All Quiet on the Eastern Front

Dickie Davies — Grab and Grunt with Dickie

The guns have fallen silent on the eastern front. The constant heated arguments between our neighbours have mercifully abated. Whatever they were rowing about appears to have been resolved, for the time being at least. Lazy days on their side of the proverbial fence have become one long languid banquet. They eat constantly. I appreciate freshly prepared Turkish cuisine is less calorific and much healthier than most Blighty fare, particularly the convenience variety. Even so, if I shoved that much food into my mouth I’d be as big as the house. Perhaps this is why those pretty, slim young things with impossibly tiny waists and bums like two plump puppies in a sack develop into wide-bodied wrestlers. Not the steroid enhanced Yankee WWF kind. I mean the saturday afternoon grab and grunt kind that I used to watch on ITV’s World of Sport in the 1970s, brought to you by Dickie Davies. I realise this analogy will fly right over the heads of my non-Blighty readers.

Turk Season

July is Türk sezon and Bodrum is crammed with a richness of middle income people of all generations drawn from across the country taking their annual holidays before the start of Ramazan. The narrow streets are grid-locked and the air is filled with the piercing sound of cross monotone horns. We wandered out into the sticky evening to imbibe the ambiance and sink a few jars. We ambled behind the multitude of multi-generational families promenading along the marina. We headed through the bazaar, past the cheap boys with their cheap goods and snaked along Meyhane Sokak. Miraculously, we found a free place at one of the tall tables outside the semi-gay bar we’d stumbled across the previous year to enjoy the good-humoured scene around us. Alcohol consumption, particularly by women, is generally frowned upon in wider Turkish society. However, there was little evidence of this in the tequila slamming crowd. We had a ball.

Whirl Like a Dervish

To celebrate our deliverance from delirium, we fancied a night on the tiles and chanced upon a small nightclub, very Turkish and surprisingly chic. Turkish pop filled the room and young trendy things revolved around the dance floor like whirling dervishes. There was one tiny sensory drawback though, prompting Liam drunkenly to declare ‘my gift to Turkey is deodorant.’ Foreigners were definitely in the minority, though we caught the eye of a couple of likely western ladies, one of whom was topped off with a curly ginger perm and who writhed around the dance-floor like orphan Annie’s grandmother. We sang The Sun’ll Come Out Tomorrow knowing full well that it always does in Asia Minor at this time of year. Happy and contented we made our way home in the wee small hours picking up a kebab on the way; a very distant relation to the slop that’s dished up in Walthamstow.

I Believe the Children are our Future

For all the fast talk of political Islam and a return to piety, there truly are two sides to this magnificent resurgent nation. Istanbul’s Kadir Has University clearly has a modern, progressive curriculum that allows students to express themselves in music and dance in a fun and inclusive way. I’ve picked three great examples of this. The first two are uplifting romps that had us rolling in the aisles. The third brought us to our feet. You’ll see why at the end.

You might also like to look at Turkey’s Got Talent. I challenge you not to at least smile.

Yes, this really is a duet with Jennifer Saunders, presumably remixed from Shrek 2.

Thanks to Death by Dolmuş for this one.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=884B2YhiqrA&feature=related

Tarty Chic

We sank a jar in a glitzy overpriced watering hole along the marina promenade and observed the rich-kids at play. The children of the Turkish urban elite are a strange breed. Many of the boys wouldn’t look out of place in Soho and the girls drape themselves in expensive tarty-chic virtually indistinguishable from the Russian ladies of the night who ply their trade discretely around them. It all conveys an emancipated image that I suspect is illusory given the deeply conservative nature of society even at the highest echelons.

The Dawn Chorus

The battles between our neighbours are becoming louder, longer and more frequent. They seem completely uninhibited by our close proximity. It is all the more frustrating since we don’t know what the rows are about. Late night fights inevitably end with Vadim sleeping al fresco on their balcony to escape the heat. His cacophonous snoring adds to the dawn chorus of canines, cocks, cars and the call to prayer.

Hot and Steamy in Old Bodrum Town

Yankee vetpat Barbara Isenberg dishes out a delicious mix of daily essays, photos and advice on living and travelling in Turkey in her colourful blog Turkish Muse. Barbara is currently celebrating her wedding anniversary with hubby Jeff in gay Paree. To avoid any distractions from their romantic indulgence in the city of lovers she asked me and a number of others to guest post while she’s being swept off her feet. I was delighted to be asked and happy to oblige. It’s an inspired idea and one I might try on our next sojourn to Blighty in August.

My piece describes a naughty night out on the tiles before we migrated to the sun. Picture it – a hot and steamy summer night in old Bodrum Town…

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Our neighbours, Beril and Vadim row a lot in a very Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? kind of way. Evidently, she is highly strung and screams at him at full volume. He rarely responds in kind. I think he knows that she is the kind of girl who might wield a carving knife if provoked. She’s always very sweet and giggly with us though and pops across the courtyard with plates of delicious home made morsels from her kitchen.

Drums and Drugs

We now have neighbours. Our house is one of two on a single plot with a shared gated entrance and garden. We’d rather hoped the other house would stay vacant. It was not to be. We dreaded being saddled with a couple of old reactionaries; all head scarves, clashing florals and disapproving looks. We’re mightily relieved that Vadim and Beril are delightful arty types from Ankara. Vadim plays the bongos (or whatever the Turkish equivalent is) with talented gusto and Beril looks like she dropped too much acid in the Sixties. We engage in lots of pointing and demented waving of hands. They hardly speak a word of English and, of course, our grasp of Turkish remains lamentably poor. We’ve agreed to have a dictionary do over a bottle or three to exchange random words just for the hell of it. The ruder the better, I hope.

Islamic Chic

Our second day in Istanbul was spent meandering through the piazzas and pavilions of the splendid Topkapı Palace, epicentre of the imperial Ottoman court for 400 years. The unheralded highlight was chancing upon relics of the Prophet (yes, The Prophet). We gazed incredulously upon bits of His beard, tooth, sword, bow, a heap of soil used for ritual ablution and a clay impression of His foot – all allegedly genuine. Slightly less credible are the rod of Moses (of the plagues of Egypt fame), King David’s skull, Abraham’s cookware, and Joseph’s turban (though sadly not his coat of many colours). We were most disappointed not to see the Ark of the Covenant and a charred twig from the Burning Bush. Naturally we remained suitably deferential to avoid stoning by the Faithful. I suppose it’s no less fantastic than the implausible holy artefacts revered by the old ladies of Christendom.

In the extensive grounds we encountered the phenomenon known as ‘Islamic Chic’. Gaggles of giggling girls wandering about their Ottoman heritage adorned in exquisitely tailored dark hued, figure-hugging maxi coats garnished with sumptuous silk scarves of vivid primary colours. The head coverings, moulded at the forehead into a shallow peek as if hiding a baseball cap beneath, framed their painted faces. Modest and modern, I suspect the look is more a sign of wealth and status than of piety. We finished the day with a flourish by ambling around the excellent archeological museum.