My Shattered Chassis

Driving in Turkey is not for the faint hearted, best only tried by the foolish or the suicidal. Though much improved in recent years, many roads are still perilous with lunar potholes, boulder-sized loose chippings and chassis-shattering unmarked concrete speed bumps. All these hazards, however, pale into insignificance when compared to the insane driving of the locals. The basic rules of the unofficial Turkish Highway Code are straightforward enough – drive fast, jump lights, never indicate, overtake on blind bends, tailgate dangerously and sound the car horn loudly and often. It is also the ‘law’ to ignore pedestrian crossings (purely for street decoration and EU compliance inspectors), bounce a new born baby on your lap when weaving in and out of the traffic and yell down the mobile phone that has been surgically grafted to your ear. The rules are observed religiously. Obligingly, local municipalities even provide traffic lights that count down to green to encourage boy racers to champ at the bit to be first out of the traps. Unsuspecting foreigners need to keep their wits about them to preserve life and limb, particularly those like me who are genetically programmed to look the wrong way.

Conversely, it all adds to the wonderfully anarchic nature of the Turkish psyche and a healthy disrespect for authority which I have long admired. It’s also a welcome relief from health and safety obsessed Blighty.

Mounted by the Valet

Clement invited us in for afternoon tea to provide some respite from our labours, all china cups and silver spoons. He appears to be a peculiarly old fashioned English gentleman with impeccable manners – gracious but fastidious and slightly pompous. I think of him as a queen of the old school displaying an air of conservative respectability by day but mounted by the valet after dark. Clement mentioned that he was having people over for supper in a few days, including Chrissy and Bernard, and wondered if we’d like to join them. It is to be a casual, low key affair and a chance to meet his ‘chums’. We accepted.

DFS on LSD


We’ve acquired a ludicrously large house with little to fill it with. Local stores are either indescribably awful (think DFS on LSD) or outrageously expensive (or both), so we settled on IKEA, the store of choice for the middle class poor everywhere. It is comforting to know that the IKEA formula, like McDonald’s, is so dependably familiar whether in Bournemouth or Beijing. However, the idea of an eight hour round trip to the nearest store in Izmir fills us with dread, but loins girded, we have stoically resolved to go forth in search of flat pack paradise.

Old Scrubbers

Our house had been redecorated by our landlord and there was white paint splattered everywhere, literally. Turkish workmen don’t make good apparently. Our site manager, Hussein, a jovial man of seemingly industrial strength idleness, offered to arrange a spring clean. We declined. We’ll be scraping and scrubbing for days. Clement kindly lent us an old vacuum cleaner and a kettle.

Marina the Shitting Kitten

We have semi-adopted a feral kitten. We have called her ‘Marina’ and are keeping her fed and watered. As a reward for our benevolence she defecated all over the balcony, including in Liam’s flip flops.

Corridors of Power

Our first encounter with Turkish bureaucracy was a salutary lesson for people like us living in the internet age where everything can be arranged from the comfort of an armchair. Alahan guided us through various corridors of power to collect the nod from an assortment of petty officials in cheap suits sitting behind excessively large desks framed by the flags of all nations. Alahan was a marvel, dispensing charm liberally to get us to the front of various queues. However, I suspect he’s burdened us with the most expensive Turkcell tariff imaginable judging by the number of units we’re using for even the shortest calls.

King Cnut

We popped by the house to measure up. We had the misfortune of bumping into crinkly Cnut from Denmark. He and his wife Ragnild own the house on the level immediately beneath us. He greeted us with assorted tales of despair about the site as he puffed continuously on his over-long pipe. However, his catalogue of grievances failed to burst our bubble. Our cheeriness only irritated him. We’ve dubbed them the Vile Vikings. What a miserable cnut.

Grinning Like Cheshire Cats

We are the Cheshire cats that got all the cream and can’t stop grinning. We are renting a holiday apartment from Lorraine while we sort the house out. The flat is nice – comfortable and conveniently positioned behind the marina. Yalıkavak is quiet. The season is in its death throes, though not yet expired, but the weather is glorious. We are wandering around in shorts and flip-flops to explore our new home town.

Seismic Change

It was the day of our emigration. old friend Maurice accompanied us to Gatwick and we were glad of the company and the help. We had four heavy suitcases and were way over our luggage allowance. We smiled sweetly at the check-in assistant and either through charm or luck, managed to get most of the excess charges waived. Predictably, Gatwick security was total chaos with queues snaking around the terminal building. As our departure time crept dangerously near, we were plucked from the queue by a surly man clutching a walkie-talkie and fast-tracked through a separate entrance. We hurriedly said our goodbyes to Maurice. He cried. It broke my heart. The magnitude of our decision became crystal clear. And so began a life change of seismic proportions.

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In the Beginning

In the beginning there was work and work was God. After 35 years in the business, the endless predictability made me question the Faith. Liam, on the other hand, was neither bored nor unchallenged but was routinely subjected to the ephemeral demands of a capricious boss, a soft and warm Christmas tree fairy with a soul of granite – Lucifer in lace. He feared for his tenure. I feared for his mental health. It was the 30th May 2009, Liam’s 48th birthday, and we were enjoying a romantic meal in Soho. As the booze flowed the conversation turned to ‘What if?’ Thus began our Great Adventure.

We began to hatch our audacious plot to step off the treadmill and migrate to the sun. Turkey sprang instantly to mind since we had just returned from Bodrum – a chic and cosmopolitan kind of place attracting serious Turkish cash, social nonconformists and relatively few discount tourists. Liam loved it and, after many years visiting the western shores of Anatolia, I needed no convincing. All I had to do was sell my house just as property prices were in free fall. All Liam had to do was agree a financial settlement with his ex on their jointly-owned property, something that hitherto had proven more difficult to resolve than the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Against all odds, I sold my house and its contents to a God-send of a neighbour and, after some emotional horse-trading, Liam finally achieved a reasonable settlement on his own property. Implausibly, we both secured voluntary redundancy from work. In my case, it happened with such an indecent haste that I sensed they were glad to be rid of me. Well, the axeman was stalking the Town Hall corridors looking for prey. It mattered little since it all added to the purse. Our remarkable run of luck convinced us that someone was looking down kindly upon us. Liam attributed it to the Virgin Mary.

We turned our attention to where in Turkey we might settle. The obvious choice was the narrow western coastal strip tucked beneath the vast Anatolian Plateau as it is the most attuned to European sensibilities. Turkey beyond this is the genuine article, a magical land of sweeping landscapes, drenched in drama and culture but far too foreign and exotic for a couple of mature, bourgeois, gay boys from the Smoke.

Bodrum was the bookie’s favourite, an urbane, liberal oasis where we could live safely and unmolested. We briefly entertained the notion of living in Kaş on the Turkuaz Coast where we had honeymooned. Kaş is a sparkling Bohemian jewel, surrounded by a pristine hinterland that has been mercifully spared the worst excesses of mass tourism. But, its glorious isolation, protected by a wilting two hour drive from the nearest international airport, means that the town is effectively closed out of season and lacks those dull but essential full time services we all need to live in the material world: banks, supermarkets, hospitals and the like. We cast our eyes along the map. The coast running south-east of Kaş towards Alanya has been colonised by the Germans and Russians and the string of major resorts running north – Fethiye, Marmaris, Altinkum and Kuşadası – attracts legions of bargain basement Brits. It was no surprise that the odds on favourite won by a mile.