Gaygle It

Last December Perking the Pansies was permanently blocked by the Turkish internet police. I threw a hissy fit at the prospect of a firm hand on my door knob, a frisk by a frisky conscript and instant deportation. It all turned out to be a storm in a çay cup. My inconsequential contribution to the blogosphere was simply caught by lazy censorship that uses a scatter gun approach to punish the innocent and the guilty alike. Perking the Pansies became, as the Americans say, ‘collateral damage‘. I had to abandon my old site hosted by Google and move lock, stock and barrel to WordPress. A couple of days ago I noticed that the page hits on my new site overtook those of the old for the first time. Nowadays I need only the slightest excuse to make merry so I raised a glass in thanks.

I’m endlessly fascinated and bemused by the search terms that bring some surfers to my website. I’ve already mentioned ‘Yalikavak Sex’  and ‘Gay Hairy Turkish Men’ but there is also:

  • Porn Torkish
  • Gumbet porno
  • Turk Gay Sitesi
  • Thermal Bloomers
  • Sex Sitesi
  • Gay Calis Beach
  • Middleaged Sexpats
  • Gundogan Gay
  • Lyrics to I’m as Gay as a Daisy

A definitive gay guide to Turkey for the curious traveller seeking a little relief in the sun is sorely needed. Sadly it would be a thin digest and probably banned.

Home Alone

Alas I am abandoned, albeit temporarily. Liam has dashed home to Londra on a mercy mission to look after his Mother while Liam Senior is in hospital having his arthritic knee repaired. My delicate and kindly Mother-in-Law is as Irish as a dainty shamrock. She and I gossip about the silly twists in Corrie and I make her giggle when I gently tease about her youthful antics when she used to climb over the convent wall to attend the local dance.

Tilting at Windmills

To distract me from my solitude I joined Greg and Sam on their weekly visit to a Pazar. They were in desperate need of soft fruit for the last batch of their winter preserves. After filling their shopping trolley with fruity seasonal goodies we ventured onwards for a bracing ramble across the desolate, windswept headland between Bodrum and Gümbet. We toured the tumble down windmills, now sadly derelict save for a solitary Turk we found self-abusing in one of them. Apparently, local men go there after dark. I wonder why.

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.

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Thank you to Clive, Greg and Sam for some of the images.

Stupid Cupid

cupidValentine’s Day took an unusual twist this year. Chrissy  invited us to her place for a romantic dinner for four. We were instructed to wear something red or pink for the occasion. Obviously, as gay men our wardrobe is dominated by different shades of pink. We feebly complied for a quiet life. The table setting was a glittering display of fussy pink and lilac chintz, hearts and flowers and enough tea lights to power a small city. The food was great. Bernard is a good cook. However, the happy couple bickered loudly in the kitchen between courses. Cupid had taken the night off.

Money, Money, Money…

Just like the Queen, I no longer carry money. Liam has assumed the role of central banker and keeper of the petty cash. Consequently, I know the value of everything but the cost of nothing.  Three months into our Anatolian adventure Liam felt a fiscal review was due. He prepared the figures with his usual due diligence supported by a complex multi-coloured, multi-linked spreadsheet. After all, he had been the Excel Queen in his previous life. It was all there, spend, income, projections – our financial world laid bare. Liam plugged the laptop into the TV and I knew it was going to be a long night. I uncorked a bottle.

Interest rates continue to slide which is potentially calamitous for us as we rely on investments to keep us afloat. Fortuitously, Liam has moved some of our stash into mutual funds and this gone some way to ameliorate our plight, but we are still eating into our capital. As Liam eloquently demonstrated, our budget deficit is “equivalent to 10% of GDP with only moderate prospects for growth during the next fiscal period.” A career in world economics surely beckons.

Liam did his best to reassure me that the money we don’t have is enough to pay for the lifestyle we can’t afford – just like Greece. And we can’t guilt-trip the Germans. Ah well, we’ll just spend the cash and wait for the pensions to kick in, assuming we still have pensions to kick in given the parlous state of the British structural deficit. We are considering taking in washing as we’re far too old to sell our bodies.

In the end, though, it is the quality of our lives that really counts and the quality is good, very good. It is a minor miracle that after spending three months together all day every day we are still speaking let alone loving, laughing and living. That’s something money can’t buy.

Huddled Masses

Misir

We watched the drama unfold in Egypt on BBC World. The dictator was finally toppled by the “…huddled masses yearning to breathe free…” to misquote the inscription on a bronze plaque mounted inside of the Statue of Liberty. History demonstrates that authoritarian regimes, whether left, right or theocratic that rule by fear eventually collapse under the weight of their own oppression. Egypt, the most ancient of nations, has no experience of democracy and I sincerely hope that the experiment will be real and lasting. Let’s wish for a pluralist, secular state that respects individual rights and not for a ‘one man, one vote, once’ process that might cast Egypt back to the Middle Ages and would make the Middle East an infinitely more dangerous place. That would be scary for everyone and Egyptians deserve better.

I also sense my foster land may be sliding imperceptibly backwards. The first sign of compulsory head-scarfs will see us booking the first available Easyjet flight back to flawed but free Blighty.

“Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Lord Acton (1834-1902)

Gone to the Dogs

I love dogs. We always had dogs at home. Petra, Pepe, Rocky and the rest were all emotionally interwoven into the rich tapestry of my family life. When they died, I cried. I even wept when my hamster, Goliath, performed a fatal somersault off the top of the freezer though I confess my pain was short lived and Goliath was quickly replaced by Samson.

After we migrated we were taken by surprise by the volume of stray and feral dogs sniffing aimlessly around the streets. Liam’s often waylaid by a wet snout playfully jammed into his groin and we are often tempted to take Rover home, hose him down and feed him up. I’m not at all surprised that animal welfare is an emigrey preoccupation. The story of an animal-lover leading her pack to a Bulgarian Promised Land like a modern day Moses is but an extreme example of the canine devotion that seems to dominate the humdrum lives of many.

Animal welfare is a noble cause but so too is the care and protection of children. It distresses me to hear and read so little about the plight of the thousands of children in our foster land who lead brutal and miserable lives, trapped within abusive families, rented out by the hour or thrown onto the streets to fend for themselves. Take a look at the following articles if you can bear to know more.

Istanbul home to 30,000 street children

Rise in sexual abuse of minors

Child Labour

Contribute

It’s easy to think that the problem is overwhelming and nothing can be done, an all too comfortable mind-set that is underpinned by the apparent dearth of children’s charities and non-governmental organisations working within Turkey. However, it is possible make a difference no matter how small. Why not sponsor a child in Turkey or make a contribution to Unicef?

SOS
Sponsor

Care for the animals by all means but care for the children too.

Hollywood Smile

Cabbage Patch Horror

Not to be outdone in the cosmetic surgery stakes, I decided to purchase a brand new set of Turkish gnashers courtesy of a delicious dentist in Yalıkavak with broad shoulders and all the right equipment. He ground my teeth down to resemble Chucky leaving the treatment room door ajar to let squeamish, dental-phobic Liam witness the bloody transformation in horror. He felt my pain more than I did. For a third of the Blighty price my tired old fag stained molars that were being slowly dissolved by alcohol were replaced by a fine selection of Omo-white crowns. I now dazzle with a Hollywood smile like a guinea pig from Ten Years Younger and Liam can see me coming in the dark. I asked my dentist how long my new teeth will last. ‘Longer than you,’ he wryly replied.

Night of the Living Dead

Off to the Quiz Night

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.

Don’t Mention the War

The Turkish scooter fraternity rarely wear crash helmets. For the few that do, Second World War style German helmets have become this year’s latest must have accessory. Young men foolishly speed along the pot holed rain-soaked roads like extras from ‘The Great Escape’ suicidally weaving through the traffic in reckless abandon. I doubt these fashion hats offer much cranial protection as they look a trifle flimsy and the riders seldom bother to fasten the chin strap. These boys have a death wish. I can’t see the craze catching on across the water. The Greeks have long memories of real life German military bikers washing their boots in the sea on their side of the Aegean in 1941.