Our former foster home is covered in a veil of tear gas. What began as a peaceful campaign against the destruction of a city centre park to make way for yet another shopping centre has spread to a wider national protest against the creeping authoritarianism of the current Turkish Government led by the charmless bruiser Erdoğan. Watch out, my Turkish friends, he’s not exactly noted for his listening skills. Is the ruling AK Party determined to implement Islamism by stealth? I don’t know. But telling women how many babies to have, branding all drinkers as alcoholics and demanding that the Dutch Government removes a baby from a lesbian couple (because “homosexuality is contrary to the culture of Islam.”) isn’t liberalism either. Erdoğan is the most popular leader in recent Turkish history, freely elected. Democracy may be a flawed political system but it’s probably the best we have. A word of warning, though. Be careful who you vote for. It might not be quite what you had in mind. This image says it all:
Longer-term pansyfans may recall that I started having a bit of bother walking distances while we were in Turkey. The cardiologist at the local private hospital in Bodrum diagnosed Periodic Limb Movement Disorder. Apparently, I was running a marathon every night in my sleep making my little lallies tired during the day. I was prescribed a cocktail of blood thinners guaranteed to bring on early onset impotence and an anti-twitching drug usually used to treat Parkinson’s. My condition didn’t improve and so, now we’re back in Blighty, I had the whole business checked out at the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital. I’m afraid the original diagnosis was a bit off target. A CT angiogram revealed that I have arterial blockages in both my groin and right thigh which won’t get better without surgery. A double stent will unblock my dodgy groin but the problem in my thigh requires an arterial bypass. My consultant looks like Dr Green from ER. It’s a shame I’m not under George Clooney.
The Bodrum Peninsula Travel Guide brought to you from the gorgeous Roving Jay is free (yes, FREE) to download to your Kindle thingy from Amazon from now until 8am on Tuesday 4th June (Blighty time). This essential guide is a must have for anyone dipping their toes in this magical corner of Turkey. Get it while you can because when it’s gone, it’s gone (well, it won’t actually be gone but you’ll have to pay for it after the freebie period is up).
Ian, one of my oldest friends, is the area manager of a gay ‘lifestyle’ chain (AKA licensed sex shops – don’t tell his mother). The filthy smut flies off the shelves as the filthy lucre fills the tills even during these recessionary times. Well, people stay in more and make a meal of it. Despite his status as purveyor of porn to the Grindr generation, Ian is an off-fashioned boy with the Nineties hairdo to prove it. He shuns the modern world of instantaneous communication for a more leisurely discourse – snail-mail rather than e-mail, hand-crafted notes rather than instant messaging. Even his flip-top phone belongs in the Science Museum. He’s particularly scathing about Facebook, seeing it as the work of the Devil. I picked up this postcard and sent it to him. I wrote, “I saw this card and thought of you.”
A couple of days later I received this card in the post. Ian had written, “I saw this card and thought of you.” Touché!
I’m struggling just a little to give up the dreaded weed (okay, I’m struggling a lot). Most of the time I bear my cross with the help of nicotine patches as my tobacco crutches. But, an evening on the Devil’s brew at the local ale house invariably sees me falling off the wagon: a relapse is odds on favourite every time. It’s another bad habit I must try harder to break (along with liver-dissolving binge drinking, artery-hardening titbits and talking to myself). A word of warning to other patch addicts. Don’t wear the bloody things in bed if you want to wake up calmed and rested. Last time I left a patch slapped on my arm, I tossed all night like a tart with crabs and had crazy dreams in vivid Fifties Technicolor. I wager few people these days dream of sleeping with Doris Day. Nothing smutty, you understand; after all, the virtuous Miss Day shared a cinematic bed with Rock (leather queen) Hudson. The minute I woke up, I panicked that the sheets weren’t fresh enough for the Febreze-fragrant star of the CinemaScope screen. It’s enough to drive a restless boy into the arms of a shrink.
The sun shone, the bride and bride kissed, the pansexual crowd whooped, the fizz popped and the waters trickled by in approval. After the nuptials in Islington, the wedding party was delivered via double decker to Blackfriars Pier where we joined them, all suited and booted (well, I’ve got to get some wear out of the two piece I bought for the funeral of my celebrated uncle). What started as a boozy cruise down Old Father Thames ended with a slow smooch on a riverside dancefloor and two very happy ladies. Liam caught up with old colleagues from his waged days and I got to flirt with a bone fide fire fighter. The hettie-man didn’t seem to mind any of my obvious batty-man gags about sliding down his greasy pole and playing with his enormous hose. The running buffet, bottomless barrel and limitless goodwill helped ensure our first lesbian wedding was a rip roaring success. We felt honoured to witness it.
The only blot on the landscape was our uncomfortable room at the Comfort Inn, Vauxhall, with its thin duvets, wonky fittings and tiny shower cupboard with a loo barely big enough for a five year old. Still, we were three sheets to the wind thanks to our generous hosts so we hardly noticed.
The wedding album isn’t out yet so here’s the view from the pier at the Westminster Boating Base in Pimlico where the reception was held. Liam said I scrubbed up rather well and who am I to argue?
What does this bog blue box on wheels look like to you? There’s a small clue stamped on the side. Yep, looks like a recycling wheelie bin to me too. So why is that the butch bin men of Norwich City Council (or refuse disposal executives or whatever fancy names they give themselves these days) walk past it as if it were invisible? Several fruitless calls to the over-imposing art décor city hall (the huge building that can be seen for miles and which the Luftwaffe failed to hit during a bombing raid) have not established why the vibrant blue box I share with our fabulous neighbour seems to merge inconspicuously into the brown-red brick backdrop at the very moment the bins around us get emptied. Apparently I’m not on their list and so I don’t exist. So put me on your list, I said. Right away, they said. Must have slipped their minds. I’m waiting for a call back from a very important supervisor-type person. Still no joy. That must have slipped their minds too. Exhausting work, this bean-counting business. I know, I used to be one of them. Over to UB40 who famously sang in 1981 (during the last great depression):
P.S. I know the green glass box (also invisible on collection day), does make it look like we’re a couple of old lushes but I would say in our defence that it’s two weeks worth of empties and our neighbour also has a wee dram from time to time.
The strapline for Star Trek must be the most famous split infinitive in popular culture. Off we boldly went to Cinema City to watch the latest instalment of the franchise, ‘Star Trek, Into Darkness.’ I’m not what you might call a trekkie. Nor am I particularly keen on slash and burn all-American action movies but I’ve always had a soft spot for a touch of sci-fi with a brain. We both enjoyed the hyper-ride. The script was crisp and engaging, the bromance between the unfeasibly handsome Kirk and the French-fringed Spock was credible and the action sequences tripped along at warp speed. The big budget special effects were, as we all expect these days, believable and not at all like a glorified X-Box game (something that afflicts so many Hollywood blockbusters). Benedict Cumberbatch makes a suitably menacing baddie (even if casting a clipped-vowelled Brit as the evil villain is a bit of a cliché) and seeing London in a high-rise 23rd century cameo role, complete with St Paul’s and the London Eye, was a nice touch. I suspect Wren’s opus magnum may well last a few more centuries but the Eye? We watched the entire extravaganza in 3D and this worked well for the big ticket scenes, particularly when the Enterprise flew directly towards us from the screen. That said, the multi-dimensional technique jarred with some of the more intimate close-up moments and I’m sure we looked quite ridiculous in the goggles. All in all, you get a lot of cosmic bangs for your bucks. Space: the final frontier. Go see.
To continue my amateurish witterings on writing a memoir, Displaced Nation asked me:
Is it easier to turn expat stories or travel adventures into a memoir or a novel, and how does one decide?
Here’s the trick. Just because a memoir can’t be a novel, it doesn’t mean it can’t be written as if it were. The greatest challenge is to give memoir a plot that readers will find convincing and engaging enough to make them turn the page.
For me, that meant very little fat. One of the first tips I picked up from my publisher was to dump storylines and characters that weren’t key to the main event or didn’t add interesting flavour. I tackled this by creating a story board, much like they do in the movies. This meant I could identify gaps in the narrative, ensure continuity and shoot down the flights of fancy.
Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag and smile, smile, smile. Forget the worst recession since the South Sea Bubble, dust off that cracked glitter ball and drag out those tarnished bacofoil hot pants. It’s time to get crushed by the sequined juggernaut that is the Eurovision Song Contest, the rightful heir to the fall of Communism. This year, the travelling freak show has pitched the big top in Malmö (pronounced Malmurrrr), Sweden. Expect high camp, a blizzard of glitzy ticker tape and enough dry ice to halt global warming. Expect virginal visions in white, gay-bar strippers, fake blonds where collars and cuffs don’t match, notes as flat as the Fens and tunes once heard, never remembered. Don’t expect ABBA. The land of the midnight sun and real blonds is throwing an enormous street party like a UEFA cup final but without the drunken thuggery. The annual warble-fest costs so much to stage it attracts its very own IMF bail-out. Let’s hope nobody votes for the unkindly named PIGS (Blighty might be joining that popular club any day now). Winning will send them over the fiscal cliff.
Turkey has thrown a hissy fit and withdrawn from the competition. TRT (the Turkish broadcaster) does not like changes to the voting rules in recent years (50/50 between the public and a panel of music experts) which it claims disadvantages the Turkish entry by reducing the influence of the Turkish diaspora across Europe. That’s the point, silly. TRT also objects to the automatic qualification of songs from the so-called ‘Big Five’ broadcasters (the BBC among them) that pay the lion’s share of the costs. If TRT wants a free ride to the final, it’ll have to sign a much bigger cheque. After all, he who pays the piper calls the tune. To top it all, TRT got its pantaloons in a twist over a lesbian kiss live on stage. At the semis, Finland’s Krista Siegfrid landed a sloppy smacker on the lips of one of her backing dancers. Krista doesn’t actually drink from the furry cup in her day job, she just objects to the Finnish Parliament’s refusal to vote on marriage equality. Her song ‘Marry Me’ is through to the final where she’s threatening to repeat the tonsil-tickling outrage. Whether Krista has qualified because she kissed to be clever or despite of it is anyone’s guess. Overcome with moral indignation and shock, TRT has pulled the show completely. As we all know, watching a bit of girl-on-girl action turns you lesbian and there are no lesbians in Turkey, the land where men are men and goats are nervous.
Britain’s entry is an old-school power ballad sung by the gravelly-voiced Welsh chanteuse of yesteryear, Bonnie Tyler, she whose heart was totally eclipsed in ’83 after she got lost in France in ’77. The song’s not half bad (and half good either) but it hardly matters. We could put up Sooty for all the difference it would make. Mark my words. It’ll be a heartache for Bonnie. She’ll need more than a hero to fight the rising odds against a rout by the former Warsaw Pact. Well, I suppose it serves us right for Iraq. Poor old Auntie Beeb keeps wheeling out the golden oldies with their careers behind them, presumably because no-one with a career in front of them would touch Eurovision; it’s the kiss of death. Despite the parochial politics and regional gerrymandering, we’ll be waving our little union flags, raising a glass of bubbly to the campest show on Earth and hoping against hope that we don’t come last.
Perking the Pansies 