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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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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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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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.
Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell
Auntie Beeb recently ran an article about gays in the military – not in America this time – but in our foster home. It makes comical reading. For young gay Turks to receive their pink exemption slip (I prefer lilac myself) they have to prove their perversion with photographic evidence. Got a few holiday snaps of you being bummed on the beach in Bodrum? Now, young man, it only counts if you’re Martha not Arthur. The next best thing is to see you in a frock and slingbacks*. Anything floral by Laura Ashley will do. You couldn’t make it up.
For all those wasted years of navel gazing by the horrified higher echelons of the British armed forces, gay and lesbian Britons are now allowed to serve their country. People who know a great deal more than I do about these things say this has had absolutely no detrimental effect on the operational efficiency of Her Maj’s army, air force or navy (well, it’s always been rum and bum in the navy anyway). Military failure is reserved for our hapless politicians who send our brave boys (and girls) out to fight wars they can’t win.
Let’s face it, when it came to periods of genuine national emergency (like a world war), no one cared less where you put it. We were all cannon fodder back then (unless you were Quentin Crisp, of course).
Thank you to Pansyfan Paul who sent me the article.
*A cock in a shock frock reminds me of my encounter with transsexual prostitutes on my very first trip to Istanbul in 2003, but that’s another story.
Overcooking the Books
Sadly, my prediction about the little market a short sashay along the street from our house has come to pass. The ever-so smiley pony-tailed proprietor has removed his dusty stock and abandoned his customer-less business. A padlocked glazed door protects the dusty ghost shop, the shelves are empty, worthless rubbish is piled up in the middle of the cracked floor and a tatty ‘for rent’ sign is swinging in the wind outside. What next for this ill-fated space? A croissant-erie would be nice.
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Gay’s the Word and Perking Down Under
I’m ecstatic to announce to the room that London’s Gay’s the Word, Blighty’s premiere LGBT bookshop (and voted 3rd in the top 50 bookshops in Britain by the Independent newspaper), have added Perking the Pansies to their illustrious shelves. This is better than sex. Gay’s the Word really is the place to be seen. If you’re in the area, pop in, browse the aisles and thumb through the many titles on offer (and buy my book, of course). To celebrate this latest achievement and whet your appetite, I’ve released the first five chapters for everyone to read.
It doesn’t end there. Are you sitting down? On the very same day I found out about Gay’s the Word, my publisher told me that the Bookshop – Darlinghurst, Australia’s pre-eminent LGBT bookstore is also offering the book for sale, just in time for Mardi Gras. The discerning readers of Sydney will have the opportunity to meet:
“…the oddballs, VOMITs, vetpats, emigreys, semigreys, debauched waiters and middle England miseries.”
I can now declare that, just like the British Empire of yesteryear, the sun never sets on these pansies.
Perking the Pansies 