Arrowtown book buyer Miranda Spary continues her regular column about her recommendations for a good read and life as she sees it ...
I know how many of you reading this column long to hear about my darling's boating disasters, so today's story will make you pretty happy.
We were ready to set off on the beautiful Miranda - a Turkish gulet which looks like a pirate ship - wide and wooden (named after me) and really just a floating sofa. She'd been tied up on the waterfront in the small, pretty town of Fethiye. Tourists come here for the combination of beautiful weather, ancient ruins and fabulous boating.
An earthquake in the 1950s did huge damage to Fethiye, but the lasting damage has been in the very nasty buildings that were built to replace the old ones.
Christchurch planners take note.
Picture this - a still and sparkly sunny day with blue, blue skies and sea. There is still snow on the mountain tops.
Everything is beautiful and along comes a gaggle of blind-drunk tourists, their skin an angry scarlet from too much sun.
They seem to come here to watch English football, eat English breakfast and drink English beer. I'm not sure why they bother. Some of them even bear tattoos saying "Made in England" as if it were something to be proud of! I'm very proud to say I'm a New Zealander when they're around, and keep my UK passport carefully hidden.
Apart from them, the waterfront is magical - palm trees and ice cream sellers and simit sellers walking along with trays of simit (a sesame bagel) balanced on their heads.
Dozens of gulets bob up and down and only a few other boats tie up here.
A big expensive motor launch had tied up right beside Miranda, which has spent the winter getting stripped down and tarted up. Our skipper is so proud of her we often think he has forgotten she is actually ours. Over the winter he has been getting her into tip-top shape. He also had the initiative to put his personal stamp on her - it didn't occur to me to learn the Turkish for "please don't feel the need to redecorate the entire interior".
He's even made it impossible for my darling to run off with another woman - if he does, he will have to find one called Miranda. Every plate, glass, cup and eggcup now bears my name. The tablecloths say Miranda and underneath he has also had the tables painted with it. It's a bit unnerving and gives me a tiny insight into how the Queen must feel.
All the wiring in the boat had been redone as had all the electronics and GPS.
We carefully edged our way out, fenders squishing on both sides. Suddenly there was a lot of Turkish kerfuffle and some shouting that meant nothing to us. Suddenly we were whizzing backwards leaving an expensive souvenir of Miranda etched on the expensive motor launch and racing at full speed into the solid stone wharf. The boatload of hungover Germans on the bare-boat charter yacht next to us stood open-mouthed in horror.
Luckily our inflatable tender acted as a very large fender stopping Miranda from some very large damage. It was huge entertainment for everyone watching. And just a short but expensive wait while the electronics guy came and replaced whatever it was that had been wrongly installed.
This was our first outing for the year, so no doubt there will be further chapters in the book on boating dramas for us.
Just as well there's some excitement here as I am very sad to be missing so much at home.
Tonight is the Locals Ball, which has all the ingredients to make it a terrific party and all the money raised is going to fix up the Memorial Hall. And Nicky Tompkins just sent me the publicity material for Margaret O'Hanlin's Songstars show in Arrowtown next week.
Everything Margaret puts on is sensational and if it's a tiny bit as good as Starry Eyed or Rock and Roll Suicide, you will hate yourself for missing it.
I was told I had to read The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt by my favourite Melbourne bookshop a while ago. Two brothers, Eli and Charlie Sisters, are hired killers during the American gold rush.
Charlie is bad to the core and Eli is always wondering if there's a better way to live. Everything they do goes wrong and the book is violent but very funny, with all sorts of deliciously weird characters - foul and friendly whores, sobbing men and vicious prospectors. A cracker.
