Pebbles From Paradise

One of our relatives is perpetually constipated, lives near a river that gets clogged with sewage, and can never throw anything away.

I always test any software, or gadget to the point of destruction, for that’s where the technical creativity is to be found. Here’s what I mean.

‘Voila’, or should I cry ‘Bak’ since I’m currently in Turkey? Your picture suddenly has extra depth and a stylish tonal quality!

It’s possible to do quite a bit to ‘rescue a poorly exposed image using an image editor such as Adobe PhotoShop, but where gross over, or under, exposure has occurred no image editing software help you.

Laurie Phillips is coming out of retirement and plans to set up a new business. He said: “I may well become teetotal – not entirely 100% on that yet!! but will try it for a while!”

I was trying, rather unsuccessfully to teach a group of Turkish psychologists the art of Family Therapy, when Laurie appeared wearing vivid red lipstick!

This is achieved by using the layers tool in PhotoShop, and is really simplicity itself.

Just before Spring really forces itself upon us, Marmaris is a place of dramatic skies and deep royal colours. It’s my favourite time of the year.

Whatever possessed Sir Michael Gambon and Timothy Spall to appear in ‘Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire’ is beyond me!

In the days when I practiced Psychotherapy I would often move stuck individuals by asking them firstly: ‘How would you like your kids to turn out? and secondly: ‘What would you as a parent need to change in order to make that future more likely?’

It is of course the Eighties generation that now hold positions of power, for whilst the Sixties Generation still dress, and behave with abandon, and continue to have the money to do so, they are also slowly collecting their pensions albeit by electronic transfer.

It’s a great pity that vegetarians are seen as making some kind of anti-establishment statement, rather than simply stating common sense.

A Traditonal Turkish Feminist! I count myself as very fortunate that I belong to at least two cultures. Firstly of course I am English, and the product of a Sixties education, if not a progressive one. Secondly I am married to a Turk and live in Turkey which has it’s own customs and traditions, and [...]

“…get off the wheel for a moment, discover where you are, and make a conscious wakeful decision about whether you want to get back on that wheel or not. Using our awareness, we can process the events that are happening to us. Otherwise, we are passive, unconscious witnesses of our fates.” Dr Arnold Mindell, Founder [...]

“The most important attribute of a good portrait is that it captures some individualism in the subject” Jorge Lewinski and Mayotte Magnus Some of my readers suggest that yesterday I was a little hard on BACP, who in a letter ‘inviting’ me to become a member chose to make the main subject heading a reference [...]

A Modest Megalith At Amos Think of Turkey, or even Hellenic Greece and the last things to come to mind are standing stones. It is surprising therefore to find near the village green at Amos Bay, Turunc, Nr. Marmaris a stone circle created in comparatively recent times. But a standing stone is a standing stone, [...]

A Holiday Snap For All You Whinging Winnies! We try to avoid going to Marmaris any more than strictly necessary, but at the moment I’m stripping the paint from some cast aluminum garden furniture in anticipation of the summer months. Unfortunately I rather underestimated the amount of paint stripper needed for the task so today [...]

I’m truly grateful to the ever youthful Alf Erickson of corkscrewballoon.com for drawing my attention to this important International competition. The winners in reverse order are as follows: 3rd Place goes to: Albania 2nd Place goes to: Serbia and the winner of the man of the year is: Ireland Look how he romantically holds her [...]

Peace To All Sentient Beings I’m celebrating today because I’ve just completed the infamous 10 days on brown rice diet. Actually this is the third time in my life that I’ve completed the diet and each time has been different. The first time occurred in my late twenties. My partner, later to become wife number [...]

In Memoriam Today when looking at this calm sea it’s hard to believe that you are seeing the face of a murderer, but five days ago two fishermen disappeared with their boat in these waters. Today I learned that the bodies have been washed ashore near Marmaris. The sea was, of course, violent when it [...]

Mira Keeps Lookout Here’s Mira, a beautiful creature that lives here on the Amos Estate. In fact she belongs to one of our neighbours. On this morning’s walk I suddenly saw her at the far end of the green lit in a natural contra jour style. With a conventional camera snapping her would have been [...]

Stormy Weather Here Today Here I am at the same spot as Wednesday’s entry. As you can see Amos Bay is very different from how it was then. Now it’s easy to believe that such waters can be dangerous. At this time of the year the weather changes very quickly and messing about in small [...]

Boncuk During our evening walk Boncuk with typical bravado attacked a heavy pick-up that was removing some scrap from the estate. Unfortunately the dog has grown older, and her eyesight wasn’t as good as it was when she was a pup. I’m unsure if the front and rear wheels of the truck ran her down, [...]

This morning reinvigorated after a night’s sleep I ventured out early in order to locate Boncuk and see if anything could be done for her. Before I got to her I met Abdula who told me that Yusuf from the white houses had already rescued Boncuk in the morning and was taking her to the [...]

“I would like to thank all my friends, and fans for their prayers and support. I would like to woof more, but am not feeling so good.” Boncuk of Amos the world’s favourite pooch is back home following veterinary treatment. Just two days ago she was run down by a cowardly driver who couldn’t be [...]

Kumlubuk Beach In Winter In the days when everyone used film for photography there was a debate about whether you should use monochrome film, or colour print film if you wanted to create black and white images. Purists would always use panchromatic monochrome film since it could be processed at home, which meant it was [...]