Author: Jack Scott

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.

Are You Being Served?

Despite our genuine fear of death or permanent disability, we left for Izmir at first light, driving by hire car due east to Milas, the next sizeable town from Bodrum. From the outskirts, Milas seems to have little to commend it; a nondescript minor provincial town of concrete awfulness. We swung north inland. Ascending into the hills (well, mountains by British standards) we passed alongside Lake Bafa, a stunning expanse of water that reminded Liam of the Italian lakes. Reaching a high plateau, we stopped off near Soke at a long row of giant discount outlet stores built in the middle of nowhere. We breakfasted in McDonald’s: a fondness for egg mcmuffins is a guilty secret of ours. Replete with 50% of our daily allowance of saturated fat, we continued onwards towards Izmir. We hit the toll motorway near Aydin which came as something of a relief. Neat, newly constructed and four lanes wide, it wouldn’t look out of place in Germany. As we descended from the plain back towards the coast, Izmir stretched out impressively before us.

Izmir’s IKEA is located in suburban Bornova, adjacent to a smart shopping centre. We had already pre-selected our major items by thumbing through the catalogue and ambling around the Edmonton branch in London, so I asked a nice young man if there was anyone available to help us. He duly obliged and presented us with our very own personal shopper to guide us around the store. We simply pointed at items indicating “one of those, two of these” and she did the rest, checking stock levels and suggesting alternatives as needed. I felt like a Harvey Nicks celeb and loved it. Liam, on the other hand, found the whole exercise rather unsettling. I’m very much a smash and grab shopper, whereas he’s more of a grazer and likes to take his time, lots of it. We had a bit of a row; our first in Asia. He eventually tolerated the experience with sullen resignation.

After we concluded our business, we took tea in the restaurant and went to accessorise in the market place. The genius of IKEA is the canny strategy of pricing so much so low as to seduce shoppers into buying things they don’t know they want and probably don’t need. Naturally, we complied like proverbial sheep. Two trolley loads later, we sauntered towards the tills. There waiting was a trolley train assembled on our behalf by half a dozen co-workers (as IKEA likes to call its shop assistants), all arranged by our efficient personal shopper. The same brigade of eager workers then packed our market place goodies and wheeled the whole lot to the home delivery desk. I was staggered. What an experience: inconceivable back home where IKEA has taken self-service to an entirely new level of indifference.

Darkness had fallen by the time we left the store, and we were in urgent need of somewhere to bed down for the night. The thought of driving through the bustling city centre during the rush hour terrified us, and so we headed out towards the airport. I thought it reasonable to assume that the international airport of Turkey’s third city would be ringed by hotels. Not a bit of it. The entire vicinity is devoid of inns. As time had marched on and we had grown weary, I suggested a diversion to nearby Selçuk, a small town south of the airport. I had a vague recollection of a decent hotel from a previous visit. We were decidedly relieved to learn that my powers of recall were still in reasonable working order and that the hotel was open for business so late in the season. The Kalehan Hotel is found on the main road into town nestling beneath the citadel. It is a bit of a treasure crammed with gorgeous Ottoman-style antiques and bric-a-brac. Though a little tatty around the edges, it was, nevertheless, a clean, reasonably priced and comfortable place to stay. The breakfast, though, was inedible.

My Shattered Chassis

Driving in Turkey is not for the faint hearted, best only tried by the foolish or the suicidal. Though much improved in recent years, many roads are still perilous with lunar potholes, boulder-sized loose chippings and chassis-shattering unmarked concrete speed bumps. All these hazards, however, pale into insignificance when compared to the insane driving of the locals. The basic rules of the unofficial Turkish Highway Code are straightforward enough – drive fast, jump lights, never indicate, overtake on blind bends, tailgate dangerously and sound the car horn loudly and often. It is also the ‘law’ to ignore pedestrian crossings (purely for street decoration and EU compliance inspectors), bounce a new born baby on your lap when weaving in and out of the traffic and yell down the mobile phone that has been surgically grafted to your ear. The rules are observed religiously. Obligingly, local municipalities even provide traffic lights that count down to green to encourage boy racers to champ at the bit to be first out of the traps. Unsuspecting foreigners need to keep their wits about them to preserve life and limb, particularly those like me who are genetically programmed to look the wrong way.

Conversely, it all adds to the wonderfully anarchic nature of the Turkish psyche and a healthy disrespect for authority which I have long admired. It’s also a welcome relief from health and safety obsessed Blighty.

Mounted by the Valet

Clement invited us in for afternoon tea to provide some respite from our labours, all china cups and silver spoons. He appears to be a peculiarly old fashioned English gentleman with impeccable manners – gracious but fastidious and slightly pompous. I think of him as a queen of the old school displaying an air of conservative respectability by day but mounted by the valet after dark. Clement mentioned that he was having people over for supper in a few days, including Chrissy and Bernard, and wondered if we’d like to join them. It is to be a casual, low key affair and a chance to meet his ‘chums’. We accepted.

DFS on LSD


We’ve acquired a ludicrously large house with little to fill it with. Local stores are either indescribably awful (think DFS on LSD) or outrageously expensive (or both), so we settled on IKEA, the store of choice for the middle class poor everywhere. It is comforting to know that the IKEA formula, like McDonald’s, is so dependably familiar whether in Bournemouth or Beijing. However, the idea of an eight hour round trip to the nearest store in Izmir fills us with dread, but loins girded, we have stoically resolved to go forth in search of flat pack paradise.

Old Scrubbers

Our house had been redecorated by our landlord and there was white paint splattered everywhere, literally. Turkish workmen don’t make good apparently. Our site manager, Hussein, a jovial man of seemingly industrial strength idleness, offered to arrange a spring clean. We declined. We’ll be scraping and scrubbing for days. Clement kindly lent us an old vacuum cleaner and a kettle.

Marina the Shitting Kitten

We have semi-adopted a feral kitten. We have called her ‘Marina’ and are keeping her fed and watered. As a reward for our benevolence she defecated all over the balcony, including in Liam’s flip flops.

Corridors of Power

Our first encounter with Turkish bureaucracy was a salutary lesson for people like us living in the internet age where everything can be arranged from the comfort of an armchair. Alahan guided us through various corridors of power to collect the nod from an assortment of petty officials in cheap suits sitting behind excessively large desks framed by the flags of all nations. Alahan was a marvel, dispensing charm liberally to get us to the front of various queues. However, I suspect he’s burdened us with the most expensive Turkcell tariff imaginable judging by the number of units we’re using for even the shortest calls.

King Cnut

We popped by the house to measure up. We had the misfortune of bumping into crinkly Cnut from Denmark. He and his wife Ragnild own the house on the level immediately beneath us. He greeted us with assorted tales of despair about the site as he puffed continuously on his over-long pipe. However, his catalogue of grievances failed to burst our bubble. Our cheeriness only irritated him. We’ve dubbed them the Vile Vikings. What a miserable cnut.

Grinning Like Cheshire Cats

We are the Cheshire cats that got all the cream and can’t stop grinning. We are renting a holiday apartment from Lorraine while we sort the house out. The flat is nice – comfortable and conveniently positioned behind the marina. Yalıkavak is quiet. The season is in its death throes, though not yet expired, but the weather is glorious. We are wandering around in shorts and flip-flops to explore our new home town.

Seismic Change

It was the day of our emigration. old friend Maurice accompanied us to Gatwick and we were glad of the company and the help. We had four heavy suitcases and were way over our luggage allowance. We smiled sweetly at the check-in assistant and either through charm or luck, managed to get most of the excess charges waived. Predictably, Gatwick security was total chaos with queues snaking around the terminal building. As our departure time crept dangerously near, we were plucked from the queue by a surly man clutching a walkie-talkie and fast-tracked through a separate entrance. We hurriedly said our goodbyes to Maurice. He cried. It broke my heart. The magnitude of our decision became crystal clear. And so began a life change of seismic proportions.

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