Bosphorus Bridge pix?

Hi, I have been commissioned to do a painting for the birthday of a Turkish gentleman. It must be of the bridge over the Bosphorus. I found 2 tiny ones on wikipedia, but they are not big enough to paint from. Can anyone in blogland help? (Of course, in a perfect world, I'd just hop on a plane and use the excuse to go there myself, but for many reasons, that can't happen... )

For one thing there is the money thing.... and then there is the fact that I am currently trapped in a situation where i have to look after my father.... this sounds really mean, and I hate the fact that looking after him feels like a real unwelcome duty to me and not an act of devoted love, but if you had an idea of what a cantankerous, manipulative, selfish and demanding person he is, you might understand that this is not a task to be undertaken joyfully, relishing the last bits of time spent with an old man. (He is 90 now and says he hopes to go on for at least another 10 years.... heaven help us!)

It is amazing how one person can change the atmosphere of a place for all the others who enter it. I have often seen it in workplaces, where one sulky or manipulative person causes the whole office to be a tense place. Remove them and the whole place feels lighter, happier, more harmonious. Sadly my father is one of those people, and our normally happy and loving home transforms into a tense and stressful place as soon as he arrives.

So rather than delighting in an opportunity to spend treasured time with a parent, instead it is an agony of constant dancing on eggshells to avoid yet another pointless confrontation over his irrational and unreasonable demands. I'd love to excuse him by saying he is old and losing his mind but he has been like this throughout my life, so it basically just boils down to the fact that he is an unpleasant person, who makes my home feel like a prison. And instead of cherishing time with him, I am counting the seconds till he leaves, and I can wake up and walk around my house without a knot in my stomach. And Max and I can go back to enjoying quiet , relaxing and harmonious evenings together.

Even though Max is very supportive about all this, and never gives me reason to feel that it is just my problem... (in fact he often bales in and deals with situations when I am struggling to cope) I still feel guilty, somehow, that he has to work so hard to earn enough to not only support us, but my father too. And that he has to come home to all the stress, and unpleasantness. I am not even talking about the revolting bathroom habits etc here, because I quite understand that when one is old, nappies might be neccesary etc, although waking up to the thankless task of cleaning a house that smells like the local sewer due to an accident in the night is also not my first choice of how to start the week!! But I am talking about the horrible and unneccesary atmosphere created by a mean personality. It just seems unfair that Max has to come home to all this, when it is not even his father!

What a sad legacy, to go through life and look back at the end to discover that the only impact you have made on the planet, and the people around you, was a negative one...... that when you are finally gone, the overwhelming feeling will not be one of loss, but of relief.

When I mentioned my reservations about dad coming to stay recently, Tom left a comment "Good luck with your Dad... I have a soft spot for Jane's old mum.... it's a swamp at the bottom of the garden :O)"

hehe, I must admit, I am driving past wetlands with fresh eyes lately!

Having been brought up on many old cliches, not the least of which was the one that goes "if you haven't got something nice to say, don't say anything at all...", I have agonised about whether to post this, or just let the writing of it be a pressure release valve, and hit the delete button. But this blog is a personal space, and this particular struggle is part of my life, so I decided to post it. Maybe someone else is struggling with similar issues and beating themselves up too, about the whole thing of being expected to love and honour your parents, when they have basically gone through life giving you every reason to dislike and disrespect them. And just knowing that someone else also battles with this might make them feel better, so here goes.........