Another Immaculate Conception

Billboard from an Anglican Church in New Zealand

When it comes to social issues, readers may think I’m a bit of a one trick pony – gay this, gay that, blah, blah, blah. In fact, as a bleeding heart pinko liberal, I come equipped with a range of predictable views on a range of predictable issues. People who feed and water me will attest to this. Apart from the fairy thing, I rarely use my blog as a platform to spread the liberal word. This isn’t why I started it. But (yes, here comes the ‘but’) there’s one thing that caught my eye recently that I just can’t resist commenting on. It’s been reported in the New Civil Rights Movement, an American online magazine, that Arizonan women are now legally pregnant two weeks before conception. Even though I agree with a woman’s right to choose, I’m not going to wade into the whole American abortion debate. It’s a divisive issue that stirs up an enormous amount of emotion on both sides of the argument. However, isn’t this all getting a bit daft? In effect, this means that a virgin can be pregnant (Hallelujah, it’s a miracle). Why stop there? What about those wet dreams of our teenage years? Or don’t we boys count?

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Tuscan Turkey

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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Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell

Zenne Dancer

From Top to Bottom

Now we’ve unplugged Digiturk, we’re gradually re-acquainting ourselves with our DVD library. This is more troublesome than it sounds. Our LG home entertainment system is rejecting discs at random. Again. This tiresome business first started last November. At the time, the system was still under guarantee and Liam called in the service man. The burly, surly boy who turned up at our door had a brilliant suggestion. We were trying to play the ‘wrong kind’ of DVD. I quickly disabused him of that and he grudgingly took the machine away for repairs. It was returned a week later and worked fine. For a few months. Naturally, it’s now out of warranty. When we move back to Blighty, our top of the range system will be at the bottom of the bin.

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Life’s Good

Mad Mother Nature

Bodrum, Turkey, April 2012. What is going on with this crazy weather? A real snap, crackle and pop of a storm has just rolled across the horizon. We’ve been assaulted by hailstones. Big buggers, they were too. Mad Mother Nature needs to be sectioned. She’s clearly lost the plot and is a danger to herself and the poor boys trying to complete the urban refit before the season is in full swing. Let’s also spare a thought for the Teutonic early birds with their knee-length shorts and sensible shoes who have taken flight to the nearest covered refuge.

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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Y Viva España

Pounds and Porn

From Local to Yokel

It’s Sod’s Law. As soon we decide to paddle back to Blighty on the evening tide to become country yokels, two things happen to make life in battered Bodrum just that little bit easier and that little bit cheaper.

First off, the Town’s highways and byways are being laid with fibre optic cables. A battalion of dusky, sweaty vested navvies is carving out mini-trenches along every street. The deep furrows are being backfilled badly and dribbled with lumpy tarmac. In some of the crazy paving alleys, zigzagging troughs look like hastily repaired earthquake cracks.

The project is a joint venture between Super Online (internet) and Turkcell (mobile phone). Fibre optic cables provide a much faster and more reliable internet experience and the new service will give the current whore’s drawers service from TTNET (Turk Telekom) a run for its money. Who knows, it may even drive down prices. I hear there are also plans for cable TV in the pipeline. Oh, what joy: the chance to tell Digiturk (Satellite broadcaster) where to shove their overpriced packages.

And so to the second piece of good news. Dolly drivers on the flat fare blue-liveried bus routes now charge us the tariff usually reserved for locals (2 lira instead of 2.75 as advertised in English). It’s only taken two years. Sadly, we’ve yet to get the local rate at cute Ali’s barbers for our one-round-the-side-two-on-the-top crops. He’s worth it though. Even without the ‘extras’.

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Something for the Weekend Sir?

Back, Sack and Crack

Jack the Scribbler

Book promos are like buses (and men). Not a sniff for ages then several come at once.  Check out Blog to Book – Start to Finish on Redheaded Writer and my interviews with the Turkey Expat Forum and Working Traveller.

I’m constantly surprised by the continuing interest and remarkable book sales. Thank you.

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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Bodrum Reborn

The Mould Season

Britain’s Got Loads of Talent

We caught the opening episode of this year’s Britain’s Got Talent on catch-up TV. A genuine attempt to discover the best (and worst) amateur talent that Blighty has to offer, or a cynical commercial exercise in crass oversentimentality? Probably both and so what? It was brilliant. From the weird to the truly wonderful, the eccentric to the frankly insane, we lapped up every last drop.

First to have us on the edge of our IKEA sofa was a duo of male, married (to each other) ballroom dancers called the Sugar Dandies. Their sweet dance of love had the audience swaying in the stalls and cheering from the aisles. Tears rolled down my cheeks. Then came the Welsh all-teenage boys choir from the Valleys called Only Boys Aloud (get it?). Their sublime rendition of a traditional Welsh folk song brought the stunned crowd to its feet and sent shivers down my spine. Who says the only thing the so-called illiterate teenagers of Blighty do these days is shag, take drugs and riot?

The soaring triumph was Jonathan, a shy, overweight 17 year man with big hair, clumsy demeanour and self-esteem in the sewer. Charlotte, his pretty singing companion had to virtually drag him on stage. After a slightly shaky start, jaws dropped as hesitant tenor met pretty pop opera voice. The hairs at the back of neck stood up in tribute. Fabulous.

Cue the videos (if you get an error, just click into You Tube)

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.