Category: Christmas & New Year

Review of the Year, 2011

Happy New Year to pansy fans one and all from a stormy, rain-sodden Bodrum. In the best tradition of the New Year and all those cheap-to-make review and top ten TV compilations I give you:

Perking the Pansies Top Ten 2011

An eclectic mix of the mad, the glad, the sad and the bad, the old, the bold, the sold and the gold. It’s interesting how few of these posts are actually related to expats directly. The list represents around 20% of all hits to Perking the Pansies (out of about 500 posts). Fancy that.

  1. Amy Winehouse, RIP
  2. Now, That’s What I Call Old
  3. Are We Mad?
  4. Pussy Galore
  5. Gay Marriage in New York
  6. Expat Glossary
  7. Publish and Be Damned
  8. There’s Hope for Us All
  9. Happy Birthday Perking the Pansies
  10. Sisters Are Doing it for Themselves

I wonder what 2012 has in store?

This is in store right now.

All I Want for Christmas

I’m taking a festive break from this blogging lark. I’m knackered. Normal services will be resumed in the New Year (unless there’s a book crisis). Peace and goodwill to all pansy fans whoever and wherever you are. Revel in your drunken parties, one night stands, quality time with lovers, partners, family and friends or just have fun shutting the wicked world out to curl up on a sofa with a good book, a good bottle or a good DVD. Whatever Christmas means to you, enjoy.

Meanwhile, somewhere on the high seas, the crew of the HMS Ocean found out they would all be home for Christmas after 214 days at sea. They just had to celebrate, sometimes shirtless.

Cue the festive video from our brave jolly Jack Tars. There’s a couple of jolly Jackies too (though not topless, obviously).

Check out my book

London in a Minute

We love our laidback Bodrum life even when huddled under a duvet watching BBC Entertainment on a loop. There’s just enough to do in Bodrum to keep us entertained during the short days of winter – cafés, restaurants, cinema, people. The summer hassle has been replaced by a more civilised, gentile pace and we will savour it before the heat and the hustle returns. However, this winter has been different; we’ve been spending our days beavering away to plug the book to death. You’re probably fed hearing about it. I know I am. They’ll be no more talk of it until 2012, unless something dramatic happens like a nomination for the Booker Prize or a call from a TV executive asking to buy the rights. Of course, this is as likely as me losing my virginity, but if the impossible happens, Liam wants to be played by Jude Law. He’s suggested that Danny DeVito might step into my pink slippers.

We’re really looking forward to our flying visit to Blighty for our big city Christmas fix. Bugger the doom and gloom and the whinging soothsayers who seem to wallow in the misery of others. We’re going to have fun in our home town.

Cue the cute London in a Minute video courtesy of Travel Yourself

Check out my new book:

Perking the Pansies – Jack and Liam move to Turkey

Miracle Child

At the virginal age of 18, Liam moved from the Smoke to South Wales to study for his music degree at Cardiff University. He stayed in Wales for 15 years. Having paid £5 to get in across the Severn Bridge, he wanted his money’s worth. The Principality has a rich history of musical excellence and this rubbed off on the young Liam. During his long exile in the Valleys, he lost his virtue and used his mouth and hands to creative effect on oboe and ivory. He sought satisfaction for his creative juices and found it with the Mountain Ash and District Choral Society who commissioned him to compose Christmas carols. Eventually, he hitched up his skirt and waded across Offa’s Dyke to return like the Prodigal Son to the bosom of his family. Liam’s never quite forgotten those halcyon days of quavers and choirs. Even today, his long-past association with these talented people brings a tear to his eye and joy to his heart. Imagine his pleasure and surprise when, two decades on, he discovered that they are once again performing one of his 20th Century pieces at a 2011 Christmas service. It’s made his year.

As it’s that Christmas time of year again, I give you Miracle Child for your festive entertainment. It’s a bit ropey as it was recorded on an old cassette recorder at the back of the hall. Hey, it beats the hell out of Slade on a continuous loop.

Miracle Child

The book

Blighted Blighty

Blighted Blighty

 

I received a witty email from Blighty life friend, Ian. No, that’s not him in the photo. As youngish singletons, he and I cruised across Europe and beyond, seeking high jinks and low frolics. Amsterdam, Paris, Gran Canaria, Sitges, Istanbul, Croydon – nowhere was safe. These days we’re both hitched and respectable pillars of the community.

Ian wrote:

Hope all’s well in your world and you are gearing up for an uneventful Brit visit. It’s relentless doom and gloom here, of course, with a daily update of Angela Merkel’s hair-do on the News and Cameron getting redder and redder as the weeks pass. The British media are loving exploring all the Doomsday scenarios, obviously. Still, Harry from Mcfly is still in Strictly so there’s something to swoon over as we all sink into the abyss. Hope your launch is massive. The Champoo is on you!

Strictly Coming Dancing, the opium of the masses. Good old Auntie Beeb. Harry is rather fetching, though. He’d certainly keep my mind off the overdraft.

Check out my book

Perking the Pansies – Jack and Liam move to Turkey

Tequila Slammers for the Last Hurrah

Bodrum was the venue for our inaugural Turkish New Year revelry. The pretty town has been draped in festive adornments and Harbour Square next to the Crusader castle is graced with a chic snow-white Christmas tree in the shape of a multi-layered hooped skirt. We jostled with the cheery crowd of many generations to catch the act performing at the free concert. An energetic Turkish diva pumped up the volume with catchy Turkopop tunes and the animated audience swayed in happy recognition.

As 2011 dawned, the midnight sky was set alight by a cacophonous pyrotechnic bonanza that dissonantly clashed with the rhythmic Turkic beat. Liam and I embraced and no one minded. With gunpowder spent and smoke hanging in the air, we looked about to observe the assorted assembly; the mobs of mischievous young men, the pantaloon’d grannies with their infant charges, the courting pairs of trendy young things and the gaggles of covered girls variously sporting elaborate head-scarves or Santa hats. We were the only yabancılar in view and we loved it.

We waded through the throng in search of a watering hole and happened upon Meyhane Sokak, a narrow lane off the bazaar and home to a cluster of small crush bars exclusively frequented by Turks. We delicately forced our passage through the rowdy horde, inching past a pretty thing in a sparkly, silver sequined ra ra skirt shaking her booty in wild abandon on top of a table and snaked around a busking band of moustached minstrels. Finally, we squeezed onto one of the tall bench tables lining the lane to enjoy the drunken scene being played out around us. I’m told that alcohol consumption, particularly by women, is generally frowned upon in wider Turkish society. However, there was little evidence of this among the tequila swiggers.

We sent and received various festive texts. I received a message from London life friends, Ian and Matt, who were enjoying their New Year in a bear bar in Brussels. What a tired old twink like Ian was doing in a Brussels bear bar is anyone’s guess.

Defeated by the cold night air and in need of bladder relief we ventured inside one of the bars to be pinned up against the wall by the maelstrom. We were much taken with a group of grungy fellows who wore their hair up in a bun – in the style of Japanese sumo wrestlers and Katherine Hepburn. Turkish appreciation of music is refreshingly unsophisticated and the melee whirled just as enthusiastically to dirgy Depeche Mode as to the Weather Girls’ infamous gay anthem “It’s Raining Men”. Forgive them Father. They know not what they do.

This was the clearly the last hurrah before a short, sharp winter.

Camp as Christmas

A bare larder and a drained wine cellar forced us out in the rain for rations. I was intrigued by the Christmas trinket aisle at the local supermarket where all manner of yuletide paraphernalia can be purchased. We fondled the multi-coloured shiny balls, flickering fairy lights, soft toy Santas, naff papier-mâché nativity scenes and twinkling, tinselled trees, all manufactured by the enterprising Chinese. It seems Turks have appropriated many Christmas traditions and grafted them on to New Year. It gladdens my impious heart. The core Christmas value of giving and goodwill is a universal message that transcends religion. I treasure the lucky luxury of spending time with family and friends. Tragically, this is not an easy time for the lost and the lonely. It’s no co-incidence that, right across Christendom, suicide rates soar.

My Juicy Mandarins

After a calm Christmas Day with Liam’s folks and a boisterous Boxing Day with mine, we left frosty Blighty where the cold had given us colds to return to balmy Bodrum. On the dry night flight home (my first ever sauce-free flight) we chaperoned Sassy Nancy, who has finally forsaken the sticking plaster life of a social worker to seek winter solace in the ample arms of her long-term amour. We chattered away the four hours where she laid bare her tempestuous dalliance with wedded Captain Irfan. He’s a giant of a man (and giant in every department, apparently) who has assembled a flotilla of autumnal ladies vying for his favours. Nancy is undisputed chief concubine, his Nell Gwyn to her improbable Charles the Second. Nancy has the ripest mandarins on the peninsula.

Irfan skilfully manages to keep all his romantic plates spinning with an occasional wobble when he finds himself inadvertently double booked. The ensuing choppy waters serve only to nurse his ego. Business is slow during the inclement months so Nancy can expect his undivided attention.

Irfan was expectantly waiting as we emerged from the terminal building. He was everything I had imagined – charming, jovial and the size of Luxembourg. Nancy threw herself into his generous arms, giggling like an adolescent school girl as he spun her round like a failed audition from Strictly Come Dancing.

Irfan offered us a lift home to avoid the extortion of a taxi fare and would not take no for an answer. He is a large man with a small car but managed to insert us and our large suitcases into his micro hatchback. Nancy sat on a case on the front seat with her legs sprawled and her feet resting on the dashboard; a position she will be repeating later.

Emigrey Spongers

Maurice invited us to his gaff for festive drinks on Christmas Eve. I was delighted to discover that Bernard from Majorca was in town. Bernard is the El Presidente of the ‘First Wives Club’, the fellowship of the ring of exes with whom Maurice has remained friends. Liam thinks the whole concept of staying on good terms with old flames is unnatural. I have membership card number five. It’s fair to say that Maurice has a distinct type, since we are all stout short arses. His current squeeze is no exception. We are the six gobby dwarves to his stocky Snow White.

Meeting up with Bernard again reminded me of my encounter with the Spanish chapter of the guild of emigreys many years ago. Bernard runs a bar in Mallorca and Maurice and I visited him one wet, windswept winter. We were invited to Sunday lunch with an east country couple called Doreen and Jim from Norwich.  Jim was doing hard labour retiling Bernard’s bar floor for which he was being handsomely paid. I asked what brought them to Spain. “Too many foreigners coming into the country and sponging off the social” came the depressingly familiar reply. I nearly fell of my chair when Jim boasted, without the slightest hint of irony, that he was claiming incapacity benefit.

There is Nothing Like a Dame

My time in Blighty is a captivating carousel of shopping and social engagements. I enjoyed a gorgeous gossipy lunch with Julia, an old work pal from way back. She’s the Chief Executive of the British Association of Occupational Therapists and at the pinnacle of her career. Naturally, she was nothing before she met me. She’s the only VIP I know, and I’m convinced that a damehood will be in the offing at the end of her tenure – for her of course. I’ve already got mine.

Liam is spending quality time with his folks. I pop by now and again to sup my father-in-law’s Jameson’s and catch up on Corrie with the mother-in-law.