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.

In a Galaxy Far, Far Away

I’ve never understood the enduring, almost religious appeal of sci-fi and superhero stuff – the comics, the blockbusters, the video games, the whole alternative universe. Ok, I admit I did enjoy the original Star Wars trilogy and loved the sixties Batman with Adam West as the camp caped crusader in budgie smugglers (I wonder why?). But that was back when I was young and easily aroused. These days, I much prefer a whodunnit – even better if it’s set in a quintessential caramel-coloured English village with a mad vicar with murder in mind.

But we were reminded how big the ‘super-verse’ has become when the circus came to town for Comic Con 2025 at the Excel Centre in London’s Docklands. Our East End digs for my 65th birthday extravaganza were occupied by a battalion of young superhero lookee-likees. A trio of dressed-up Star Wars jedheads joined us in the lift. As the doors began to close, one cried out, ‘Shit, I’ve left my light sabre behind!’ Down in the lobby, we were faced with a speeding bullet of supermen in full caped garb, rushing – though not flying – out the door, with Captain America and Darth Vader bringing up the rear.

Still, I guess it’s all good clean fun for the young and the young at heart. Much healthier than being seduced by the dark side of cybercrime, county lines, street gangs or religious fruitcakes.

Dancing Queens No More

As our birthdays are just two weeks apart, each year Liam and I tend to mark them together. Nowadays, as befits our budding dotage, our jollies resemble more of a pensioners’ outing than the bop-til-you-drop of our yesteryears. 2025 also marks me reaching my latest chronological milestone – 65 – so Liam planned some fancy ticklers to get me in the mood. First on the menu was a glass of overpriced plonk in a Canary Wharf wine bar followed by a surprise dinner date with family. We dined on Italian, washed down with copious amounts of gossip and scandal – naughty but nice!

 The next morning Liam took me up this…

… for a full-on full English with a show-stopping view at the Sky Garden. Perched on top of the Leadenhall Building – affectionately known as the Walkie Talkie – the Sky Garden is London’s highest public green space, with panoramic views of the city. It was a gorgeous crisp day with the sun hanging low in the wispy blue, so our snaps aren’t all that. But you get the picture.

After breakfast, we wandered through the City in a vain attempt to burn off the calories, passing ‘the Monument’, the enormous column commemorating the Great Fire of London of 1666, and then across the Thames to Southwark – pronounced suth-erk – via London Bridge. We strolled along the busy Queen’s Walk, passed HMS Belfast and through Hays Galleria before crossing back into the City via Tower Bridge.

Our final destination was St Katharine Docks, immediately downstream from the Tower. Once part of the Port of London, the docks have since been repurposed as a place to work, sleep, shop and sup, centred around an upmarket yachting marina. After a quick gander, we found a place to sink a bottle and watch the world sail by.

Afternoon drinking can be exhausting even for these two old lushes, so it was back to our Westferry digs for a kip. We had to be fresh and fragrant for the main event, which was…

This was our second visit to the breathtaking ABBA Voyage, located by the deliciously named Pudding Mill Lane Station. Our debut performance was in 2023 as part of a birthday bash for the good wife of our local pub’s (now ex) landlord. Back then, we wiggled about like has-been dancing queens to the ageless ABBA classics. This time round we booked comfy seats in the auditorium. This old codger has finally hung up his dad-dancing shoes, much to the relief of all those around. Well, I don’t want to put my back out.

LGBT Armed Forces Memorial – No More Shame

Last month, His Maj, King Charles, dedicated the first national memorial honouring LGBT armed forces personnel, 25 years after the ban on LGBT people serving in the military was lifted. Before this, those who were – or who were thought to be – gay or transgender were subjected to interrogation and discharge, a brutal and utterly needless witch hunt that ruined countless lives. Ironically, in the past when the nation faced an all-too-real existential threat – a couple of world wars – the top brass didn’t care less where you stuck it so long as you kept your mouth shut and didn’t frighten the horses. We were all cannon fodder back then.

The memorial in bronze, at the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire, takes the form of a crumpled letter featuring words from those affected by the ban, with the words ‘pride’ and ‘solidarity’ highlighted.

Here’s what the Beeb had to say about it…

The memorial is especially poignant for me, not just because I’m an ex-forces brat who was born in an army barracks, or that I am a great believer in natural justice and fair play for all. It’s also because, in the early nineties, I met Duncan, a dashing young former naval officer who was forced to walk the plank simply for being gay; another irony given the senior service used to be described as ‘rum, bum and the navy’. Even Churchill said something similar.

Duncan didn’t take it lying down. Oh no, he joined three other ‘dishonourables’ and took the UK Government to the European Court of Human Rights. Against all odds – including a hostile press and the pissed off powers that be – they won. Soon after, much to the horror of a few fuddy-duddy generals and bearded rear admirals, the ban was overturned.

Here they are then and now, with Duncan on the left…

Of course, it wasn’t just the four gay crusaders who made it all happen. There was a small army of supporters bringing up the rear. And the rest, as they say, is LGBT history. My history.

My Dribbling Years

Being closer to the finish line than the start, I’m regularly pricked and poked, and not in a good way – blood tests for diabetes and high cholesterol, liver and kidney function, and checks on my far-from-showroom-new prostate. And let’s not go there about stabbing a turd for bowel cancer, a procedure that leaves no one’s dignity intact.

And I’ve now reached a new milestone. I’ve just turned 65. So, it’s official. I’m an old fart who’s ‘past it’ but can’t remember what it was. In years gone by, this would have meant that I’d get my state pension, but no more. I’ve got another 18 months to wait for that pauper’s ransom.

On the plus side, some youngsters now call me ‘sir’ and I get to sit in the special seats on public transport. Whoopy do. My delight knows no bounds.

And I get an extra layer of healthcare aimed at the grey herd – jabs for flu, shingles and pneumococcal (whatever that is) and screening for abdominal aortic aneurysm (any idea? Me neither).

These checks, supplemented by a daily diet of pills and potions, are meant to keep me alive and kicking beyond my biblical three score years and ten. No wonder us old bones are a drain. It wouldn’t surprise me if those same youngsters who offer me a seat on the bus would rather throw me under it.

But despite the aches and the pains, the turkey neck, the well-ploughed wrinkles, the expanding bald patch and waistline, the greying short and curlies, the slowly fading faculties, the struggle to tie a shoe lace and the all-too-tedious 4am sleepy stagger to the loo, I’m embracing my dribbling years. Because living here and now, I know how lucky I am.

Sparks, Candles and Cardamom

Suddenly one late evening our lights started to flicker and our electric hob began to beep randomly. Our neighbours, too, were experiencing spooky goings on. With Halloween approaching, we thought it might be a message from the other side. Well, our small cottage is over 170 years old and some poor soul is bound to have kicked the proverbial at some point in the past. Instead of chasing ghosts by rolling out the Ouija board, a saner mind prevailed: Liam contacted the UK Power Networks – the fancy new name for the National Grid.

Engineers were on the case in less than an hour – climbing poles and checking cables. It turned out to be a fault in an underground line running beneath a neighbouring front garden. Nothing more could be done that evening and so, as a safety precaution, our electricity was cut off. Out came the candles, on went the transistor radio. Early the following morning, a lorry-load of strapping lads in hi-vis vests descended upon us, their power tools cocked and loaded.

While they got down to business on the fault, we were wired up to a bloody great generator on wheels parked outside. “Is that cardamom I can smell?” asked the sexy sparky as he poked cables through our cat flap and up through our coffin hatch to the fuse box. Now there’s a man with a keen nose, I thought.

The faulty power line was repaired by nightfall. Job done. Here’s one of the sparks and his dancing feet disconnecting us from the generator before plugging us back into the mains. A fella happy in his work.

We can’t fault the fault fixers. A tip-top service from the big boys with their big toys, can-do attitude and ever-friendly smiles. Thank you.

Happy Birthday, Perking the Pansies

“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…

Roys of Wroxham

Way back in 2013, I wrote a brief throwaway piece about a day trip to Wroxham – ‘Gateway to the Norfolk Broads’ – a town entirely given over to those who like to mess about in boats and those who service them. I called it Roy’s Town because we were baffled by the dominance of what seemed to be some bloke called Roy – Roys Supermarket, Roys Pharmacy, Roys Toys, Roys Garden Centre, Roys Car Park. Note the missing apostrophes. Tut, tut.

Last week, the long dead and buried post attracted fresh attention. This happens now and again, usually without rhyme or reason. But not this time. BBC East – Auntie Beeb’s local news hereabouts – featured one of those newfangled ‘influencers’ who was also baffled by Roy’s riches. He posted about it on TikTok.

Riding on his coat-tails, my post got a few hundred extra hits. He got millions. Such is life.

Room With a View

When we first waded ashore to the fabled isle of Ithaca, we stumbled upon a tumbledown wreck of a house, perched by the waterside and overlooking a pine-dressed Frikes Bay. Sad, unloved and barely standing, a wonky For Sale sign hung precariously from the front wall. It was the ultimate doer-upper (or puller-downer and start again-er). But with such a glorious aspect and a view to sell your soul for, we expected it to be snapped up in no time and transformed into something truly magical. Over dinner, we fantasised about snapping it up ourselves. Romantic notions of the perfect place to live out our dotage were encouraged by the robust local plonk. The more we drank, the more possible it seemed.

Of course, the next day, reality dawned and all romantic notions of our place in the sun evaporated. Like many Greek islands out of season, not-so-idyllic Ithaca is cold, wet and closed, wild winter tempests could sweep us out to sea without a paddle and what about healthcare for our aging bones? Also, the prospect of trying to learn a new language with an unfamiliar alphabet made our old brains hurt. The booze from the night before didn’t exactly help. Besides, the curse of Brexit meant it was nigh on impossible anyway. That was two years ago.

Imagine our surprise when, this year, back in Ithaca, we stumbled upon the same tumbledown wreck with the same wonky For Sale sign hanging precariously from the front wall. We started to romanticise all over again. Well, an old boy can dream, can’t he? I wonder…

My Garden Follies

After a long hot summer of sweaty nights, autumn waits impatiently out to sea and nights are cooling. The changing season has brought with it a welcome respite from the semi-drought. Apart from the occasional monsoon-like downpour that evaporated almost as quickly as it landed, we’ve had very little rain this year. And as East Anglia is the breadbasket of England, the thirsty fields are desperate for a good drink. Our little plot has managed to get through the dry patch relatively unscorched – with the help of a couple of water butts replenished by the odd thunderstorm.

And with shorter days, cosy evenings and frosty nights on the horizon, it won’t be long before the garden goes into hibernation and I’ll have to put away some of our garden toys – my follies, I call ’em – which can’t take the cold. The evil eye hanging from a branch is looking particularly worse for wear. I should’ve bought a new one when we were on Ithaca. Oh well, there’s always next year.

Idyllic Ithaca – the Return

It’s taken quite a while but we’ve finally recovered from our frolic-filled sojourn on Ithaca. For our second expedition, we were accompanied by a couple of fellow village people who added an extra helping of spice to the mix. We had a ball. We haven’t laughed so much in years. It was well worth the hour-and-a-half delay at Stansted Airport, the three-and-a-half-hour flight to gorgeous Kefalonia, the hour-long taxi trek across the island to the pretty port of Sami, the two-hour wait for the thirty-minute ferry to Ithaca – enough time for a liquid lunch – and, finally, the half-hour cab ride to Frikes.

Even the ferocious squadron of wasps sharing our breakfast buffet each morning didn’t manage to spoil our picnic. Neither did the nasty mozzie bite on my once pert posterior.

Our ouzo-fuelled romp was liberally sprinkled with hot-off-the-press gossip, laced with the lewd and the rude. Here’s a few choice phrases chucked into the drunken conversations. A bit of camp old nonsense, I think, but if bawdy double entendre ain’t your thing, then best change channels now.  

“Need to get some water on my aubergines.”

“Our neighbour’s always going up my back passage.”

“Well, there was that time when my friend shat in a Pringles tube.”

“Apparently, Keira Knightley buys her onions from a veg shop in Bungay.”

“So, the doctor just shone his torch up my backside and said, nice and clean.”

“Oooo, you’ve got a lovely little foible!”

“You gotta keep your own hair on your own seat, right?”

“It’s true! She came home with a pickled foetus in a jam jar.”

“So there I was, just standing there holding my swimming teacher’s long pole.”

“It’s like butter off a water’s back.”

And the evergreen classic…

“So, is your cervico intacto?”

 “Oo-er. Didn’t know you spoke Latin.”

Massive hugs to our splendid travelling buddies. Thank you for the good times to be treasured. You know who you are.

Idyllic Ithaca, we shall return again.