I’ve never had much difficulty finding something to say. In fact, sometimes Liam would rather I kept it buttoned once in a while. Today I received a copy of the April edition of Time Out, Istanbul, courtesy of Pat Yale which features a piece she’s written about expat books. Pat is one of the (if not the) pre-eminent resident travel writers in Turkey. She gave Perking the Pansies top billing. It made me feel like a sexy centrefold without the need to take my kit off (believe me, these days Jack in the flesh would put anyone off their Adana Kebab). Pat’s review is, well, see for yourself. I am speechless. Thank you, Pat. You managed to shut me up and Liam is at peace for once.
Category: Turkey & Turkish
Locked Up and Knocked Up
Are you an expat who started a company to do the business in Turkey? Do you have a website? If not, you’d better get one sharpish and register it with the authorities. If you don’t, you might find yourself dumped in the clink for 6 months. Even if you do have a website, you’d better make sure it’s stuffed to the brim with company information. Don’t forget to include the name of the office cat, your granny’s maiden name and the parlous state of your bank balance. If your site content isn’t up to scratch, expect to be banged up alongside a hairy daddy with a twinkle in his eye and a little lovin’ on his mind. Why is this? Well, the Turkish Government has just adopted a new Trade Law which is due to come into effect on the 1st July this year.
Sounds like some daft idea from a witless job’s-worth paid to dream up the unworkable. I expect it will go the way of the much heralded internet regulations introduced with a fanfare then unceremoniously dropped when it became blindingly obvious they were just a little bit crap.
Turkish Wrestling, Lube and Lederhosen
The Turkish oil wrestling circus came to an ancient town. A picnic field near the obscure and little excavated Lelegian city of Pedasa, high in the hills above Bodrum, hosted a greasy competition of brute force and suspect hand insertions. The ancient smack down imported by the nomadic Turks from the windswept steppes of Central Asia was staged by the lubed-up lads in lederhosen (or kisbets as they’re correctly called) with enthusiasm and grunting gusto. Getting a slippery grip on a marinated boy basting in the midday sun would challenge the most dedicated follower of a bit of rough and tumble. It was an all-family affair with drums, horns and B-B-Q chicken. I’ll leave the last word to a Bodrum Belle of our acquaintance who supplied the snaps.
“Fat men getting feisty in flora! I even caught them having a soapy shower behind the fire engine afterwards but you will see that, for most of them, the greasy glory days are sadly over. Have you and Liam never fancied cavorting in Castrol?”
The answer’s no. We leave the homoerotic horseplay to the hetties. They do it so much better.
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From Frostbite to Heatstroke
The next door apartment block has just received an unusual spring makeover. Over a period of two weeks, we watched in bemused amusement as the entire building (excluding the roof) was clad in grey polystyrene tiles. These were eventually rendered then whitewashed to suit Bodrum’s standard livery. The re-modelling was watched from the opposite side of the street by one of the residents, a little old man wearing an embroidered pillbox* hat and an inscrutable perma-grin.
Buildings hereabouts are little more than simple concrete boxes and are notoriously difficult to keep warm in the winter or cool in the summer. They would also collapse like a pack of cards if an earthquake struck. So, is this some new and ingenious insulation technique – like a tea cosy or a padded jacket for a hot water tank? If so, let’s hope it breaks the time honoured annual cycle of frostbite and heatstroke. The unconventional wrap was completed just in the nick of time. The following day the mother of all storms lashed the coast. The rickety scaffolding would surely not have survived the tempest. Neither would the little old man.
*This type of hat is called a kufi kofi hat in parts of Africa but I don’t know what it’s called in Turkey – any ideas?
A Balcony with a View
Blessed (and gloriously noisy) are the children…
Children’s Day 2012
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200,000 Hits Plus
A few days ago, an obscure English language blog written by an ex-pretty boy reporting from a minor peninsula on the Aegean coast of Turkey, exceeded 200,000* page hits. My sincerest thanks go out to all those people who have popped by to show their support for Perking the Pansies. Are you all mad?
Other notable stats for cyber geeks include:
600 posts – 2,000 shares – 14,000 spam comments – 4,500 legit comments (not including Faceache and that tweety thingy).
Surprisingly, I’ve been little troubled by the angry little trolls who stalk cyberspace with impunity. I’ve only ever had to delete two vile comments from the faceless.
My parochial dispatches from the emigrey trenches (in the winter, I mean this literally) have been liberally sprinkled with liberal mutterings on selected events of the day. Sometimes, Perking the Pansies goes beyond these short-sighted shores and tackles issues that interest, amaze, amuse or concern me. Indeed, many of the posts with an international twist have been big hits. This gives me hope. Maybe Perking the Pansies can evolve from reflections on emigrey life to broader horizons – from fosterland to motherland. So, climb aboard the slow boat to Blighty. I hope you’ll stay on for the ride but feel free to jump ship at any sunny port en route. That’s what journeys are all about.
Next milestone? A quarter of a million. Imagine that?
*Combining page views on this site with my old Google blog blocked by the Turkish Authorities in December 2010).
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A Brief Lesson in Sex, Sexuality and Gender
It seems that the man on the Clapham omnibus often gets his Calvins in a coil when trying to work out the difference between sex, sexuality and transexuality. Put simply (simplistically, even), sex is what you do, sexuality is who you fancy and transexuality is when you are born the wrong gender. A sex change does not alter an individual’s sexuality. Therefore, a woman born as a man who fancies men will still fancy men after the op. Likewise, a woman born as a man who fancies women will still fancy women. Got it?
The reason I’m labouring this point is because my good friend and new kid on the blogging block over at Back to Bodrum sent me an article about two gay men, Aras Güngör and Barış Sulu. They intend to marry in Turkey. Impossible, I hear you collectively cry. Under ordinary circumstances you would be correct but these are not ordinary circumstances. You see, Aras is a transexual born female and now living as a man. Therefore, he carries a ‘pink’ identity. Barış carries a ‘blue’ identity so, under Turkish law, they are permitted to marry with all the rights and duties that entails. They intend to use their matrimony to campaign for marriage equality. I wish them the best of luck and I hope they can stay safe from those who will seek to bring them down.
You can read their courageous story here.
Despite a long tradition of transexuality in Turkey, transexuals have a rough time. With the exception of a few at the top of the entertainment heap, most are marginalised and reviled. Some end up leading brutal lives and resort to prostitution to bring home the daily bread. I saw this first hand during my inaugural trip to Istanbul in 2003 when street ladies in Laura Ashley frocks would leap out from behind parked cars in the dingy side roads along Tarlabaşi Bulvari. It scared the life out of me.
Just for the record, transvestites are people who cross dress, often, but not always, for sexual gratification. Most transvestites, like most people, are straight. Drag queens are not transvestites. They are female impersonators and entertainers (though not always convincing or entertaining). It’s all part of the rich tapestry of humanity, I’m pleased to say.
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Every Little Helps
The Bodrum Bulletin has just updated its annual grocery price check, comparing Britain with Turkey. This exercise was first started in 2009 using the same basket of goods from Sainsbury’s (in the UK) and Migros (in Turkey). The headline is that the price differential between the two countries has been gradually eroded since the survey started. In 2009 the British basket cost 26% more, whereas today the difference is less that 10%.
As with all things, the devil is in the detail. Buying habits vary from person to person and the comparison is affected by the prevailing lira to pound exchange rate. Nevertheless, it does indicate a direction of travel during these recessionary times. We residents all know that booming Turkey is no longer the low cost paradise it used to be. To add to the depressing trend, the Turkish Government has just hiked the price of gas by nearly 19% and the price of electricity by just over 9%.
A year ago, I set Liam a challenge. I wanted to know the cost of living for our kind of life in Britain, Spain and Turkey. He calculated our average monthly spend on the typical stuff we consume – food, booze, fags, essential trips back to London, rent, bills, healthcare, insurances, etc. He also used Migros for the Turkish grocery shop, comparing it to Tesco’s in Britain and a major Spanish chain. At the time, the results showed that living in Spain would cost a fifth less overall whereas living in Britain (outside London) would cost a third more.
The same analysis today (excluding Spain) paints a completely different picture. Our British living costs will be on par with our Turkish expenses. This is almost entirely due to the low rent we expect to pay in Norwich and the fact that we’re (almost) a smoking-free family. This isn’t the reason we’ve decided to leave our foster home but, as they say at Tesco’s, every little helps.
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April Fools
My brother is in Majorca sitting on a sunny hotel balcony sipping cool white wine wearing shorts and a tee shirt. We’re huddled in front of an electric fire in slippers and zippy tops. Last month’s electric bill was 480 lira (£180). Yes that’s right. Four hundred and eighty. We don’t expect this month’s bill to be much lower. We thought grumpy Mother Nature had flicked on the spring switch a couple of weeks ago. It seems the perfidious old bag has switched it off again. Still, the flowers are nice.
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Turkey from the Inside
I’ve been scribbling like a lunatic getting the message out about the book. The days when an author just sits back and lets someone else do all the PR and promotion are long gone. Sometimes, though, things just happen without any intervention from me. Pat Yale is an extremely respected British vetpat travel writer living in Cappadocia. You could say she put the pat in expat. Pat wrote A Handbook for Living in Turkey which is the definitive guide for moving to and living in our fosterland. Pat also writes a Turkey travel blog called Turkey from the Inside. Liam stumbled across the page about Yalıkavak. This is the introduction:
On the northwest side of the Bodrum Peninsula, pretty Yalıkavak centres on a harbourful of gülets but also boasts several inviting getaway-from-it-all boutique hotels up on the hillside. It served as the setting for Jack Scott’s 2012 travel memoir Perking the Pansies which dished the dirt on goings-on in the expat community.
Thank you, Pat. I’m chuffed.
Perking the Pansies 