I’ll be banging on about my book ad nauseum at the Polari Literary Salon at London’s Royal Festival Hall on the 6th February 2012. All my profit and more has gone on paying for the bloody airfare. I suppose you have speculate to accumulate. Anyone who has read the book and likes it, please add a review to Amazon (if you haven’t already). Every little helps, as they say in the Tesco’s advert.
For details about the event check Time Out online. To buy tickets check out the Southbank Website.
After much brouhaha and faffing about, th
e Turkish Government will finally introduce new visa requirements on the 1st February. Essentially, this means that foreigners entering Turkey on a tourist visa can only stay for a maximum of 90 days in any 180 day period. Anyone staying longer will have to apply for a residency permit.
The permit process is not particularly onerous or expensive but it is a tiresome paper chase of red tape. It can be weeks before you finally get your mitts on the precious little blue book (that looks like it’s been knocked up by a child in a shed). Patience is needed. After years of encouraging foreigners to spend their readies and buy their dream holiday home, Turkey will not allow them to enjoy the fruits of their investment for more than 3 months at a time without becoming residents of a country they don’t reside in.
There’s a more significant change that is rocketing blood pressures into orbit. Spleens are being vented all over the forums. According to an article in the Land of Lights, the Turkish Parliament has passed a law requiring all expats with a residency permit exceeding twelve months to join the Turkish National Health Scheme. The cost will be a flat fee of 212 Lira per month each. This week’s special offers are two-for-one for married couples and children under 18 get in free. Those living in sin or have done the in-sickness-and-in-health thing differently (civil partnerships, for example) needn’t apply. Also, as with all the best health insurance policies, pre-existing conditions will not be covered. So it’s just tough if you’re a bit old and slightly doddery, with a touch of arthritis and spot of hypertension. That’ll be many expats then. Best not cancel your private insurance just yet.
The article also states that, while the scheme isn’t up and running yet, everyone is required to register by the end of this month. Failure to do so will attract a hefty fine. If this is the case, how come this crept up and caught us awares? What’s our man in Bodrum (actually, our woman) been doing? Sod all as usual.
I’m a great supporter of national health care, free at point of delivery and available to all. Apparently, the fee is the same for everyone, Turk and expat alike. I find this difficult to believe as 212 lira is a lot of dosh to most Turks I know. We’re happy to do our bit and pay our dues but I’m not keen on any scheme that isn’t linked to the ability to pay. As the cost of residency for Brits dropped dramatically last year, is this a case of robbing Peter to pay Paul?
As with most things the devil will be in the detail. The forums are hot with gossip and hearsay, outrage, resignation, argument and counter-argument. I’ll let the dust settle before I decide what to do. I’d still like something from the Honorary Consul, though. I won’t be holding my breath.
Ex-spook, Linda (she denies it, but I know she was), gave up her 007 career at the Pentagon and settled in the Low Countries to write about life and fret about global warming. If my house was fifty feet below sea level, I’d fret too. Linda is a prolific blogger, accomplished writer and published author. She’s also an all-round good liberal egg with the all the right values and a huge heart. Linda has been a great supporter of my blog virtually from the outset. She wrote an incredible review of my book and, best of all, I didn’t have to bribe her. This just goes to prove you can’t wet the beak of the honourable. In addition to the review, she’s written a post Pansies, Oh So Successfully Perked on Adventures in Expatland. Read it here.
It’s bleedin’ freezin’. As night time temperatures plummeted, Liam extracted his Dennis the Menace jim-jams from the bottom of the wardrobe, unrolled the woolly socks, re-commissioned the hot water bottle and upped the tog with an extra duvet on the bed. It’s icy times like this when I most appreciate not sleeping alone. As night progresses, we weave together, limbs entwined like a French plait, sometimes opting for periods of alternate spooning.
Come sweaty August nights, it’ll be a different story entirely. We’ll roll to opposite sides of the bed in a fruitless attempt to cool our clammy old hides.
When I planned my virtual tour, I knew the book would have to take centre stage. There would be little point if it didn’t. But I didn’t want to just bang on about it and do the hard sell. People would get bored and simply switch channels. I know I would. I had to find a theme, something to maintain interest. I also wanted to say something related to the people that have kindly let me loose on their blogs. A theme gradually emerged: me. My favourite subject.
Today’s post is on Helen’s European Journey. Elegant Helen is wander-lusting gypsy-like across Europe (well, so far across Iberia – give ‘em time) in a travelling caravan with hunky husband and two pretty pussies in tow. So, folks, I give you… me and caravans. Not the dusty camel trains of antiquity hauling exotic goods along the ancient Silk Road from China to Anatolia, but the common or garden static metal type of my childhood. It’s a tenuous link, but stay with me.
Over the Helen for Trailer Trash
My publisher, Jo Parfitt, recently interviewed on her Writer’s Abroad Radio Show. Blimey, I felt like a studio starlet – though more minor Rank than major MGM. Jo just chucked me in at the deep end to sink or swim – no rehearsals, no re-takes. I was nervous – lots of ums and arrs. Despite the spluttering I didn’t drown – not too distasteful or disgraceful. Jo also interrogated me for her website. I got these questions in advance so my answers were a tad more considered.
Check out my radio gaga here and my more thoughtful dispatch from the front line here.
Check out what all the fuss is about.
Next whistle stop on my virtual book tour (are you still on the train?) is Liz Cameron’s blog, Slowly-by-Slowly. Liz writes with depth and poetry about her cross-cultural life as an American married to a Turk through the eyes of a troupe of Ottoman era Karagöz shadow puppets. She’s not insane. It’s a metaphor, silly. Of greatest interest to me, though, is that Liz lives in Provincetown, a pretty little New England seaside resort which is a summer mecca for gay visitors – a kind of American Brighton. Yes, I am that shallow. My invite to ogle the shocking males must be lost in the post. The shocking mail in Turkey is to blame, no doubt.
Hop over to Slowly-by-Slowly to catch the book review and to hang out with M’Lady and the crazy marionettes.
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While Bodrum collectively nursed its New Year hangover, the mechanical diggers moved in and started excavating the half of the promenade that wasn’t ripped apart last winter. These CATs don’t purr. Thankfully, we live far enough away from the main drag and didn’t have to endure the deafening rat-a-tat-tat competing with the deafening rat-a-tat-tat in our heads. Others were not so fortunate. Lessons have been learned from last year’s scramble to complete the makeover in time for the Spring rush. Not a minute has been wasted. Entire shop and restaurant frontages have been torn down leaving doorways hanging in the air. It’s not a case of mind the step, more grab the rope. Following the torrential rain of the last few days, the wide strip where the pavement used to be now resembles a bog which can only be crossed by impromptu paths of broken slabs set down by proprietors desperate to keep their doors open. Wheelchairs not welcome. Take a look at the before, during and after snaps.
You might also like Bedlam in Bodrum
Book Tour IntermissionWe know a young Turkish man called Mete. He’s at university studying hard to make something of himself. He’s also gay. He’s not riddled with guilt. He’s resolutely out and comfortable in his own skin. He’s one of the new breed of young modern Turks demanding to live and breathe free. It won’t be easy.
People ask me why I don’t write more of the plight of LGBT people in my foster land on my blog and why my book isn’t about the struggle for sexual equality. Actually, I have touched on this in both, but neither the blog nor the book is intended to be a political or social polemic. Maybe my next project will be more radical. People who know me know I have a lot to say. It saddens me that if I do, I will have to do it from a safe distance.
I greatly admire Mete. He reminds me of a young Jack. Blighty the Seventies wasn’t so different from Turkey in 2012. Be brave Mete and stay safe.
Take a look at Mete’s World.
And check out the book.
I was really pleased when Istanbul Stranger asked me to guest on her blog as part of my virtual book tour. She’s deliciously witty, calls a spade a spade and her sharp observations about her life in Old Constantinople are a joy to read. She’s American but I think her writing style has a distinctive ironic British twist. Maybe she was a Brit in a former life. I’m there to plug my book but, as this isn’t Oprah’s Book Club, I thought I’d regale you with tales of my first visit to the good old US of A.
Ladies and Gents I give you Yankee Tales.
Perking the Pansies 