Well silly season is upon us, it is the height of summer and downtown the tourists are soaking up the sun on the beaches all day and partying all night – some rather more indiscreetly than others, as a couple from Belgium were photographed humping energetically in the main street of Kusadasi early one morning. The Turks were so horrified only a few of them managed to film it on their mobiles and send it to the newspapers. As one ex-pat pointed out wryly on noting the girl only had one shoe on, “Maybe this is a modern day Cinderella story!” And they say romance is dead.

Here in the valley things are not so obviously mad under the sun although I did lose my telephone and internet connection when a circumcism party got out of hand (!!!) and the celebrants shot out the cables whilst firing guns wildly into the air. What is it about losing a bit off your willy that makes a bloke want to reach for the nearest gun and pump bullets into the air….oh never mind, I think I know the answer!

Turk Telekom rolled up pretty quickly to repair the damage and were supported in their work in the burning sun with ice cold Efes.

The engineers are now my bestest friends and any further problems I am to phone them direct and not bother going through channels. And they mean it, and not just because of the beer, which is appreciated but not essential. That’s one of the nice things about Turkey, people want to be your friend, and they want to help you and they want to look at pictures of your children and show you theirs and swop Facebook id’s even though you can barely string a sentence in each others language.

On an agricultural note the plum harvest is in progress, the tomatoes are being harvested and all the village wives are frantically making tomato sauce to preserve for the winter. You can’t go round a corner at the moment without running into a cauldron set up in the street and as everyone is cooking at night because it’s cooler it’s like a Witch’s Shabbat here at the moment with groups of women huddled over their cauldrons and debating if eye of newt is really essential or can they just get by with a touch more basil.

Peppers and mushrooms are also being harvested and there are strings of them everywhere drying in the sun.

The villagers must be picking these at night because it is so damn hot nobody is moving during the day time and especially with it being Ramazan it is best to just sleep away the daylight hours and work through the short but cooler night.

Roll on September, Seker Bayram and lower temperatures. This is the hottest summer I remember here with humidity higher than normal and week after week of temperatures in the high 30’s. It is all getting a bit much now even for those of us who are used to it and those who are keeping the fast are struggling and the local hospital has had to deal with the faithful passing out from heat exhaustion and dehydration.

As summer rolls on I spend the hottest part of the day watching Masterchef Australia (superior food porn!), recovering from a horrible summer cold I caught on Samos and dreaming of rain.

Still summer is nearly over; I sense the faintest trace of autumn on the early morning air and the occasional rattle of a leaf falling from the plane tree in the square by my house signals the year is drawing on. The valley in the morning is full of mist and there is a subtle change of light that indicates summer’s end rather than summer’s height. By noon the sky is bleached white in the heat but soon we will have autumn’s vibrant blue skies and the air will be clearer and life here will not revolve solely around keeping cool.