There were 4 boxes wrapped sturdily in black plastic. What on earth could these be? I looked in one box and found a large Bob Marley flag - I had absolutely no recollection of this object. Had I converted to Rastafarianism, and been deprogrammed by some well-meaning secularists, who had stuffed the evidence of my colourful past in these boxes? Was I perhaps now merely a residual Rastafarian in my subconscious? I waved the flag wanly in front of my face to elicit any memories, none came.
Out emerged another more attractive flag with golden castles (I was liking this already) on a green and red background. This would look lovely on my castle "flagpole to be", but again I had never seen this flag before in my life, and doubts in my own sanity were coalescing.
I opened another of the containers, the box was one for a shuttle computer - and I suddenly twigged! These were the boxes my Turkish tekkie friend Gorkem, had left in the castle 2 years previously before emigrating from Scotland back to Turkey. Phew! The irony was that he was coming back to Scotland the following weekend for the first time in two years. I alerted Gorkem to his long lost chattels, and the successful reunion has now taken place!
Gorkem left some of the chattels including the "golden castle" flag. Buoyed by my genealogical detection success (see the previous blog entry comment) could I now identify this flag? I am not an expert in vexillology (the study of flags) but hey, I got the Internet and I'm gonna use it!.
May I introduce you to the marvellous:
http://www.flags.net/search.php
for identifying flags. I looked up the Jamaican flags obviously, but the "golden castles" flag was nowhere to be seen. I entered the attributes of the flag (red and green with a coat of arms) on the search page, and lo and behold 20 or so flags popped up. One of these, the Portuguese flag, matched perfectly. Success!
Of course, why a Turk in Scotland should have a Portuguese flag, let alone leave it before flying to Sweden is one detective investigation too far for this evening.
I was about to joke about how I feel violated my chattels being exposed, but remembered how sensitive you are and didn't want to risk that :))
ReplyDeleteThis piece is a souvenir from my Portuguese flatmate in Dundee, Alex, with whom together we had watched the Turkey-Portugal world cup half-finals. I am not very much into football, but that match was hilarious. There was a 30 min extension (120 mins in total!), and it was used to its last minute only to end with Turkey's goal. I think that was the peak point of Turkey's national success in football.
Some random facts:
Alex once thought Turkey wouldn't have much milk products/dairy because of all the desert land, and he used to drink non-fat milk because it was the cheapest. In contrary, Turks were nomads until a thousand years ago when they settled in Anatolia, and until then all they had was the animals which could travel with them. That caused a dairy-based diet, which still partly lives on mixed with Mediterranean habits. In fact, these nomad communities lived on until only a few decades ago when they almost diminished due to hatred from settlers.