Category: Crime

News of the World, RIP

I hear the hacking hacks at the News of the World, that famously progressive liberal rag, got caught red handed indulging in a little illegal phone tapping (as opposed to legal phone tapping which is commonplace in Turkey, only requiring consent from the local Jandarma chief). That’s the red tops for you, anything for a salacious scoop. The News of the World isn’t the only newspaper that panders to the base and reactionary instincts of the ignorati by any means. Now that it’s published its last issue the slack will be taken up by another soon enough. To think the British Government is about to hand over full control of BSB (the British satellite broadcaster) to News International, the News of the World’s parent company.

I must confess to one tiny regret about the demise of this 170 year old Sunday institution. If it hadn’t been for their relentless and vicious campaign to expose the twilight world of the perverted homosexual in the late 1970s I never would have known where to go for my jollies. I haven’t looked back since. So thank you, News of the Screws. I owe you one.

The Knickers Nicker

Apparently we’ve got a knickers nicker in the vicinity according to Funlife on the Turkish Living Forum (to nick is to steal in British English parlance). Someone has been skulking around the Türkuyusu area of old Bodrum Town pilfering from washing lines. Well, to be exact only one confirmed line has been plundered at this stage of the game. Who is the miscreant I wonder? Is it some impoverished itinerant worker who left his meagre belongings in a black bin liner on the bus as it sped off back east? Or perhaps it was some panties pinching perv who gets his kicks from wearing freshly laundered women’s undies. My preferred explanation is that some secret paramour was caught in the act with his knickers down, fled naked from the scene of his undoing and improvised with whatever he could find hanging around. There’s always someone’s washing flapping in the wind around here so he’d be spoilt for choice. Does my bum look big in this? Of course it does, you fool. Everyone’s bum looks big in baggy floral pantaloons. I’m keeping my Calvin Kleins under constant surveillance from now on – the genuine article, not the market-bought fakes that fall apart after a couple of cold rinses. He’s welcome to them.

That’s me in the picture, obviously.

Jac the Fucing Felon

I’m having a bit of bother with my full size eyboard. One of the characters, the ey between J and L, only works when it can be arsed. It serves me right I suppose. I purloined the delinquent eyboard when I was helping young offenders and petty theft shouldn’t pay after all. I could buy a Turish eyboard but all those unfamiliar extra characters in strange positions would mean unlearning decades of appalling typing. This old dog can’t learn new trics.

I’ll buy a substitute on the next trip to Blighty for my Mother’s 80th birthday grand gala in March. Meanwhile, I am left to compose my latest masterpost by hunching uncomfortably over the undersized laptop keypad designed for infant digits, unnaturally contort my sagging upper torso and aggravate the repetitive strain injury that I painfully acquired during many arduous years of unsung but heroic public service.

Hello Dolly

Hop Aboard

We are finding local people to be warm, welcoming and obliging. We’re having fun riding around by dolmuş (or dollies as we call them) though it’s taken us a while to get used to dolly drivers collecting fares and dispensing change as they drive at speed along the highway, swerving to avoid pot holes and untethered cattle. Kindly strangers occasionally stop to offer us a lift, including a sweet little old lady with impeccable English, who pulled over in her beaten up Beetle and gave us a ride into town. She seemed unperturbed at inviting two strangers into her car. Perhaps this is because Turkey is blessed with a low crime rate when compared to the West and, therefore, the associated fear of it is also blessedly absent.

By comparison, Clement fled England because his fear of crime had reached hysterical levels. He’d become terrified to venture out after dark, lest he might be mugged by the drug addicts and beggars who loitered menacingly at every corner. He considered himself lucky to have survived the ordeal. We listened sympathetically and enquired where he had lived thinking it might have been Moss Side or Brixton. ‘Dorchester,’ he replied.