Category: Food & Drink

Home Alone

Alas I am abandoned, albeit temporarily. Liam has dashed home to Londra on a mercy mission to look after his Mother while Liam Senior is in hospital having his arthritic knee repaired. My delicate and kindly Mother-in-Law is as Irish as a dainty shamrock. She and I gossip about the silly twists in Corrie and I make her giggle when I gently tease about her youthful antics when she used to climb over the convent wall to attend the local dance.

Tilting at Windmills

To distract me from my solitude I joined Greg and Sam on their weekly visit to a Pazar. They were in desperate need of soft fruit for the last batch of their winter preserves. After filling their shopping trolley with fruity seasonal goodies we ventured onwards for a bracing ramble across the desolate, windswept headland between Bodrum and Gümbet. We toured the tumble down windmills, now sadly derelict save for a solitary Turk we found self-abusing in one of them. Apparently, local men go there after dark. I wonder why.

Hollywood Smile

Cabbage Patch Horror

Not to be outdone in the cosmetic surgery stakes, I decided to purchase a brand new set of Turkish gnashers courtesy of a delicious dentist in Yalıkavak with broad shoulders and all the right equipment. He ground my teeth down to resemble Chucky leaving the treatment room door ajar to let squeamish, dental-phobic Liam witness the bloody transformation in horror. He felt my pain more than I did. For a third of the Blighty price my tired old fag stained molars that were being slowly dissolved by alcohol were replaced by a fine selection of Omo-white crowns. I now dazzle with a Hollywood smile like a guinea pig from Ten Years Younger and Liam can see me coming in the dark. I asked my dentist how long my new teeth will last. ‘Longer than you,’ he wryly replied.

Night of the Living Dead

Off to the Quiz Night

Prior to our exodus, my GP was concerned about the slow but inexorable rise in my blood pressure. He regularly, and rightly, gave me the standard lecture about diet, smoking and drinking to defer the time when prescription drugs will be needed to control it. As a precaution, I invested in an electronic monitor from Boots and check the reading every week or so. Soon after our emigration my blood pressure reverted to normal and has stubbornly stayed there ever since, despite my continued dependence on booze and fags. This is further proof that work isn’t good for my health. I occasionally check Liam’s pressure. It is so low that, technically, he is clinically dead and I’ve been sleeping with a corpse for months. I could prop him up in a village bar and no one would really notice. Most nights Yalıkavak resembles a scene from The Night of the Living Dead anyway.

The Beating Heart of Bodrum

I’d like to give a big hand to Natalie, author of the Turkish Travel Blog. Natalie kindly invited me to be one of the contributors to her splendid post on Anatolian wonders in words and pictures. Her eclectic selection evokes some of the best that Turkey has to offer to the curious traveller, from magnificent high drama to the gloriously humdrum.

My pretentious piece describes Bodrum Otogar (bus station),  a modern day kervanseray where nose to nipple dolmüslar vie for space and custom. I wrote:

That’ll be two lira

 

To imagine daily Turkish life think of sweet baked sesame seed simit stalls, lemon scenting cut throat barbers, piercing purveyors of rapid kebabs, entrepreneurial pantaloon’d grannies on the make, baffled travellers lost in Left Luggage, mobs of weary eastern boys bussed hither and thither, carefree western girls shocking the eye, sallow sightseers with brats in caps and tea sipping cabbies dropping off in the sweaty midday sun. This magnificent entrepôt of the exotic and the ordinary is a typically Turkish tussle and bustle of commotion and chaos.

Take the look at Natalie’s delicious box of Turkish delights here.

Oh Woe is Me

Laugh and Cry
Screen Dames
A Real Weepy

A chill night wind conspired to trap us inside most evenings so we amused ourselves with a delicious mix of gossip and the silver screen, liberally lubricated with increasingly less cheap plonk as wine prices seem to rise by the week. We amused Clive with our sorry emigrey tales of the mad, the sad, the bad and the glad. We watched Beautiful Thing and Tea with Mussolini; two of my favourite films. Seriously sentimental Clive just loves a weepy so I kept a box of autumnal shades to hand.

We ventured out  to a village morgue bar just the once and really wished we hadn’t. We’d hardly taken our first sip when a despondent, drunken emigrey called Fergus from Falkirk was working his pitch at the bar and looking for a stooge. He collared us to impart his hard luck story. Fergie is a big man with a greasy ginger toupée and a disproportionately hefty lower torso, giving him the look of a bewigged weeble. He had married an attractive tender-aged Thai girl who he had picked out of a catalogue. She was delivered by post and married for security. After a couple of barren years, the Thai bride divorced fat Falkirk Fergie, kept the security and moved south to warmer climes. He now drowns his sorrows in the bottom of a beer glass frittering away the meagre income left to him. A dismal tale of woe too far, we headed for the door, taxied home and chucked on Steel Magnolias to lighten the mood. It was not the best selection. Clive was inconsolable and emptied the autumnal box.

A Star is Born

Burger-star, Clive, landed after sundown at a wind-chilled, sodden Bodrum Airport, jetting in via Istanbul. We waited outside the domestic terminal without realising that internal Pegasus passengers disembark from the International terminal.

Plonk

As my first-born friend of 38 years, it is fitting and proper that he is our maiden caller. I am truly gladdened that he made the effort to join us, exhausting his air miles to do so. We hurried him home, hit the sauce to rejoice and chatted into the wee small hours. Over-drinking is fine for a couple of old reprobates like us but poor Clive suffers terribly from hurricane-force hangovers. The next day he scrambled out of his pit in time for afternoon tea, mumble-mouthed, fuzzy-eyed and ashen-faced fumbling for the paracetamol.  It took him another hour or so to string together a few coherent words which were “What’s for dinner?”

Life in an Hermès Scarf

Elegance in a Head Scarf

Liam has become quite the Mrs. Beaton of late, honing his once impoverished, improvised gastronomy and turning his hand to exceptional cake making, biscuit baking and seasonal specialities. Today’s impressive delight is walnut and carrot wholemeal bread. He’s been inspired by domestic guru, curvaceous Charlotte and Kirazli Karyn’s various online cook booklets. I secretly fear he is gradually going native and that head scarf moment is inching ever closer – Hermès, naturally. Methinks I should leave him to his culinary creations, withdraw to the tea house, play parlour games with the local boys and take an illicit lover or three. It’s the Turkish way. I’ll expect my supper on the table when I get home.

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.

Sleeping Beauty

Yalıkavak life is in hibernation mode, and the hatches are well and truly battened down. As a working town, daytime activities go on as they must, but by night the village falls eerily silent except for roving packs of abandoned hounds and the few venues scraping a scanty living from the rare hardy emigrey annuals who venture out after dark.

Sleeping Beauty

Dogs in Turkey are employed primarily to guard houses not to live in them and are discarded when no longer required, usually at the end of the season. The local council does its best to control the numbers but resources are limited and the supply overwhelming. For the most part, the animals seem healthy and happy, more of a nuisance than a danger. I suppose life on the streets is preferable (and certainly more natural) to being tethered to a post in solitary confinement and fed on kitchen slops. We’ve been sorely tempted to salvage a winsome mutt with a sad, down at heel expression but this would be unfair given our frequent sojourns to Blighty to placate our abandoned families.

Animal-loving emigreys are appalled by the callous treatment of man’s best friend. After all, it’s well known that Brits love their pets more than their children. So, fund-raising and re-homing of street dogs is a regular aspect of emigrey life. A concern for street children seems less prevalent.

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.