First and last, and other numbers

Twelfth night, and the tree needs to come down, and suddenly I felt very, well, odd as I realised I was doing this for the twenty second and very last time in Istanbul. This is the first time I've encountered a 'last time' since announcing I will be retiring this year. The first, but not the last time I will feel like this. So, here is my first and last photo of my now elderly 2019-2020 tree. Not the best photo I took today, but one that will not be replicated. 

Meanwhile in other news, the weather is appalling - amber alert storm conditions, winds gusting in excess of 55mph, constant sheeting rain, and freezing cold.  It can just about be understood through the windows in the photo.  Graham and I set off in his car at 13.30 heading for the chiropractor, but almost an hour later we had barely covered a distance that normally takes ten minutes, just trying to get to the metro station, so we abandoned the idea, I called the practice to say we couldn't make it. Bad weather of any kind always brings Istanbul to a halt.  For our journey back, we let the nice Google Maps lady direct us through various sodden narrow side streets in an attempt to diminish the traffic locked journey, an educational experience. I subsequently heard that one colleague took three hours to get home, and another's wife took five hours to get back from the airport.  There will be many more such stories from today, I'm sure.  

When we drove hardly more than around the corner to Akmerkez a few hours later, to have dinner at Midpoint (again!), we gave a lift to a drenched colleague who had been trying to get a taxi for a while, but there were, of course, none to be had. Back home, in my lofty attic conversion, the plane trees are whipping around my window in a symphony of roar and crack, and I have seven or eight campus cats hunkered down in different corners of my apartment. Amber alert warning continues for tomorrow with more of the same. 

Be safe everyone, what ever the weather.