Fairground Attraction

Fairground Attraction

Yesterday, I left Liam indoors slaving over the final pre-edits of the new book and tootled into town to catch the bank holiday vibe. The crowds were drawn to the Easter parade of stalls flogging fast food with an international flavour – German bratwurst competed with Cumberland sausages, French fromage with the Great British Cheese Company, savoury Indian street food with overflowing troughs of sweet treats. It was as if Borough Market had parachuted in for the day. Naturally, I was drawn to the stall selling Turkish delight, baklava, olives and mezes. The swarthy geezer with tombstone teeth behind the counter wasn’t bad either.

In nearby Chapelfield Gardens, a travelling fair rose up above the neat borders. As I drew closer, the fatty aroma of fried onions and cheap burgers mugged the senses and my arteries hardened with every nostril-full. Distant memories flew me right back to my adolescent stirrings for the tattooed oiks who spun the waltzers, the kind of randy highwaymen who would take you round the back of the ghost train and relieve you of your pocket money (or at least, that’s what I imagined at the time).

There was a time when I would jump on every attraction with gay abandon. Alas, I am Braveheart no more. Not since my nephews dared me to hop on the Detonator at Thorpe Park a few years back and I nearly lost my lunch. Risk aversion comes with age, I suppose. These days, the rickety rackety rides seem way too Heath Robinson for my liking. For me there’s little fun left at the fair. Still, the tattooed oiks still manage to get my loins stirring.

I Wanna Hold Your Hand

I took up pole position outside Pret a Manger on Haymarket to sip my usual tipple, rest my gym-tortured limbs and people-watch. It was a bumper crop. School’s out and the Easter break delivered bus-loads of bumpkins and charabancs of tourists to sup, shop and promenade along Norwich’s cobbled streets. Dutch lowlanders mingled with landed gentry and the children of the corn while Chinese happy snappers brought up the rear. As I gazed into the crowd, I spotted two middle aged men wandering past the crooning busker outside Top Shop. The pair sported the neo-clone whiskers that are all the rage right now. They were also holding hands so I guessed they were more than just good friends. My, how things have changed since the secret encounters of my wonderfully misspent youth.

Haymarket Down the Years

St Peter Mancroft

With thanks to the late George Plunkett and his marvellous photos of old Norwich.

Closed for 2014

A sunny spring day saw us on the top floor of a double decker cruising cross-country past gilded fields of rapeseed. We were on our way to Loddon, a picture postcard market town of 2,500 souls, ten miles outside Norwich at the headwaters of the Norfolk Broads on the River Chet. We had a taste for a speciality brew and a clotted cream fancy in the Vintage Tea Rooms at the eighteenth century mill, quite the thing to do in these parts. Neat and tidy Loddon is stuffed with quaint little Georgian and Victorian buildings lining its gently winding high street and is dominated by the fifteenth century Holy Trinity Church set in a sea of tombstones. The town also features the smallest fire station I’ve ever seen with room for just a single truck  and no fireman’s pole to slide down.

We made it to the Vintage Tea Rooms, only to find it locked up with the following message:

“Closed for 2014”

We got the bus back to Norwich and went to the pub instead. Every cloud…

Blast from the Past

I was busying myself with morning admin when my tippy-tappying  was interrupted by an old Seventies tune on Radio 2, the summertime hit ‘Beach Baby’ by the group First Class. They were a one hit wonder and hearing the track brought adolescent memories flooding back of picking up Radio 1 on a transistor radio as I crossed the North Sea in an old Russian rust-bucket. It was the year of  the Fall of Saigon, the end of Portugal’s empire, the first Yorkshire Ripper murder, the election of the Iron Lady as Tory leader, the establishment of the ‘Turkish Federated State of North Cyprus,’ the foundation of Microsoft, the nationalisation of British Leyland and my Soviet tour in my very own Bolan curls and loon pants look. Cue the bubble gum pop and an old post from our Turkey days about my youthful misadventures. It’s worth a second recital.

Sweet Swedes and Wretched Russians

I recalled my first visit to Stockholm when I was a hormonal adolescent. The little local grammar school I attended laid on the most incredible journeys designed to broaden horizons and expand the mind. One early morning in 1975 twenty or so sweaty boys boarded  a train at Victoria Station and headed for the coast. We sailed on the morning tide to Flanders where we began our grand passage across the great North European Plain. More…

When in Rome

The great castle keep of Norwich dominates the city’s skyline. At first sight, it looks too twee to be authentic, its walls too sharp, its stonework too clean and its decoration too untroubled by the march of time. No wonder Liam and I assumed it to be a folly, a romantic Victorian nod to a more chivalrous age (if such a thing ever existed). As it happens, we were entirely wrong. While most of the sprawling castle has disappeared, the old keep and its handsome white Caen limestone walls have endured for almost 900 years. Its conversion from a royal palace to the county gaol in the 14th Century ensured its survival. The hanging, flogging and incarceration continued with great gusto for 500 years until the building opened as a museum in 1894. There’s a lesson there for us all: adapt to survive. Norwich Castle Keep I’d passed around the keep many times but had never bothered to pop in for a gander. That was until a new exhibition caught my eye – Roman Empire: Power and People – a British Museum tour. While the show didn’t quite match up to the scale and glory of the Ephesus Archaeological Museum in Selcuk (one of the highlights of our Turkey years) it was a beautifully formed diversion for a couple of hours on a crisp sunny day.

The remainder of the museum is given over to an assortment of galleries mostly dedicated to local history (Boudicca, Anglo-Saxon and Viking East Anglia, prison life). There’s even a small Egyptian gallery with its very own mummy (the excuse being that Howard Carter of King Tut fame grew up in nearby Swaffham). And only in England would you find a gallery dedicated to teapots – all 3000 of them. Sadly, the Teapot Gallery was closed (for a tea break, presumably). Generally, the exhibits had a school field trip about them. Oh to be twelve again. The keep itself is impressive and certainly wowed Liam. The Victorian renovators removed the cell blocks to open up the building’s shell and installed a galleried balcony at the level of the original Norman floor. Two massive arches support the roof. The ‘new’ look gives a real sense of the scale, something intended to send a powerful message to the defeated and downtrodden Anglo-Saxons in their tiny thatched hovels. The nasty Normans were saying, “We’re in charge and don’t forget it.” These days, aircraft carriers convey the same message.

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Twitter Ye Not

Erdogan1

If ever there was cast-iron evidence for limiting the number of terms in the top job, it’s the Prime Minister of Turkey’s current spat with Twitter, an unedifying squabble that makes Erdoğan look autocratic and self-serving. Is the Twitter ban on or off? Who knows? Are the tweets about Erdoğan accurate? Who knows? Twitter is in good company. Lazy censorship is the norm in Turkey. A ban on YouTube has been on and off for years. Facebook may be next. Erdoğan doesn’t like selfies. It’s all rather pointless as anyone with a little technical savvy can circumvent the ban with relative ease.

Something dangerous happens to those who sit at the big desk for too long. The seduction of power can be unhinging. Like the absolute monarchs of old, some start to think that they personify and embody the nation they’re supposed to serve and to insult them is also to insult the nation (something that is a crime in Turkey). Erdoğan doesn’t respond well to criticism and uses politically appointed judges to punish those who cross him. And it’s not just Turkey. This imperious tendency can happen even in so-called mature democracies. Think Margaret Thatcher and how she became more regal and dictatorial with every year of her reign. God knows how Her Maj coped with those weekly chit chats. Who was giving an audience to whom?

Wiser heads know when to leave the party. Take Nelson Mandela, a great example of a dignified exit and even the ever-shrewd Tony Blair knew when the game was up. Not so for our power-crazed Erdoğan. In 2011, he won an unprecedented third consecutive election making him the most popular and successful Turkish leader since Atatürk. But there was a problem. The Constitution barred him from serving a fourth term as Prime Minister and that historic victory could have been his swan song. But the wily old Erdoğan wasn’t about to let the small matter of a Constitution pension him off, he simply changed it.

In August, Turks go to the polls to choose a directly elected executive president and guess whose name will be at the top of the ballot paper? The chances are Erdoğan will win, maybe by a smaller margin, but with a majority nonetheless. I don’t expect today’s local elections to upset the political status quo either. I do expect more authoritarianism and more paranoia, a prospect that doesn’t augur well for political pluralism in Turkey. And so back to the Iron Lady. In the end, it was her own who got rid of her, not the electorate. Maybe, just maybe, there’s a lesson here for Erdoğan.

 

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I Do

Same Sex Marriage PictureToday‘s the day that same sex marriage was legalised in England and Wales. Scotland follows suit in October and it can only be a matter of time before Northern Ireland falls into line. Both England and Wales have now joined a select group of civilised nations that believe in marriage equality for all. I awoke to find my world just as I left it. We have not been smitten by a vengeful God, the sun still shines and this green and pleasant land is still green and pleasant. My advice to those who oppose same sex marriage: don’t marry someone of the same sex.

The Sisterhood

Expat GlossaryI first compiled my expat glossary in 2011 as a tongue-in-cheek classification of the various expat types Liam and I encountered during our time in Turkey. The idea started with ‘emigrey’ to describe silver-haired retirees living out their dotage in the sun. It was a play on the English loan word from the French ‘émigré,’ the past participle of ‘émigrer’ – to emigrate. The glossary caused quite a stir at the time, striking a chord with most but hitting a nerve with the humourless. It’s remained a perennial favourite, often quoted and plagiarised, and not always with a credit – naughty, naughty. Over time, the lexicon has grown, with additions by me and suggestions from others. And now, I’ve added a new category. So, ladies and gents, I give you…

Turkey StreetThe Sisterhood

The antidote to the VOMITing sickness that afflicts the Shirley Valentines who wash up like driftwood on the beaches of Turkey. Many of the Sisters are reformed VOMITs who’ve been through the ringer, some more than once, but have emerged to tell the tale stronger and wiser. The Sisters stick together (like birds of a feather), because men are rubbish.

The Bodrum Chapter of the Sisterhood play a central role in Turkey Street, the sequel to Perking the Pansies, Jack and Liam move to Turkey, due out in the Summer of 2014.

Norwich-Over-The-Water

Norwich-Over-The-Water

After 20 months, we finally closed the door on the Weaver’s Cottage and left the old parish of Norwich-Over-The-Water. It was a sad parting but bricks and mortar are just that, even when they’re 370 years old and located in the oldest ward in town. In any case, we shall return. Our new gaff (my 18th home since I dropped) is less than a mile across the city on the other side of the water. We fully intend to re-visit our old haunts every now and then and wallow in the exuberance and pretentiousness of Norwich arty types (also known as a few pints on a warm summer’s evening at the Playhouse Theatre bar).

There’s something a little bit special about Norwich-Over-The-Water. It’s reckoned by those in the know to be the site of the original Saxon (or rather Anglish) settlement called Westwic. According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, wood-pannelled Westwic was torched in 1004 by the deliciously named Sweyn Forkbeard, King of the Danes. Clearly there was something rotten in the State of Denmark, to misquote the Bard. However, the doughty arsonist’s marauding hit the right spot and he later became the first Danish king of England and introduced flat-packed furniture to a world-wide audience. Okay, I made that last bit up.

Fast forward to medieval times and Norwich-Over-The-Water welcomed Huguenot, Walloon and Flemish refugees from the near continent, fleeing religious persecution from the dastardly French and Spanish. The immigrants became known as “The Strangers” and eventually made up a third of the city’s population. Apparently, the mighty flood of immigrants caused very little resentment at the time. Far from packing out the workhouses and stealing the jobs of the local farmhands, the highly skilled expats from the Low Countries bolstered trade with mainland Europe and helped make Norwich rich. Stick that in your pipe and smoke it, Nigel Farage and your UKIP xenophobic swivel-eyed loons.

So, I give you a little tour of Norwich-Over-The-Water from the comfort of your own sofa:

Norwich Playhouse
St Mary’s Coslany
The Wharf
St George’s Colegate
St Michael Coslany
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Births, Deaths and Marriages

Over the cold winter on the sofa nights, ITV, Britain’s main commercial broadcaster, ran a documentary series featuring the activities of the City of Westminster’s Register Office where births, deaths and marriages are recorded. It was a distracting little show, a  funny and touching fly-on-the-wall human interest fest for a chilly midwinter’s evening that helped the digestion and wasn’t too taxing on the brain. There is something rather dignified and valiant about the ordinary people – the hatch, match and dispatch squad – who deal daily with the relentless cycle of life that we must all face and the relentless cycle of emotion that goes with it. Veteran registrar of 28 years, Patricia Gordon, confessed that she was none too comfortable with the notion of civil partnerships. But, through friendship and by example, fellow registrar Tommy helped her see the light; now she can’t wait for him to find his own soul mate so she can do the honours. And guess what? Patricia officiated at our Civil Partnership in 2008. Here is she doing the business:

Thank you for changing your mind, Patricia.