“In the beginning there was work and work was God. After 35 years in the business, the endless predictability made me question the Faith. Liam, on the other hand, was neither bored nor unchallenged but was routinely subjected to the ephemeral demands of a capricious boss, a soft and warm Christmas tree fairy with a soul of granite – Lucifer in lace. He feared for his tenure. I feared for his mental health.”
These were the fateful opening lines of my very first blog post on the 8th of October 2010 – fifteen years ago – when Perking the Pansies was born on a wet Friday afternoon in Bodrum. Over 1,500 blog posts later, these pansies are still as perky as ever.
They were also the first few lines of my first memoir of the same name, with its enticing, Amazon-friendly book blurb (or so I hoped at the time)…
Jack and Liam, fed up with kiss-my-arse bosses and nose-to-nipple commutes, chuck in the towel and move to a small town in Turkey. Join the culture-curious gay couple on their bumpy rite of passage. Meet the oddballs, VOMITs, vetpats, emigreys, semigreys, randy waiters and middle England miseries. When prejudice and ignorance emerge from the crude underbelly of Turkey’s expat life, Jack and Liam waver. Determined to stay the course, the happy hedonistas hitch up their skirts, flee to laissez-faire Bodrum and fall under the spell of their intoxicating foster land. Enter Jack’s irreverent world for a right royal dose of misery and joy, bigotry and enlightenment, betrayal and loyalty, friendship, love, earthquakes, birth, adoption and murder. Suburban life was never this eventful. You couldn’t make it up.
Fifteen years is several lifetimes in blog-land. In this attention-span-of-a-goldfish era of TackyTok, Instapout, Faceache and the debased twit thing with its daft new porn-site-sounding name, who blogs these days anyway? I may be old hat but I’ve not run out of steam quite yet. And so, as they said just before the outbreak of World War 2, I’ll just…
Perking the Pansies 
Oh yes, who blogs these days anyway? And what the hell do I do with all these posts? Memoirs that no one cares about. Sigh.
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We care. It’s a kinda legacy, I think. 😃
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Congratulations on 15 years!
I’m not sure when my first post was. I used a different site before this one, and it kept messing me up, so I switched. I go back to that one and can find some of my posts but none of the photos. Talk about messing me up!
A lot of people don’t look at blogs any longer, but I’m finally feeling brave enough to publish my story about why I disappeared here for a few months.
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Hi Emilie, That’s a real shame. I too had problems at the start. I first published through Blogger but then the Turkish authorities banned all Google products so I was forced to switch to WordPress. I managed to retrieve all my initial posts, though. Can’t wait to read what your news! 😀
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Blog away, dear Jack. You remain my utmost hero in the field, while at the same time being my endless source of shame at my own ineptitude in same.
Never cease, my fierce, soft little soldier xx
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Hello stranger! Lovely to hear from you. How’s tricks? BTW, don’t fret about the whole blogging thing. Life just gets in the way, as it should 😀
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Oh, the usual … a few years with several too many funerals. I’m now in Herefordshire, gutting another house – a pretty 19th century cottage next to a park and within 2 minutes’ walk of the quaint market town centre of Leominster (probably much like Norfolk, I imagine).
This will be my last, my poor old bones inform me (constantly).
I trust that life continues to delight and inspire you both – long may it last x
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That’s a gorgeous part of the world – more curves that flat Norfolk! And Leominster looks lovely – I googled it! I know exactly what you mean about old bones. We feel it too. The only heavy lifting we do these days is the wine glass in the pub! And funerals can’t be avoided at our age – lots of perch-dropping going on, sadly. Otherwise, life is uneventfully good. Best of luck with the doer-upper! 😀
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