Say What You See

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.

The Seduction of Young Jack

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.

Cleopatra’s Island

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.

Chock-a-Block Beach

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.

Shall We Dance?

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.

Asia in a Minor Key

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.

Liam Brennan

Oboe for Hire

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.

Rain, Rain Go Away…

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.

Gay as a Daisy in May

On the sabbath we decided to indulge in a hearty roast chicken dinner with all the trimmings followed by a screening of  the classic musical ‘South Pacific’ courtesy of Karen at Christmas. I adore the line “I’m as gay as a daisy in May”. They just don’t write lyrics like that anymore – they dare not. Oh, such innocent times. The Rogers and Hammerstein score is a particular favourite of Liam’s. He once had the the soundtrack with the lead sung by Kiri T Canopener. He’s so gay.

Thermal Knickers

New Year’s Day was spent nursing a hangover and basking on the balcony in the gorgeous warming winter sunshine. The benevolent sun enabled me to break the back of the Christmas laundry that was languishing in a suitcase. Our fabric conditioned knicker supply has been replenished just in the nick of time.

The house remains relentlessly chilly. We have yet to find an effective heating solution and so thermal pants are a must-wear. If only it were possible to construct a dwelling on a turntable to follow the passage of the Sun. After dusk we watched Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince on Digiturk. Liam is a huge fan and bought all the books (with the adult covers, of course). He watched silently mesmerised wearing the strangely sexy ‘Dennis the Menace’ jim jams my sister bought him for Christmas.

Tequila Slammers for the Last Hurrah

Bodrum was the venue for our inaugural Turkish New Year revelry. The pretty town has been draped in festive adornments and Harbour Square next to the Crusader castle is graced with a chic snow-white Christmas tree in the shape of a multi-layered hooped skirt. We jostled with the cheery crowd of many generations to catch the act performing at the free concert. An energetic Turkish diva pumped up the volume with catchy Turkopop tunes and the animated audience swayed in happy recognition.

As 2011 dawned, the midnight sky was set alight by a cacophonous pyrotechnic bonanza that dissonantly clashed with the rhythmic Turkic beat. Liam and I embraced and no one minded. With gunpowder spent and smoke hanging in the air, we looked about to observe the assorted assembly; the mobs of mischievous young men, the pantaloon’d grannies with their infant charges, the courting pairs of trendy young things and the gaggles of covered girls variously sporting elaborate head-scarves or Santa hats. We were the only yabancılar in view and we loved it.

We waded through the throng in search of a watering hole and happened upon Meyhane Sokak, a narrow lane off the bazaar and home to a cluster of small crush bars exclusively frequented by Turks. We delicately forced our passage through the rowdy horde, inching past a pretty thing in a sparkly, silver sequined ra ra skirt shaking her booty in wild abandon on top of a table and snaked around a busking band of moustached minstrels. Finally, we squeezed onto one of the tall bench tables lining the lane to enjoy the drunken scene being played out around us. I’m told that alcohol consumption, particularly by women, is generally frowned upon in wider Turkish society. However, there was little evidence of this among the tequila swiggers.

We sent and received various festive texts. I received a message from London life friends, Ian and Matt, who were enjoying their New Year in a bear bar in Brussels. What a tired old twink like Ian was doing in a Brussels bear bar is anyone’s guess.

Defeated by the cold night air and in need of bladder relief we ventured inside one of the bars to be pinned up against the wall by the maelstrom. We were much taken with a group of grungy fellows who wore their hair up in a bun – in the style of Japanese sumo wrestlers and Katherine Hepburn. Turkish appreciation of music is refreshingly unsophisticated and the melee whirled just as enthusiastically to dirgy Depeche Mode as to the Weather Girls’ infamous gay anthem “It’s Raining Men”. Forgive them Father. They know not what they do.

This was the clearly the last hurrah before a short, sharp winter.

Pigs in the Proverbial

As village life is quietly dull and the days are short, we are taking time to endlessly potter and enjoy our newly procured lives as decadent dossers. Daily activities are stretched to breaking point to fill the available time. The expensive entertainment system we extravagantly bought on our minimum wage is paying dividends. We are rapidly exhausting our DVD library with nightly showings of our favourite films and TV series from good times past; Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, Beautiful Thing, Love Actually, The Holiday, Calendar Girls, Postcards from the Edge, Golden Girls (Series 1,2,3 and 4); Gimme, Gimme, Gimme (Series 1,2 and 3) and a host of other manly favourites. We are like pigs in the proverbial.

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