We had a late lunch, curled up on the sofa and watched ‘Inn of the Sixth Happiness’ starring the legendary Ingrid Bergman. Casting a tall, ravishing actress with a Swedish accent in the role of a short, Cockney, puritanical protestant missionary inflicting her version of God on the Chinese masses was a bit of a stretch. The film was shot in Snowdonia with the children drawn from the Chinese community in Liverpool. Nonetheless it’s a ripping yarn. Why ruin a good story with the truth?
For better or for worse we have become part-time curios on the crème de la crème dinner party circuit adding exotic seasoning to various pretentious repasts. It’s all very Come Dine with Me and the competition is frightfully fierce. We attended a meal at Chrissy and Bernard’s imposing pile in Torba.
Around the fussily arranged table, we met vetpat Viv from Dereköy. Impeccably turned out, fifty something Viv is elegantly statuesque but struggles to raise her slender forearms due to the weight of clanging bangles. In bygone days she owned a Battersea bistro with her ex-husband until the day she found him in flagrante with the pastry delivery boy. She never suspected that her ex batted on both sides of the net though his treasured collection of classic Judy Garland vinyls was a bit of a clue.
Viv has since carved out a prolific career as a serial VOMIT hopping on top of one Anatolian after another. The boys get younger as she gets older. Despite the predictable pattern of broken heart and emptied purse, she remains irrepressibly upbeat about her lot. We make attentive listeners to assorted emigrey tales. The complement is rarely reciprocated. Do I have agony aunt tattooed across my forehead?
At the close of play Viv gave us a lift home taking the back road to evade the Jandarma. Naturally, we small-talked about the evening along the way. I commented how appetising the food had been. ‘The rice was cold’ came Viv’s withering verdict. We are not confident cooks and have no intention of being subjected to microscopic scrutiny from the affected. The most anyone can expect from us is a bottomless cellar and a few savoury nibbles.
We semi-addressed the great heating debate with the procurement of an ugly infrared monster heater on a tripod, colour-matched to the drawing room décor. There is much discussion about the effectiveness and cost of running such a unit. I don’t care. My feet are warm for the first time in weeks. Besides, they were flying off the shelves. As they say, when in Rome…
It’s a lazy day of pottering and laundering in brilliant, blinding sunshine. I’m cautioned that exposing our damp pants to passing locals is considered very poor taste. I’ve no wish to unwittingly offend but nor do I desire to display dripping knickers about the place like an exhibit from Tate Modern. In any case, passing traffic is rare and effective interior drying is all but impossible in a stubbornly nippy, nipple hardening abode. Daintily scented linens with real feel appeal turn to a stale musk and contribute to the inevitable condensation crisis we all endure during the mould season. In a determined effort to show uncharacteristic cultural sensitivity and to avoid inflaming Tariq the Toothless Caretaker’s bubbling ardour, I stealthily hung out our genuine designer pants in a neat row sandwiched between a t-shirt and a pillow case. Sorted.
While the undies were happily flapping away in the wind, the main fusebox switch tripped and resolutely refused to be reset. Clearly, the underpowered circuit designed only to run a couple of light bulbs struggles to cope with all our decadent fancy electricals. It was a relief that after a few anxious attempts power was restored. Such is the leisurely life of a pansy pioneer in the Wild East.
I’m having a bit of bother with my full size eyboard. One of the characters, the ey between J and L, only works when it can be arsed. It serves me right I suppose. I purloined the delinquent eyboard when I was helping young offenders and petty theft shouldn’t pay after all. I could buy a Turish eyboard but all those unfamiliar extra characters in strange positions would mean unlearning decades of appalling typing. This old dog can’t learn new trics.
I’ll buy a substitute on the next trip to Blighty for my Mother’s 80th birthday grand gala in March. Meanwhile, I am left to compose my latest masterpost by hunching uncomfortably over the undersized laptop keypad designed for infant digits, unnaturally contort my sagging upper torso and aggravate the repetitive strain injury that I painfully acquired during many arduous years of unsung but heroic public service.
To some, my words may sometimes appear harsh and uncharitable. This is not my intention. My fervent belief is that I raise a satirical mirror to the myriad of expats we’ve encountered. Sometimes the reflection is funny, sometimes it’s sad, and sometimes it’s plain ugly. To coin Roy Walker’s words from Catchphrase, that dreadful but compulsive Sunday night game show from the last millennium, ‘Say what you see’ and that’s what I do. What I don’t do is betray a confidence or invent for effect. What is written is either already in the public domain or has been said publicly. People damn themselves with their own words. I do express opinions. I have lots of them, but I do not set myself up as the perfect paragon of virtue. Far from it. I am as flawed as the rest.
I’m not at all sure why anyone is remotely interested in the waspish ramblings of an ex-pretty boy whose function in life used to be purely decorative, but it seems that my blog has struck a melodious chord with many. I am truly heartened by the numerous messages of support I have received and amazed that Perking the Pansies has received well over 25,000 hits since it was launched less than four months ago. I don’t know how long it will continue. I don’t want to flog the blog it to death like a sad sitcom well passed its sell-by date. Maybe I will just tire of it or maybe my ratings will drop to point where I am simply talking to myself. Inşallah.
We decided on a short overnighter to Marmaris as a break from our Hollywood nights. The drive was most enjoyable as the shrubby scrub and Cadbury’s crunchie-coloured rock typical of the Bodrum Peninsula gave way to dense, fragrant pine-forested hills. We stopped off for sustenance in Akyaka, a pleasant little resort purpose built in pretty, low-rise, faux Ottoman style situated at the far end of the Gulf of Gökova.
Over lunch, I romantically reminisced about my first visit to the town on my first visit to Turkey, lodging in a modest whitewashed villa adjacent to the tiny hamlet of Taşbükü on the Datça Peninsula about a 30 minute drive from Marmaris. We wallowed in rapture for two weeks, bathed in the gulf of shimmering turquoise, breakfasted in the tumble-down amphitheatre on Cleopatra’s Island (Sedir Island) and star gazed on cheap plonk. I was gently seduced and thus started an unlikely chain of events leading me to the here and now.
Back on the road, we dropped into Marmaris by mid-afternoon. Despite ruinous, rampant overdevelopment, Marmaris retains some charm due to the splendid position of the castled old town at the foot of a steep-walled, almost fully enclosing wooded bay. The town must have once been magical before the advent of mass tourism and the single-minded pursuit of hard currency. We sank a few Efes by the water’s edge, slept in a modest inn with lokanta attached and returned home early the next morning. The journey was more satisfying than the destination, and we were glad of the validation that we had chosen our home in Bodrum well.
I was minding my own business supping my morning brew when Tariq the Toothless Caretaker appeared with mail in hand. He hurdled enthusiastically onto the patio, delivered a masterful, rib-crushing bear hug, raised me up with indecent ease with his huge, rough shovel hands and twirled me around like a floppy rag doll. I had not the strength to resist. Methinks he likes me. A much amused Liam gave Tariq a round of applause and a fag for his commanding performance. How they laughed as I withdrew to my boudoir to check for bruises.
A real challenge to able-bodied emigreys is to find a gainful occupation that doesn’t involve propping up the bar in some sad, insular expat dive to Blighty-bash and complain ad nauseum of all things local. I have my blog but what of Liam? An early decision was to order a Roland keyboard from Istanbul. A creative renaissance ensued. Liam spends endless hours tickling the ivories and fiddling with his knobs. Well, if you can’t beat ’em then join ’em, so I have embarked on a set of suitably pretentious lyrics for him to compose around – more Shakespeare’s Sister than Shakespeare, methinks. The lyrics are evolving into a compendium cryptically entitled Asia in a Minor Key.
The title lyric, an ode to the emigrey forlorn, goes like this
Land of my fathers, don’t you want your son? Shall I run from you, my kin undone? To the land of sunrise and chattering minarets Bizarre bazaars and monkish pirouettes Chase my dream across dusty hills Past olive groves and neglected mills To find myself in the arms of strangers To talk in silence and delight in dangers Erase the pain of past misdeeds Follow my road to wherever it leads Land of my father I have done all I can To find the love of an Ottoman Asia in a minor key A game of chance Last chance for me Land of my fathers; don’t you want your son? I ran from you, my kin undone To the land of sunrise and chattering minarets But shall my dream stay unrequited yet?Pompous twaddle or what? I guess Liam thinks so. While his Steps to Sibelius musical palate may be a broad church, classically trained Liam struggles with hooks and the art of a well-crafted three minute pop song eludes him. In any case, his real dream is to complete the requiem he began to write a decade or so ago and to write a score for a film. This is now.
Liam has been experimenting with his keyboard by writing some short pieces as part of his score for a soundtrack. It’s very much a work in progress but you fancy a listen, please click below.
Working class lad, Liam, was born with an innate desire to blow things. This manifested itself at the tender age of seven when he learnt to play the recorder with noted skill. A year later, he moved on to the oboe, an altogether more difficult woodwind instrument to master. By 15, he’d learnt to play the piano and started composing simple ditties in a classical genre. By 18 he was studying for a music degree, became an oboe for hire for various orchestras and his then more complex compositions attracted a more discerning audience. A career in serious music seemed assured. But, by 20 Liam discovered the love that dares not speak its name and, with hormones raging, his creative juices flowed in an entirely different direction. His classical career in tatters and with penury looming, he joined the civil service.
Liam rediscovered his beloved oboe in the loft when we were preparing for our emigration. It had been sitting in its sad satin-lined box, broken and unblown for decades. Unable to breathe life back into the lifeless instrument, he sold it on Ebay. It was a sad day. That was then.
Find out more about Liam’s music here.
Asia Minor is blessed with a soaring landscape wrought by tectonic movements over countless millennia that has created a jagged terrain of outstanding natural beauty. However, there is a definite downside to living half way up a mini mountain, even if this does afford an incomparable sea view. No-one warned us that the virtually vertical crumbling concrete access road leading to our house is impassable by car in the rain and treacherous by foot. During the cold weather monsoons, water teems down Mount Tepe transforming the drive into a fast moving stream swollen by dribbling tributaries from all corners of the site. Water continues to trickle for days. Not much fun when hauling up the monthly shop.
Perking the Pansies 