In my last blog I mentioned how helpful the assistant to the Turkish city of Belek was in my quest to get permission do a record at the famous ancient Roman amphitheatre at Aspendos. I found the affable fellow in the restaurant of the hotel I was staying at. He was having lunch with his staff and he invited me to join them. Something unusual happened at the lunch that I wasn’t sure was worth mentioning. But here goes!
I introduced myself to everyone at the table and showed them my photo in the 2007 Guinness Book. After seeing the page, the assistant to the mayor got very excited and he immediately began making calls to find the number of the mayor in charge of Aspendos. Although he was talking in Turkish, I could tell that he got the number because his eyes were roving the table looking for a piece of paper or napkin to write on. Everyone had already finished eating and there were no clean napkins around, but bananas must have been served for dessert because there was an empty peel on the plate in front of him. Sure enough, his eyes finally settled on the banana peel and he wrote the number on the peel!
Although I thought it was funny, I certainly wasn’t going to say anything – you never know, maybe writing on banana peels is a common practice in Turkey! Anyway, when the kind gentleman got off the phone, he started giving an account of his conversation, but one of his colleagues pointed to the plate with the tatooed banana peel on it. The poor fellow, who hadn’t realized that he had written on a fruit, turned bright red and, after a split second of stunned silence, everyone at the table erupted in roaring laughter!
The weird part of the story is that after the lunch was over, I took the Guinness book from under my arm and I absentmindedly opened it. By some strange chance I opened to the two page spread on food consumption. There were photos of various foods with interesting facts about them printed underneath. And there, staring me in the face, was a life size picture of a banana, but instead of printed text, the facts were handwritten on the peel! Among other things the writing said that the banana is the fourth most consumed fruit in the world. But I bet it’s the first most written on fruit in the world!
