The woman beside me was snoring, all the blood in my skull had pooled to the back of my head, my lumbar region hurt, I was sweating profusely lying on a mat someone else had sweat on profusely, and I was listening to the indisputably worst music I have ever heard. I was not, by any stretch of the imagination, relaxed.
I was at my first Yoga class. It was a birthday present of fourteen classes from Ayla. (The pay-off is that she plays squash with me once a week. Let's see how she likes them apples.) Considering my woeful posture it's a very thoughtful gift, but considering my immense snobbery it's on thin ice.
It wasn't that it was intrinsically humiliating (the clothes, the sweating etc), it was the music and the Tantric bowl ringing, or clonking, that rankled the most. Actually, it was the music. We were just about spared whale and dolphin noises but not the positive affirmations of peace and relaxation. And a cavalcade of all the world's most aggravating ethnic instruments playing tourist melodies all synchronised to the movements I couldn't perform. If it had featured steel drums and roto-toms I would have done some damage.
It's not easy to perform dog-with-down-turned-head position and cover your ears at the same time.
Monday, 30 July 2007
Friday, 27 July 2007
It's all Greek to me
After an abortive trip to Ayla's ceramics guy (she has an eye guy, a gold guy, bag guy, a silver guy, a carpet guy, and a late shoe guy), we wandered back along the Golden Horn stopping briefly at the Ecumenical Orthodox Patriarchate. Along the way we bumped into a hot and bothered young student called Rob from Oxford who tagged along for the ride.
Our friend Colin was reluctant to come in for fear of being struck down by the Lord's lightning but as we entered the jaw-dropping church there was a service in action. Sadly, the (disputed) centre of world Christian Orthodoxy had a congregation of just one middle-aged woman.
Just as we were about to leave this gilt eastern Vatican an older priest entered to take over the proceedings from the three younger priests who had been chanting and singing a plaintiff three part harmony. I smiled and nodded to the old vicar in due respect and he warmly smiled and nodded back.
"Do you know who that is?" Ayla asked me.
"Not a clue, my love."
It was, she pointed out, His All Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, 270th successor of the 2000 year old Orthodox patriarchy.
I just gave the Brighton eyebrow to the (sort of) Pope. Sweet.
Our friend Colin was reluctant to come in for fear of being struck down by the Lord's lightning but as we entered the jaw-dropping church there was a service in action. Sadly, the (disputed) centre of world Christian Orthodoxy had a congregation of just one middle-aged woman.
Just as we were about to leave this gilt eastern Vatican an older priest entered to take over the proceedings from the three younger priests who had been chanting and singing a plaintiff three part harmony. I smiled and nodded to the old vicar in due respect and he warmly smiled and nodded back.
"Do you know who that is?" Ayla asked me.
"Not a clue, my love."
It was, she pointed out, His All Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, 270th successor of the 2000 year old Orthodox patriarchy.
I just gave the Brighton eyebrow to the (sort of) Pope. Sweet.
Monday, 23 July 2007
Fumus Interruptus
I was delighted and deeply saddened by a note from dear Alan Hay, for which I express my gratitude, that said that there were only twelve customers at the Heart last Saturday night. Delighted that I'm not subject to the appalling fascism meted out to our fellow subjects, and saddened that, England has been disgorged.
I am, of course, still harping on about the smoking ban in English pubs but also it's ramifications. Rich you might say coming from me, living in the land where it is positively encouraged throughout. But I feel my comrades' anguish even here.
It is trite, but born from the experience of professionally touring international licensed premises, that the culture, the phenomenon of the English public house is unique in this world despite this ludicrous ban.
Nowhere else was there a place of such simultaneous discourse and revelry and a bastion of bawdiness and louche behaviour dressed in the stained velvet and crinoline of a genteel Victorian parlour. Where the formulation of all kinds of relationships -- romantic and social, of great import or frivolous -- was so potential. It's where some of my most cherished friendships were fomented. It was a monument to solitude and community. The most immediate point of sale for government policy and the place to immediately discuss it. It's a place of learning, not least providing a valuable lesson on how to expediently and expertly detect bullshit. A meeting place, a rallying point, and a safe haven. Where else can you derive hilarity and moments of tenderness? To console and be consoled? And, frankly, to get utterly pissed.
To drink anywhere else in the world is to merely enter into a dishonest financial transaction with the barman, not a landlord. A landlord, my God. A common peer of his own realm.
In America a bar is where you get drunk, alone; in France a bar is where only discourse seems to occur; Spanish bars may have food but the ankle-deep Ducados butts and discarded lotto tickets don't whet my appetite; I wouldn't give a XXXX to burn the Midnight Oil in an Australian pub; From the outside Scottish bars seem derelict or closed; Irish pubs look like Irish pubs the world over; great beer is found in German kellers but martial drinking jangles my nerves; Italy has no idea what constitutes a serious drinking establishment; and in Istanbul a bar is where one spends most of one's time trying to remain sober enough to calculate how much formaldehyde you drank at the end of the night without seeming tight.
And what glorious variety grows from what was once just a private house brewing their own gut-rot. From the sparkling gin palace to the thatched inn. From the city spit-and-sawdust to the Utopian 1930s wayside hostelry
(automobiles welcome), the coach house, the new pub in the tower block estate, the wine bar (surely what made Gordon's beside Charring Cross so great was the ploughman's, suffocating smoke, and not enough headroom to stand up), and the common-or-garden boozer with a good Jukebox and migraine beer. I love the pub; I miss it bitterly.
And now all it's gone, forever. I wish my diarrhea would go the same way.
I am, of course, still harping on about the smoking ban in English pubs but also it's ramifications. Rich you might say coming from me, living in the land where it is positively encouraged throughout. But I feel my comrades' anguish even here.
It is trite, but born from the experience of professionally touring international licensed premises, that the culture, the phenomenon of the English public house is unique in this world despite this ludicrous ban.
Nowhere else was there a place of such simultaneous discourse and revelry and a bastion of bawdiness and louche behaviour dressed in the stained velvet and crinoline of a genteel Victorian parlour. Where the formulation of all kinds of relationships -- romantic and social, of great import or frivolous -- was so potential. It's where some of my most cherished friendships were fomented. It was a monument to solitude and community. The most immediate point of sale for government policy and the place to immediately discuss it. It's a place of learning, not least providing a valuable lesson on how to expediently and expertly detect bullshit. A meeting place, a rallying point, and a safe haven. Where else can you derive hilarity and moments of tenderness? To console and be consoled? And, frankly, to get utterly pissed.
To drink anywhere else in the world is to merely enter into a dishonest financial transaction with the barman, not a landlord. A landlord, my God. A common peer of his own realm.
In America a bar is where you get drunk, alone; in France a bar is where only discourse seems to occur; Spanish bars may have food but the ankle-deep Ducados butts and discarded lotto tickets don't whet my appetite; I wouldn't give a XXXX to burn the Midnight Oil in an Australian pub; From the outside Scottish bars seem derelict or closed; Irish pubs look like Irish pubs the world over; great beer is found in German kellers but martial drinking jangles my nerves; Italy has no idea what constitutes a serious drinking establishment; and in Istanbul a bar is where one spends most of one's time trying to remain sober enough to calculate how much formaldehyde you drank at the end of the night without seeming tight.
And what glorious variety grows from what was once just a private house brewing their own gut-rot. From the sparkling gin palace to the thatched inn. From the city spit-and-sawdust to the Utopian 1930s wayside hostelry
(automobiles welcome), the coach house, the new pub in the tower block estate, the wine bar (surely what made Gordon's beside Charring Cross so great was the ploughman's, suffocating smoke, and not enough headroom to stand up), and the common-or-garden boozer with a good Jukebox and migraine beer. I love the pub; I miss it bitterly. And now all it's gone, forever. I wish my diarrhea would go the same way.
Saturday, 21 July 2007
Suits me
Had a rather odd day today; the vestiges of my food poisoning are still lingering taking all my powers not to dive off at random points from my companion's company at awkward moments.
My companion today is a family friend of Ayla's who accompanied me to his favourite tailor to be fitted for my wedding suit. It's a chance to get a reasonably priced bespoke suit and with any luck, paunch permitting, I'll get to wear it at my next wedding too. I have chosen a navy chalk stripe, three button, double vent with flat fronted trousers (no turn-ups).
At the tailor they pulled out all the stops: An espresso when we arrived, two tailors and an assistant in attendance and, the piece de resistance, a bar serving booze. And the icing on the piece de resistance; you can smoke, in the shop. Disque Bleu!
My Anarcho-Dandyist credentials are restored. This is a place where a chap can thrive; drunk, calabash in hand, having young Mahmoud measure ones inside leg. A-hem.
"Are you free Mr. Lucas?"
"I'm free."
My companion today is a family friend of Ayla's who accompanied me to his favourite tailor to be fitted for my wedding suit. It's a chance to get a reasonably priced bespoke suit and with any luck, paunch permitting, I'll get to wear it at my next wedding too. I have chosen a navy chalk stripe, three button, double vent with flat fronted trousers (no turn-ups).
At the tailor they pulled out all the stops: An espresso when we arrived, two tailors and an assistant in attendance and, the piece de resistance, a bar serving booze. And the icing on the piece de resistance; you can smoke, in the shop. Disque Bleu!
My Anarcho-Dandyist credentials are restored. This is a place where a chap can thrive; drunk, calabash in hand, having young Mahmoud measure ones inside leg. A-hem.
"Are you free Mr. Lucas?"
"I'm free."
Friday, 13 July 2007
Kurdistan
We never learn, we never exercise self control. We were getting drunk way past our bed time and still got more beer from the shop before passing out at 2.30 for a 5am start. There was no argument due with the cabby this time on the way to the airport the next morning. Today, we were heading east.
Arriving at the military airport in Diyabakir, the main city in the Kurdish part of Turkey, was a shock. At 9am it was already 32C and rising. I slept most of the day in the hotel room, drugged by heat and hangover, while Ayla went about her work interviewing local politicians ahead of the elections next Sunday. I only got up to eat take away and watch an episode of Extras and a very dry documentary about Gallipoli. Same old story: Bad planning, arrogance, failure, pointlessness, but the British ultimately prevailing. And the Gallipoli film wasn't much better.
Ayla supposed I was the only male in the region with a foreskin and the last blond-haired, blued-eyed man they'd have seen was on Starsky and Hutch. That must be why they all look at me strangely.
Then a coach load of Japanese tourists turned up. Were they aware of the political hot potato they were visiting? Were they the same coach party that has been touring the middle east since the second gulf war? Did they think I was David Soul too? The answer to these questions must surely be: No.
We drove to the old ruins of a Byzantine fortress, at a place called Hasankeyf, where people lived in caves for two millennia. We had lunch on the banks of the Tigris. I had delicious open-grilled fish caught fresh from the river. Then w
e paddled in the river where our lunch was just caught. Hold on... I'm glad I only just thought of that. And finally, after months of nagging, I bought Ayla a bloody raffia cowboy hat from an urchin. Happy now?
We visited a monastery of monks who spoke Aramaic, the language of Mel Gibson. This region is the homeland of a few Syriac Christians who, it is claimed, can trace their faith back to 33AD, the year of our Lord's crucifixion. This makes them the very first new age Christians. I wonder if they had fish symbols on the hinds of their asses.
Back on the campaign trail, after a night in a hotel popular with dead flies and cockroaches, we started to feel very, very unwell. I drove Ayla to the next engagement reasoning that she had to be fresh for work. She met with a local candidate from the Kurdish DTP party which, bizarrely I was invited to attend. I was ushered upstairs by a party officials into a private apartment full of relatives, extended family, and minders, through dark corridors (which perturbed me somewhat) until I was sat in the corner and fed scalding hot tea while Ayla asked the questions. The interviewee, the head of the DTP, didn't have socks on.
They thought I was Ayla's hired goon. Fat lot of use I would have been in a hostage situation, wearing flip-flops and jeans and looking all Brighton, complaining about how the North Laine isn't the same any more since they built the new library. Maybe ending up locked in a Syrian broom cupboard moaning there are no clean towels or enough Stella on the rider. "Erm, yeah mate, I'm in a popular Post-Rock-Krautrock-Nihlist-Assault-Groop with a dash of French Ye-Ye called Stereolab. We're internationalist and marxist and everything." "Silence you western pig!"*
By the time we got back to Diyabakir we were almost incapable of walking. Both of us had sore joints, aching backs and headaches. And not induced by booze this time since there isn't any.
This place is Hell; hot and no beer.
We returned to Istanbul extremely unwell spending long spells of Monday groaning on the sofa punctuated by dashes to the necessarium.
My backside is like the Japanese flag. And as Ayla is sparked out in a worse state than me I can't even go to the shops to get some Imodium because I don't know what the Turkish is for "My arse is on fire. Can you give me something for my Sultan's revenge?"
The Diyabakir tourist board has a lot to answer for.
* Thanks Jim.
Arriving at the military airport in Diyabakir, the main city in the Kurdish part of Turkey, was a shock. At 9am it was already 32C and rising. I slept most of the day in the hotel room, drugged by heat and hangover, while Ayla went about her work interviewing local politicians ahead of the elections next Sunday. I only got up to eat take away and watch an episode of Extras and a very dry documentary about Gallipoli. Same old story: Bad planning, arrogance, failure, pointlessness, but the British ultimately prevailing. And the Gallipoli film wasn't much better.
Ayla supposed I was the only male in the region with a foreskin and the last blond-haired, blued-eyed man they'd have seen was on Starsky and Hutch. That must be why they all look at me strangely.
Then a coach load of Japanese tourists turned up. Were they aware of the political hot potato they were visiting? Were they the same coach party that has been touring the middle east since the second gulf war? Did they think I was David Soul too? The answer to these questions must surely be: No.
We drove to the old ruins of a Byzantine fortress, at a place called Hasankeyf, where people lived in caves for two millennia. We had lunch on the banks of the Tigris. I had delicious open-grilled fish caught fresh from the river. Then w
e paddled in the river where our lunch was just caught. Hold on... I'm glad I only just thought of that. And finally, after months of nagging, I bought Ayla a bloody raffia cowboy hat from an urchin. Happy now?We visited a monastery of monks who spoke Aramaic, the language of Mel Gibson. This region is the homeland of a few Syriac Christians who, it is claimed, can trace their faith back to 33AD, the year of our Lord's crucifixion. This makes them the very first new age Christians. I wonder if they had fish symbols on the hinds of their asses.
Back on the campaign trail, after a night in a hotel popular with dead flies and cockroaches, we started to feel very, very unwell. I drove Ayla to the next engagement reasoning that she had to be fresh for work. She met with a local candidate from the Kurdish DTP party which, bizarrely I was invited to attend. I was ushered upstairs by a party officials into a private apartment full of relatives, extended family, and minders, through dark corridors (which perturbed me somewhat) until I was sat in the corner and fed scalding hot tea while Ayla asked the questions. The interviewee, the head of the DTP, didn't have socks on.
They thought I was Ayla's hired goon. Fat lot of use I would have been in a hostage situation, wearing flip-flops and jeans and looking all Brighton, complaining about how the North Laine isn't the same any more since they built the new library. Maybe ending up locked in a Syrian broom cupboard moaning there are no clean towels or enough Stella on the rider. "Erm, yeah mate, I'm in a popular Post-Rock-Krautrock-Nihlist-Assault-Groop with a dash of French Ye-Ye called Stereolab. We're internationalist and marxist and everything." "Silence you western pig!"*
By the time we got back to Diyabakir we were almost incapable of walking. Both of us had sore joints, aching backs and headaches. And not induced by booze this time since there isn't any.
This place is Hell; hot and no beer.
We returned to Istanbul extremely unwell spending long spells of Monday groaning on the sofa punctuated by dashes to the necessarium.
My backside is like the Japanese flag. And as Ayla is sparked out in a worse state than me I can't even go to the shops to get some Imodium because I don't know what the Turkish is for "My arse is on fire. Can you give me something for my Sultan's revenge?"
The Diyabakir tourist board has a lot to answer for.
* Thanks Jim.
Thursday, 12 July 2007
Arrival
So, I'm here at last in Kebabistan.
That might have been the longest goodbye I've endured. With my birthday on Thursday, the farewell gig on Saturday, the barby on Sunday, and the last pint in the Heart on Tuesday, I was harder to get rid of than syphilis. But thanks to all of you who made it to one or all of those evenings. I regret not giving everyone as much attention as I hoped, so if you were neglected I'm sorry. You'll just have to come and visit, and bring some pork products.
The trip back to Istanbul was pretty sweet: we got free upgrades to business class, stiffed The Man for an unprecedented extra 25kg of baggage for free (Ayla played the wedding card with the dope behind the counter), and smuggled my guitar amp into the country without paying duty.
We stepped out of the plane and into the heat of a Nike shoe factory in August. And then, of course, we had to endure the blazing row over a few pence with the ignorant, smelly cabby straight from ignorant, smelly cabby Central Casting.
Tomorrow Ayla and I are off to the Kurdish part of Turkey so she can cover the run-up to the elections. In a town called Batman (in the same region) the temperature is already 47C. Holy armpits! Not the weather for capes and tights, Robin. Let me get the Bat-roll-on deodorant from my utility belt.
Spent today unpacking an array of crap that I simply can't live without, including a broken Stereolab mug, a squash racket needing new strings, lots of wires, and dirty laundry. My most essential items are languishing in the loft at my old place.
The Union flag I bought at the Sunday boot after a night out has been hung in the hallway so we can stand to attention in front of it every morning and sing my national anthem. I couldn't bring any Crown soil through customs because of regulations but I'm in conversation with the Consul General to see whether I can acquire some Crown soil from the Istanbul Consulate on a lend-lease basis.
My anarcho-dandyist principles are already out the window, sat here as I am in shorts, my mosquito-bite-ridden soft white underbelly exposed. In a while, I'll put on some flip-flops and a George cross T-shirt and go to a restaurant, where I will be encouraged to smoke. In your face.
That might have been the longest goodbye I've endured. With my birthday on Thursday, the farewell gig on Saturday, the barby on Sunday, and the last pint in the Heart on Tuesday, I was harder to get rid of than syphilis. But thanks to all of you who made it to one or all of those evenings. I regret not giving everyone as much attention as I hoped, so if you were neglected I'm sorry. You'll just have to come and visit, and bring some pork products.
The trip back to Istanbul was pretty sweet: we got free upgrades to business class, stiffed The Man for an unprecedented extra 25kg of baggage for free (Ayla played the wedding card with the dope behind the counter), and smuggled my guitar amp into the country without paying duty.
We stepped out of the plane and into the heat of a Nike shoe factory in August. And then, of course, we had to endure the blazing row over a few pence with the ignorant, smelly cabby straight from ignorant, smelly cabby Central Casting.
Tomorrow Ayla and I are off to the Kurdish part of Turkey so she can cover the run-up to the elections. In a town called Batman (in the same region) the temperature is already 47C. Holy armpits! Not the weather for capes and tights, Robin. Let me get the Bat-roll-on deodorant from my utility belt.
Spent today unpacking an array of crap that I simply can't live without, including a broken Stereolab mug, a squash racket needing new strings, lots of wires, and dirty laundry. My most essential items are languishing in the loft at my old place.
The Union flag I bought at the Sunday boot after a night out has been hung in the hallway so we can stand to attention in front of it every morning and sing my national anthem. I couldn't bring any Crown soil through customs because of regulations but I'm in conversation with the Consul General to see whether I can acquire some Crown soil from the Istanbul Consulate on a lend-lease basis.
My anarcho-dandyist principles are already out the window, sat here as I am in shorts, my mosquito-bite-ridden soft white underbelly exposed. In a while, I'll put on some flip-flops and a George cross T-shirt and go to a restaurant, where I will be encouraged to smoke. In your face.
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