This is only short, but having scanned this story, (done on a dot matrik on orange paper)  it takes ages to make it into readable print - and I haven't done the next bit yet.

Saturday we went down to the town early. I told Pat she had to buy her coat that day. I was fed up with going from shop to shop and her never buying anything.

As we walked down the hill, we heard drum beats. When we got to the first area of houses we saw what the noise was all about. The drummer was going from house to house and playing, and all the household members were coming out on the road and dancing around him. The children all were dressed in pretty, new clothes and seemed so happy and pleased with themselves. We saw the remnants of the bonfires we’d come across the night before. Niyazi said that they shouldn’t have had the bonfires on Friday - that that was jumping the gun.

When we got to the town we popped in to see if Niyazi was okay. He said he had found a shortcut home from our hotel that night. And he had managed to get up for his prayers at five. The mosque when he went later was absolutely packed and many more people were standing outside during the service. He was dressed up for the holiday with a white shirt and tie on.

While we were sitting there drinking our tea, in came a little boy of about eight, who proceeded to bump heads with Niyazi and then kiss his hand. He then did the same thing to each of us, saying sort of greeting. Niyazi reached out his wallet and gave the child a note. The boy looked disappointed when we didn't give him money too. We had also had a gift of a piece of candy from the hotel owners that morning- all part of this festival of sweets.

Niyazi wasn't expecting his wife and son until they came on the bus later in the afternoon. I told him the ideas I'd thought of for his shop. I thought he should use his kilim caarpet material and make placemats or small tablecloths - and also wall hangings cut of the pretty patterned ones.

He suddenly got up and rushed to the phone and had this rather terse conversation with someone. When he hung up, he said that he had been talking to his wife. He told her to bring some special kilim cloth that he had bought many years ago. There was a story attached to it. They had had an emergency call that their son was very ill in this place 18 hours drive away on the other side of Turkey. They had gone to see him, and he had survived the emergency and this cloth that his wife was to bring was what they had bought when they were there. I thought his wife might have been a bit annoyed at this extra last minute request. Certainly the phone conversation had had an element of irritation in it. But he was pleased. He wanted us to see this material.

Now we set out to visit the leather shops. Pat went first to the shop where we had gone on the first day, although she hadn't remembered being in it before. She had such a good way with the Turkish people. She went up to the children and smiled and talked to them. And she loved to converse with all of them and just bubbled over with interest in them.

So when we went into this leather shop there was a little boy sitting in the chair. She asked if the boy was the son of someone who worked there. The owner a rather serious man admitted proudly that this boy was his son. Pat asked if he could speak English. Not much, they admitted because he was only eight, but his older brother who was 12 and went to the college, a private school, spoke good English. Pat also commented on this boy's blond hair. “His mother also has blond hair,” the salesman said.
 
Pat was torn between two jackets in this shop - one for £80 and one for £60. She liked the more expensive one but preferred the lower price. We had tea in that shop and before we finished the older brother and his mother had been found and told to come to speak to us in the shop. The older boy was very serious looking and his English was quite good. Apparently their English teacher would only speak to them in English so they had to learn. The mother was a pretty lady, but hardly blond like they had said. She was a person who made the plans for buildings we were told. We tried to think of the English equivalent- not an architect, not a surveyor, more of a draftswoman. But obviously she made good money and the shop owner did too. Their son went to private school and Niyazi told me it cost £30 a month for his grandchildren to go to a private kindergarten. The young man who was trying to sell the coats to us was about 25 and athletic looking. Pat told him she wanted him to model the coats because he was a similar size to her son, but that her son had broader shoulders because he was an athlete.

“I too am an athlete,” the man said, a little bit hurt that she thought her son was more athletic looking  than him. I had thought we would strike a bargain and I would get a handbag, and Pat a coat, but that was not to be.

We then had to go across the road to where the Irishman was selling coats. She really liked the cut of his jackets best, and the leather had passed the quality test, and his price was good, £68.  So after hovering and ooing and ahhing, she bought one. I was so pleased it was finally over. Then to finish off purchases we went to one of the leather goods shops down the alley we had seen earlier in the week and I found a handbag I liked for £15, and was well pleased.

We did other bits of buying too. We each bought a set of little Apple Tea glasses to take home, and tins of the powder. And we found a little backstreet: fabric shop where we got very cheap scarves so we each bought a lot of those to take home as presents. Pat also bought some toweling material and we found a shop which had reasonably cheap Turkish Delight and she bought six boxes - not all at once, mind you. I think we must have made four separate trips to that shop over the week.

That afternoon I decided to risk eating in the local restaurant where all the locals go. I don't know if it had a name. But by the front door there were these six or so large pots of mixtures of vegetables and meat in gravy, just off the stove, and on the other side the cook was preparing Donna kebabs. That is what I had. We didn't know the routine but Pat pointed out what she wanted - a sort of aubergine and mince mixture with rice, and I said I wanted a kebab and they told us to go and sit down and they would bring them.

The meat was lamb all done up in an enormous round shape and was cooking over a heated rod which revolved. The cook took a pitta bread piece, dipped it in lamb dripping, fried it on the grill top, added chopped lettuce, runny yoghurt and then this slices of meat he had hacked off this enormous revolving joint. This was topped with a sort of mild chilly sauce and had a green chilly pepper on top.

The restaurant was just white tables and ordinary chairs. It had nothing to make it look attractive. Nearly all the clientele were Turks. There were flies buzzing around. “Just the place to make us ill if we were going to get food poisoning,” I thought.

After awhile a young man asked us if we wanted drinks so I got a Fanta fizzy orange. Then our food came and it was delicious. So much better than the food we'd had at the hotel and so much more living up to the Turkish food's reputation. Pat loves soggy food rather than big hunks of meat so she was thrilled with her casserole.

And it was cheap. My meal cost 6500 Turkish lire and I had only a 10,000 note and they wanted less, they couldn't change it. I thought they wanted more and I kept getting out more and more bills. Finally they broke into a tip box and got change out of there. It was all rather embarrassing. I did find the money very hand to come to terms with. Again, as in the dolmus, it was Pat who was so keen for this native experience and she who appreciated it most. I felt out of control, going into a strange situation where I didn’t know if I would like the food, if it would make me ill, if I could pay for it etc. But all was okay in the end and we vowed to go there again another day.

Pat had made special friends with the maid who cleaned our rooms - who was pregnant. They didn't have a word in common - except for our knowing hello and thank you, in Turkish. But they managed to carry on long conversations by sign language. So Pat bought a baby outfit for this woman, who was quite advanced in her pregnancy.