With Liam away on family duties and me at a loose end, I made a brew, raided the biscuit barrel, put my feet up and channel-hopped. Mine’s a glamorous life. Quite by chance, I happened across a Sunday matinee of Under the Tuscan Sun. The last time I saw the film was also a Sunday afternoon but that was in 2011 and we lived in Bodrum. And Liam had just returned from family duties. Warming waves of nostalgia rolled over me and my eyes glassed over, not just because of the weepy but also for memories of our Turkish days.

Under the Tuscan Sun

The film even gets a brief mention in Turkey Street and I posted about it back in the day. I think the post holds up surprisingly well…

Under the Tuscan Sun

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.

12 thoughts on “Under the Tuscan Sun – Reprise”

  1. I’ve never seen the movie. I have no cable or disc so just see what I can find on old videos at thrift stores and the library. But the library is now pretty much just CDs. Hopefully I will run into it one day.

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      1. I think that’s true of most books that become films…the book was richer for its detail and contained recipes that quite frankly made my mouth water. The movie felt quite shallow
        by comparison. (btw: the book is a great expat read.)

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    1. It’s one of stills from the movie. She shagged the squeeze in Positano, which apparently never happened but what’s a weepy without a little romance? 😀

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