I have been on holiday to Istambul with my family. My brother Monty speaks Turkish and is a fantastic tour guide. He suggested that the way to see how the locals behave is to go to a football match.
My mother Diana, doesn't really like football and wasn't sure if she wanted to go. I asked her why and she said,
"It becomes a bit nurdish, who's been transfered to who and for how much money. There's better ways to spend money quite frankly, like having nice gardens or not eating junk food".
Diana agreed watching football wouldn't be a waste of time if she did her sewing and I did my knitting. Diana was stitching acorns from Phillipa Turnbull's 'Tree of Life' in crewel work.
We loved the men's singing, and the man pictured here with the designer stubble told his friends not to block our vision of the game, because we wanted to sit down and all the men were standing in front of us. Monty and Dad David found the 3-0 win very exciting.
The next day we were in the Turkish barbers, watching Monty have a shave with a cut throat razor, when David found our picture in the newspaper 'Banko'. Monty translated the captions which read,
"The fans of Fenerbahce didn't let their team alone despite of the rain at the stadium." and
"Supporters who came as family to support yellow-navy blue set out different sight at Saracoglu" (the name of the place)
We were very excited and the barber took pictures of us with the newspaper and our stitches.
Later I asked David why he liked football so much and he said,
"It never goes quite the way you expect."
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