Finally…work has started on the hotel. We have had to decide what is urgent and what can be put off until next year as, despite our dire threats of not taking their guests this year and the resultant apologies (and bottle of Jack Daniels forwarded to Cem), we have still not received the remainder of the money from one of the agencies for last year’s guests. They are supposed to pay 50% of the money for this year’s advance bookings in May, but that seems increasingly unlikely. What seems almost certain is that we will start the season with another big dispute with them, sitting in their office explaining that it is hard to pay electric bills, wages etc. when there is no money coming in. We also make threats to leave the next arrivals at the gate, but the trouble is they know these threats are empty as we don’t want to ruin anybody’s holiday. So they have us over a barrel really.
Anyway, there is very nice young plumber in the hotel, quietly and efficiently going round each room fixing the many leaks and drips. Since we built the hotel, the most persistent problems have been of the plumbing variety. Part of the problem is poor quality materials – pipes that with no warning split and turn rooms into paddling pools, not to mention a strange toilet-flush system that relies crucially on a piece of string. If the string is too long, the toilet doesn’t flush properly; too short and the reservoir never closes off and the water runs continuously. It’s not enough to get them the right length as each time you pull it, the nylon thread slips slightly and will eventually be too long again. Who invented this system?
Another problem is the workmanship. If I ever build anything again, I will take most care choosing the plumber. The one we used when building the hotel fancied himself as a bit of an artist and designed pipe connections to rival spaghetti junction for the number of bends and turns they take. Perhaps he ordered too many pipes and felt he needed to get them all in somewhere, I don’t know. Anyway, I don’t need to detail the result of these bends on the free flow of water through the pipes. Suffice it to say that we are now aware of the various ‘black spots’ in the plumbing system and leave easy access to these points.
Tuesday was Cem’s birthday. We didn’t make a big deal of it, but we had a couple of friends round for dinner and some drinks. Entertainment was in the form of the boys’ wii – and it’s amazing how grown men are happy to look ridiculous spinning imaginary hula hoops, or flying – in bird form – between imaginary perches, as long as there is enough vodka involved.
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| Cem celebrating his birthday |
I had a couple of glasses of red wine, but not enough to deserve the fuzzy head I had yesterday morning. It wasn’t aided by the fact that the whole world seemed determined to make a lot of noise – starting with the hotel opposite us whose generator was working at full volume, and the building site next door which had a very large digger delivered - toe-curling screeches as it drove down off the lorry, then the drone of it digging out the foundations for walls.
I went to the hotel to give a lesson and the marble men turned up to polish the travertine round the pool. This involves a machine which looks a bit like those that polish floors in schools and hospitals, but grinds the top layer off the marble – you can imagine the noise that makes. To top it all, the plumber decided to tackle the room with the biggest problem, which involved breaking the wall with an angle grinder.
Oh well – it will all be worth it if the plumbing problems are sorted!
