This town is coming like a ghost town

It’s the end; all things come to an end. It’s the last week of the season. One by one the paraglider operators cease plying their trade and the tandem pilots prepare to return to their homes for the winter. Shops are closing by the day and as the thunder rolls overhead, lightning flashing across the horizon, the plaintive strains of Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez add a melancholy counterpoint to a quiet evening’s solitary beer and herald the sudden demise of what was once bright, shining and new.

As each day dawns the sight of beachside emporia that no longer open the shutters becomes more familiar and each closure causes less distress than the last; there is only so much you can mourn something you had for so short a time. The tour operators pack away their boards and the lights go out, one by one as the thriving resort of Oludeniz prepares to hibernate. The place you once tentatively thought you could live in forever loses its lustre and now you've seen beneath the surface it can never be the same again.

 There can be no greater symbol that this land of eternal sunshine is shutting up shop than the fact that we all bought umbrellas two nights ago, to get us home under black, pelting skies. Swapping paragliders for parapluies, how poetic. And talking of symbols, nestled on a pile of tee-shirts a lonely glass eye charm, a gift for a loved one, struggles under the brooding skies to do its work and ward off evil.

Ennui... enervation... it's still only Wednesday. The ticking clock tediously ticks off the seconds to Friday when we make our weary way slowly back home. What to do... what to do?

Little rays of hope

But, what’s that? A chink of blue light; the eye winks hope and all may not be lost. We heft our gliders onto our backs and head out for the transport, squinting into the light, fingers tightly crossed all the way.