Category: Vetpats

Beggar Thy Neighbour

Susan and Chuck invited us to their pre-Christmas shindig. They live in Gökcebel, a sprawling village in the foothills above Yalıkavak, in a charming detached house surrounded by a pretty well-manicured walled garden.  As we arrived Susan presented us with a Manhattan. She mixes a mean cocktail and it nearly blew my head off. The usual suspects were in attendance with a few out of town extras to add to the vetpat mix. After a short while of mingling and polite conversation, we became trapped in the kitchen with merry widow Maureen from Windsor. She thought us very entertaining because she so loves the ‘gays’. She didn’t exactly endear herself by comparing us to Colin and Justin, the two queeny Scottish daytime TV interior ‘designers’ who devastate the homes of the unsuspecting with cheap and nasty kitsch. Realising she is incurably stupid rather than malicious, I let it pass.

Susan laid on a sumptuous festive spread. As we tucked into the sausage rolls, Liam chatted to naked capitalist Francis from Weybridge, who lives near Gümüslük with his wife Dotty, who apparently is. He retired from property speculation a few years ago and is a great admirer of Margaret Thatcher. He made his first fortune by buying and selling discounted, state subsidised council houses. Christ, even the Iron Lady hadn’t intended that to happen.

Having escaped the clutches of merry Maureen and fat cat Francis, we retreated to a bitter but discreet and sheltered corner of the garden for a furtive fag where we soon attracted the attention of Patricia from Bitez. She told us that she also owns a house in Wandsworth, south London, so she’s worth a bob or two. I engaged in a little small talk about the area, since I grew up there. The main advantage of living in Wandsworth, she said, is the low council tax. Mind you, she doesn’t think she should pay anything as she lives permanently in Turkey. “Do you know why your council tax is low?” I enquired. She didn’t. “Well, never be old, never be young, never be disabled or the parents of a disabled child” I explained. Patricia pondered a while, playfully twisting her hair and caressing the vulgar bauble welded to her finger. “Oh, I don’t care about people like that” she sniffed. I hope she never ends up in a wheelchair.

Shaken, Not Stirred

In the fine old tradition of ‘you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours’ I’d like to introduce my first guest blogger – clever, courageous Karyn from Kirazli. Vetpat Karyn lives in a traditional Turkish village about 10 kms from Kuşadası. She describes her arcadian idyll as ‘surrounded by flowering fields of cherry trees, figs, vines and olives. The village is a traditional Turkish Koy of narrow twisting streets, stone and whitewashed houses and terracotta roofs. Cooled by fragrant pine scented breezes Kirazli is a world away from the hot and bustling tourist centres of the coastal strip’. Sounds like a lot of old fragrant flannel to me so Liam and I will just have to check it out and dish the dirt. Take a look at Karyn’s own blog Being Koy. It a class act. In the meantime, here’s her provocatively unkoy take on the plight of a woman alone in Turkey. Enjoy.

Karyn

I am immune to the charms of Mediterranean men, I grew up on the Costa Del Sol and after a brief bout at thirteen with the virus that is the Spanish Waiter I developed a life long immunity to all those sons of the southern lands who flash dark eyes and mutter unlikely compliments in clichéd accents.

Of course this doesn’t stop them hitting on me, any time, any place, anywhere; because Turkish men in the tourist resorts are the Martini boys of love.

Hyped up on exaggerated tales told in tea houses across the hinterland through the dark days of winter the men who flock to the resorts for work in the season are brainwashed into believing that western women are not only very rich and bang like barn doors but are blind and have no sense of smell, so even blokes who look like the back end of a goat and smell similar are in with a chance.

Of course there is a grain of hope in their dreaming, and every summer season will throw up a friend of a friend who swept a British woman off her feet in nanoseconds and landed a life of luxury and indolence in return for climbing on top and thinking of Turkey.

This all makes life difficult for me and those of my expat sisters who really aren’t interested; nobody minds a mild flirtation, sexual attraction makes the world go round, but there is a time and a place for everything and the Turkish Lothario has boundary issues.

Top marks for inappropriate timing likely to get you at the very least a broken jaw go to Salatin, a taxi driver with broken English and a manic gleam in his eye. He propositioned me on the drive to the airport when I was flying my husband’s remains home for the funeral. He really wanted a British wife; I really wanted his gonads crushed beneath my boots.

Top marks for seizing the moment go to the Manager of Burger King in Kusadasi who managed to fit a sleazy come on into the two seconds it took me to order a meal. “You want to go large?” he leered at me whilst stroking his groin suggestively. I picked up a limp French fry and peered at it; it drooped pathetically between my fingers. I looked at him; I maintained deadpan eye contact until he withered noticeably and slithered off.

Top marks for trying to cop a feel at any opportunity go to the noxious and extremely short market trader who, when my friend agreed to buy a pair of jeans, showed his delight by grabbing me and rapidly groping all he could reach. A heavy stamp with a finely engineered Kurt Geiger heel onto his bare toes sent him limping away.

It seems the only place to avoid unwelcome advances is my village. Here the older men nod respectfully at me and the young men politely step out of my way with murmured greetings. It couldn’t be any other way in the village, disrespect me and my male neighbours will be compelled to hurt you and my female neighbours, who are infinitely more imaginative, will find ways to make your life a living hell for the next fifty years!

Obviously the only thing they talk about in the tea shops here are how ripe the grapes are, not how ripe are the yabanci women. I am very grateful for that.

The Emigreys

The ex-pats we’ve met are a select collection of friendlies and freaks. I have christened them the emigreys, retirees serving out their twilight years in the sun, most of whom seem to be just a little to the right of Genghis Khan and who bought a jerry built white box in Turkey because it was cheaper than Spain (well, it was at the time). Everyday emigrey life operates within a parallel universe of neo colonial separateness preoccupied with visa hops to Kos, pork sausages, property prices and Blighty bashing.

Cream of the emigrey crop are the vetpats, veterans who have been living in Turkey for many years. Usually better informed than their peers with a less asinine view of the world, vetpats have taken the trouble to learn Turkish and are better integrated into the wider community.

A little noticed and discrete group of emigreys is the sexpats, grey men of means who are serviced by young Turkish men in return for a stipend. The contract suits both parties well and the trade is conducted in secrecy far removed from prying eyes and tittle-tattlers.

We are trying hard not to get too involved and cultivate a mysterious aloofness – courteous but distant – spectators rather than participants. We prefer to amuse ourselves with the obsequious wintering waiters, most of whom seem both repelled and fascinated by our obvious union.

Stand By Your Beds!

The IKEA Room Set

Chrissy turned up to check on our home making progress. Actually, it felt more like a military inspection, and we dutifully stood by our beds. She nodded general approval as she moved from room to room though was strangely dismayed by the lack of bedside tables. “But, bedside tables are so last year!” I insisted. She glared at me in sheer panic before composing herself to suggest we might secure the services of a cleaner, “so good for local employment.” How quaintly colonial, I thought. I haven’t had one of those since my days as a sixties army brat in the Far East. However, that was before Britain had withdrawn ‘East of Suez’ and assumed a diminished role in the World.

La Crème de la Crème

The evening of Clement’s supper soiree had arrived, and we waited in our still empty house until quite a few of his guests had turned up before venturing next door. We approached his house with some trepidation. Neither Liam nor I are that good in crowds of strangers and as new kids on the block, there was an added frisson to the occasion. With a cordial welcome, Clement led us like condemned lambs into the body of the kirk. There assembled were the congregation, ‘the gang’ Chrissy whispered, la crème de la crème of the ex-pat community.

We grabbed a drink and bravely resolved to mingle. I occupied an empty seat on the patio next to butch, Brigit from Brisbane, who I rashly assumed to be a lesbian, and threw myself into conversation. Our tête-à-tête tripped along nicely until I innocently but unwisely enquired “Do you have a girlfriend?” With a glacial glare she rebuked me with “I don’t know what you mean” and ignored me for the rest of the evening. Oops. This was to be the first of many social gaffes, though in my defence it was an easy mistake to make given the lack of make-up, masculine attire and boyish hair do. Well, if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, it is a bloody duck.

La-Creme-de-la-creme-film-640x307

My next social intervention met with much greater success. I sidled next to Charlotte; a vivacious, energetic kind of girl with a bouncing cleavage that heaved in rhythm to her filthy laugh. We hit it off immediately. Charlotte and tall, debonair, silver haired husband, Alan, are ex-pat veterans having lived in Turkey for eight years. They sold up in England and built their dream house in Yalıkavak. It was obvious we shared similar values and I sense a friendship developing.

Next up was lovely social worker Nancy, Charlotte’s best friend visiting from London. Nancy is a shapely, sassy lass of Turkish extraction who speaks Turkish with a Cockney accent. Nancy has abandoned a barren and loveless marriage in search of romance and orgasms. She is having a passionate but stormy affair with a local skipper.

Liam hovered nervously in the background and spoke mostly to Chrissy. She dished the dirt on everyone in the room. Last to arrive were Susan, who marched in with a confident gait, and husband Chuck. Susan is a pretty Fulham girl in her 50s who had been clearly gorgeous in her youth. Chuck is a well built, striking older man with tattoos and warm blue eyes. Feisty and independent, Susan told me she ran away to Istanbul in her teens where she met and married a philandering academic many, many years her senior. The marriage ended in divorce. She then tried on a second older Turk for size. They too divorced. Following her dalliance with the Turkish branch of Help the Aged, Susan left for the New World, settling in LA where she owned a coffee shop and developed a curious mid-Atlantic accent.

Yankee Chuck’s chequered youth perfectly matches his seventies porn star looks. Susan and Chuck’s eyes met across the Gaggia coffee maker; they fell in love and married. Despite (or perhaps because of) his colourful past, Chuck has become a reformed character, virtually tee-total and a bit of a born again puritan. Susan, on the other hand, likes a drink. We were left with the distinct impression that, despite many pretenders to the throne, Susan is truly the queen bee in these parts.

After a few hours of polite inquisition, we decided to withdraw. We walked back to our holiday let for a final shandy on the balcony to debrief. All things considered, we survived the ordeal relatively unscathed. But, are we the ‘right sort?’ we wondered. “Well, we’re not talking Monte Carlo” Liam sighed leading to a more fundamental question to ponder. Was this disparate group of people thrown together purely by chance really our sort? And so, we surmised, the stage is set, the cast assembled, and we made it through the first act without fluffing too many lines.