Mad Max?
WHAT has happened to my ‘north’ mobile? Cursed with having to have two telephones in this country, I now find that one of them has gone bonkers. A few days ago I got a message at 2.17am saying something inconsequential like: “Hello, Jane how are you ?” Very welcome under normal circumstances, but not in the middle of the night. A late delivery due to a Turkcell blip, I concluded, rather than an insomniac friend.
And then blow me if last night it didn’t happen again. There I was, dreaming I was hurtling down the black slopes at Trois Vallees, when –beeeb beeeb beeb beb be-be-beep… my phone fired. Golly, this one’s up with the lark. It isn’t even light yet… It was my friend Enver texting to ask if his daughter could come to play with mine after school. Yes, I replied, wondering, as I clocked the delivery report, whether it was time to get up and make coffee. That’s when I noticed that it was 3.48 am. Bloody Enver, what’s he on?!!!! But no, Turkcell strikes again…
So. Back to dreaming of the slopes? No chance. Because that is when thoughts of Max flooded into my mind and, in the immortal words of Gilbert and Sullivan, “repose was tabooed by anxiety”. No way I was going down to make coffee – what if I found him dead in the kitchen?!!
Max….. well Enver is implicated in the Max Business as well, so he and Turkcell can share the blame for my sleepless rest-of-the-night. Max has been living with us since Saturday morning. He is a turtle…. I think. Anyway he has a shell which is green on top with extraordinarily pretty markings on the underside. He has sticky-out legs and arms and a big head with red go-faster stripes on the sides and a throat that goes in and out like a frog. He is miniscule – not much bigger than a fifty cent piece. And he looks bored out of his brains.
Why am I blaming Enver? Well, he took our two daughters to the Bayram fair and paid for them to do some activity or other which resulted in my second-born winning the creature. The two girls then did a deal by which we get to keep Max – a misnomer if ever there was one – until such time as we depart the Island of Love. Then we hand him over and Enver and family get to see Max through the rest of his childhood and pay for his education. But we get the sleepless nights. Because I have to keep him alive until then and my constitution simply can’t stand it. The little chap just won’t eat! Just before I went to bed last night I went to say good night to him and he was motionless, lying under the water at the bottom of his tank. Aaaaaaaaaaargh…
I have held out for eleven and a half years against my children having a pet. I have been deaf to cries of “oooh, look at that sweet little puppy. Or “Mum, go on why can’t I have a cat?” One of them has asthma so NO cuddly, furry things. But you can’t argue with a turtle on health risk grounds, even though, if you think you can’t cuddle a turtle, you ought to see my daughter try. Anyway, the point is that holding out is one thing but when you find yourself picking up not just your child from her sleepover but also a perspex tank containing one micro-turtle and a jamjar full of stuff that turtles are meant to like eating, you really are past the point where the “n” word becomes operative.
Moreover my husband is kindly disposed to welcome the new family member and has set about researching turtle websites. Google gave approximately 8.3 million hits so he had a busy morning. He thinks it is something called an Amman Asian Turtle (hatchling). Soon he was simulating the natural habitat of said AAT(h) by erecting a lamp by the tank. “He has to be basking,” he explained. (Yes, and you have to be barking…!”) Then he did some dry-stone walling around the deep end of the tank so the poor brute could have a place of shelter – to hide from our daughter, obviously. Then colourful postcards of Picassos to study through the tank walls. And ooh.. many other small touches to make Max feel happy in his new home. But nothing – nothing – seems to give the little chap an appetite.
So I am now off to the pet shop to consult the local turtle expert where I will no doubt be told that it only eats Beluga caviar and white truffles and then, I suppose, I better go on to the doctor for some sleeping pills!
