Stop Press!

So far, the start of spring has been a nipple-hardening affair. Wild March winds are whistling across the East Anglian flatlands and snow flurries swirl around the daffodils. Thank God for central heating and high tog duvets. March has also been remarkable for a flurry of activity for Perking the Pansies, Jack and Liam move to Turkey. The middle of the month saw a spike in sales sending it to the top of the Amazon charts. I know not why. Then, quite by chance, Twitter of all things alerted me to a review of the book in the Turkish Daily News. The out-of-the-blue piece was written by Hugh Pope, an eminent writer and journalist. Hugh lives in Istanbul and has assembled an impressive CV – The Wall Street Journal, The Independent, Reuters, and United Press International as well as three critically acclaimed books under his belt – Dining with Al-Qaeda, Sons of the Conquerors and Turkey Unveiled. These days, Hugh is Project Director (Turkey/Cyprus) for the International Crisis Group. This is serious stuff for a serious writer who knows a thing or two about Turkey and the wider region. He’s a busy man and I’m not sure how a little-known book by an unknown author caught his attention but I’m grateful that it did. Hugh gets the book in a way some others don’t. It might be a gossipy tale written in comic carry-on style and tied up with a pink ribbon, but there is a more thoughtful message in there too. Thank you, Hugh, for seeing it.

You can read Hugh Pope’s review here.

To find our more about his titles click here for Amazon.co.uk and here for Amazon.com.

Jack in the Book

You could knock me over with a feather boa. Fifteen months after Perking the Pansies, Jack and Liam move to Turkey first hit the shelves, it’s back at the top of the Amazon UK charts. To be number one in LGBT Travel is fabulous. To be in the top twenty for all travel books about Turkey is remarkable (in the company of titles from the Rough Guide, Lonely Planet and Marco Polo). I’ve now had more chart re-entries than Elvis and I’m chuffed. Thank you.

Turkey, Surviving the Expats – Out Now!

After a few weeks of tweaking, fixing and buffing, Turkey, Surviving the Expats is off the blocks. Episode Two of the best of the blog contains all the juicy bits from the Turkey years. Here’s the blurb:

In 2009, Jack Scott and his civil partner, Liam, sold off the family silver and jumped the good ship Blighty for Muslim Turkey. They parachuted into paradise with eyes firmly shut and hoped for the best. When the blindfolds were removed, what they saw wasn’t pretty. They found themselves peering over the rim of a Byzantine bear pit. Bitching and pretension ruled the emigrey roost. The white-washed ghettoes were populated by neo-colonial bar-room bores who hated the country they’d come from, hated the country they’d come to and were obsessed with property prices, pork products and street dogs. Expat life was village life where your business was everyone’s business. For Liam, it was the barren badlands of the lost and lonely. For Jack it was the last stand of the charmless Raj – ‘Tenko’ without the guards, the guns and the barbed wire. It took them a while to find their feet and separate the wheat from the chavs but, determined to stay the course, eventually they found diamonds in the rough and roses among the weeds.

Welcome to Part Two of the mini-series which includes previously unpublished material together with Jack’s personal recommendations of the must-sees that Turkey has to offer visitors and residents alike.

Buy a Kindle edition from Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com and from all other Amazon stores worldwide. Don’t have a Kindle? No problem. Download the Kindle app from Amazon and read the book on your PC, smartphone or tablet. Alternatively, buy an e-Pub version from me directly and I get to keep all the dosh. The e-Pub format can be read on most non-Kindle readers (Nook, Kobo, Sony, Apple). The e-books are priced at just £2.99, $3.99 and €3.50 – cheaper than a frozen pizza from Iceland (the shop, not the country).

Don’t forget to pick up Episode One – Turkey, the Raw Guide. Like Jack and Liam, they come as a pair.

The Cream of the Crop 2012

It’s the turn of a new year, a time to reflect on the recent past. And what a hectic time it’s been for these old two old drunken reprobates. Four years ago, we jumped the good ship Blighty and swam ashore to paradise in search of a dotty dotage of gin and tranquility We found a paradise of sorts and so much more besides. Three years into our choppy voyage, I found a little fame and notoriety, and a new course was set – as an accidental author. 2012 brought change: a rudder slammed into reverse and a return to our damp little island perched on the edge of Europe. So, in the best tradition of the year’s end, I give you the most popular Pansy posts of 2012.

1. Now That’s What I call Old

Who would have guessed that a lazy, throwaway post about the 12,000 year old ruins at Göbekli Tepe in Eastern Turkey would hit the top spot? Although it was published in 2011, like Meatloaf’s Bat Out of Hell*, it never left the charts. In fact, it’s my most popular piece ever, racking up 7,500 hits to date.

2. Expat Glossary

Another perennial favourite. Technically, it’s a page not a post nowadays (though it started off as a post many moons ago). Oft quoted and copied, it’s a tongue in cheek attempt to classify the vintage villagers of expatland. It continues to strike a chord.

3. Goodbye to the Turkish Living Forum

The closest I came to an unseemly slanging match – I queered my pitch with the Turkish Living Forum (or, more accurately, they queered their pitch with me). I stopped the vile conversation in mid-sentence. I can do that. It’s my blog. It gladdens my little homo heart that this post continues to attract punters. If I’ve put just one potential member off the bigoted posts, then my work is done. It’s a shame. Most contributors to the forum seem sane and reasonable. It’s a good idea ruined by the vicious and vocal few.

4. Britain’s Got Loads of Talent

I’m a sucker for a sob story and Britain’s Got Talent is stuffed to the rafters with them. A genuine attempt to discover the best (and worst) amateur talent that Blighty has to offer, or a cynical commercial exercise in crass over-sentimentality? Probably both and so what? This year a dog won. No, a real dog, not an ugly person.

5. No Going Back on Going Back

A slip of the wrist and the cat was out of the bag. A premature posting meant that I announced our repatriation much earlier than I had intended and readers tuned in to read the news.

6. Zenne Dancer

A post about a ground-breaking and award-drenched Turkish film, inspired by the true story of a Kurdish student who was gunned down by his own father for being openly and unrepentantly gay. It still hasn’t been released with subtitles so I’m ashamed to say I still haven’t seen it.

7. Fifty Shades of Gay

I wrote this post to celebrate and support the launch of Rainbowbookreviews, a brand new LGBT book review website. As part of the party, Perking the Pansies, Jack and Liam move to Turkey was offered as a competition prize. What some people will do for a freebie.

8. The Friendly Games

This was my naughty but nice take on the closing ceremony of the London 2012 Olympics. The BBC did a grand job in televising the once-in-a-lifetime event – online, on radio and on TV. Liam had all three on simultaneously. For a brief period, the nation forgot its woes and smiled again. The mother lode of precious metal helped.

9. Bodrum’s Crusader Castle

Towards the end of our time in Turkey, I thought it was high time to give the pansy treatment to the grand centrepiece of the Bodrum townscape – a little bit of history (not too much) and a little bit of humour. It’s a popular cocktail.

10. Gran Canaria, Sex Emporium

Our first ‘proper’ holiday for four years and we chose Gran Canaria, that rocky mid-Atlantic brothel. You can take the boy out of the back room but you can’t take the back room out of the boy.

I leave you with my favourite image from 2012. I know, it’s all a bit predictable but I’m turning into a dirty old man and I intend to wallow in it. Happy New Year everyone and thank you for enduring my camp old nonsense for yet another year.

*Bat Out of Hell stayed on the UK album chart for 474 weeks. God knows why.

Suited and Booted

Now that our frivolous semi-retired life among the lotus-eating emigreys of the Aegean is behind us, I thought I’d mark the transition with a major makeover. Not me, of course (far too late for that). Regular readers will have noticed that the blog is now dressed in more sober attire. Backtobodrum commented:

“I have to comment that your blog now looks very organized and serious. Have you two gone back to wearing suits and ties?”

It’s an interesting observation because, in a way, we have. Liam’s got himself a part time job doing something with data. So much for giving up the wicked world of the waged but needs must when the Devil drives. The demon in this case is the continuing slide in Turkish interest rates. It’s a pre-emptive strike. We’re spending more or less the same here as we did in Bodrum, but we need to stitch the little hole that first appeared in the family purse a couple of years back. Working part time enables Liam to plug the gap and to meet his family obligations (the main reason we came back to Blighty). It also enables me to make a proper go at this writing lark (the other reason). When I get the film deal, Liam will be released from paid labours and return to his main function in life – sorting me out and peeling me grapes.

School’s Out

Travel may well broaden the mind but upping sticks and relocating to a foreign field can blow it completely. The best laid plans may not prepare you for having the cultural rug pulled from under your feet, something that can throw the most balanced person off kilter. Becoming a novice expat is like the first day of school. All those childhood fears come flooding back. Will I fit in? Will people like me? Am I wearing the right kind of kit? Am I as good as them?

As the naïve new kids on the block, we made the classic mistake of chucking ourselves into the well-rooted and largely insular expat community that clung to the iridescent coast of Aegean Turkey. We didn’t dip our toes into the water to test the temperature. Oh no. We leapt in with eyes slammed shut, noses held and hopes raised. It was a salutary lesson in what not to do. The emigrey soap opera was, at times, a life-sapping experience and negativity stalked the smoky bars and over-crowded beaches. We spent the first six months trying to get to know people and the next six months trying to get rid of many of them. In retrospect, I don’t know why I expected a disparate group of people thrown together purely by chance to be our cup of tea. Four years down the line our burnt fingers had healed and we started to enjoy the sparkling company of a small cohort of like-minded people. As with many things in life, less is more. Ironically, just as we reserved our own corner of the playground with a hand-picked gang, we returned back to Blighty to be grown-ups again.

We’re All Immigrants Really

I recently tuned in to a debate on BBC Radio Norwich. It was about immigration, something of a national obsession in Britain. Some of the comments were intelligent and thoughtful, others were plain stupid. It made me think. How is it that, in general, relatively rich people from the West who move abroad are described as ‘expats’ whereas relatively poor people settling in the West are classed as ‘immigrants’? Perhaps this is because ‘immigrant’ is a dirty word these days, laced with nasty undertones of freeloading and coloured by thinly veiled racism. The threat of the UK or anywhere else being swamped with lazy foreign devils sponging off the state and plotting a new world order is a tad exaggerated in my experience. Where would the National Health Service or the care sector be without imported labour? It’s also worth bearing in mind the United Nations of young people who greet the commuting worker bees of London at the Pret a Manger* counter each morning are there because they’re eager, committed and willing – not a scrounger among them. This is an attitude that some British youths would do well to emulate.

The smug, self-congratulatory term ‘expat’ does have more than a hint of the British Raj about it (or any colonial raj come to that) – people who move away for a sea-view room or a tax-free dream job but who maintain their cultural and language separateness in various expat ghettos across the globe. The word also suggests a sense of impermanence. Interestingly though, many foreign nationals I know in Turkey have no intention of moving back to their home countries. Some have even acquired Turkish citizenship (though I suspect few have relinquished their original passports. It pays to have a plan B, just in case). If expat life is transitory does this mean that immigration is permanent? This doesn’t explain the huge influx of Poles who moved to Britain in the 90’s looking for work, many of whom have since moved back to Poland because the work dried up. They are called immigrants (and less savoury words by some). Clearly, quite a few have no wish to stay longer than necessary. Perhaps it really is all to do with the filthy lucre.

It’s certainly true that expats tend to be more financially self-sufficient than those who move in search of a better economic life, but nothing is that simple. In Turkey, plunging interest rates in recent years have presented quite a fiscal challenge to those trying to maintain a hedonistic lifestyle on dwindling assets. I wonder how many will survive? In the end, some may have to head home anyway, kicking and screaming. Expat? Immigrant? You say tomayto, I say tomarto.

*Pret is very successful British coffee and sandwich chain. I recommend their breakfast baguette – delish!

Essential Lessons for Expat Living

Pat Yale (she who put the pat into expat), has been writing for the Today’s Zaman, one of two Turkish national newspapers published in English. She asked me (he who put the grey into emigrey) what I thought were the essential lessons for expat living in Turkey (or anywhere else, for that matter). This is what I had to say:

Be prepared for a culture shock and show respect for the country you have chosen to move to.

Do what you can to integrate and engage your hosts. Learning the lingo, at least conversationally, will really help (here I failed miserably).

Understand where you are: learn a little history and if there are English language newspapers, read them.

Keep the brain cells active: if you don’t have a job, develop some interests to fill your days.

Leave the whitewashed ghettos and go explore your new country.

Don’t rush into instant, life-sapping friendships with other expats; think emotional resilience and choose carefully.

Stay sober, at least part of the time.

And finally, a prerequisite for every expatriate…

…the wisdom of Solomon and the patience of a saint.

What’s on your list?

Hit the Road, Jack

The show is over and the curtain has fallen on our final Anatolian performance. It’s been a long and successful run but they’ll be no ovation or encore. As we said goodbye to Gümbet, Liam and I reflected on our time in this ancient land of paradoxes and plenty. Turkey has provided a restful respite for our weary bones and taught us that we can live differently and work with less. This is a profound lesson that many would be wise to copy. We don’t regret a single second of it.

We’ve both enjoyed and endured some extraordinary exploits with some extraordinary people. From the outset I called our cast ‘the mad, the sad, the bad and the glad’. This epitaph was no less true in Bodrum than it was in Yalıkavak three years before. From our first encounter with the pretentious expat rat pack to the Bodrum Belles, the Gümbet Gals and the Bitez Babes all sorts – the ladies of this small corner of Asia Minor do what they can to live their lives in dignity and grace. Many succeed. Many don’t. Listen up, ladies. Take a little advice from an old pro. When your ship is holed beneath the waterline, head for the lifeboat. Don’t flounder about like flotsam just because the sea looks inviting.

We’re not looking forward to the downside of Blighty life – the unpredictable weather, the fretful recession or the endless whinging. Let’s face it, some of our compatriots, whatever shore they wash up on, have turned whinging into a class act. Nevertheless, our course is set and it is a step forward, not a step back. But, there’s a sadness in my soul. I shall greatly miss our entertaining encounters with the hopeless, the hapless and, yes, the happy go lucky. So long, farewell, auf Wiedersehen, adieu to the emigreys, vetpats, semigreys, VOMITs, MADs, Emiköys, and sexpats. You gave me an unexpected tale to tell and for this I thank you. The next instalment is on the story drawing board.

Chip Pan Alley

gumbet2 — This is a gumbet – a Bodrum water cistern

We closed the door on our little stone house in the heart of old Bodrum Town for the last time and said our fond farewells to our great neighbours. Tears rolled down Bubbly Beril’s cheeks and Vadim distributed rib-crushing bear hugs. We left Bodrum a week before returning to Blighty. We would have been homeless itinerants if two Gümbet gal-friends hadn’t come up trumps and offered us their holiday villa for a week, no strings attached. It was a fantastic parting gift. Lovely Lemon Tree Villa comes highly recommended. If you want to know more, contact Carole or Liza on info@turkuoise.co.uk.

Ironically, it was like taking a proper holiday, the first for four years. We planned to relax around a cool pool with a G&T, ice and a slice. We also planned one or two evenings getting down and dirty with the good, bad and the ugly along chip pan alley with its competing cacophony and naff neon. We were looking forward to witnessing the garrison of tattooed emigrey arms, pussy pelmets and pot-bellied Nike tops on proud display. It was not to be. Instead, our week became a fabulous fanfare of farewells as the Belles and the Gals sent us on our way in drunken style. I’ll be taking my liver back to Blighty in a jiffy bag.

Perking the Pansies

Jack Scott's random ramblings

Category: Emigreys

Jack in the Book

Turkey, Surviving the Expats – Out Now!