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.
The Bodrum Peninsula Travel Guide brought to you from the gorgeous Roving Jay is free (yes, FREE) to download to your Kindle thingy from Amazon from now until 8am on Tuesday 4th June (Blighty time). This essential guide is a must have for anyone dipping their toes in this magical corner of Turkey. Get it while you can because when it’s gone, it’s gone (well, it won’t actually be gone but you’ll have to pay for it after the freebie period is up).
Ian, one of my oldest friends, is the area manager of a gay ‘lifestyle’ chain (AKA licensed sex shops – don’t tell his mother). The filthy smut flies off the shelves as the filthy lucre fills the tills even during these recessionary times. Well, people stay in more and make a meal of it. Despite his status as purveyor of porn to the Grindr generation, Ian is an off-fashioned boy with the Nineties hairdo to prove it. He shuns the modern world of instantaneous communication for a more leisurely discourse – snail-mail rather than e-mail, hand-crafted notes rather than instant messaging. Even his flip-top phone belongs in the Science Museum. He’s particularly scathing about Facebook, seeing it as the work of the Devil. I picked up this postcard and sent it to him. I wrote, “I saw this card and thought of you.”
A couple of days later I received this card in the post. Ian had written, “I saw this card and thought of you.” Touché!
I’m struggling just a little to give up the dreaded weed (okay, I’m struggling a lot). Most of the time I bear my cross with the help of nicotine patches as my tobacco crutches. But, an evening on the Devil’s brew at the local ale house invariably sees me falling off the wagon: a relapse is odds on favourite every time. It’s another bad habit I must try harder to break (along with liver-dissolving binge drinking, artery-hardening titbits and talking to myself). A word of warning to other patch addicts. Don’t wear the bloody things in bed if you want to wake up calmed and rested. Last time I left a patch slapped on my arm, I tossed all night like a tart with crabs and had crazy dreams in vivid Fifties Technicolor. I wager few people these days dream of sleeping with Doris Day. Nothing smutty, you understand; after all, the virtuous Miss Day shared a cinematic bed with Rock (leather queen) Hudson. The minute I woke up, I panicked that the sheets weren’t fresh enough for the Febreze-fragrant star of the CinemaScope screen. It’s enough to drive a restless boy into the arms of a shrink.
The sun shone, the bride and bride kissed, the pansexual crowd whooped, the fizz popped and the waters trickled by in approval. After the nuptials in Islington, the wedding party was delivered via double decker to Blackfriars Pier where we joined them, all suited and booted (well, I’ve got to get some wear out of the two piece I bought for the funeral of my celebrated uncle). What started as a boozy cruise down Old Father Thames ended with a slow smooch on a riverside dancefloor and two very happy ladies. Liam caught up with old colleagues from his waged days and I got to flirt with a bone fide fire fighter. The hettie-man didn’t seem to mind any of my obvious batty-man gags about sliding down his greasy pole and playing with his enormous hose. The running buffet, bottomless barrel and limitless goodwill helped ensure our first lesbian wedding was a rip roaring success. We felt honoured to witness it.
The only blot on the landscape was our uncomfortable room at the Comfort Inn, Vauxhall, with its thin duvets, wonky fittings and tiny shower cupboard with a loo barely big enough for a five year old. Still, we were three sheets to the wind thanks to our generous hosts so we hardly noticed.
The wedding album isn’t out yet so here’s the view from the pier at the Westminster Boating Base in Pimlico where the reception was held. Liam said I scrubbed up rather well and who am I to argue?
What does this bog blue box on wheels look like to you? There’s a small clue stamped on the side. Yep, looks like a recycling wheelie bin to me too. So why is that the butch bin men of Norwich City Council (or refuse disposal executives or whatever fancy names they give themselves these days) walk past it as if it were invisible? Several fruitless calls to the over-imposing art décor city hall (the huge building that can be seen for miles and which the Luftwaffe failed to hit during a bombing raid) have not established why the vibrant blue box I share with our fabulous neighbour seems to merge inconspicuously into the brown-red brick backdrop at the very moment the bins around us get emptied. Apparently I’m not on their list and so I don’t exist. So put me on your list, I said. Right away, they said. Must have slipped their minds. I’m waiting for a call back from a very important supervisor-type person. Still no joy. That must have slipped their minds too. Exhausting work, this bean-counting business. I know, I used to be one of them. Over to UB40 who famously sang in 1981 (during the last great depression):
P.S. I know the green glass box (also invisible on collection day), does make it look like we’re a couple of old lushes but I would say in our defence that it’s two weeks worth of empties and our neighbour also has a wee dram from time to time.
The strapline for Star Trek must be the most famous split infinitive in popular culture. Off we boldly went to Cinema City to watch the latest instalment of the franchise, ‘Star Trek, Into Darkness.’ I’m not what you might call a trekkie. Nor am I particularly keen on slash and burn all-American action movies but I’ve always had a soft spot for a touch of sci-fi with a brain. We both enjoyed the hyper-ride. The script was crisp and engaging, the bromance between the unfeasibly handsome Kirk and the French-fringed Spock was credible and the action sequences tripped along at warp speed. The big budget special effects were, as we all expect these days, believable and not at all like a glorified X-Box game (something that afflicts so many Hollywood blockbusters). Benedict Cumberbatch makes a suitably menacing baddie (even if casting a clipped-vowelled Brit as the evil villain is a bit of a cliché) and seeing London in a high-rise 23rd century cameo role, complete with St Paul’s and the London Eye, was a nice touch. I suspect Wren’s opus magnum may well last a few more centuries but the Eye? We watched the entire extravaganza in 3D and this worked well for the big ticket scenes, particularly when the Enterprise flew directly towards us from the screen. That said, the multi-dimensional technique jarred with some of the more intimate close-up moments and I’m sure we looked quite ridiculous in the goggles. All in all, you get a lot of cosmic bangs for your bucks. Space: the final frontier. Go see.
To continue my amateurish witterings on writing a memoir, Displaced Nation asked me:
Is it easier to turn expat stories or travel adventures into a memoir or a novel, and how does one decide?
Here’s the trick. Just because a memoir can’t be a novel, it doesn’t mean it can’t be written as if it were. The greatest challenge is to give memoir a plot that readers will find convincing and engaging enough to make them turn the page.
For me, that meant very little fat. One of the first tips I picked up from my publisher was to dump storylines and characters that weren’t key to the main event or didn’t add interesting flavour. I tackled this by creating a story board, much like they do in the movies. This meant I could identify gaps in the narrative, ensure continuity and shoot down the flights of fancy.
Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag and smile, smile, smile. Forget the worst recession since the South Sea Bubble, dust off that cracked glitter ball and drag out those tarnished bacofoil hot pants. It’s time to get crushed by the sequined juggernaut that is the Eurovision Song Contest, the rightful heir to the fall of Communism. This year, the travelling freak show has pitched the big top in Malmö (pronounced Malmurrrr), Sweden. Expect high camp, a blizzard of glitzy ticker tape and enough dry ice to halt global warming. Expect virginal visions in white, gay-bar strippers, fake blonds where collars and cuffs don’t match, notes as flat as the Fens and tunes once heard, never remembered. Don’t expect ABBA. The land of the midnight sun and real blonds is throwing an enormous street party like a UEFA cup final but without the drunken thuggery. The annual warble-fest costs so much to stage it attracts its very own IMF bail-out. Let’s hope nobody votes for the unkindly named PIGS (Blighty might be joining that popular club any day now). Winning will send them over the fiscal cliff.
Turkey has thrown a hissy fit and withdrawn from the competition. TRT (the Turkish broadcaster) does not like changes to the voting rules in recent years (50/50 between the public and a panel of music experts) which it claims disadvantages the Turkish entry by reducing the influence of the Turkish diaspora across Europe. That’s the point, silly. TRT also objects to the automatic qualification of songs from the so-called ‘Big Five’ broadcasters (the BBC among them) that pay the lion’s share of the costs. If TRT wants a free ride to the final, it’ll have to sign a much bigger cheque. After all, he who pays the piper calls the tune. To top it all, TRT got its pantaloons in a twist over a lesbian kiss live on stage. At the semis, Finland’s Krista Siegfrid landed a sloppy smacker on the lips of one of her backing dancers. Krista doesn’t actually drink from the furry cup in her day job, she just objects to the Finnish Parliament’s refusal to vote on marriage equality. Her song ‘Marry Me’ is through to the final where she’s threatening to repeat the tonsil-tickling outrage. Whether Krista has qualified because she kissed to be clever or despite of it is anyone’s guess. Overcome with moral indignation and shock, TRT has pulled the show completely. As we all know, watching a bit of girl-on-girl action turns you lesbian and there are no lesbians in Turkey, the land where men are men and goats are nervous.
Britain’s entry is an old-school power ballad sung by the gravelly-voiced Welsh chanteuse of yesteryear, Bonnie Tyler, she whose heart was totally eclipsed in ’83 after she got lost in France in ’77. The song’s not half bad (and half good either) but it hardly matters. We could put up Sooty for all the difference it would make. Mark my words. It’ll be a heartache for Bonnie. She’ll need more than a hero to fight the rising odds against a rout by the former Warsaw Pact. Well, I suppose it serves us right for Iraq. Poor old Auntie Beeb keeps wheeling out the golden oldies with their careers behind them, presumably because no-one with a career in front of them would touch Eurovision; it’s the kiss of death. Despite the parochial politics and regional gerrymandering, we’ll be waving our little union flags, raising a glass of bubbly to the campest show on Earth and hoping against hope that we don’t come last.
Today is IDAHO Day. For the uninitiated, this stands for International Day Against Homophobia (not to be confused with a holiday in the 43rd State of the Union). On this day in 1990, the World Health Organisation removed homosexuality from the International Classification of Diseases. No longer were gay people officially categorised as sick and mentally disordered. IDAHO Day was conceived by the French academic and human rights activist, Louis-Georges Tin, with the aim to raise awareness about the plight of sexual minorities across the globe who live in daily fear of casual discrimination, systematic violence and state-sponsored murder. Some of us are fortunate to live in societies where attitudes have changed radically and where we are protected by a comprehensive body of law. Most are not so fortunate. This does not mean that mindless, sometimes violent, homophobia is no longer with us. Far from it. We must always be on our guard against the knee-jerkers and pond life who mean to do us harm. And we still have a long way to go to effectively eradicate transphobia. But, spare a thought for the brave souls in other lands whose very existence is a crime, where silence and denial are the only instruments of survival. Earlier this week, I had the honour to interview Eric Gitari, a human rights lawyer and activist in Kenya, on Future Radio’s Pride Live Show. Eric is helping to co-ordinate IDAHO Day in his own country and campaigns to abolish the draconian laws inherited from the British Raj. Believe me, his work is no walk in the park but Eric refuses to be silent. Today, ordinary people in many corners of the world will mark IDAHO Day publicly. However, some will do so in private and who can blame them? To be lynched from an olive tree or burned to death by a tyre necklace is nobody’s idea of a gay old time.
PS: The Kenyan Police banned the IDAHO march in Nairobi minutes before it was due to set off. No surprises then.
The traditional high street is under seige from a flat-lining economy, increased rents (no, I don’t understand that either during a recession) and the relentless pressure from the big boys with their charmless out-of-town retail parks sucking up all the trade. Norwich seems to have bucked the trend by preserving its novelty. Of course, the narrow maze of city centre streets has its fair share of chains with their identikit offerings but there’s also a treasure trove of independents to graze. Maybe the city’s relative isolation is its saviour (the last section of the dual carriageway from the Smoke is only now being built and the train service is express-less). Perhaps it’s a benign planning environment by farsighted burghers. Who knows? Whatever the reason, long may it continue. Here’s just a small sample to whet the appetite and loosen the purse.
Give Us a Quiche
Jarrolds is a Norwich institution. The family-run business has outlets dotted about all over the shop. The Book Hive is the best independent bookshop in town. Both Jarrolds and the Book Hive declined to stock my book. Jarrolds refused (politely). The Book Hive didn’t respond at all. I don’t hold it against them (much).
The Grosvenor Fish Bar on the corner of Pottergate and Lower Goat Lane offers delicious, artery-hardening deep-fried heart attacks. It gets my vote because punters are welcome to finger the fish over a pint in the pub opposite. Personally, I prefer to nibble on a battered sausage (cue Liam). The public house in question, The Birdcage, has been the scene of our undoing many times now.
I doubt Meryl Streep ever visited this corner of the Dark Continent when she was attempting a truly terrible Viking accent in ‘Out of Africa.’ Do they really sell slices of crocodile, ostrich, springbok and zebra? Well, if Tesco’s can flog donkey burgers, why not?
Liam spends endless hours thumbing through the sheet music in this old-school music shop as he contemplates a profitable sideline teaching piano. He’s quite talented with his fingers, my Liam. This little gem is right along the street from our weaver’s cottage.
Finally, my personal favourite – not because I’m a cock in a frock at weekends and call myself Jacky but because Pepperberry’s sell ‘clothes designed with your boobs in mind.’ It’s just as well, as I have noticed that quite a few Norfolk broads do look like they’ve eaten all the pies.
The Bodrum Peninsula Travel Guide brought to you from the gorgeous Roving Jay is free (yes, FREE) to download to your Kindle thingy from Amazon from now until 8am on Tuesday 4th June (Blighty time). This essential guide is a must have for anyone dipping their toes in this magical corner of Turkey. Get it while you can because when it’s gone, it’s gone (well, it won’t actually be gone but you’ll have to pay for it after the freebie period is up).
Perking the Pansies 