You know you’re getting long in the tooth when you’re regularly called in by the quack to check for a pulse. The latest invitation dropping onto the mat was for bowel cancer screening. Apparently, there’s a national programme to screen everyone over the age of 55. My invitation came with an evening appointment and a handy little leaflet written in plain English even I can understand.

Cancer Screening

Of course, I’m ever grateful my inescapable slide towards the slab is being carefully monitored by the white coat crew. I strongly suspect, however, they’d be less conscientious if I fessed up to my persistent alcohol dependency.

I won’t go into the precise nature of the procedure I’m about to endure. Suffice it to say, it’ll be a pain in the arse.

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 an indie 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.

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