Liam has become quite the Mrs. Beaton of late, honing his once impoverished, improvised gastronomy and turning his hand to exceptional cake making, biscuit baking and seasonal specialities. Today’s impressive delight is walnut and carrot wholemeal bread. He’s been inspired by domestic guru, curvaceous Charlotte and Kirazli Karyn’s various online cook booklets. I secretly fear he is gradually going native and that head scarf moment is inching ever closer – Hermès, naturally. Methinks I should leave him to his culinary creations, withdraw to the tea house, play parlour games with the local boys and take an illicit lover or three. It’s the Turkish way. I’ll expect my supper on the table when I get home.
“Avustralyalılaştıramadıklarımızdanmışsınızcasına” is a Turkish term pronounced as a single word and an extreme example of agglutination, the process of adding affixes to the base of a word. This word is translated into English as “as if you were one of those whom we could not make resemble the Australian people”. Crikey. Turkish is stuffed with tortuously lengthy agglutinations and therein lies my knotty problem.
Turkic Language Distribution
Though rhythmic and poetic on the ear, Turkish is not an easy language for Europeans to assimilate as it is thought to belong to the Altaic language family and is distantly related to Mongolian, Korean and other inscrutable Asiatic tongues. Despite Atatürk’s valiant 1928 adoption of the Latin alphabet and the fact that the language is phonetic and mostly regular, the word order, agglutinations and the absence of familiar sounds all conspire to make learning Turkish a very daunting prospect. At least that’s my excuse. Liam is trying. I am just hopeless.
Although our hosts are remarkably tolerant of the average Brit’s lazy attempts to nail a foreign tongue, I’m a zealous believer that a little learning goes a long way. Taking the trouble to remember a few choice words and phrases can make a world of difference. One rainy afternoon, we were buying DIY essentials in Koçtaş. A yellow-haired, haughty emigrey ignorati strutted into the store and bellowed imperiously at a random selection of bewildered staff “Excuse me, I am English! I need help! Do you speak English? Yes, you there. Do you speak English?” It made me cringe with acute embarrassment and I peered apologetically at the pretty till girl. Despite my lacklustre language skills, I will never become one those all too common high-handed, po-faced little Englanders.
So what’s the Turkish for “as if you were one of those whom we could not make resemble a drag queen”? Answers on a postcard.
We fancied a singalong fright night in the village and headed down to a local beachfront steakhouse. Popular with the hardy resident emigreys, it’s owned by bubbly, brassy bottle-blond Berni Belfast and her Turkish husband, Deniz, who cooks the best steak on the peninsula. Berni lays on the usual winter fare of fixed price menus, quiz nights and karaoke to coax the emigreys out from under their duvets. I like unpretentious Berni. She is the real deal, calls a spade a shovel and is a bracing breath of fresh air on a brisk night.
Proletarian Berni has a high-octave accent delivered like a sub-machine gun. As my Mother is from that part of the world I can catch the conversation. Alas, poor Liam understands hardly a word and just nods and smiles politely like the Queen at a Commonwealth jamboree.
Berni regaled us with tales of the bar wars. Allegedly, following months of clandestine subterfuge, her former front of house left without warning to launch his own restaurant taking with him their head chef and photocopies of their menus. I sense industrial espionage is rife in the catering trade here but to set up a new establishment dishing up identical fare for the same audience only a few hundred metres along the pretty promenade does seem a touch provocative. The bilious bad blood bubbles just beneath the surface.
Blackpool Bobbi was our camp karaoke compere for the evening’s random entertainment. Unforgettable veteran resident Bobbi fosters a unique, instantly recognisable look. Uncompromisingly clad top to tail in Persil whiteness from his back-combed highlights to his shiny patent leather loafers, he belts out a passable interpretation of ‘My Way’ between the vodka shots. I admire his pluck. Truly, Bobbi is the only gay in the village.
Vivacious vetpat Charlotte and naughty but nice Nancy are compulsive Sex and the City groupies. So when they heard that my butch scaffolder nephew gave me a DVD of ‘Sex and the City 2’ for Christmas they started foaming at the mouth. I have a perceptive family who know what I like though I suspect the strapping lad asked his girlfriend to buy it for him to avoid being ridiculed at the till in HMV.
Charlotte and Nancy descended on us for a camp night at the movies dragging Charlotte’s dapper hubby, Alan, behind them. ‘Sex and the City’ really is a gay and girlie thing. Straight men just don’t get it. As with SATC1, the sequel is less edgy and sexually incisive than the broads with balls TV shows but is diverting enough with a thin storyline cleverly disguised by a grand pageant of fab frocks, fuck me heels and glam handbags. The rapid fire costume changes left our girlie guests gasping doubling the dimensions of their bounteous baps. Meanwhile, bored Alan dropped off in the corner.
The soaring triumph of the film is a remarkably nimble performance by premier league gay icon, Liza with a ‘Zee’ Minnelli, who I thought had long since checked into a waxwork museum. Draped in a little black mini dress displaying an amazing set of pins many decades her junior and a fixed nip and tuck expression, Ms Minnelli delivered a delightfully feisty rendition of Beyoncé’s ‘Single Ladies (Put a Ring on it)’. The agile, aging diva bopped boldly about the boards like the game old bird that she is. I feared she might fall and break a hip. And, while I have no wish to impugn Ms Minnelli’s undoubted talents or profound ability to hold back the years, I suspected CGI.
Much-troubled Ms Garland’s much-troubled progeny appeared as the surprise star turn at a gay ‘wedding’ at the top of the film. Alas, it put our tastefully understated French bistro-themed civil partnership reception at a gastro-pub in Waterloo firmly in the shade. That’s Hollywood for you.
Thanks to Paul Hard for the post title. Sorry Paul, there’s no money in it!
Expatriates, like everyone else, come in all shapes and sizes – the mean and the mannered, the classless and the classy, the awful and the joyful. The abbreviated epithet ‘expat’ simply doesn’t adequately express the myriad folk who have chosen to live here In Turkey. To add a little descriptive colour to my posts, I’ve devised some new words to depict the numerous variants of the species.
Emigreys: retirees serving out their twilight years in the sun, most of whom seem to be just a little to the right of Genghis Khan and who bought a jerry built white box in Turkey because it was cheaper than Spain (well, it was at the time). Everyday emigrey life operates within a parallel universe of neo colonial separateness preoccupied with visa hops to the Isles of Greece, pork sausages, property prices and Blighty bashing.
VOMITs (Victims of Men in Turkey): vintage desperate ex-housewives with a few lira to spare who shamelessly chase younger Turkish men. Predictably, such relationships rarely last once the money runs out. Thank you to Sara for this one.
Semigreys: those too young to retire in the conventional sense, who are living the vida loca on the proceeds of property sales. Plunging interest rates present quite a fiscal test to those trying to maintain a hedonistic lifestyle on dwindling assets while waiting for the pensions to kick in, assuming there will be a pension to kick in given the parlous position of the public purse.
Vetpats: veterans who have been living in Turkey for many years. Usually better informed than their peers with a less asinine view of the world, vetpats have taken the trouble to learn Turkish and are better integrated into the wider community. Some have even acquired Turkish citizenship and are fortunate to have found gainful employment on the right side of the Law.
Sexpats: discrete grey men of means who are serviced by young Turkish men in return for a stipend.
Hedonistas: Those who enjoy a carefree existence of total self indulgence liberated from the binding ties of responsibility or the worries of tomorrow.
The Ignorati: A collective term for those who live in utter ignorance of the history and culture of their foster land, shout loudly in English and see the world at large through the pages of the Daily Mail (or The Daily Bigot as I like to call it).
These terms are not mutually exclusive. It’s perfectly possible for an emigrey to also be a vetpat VOMIT and a fully paid up member of the ignoble ignorati.
I have received several suggestions from readers to add to the ex-pat lexicon. Thank you to Greg for ‘emigays‘ to describe well to do old queens spending up their savings because you can’t take it with you. Thank you also to Tom for the deliciously naughty ‘cowpats‘ to describe those I really can’t abide and would flee to the next town to avoid.
I stumbled upon the Horizon Sky Owner’s site* on Facebook where it seems some investors are in rebellious mood, railing against prolonged delays and rising costs. It was a chilly blast from the past. I had considered buying into the development about 4 years ago when I had a proper job, a decent wage, and a few pennies in the piggy bank. It was at a time when the prospect of moving to the sun was but a faraway fantasy so we fancied a part time slice of paradise as the next best thing. The development was heavily promoted in the London Evening Standard property supplement and I was seduced by Galliard Homes’ first-rate reputation for top-drawer builds. Liam and I attended a slick presentation in a swish West End hotel and talked at length to one of the persuasive, pretty reps. I was dangerously close to signing on the dotted line but, at the critical moment of my madness, I stepped outside, lit a reflective cigarette, regained my sanity and walked away. It was not to be.
I know little of the development these days except that it seems colossal in scale and ambition, located on an isolated slope near Iassos and late. Now we live in Turkey we know so much more. Our lives and means are utterly altered as is the dire economic landscape we all now inhabit. We rent and are thankful for the freedom to move as we please and when the mood takes us. We have been mercifully released from that inbred notion to own that Brits nurture in the womb. “There’s nothing safer than houses” my father used to say. Alas, this has a hollow ring nowadays.
Investing in Turkey no longer offers the rapid return it once did, nowhere does. We travel the length and breadth of the Bodrum Peninsula past half-built developments of little white boxes marching up hill and down dale. No-one seems to be buying and few are renting outside the height of summer. And yet the developers carry on regardless, promising pie in the sky, depressing the market and killing the goose.
* July 2011. The Horizon Sky Owner’s site on Facebook is no longer public.
* February 2013. Horizon Sky now has an open Facebook page that anyone can join.
I’ve recently found a nifty little device that I’ve added to Perking the Pansies. It’s called ‘Revolver Maps’ which pin points the location of my visitors across the globe. I now stare at the screen for hours to watch the cities of the World light up and pulsate to the perking beat of the pansies. Unsurprisingly most of my punters come from Blighty, the Emerald Isle or the Turkish Riviera though the map of Europe is beginning to twinkle like a Eurovision Song Contest score board with nil point currently awarded to France. Perhaps they don’t like pansies in La Belle France though there was little evidence of it when I was last in Gay Paree.
Most unexpectedly are the pansy punters from more far-flung corners of the globe. I seem to have enthusiasts on both American seaboards but have attracted few fans in the vast lands in between where the bible-belters lurk. The Canadians like to perk (well the Mounties will do anything to keep warm in minus 20 degrees) and I have one or two camp followers in Latin America. The fragrant Far East is where the pansies never fade and I’m particularly delighted by our man in Borneo. Oz is a disappointing late starter though the ever cheerful Aussies do have a biblical flood to contend with. I have high hopes for Africa and track the map from Cairo to Cape Town looking for signs of pansy flashers.
The South Pole is excluded from my pansy blog domination. Nothing grows down there anyway and I don’t want the egg-heads of Antarctica to be diverted from their vital work on global warming lest the pansies drown from rising sea levels.
After a hearty brunch, Nick decided to initiate us into the ancient Ionian ritual of bush bashing to bring down the olive crop, a technique that has remained unaltered for countless millennia. Liam took to thrashing a cane with great gusto donning a fetching floral headscarf for the occasion. I withdrew to the foliage to keep Vinnie company. Vinnie was distinctly nonplussed by all the fuss and took refuge in a sunny spot.
Next on the packed agenda was a whistle-stop tour of the dubious daytime delights of Kuşadası, the Aegean gateway to the splendours of some of Asia Minor’s best preserved historical sites. Having read the ‘Rough Guide’ which uncompromisingly describes the resort as “a brash, mercenary and unpleasant Las Vegas-on-Sea…” my expectations were rock bottom. In fact, I thought the epitaph more than a little harsh. The town is a touch rough around some of its sprawling edges and not as classically attractive as Bodrum, but it does convey a vital urban buzz which I found appealing. I was unpredictably impressed by the busy throng of real people, the boulevards of real shops and the sprinkling of smart bistros. And Kuşadası does provide one important facility that sets it above the rest – a proper, bone fide gay bar that entices an eclectic mix of trannies, dancing queens, sugar daddies, gays for pay, hairy marys and the odd bemused bi-curious northerner in search of furtive titillation.
Sunset Behind the Marina
We stopped off for coffee at a trendy café along the neat promenade and watched the sun set over the marina. We contemplated the stark contrast to our cute but comatosed little town of Yalıkavak where nights are spent holding hands and contacting the living. Where’s Doris Stokes when you need her?
Karyn dished up a gastronomic triumph for the evening’s victuals, serving duck terrine which she fretted over all week according to ‘The Competitive World of Expat Cooking‘. She needn’t have worried. The reclaimed brick had done the trick, and the terrine was superb. Karyn invited a few old fairy friends along for the slicing ceremony. We were particularly amused by senior citizen, Peter, a dedicated Friend of Dorothy and philanderer extraordinaire who is an accomplished, competitive cook and keeps a Turk in the basement for afters.
The next day we took homespun kahvaltı in the local soba-warmed lokanta, escaping the crisp mountain air. Popular with both the Chelsea tractor brigade and villagers alike, the rustic eatery served up a plentiful plate of traditional fare. We hit the road after breakfast, waving farewell to our generous comperes and their tender menagerie. I had utterly enjoyed sparring with an intellectual thoroughbred. We shall return.
Charismatic Vetpat and ex-biker babe, Kirazli Karyn, has fashioned a unique Anatolian Arcadia at the beating heart of old Ionia. Authentic thick stone walls embrace chic but unpretentious modern living within a neo-biblical eco-setting. The enchanting private courtyard garden comes with a pretty plunge pool and a handy vaulted roof extension for flexible hire. Karyn began her bold and ambitious build with her late husband, Phil. Tragically, Phil died before the dream was realised though his signature is inscribed on every stone. Karyn’s heartbreak adds to the poignant poetry of their beguiling labour of love.
Karyn and instantly likeable, soulful Nick were warm and liberal hosts. I sensed wise young owls of depth and sincerity. Unlike the Bodrum ‘Come Dine with Me‘ set, Karyn’s scrumptious spreads require no fuss or fanfare to big them up. We effortlessly nattered for endless hours as if we were rediscovered old friends lamenting lost years. I completely forgot about my cunning stunt to sabotage my superior rival. I was far too busy gassing and guzzling.
I was casually surfing around Perking the Pansies. I often review older posts and add a word here, change a word there. I do it purely out of personal pickiness as once a post is read it’s dead. I clicked on the ‘Go! Overseas’ badge and, to my horror, found ‘Being Koy’ top of the blogs in their Turkey chart. ‘Perking’ is inexplicably second. Enraged by irrational envy, I hatched a dastardly plot to knock ‘Being Koy’ off the top spot by fair means or foul. Veteran author Kirazli Köy Karyn and I correspond regularly and have made a guest appearance on each other’s blog. Keep your friends close but keep your rivals closer, I say.
Lulling Karyn into a false sense of security with phoney flattery, she was cleverly duped into inviting us to stay for the weekend. This was to be my one chance to dis the idyll, spike Karyn’s cocoa and ‘accidently’ spill my wine into her laptop. Just a dribble though; I am not one to waste even a poor vintage.
Saddled with yet another underperforming hire car, we set out at first light taking the usual Izmir route past dreary Milas, sweeping along the shores of the perpetually pretty Lake Bafa and descending into the Meander basin towards Söke. After a naughty McDonald’s burger break, we pushed on to agro-town, Ortaklar, where we took the Selçuk road. Leaving the impressively dull agrarian plain behind, we climbed into verdant Tuscanesque hills replenished by the recent rains. As we snaked through the forested slopes my resolve to nobble began to wither. Perhaps this is the Eden that Karyn exalts.
Kirazli Eco-Koy
We rendezvoused with our host on the wrong side of the railway tracks in Çamlık. Karyn shepherded us into the hills along an uncharted way towards her high hamlet where I expected the men to be men and the goats to be nervous. Nestling in a natural caldron, Kirazli is a visual treat of higgledy-piggledy dwellings with pitched terracotta roofs and gently billowing chimney stacks that warm the cool air with aromatic wood smoke. I’m afraid to admit that this particular working köy does exactly what it says on the tin.
Perking the Pansies 