Songs About Turkey #3

Turkish Song of the Damned - The Pogues

From one of their greatest albums, this song has almost nothing to do with Turkey. Based heavily on Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner, the Turkish title was something of an accident. Apparently a Pogue heard someone talking about 'Turkish Song' of The Damned (though I've not been able to find any reference to The Damned having made any such track) and the name stuck.

The video here includes the late Joe "should I stay or should I go?" Strummer, the late Kirsty "not looking for a new England" MacColl and, the forever teetering on the edge of alco-meltdown, Shane MacGowan. Enjoy.

Twit about Fez

I'm trying my hand at Twitter these days (yes, I know I'm getting a trifle slow at adopting new technology in my old age).

Come find me and read a minute by minute account of my daily life. It's the social media equivalent of watching paint dry.

http://twitter.com/arseaboutfez

More Turkish things that make you go ooooohhhhhwaaaaaaaaaahhh!!!!!!

Looking on my girlfriend's shelf the other day, I spotted something that made my testicles retract into my lower abdomen.

At first glance, it's a classic shelf - The Cambridge English/Turkish dictionary, a few batteries, a mug of loose change, a taser ...sorry? What?!

Yep, a taser. A weapon used for the purpose of inducing neuromuscular incapacitation and something the U.N. classifies as a weapon of torture.

Turkish girls... don't mess with them!

Things I'd never done before moving to Turkey #5

Getting stuck in a lift and forgetting to panic.

Being claustrophobic, I thought my first experience of getting stuck in a lift would be something of a screaming frenzy. I guess living in Turkey has toughened me up a bit.

Tonight, I got stuck in the metre square lift in my apartment building. The strange thing was my reaction of complete and utter calm; as though it were an everyday event.

No punching walls. No loss of bladder control. No crying. No tearing at my clothes. Just a very matter-of-fact tap of the buttons and a nudge to the door. It worked too.