Following our mini-break in breezy Yalıkavak we returned home to sultry Bodrum. As usual we travelled by dolly. As usual, it was chock-a-block. Sat immediately in front of us were a young Turkish couple with their infant who loudly asserted its discomfort in a way only babies know how. It seems to me that during waking hours a new human’s only function is to eat, pee and poo using their tiny but powerful lungs to proclaim their pre-occupation. Unfortunately for us it was the latter need that was being expressed on this particular occasion. The doting parents dutifully obliged with a full service. The only ventilation on a dolly is airflow from the front as it moves. We tasted the full potency of the pungent evacuation.
The Juggling Smuggler
On our last day in Yalıkavak we ventured again into the village for a sunny stroll and a spot of lunch. We were greeted by a host of familiar waiters, foremost of whom was Ahmed the Kurd. Handsomely constructed, entrepreneurial Ahmed has a flirtatious charm and dishonest eyes. He juggles his life by waiting tables during the summer and smuggling contraband across the Iraqi border during the winter, bribing the border guards with cartons of Marlboro’ Lights.
After lunch, we sauntered back to the house for a final dip and a nap before our return home. On route we spotted little bit gay, local boy Rasheed sitting alone in a lokanta. We approached him for a cheery, shallow chat. It pained us to find him unkempt, fidgety and broody, so different from the flirty, chirpy chappy we’d met just a few months before. He said that he hadn’t been able to find work this year. This will have left him close to penniless. We offered a few words of solace and a refill which he declined. We left him to nurse his tepid Nescafé.
Happy Birthday America
I’d like to extend a huge thank you to an individual from Burlingame, California who has single-handedly doubled the hits to Perking the Pansies for the 4th July, American Independence Day. I really hope you like what you read and will come back again. Burlingame, the City of Trees, is a small community close to San Francisco. It looks like a charming place to live. Perhaps Liam and I will get to visit one day.
On this side of the pond it was Independence Day long before our Yankee cousins awoke from their slumber and began their tea party. It made me wonder how the course of modern history might have been different if mad King George III and his hapless ministers had agreed to the reasonable demands of the thirteen colonies to be represented in the British Parliament.
Happy Birthday America. No hard feelings.
PS: It would be thoughtless of me not to mention the dedicated Pansy Fan from San José, Costa Rica who has visited hundreds of times over the months. I don’t know who you are but I’m indebted to you. ‘I thank you’ as the glorious Julian Clary would say.
Irfan the Slut
During our stay we strolled down to Yalıkavak for a spot of dinner and a trip down memory lane. We had a few snifters in the bar where last year the pretty stripping barman had danced around us prettily. He was nowhere to seen so we assume he’s moved on to greener pastures where the dancing is more profitable.
I spotted Captain Irfan sitting alone and beckoned him to join us. He did so enthusiastically and ordered a fresh round of Rakıs. Conversation was subdued as Irfan’s grasp of English has barely advanced beyond the ‘enjoy your meal’ stage and our Turkish has remained deplorable. Irfan leered at every bit of skirt that passed by, regardless of age. His lewd behaviour pressed me to exclaim ‘Irfan, you are a slut’ to which he enquired ‘What is a slut?’ My explanation drew the broadest of grins and the proud response ‘Yes, I am a slut!’
Irfan doesn’t really get us. In his world man on man action is, at best, a minor sideshow to the main event. Despite this he makes an affable, protective host which prompted Liam to depict him as the village muhtar (head man). Mighty Irfan was mightily flattered by the accolade. Finally, as the bar entertained the dregs we returned to the house for a final glass of red and a naughty skinny dip.
Hi-De-Hi
Alan’s daughter Samantha was holidaying on Rhodes so he and Charlotte decided to join her for a few days. They offered us unlimited access to their wine cellar and use of their plunge pool in return for cat feeding duties. We accepted without hesitation. Like the Raj of old we headed for the hills to escape the Bodrum heat. We spent a romantic and restful three nights in their luxuriant but unpretentious home overlooking Yalıkavak in the company of various soporific felines and their assorted multi-coloured offspring. The breezy calm was only occasionally interrupted by the call to prayer and the municipal public address system informing the townsfolk of local events, planned power cuts, road closures and the like. It’s a cross between 1984 and Hi-De-Hi. Liam was in frisky, horizontal mood as we lazied around the pool. He whispered to me
I’m ready for my blow job, Mr De Mille.
Ultimate Blog Challenge
I’ve just joined the Ultimate Blog Challenge. I have to post every day for the whole of July. Well, I post every day anyway so where’s the challenge?
Tarty Chic
We sank a jar in a glitzy overpriced watering hole along the marina promenade and observed the rich-kids at play. The children of the Turkish urban elite are a strange breed. Many of the boys wouldn’t look out of place in Soho and the girls drape themselves in expensive tarty-chic virtually indistinguishable from the Russian ladies of the night who ply their trade discretely around them. It all conveys an emancipated image that I suspect is illusory given the deeply conservative nature of society even at the highest echelons.
Summer Winds
Bodrum is always a few degrees hotter than Yalıkavak as it’s partially protected from the prevailing north winds by a south-facing aspect and a natural amplitheatre of low hills. It’s the price we pay for our stone-built Bohemian idyll. The searing heat is mercifully moderated by the dry summer Meltemi Wind that blows down from the Balkans and sweeps across the entire Aegean basin. Providing a welcome respite from the soaking humidity, the wind lasts for days and can gust to gale force, scuppering sailors, sand blasting beach bathers and fanning forest fires. Well, fancy that.
Murder, He Wrote
I’m encouraging a vine to tumble over the railings of our first floor balcony. To my dismay the leading tips were infested with aphids. I could hardly see the delicate green shoots for the fat clusters of writhing black bugs. Along came an army of ants to harvest the honeydew that blackfly excrete from their nether regions. I was up close and personal to watch the toxic bugs raise their backsides to let the ants feed. Yuk! The intimate, symbiotic relationship that exists between these creatures is a wonder of nature. Well I was having none of it. I sprayed them all with copious quantities of soapy water. It was bit like watching a disco full of drugged-up ravers being drowned at a foam party. Murder, he wrote.
On the whole I rather admire ants and their ability to clean up the litter of dead bugs that regularly fall to earth. As I was sipping my morning cuppa I observed a platoon of tiny ants (a different breed from the aphid arse-lickers) slowly tug a dead fly the comparative size of a jumbo jet across the patio. Their collective iron grip was momentarily loosened and their prey tumbled into the gap between the floor tiles. It must have seemed like lunch had fallen into a monsoon drain. Unperturbed, the industrious insects hauled the fly carcass from the depths and continued their mammoth trek back to the nest. Marvellous.
Closets are for Clothes
We met a couple of new people who ride on our dolly. Firstly, there is Bayram a 25 year old Istanbuler. He is from a well-heeled family with a house in Bodrum. He flies down every few weeks during the season. We met him for drinks and lunch. He’s an urbane and well educated young chap with impeccable English. His father has warned him against visiting England, ‘full of homosexuals’ he cautioned. This statement has only hardened Bayram’s resolve to do so. He liked to talk about sex a lot but then so did I when I was 25.
Then there is Joseph, 61, a semi-retired accounts manager from Manchester. He’d only realised he was gay when he was 57 after thirty-five years of marriage (God, why bother?) and talked disparagingly about the poor woman who put up with him for all that time. Joseph has fallen in love with a younger Scouse divorcee. Unfortunately the Scouser has buggered off to Australia. John misses him terribly and plans to visit. I fear a tepid welcome when he gets there as I feel sure that the boyfriend is now banging a different secret drum. They both occupy the same small IKEA wardrobe firmly locked from the inside.
Perking the Pansies 
