piranha/ spider-infested bank of the Amazon River instead of sharing a dug-out wooden canoe with a man on a fishing mission. I remember sitting on the bank, being ravaged by mosquitoes, feeling vulnerable and a little panicky but infinitely more calm than being in the boat.

I mention the fish hooks because today I took a stroll across the Galata Bridge which is really made up of flying fish hooks and not much else. I was feeling exuberant and plucky because I had just had a very successful meeting with a man called Husseyin at the Istanbul Animal Export Office in Karakoy. Encounters like this, where tea is drunk and friendliness abounds, makes me love Turkey so much and I felt like for the first time since I arrived back under the cloud of Three Paw's illness that there was a little light on my face.

After, I  strolled around The Bosphorus for a while  and then sat at a cafe and waited to see if another of Putin's war ships would come cruising past.

I can't take credit for this photo. A colleague caught it the other night on his way home from work.