The First Noel

We’re Blighty-bound for Christmas and, in some ways, I wish we weren’t. It would be splendid to spend our first yuletide in our newly adopted home, chuck up a tree, decorate it with the cheap baubles we expensively air-freighted, wrap it up in twinkling lights and top it off with a fairy flourish.

Before our festive exit from Asia, we decided on a social double date. We had a light luncheon with Vetpats Chuck and Susan who have brought forward their new year’s resolutions by regular gym visits to replenish their health. It seems to be doing the trick, particularly for Chuck who’s dropped a few pounds, perked up his pecs and brought a new glow to his fading porn star frontage. Their tranquil existence is being rudely disturbed by noisy neighbours. Susan’s polite intervention has had little lasting effect. If Chuck had a gun he’d shoot them. This is the American way.

Our second date was with Marie from Twickenham. Marie owns a large and imposing stone house near Gümsülük, the wintertime approach to which requires a transfer by Challenger tank since the surrounding roads resemble trenches of the Great War. She used to be big in IT and has just launched a Blighty-based internet business to off-set plunged interest rates. It’s called Snazzy Specs and sells chic reading glasses for discerning myopians. Also invited was Ellen from Ulster, a pretty blond with a harmonious demeanour and an unreserved ‘I love Turkey’ message which I found refreshing. Marie dished up hearty winter fare accompanied by a warming, roaring fire and serenaded with Sezen Aksu, the Queen of Turkopop. We all imbibed a little more than was good for us as we chatted into the small hours. The next day we had wine flu.

My Name is Jack, I am a Chocoholic

We are readying ourselves for our ‘holiday’ to London for the festive period. It feels strange, doing things in reverse for the first time. Most of the practical stuff here has been sorted, registering our stress index at zero. Chrissy seems amazed at how easy it has been for us, all due to her intervention, of course. We thought we’d already paid our dues in cash and kind, but it seems our gratitude is expected to be everlasting.

We’ve both lost weight despite our best efforts to nurture a cheap drink problem. Mind you, substituting convenience foods saturated with salt and sugar and stuffed with E numbers with freshly prepared meals just might have something to do with it. However, we absolutely dread the thought of early onset emigrey arms so are developing an addiction to chocolate to compensate.

Where the Pansies Never Fade

We are busy surveying the estate for storm damage. The bougainvillea has been rudely stripped of its leaves leaving a twisted wreck of intertwined twigs and the torn palm has been uprooted and casually tossed aside. Whilst we make repairs and mangle the sodden towels, I thought I’d share a sister pansy website from a distant country cousin from across the pond who writes of a perfect pansy paradise where we will never grow old.

Life Between the Buns – Where the Pansies Never Fade

Don your best red shoes and follow the yellow brick road to Shangri La.

Whore’s Drawers

The pitiless Turkish winter is suddenly upon us and we are woefully unprepared. We are being mugged by a posse of violent electric storms processing across the horizon, a savage spectacle that crashes ashore trapping us inside. Generally, Turkish houses leak, have no insulation and precious little heating; and ours is no exception. Our double height living room is like a drafty village hall with a blazing open grate that only warms a few square yards. Towels are strategically placed against every crack and crevice to keep the water at bay. The power is up and down like whore’s drawers. I fail to see Turkey emerging as an economic powerhouse if the electricity company can’t keep the lights on. Fearing frostbite, we recline in double coated socks, mummified in a duvet and vie for possession of the hot water bottle.

It’s a striking reminder of my pre-central heating childhood days, when the bed was too cold to get into at night but too warm to get out of in the morning. We sprint to the loo for a morning pee, wear sexless layers and have reverted to copulating under cover.

Beggar Thy Neighbour

Susan and Chuck invited us to their pre-Christmas shindig. They live in Gökcebel, a sprawling village in the foothills above Yalıkavak, in a charming detached house surrounded by a pretty well-manicured walled garden.  As we arrived Susan presented us with a Manhattan. She mixes a mean cocktail and it nearly blew my head off. The usual suspects were in attendance with a few out of town extras to add to the vetpat mix. After a short while of mingling and polite conversation, we became trapped in the kitchen with merry widow Maureen from Windsor. She thought us very entertaining because she so loves the ‘gays’. She didn’t exactly endear herself by comparing us to Colin and Justin, the two queeny Scottish daytime TV interior ‘designers’ who devastate the homes of the unsuspecting with cheap and nasty kitsch. Realising she is incurably stupid rather than malicious, I let it pass.

Susan laid on a sumptuous festive spread. As we tucked into the sausage rolls, Liam chatted to naked capitalist Francis from Weybridge, who lives near Gümüslük with his wife Dotty, who apparently is. He retired from property speculation a few years ago and is a great admirer of Margaret Thatcher. He made his first fortune by buying and selling discounted, state subsidised council houses. Christ, even the Iron Lady hadn’t intended that to happen.

Having escaped the clutches of merry Maureen and fat cat Francis, we retreated to a bitter but discreet and sheltered corner of the garden for a furtive fag where we soon attracted the attention of Patricia from Bitez. She told us that she also owns a house in Wandsworth, south London, so she’s worth a bob or two. I engaged in a little small talk about the area, since I grew up there. The main advantage of living in Wandsworth, she said, is the low council tax. Mind you, she doesn’t think she should pay anything as she lives permanently in Turkey. “Do you know why your council tax is low?” I enquired. She didn’t. “Well, never be old, never be young, never be disabled or the parents of a disabled child” I explained. Patricia pondered a while, playfully twisting her hair and caressing the vulgar bauble welded to her finger. “Oh, I don’t care about people like that” she sniffed. I hope she never ends up in a wheelchair.

Upstairs, Downstairs

Our rapport with Tariq our toothless caretaker has warmed up nicely following an inauspicious start of reticence and bewilderment. These days we are greeted with a broad gummy grin and a decisive handshake of digit crushing magnitude. Tariq has swapped his shapeless beige shorts and crumpled t-shirt for ankle length black baggy pantaloons and Christmas jumper, fetchingly set off by a see-through cagoule and a bobble hat during inclement weather. He is from the Hatay (the little finger of Turkey that pokes into Syria) and is more Arab than Turk. There’s virtually nothing to do on the site except keep watch so it amuses him to visit us now and again, indulge in a little good humoured arm waving banter on the patio and help himself to our Marlboro’ Lights. His only word in English is “rubbish?”

Chrissy has cautioned us against fraternising with the staff. “It wouldn’t do to give them the wrong idea” she remarked in an ‘Upstairs, Downstairs’ kind of way little realising that she’s well below stairs herself.

Pooing on a Paddle

I received a delightfully distracting ‘how’s things?’ email from Jacqueline, an old comrade of wry wit and razor sharp intellect. She is a wonderfully undemanding friend who I may only see once a year. When we meet, we simply carry on where we left off, mixing lascivious gossip with incisive social and political comment (or so we think). She and her partner Angus have been sorely laid low of late with a nasty case of gastroenteritis. Naturally, Angus’ suffering is the greatest since he is a boy. Girls have a higher pain threshold apparently. It’s something to do with childbirth. If the Vicar of Christ knew from first-hand experience just how painful it was to have babies, I’m sure he would command priests to hand out condoms during communion; he could solve the African AIDS crisis and endemic Third World over-population with a single wave of his Holiness’ crook.

I know a little of food poisoning myself. Many, many years ago when I had cheek bones you could slice cheese with, I met a randy Yank in the Brief Encounter Bar in St Martin’s Lane (now long gone, but in times long past the place to briefly encounter). In the taxi back to his gaff, the Yank got a tad peckish so we stopped off for a takeaway kebab on the Caledonian Road. I took one small bite to be sociable. He wolfed the rest. The next day I ended up in The London Hospital with projectile vomit. The rapid diet had its attractions but pooing on a paddle for Environment Health was a distressing experience. I never saw the Yank again. I think he died.

Jacqueline has taken up patch working and quilting as a hobby. She’s clearly keeping a weather eye on the future: the imminent implosion of the public sector may well necessitate a dramatic career change.

Much Ado About Nothing

My nightly tribulations anticipating a cross knock at the door by a scandalised conscript in latex gloves conducting an internal investigation has mercifully abated. All the fuss started when a distressed Digiturk obtained a court order to shut down a couple of insignificant blogs illegally broadcasting highlights from the Turkish Süper Lig. In response, the inscrutable authorities banned hundreds of thousands of websites that share the same Google ‘address’ as the obsessive soccer bores with their wobbly handicams. Imagine the sheer farce of Calvin Klein forcing every market across the land to close because a few stalls flog phony CK knickers.

Yesterday I was off blog in a vain attempt to forget the whole sorry story and return to a near normal life of degenerate leisure. We had a late liquid lunch followed by a reinstatement of Liam’s conjugal rights hurriedly withdrawn when I was branded a petty felon. We topped off our perfect day with an evening of ‘Strictly’ courtesy of the BBC iPlayer. It was delectable to behold that unreconstructed old bigot and professional virgin with two left feet, Miss Widdecombe, finally expelled from the show. National institution? She should be in one.

I retired to my pit pissed and paranoid thinking our phone might be tapped.

Auntie’s Bloomers

You are the weakest link. Goodbye

We amused ourselves with a night of catch up TV by plugging the laptop into the box. It is hugely preferable to BBC Entertainment, a misnomer if ever there was one. The whole channel broadcast an endless nightly loop of old shows indispersed by obscure BBC3 flops. I like a little bit of The Weakest Link now again but not the same episode recycled a dozen times and Robin Hood is a real repeat treat. I’m overdosing on so many cutting edge medical dramas I need my stomach pumped.  I know I can just watch the other side but Auntie, like chocolate, is an essential comfort. Besides, I’m waiting to see the name of an old friend roll by on the closing credits of Holby Shitty when he served his time as series editor. Since we’ve just reached the episodes originally broadcast just after The Six Day War, I’m not counting my goats.

Clement watches Sky but needs a satellite dish the size of Jodrell Bank to receive it. The service is so unreliable he’s constantly getting a little man in to fiddle with his aerial. Still, it keeps a smile on his face.

Break a Leg

Sipping my morning cuppa lounging about the patio in sun specs and a T shirt in early December is a novel experience. The stark contrast with the frigid Siberian winds that have plunged Albion into a mini ice age is not lost on me. My mother, a spritely, feisty 81 year old Ulsterwoman still young enough to run for buses, complains bitterly through chattering dentures that she is unable to leave the house for fear of a breaking a hip. She is not the kind of woman to be imprisoned for long. As a beautiful young girl she was swept off her feet by a penniless, pretty soldier boy with a twinkle in his eye. She was plucked from a small Irish town made famous by an IRA bomb and found herself on a slow boat to Malaya. I was a home birth in an army barracks which may explain my enduring fetish for uniforms.