Category: Expats

Clever Bitch

In a half-hearted attempt to integrate into the overwintering emigrey community we popped along to a local restaurant for a quiz night. We’re good at quizzes or so we thought. It was like a Derby and Joan Club with a sorry collection of depressed looking people in BHS knitwear. We stuck out like black people at a Ku Klux Klan convention. We sat next to George and Phyllis from Birmingham. We engaged in the usual exploratory conversation. We overheard George whisper to Phyllis “Look, they’re even wearing wedding rings”.

It seems that Phyllis and George have somewhat mislaid their family. They found out about their daughter’s wedding and pregnancy on Facebook. The are pooch people and their clever bitch can tell the difference between a Turk and Kurd because they smell different. Oh dear.

We came last in the quiz. Phyllis helpfully explained that many of the questions originated from BBC World so we should keep watching for next time. There won’t be a next time. As one of the answers was ‘cruet set’ I asked Phyllis when was the last time she heard cruet set mentioned on the BBC. That shut her up.

Emigrey Arms

I have detected that a defining anatomical characteristic of the emigrey male is an unsightly affliction called emigrey arms. No, this is not a popular watering hole for the expats but a kind of muscle wasting condition of the upper limbs, brought on by over-exposure to the sun and alcohol abuse resulting in leathery flaps of wrinkled loose skin dripping from sinewy triceps: bingo wings without the lard.

The Semigreys

The final clutch of exiles I’ve observed are the semigreys, people too young to retire in the conventional sense, who are living the vida loca on the proceeds of property sales. Plunging interest rates present quite a fiscal test to those trying to maintain a hedonistic lifestyle on dwindling assets while waiting for the pensions to kick in, assuming there will be a pension to kick in given the parlous position of the British public purse. That’ll be us then.

VOMITs

The mirror image of the predatory Turkish male is a sub-species of the emigrey called the VOMIT, or Victims of Men in Turkey: vintage desperate ex-housewives with a few lira to spare who shamelessly chase younger Turkish men. They jump ashore like eager Shirley Valentines straight into the arms the willing waiters who hang around the docks. Predictably, such relationships rarely last once the money runs out. Listen up ladies. Have a little fun and shag the boys by all means, but never fall in love. While he whispers sweet nothings in your ear, he’ll dip his fingers into your purse and when the takings are spent, he’ll be off like a rat up a drainpipe.

Lock Up Yer Sons

An easy mistake to make

We picked up an old copy of Bodrum Voices at the kiosk next to the main cami (mosque) in old Bodrum Town. I nearly choked on my crappafrappachino when I spotted the headline – Bodrum Becomes Gay Hotspot. According to the Independent on Sunday (my preferred Sunday rag) over 4,000 gay tourists have visited Bodrum in the past five years. How do they know? Have our passports been chipped by the secret police and we’re now tracked by satellite? I knew it was a stupid mistake to declare my sexual orientation on the census return. I’m a marked man.

The article went on to suggest that the numbers may rise to over 30,000 in the coming years. It’s amusing to think that Yalıkavak could become the new Mykonos. Alas, I really don’t think Turkey is quite ready for that yet and the emigrey ignorati might well have a collective seizure at the thought of it. Well, on the other hand…

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The Emigreys

The ex-pats we’ve met are a select collection of friendlies and freaks. I have christened them the emigreys, retirees serving out their twilight years in the sun, most of whom seem to be just a little to the right of Genghis Khan and who bought a jerry built white box in Turkey because it was cheaper than Spain (well, it was at the time). Everyday emigrey life operates within a parallel universe of neo colonial separateness preoccupied with visa hops to Kos, pork sausages, property prices and Blighty bashing.

Cream of the emigrey crop are the vetpats, veterans who have been living in Turkey for many years. Usually better informed than their peers with a less asinine view of the world, vetpats have taken the trouble to learn Turkish and are better integrated into the wider community.

A little noticed and discrete group of emigreys is the sexpats, grey men of means who are serviced by young Turkish men in return for a stipend. The contract suits both parties well and the trade is conducted in secrecy far removed from prying eyes and tittle-tattlers.

We are trying hard not to get too involved and cultivate a mysterious aloofness – courteous but distant – spectators rather than participants. We prefer to amuse ourselves with the obsequious wintering waiters, most of whom seem both repelled and fascinated by our obvious union.

The Glasgow Kisser

As respite from home making, we popped into Yalıkavak for a drink or three. The village is shutting up shop, but we found a few watering holes still open for trade. Unfortunately, we found ourselves in the company of Scots Max, who moved to Turkey from South London. Max is a sinewy, embittered, youngish man with an obvious drink problem. He told us he absconded from England because of all the “political correctness” to coin an over-worn tabloid phrase. He said that he was now free to call a Paki and Paki, not that he’s racist, of course. “Anyway”, he continued, “Britain is overrun with foreigners”, totally oblivious to the irony of this statement. He was fascinated and probably repulsed by us, and couldn’t understand why “you lot are always banging on about your rights”. I pointed out that, since I have always paid my taxes (and at a higher rate in recent years), I did not think it unreasonable to expect to enjoy the same rights as everyone else with the same protection under the Law. The argument flew over his low IQ head, and I didn’t push the point for fear of a Glasgow kiss.

We decided upon a strategic withdrawal. As we toured the village inns, we passed a little place on the high street which seemed more promising. The promise delivered. As the Turkopop became more frenetic the barman peeled off his t-shirt revealing a rather enticing hairy chest, and I was dragged up to dance by an amorous older Turk, who got very touchy-feely. There were a number of likely lads about the place and the ambience was full of clandestine possibilities. After a little innocent flirtatious fun, we meandered home in the wee small hours.

La Crème de la Crème

The evening of Clement’s supper soiree had arrived, and we waited in our still empty house until quite a few of his guests had turned up before venturing next door. We approached his house with some trepidation. Neither Liam nor I are that good in crowds of strangers and as new kids on the block, there was an added frisson to the occasion. With a cordial welcome, Clement led us like condemned lambs into the body of the kirk. There assembled were the congregation, ‘the gang’ Chrissy whispered, la crème de la crème of the ex-pat community.

We grabbed a drink and bravely resolved to mingle. I occupied an empty seat on the patio next to butch, Brigit from Brisbane, who I rashly assumed to be a lesbian, and threw myself into conversation. Our tête-à-tête tripped along nicely until I innocently but unwisely enquired “Do you have a girlfriend?” With a glacial glare she rebuked me with “I don’t know what you mean” and ignored me for the rest of the evening. Oops. This was to be the first of many social gaffes, though in my defence it was an easy mistake to make given the lack of make-up, masculine attire and boyish hair do. Well, if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, it is a bloody duck.

La-Creme-de-la-creme-film-640x307

My next social intervention met with much greater success. I sidled next to Charlotte; a vivacious, energetic kind of girl with a bouncing cleavage that heaved in rhythm to her filthy laugh. We hit it off immediately. Charlotte and tall, debonair, silver haired husband, Alan, are ex-pat veterans having lived in Turkey for eight years. They sold up in England and built their dream house in Yalıkavak. It was obvious we shared similar values and I sense a friendship developing.

Next up was lovely social worker Nancy, Charlotte’s best friend visiting from London. Nancy is a shapely, sassy lass of Turkish extraction who speaks Turkish with a Cockney accent. Nancy has abandoned a barren and loveless marriage in search of romance and orgasms. She is having a passionate but stormy affair with a local skipper.

Liam hovered nervously in the background and spoke mostly to Chrissy. She dished the dirt on everyone in the room. Last to arrive were Susan, who marched in with a confident gait, and husband Chuck. Susan is a pretty Fulham girl in her 50s who had been clearly gorgeous in her youth. Chuck is a well built, striking older man with tattoos and warm blue eyes. Feisty and independent, Susan told me she ran away to Istanbul in her teens where she met and married a philandering academic many, many years her senior. The marriage ended in divorce. She then tried on a second older Turk for size. They too divorced. Following her dalliance with the Turkish branch of Help the Aged, Susan left for the New World, settling in LA where she owned a coffee shop and developed a curious mid-Atlantic accent.

Yankee Chuck’s chequered youth perfectly matches his seventies porn star looks. Susan and Chuck’s eyes met across the Gaggia coffee maker; they fell in love and married. Despite (or perhaps because of) his colourful past, Chuck has become a reformed character, virtually tee-total and a bit of a born again puritan. Susan, on the other hand, likes a drink. We were left with the distinct impression that, despite many pretenders to the throne, Susan is truly the queen bee in these parts.

After a few hours of polite inquisition, we decided to withdraw. We walked back to our holiday let for a final shandy on the balcony to debrief. All things considered, we survived the ordeal relatively unscathed. But, are we the ‘right sort?’ we wondered. “Well, we’re not talking Monte Carlo” Liam sighed leading to a more fundamental question to ponder. Was this disparate group of people thrown together purely by chance really our sort? And so, we surmised, the stage is set, the cast assembled, and we made it through the first act without fluffing too many lines.

In the Beginning

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. It was the 30th May 2009, Liam’s 48th birthday, and we were enjoying a romantic meal in Soho. As the booze flowed the conversation turned to ‘What if?’ Thus began our Great Adventure.

We began to hatch our audacious plot to step off the treadmill and migrate to the sun. Turkey sprang instantly to mind since we had just returned from Bodrum – a chic and cosmopolitan kind of place attracting serious Turkish cash, social nonconformists and relatively few discount tourists. Liam loved it and, after many years visiting the western shores of Anatolia, I needed no convincing. All I had to do was sell my house just as property prices were in free fall. All Liam had to do was agree a financial settlement with his ex on their jointly-owned property, something that hitherto had proven more difficult to resolve than the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Against all odds, I sold my house and its contents to a God-send of a neighbour and, after some emotional horse-trading, Liam finally achieved a reasonable settlement on his own property. Implausibly, we both secured voluntary redundancy from work. In my case, it happened with such an indecent haste that I sensed they were glad to be rid of me. Well, the axeman was stalking the Town Hall corridors looking for prey. It mattered little since it all added to the purse. Our remarkable run of luck convinced us that someone was looking down kindly upon us. Liam attributed it to the Virgin Mary.

We turned our attention to where in Turkey we might settle. The obvious choice was the narrow western coastal strip tucked beneath the vast Anatolian Plateau as it is the most attuned to European sensibilities. Turkey beyond this is the genuine article, a magical land of sweeping landscapes, drenched in drama and culture but far too foreign and exotic for a couple of mature, bourgeois, gay boys from the Smoke.

Bodrum was the bookie’s favourite, an urbane, liberal oasis where we could live safely and unmolested. We briefly entertained the notion of living in Kaş on the Turkuaz Coast where we had honeymooned. Kaş is a sparkling Bohemian jewel, surrounded by a pristine hinterland that has been mercifully spared the worst excesses of mass tourism. But, its glorious isolation, protected by a wilting two hour drive from the nearest international airport, means that the town is effectively closed out of season and lacks those dull but essential full time services we all need to live in the material world: banks, supermarkets, hospitals and the like. We cast our eyes along the map. The coast running south-east of Kaş towards Alanya has been colonised by the Germans and Russians and the string of major resorts running north – Fethiye, Marmaris, Altinkum and Kuşadası – attracts legions of bargain basement Brits. It was no surprise that the odds on favourite won by a mile.