The Great Flood

Flood 2014

As a card-carrying, dyed-in-the-wool, bleeding heart pinko liberal (though not in the party political sense), I don’t have much time for the UK Independence Party. To me, it looks like a motley crew of disaffected Tories, the swivel-eyed variety, bible-thumping zealots, little England xenophobes and closet and not-so-closet fascists – not the kind of people I’d give my last Rolo to. Just sit back and watch as they trip themselves up with their own silly rhetoric, something that happens with embarrassing regularity. Cue the nice UKIP town councillor from Henley-on-Thames, David Silvester. Mr Silvester raised a few eyebrows when he wrote a letter to his local rag, the Henley Standard. In it, he claimed that the floods which recently beset these soggy islands were divine retribution for the legalisation of gay marriage. He wrote:

“The scriptures make it abundantly clear that a Christian nation that abandons its faith and acts contrary to the Gospel (and in naked breach of a coronation oath) will be beset by natural disasters.”

Mr Silvester was once a Conservative councillor (nuff said) but defected to UKIP because of the Government’s policy on marriage equality. I wonder how the wise councillor explains the Great North Sea Flood of 1953, the very year of the Coronation. It was a time when England was still largely the God-fearing, church-going, gay-jailing, warm-beer drinking, class-ridden, women-know-their-place, whites only earthly paradise that, presumably, Mr Silvester pines after. The flood claimed the lives of 300 souls in England alone (with more in Scotland, and the Low Countries), badly damaged over 24,000 buildings and forced 30,000 people to flee their homes. God really does work in mysterious ways.

Mr Silvester’s words unleashed a firestorm of ridicule on social media. So much so, that he’s now considered too extreme even for UKIP, who have since suspended him from the party.  The delicious furore has even spawned some spoof news items. My personal favourites are:

The UKIP Shipping Forecast

Married Gays to Tour Drought-hit Countries

Liam is packing our saddle bags as I write but we think the Sahara might be a challenge, even for these two unrepentant sinners.

Oi Speak Narrfuk Oi Do

Anyone living on these damp little islands and anyone who visits them knows that Britain is a nation of a thousand and one accents and dialects. Homespun and imported lingo twists and turns through town and county. We may live in a global village and in a mass media world where ‘Globalish’ (the cut-down version of English-light) dominates, but that hasn’t stopped many regional accents kicking against the tide. In many cases, they are thriving. English in all its variants is constantly evolving and because the language is such a magpie, words are being dropped and added, borrowed and adapted, created and extended all the time. Our cousins across the Pond might be forgiven for thinking that there are only two English accents: posh and Cockney. But even those stereotypes are changing. These days, only the Queen speaks like the Queen and the word on the street, the inner city London street, is a marvellous infusion of words, phrases and pronunciations from right across the world. Quite different from an Eastenders episode.

Unfortunately, many English dialects are truly indecipherable to an untrained ear. Pity the poor foreigner, jumping into a cab at East Midlands International Airport to be greeted by:

“Ayup me duck.”

The thick Norfolk accent, aptly named “Broad Norfolk” is no less difficult to fathom and notoriously difficult to imitate. Norwich may only be 115 miles from central London but that’s far enough away for Broad Norfolk to survive the onslaught of the insipid Estuary English, the dominant accent of southeast England (and the one Liam and I speak). There’s even an organisation, the Friends of Norfolk Dialect (FOND) which is…

…dedicated to conserving and recording Norfolk’s priceless linguistic and cultural heritage, thus keeping ‘Broad Norfolk’ alive.

Broad Naarfuk is rich in local words and phrases, some of them variants on standard English, others completely unique. A year in and Liam and I are only just beginning to look a little less baffled. Here’s a few to give you a titty-totty taste:

Norfolk_Words

Want to know how all of this sounds? Take a look at this. I’ll be testing you later.

 

Tales from Turkey

Peoples_RepublicLast month I had the pleasure of being interviewed by the gorgeous Shelley Antscherl for the People’s Republic of South Devon, the premier online newspaper for that bejewelled corner of this sceptre’d isle.

“We’d both reached a professional impasse and thought it was high time to take a break from our labours while we still had our own teeth.”

Update – Friday 17th January

sad-face

I’ve just checked back with the People’s Republic of South Devon and my interview (and, the entire website, it seems) has disappeared from the ether.  That’s rather unfortunate. It was there yesterday. My witless words are now lost for all time. Sorry about that.

When Did You Choose to be Straight, Evander Holyfield?

For as long as I can remember, there’s been idle speculation about how and when someone’s homosexuality is established – nurture or nature, a bit of both? Who knows? Certainly not me. Nor do I much care. To my way of thinking, identifying the ‘cause’ of something tends to suggest there should be a ‘cure’ and I’m not in the business of being cured. Why would I be? I’m not sick. What is blindingly obvious is that, whatever the reason, the sexual and romantic attraction to a member of the same sex is not a choice. If it was, many gay people might choose to be straight. After all, it’s so much safer to run with the pack rather than against it. Of course, this doesn’t stop many (almost exclusively straight) people claiming that sexuality is just a lifestyle choice like nipple piercing or kerb crawling. Or smoking, as Evander Holyfield claimed after being the first to be kicked off Celebrity Big Brother here in the UK. This gives a whole new meaning to giving up the fags. Really, Mr Holyfield, it’s time to shut up, bank the cash and go home. This whole ‘choice’ smokescreen is just an easy and convenient excuse to oppress and eradicate, and is used to hateful and sometimes deadly effect across the world, even in the so-called socially advanced West. It’s just lazy thinking from the pond life, the bigots, the politically hoodwinked and the religiously deceived. No, sexuality is not a choice. The only choice an individual has is whether to express their sexuality in a meaningful way. And that isn’t a walk in the park in far too many communities and societies. Who wants to be cast out onto the street by their families, get terrorised at school, end up with twenty years hard labour or get lynched from the nearest olive tree?

No doubt the sterile navel gazing about alleged lifestyle choices will rumble on across the airwaves, in the press, the pub and from the pulpit, long after I’ve shuffled off this mortal coil. Let me leave you with this little video* that debunks the entire myth in a deliciously simple and effective way. Please take note Mr Holyfield. 

*Thank you to my old friend Richard who posted the video on Facebook and who is lucky enough to live out his dotage with his partner, John, on the gorgeous Greek island of Kefalonia (the venue for my first late deal with Liam). Lucky sod. The clip was also featured on the liberal social media site Upworthy

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Oo-er, Missus

Most_PopularLet’s face it, the days between Christmas and New Year can be a bit of a damp squib. Unless you’ve been forced onto the tills by the hordes of hysterical bargain hunters flashing the plastic, it’s a time to tread water. The entire western world is stuck between the over-bloated, over-indulgent and sometimes over-wrought Noel (a time when suicides soar) and the over-bloated, over-indulgent and sometimes over-wrought New Year’s knees-up (the most popular time to get dumped). Even the desk-bound know that it’s the graveyard slot with only the filing to do.

Sadly, Liam and I both succumbed to the dreaded festive lurgy. Our inter-feast days were spent on the sofa under a duvet with a keg of Lemsip and a crate of Kleenex extra absorbent. Sadly, there were no hide-the-sausage shenanigans either: we had neither the energy nor inclination for a furtive fumble beneath the eiderdown. Still, I did manage to get my stiff little digits moving and before long I was fingering the internet with gusto, a willy-nilly and desperate attempt to amuse myself. Judging by Perking the Pansies, I wasn’t the only one who swallowed the boredom pill. And what a fruity lot the pansy readers were. On 28th December, four out of the eight most popular posts (as revealed by my sidebar) featured racy images. The lean, semi-naked scaffolder was particularly popular. I hope my thrill-seeking surfers weren’t too disappointed by what they actually found. To quote the late, great Frankie Howerd, Oo-er, Missus.

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New Year for Old Farts

We’re getting too long in the tooth for this exhausting New Year malarkey. The days are long gone when we would queue up in the rain, squeezed into sequinned hot pants outside some over-priced sleazy boyz club to take recreational drugs and shake our booties into the wee small hours, surrounded by half-naked sweaty men in tight jeans wrapped in fur and tattoos. Come to think of it, it doesn’t sound that bad at all. Sadly, the spirit is willing but the flesh is oh, so weak. Such unfettered decadence is best left to the young bucks who bring up the rear with stamina and a little lovin’ in mind. No, for us, it was a quick bite in town then back home to a warm hearth, Graham Norton and a bottle of bubbly, all capped off with the South Bank fireworks courtesy of impossibly blond London Mayor, Boris Johnson (a wolf in a golden fleece if ever there was one), Vodafone and good old Auntie Beeb. And fabulous pyrotechnics they were too. It’s always good to bring in the new year with a bang don’t you think?

2013 in Review

Perking the Pansies recovered from a difficult birth at the murderous hands of the Turkish censors, thrived through the terrible twos and survived the transitional threes, ending the year with 60,000 hits for the last twelve months. Thank you to everyone and anyone who’s passed by and glanced at my random witterings. Most blogs burn out after two years so I must be living on borrowed time.

As the sun sets on 2013, in the best Hogmanay tradition, I give you the year’s top ten – a pick ‘n’mix treat of bum cleavage, Turks at the barricades, a shot in the arm, a tender coming out story, a sexy rugger bugger, a book to send you to sleep, an old-time boozer, an olive tree planted in a foreign field and a scratched itch.

Image courtesy of Occupy Gezi on Facebook.
One for the Ladies
The Art of Blogging at St Margaret’s Church of Art
Gareth Thomas likes Good Read
Best of Perking the Pansies Vol Two
Queen’s Head, Chelsea
Tulip Fields of Turkey
Image Courtesy of the Financial Times
Tom’s Posing Pouch

Plumber’s Bum

It was the picture wot won it.

Turkey Troubles

A revolution in the making?

Tom Daley: Something I Want to Say

Saying it before someone said it for him.

Gareth Thomas, Dancing on Ice Drama

Who said ice-prancing rugger buggers can’t read?

Life in the Old Blog Yet

With thanks to the nice people at WordPress who featured me on one of their big hitting sites.

Turkey, Surviving the Expats – Out Now!

Keeping me out the workhouse.

God Save the Queen’s Head

A Chelsea classic and old watering hole of mine.

From Little Acorns...

A small corner of Turkey that is forever John.

Seven Year Itch

A soppy tale from Liam.

Turkey, Who Will Blink First?

And we all know who did in the end, don’t we?

For some inexplicable reason, this was the most popular image of 2013, featured in Let’s Hear it for the Brides.

Nine Elms
The Thames at Nine Elms

And I shouldn’t forget the perennial favourites from previous years that keep coming back again and again like a bad case of thrush.

Gran Canaria Sex Emporium

Proving that ‘sex’ really is the most searched for word on Google.

Now That’s What I Call Old

A humble little post about a spectacular discovery in eastern Turkey that just keeps on giving while the archaeologists keep on digging  – 8,000 hits and climbing. Who would have thought?

Expat Glossary

Oft quoted and oft plagiarised (and not always with a credit, tut tut)

Goodbye to the Turkish Living Forum

The few spoiling it for the many. A real shame.

Turkey Street RecliningAnd what of 2014? All I know is that Turkey Street, Jack and Liam move to Bodrum will be out early in the year. Will it be as successful as the first one? Who knows? Not me. Whatever happens, come rain or shine, a happy and prosperous year to all my pansy fans. Thank you for staying the course and for your remarkable support. I’m touched but then, I have been for years.

Tis The Season to be Jolly

Perking the Pansies is off-air for the Yuletide. Liam and I are heading to the Smoke for a jolly slice of family life with all the calorific trimmings. But before we head south to the big city, I’d like to take this opportunity to wish everyone, believers and non-believers alike, a season of peace and goodwill. Whatever Christmas means to you, be happy and enjoy.

Seasons Greeting from Jack Scott 2013
…as the enterprising Chinese say (well, they probably don’t, but they do make make a shilling or two at this time of year and good luck to ’em). And, of course, I got the translation from Google and so it could say ‘Mao is Chairman of the Board’ for all I know.

Bah! Humbug!

bah humbug1I’m no scrooge, really I’m not. The piggy bank may have dropped a few pounds since my days as a senior bean counter, shuffling a pile of papers from one side of my desk to the other then back again, but we can still afford to spend a farthing or two on our nearest and dearest. We just can’t thrash the plastic to make the grand gesture any more. Britain may be finally emerging from the longest and deepest recession since the Great Depression but our days of austerity are permanent (that is, unless Liam’s Lotto numbers come up). It’s fine. We don’t mind. It’s our choice. Let’s face it, I could always stop mucking about with this writing lark and get a proper job.

Anyway, don’t you think festive fever is a bit OTT these days? I’m not one of those old farts down the pub who will bore you with their sad Victorian tales of home-sewn Christmas stockings stuffed with two walnuts and a satsuma – very A Christmas Carol.  No, I got a Dalek suit, a Hot Wheels racing set, an action man with all the butch accessories and enough Dinky toys to run Port Talbot (admit it, you thought I played with Barbie dolls, didn’t you?). It just the whole commercial juggernaut seems to start earlier and earlier and by the time the baby Jesus pops out, I’m ready to chuck my lot in with the Devil. That’s why I just love this glorious ad from posh Knightsbridge department store, Harvey Nichols (superior by far to their more famous neighbour, Harrods, only spitting distance away). It’s a breath of fresh air. 

The video was first picked up by the lovely Aussie Kym at Gidday from the UK.  Ta!

Stripping for the Cause

RowersMany moons ago, I nailed my colours to the mast about the scourge of homophobia, particularly hate crime and bullying in schools. I even banged on about it on the wireless when I did a My Pride Life gig on Future Radio. It still goes on, of course. Hardly a day passes when I don’t hear about some pond life picking on the defenceless. Mercifully, I’m not a lone voice in the wilderness. Who listens to me anyway? There are loads of splendid organisations, charities and talented individuals doing their bit. And, if the message of hope is blended with a little harmless titillation, then that gets my vote every time.

Cue the cute rowers from Warwick University stripping for the cause. Oh, to be the cox.

I thought I might take my clothes off in public to raise a few farthings for the cause but I fear people would only pay me to put them back on again.