When we got back to the hotel I was so tired, I could have fallen into that monster bed and stayed there until our flight home. I don’t know what was wrong with me, I love the sun and can’t get enough of it but I felt as though the sun was draining the energy out of me. I didn’t feel ill as such, just so very weary and tired. But there was no time for dozing, it was getting around to seven thirty and it was time to get showered and ready for whatever the night held. Annie was doing her show that night and we’d promised to go and watch. Actually I wanted to see if she was telling the truth the night before she’d said that the animation team thought she was so good that rather than asking her to just do one song like everybody else, they pleaded with her to do an entire set. This seemed unlikely to me because the full show only runs for an hour and if she was doing forty minutes of it then it didn’t leave long for all the other Lettonia stars of that week. Annie’s good, but hell, she’s not that good. I reasoned that as she’d asked us to attend that it must be true. I was looking forward to seeing what songs she came up with.
We ate at the star restaurant that night. It was exactly the same food and lay out as the main restaurant but quieter. It was non-smoking and the only drawback from Russ’ point of view was that he had further to walk to the barbeque area; everything else was duplicated from the main room to the star. I wasn’t very hungry and only had a small amount to eat, but as with every meal before it, it was absolutely gorgeous. I loved that salad bar with all of its varying connotations.
One thing that I like about the Letoonia is that the staff are encouraged to eat with the guests. Not the cleaners and waiters and menial staff, I suppose that would be asking too much of fair play, but the animation team and the reps all eat the same food that we do. The only rule for them to qualify for a meal when they’ve worked a full shift is that they aren’t allowed to sit together and have to find guests to sit with. I think that level of integration is good.
One evening I ruined my meal. I found this wonderful combination of buttered rice with tzaziki I loved the stuff and had some with every meal pouring the tzaziki over everything else. This particular evening I thought I’d got the yogurt and cucumber dip but had in fact got something with gerkins that was full of salt and absolutely horrible. I’d poured it over the top of my meal and ruined the lot. I couldn’t eat it. I asked Russ if he’d have my meal but he said that he didn’t like it either so I wasted it. Luckily, my plateful of wasted food is probably a lot smaller than somebody else’s, but I can’t abide waste. Sometimes I make a lot of waste with my eating problems if somebody else has dished up my food. If I’m serving myself I’m pretty good at knowing what I can manage. Some evenings that holiday sickened me. The majority of people in Turkey live in poverty. Eren told me that even some of the smartly dressed waiters in our very resort are living in horrible squalid conditions. Turkey has national service and while the boys are in service for two years they get no assistance. Elder and younger brothers often have to pay for their eighteen year old siblings’ uniforms and food. Lads go into service from eighteen to twenty years old. They also have to provide for the rest of the family. Life can be very hard for them. People were leaving plate after plate of food, and just going up and getting another one. They’d take anything up to ten different puddings and leave almost all of them part eaten. The food wastage would have fed a village every night. It made me very ashamed to be so privileged. I only wasted that one plate of food and what I couldn’t eat at the a la carte meals but I was still conscious that some of the staff would be going home to a plate of watery soup that night; poor people eat a lot of soup apparently.
After eating we went to the bar. I fancied one of the cocktails; some of them looked very colourful. We had no idea what to go for and opted for the Letoonia Special. It was, vodka, banana liqueur, blue Curacao, and lemonade. The glass was more like a jug and after it had been bedecked with sugar frosting and enough fruit to feed a small country I didn’t know whether to drink it or cultivate it. It was lovely, but one was more than enough. We wanted to get good seats for the show.
We took our places and when the compare came out we were told that tonight’s entertainment was the very popular Miss Letoonia. What had happened to the talent show? A young woman was picked from every country represented in the audience and then had to perform a set of embarrassing and silly games. The one with the highest score at the end won. It wasn’t our kind of thing and we left before the end. On the way out I asked one of the reps why the talent show had been cancelled and she hadn’t a clue what I was talking about. She said that the nearest thing to a talent show is the Miss Letoonia contest and nobody ever sings. Because it’s one of the popular nights it’s put on every Saturday. Annie had been lying through her teeth. I didn’t feel any desire to gloat and felt very sorry for her. Why say she was in a show when she wasn’t? And then to come back to us and say that not only was she in it but that she was the star of it doing her own set seemed ludicrous. Did Bruce know about it? If he knew that she was making up stories why does he let her get away with it? I’d have thought it would be best to make her look stupid once to teach her a lesson that it’s not a good idea to make up wild stories and that if she does he won’t stand by and be a part of them.
A band was playing on one of the courts and we decided to go and watch it. As we walked across we ran into Bruce and Annie. They sat with us watching the trio of singers for awhile and we were sitting directly opposite the hookah smoking tent. Annie and Bruce came up with the bright idea of getting a pipe between us. They don’t sell cannabis of course (Bruce asked) but they sell the fruit flavoured legal high stuff. We decided on a cherry tobacco. Russ would never offer to pay for it because of course he doesn’t smoke. I waited for them to offer to pay some of the cost but Bruce and Annie stepped back and left me to pay. As usual I got stung for the lira/euro thing. I thought it was ten lira for one full pipe; it turned out to be ten euro. Ten lira is about four quid which I wouldn’t have minded so much at all, but ten euros was a bit steep and I felt pretty put out. Russ had already noticed that they liked to freeload a bit because on previous nights when we’d sat together they never offered to get their cigarettes out and always smoke mine, which at the price I was paying for them I didn’t mind.
I think it was purely because they hadn’t offered to pay half that Russ decided to smoke his share. By this time he’d had two strong cocktails and several of the monster vodkas and I don’t think he wanted to be left out. I tried to talk him out of it, knowing that if he believed that his chest was bad the next day whether it was or not we’d suffer for it all day. “I want to,” he said, “It’s not real smoking, is it? It’s not real tobacco, it’s only crushed cherry leaves and stuff.”
Okay.
Russ took his turn every time the pipe came round and even though it was only cherry leaves and there was nothing mind altering in there we did all get very giggly. Russ was hilarious and every time I looked at him with the pipe in his mouth it made me laugh.
“Oh, by the way,” said Annie, taking an extra long toke on the pipe. “I decided to cancel my show tonight.”
Russ and I looked at each other ... her show!
“Yeah, well me and Bruce were going to the Asian restaurant to eat and we knew we wouldn’t be able to enjoy it if I had to perform straight afterwards, and then it would interfere with dress rehearsals so I decided to cancel the show.”
I’m sure Russ was stoned, though he was probably just mildly pissed, “What? The whole show?” he said, and giggled. It’s not like Russ to be sarcastic or to make somebody squirm. It’s far more in his character to give them their out and let them backtrack gracefully.
“Yes, they said there was no point doing it without me so they put something else on instead.”
“Oh,” said both Russ and I in unison and then we started giggling. Bruce giggled too and received a withering glare from Annie who had realised that we were actually being quite unkind.
“Oh what the hell,” I said, to break the uncomfortable atmosphere, “we’ll all be super stars tomorrow, tonight we smoke.”
