Category: TV & Radio

The Word on the Street

Thank you to those who voted in my playful poll about proxy servers. Here are the results of the Perking the Pansies jury:

31% – Yes I use a proxy server in Turkey

28% – No I don’t use a proxy server

10% – I’ve no idea what you’re taking about!

31% – I don’t live in Turkey

For anyone interested, the way to access a proxy server is to sign up to a ‘Virtual Private Network’ (VPN). This handy service provides a gateway to British terrestrial TV and also circumvents internet restrictions by the Turkish authorities. We use my-private-network.co.uk. The service was easy to set up and costs about a fiver a month. This allows us to stream live TV and watch catch up services on our laptop. We also installed the BBC iPlayer to download BBC programmes to watch at our leisure. For an altogether better viewing experience, we connect the laptop to our TV and sound system.

The Downside

The process can be frustrating and unsatisfying. Live streaming and catch up needs a good internet speed. Ours is up and down like whore’s drawers. A variable picture quality, broadcasts that freeze then jump forward and endless buffering can irritatingly interrupt our  enjoyment. Downloading programmes using the iPlayer works really well as it saves a temporary copy on our computer but, of course, only applies to BBC broadcasts.

One Out, All Out

The internet police have been at it again in the continuing war between Google and Digiturk. As from the 1st of March Google Blogger in its entirety was banned in Turkey. The draconian censors are indifferent to the effect on millions of blogs, many of them small businesses trying to earn an honest crust in challenging times. Digiturk is acting like an overbearing corporate bully and Google just doesn’t give a toss about anything other the bottom line. There’s no profit in blogging as it’s a free service so why cause a fuss? The core of the dispute is infringement of broadcasting rights. This is laughable when you think that Turkey is flooded by counterfeit goods. Fancy a bootleg copy of the ‘King’s Speech’? No problem.

It’s relatively easy to get round the ban with a proxy server, an application that lets us pick up British TV. Please take a split second to complete the poll below. Don’t worry, you can’t be identified!

Wild About the Oscars

I lost Liam to a night at the Oscars on the CNBCe channel. He watched the entire back-slapping marathon from the glitzy red carpet entrée of fixed Hollywood smiles, borrowed frocks and asinine chatter right through to the tacky banquet of tearful and gushing OTT acceptance speeches. I awoke to find Liam asleep on the sofa wrapped like a babe in swaddling clothes. I went about my morning household chores silently. The washing machine on final spin finally roused him from his slumber.

‘The King’s Speech’ won Best Picture and Colin Firth who made his name wearing magnificent britches and a stiff upper lip was awarded the gong for Best Actor. We’ll take in the film when it’s released in Turkey. The multiplex at the Oasis Shopping Centre just outside Bodrum is cheap, comfortable and civilised, providing armchairs and a mid-screening fag break for the punters. Unfortunately, the entertainment can be rudely disrupted by a Turk shouting down a mobile.

Yalikavak Sex

Video Nasty

I completely lost Liam to an afternoon musical matinee, the delightful feel good little number called Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street – a video nasty with nice tunes. Not my cup of çay at all. While he was gripped by the melodious gore, I spent my barren time studying my blog stats. Perking the Pansies has finally penetrated the Dark Continent and I seem to have acquired an avid fan in Costa Rica. Twinkle, twinkle little red star, how I wonder who you are.

I was mystified by someone out there searching for Yalikavak Sex which inexplicably returned my saintly, strictly sexless site. Copulation in vacant Yalıkavak in a chilly, wet February? That would be a triumph of hope over experience. Like the deserted village, I won’t be putting my stall out again until April.

Irresistable Bubble Gum

We spent the evening watching the first series of Glee. As a strange hybrid of Fame and High School Musical with a wafer thin bubble gum plot and hammy acting, I was determined to loathe it. I sat through the lot. Liam was utterly bewitched by a magnificent rendition of Funny Girl by Idina Menzel. ‘So much better than batty Barbra’s original,’ he gushed. We really need to get out more.

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.

Sex and the Sitesi

Vivacious vetpat Charlotte and naughty but nice Nancy are compulsive Sex and the City groupies. So when they heard that my butch scaffolder nephew gave me a DVD of  ‘Sex and the City 2’ for Christmas they started foaming at the mouth. I have a perceptive family who know what I like though I suspect the strapping lad asked his girlfriend to buy it for him to avoid being ridiculed at the till in HMV.

Charlotte and Nancy descended on us for a camp night at the movies dragging Charlotte’s dapper hubby, Alan, behind them. ‘Sex and the City’ really is a gay and girlie thing. Straight men just don’t get it. As with SATC1, the sequel is less edgy and sexually incisive than the broads with balls TV shows but is diverting enough with a thin storyline cleverly disguised by a grand pageant of fab frocks, fuck me heels and glam handbags. The rapid fire costume changes left our girlie guests gasping doubling the dimensions of their bounteous baps. Meanwhile, bored Alan dropped off in the corner.

The soaring triumph of the film is a remarkably nimble performance by premier league gay icon, Liza with a ‘Zee’ Minnelli, who I thought had long since checked into a waxwork museum. Draped in a little black mini dress displaying an amazing set of pins many decades her junior and a fixed nip and tuck expression, Ms Minnelli delivered a delightfully feisty rendition of Beyoncé’s ‘Single Ladies (Put a Ring on it)’. The agile, aging diva bopped boldly about the boards like the game old bird that she is. I feared she might fall and break a hip. And, while I have no wish to impugn Ms Minnelli’s undoubted talents or profound ability to hold back the years, I suspected CGI.

Much-troubled Ms Garland’s much-troubled progeny appeared as the surprise star turn at a gay ‘wedding’ at the top of the film. Alas, it  put our tastefully understated French bistro-themed civil partnership reception at a gastro-pub in Waterloo firmly in the shade. That’s Hollywood for you.

Thanks to Paul Hard for the post title. Sorry Paul, there’s no money in it!

Nick Nack Paddy Wack

Ingrid in a Funny Hat

We had a late lunch, curled up on the sofa and watched ‘Inn of the Sixth Happiness’ starring the legendary Ingrid Bergman. Casting a tall, ravishing actress with a Swedish accent in the role of a short, Cockney, puritanical protestant missionary inflicting her version of God on the Chinese masses was a bit of a stretch. The film was shot in Snowdonia with the children drawn from the Chinese community in Liverpool. Nonetheless it’s a ripping yarn. Why ruin a good story with the truth?

Gay as a Daisy in May

On the sabbath we decided to indulge in a hearty roast chicken dinner with all the trimmings followed by a screening of  the classic musical ‘South Pacific’ courtesy of Karen at Christmas. I adore the line “I’m as gay as a daisy in May”. They just don’t write lyrics like that anymore – they dare not. Oh, such innocent times. The Rogers and Hammerstein score is a particular favourite of Liam’s. He once had the the soundtrack with the lead sung by Kiri T Canopener. He’s so gay.

Thermal Knickers

New Year’s Day was spent nursing a hangover and basking on the balcony in the gorgeous warming winter sunshine. The benevolent sun enabled me to break the back of the Christmas laundry that was languishing in a suitcase. Our fabric conditioned knicker supply has been replenished just in the nick of time.

The house remains relentlessly chilly. We have yet to find an effective heating solution and so thermal pants are a must-wear. If only it were possible to construct a dwelling on a turntable to follow the passage of the Sun. After dusk we watched Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince on Digiturk. Liam is a huge fan and bought all the books (with the adult covers, of course). He watched silently mesmerised wearing the strangely sexy ‘Dennis the Menace’ jim jams my sister bought him for Christmas.

Pigs in the Proverbial

As village life is quietly dull and the days are short, we are taking time to endlessly potter and enjoy our newly procured lives as decadent dossers. Daily activities are stretched to breaking point to fill the available time. The expensive entertainment system we extravagantly bought on our minimum wage is paying dividends. We are rapidly exhausting our DVD library with nightly showings of our favourite films and TV series from good times past; Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, Beautiful Thing, Love Actually, The Holiday, Calendar Girls, Postcards from the Edge, Golden Girls (Series 1,2,3 and 4); Gimme, Gimme, Gimme (Series 1,2 and 3) and a host of other manly favourites. We are like pigs in the proverbial.

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