And so I’m back… from outer space… well not quite but it feels like it. We had an incredibly relaxing week away doing very little which is exactly what we wanted but it doesn’t give me a lot to talk to you about today. I packed very light and it was a selection from my usual holiday wardrobe, almost all of which you’ve seen before. We did very little beyond sleeping, eating, chatting and sliding in and out of the water like crocodiles… oh and we danced every evening in a beach bar under the stars. So this is probably going to be quite a quick post about a nice enough all-inclusive resort in Turkey with a bit of chat about the books I read and the thoughts they provoked in my otherwise empty holiday head. I’ll start writing and let’s see what comes out…
Marmaris Bay Resort – a nice enough all-inclusive resort in Turkey
So our ‘nice enough’ all-inclusive resort in Turkey was called Marmaris Bay… and before you shudder at the thought of Marmaris, it wasn’t in the heaving heart of the town, it was in a secluded bay that was a 20 minute drive away from the bright lights.
It’s a place I’ve had my eye on for a while because the site has exactly the landscape that I dream of when I think of Turkey. This resort hugs a quiet, curving bay and rather than being a big hotel block, the accommodation is based in small, secluded buildings that nestle in woodland.
There are paths that twist and turn between the trees so you feel as if you’re far away from a engineered resort and the mountains climb dramatically behind you which adds to the feeling of remoteness. As Mal pointed out, I’m basically just looking for what I have at home – but with guaranteed hot sunshine!
The sea laps the shore gently and as you relax to the sound of the waves, you’re sheltered by pines, palms and tamarisks which if you’re a tree-lover like me, you’ll know gives you the perfect balance of soft and spiky woven together in shades of green that range from deep to bright to almost grey. It’s very difficult to find a site like this with an all-inclusive offering, usually they’re based in huge white blocks lined up along a straight coastline, squashed up against other hotels so you don’t have the feeling of escape that I love so much.
Over the last year we’ve discovered that we love all-inclusive at this time of year, partly because summer is a low billing time for us and so we like to know that all costs are covered but also because we love the complete abandonment of responsibility. For one week only there isn’t a single decision to be made and the biggest hassle lies in remembering to reapply sunscreen. I’m not sure that we’d do a holiday like this anywhere other than Turkey, the relaxation comes from it being a country that we’ve visited about 20 times so I don’t have an itch to explore.
Last year we went to Club Marvy in October which was fabulous. This year though I wanted to go a month earlier so that I could be back at home when the middle one heads off to Spain. For some reason I feel the need to be able to jump on a plane in the first few weeks and get to him quickly, not that he’ll need me, it’s a me-problem that I’m sure some of you will understand. Travelling in September meant that Marvy was still in its high season pricing and so beyond our budget – hence us trying this new spot. The prices at Marmaris Bay are low at the moment because it’s had a bit of a chequered time. At the end of last season the German owners went bust and for a while before that it had been driven into the ground and so legacy reviews were poor. This spring it was bought by an IT magnate from Istanbul who reopened it and early reviews were good so I decided to take a risk.
I’m going into this detail because I know quite a few of you book holidays based on my recommendations so I always want to be honest. When I say Marmaris Bay Resort is ‘nice enough’ I mean it. Comparing it with Marvy is a bit like comparing Tesco with Waitrose – that’s the best way I can explain the difference. Marvy has more panache. Marmaris Bay is smaller which is good but it gives you fewer options for dining; the rooms are clean and comfortable with spectacular views but they’re in need of an update.
There are only two bars open in the evening so if you don’t want to watch the entertainment there isn’t an option for chatting quietly over a nightcap.
However it has some really good points – the location of both is stunning but Marmaris Bay has the edge. The food was fundamentally as good as Marvy (apart from there being fewer restaurants), the wine was better and the spirits in the cocktails were branded (if you asked for them). The service was warmer and the other guests were less sophisticated but much friendlier (mostly English and Russian). And it cost about £1200 less for a week for two so it was great value for what we wanted – which was to do nothing. If budget wasn’t a consideration I’d choose Club Marvy but if you’re adding a lazy getaway to a year when you’ve already had an expensive trip like us then Marmaris Bay Resort is great.
So for a week we lived in a bubble and the world around us ceased to exist. I packed very lightly – seven bikinis, seven beach dresses, seven evening options, three pairs of sandals and one evening bag. We hardly took any photos because I wanted to give Mal a break and anyway you’ve seen my holiday capsule so many times… here’s the beginning with an old vest top which is gold lurex (although the camera hasn’t picked up the sparkles) and jeans, still looking tired after our busy summer…
Hush gold vest SS16; Me+Em jeans SS21
Here’s the Mara Hoffman white dress enjoying its ninth year of sunny holidays (and you’ll see everything’s a bit creased because there were no irons – you had to pay to have your clothes pressed and I didn’t trust them with my precious holiday pieces)…
And here’s the red one – it’s always a favourite holiday moment when I put this one on…
This was last year’s addition to my holiday box – we haven’t had enough warmth to wear it at home so I’m glad it had a moment.
Me+Em dress SS24
I can see that I’d slept and relaxed here and was really in the holiday mood. Claudia sent me one of her limited edition 25th anniversary coin pearl necklaces and it was perfect to wear on holiday because it has that slightly boho beachy feel. It’s a replica of the first piece she made when she launched her brand and it’s been sold out for a while but she’s now done one more run.
Adjustable coin pearl necklace (20% off with code MIDLIFECHIC20); Pearl toggle necklace (20% off with code MIDLIFECHIC20)
I did have a couple of new holiday wardrobe additions – and prepare to see these time and time again too. This was a beach dress that I’ve wanted for years and managed to buy on Vinted.
Popsicle beach dress from Vinted; Sandals
And then there was this dress which was an absolute bargain in the sale and it’s still available. You can wear it two ways, either low cut like this or you can cross the straps over if you prefer more bust coverage. So many people came over to ask me about it because apparently it changed colour constantly under the disco lights when we were dancing.
I’d saved it to wear on the most special of our evenings there when we were celebrating 27 years since our first ‘date’.
We had an à la carte dinner in a little fish restaurant at the water’s edge and the food was simple but superb…
…until the dessert where they’d made a tahini and halva vegan brulée. Mal had dug his spoon in before I managed to warn him – there isn’t much that he doesn’t eat but he absolutely loathes tahini and so he spent the next half hour sucking his teeth while I just couldn’t stop laughing.
If the evenings were dedicated to food, wine, song and sleep then the days were all about books… punctuated by dips in cool water when it got too hot. I almost got through five books in total and they were all completely different. I had The Death Of Us to finish when I arrived which is a very, very good thriller but not for the fainthearted. If you’ve read Abigail Dean’s other books you’ll know that she deals with difficult topics and this is centred around the victim of a serial rapist and the outcome of her trauma. It’s brilliantly written and it deserves all of the accolades it’s had.
I’ll talk about the second one in a minute because I want to go into a bit more detail on it… my third was ‘And Notre Dame is Burning’ which I’d heard a lot about. I almost instantly regretted it as a holiday read but I persevered because it was an expensive buy. It’s about the beginning and ending of a young marriage and the trauma of miscarriage. Having had miscarriages myself I find them hard to think about and so I just wanted to get to the end. The structure of the book is interesting, there isn’t a timeline because it’s written as scraps of feeling so if you like literary devices you’ll find that in itself clever. It’s a very well crafted book but the only upside for me was being glad that I’m not in that stage of life any more.
I was relieved to move on to a classic poolside thriller that I’ve been saving for a holiday and it was great. Mo Hayder’s last ever book is generally considered to be her best and it was – clever, creepy, gripping – just what you want as you relax in the sun.
I raced through it and moved on to Service which I haven’t finished yet so I can’t give you a final opinion but I’m really enjoying it. It has me wanting to get back to it when I’m working at my desk. It’s one of those rare beasts – a book that’s very well written from a literary perspective and yet it keeps you turning the pages too. It’s about the #metoo movement told from three angles – the accuser, the accused and his wife. I can’t say any more than that because so far I just don’t know who to side with.
But let’s go back to the second book because this is the one I’d really like everyone to read, not because it’s especially well written (although the writing is fine, it’s intelligent rather than literary) but because it deals with the topic of trolling, particularly amongst midlife women.
It’s written by Anna Whitehouse who is known as Mother Pukka on her social channels. I spent an evening with her at a Specsavers event once and she was great company – a clever woman who has dedicated herself to campaigning for a better work life balance for young families. At the time I was being particularly badly trolled and she gave me a great tip for uncovering the ringleader who, as some of you know, turned out to be somebody I knew quite well.
So you won’t be surprised to hear that I bought her book as soon as it came out because I knew she was going deeper into a very dark side of life that some of us have to live with. It’s an easy, pacy read that insightfully outlines just how lonely and empty the lives of the women who feel the need to target strangers are. Even as somebody with a small and mostly close tribe here, I still have women who contact me regularly to tell me in detail what they think of me. And of course they’re vocal on their forums as well which I stopped reading years ago but people tell me they’re still there. So this was a soothing read for me because even though Anna is sympathetic to the unfulfilled life that causes her character’s malice, it’s good to see their vacuum exposed.
Managing bitterness and regret in midlife
It had me thinking as I floated in the pool… mostly about the dangers of regret in midlife. This is such a big time of reckoning and looking back at the paths you didn’t take. Sometimes, with hindsight, these thoughts leave you with a feeling of lack. Dwelling on the things you haven’t done or don’t have is pointless but it’s hard not to feel a jolt when you see other people with whatever gives you an inner twinge. Envy is probably the most destructive of emotions. You can’t be happy if you constantly look over your shoulder and compare what you have/are to other people.
It’s one of the main reasons that I don’t often look at Instagram, the temple of high optics where everyone’s living their best life. I can’t control what I’m going to see there and sometimes I find it unsettles me. There are simple things on there that I don’t have – times with my elderly parents… or with an adult daughter… or increasingly with grandchildren (although I’m not hurrying that one yet). I see old colleagues who stayed in retail now at the peak of an exciting career and friends who’ve come into big inheritances spending their midlives travelling the world. But it’s up to me, and me alone, to manage my own happiness – I know things like Instagram can provoke a reaction in me that takes away my equanimity so I stay away from them. As we discussed a few months ago, evaluation is a key part of midlife but you can only move forward with happiness if you apportion more time to appreciating what you have – from the big life achievements to the tiny glimmers of joy that are hidden in every day.
Anna’s book tells the story of a woman who takes the feelings that Instagram provokes and lashes out at the people who have triggered them to make herself feel better. As the story develops it illustrates that if you let envy play out, the only person you’re damaging is you. It’s like putting a bottle of poison on the table and drinking it yourself. It seeps through your soul and turns you into a bitter person.
This really hit me when I was chatting to someone I know last Christmas. I noticed she was wearing a rubber band on her wrist and she kept snapping it so I asked her what she was doing. She explained that she’d recently discovered that she had barely any pension savings. She’d been contributing to her workplace scheme since it began about ten years ago and she’d assumed that the people in charge would have worked out the right sum for her to pay so that she would have what she needed when she wanted to retire. It was only when she turned 60 and went to see an advisor that she realised she didn’t have very much at all and since then, she said, she’d turned bitter. She was finding herself avoiding a lot of people and with others she felt she was biting her tongue through the whole conversation so that she didn’t snarl at their good fortune. She started to cry as she told me that she’d realised over Christmas that she didn’t even like herself any more because her head was so full of grudges but she didn’t want to turn into a bitter old woman. So she’d started snapping the rubber band whenever she had a negative thought.
She told me she was doing her best to live by the serenity prayer, you know the one, ‘grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change what I can, and the wisdom to know the difference’. I saw her again over the summer and she was feeling much better. And I so admired her for taking control of her thoughts and not letting bitterness make her difficult position feel even worse.
So anyway it’s all common sense – but Influenced is a useful modern allegory that shows specifically how social media can get under your skin. As I’ve already said, it’s easy to forget that it all runs on optics and that’s pernicious because nothing is ever as it seems in a picture – there’s so much more behind the scenes.
I’ll get off my soapbox now and leave you to your weekend. I’ll be back with a new season run down next Friday, an analysis of the most wearable trends with easy ways to update your wardrobe. In the meantime don’t forget to savour everything that’s good about your life. I took this photo because as you know this year I’ve been focusing on pausing to recognise the glimmers of joy when they come along. We’d stopped on the way back to our room after a night of dancing here and curled up on a sunbed. Being with Mal, just watching the stars and the twinkling lights across the bay was one of the most joyful moments of my holiday (well apart from the tahini brulée perhaps!). Intrinsic happiness is like a savings account, it’s built from these small glimmers… you just have to squirrel them when they come along because it’s so easy to let them slip by.
