For any innocent reader who does not recognise the acronym ‘TEDAŞ’ (which means you have never actually lived in Turkey), it’s the national electricity supplier, and anyone who does live here always has a good TEDAŞ story.

The village wing of Fethiye Times would gladly enter the TEDAŞ Story competition in the Olympics, having suffered numerous power surges with resultant appliance burnout (a freezer in flames once!) and never managing to get TEDAŞ to reimburse the cost of repair/replacement.

On Tuesday 29th January, the day of the storm, yet another power cut hit the village wing.  By early evening power was restored to everywhere save the kitchen.  Just as this writer was cooking dinner by oil lamp, the electricity came back.  But on Wednesday morning the kitchen was without power again and, after we’d checked all fuses and trip switches, our long-suffering electrician was called out.  He arrived early afternoon, took one look at the main fuse box and said “Sorry.  It’s TEDAŞ.  You’ve lost a phase.” Whatever that may mean. I phoned TEDAŞ and had a conversation with a very harassed-sounding young woman, talking on another phone at the same time (how unusual is that for Turkey).  She told me the whole of our district had power problems, which TEDAŞ was working flat out to correct.

I made two more phone calls during the afternoon.  The young woman had gone, maybe she’d burnt out, and I got a man who informed me the power had been off since 11pm the previous evening – we are now in late afternoon – and my phoning repeatedly wouldn’t make it come back any quicker.

Around 6pm, just as I was preparing to light the oil lamp again, the power came back and the phone rang, simultaneously.  To my amazement it was the man at TEDAŞ asking if everything was now working.  A customer care call from TEDAŞ no less.  Perhaps they were hoping I’d have my heart attack and they would thus have removed a stroppy customer.