The Wedding

 We watched the royal nuptials with friends surrounded by homespun bunting, Union flags lovingly coloured in felt tip pens and attached to straws, and photocopied mini-flags on cocktail sticks. We feasted on a celebratory spread of British fare with a Turkish twist – spicy Cornish pasties for the fellas, scones for the ladies, fairy cakes for the pansies. Intellectually I’m a republican but emotionally I’m a true blue royalist. It’s a contradiction I manage to fudge with typically British pragmatism.

We had a joyous time stuffing our faces, sipping Pimms, waving our patriotic pennants and whooping at the hotchpotch of heavenly and hideous frocks. Princess Bea’s head dress could pick up intelligent life on other planets and Anne wrapped herself in her granny’s tablecloth that she’d run up on a Singer. Her Maj, of course, is above fashion. Harry looked dapper in his uniform. He’s the best of the bunch even though he’s a ginger. I’ve forgiven his faux pas with Nazi party attire some years ago. I put it down to youthful exuberance and stupidity. The Windsor-Mountbattens aren’t blessed with much up top. The Abbey looked magnificent and the majestic pageant was delivered to perfection in a way only the British know how. It gladdened my heart to see Elton John and his Civil Partner, David Furnish, in attendance. The final nail in the coffin of bigotry? Well, perhaps.

I’ve heard it said that the whole jamboree was a waste of time and money in these days of austerity and the terrible events occurring around the globe. What’s wrong with forgetting the woes of the world just for one day and enjoying the fairytale moment? I hope the dysfunctional Firm have learned the Diana lesson and gorgeous Kate will be allowed to flourish in a thoroughly modern way.

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Something for the Weekend, Sir?

Hairdressing, like undertaking, is a steady trade which never goes out of fashion. Having sampled a few establishments in the village, we have settled on a high street barbershop run by a delightful father and son combo. Our number two cut requires only a few minutes with a hair trimmer. However, this cannot be said of the average young Turk. Generally blessed with abundant tresses, even the humblest waiter vainly adorns his head with elaborate, gravity defying sculptures held aloft by a vat of gel. Armpits though, are not always so well groomed.

Our genteel Bodrum barber is a far cry from Liam’s first skirmish with a Turkish coiffeur. The fun began on the final full day of our gloriously romantic honeymoon in splendid Kaş. I persuaded Liam to join me in the exotic pleasure of a Turkish shave, an indulgence I have enjoyed many times on previous visits to Asia Minor.

The barbershop boys saw us coming, and we were mobbed by eager young bucks queuing up to service us. The routine began innocently enough – an efficient double shave with a cut throat razor followed by ear and nose fuzz skilfully dispatched with a flaming cotton bud soaked in petrol. I thought it unusual to find that we were stripped of our tops for the neck and shoulder rub. My young man asked if I would prefer a full body massage in the little room at the back of the shop. I naïvely accepted thinking nothing untoward could occur in a busy barbershop on a main thoroughfare.

He led me into the room and lay me face down on the padded table. His expert hands kneaded and pounded my torso into rapturous submission, and my mind wandered into semi-trance. The spell was rudely broken by a tug of my shorts, which were unceremoniously whipped off in a single movement. I had gone commando that day which rather startled my young masseur but which only added to his vigour. His pummelling went into overdrive. I opened my eyes fleetingly to find him standing to my side inches from my face, shirtless, scarlet-faced, sweating like a dray horse and obviously aroused. For the remainder of the rubdown, I kept my eyes firmly shut and my arms religiously tucked to my side for fear of displaying the slightest encouragement. It was my honeymoon, after all.

Meanwhile, Liam was relishing an upper body rub. However, he became alarmed when the crimper's fingers started to walk south towards the small of Liam’s back, playfully plucking the waistband of his shorts and continuing their passage into the abyss. Liam grabbed the boy’s wrist firmly giving a whole new meaning to the word hayır.

It is not hard to imagine what raced through Liam’s mind as he endured the grunting, murmuring and bed squeaking that emanated from the back room. Shortly afterwards, my tellak and I emerged into the light, me shaking uncontrollably, he drenched in sweat. We concluded our business with a quasi-post-coital cigarette.

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Ex-Pat Glossary

Expatriates, like everyone else, come in all shapes and sizes - the mean and the mannered, the classless and the classy, the awful and the joyful. The abbreviated epithet expat simply doesn't adequately express the myriad folk who have chosen to live here In Turkey. To add a little descriptive colour to my posts, I've devised some new words to depict the numerous variants of the species.

• Emigreys: retirees serving out their twilight years in the sun, most of whom seem to be just a little to the right of Genghis Khan and who bought a jerry built white box in Turkey because it was cheaper than Spain (well, it was at the time). Everyday emigrey life operates within a parallel universe of neo colonial separateness preoccupied with visa hops to the Isles of Greece, pork sausages, property prices and Blighty bashing.
• VOMITs (Victims of Men in Turkey): vintage desperate ex-housewives with a few lira to spare who shamelessly chase younger Turkish men. Predictably, such relationships rarely last once the money runs out. Thank you to Sara for this one.
• Semigreys: those too young to retire in the conventional sense, who are living the vida loca on the proceeds of property sales. Plunging interest rates present quite a fiscal test to those trying to maintain a hedonistic lifestyle on dwindling assets while waiting for the pensions to kick in, assuming there will be a pension to kick in given the parlous position of the public purse.
• Vetpats: veterans who have been living in Turkey for many years. Usually better informed than their peers with a less asinine view of the world, vetpats have taken the trouble to learn Turkish and are better integrated into the wider community. Some have even acquired Turkish citizenship and are fortunate to have found gainful employment on the right side of the Law.
• Sexpats: discrete grey men of means who are serviced by young Turkish men in return for a stipend.
• Hedonistas: those who enjoy a carefree existence of total self indulgence liberated from the binding ties of responsibility or the worries of tomorrow.
• The Ignorati: a collective term for those who live in utter ignorance of the history and culture of their foster land, shout loudly in English and see the world at large through the narrow-minded pages of the Daily Mail (or The Daily Bigot as I like to call it).

These terms are not mutually exclusive. It's perfectly possible for an emigrey to also be a vetpat VOMIT and a fully paid up member of the ignoble ignorati, and many are.
I have received several suggestions from readers to add to the Pansy ex-pat lexicon.

• Thank you Greg for 'emigays' to describe well to do old queens spending up their life savings because you can't take it with you and no children to fret about (That'll be us then).
• Thank you Tom for the deliciously naughty 'cowpats' for those I really can't abide and would flee to the next town to avoid.
• Thank you Carole for the 'MADs' (My Ahmet's Different) for those delusional VOMITs who think that their Turkish man is somehow different from the rest because 'he really loves me'. Who are they trying to kid?

More please...

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Gone to the Dogs

I love dogs. We always had dogs at home. Petra, Pepe, Rocky and the rest were all emotionally interwoven into the rich tapestry of my family life. When they died, I cried. I even wept when my hamster, Goliath, performed a fatal somersault off the top of the freezer though I confess my pain was short lived and Goliath was quickly replaced by Samson.

After we migrated we were taken by surprise by the volume of stray and feral dogs sniffing aimlessly around the streets. Liam’s often waylaid by a wet snout playfully jammed into his groin and we are often tempted to take Rover home, hose him down and feed him up. I’m not at all surprised that animal welfare is an expat preoccupation. The recent story of an animal-lover leading her pack to a Bulgarian Promised Land like a modern day Moses is but an extreme example of the canine devotion that seems to dominate the humdrum lives of many.

Animal welfare is a noble cause but so too is the care and protection of children. It distresses me to hear and read so little about the plight of the thousands of children in our foster land who lead brutal and miserable lives, trapped within abusive families, rented out by the hour or thrown onto the streets to fend for themselves. Take a look at the following articles if you can bear to know more.

Istanbul home to 30,000 street children
Rise in sexual abuse of minors
Child Labour

It’s easy to think that the problem is overwhelming and nothing can be done, an all too comfortable mind-set that is underpinned by the apparent dearth of children’s charities and non-governmental organisations working within Turkey. However, it is possible make a difference no matter how small. Why not sponsor a child in Turkey or make a contribution to Unicef?

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