Some EnchanTIN Evening

As some people on Faceache already know, last week was a double anniversary for me and him indoors – 12 years since we first met and 10 years hitched. Thank you for all the warm and generous words.

We met in Halfway to Heaven and I’m still waiting to go all the way.

It’s an old joke and I tell it every year to groans from Liam.

Liam slipped his ring on my finger two years later. It’s been stuck there ever since.

We ‘formed’ a civil partnership, which always sounded like a firm of solicitors to me. We called it ‘a bit of a do’ and invited our nearest and dearest to the party. Six years later, same sex marriage was legalised and we upgraded to equality class as soon as we were able. Due to a bit of legal hocus pocus, our civil partnership was struck from the record like it never existed and replaced by our marriage.

Expelliarmus!

On the day of our anniversary – our tin anniversary according to tradition – we decided on some posh lunchtime nosh followed by a mini pub-crawl. A meal at Bishop’s had been on our bucket list for a while and we weren’t disappointed. It was divine. The fancy gin aperitif was a great starter. Then we hit the bars.

We didn’t actually sup in all of these establishments, just selected the best from the menu as we meandered round town. Nevertheless, we were a tad tipsy by the time we fell into bed. Pity poor Liam who had work the next day.

Next month, Liam’s planned an anniversary tour of the Smoke to relive that fateful moment when our eyes first met across a crowded bar of after-work desperados.

Maybe this time we will go all the way.

My Brokeback Mountain Moment

Recently, I received a solicitous email from an ‘admirer’ who wrote:

You look nice and charming, to be honest, I can’t pass your page without saying HELLO to such a gorgeous person like you. I am really very sorry if my message upsets you, but i just can’t stop looking at your profile on Facebook.

My name is XXXX, I am from Callaghan, Texas, USA, I live in IOWA city, not that far from City center, i am gay and what about you?

Usually this kind of thing comes to me via Facebook. And most contacts are from young ladies who haven’t checked my profile despite it virtually screaming ‘poofter’ at them. Delete and block.

As this was an email, curiosity got the better of me and I Googled Callaghan, Texas. According to Wikipedia, it’s a small ranching community near the Mexican border. Images of strapping cowboys flooded my mind – sweaty chaps in chaps, saddle-sore after a hard ride and in need of a good rub down. It was my Brokeback Mountain moment.

I’m not daft. I know the message was either from a scammer or some Third World likely lad trying to climb out of poverty. And who can blame him? Whoever he is, he brought some brightness to a dull day. Sadly for him, I’m not in the market for a new model nor am I sugar daddy material. I just don’t have the ‘handbag’ for it as they used to say in Polari. My adoring ‘Texan’ was consigned to spam. Sad face.

It’s All Double Dutch to Me

A couple of weeks ago I popped over to the low land of dykes, bikes, canals, tall thin blonds and tall thin buildings. I’ve been to old Amsterdam many, many times before. Back in the day, Amsterdam was a blesséd escape from finger-wagging, buttoned-up Britain, and a place where I could feel totally free. I won’t regale you with ripe tales of how I expressed that freedom – this is a family show, after all. Needless to say, it rarely involved a cultural troll round the marvellous galleries of the Rijks Museum.

Here’s an ancient image of me in the naughty Nineties on one of my gayfests.

I’m standing on the Homomonument, a memorial to those persecuted for their sexuality. Opened in 1987, the monument takes the form of a large pink triangle jutting out into the Keizersgracht canal. It’s a potent symbol: the pink triangle was the badge of shame gay men were forced to wear in the Nazi concentration camps during World War Two. And we all know what happened in those places.

This time I was there on business. I was attending the 2016 Families in Global Transition Conference (#FIGT16NL), a gig that brought together people from far flung corners, all concerned with issues affecting global families. The current refugee crisis in Europe and the Middle East added an extra layer of complexity to this year’s august jamboree.

Why me? You may well ask. I’m neither an expat, nor a family in transition (not anymore anyway). In fact, I was there as part of my work with Summertime Publishing and Springtime Books, specialists in expat titles. And I was asked to lead a social media workshop for writers. It was a bit of a hit, I’m told. I even got to sell signed copies of my books in the FIGT bookshop – and was more than chuffed when they flew off the shelves and soon sold out. Clearly some people like a dash of camp with their esoteric.

Here’s me flapping my hands about in the social media workshop.

And me on the right grinning inanely in the bookshop.

After a hectic few days navigating through the talkers, walkers, cars, trams and manic cyclists on a mission coming at me from every which way, I landed back at Norwich Airport at ten to nine in the evening. I was home with a large glass of Pinot in hand twenty minutes later. Now that’s the way to travel.

If you’d like to know more about Families in Global Transition and their valuable work, check out their website. In the meantime, here are some pretty pictures I took of the pretty city.

Cafes, galleries and Restaurants in Amsterdam

Amsterdam

The conference pictures are courtesy of FIGT.

Springtime has Sprung

In my last post, I took a meander down memory lane and hinted that change was afoot. Well, my news is that I’m now a publisher, a bone fide purveyor of the written word. No, I haven’t bought out HarperCollins or picked up a Penguin. I’ve gone into partnership with Jo Parfitt, she who is the force of nature behind Summertime Publishing and Jane Dean, a super-talented eagle-eyed editor with a big red pen. The new publishing venture is called Springtime Books, and you’ll see that we have a few books on the books already.

Summertime Publishing has been the expert in expat books for years. From now on, Summertime will specialise in expatriate families and third culture kids, while Springtime will focus on travel and the expat experience in general. We’ve even got a snazzy little video to promote our new enterprise.

Are you a current or former expat with something fresh to say about expatriate life? If so, it could be your time to shine.

And that’s not all. Today’s also the day Springtime publishes its newest title, Passage of the Stork, Delivering the Soul from the rather wonderful Madeleine Lenagh. Click on the book image to find out more.

Now, I’d wager you thought that this post was going to be about the weather. You did, didn’t you?

Rite of Passage

After small town resort and the tale of Can’t Sing for You, Brighton came a jolly to the big city and time to party. My nephew and namesake, Jack, was celebrating his coming of age with his first legal drink. We helped his nearest and dearest deck out a hired hall in tinsel, balloons and streamers, transforming a working men’s club into a glitzy fairy’s grotto. As we uncovered the party platters, I asked Jack if we were to be the only gays in the village that night. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘there may be a couple of bisexuals popping along for a boogie. No big deal.’ How times have changed since I got the keys to the door. Jack was nervous (he’s a sensitive soul). Would anyone actually turn up to his 18th? He needn’t have worried; the streets of South London were empty that night.

There’s a lot of debate these days about the degenerative condition of Britain’s yoof – you could be forgiven for thinking that we’ve sired a lost generation of lazy, selfish, illiterate, shallow, celebrity obsessed mediocrities. Well there was little evidence of that poor state of affairs at Jack’s bash. Apart from a few very minor skirmishes caused by raging hormones, the trendy young things were polite, respectful, considerate and obliging. Boisterous? Certainly. Feral? Hardly. Mind you, when did eighteen year olds get to look twenty five? The hipster whiskers didn’t help. Naturally, birthday boy got horribly drunk on his first lawful binge, but the care shown by his friends was impressive and rather touching. The next morning, he rose from the dead with not so much as a twinge. Oh, to be eighteen again.

The fragrant Grace, the long term squeeze of Jack’s elder brother, is a bit of a photographer on the side and set up a photo booth for the evening. Here are some of her best shots…

Jack’s very popular with the girls

Liam and my sister

Jack and his admirers

Brothers in arms

Head boy and head girl

Mother and first born

Jack and even more admirers

Jack’s parents

Jack and more admirers

Me and sis

Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell

Ray Cole from Kent was recently released early from a Moroccan prison after receiving a four month sentence for ‘homosexual acts’. Mr Cole had struck up an online friendship with a local Moroccan man and popped over to see his new beau in the flesh (as it were). Nobody else’s business, you might think. You’d be wrong. The couple were arrested at a bus stop, after which the Police apparently found incriminating images on Mr Cole’s phone. Like most African and Moslem countries, homosexuality is illegal in Morocco. Mr Cole knew this but went there anyway. After all, Morocco isn’t Saudi Arabia or Iran where execution is de rigeur. It was, I guess, a calculated risk. The North African kingdom has a reputation for a relaxed don’t-ask-don’t-tell attitude, particularly for Western foreigners who indulge in the many exotic pleasures that the country has to offer. But discretion is the order of the day. Moroccan life, like so many others around the world, spins on hypocrisy. Why were Mr Cole and his young paramour targeted? Who knows? My suspicion is that they were unlucky. I doubt the Moroccan authorities have any wish to deliberately upset Europe or damage the tourist trade. Mr Cole was released after a concerted legal and PR campaign by his family. A week later, his partner in ‘crime’ was also released. So that’s something, I suppose. There are many lessons in this sorry tale. Keeping the camera out of the bedroom would be the first on my list.

IDAHOT Day 2014

To help promote and support today’s IDAHOT Day 2014, the marvellous people behind OUT140 invite you to write your own coming out story in 140 characters or less. Simply tweet your tale to @OUT140, or use the hashtag #OUT140. You never know, it could end up on stage.

You can also follow OUT140 on Faceache, and check out their website here.

This is something I prepared earlier….

The Little Book of Coming Out Stories

Twitter Ye Not

If ever there was cast-iron evidence for limiting the number of terms in the top job, it’s the Prime Minister of Turkey’s current spat with Twitter, an unedifying squabble that makes Erdoğan look autocratic and self-serving. Is the Twitter ban on or off? Who knows? Are the tweets about Erdoğan accurate? Who knows? Twitter is in good company. Lazy censorship is the norm in Turkey. A ban on YouTube has been on and off for years. Facebook may be next. Erdoğan doesn’t like selfies. It’s all rather pointless as anyone with a little technical savvy can circumvent the ban with relative ease.

Something dangerous happens to those who sit at the big desk for too long. The seduction of power can be unhinging. Like the absolute monarchs of old, some start to think that they personify and embody the nation they’re supposed to serve and to insult them is also to insult the nation (something that is a crime in Turkey). Erdoğan doesn’t respond well to criticism and uses politically appointed judges to punish those who cross him. And it’s not just Turkey. This imperious tendency can happen even in so-called mature democracies. Think Margaret Thatcher and how she became more regal and dictatorial with every year of her reign. God knows how Her Maj coped with those weekly chit chats. Who was giving an audience to whom?

Wiser heads know when to leave the party. Take Nelson Mandela, a great example of a dignified exit and even the ever-shrewd Tony Blair knew when the game was up. Not so for our power-crazed Erdoğan. In 2011, he won an unprecedented third consecutive election making him the most popular and successful Turkish leader since Atatürk. But there was a problem. The Constitution barred him from serving a fourth term as Prime Minister and that historic victory could have been his swan song. But the wily old Erdoğan wasn’t about to let the small matter of a Constitution pension him off, he simply changed it.

In August, Turks go to the polls to choose a directly elected executive president and guess whose name will be at the top of the ballot paper? The chances are Erdoğan will win, maybe by a smaller margin, but with a majority nonetheless. I don’t expect today’s local elections to upset the political status quo either. I do expect more authoritarianism and more paranoia, a prospect that doesn’t augur well for political pluralism in Turkey. And so back to the Iron Lady. In the end, it was her own who got rid of her, not the electorate. Maybe, just maybe, there’s a lesson here for Erdoğan.

Jack Scott's random ramblings

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