Arrowtown book buyer Miranda Spary continues her regular column about her recommendations for a good read and life as she sees it ...
Ramazan is over and it's the equivalent of Christmas here.
Little children walk around in new clothes kissing adults' hands and being given sweets.
One of the greetings the Turks use is "good sugars" and it means you hope life is sweet.
It's a great way to meet people.
The boat tied up beside us had a family of women in full, all-covering burqas while the daughters were in considerably less-covering bikinis (although well filled!).
I wanted to meet the covered ladies and try to talk to them so I made up a box of New Zealand goodies like Crunchies and peanut slabs and told our boat boy I wanted to give them the treats once they got back from being whizzed around the bay on an inflatable banana - quite an extraordinary sight!Unfortunately, he misunderstood me and took the box over himself and gave them to the crew on the boat.
The crew were delighted, but it didn't get me any closer to chatting to the ladies.
They may not have wanted to chat to us anyway, as my darling forgot they were there, and went to change out of his wet togs on the boat.
He kept a towel draped over the front of himself so that none of us could be offended by the sight of some full-frontal male nudity, but not sure a hairy Kiwi backside waswhat the Turkish ladies wanted to see as they lifted their heads up from their prayer mats.
Everyone smartens up for the end of Ramazan - we've got three highly polished heads aboard as our three husbands all trotted off to the Princess Diana Barber.
Not sure if he was actually Princess Di's barber - she didn't look as if she needed one - but he certainly got rid of every hair anywhere near their heads.
We had a big fix of New Zealandness on Saturday - Kathryn Wills and her team had turned up in our bay in their beautiful yacht.
It didn't just have Sky TV and the rugby on - what joy for our boys - but real loos, utter bliss.
One of the downsides of boating is coping with constant gripes and grumbles from the toilets.
No 2-year-old was ever as disagreeable and tantrummy as a boat loo.
The minute we had sent our skipper off home to celebrate the end of Ramazan, ours chose to throw a total wobbly.
Our boat boy sorted it out by flushing the high-pressure sea water hose down it.
It worked, but it also filled our holding tank right up to the tippy top - and a little bit more. Oops.
My whole birthday was spent anxiously waiting for the arrival of the pooh boat - it was the only present I wanted.
But the presents I got were much less desirable.
My sister had had lots of T-shirts printed with a photo my daughter had taken of me while I was at the beauty salon having my eyebrows dyed (beauty salons are well air-conditioned places to spend an overhot afternoon).
It was most unnerving sitting at breakfast with photos of myself with enormous, murderous, black eyebrows staring back at me.
And our friends kindly gave us all matching tracksuits embroidered with my name in enormous letters on the bottoms and fronts.
The sight of us in all our finery may have been another reason the covered ladies weren't very interested in meeting us.
So far, being 52 is pretty good fun, but it is a weird thing getting older.
I know the other option is most undesirable but old age is definitely staring me in the face and making me a little nervous.
Life's so wonderful and there are so many things piling up on my must-do list, that I have to keep pruning it.
I know I will never learn to use Photoshop or how to make willow laundry baskets, so I pushed delete on those.
I'm going to get rid of the losing weight and getting fit ones soon as well. Too boring.
I bet no-one's ever said on their deathbed that the best thing they ever did was get fit and slim.
If I make it to 100, I want to be like Allan Karlsson - he's the hero of Jonas Jonasson's bestselling The Hundred Year Old Man who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared - and mine.
Allan hates his old people's home and does a shuffling escape on his birthday. His time on the run and his past show him for the James Bond character he really is, in spite of his slippers and need for sleep.
It's a hoot and it's so much fun seeing the baddies get their comeuppance and also seeing the good side of the baddies.
There's a great interview with the author - Google "Jonas Jonasson: My 100 year old hero and the secret of happiness".
It's a huge change from the usual black Swedish crime stories and all the better for it.
And I got a wonderful card from a friend saying "A book is a chance to try on a different life for size".
I love it!
- miranda@queenstown.co.nz
