Our fat perfidious landlord has unveiled his dastardly intention to evict us should he find a buyer for the house. This is in spite of our two year tenancy agreement and faultless payment history. We will jump before we are pushed. Our minds are now set on change and this is the opportunity to cast our net wider than sleepy Yalıkavak. We now know there is more to the Bodrum Peninsula than living in an igloo with a view on the edge of a ghost town populated by street dogs and feral felines. Besides, the vile Vikings are back for the spring and I don’t relish the prospect of enduring the whinging drivel from miserable Cnut or the sight of vapid Ragnild’s gravity ravaged baps. Despite the temporary bedlam, a Bodrum in shiny new livery looks promising.
Category: Yalikavak
Politics is a Dirty Business
We were suffering from an advanced dose of cabin fever. We braved the inclement weather to stroll down to the village and take tea in the municipal café along the Yalıkavak harbour front. It’s a nice spot if it’s not too breezy. An earnest young local man with intense eyes and passible English engaged us in conversation, curious as to why we were in town out of season. Clearly, an educated and reflective individual it didn’t take him too long to turn the chat to politics, particularly the differences between the British and Turkish brands. We have been warned against talking politics and tried to keep it light and frothy, but he persisted. I mentioned the positive result for the Government in the constitutional reform referendum last year. As a passive observer, I thought the proposed amendments to be reasonable, and so too did the European Union. He assured me that politics is a zealous and divisive business in Turkey, and the referendum exposed the deep fault lines that exist in society. He said that many people passionately believe that the constitutional changes are just part of a larger, more sinister plot by political Islam to undermine the cherished secular state. Politics is a dirty business in every country and we shall see if the sceptics are right.
Old Scrubber
I am bored rattling around our big house on my own. I know I’m an old scrubber but there’s only so much scrubbing even I can do. Anyway, I can’t get down on knees like I used to. Well, getting down is a doddle but getting back up requires the assistance of two strong lads. I am considering getting a little Turk in to dust down my knick-knacks and clean out my drawers.
Neighbourly Clement invited me to a spot of lunch to relieve me of my solitary confinement. He’s all angst and ringing of hands at the moment because his dream retirement bungalow in the hills is delayed by a plague of minor technical hitches (no windows or roof).
Yalikavak Skies
We relax at home to revel in our continued good fortune with G&Ts, ice and a slice on the terrace. We sit in silent awe as the sun descends into the sea releasing a final flourish of soft red, peach and orange light into the evening sky. Spectacular but short lived, the riot of delicate hues is displaced by the chilled black night studded with a thousand stars. Now you don’t get that in Walthamstow.
Thank you to Clive, Greg and Sam for some of the images.
Night of the Living Dead
Prior to our exodus, my GP was concerned about the slow but inexorable rise in my blood pressure. He regularly, and rightly, gave me the standard lecture about diet, smoking and drinking to defer the time when prescription drugs will be needed to control it. As a precaution, I invested in an electronic monitor from Boots and check the reading every week or so. Soon after our emigration my blood pressure reverted to normal and has stubbornly stayed there ever since, despite my continued dependence on booze and fags. This is further proof that work isn’t good for my health. I occasionally check Liam’s pressure. It is so low that, technically, he is clinically dead and I’ve been sleeping with a corpse for months. I could prop him up in a village bar and no one would really notice. Most nights Yalıkavak resembles a scene from The Night of the Living Dead anyway.
Yalikavak Sex
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.
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
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.
Bodrum Blues
We rushed Clive around the peninsula to provide a tasty titbit of our foster home. He took to Bodrum even in mid makeover mode and adored the castle, camera-clicking like a man possessed. Unhappily, despite the glorious, cloudless skies, the rest of the midwinter yarımada is distinctly unprepossessing – scruffy, neglected and vacant. I think he finds Turkey’s rough, ramshackle patina rather unappealing. As man of certain age, cultivated habits and mature sensibilities, Clive is more drawn to the coiffured charm of the Home Counties.
It wasn’t always so. Clive’s salad days were filled with audacious spirit as he criss-crossed the globe in search of adventure and discovery; even floating up the Irrawaddy on a Sampan to smoke opium in the jungle with the natives (I know a sampan is a Chinese flat bottom boat so highly unlikely to be found in Burmese waters, but no matter). Alas, we must all grow up eventually and get a sensible job in sensible shoes. These days Clive’s favourite holiday destination is refined Madeira – Surrey with a little more sun.
Rubble, Rubble, Toil and Trouble
As a much needed contrast from our sleeping village beauty, we rode the dolly into Bodrum for a walkabout. We found the town in frantic refashion mode with mechanical diggers in full destructive swing. The Town Hall has been utterly gutted, the promenade hassle cafés have been demolished and the crazy paving beneath is being excavated. All along the narrow pedestrianised ‘bar street’ the cobbles have been ripped up leaving a multi-puddled dirt track and entire buildings have been razed revealing views of the Aegean not seen since Mausolus was on the throne. A chic new civic square overlooking the crusader castle would be a spectacular urban statement. I suspect it’s not to be. Doubtless, short sighted, short term commercial considerations will prevail.
As befits the town’s reputation as the summer playground for the Turkish urban elite, I sincerely hope that sufficient time, money and imagination will be spent on the finished product.
In a vain effort to raise its game, Bodrum’s ill-favoured ugly sister, Gümbet, had its own makeover last year. But still the roads leading into the tacky resort remain grimly uninviting, marred by dereliction and casual building debris. The meagre improvements to the central townscape look cheap, rushed and unfinished. You can’t polish a turd.
The Only Gay in the Village
We fancied a singalong fright night in the village and headed down to a local beachfront steakhouse. Popular with the hardy resident emigreys, it’s owned by bubbly, brassy bottle-blond Berni Belfast and her Turkish husband, Deniz, who cooks the best steak on the peninsula. Berni lays on the usual winter fare of fixed price menus, quiz nights and karaoke to coax the emigreys out from under their duvets. I like unpretentious Berni. She is the real deal, calls a spade a shovel and is a bracing breath of fresh air on a brisk night.
Proletarian Berni has a high-octave accent delivered like a sub-machine gun. As my Mother is from that part of the world I can catch the conversation. Alas, poor Liam understands hardly a word and just nods and smiles politely like the Queen at a Commonwealth jamboree.
Berni regaled us with tales of the bar wars. Allegedly, following months of clandestine subterfuge, her former front of house left without warning to launch his own restaurant taking with him their head chef and photocopies of their menus. I sense industrial espionage is rife in the catering trade here but to set up a new establishment dishing up identical fare for the same audience only a few hundred metres along the pretty promenade does seem a touch provocative. The bilious bad blood bubbles just beneath the surface.
Blackpool Bobbi was our camp karaoke compere for the evening’s random entertainment. Unforgettable veteran resident Bobbi fosters a unique, instantly recognisable look. Uncompromisingly clad top to tail in Persil whiteness from his back-combed highlights to his shiny patent leather loafers, he belts out a passable interpretation of ‘My Way’ between the vodka shots. I admire his pluck. Truly, Bobbi is the only gay in the village.
Perking the Pansies 