hello

I’ve just added a new translate feature to this site courtesy of Google. You’ll find it on the left hand sidebar (click the three line icon, top left, and scroll down). Now non-English speakers from far flung corners of the globe can read my random ramblings. Read? Maybe. Understand? Nope. My liberal mix of double entendre, irony, sarcasm, understatement, idiom and slang is bound to confound. Let’s face it, even some of our Stateside cousins haven’t the foggiest clue what I’m wittering on about sometimes. And, of course, who wants to follow the inane drivel of an ex pretty boy anyway? Feel free to chip in here.

So, will I get the message across? As we say on this side of the pond…

Not a cat in hell’s chance.

Or as they don’t say in Turkey, India, China, Spain, Russia or the Middle East…

Cehennemin şansında bir kedi değil

नरक का मौका में नहीं एक बिल्ली

不是一只猫在地狱的机会

No es un gato en la oportunidad del infierno

Не кот в возможности ада

ليس القط في فرصة الجحيم

Translating the Turkish version back into English seems to be…

Hell is not a cat in luck.

Sounds Confucian in its inscrutability. That’s Google babble for you. A translation that conveys the meaning of the words; now that really would be something to write home about.

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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