Perking the Pansies, Jack and Liam move to Turkey

Chapter 24 - All the Nice Girls Love a Sailor

The house was infested by flies. It was a plague of biblical proportions and lasted for days. Liam and I lay in bed like the last of the great white hunters, armed with cans of insecticide spray and taking pot shots at the bugs as they encircled us. By morning, the floor was carpeted with the wreckage like a scene from the Battle of Britain. At least the much anticipated mozzie threat, like Saddam's WMD, had been wildly exaggerated. There was a definite benefit to living along one of Bodrum's busy thoroughfares. The weekly bug-busting van that toured the streets at night draped the entire house in mustard gas, nipping the nasty nibblers in the bud and exterminating all other life forms, except for the satanic cockroaches. I can only assume that God designed these little darlings to be completely indestructible; the true heirs to a post-apocalyptic world. I found one of the three-inch armadillo aliens clicking in my flip-flop. I felt sick.

Liam hardly helped the situation with his "Ah, look, 'ees all on his own," and "'ees only a little cockroach, Jack."

"Only a little cockroach? I'm gonna throw up. Get rid of it."

The bug from hell ran rings round Liam. When it was bored of playing, it stood its ground, wiggled its antennae and looked right back at him and his inadequate broom. My useless husband seemed more interested in opening diplomatic channels than splattering the thing to death. Finally, he captured the creature inside a downturned tumbler. He passed sentence and decided on a public drowning.

"Get on with it! What are you, a bloody Buddhist? Just kill it!"

Liam carried the mini monster to the bathroom with the help of an old newspaper and attempted to slide the beast into the pool of disinfected death below. His hands shook (through excitement or guilt, I will never know) and the rim of the glass decapitated the bug against the pan. In a single stroke, the head was cleanly guillotined from the roach's torso. Like a scene from Alien, the headless bug refused to die and writhed around the pan for minutes. It was the stuff of my nightmares. Sometimes I longed for East London.

In between insect battles and edifying nights with Sophia, we spent days exploring our new town. Bodrum was a town of two distinct halves, divided by the imposing crusader castle. Like London, the east end was the rougher. It was typified by Bar Street, a procession of cheap and cheerful bars and hassle shops, patronised by tourists who were boarding in that part of the town or had ventured in from Gümbet, Bodrum's smaller  ugly  sister.  Conversely,  the  west  end  was  super swanky and wantonly expensive. The exemplar bar was Fink, a lavish watering hole dominated by an enormous sparkly-red overhanging  chandelier,  the  most  photographed  lampshade east of Versailles. The opulent inn was frequented by the filthy rich with money to burn and, like most of the rich-bitch bars, guarded by a platoon of huge, brooding bouncers, greasy-haired body-builders with low IQs and inflated egos.

We both preferred the east end by day; totty watching was more fruitful and the drink prices more palatable. Our big find was Café S Bar, a friendly little tavern opposite the town beach. A rainbow flag hung proudly alongside the ubiquitous Cross of St George, Cross of St Andrew, Irish tricolour and Welsh Dragon. Everyone was welcome regardless and it was the perfect place for a jar or two as the sun set over the castle. On our first visit, the US Navy was in town and our imaginations ran riot. We felt absolutely certain that the bar would be a hot bed of homoerotic horseplay. A bunch of tattooed drunken sailors with exotic sexual tastes picked up in various ports of the Orient would be strutting on the beach stripped down to their standard issue green boxers. As we approached, Ozzie the burly bar owner emerged bare-chested and tight-trunked, spear in hand, and goggled and snorkelled for underwater action. Things were looking up. He waded into the shallow waters with all the drama of a Jacques Cousteau film crew, out to impress the jolly tars as much as to spear the catch of the day. We took our seats alongside the throng of Yankee sailors and prayed for maritime heaven. Sadly, it wasn't to be. The entire crew was a disappointing bunch of dull, overweight geeks, talking into their laptops and over-dosing on pints of Diet Coke. When the tar opposite said grace before tucking into a plate of chips, we knew our perverse fantasy was precisely that and headed off in search of pastures new.