Chameleon Road- Cyprus

If you want an exercise in red tape and inefficacy then take the ferry from mainland Turkey to Northern (Turkish) Cyprus. Leaving Tascu on the southern coast of Turkey the plan was to take the overnight ferry to Cyprus and from there tackle the issue of getting to Jordan from another angle.

I’ll save you the details but here’s the facts- a five hour trip became a 15 hour marathon. Sailing was at 24:00 but we eventually set off at 3:30. I had to visit and hand over cash to a total of twelve different officials before Austin and I could be on our way. By the time we pulled out of the car park and on the disputed soil of Northern Cyprus we were both going bonkers in the heat.

 

Still there were consolations, Nic was coming out to spend 10 days with me and I was really looking forward to it. Originally I should have already tackled Jordan and she was to meet me on the way back. From Cyprus we planned to take a leisurely drive back up to Istanbul together. But timing wasn’t the only issue; Austin had something to say too.

Austin for the most part has been good as gold. Like me he has had a few sniffles and coughs and not everything works but something about Cyprus did not agree with him from the moment we arrived. For almost the whole of the first week Nic was here Austin was in one garage or another. They’d get one thing fixed and something else would go wrong. In the end he had a new dynamo, a new coil, some new wiring and new points put in.

Eventually Austin limped out of the garage and the three of us headed out along the Karpaz Peninsular for a little R and R. The wilds of Karpaz are famous throughout the island and we were looking forward to the long three hour drive down to the point. Nic had a drive of Austin and for the first time I was able to sit back and be a passenger. The sun bleached world of Northern Cyprus drifted passed as the coastline dipped in and out of the ocean, each time it left a beautiful azure cove. We spent a couple of days swimming and driving about dusty trails finding wild donkeys, chameleons and little owls. Not to mention turtles (if you want to know more about these wonderful creatures have a look at Nic's Zoology Blog).

Eventually it was time to head south on the next step of the mission. As I hadn't had any luck getting into Syria the only other choice was to attempt to take the ferry from (Southern) Cyprus to Israel and tackle Jordan from there. For those of you who aren't aware Northern Cyprus and Cyprus don't get on, in fact the UN had to step in and now there is a permanent collection of Blue-and-Whites stationed on the buffer zone that runs the length of the island.

Crossing from the North into the South was supposed to be easy, in reality the Cypriots pulled us aside and went through the paperwork and car with a fine tooth comb. An hour later not only had they driven me nearly insane but they gave us a parting gift- Austin and I could ONLY leave the island by returning to the North and exiting back into Turkey. If true then we were in a whole heap of trouble.

We had been invited to stay with Russell and his lovely wife Jane (and their friends Paul and Karen) at their place. We had meet them up in the north when they jumped in and gave Austin a bump start when he was having one of his Cyprus wobbles. They adopted us; in fact they were so kind and generous that I even began to put weight on again.

For the first time in ages I was forced to relax and stay still. Austin was working fine, we had sent out a few emails trying to confirm the next step and while I waited for the replies it was time to digest another delicious fish meze while floating around their pool in the sun....(to be cont.)

There's a new Cyprus gallery over at the Facebook page.
Have a good week folks
And again soz if there are any typos.
Cheers Matt

Insane-bul.

'I think you shouldn't drive through Istanbul. No one in their right mind does that' said Ahmet while his lovely wife Ayse nodded in agreement. They had already given me their map insisting I have it, as it was better than the one I had.

The view at Kartel

Not driving through Istanbul was sage advice, and parroted by everyone and every source, which is why I could have punched myself in the facefor not following it as I found myself stopping again at another set of lights in the crammed orgy of traffic.


I had called in at the airport to see if the tourist info could narrow the search for Mum and Dad's campsite in Kartel. Turkey is a wonderful hospitable country, but their tourist information is the worst in the world by far; rude, lazy and unhelpful. Not a great advert for the country. The lazy clerk behind the counter couldn't be bothered to stand, he gave me tourist map and said there 'might be' campsites in Kartel. There were none printed on the map.


At the end of a hot, six hour drive Austin was had to endure first several hours lost in Istanbul's insane traffic followed by several more in the even greater insanity of the commuter traffic heading to Kartel and the surrounding suburbs. I won't go into the detail but by the time we reached Kartel both of us were ready to knock the whole trip on the head. It was absolute purgatory.

Jimmy and Dad in Istanbul

When the Originals paused this way looking for a few days in the souks of brilliant Istanbul, there were still beaches at Kartel. They were even able to park right outside the Blue Mosque when they went sightseeing. There hasn’t been a campsite in Kartel for twenty years, apparently, and no beaches for decades. Now the city spills unsuppressed all the way along the coast and the beaches are either parks or industrial areas.


Istanbul is one of my favourite places in the world, but Kartel is not. I collapsed into the first, and only, hotel I found.


The situation was almost completely mirrored on the run to Bursa. The info guy was rude and unhelpful, the traffic a nightmare and the end result was an expensive hotel. The only difference was that Austin threw a bit of a wobbly and we had to sit beside the road while he calmed down.

The Ulu Camii in Bursa

'And that is that' I thought later as I sat in the old market eating dinner. 'I have reached the last point of my parent’s journey'. Here they were stopped by the shockwaves of the Six Day War, the shockwaves of the Mudurnu earthquake and the shockwaves of a dodgy kebab. They called it a day and headed home.

You wouldn’t recognise the Bursa of their time to the sprawling city of today (the fourth largest in Turkey). The closest place to camp is twenty miles away from the outskirts in the ski resort of Uludag milli Parki. So as I ate my Iskendia Kebab, in the busheling market and the Call to Pray rang about the eves, I took a moment to congratulate Austin and I on getting this far, of course we still have to get back…

There a new Turkey gallery over at the Facebook page.

Have a good week folks
And again soz if there are any typos.
Cheers Matt

BBC Radio Cornwall

Just a quick reminder ,
I've been invited to BBC Radio Cornwall to talk about the The Escape Committee. I'll be in the studio at about 3:30.  
A bit nervous ....

Have a good week folks

Cheers Matt

matthewbutton.co.uk

facebook

Follow on Twitter

The media onslaught begins

Hi Folks, it's been a great week. The Escape Committee has been in all the local papers.

The Cornish Guardian

Both the Cornish Guardian ran articles on the story. Although neither of them put any contact details or mention this blog, which was a bit of a disappointment. Newquay Voice however made the effort to call me and a lovely Sarah Morcom interviewed me and wrote it up for the next weeks addition. 

Newquay Voice

Have a good week folks

Cheers Matt

matthewbutton.co.uk

facebook

Follow on Twitter

West Britain 

Greece (Thunder and) Lightning

Today Greece faces a decision that could, could have very serious repercussions for the future of the EU, the Euro and ultimately the world recession. As I understand it, the rioting and violence in Athens is in protest against further government austere measures which are, at the simplest level, involve the privatizing of a slue of state industries and a hike in taxes. Understandably the Greeks are upset. I'm sure we would be, too. However, if their bigwigs in charge don't do something to try and dam the breaches then the International Monetary Fund won't offer £10 billion in loans. Without the money Greece may default on their present loans and the country could face bankruptcy and, realistically, may face having to leave the Euro and return to the Drachma. Not a great situation to be in, for anyone.

Photograph: Yannis Behrakis/Reuters in the Guardian

So as far as the trip is concerned what was in the original journey a wonderful goal and prize, especially after Tito's Yugoslavia, is now, in 2011, looking like a potential hurdle. Fifty years ago my parents bought their lunch with Drachma at the way things are going i may well be doing the same. There is very likely to be strikes if the bills go through, possibly even continued riots, an escalation in the violence or even, as the economist  on the BBC this morning offered, a civil war. And surely no one wants that. 

Photograph: Vladimir Rys/Getty Images from the Guardian

On a purely selfish level, it's hard enough trying to work out how to get around Syria to Jordan, for the sake of the Greek people and the trip I hope I don't have to find myself another alternate route, this time around Greece. 

Have a good week folks

Cheers Matt

matthewbutton.co.uk

facebook

Follow on Twitter

Who's going to Port Eliot Festival? We are.

Last year I was invited to read at the Port Eliot Festival at St. Germans.

On a beautiful day I stood up in front of a bunch of people I had never meet and stumbled my way through a reading from In The Almond Groves of Samarqand, my Silk Road book. 

This year I have been invited again, but this time I'm suppose to bring Austin. There'll be mega stars of words, music and art, but I'll be there too. I'll be reading on Saturday and Sunday if anyone would like to come along. The very next day I pack up and head off for London and then Belgium. All a bit nerve wracking really. 

Come along meet and Austin and say hello

Have a good week folks

Cheers Matt

matthewbutton.co.uk

facebook

Follow on Twitter

The world is changing..

Friday, 22 October 2010

Last night I was lucky enough to be invited to a lecture given by Dan Witters of Kiwa Media at University College Falmouth (who have just been voted the best place to study creative writing according to blog.saltpublishing). Dan and his team are award winning app designers working with both  the Apple and Android formats. According to Dan the Android share of the market is marching ever closer to a staggering 80%. 

Lets have a look at one of the apps Kiwa had made for Penguin publishing for one of their popular children's books- Hairy Maclary by Lynley Dodd

If you buy the print version it is a beautiful thing and a parent can read it to their child, brilliant. Yet the app brings a little more to the table-

The dogs tales wag and their eyes roll, not much extra you’ll say. 

If you touch the text the splendid David Tennant will read it to you, argh!?!? Sound good?

If you touch an individual word the app will spell it out for you. 

You can record you own narration if David Tennant’s brogue isn’t your thing.

Okay then, how would you like to change the language of the text with a click? Spanish anyone?No, how about Polish?

Well, how would you like to remove all the colour from the illustrations and with another click select from the colour pallet and finger-paint the trees blue and the dogs green?

There were probably a lot more, but at this point I couldn’t keep up with the note taking and anyway you get the picture. There is a whole brave new world out there to explore, if we have the courage...

I’m sure I’ll be returning to the subject very soon

Have a good week Matt

Oh, by the way the images were pinched from the ProfWriting website and amazon.co.uk

Port Eliot part 3- this time it’s personal

Okay this will be my third and final blog on the festival. I thought I’d mention about the tent itself and terrors. I think most people can relate to the horror of standing up in front of an audience and reading aloud. I think I mentioned this before, but I can stand up in front of an audience and talk until the cows come home (I know a lot of people struggle with this) but reading is a very different matter.

We all get nervous and then what happens? We start to shake. So now I'm are trying to read from a script that keeps bobbing up and down. As I'm talking about stopping for dinner and  grabbing a snack of sparrow’s bum I reach the end of the line and move down only to realize that I'm about to stop and grab a snack of sparrows bum again! I’ve nearly read the same sentence twice. Whoops! So I do what everyone does and I jump too far back then can’t find either where I finished or where I were going. Then I get more nervous and the whole thing starts over again. The throat dries up and as if they knew what was going on my wisdom teeth decided to grumble all day. All this and   I was still trying to move on from sparrow’s bum snacks.

                                                                   

The Colosseum 

I suppose the answer is to have memorised your work so well that you simply repeat it out loud rather than actually reading it. And although it sounds obvious now I didn’t think of this until I watched the poets in the tent. Each of them was brilliant. There were pieces on O.C.D and A.C.D.C, on Hash cakes and Hadron Colliders, but each were smooth and professional. They knew their pieces inside and out and were able to recite them rather than read them. It gave each piece a drama and an air of performance that I certainly couldn’t match. 

The Arena

            As Jane Pugh called up each of the readers there was a sinking feeling that I hadn’t prepared enough. Eventually I could no longer hide behind the other students and made my way up to the front, where the carpeted floor was as even as a pitching ship. Each of us had to stand in front of a microphone, which was recording our work for The Source FM, and an impressive video camera whose nefarious purpose was never revealed to me. The audience, the mic and the camera really helped to settle my nerves I can tell you.

       A deep breath got me through the first piece about a lady archer I watched one morning in Kamakura, Japan, which became the opening of my Silk Road manuscript. And then, because we only had 3-5 minutes to read, I asked the audience whether they would prefer an embarrassing piece (from the Beijing chapter) or an execution piece (from the Uzbekistan chapter).  Taking up Jane’s lead the assembly of course asked for ‘embarrassing’ and so a little more relaxed I told them of the tale of the Beijing Hairdressers. There were a few laughs and everyone was very kind and then it was done. All that was left to do was open my gifts for performing while watching a brilliant piece by a young poet who had cut up a news article from the nineteen thirties and made it into a very funny and original piece.

I learned a lot in a small space of time and look forward to having a second stab at it next year! 

Before next year I’ll buff up my wellies and my accent, too.

Have a good week folks

Cheers Matt

matthewbutton.co.uk

facebook

Follow on Twitter

Port Eliot Festival. PART 2- on the day

A frighteningly posh ginger ten -year old gave me perfect directions to the ProfWriting tent and then went about his business of advertising someone’s food stall with a cardboard sign. And what food! No hotdogs here, nope, it was all falafels, Jamaican goat curry and Jamie Oliver’s Fifteen.  This was by far the poshest festival I’ve ever been to; I felt simultaneously over and underdressed. Wearing a pair of clean Vans seemed a little over the top when everyone else had wellies on, yet again a pair of jeans and a shirt were very drab when compared to the plethora of fairies and fashionistas swathed in tinfoil and warning tape. 

                According to the brochure this was the seventh Port Eliot Festival and that only 18 paying guests presented themselves at the first one. Festivals are big business in the British summer now and if I can use the misquote ‘if you build it, they will come’. And come they have. The parks and gardens of the Earl of St. German were positively humming with visitors on a muggy Saturday in July. 

                I had a few hours before I had to embarrass myself in front of people so I went to see who I could find.  Sadly I had already missed the River Cottage people. Hugh Fearnnley-Whittingstall’s talk (on Friday) probably had a recipe for raw elk’s bladder on toast or maybe artichoke and afterbirth flan, that said it is all part of Hugh’s eccentric charm and the River Cottage BLTs were very highly praised by all who had the patience to queue. 

          Firstly I went to see the most splendid Diana Athill, OBE. The award winning novelist and memoirist has been the editor to a number of famous and respected authors. This lovely doyenne of publishing and editing was recently honoured with a BBC Imagine with Alan Yentob. She showed herself to be every bit as sharp, funny and eloquent in the tent as she had on TV, not bad for a ninety-year-old. The only downside to the event was that she and the interviewer (the editor Ian Jack) hadn’t been mic’d up properly and consequently you could only hear half of what was said. Sadly this meant that the fat female Aussie behind felt the need to bellow ‘Can you get her to speak into the F**king mic’; not the sort of thing you yell at ninety-two-year-olds, or anyone really. Ms Anthill talked of writing as a therapy as IPhones were held aloft to photograph and video her. She talked of her work with VS Naipaul and how his depressions was a ‘challenge’ and that editing often had more in common with nannying then anything else. There was the warm aroma of canvas and while she laughed about an over-eighties dating agency she had been invited to join some of the audience put down their BlackBerries long enough to do a little knitting. 

Ian Jack & Diana Anthill, OBE

               
 After a lunch of goat curry and rice and beans I sat beneath a beech tree in the Walled Garden and listened to Alexander Masters (author of the most splendid Stuart: a life backwards, go and read it.) and Sam Leith chat about the madness and magic of mathematicians. Alexander had chosen to add a little cabaret by dressing as a man-sized number seven.  What I heard between two kids called Neco and Rupert being reprimanded was fascinating and funny and I look forward to reading their new books when they come out. 

Sam Leith and Alexander Masters (Number Seven)

                There was little else I could do after that but go and prepare for my session in the Profwriting tent. I stopped in to watch a little of Martin Parr’s talk about hoarding but my mind was elsewhere, so I went and sat on the hill over looking the secret Tamar estuary that Kate Rew’s Wild Swimmers would venture into after tea, and pulled out my notes …

Have a good week folks

Cheers Matt

matthewbutton.co.uk

facebook

Follow on Twitter