I received a witty email from Blighty life friend, Ian. No, that’s not him in the photo. As youngish singletons, he and I cruised across Europe and beyond, seeking high jinks and low frolics. Amsterdam, Paris, Gran Canaria, Sitges, Istanbul, Croydon – nowhere was safe. These days we’re both hitched and respectable pillars of the community.

Ian wrote:

Hope all’s well in your world and you are gearing up for an uneventful Brit visit. It’s relentless doom and gloom here, of course, with a daily update of Angela Merkel’s hair-do on the News and Cameron getting redder and redder as the weeks pass. The British media are loving exploring all the Doomsday scenarios, obviously. Still, Harry from Mcfly is still in Strictly so there’s something to swoon over as we all sink into the abyss. Hope your launch is massive. The Champoo is on you!

Strictly Coming Dancing, the opium of the masses. Good old Auntie Beeb. Harry is rather fetching, though. He’d certainly keep my mind off the overdraft.

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Perking the Pansies – Jack and Liam move to Turkey

Imagine the absurdity of two openly gay, married, middle aged, middle class men escaping the liberal sanctuary of anonymous London to relocate to a Muslim country. I chronicled our exploits with the mad, the bad, the sad and the glad in a blog for the whole world to ignore. Then came the book which became a critically acclaimed best seller. Its success opened out a whole new career for me, firstly as an author, and now as a publisher. Who'd have thought it? Certainly not me. In June 2012, we ended our Anatolian affair and paddled back to Britain on the evening tide, washing up in Norwich, a surprising city in eastern England, then to the wilds of Norfolk as the only gays in the village. I’m sometimes nostalgic for our encounters with the hopeless, the hapless and, yes, the happy go lucky. They gave me an unexpected tale to tell and for this I thank them.

7 thoughts on “Blighted Blighty”

  1. Yes, he is rather distracting, isn’t he. My son is in London, one of the many young graduates desperate for a half-way decent job, working all night in a bar tonight… Missing him. (He is quite handsome, perhaps he could do some modeling too…)

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  4. I think the nation (me included ) fell in love with Harry, and such a humble nice guy when he is being interviewed.,loved the band cheering him on.
    The media gloom and doom is consistant but this “bulldog” was walking in a national park with 2 herds of reindeer in the snow ,priceless and good for the soul .Enjoy your trip back home Jack and those precious moments .

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