14 May 2022
Everyone needs a manifesto. Art movements start with a manifesto. My favourite fashion magazine has a manifesto 1. I should have a manifesto.
I would say political parties have a manifesto, but if I were in politics right now I’d be avoiding the word party. Just saying.
Besmirchers see “The Pirates of the Caribbean” as a children’s film. They may have a point. But besmirchers are missing out on its deep philosophical lessons. A note for the millennials: where you say “hater”, replace it with “besmirched”. As in “besmirchers gonna besmirch”. Besmirching being pirate speak for haters. When I said philosophical lessons, I really mean lesson, singular. But it’s a rich treasure. Arrr.
The lesson is contained during this exchange in the film.
Elizabeth: Wait! You have to take me to shore. According to the Code of the Order of the Brethren-
Barbossa: First, your return to shore was not part of our negotiations nor our agreement so I must do nothing. And secondly, you must be a pirate for the pirate's code to apply and you're not. And thirdly, the code is more what you'd call "guidelines" than actual rules. Welcome aboard the Black Pearl, Miss Turner!
More what you call guidelines than actual rules.
When it comes to happiness and fulfilment this is a maxim for living. Particularly in terms of self improvement. New Year’s Resolutions. Or more accurately New Years’ Resolutions. There’s a lot of power in moving that apostrophe. It’s not like we make a set of resolutions with a hurty head come the morning of January the first, and then the following year, say to ourselves ‘Well I’ve sorted out all last year’s resolutions so I guess there’s nothing for me to do this year”. No. It’s start all over again time.
The main reason for failure is rules.
New Year’s Guidelines.
Don’t you already feel better?
Go to the gym three times a week. Fail to do it, usually around week three of January. Alright, week two, and as a rule, you have failed. And logically, since you’ve already failed, there’s now no need to go this week, and the following week. Until next January actually. Now fail as a guideline, and the guidelines recommend giving it a slightly better go next week. The guidelines know that some weeks there’s going to be latitude. Latitude is not failure. Latitude is following the guidelines.
The same works for being a vegetarian. No, no besmirching on the veggies please. As a vegetarian, if you’ve snaffled that sausage at a BBQ because you are ridiculously pissed, you have not failed at being a vegetarian. Don’t take shit from everyone pointing out you’ve failed. You are adhering to the Vegetarian Guidelines as shtrictly as possible as the current shisuashion allows shank you shery much. Hic.
Possibly a greasy belch too. Given you’ve just eaten a sausage for the first time in three years.
So when I say manifesto, it’s more what you call guidelines than actual manifesto.
T H E C O N S U M E A N D C O N S U M E M A N I F E S T O
1. Be fashionably late.
2. …
That’s it. Can’t think of a guideline number two. There’s my mission statement: to write a mild philosophical meditation about a thing I’ve bought and loved. But that’s a what, not a how. I could do a Fight Club club quote for the second clause, I love Fight Club. But I’m not going to. Although I hope you spotted my crafty repetition there as homage.
Speaking of guidelines and Fight Club, I’d like to call out David Fincher’s changing of the ending compared to the book. Altering a book's ending when dramatising is a bold move. I Googled for other films but very few do it as radically as here. Chuck Palahnuik’s ending has our hero trying to blow himself up along with a museum, and failing, waking up in a mental institution. While in the film he successfully blows up all the banks holding our credit card records freeing us from debt. This ending significantly changes the philosophy of the story. Internet discussions centre on the differences, but I haven’t seen much said on what I think is this seismic shift, Palahnuik’s book is a satire on toxic masculinity whereas Fincher remodels it as an anti-capitalist manifesto. Or guideline.
The levels of irony and doublethink amuse me no end in the Communist Party of China cutting the ending where we watch capitalism burn baby burn. Instead, a silent movie style text card appears, reading “The police rapidly figured out the whole plan and arrested all criminals, successfully preventing the bomb from exploding. After the trial Tyler was sent to lunatic asylum receiving psychological treatment. He was discharged from the hospital in 2012”. The authorities have since restored the original ending due to public ridicule aka losing of face 2. I fought the law and capitalism won.
I’m also enjoying the cowgirl dancing in the clip in an ironic nod to Legs and Co enacting the lyrics to the Clash’s “Bank Robber” on Top of The Pops 3. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it 4, indeed. Nothing like having your anti-establishment anthem mimed to by eye-candy go-go dancers. The revolution will not be interpreted in expressive movement 5. Before moving on, Bank Robber is the one time Joe Strummer missed the mark. Pointing guns at bank cashiers is not annihilating credit card debt.
Joe Strummer 0, Tyler Durden 1.
I once had a farm in Africa 6. I once had a bar in Turkey. In reality I didn’t have a farm in Africa but I did, as a teen, live around the corner from Karen Blixon’s farm, and I partially owned a bar in Turkey. Mentioning Bobby Fuller’s I Fought The Law has a personal meaning for me beyond being a witty aside on Fight Club censorship.
This column is ostensibly about things I bought and loved, this anecdote falls more into the category of things I bought that I didn’t love. A bar in Turkey.
Anne, while I was in the toilet, bought a fifty percent stake in an open air bar. This is the least remarkable aspect of the whole affair. Rather than recount, here is an email written at the time of the incident. You’ll have to go with it a little, as a lot of raki had already flowed under the bridge.
Date: 19 June 2007 12:17:41 BDT
Subject: Random Conversations from a bar in TurkeyCAST
Tur***: Human till no1
Ye***: Human till no2
Memhet Ali: Barman
Osman: Barman
Sherif: A Chef
Huseyin: Manager
Tezcan: Partner
Orhan: Barman
Soni: Barman
Shevket: Another barman
Yiannis: A English Barman
The Police: Themselves
Steve: Allegedly a Chef
More Turks...The names of certain characters have been altered to protect the innocent (and punish the guilty)
Scene 1
Late April, I arrive in Turkey after a short sojourn in the UK. We have a new term which commonly gets used in bar management -
"A Comedy Moment". These by the way are usually only actually funny some time after the event, and often when in another continent entirely.
I have flown over with the chef Steve, an old friend of mine.
In my absence the toilets have been completed and the gas installed so the kitchen now has a stove and hot water. Before leaving I had spent several hours scraping stickers from the back window in the Winter Bar to let in daylight, which now gives a fabulous view onto the back of the breeze block toilet wall two feet away. Remember the adage "Shoes first, trousers second", it's now my turn to ask Tezcan whether it might have been better to build the toilets first and then install the gas bottles in a wire cage against the back wall.
Apparently not.
Luckily I am hiring a metal worker to build a cage around the bar so I can get him to climb through the back window of the Winter Bar and cut through the metal cage that surrounds the gas bottle behind the newly built toilets. Hmmmm, small spaces, pressurised 6ft gas bottles, angle grinders, sparks. Health and Safety Turkey is not. Actually this all sounds very simple but it has taken me 415 glasses of tea, five hissy fits and six days of hanging about the bar to get a metal worker to turn up.
Which reminds me, electricians. I have had more luck finding them, quite a few in fact, and even one who knows how to wire up lighting. Tezcan in my absence has hired a decorator so the Winter Bar is now a gleaming white and the bullet hole in the ceiling has been filled, wires protrude from the walls ready for my new subtle wall lighting, along with fluorescent strips, a chandelier salvaged from a mosque (the Turks are bemused by this) and lights outside the door.
Divine comedy moment #2, I turn on the newly installed wall lights and half of them come on.
Along with half the fluorescent lights.
Obvious really.
You of course turn on the other half of the wall lights by turning on the fluorescent lighting. Well kind of. One of the wall lamps is on the same switch as the lighting outside the bar. So now in order to turn all eight wall lights on (40W each, lovely bar mood lighting) you also get six fluorescent tubes including three with blue light and lights outside the doors and windows. In order to leave the Turkish sunshine and come inside you have to wear sunglasses.
I stroll down town to where the electrician is staying (advice for anyone hiring tradesmen in Turkey - find out where they live first, one of the valuable lessons I learnt from my previous trip) and haul him back to the bar and do an entertaining mime explaining the concept of distinct circuitry. And would he mind wiring in the chandelier? The next day he comes to find me looking very pleased with himself and proudly lets me try out the lighting. The wall lights all come on but one, progress! I ask about the chandelier, he points to a switch, I flick it and the chandelier lights up.
As do all the fluorescent strips.
Back to my miming.
And we still have one wall light that turns on the bright white lights outside that completely obliterate the romantic atmosphere outside created from 60 lamps with coloured glass. Previous readers will of course welcome these lamps like old friends. My plane leaves in one hour. I leave a note explaining the works for the electrician and the metal worker with Steve the chef and head home, at least knowing that we have helped Steve get over his drinking problem by removing him from his drinking buddies and giving him a challenge to take his mind off his addiction.
Scene 14
5am, I am asleep in a hotel room in Alice Springs, Australia. My phone rings
"Who the hell is Jessica and why is she working in my bar", ah, this would be my partner and wife in England.
Paul (who is not on the cast list along with Jessica for reasons that will be seen), has just returned from a trip working for my web company in Turkey. Or not, as the case may be. Seems to have spent the week in the bar and has come back full of news. Huseyin is uncooperative, his girlfriend Jessica is a waitress and causing problems with the other staff, we should promote Orhan, he is the only one to be trusted, oh, and am I having a nice time...
So, now I have to ring Tezcan my partner in his bar, known for it's quiet and subtle music, from Australia, and discuss these matters
"Tezcan, you have to sack Jessica, she's causing problems"
"But I can not, my friend"
"And why the hell not (repeat above paragraph)"
"Because she does not work for us"Ah.
Turns out she's just hanging around for tip money, back to sleep then.
5.30am I am drifting back to sleep in a hotel room in Alice Springs, Australia. My phone rings
A text message from Orhan, he's been sacked.
Repeat conversation with Anne, repeat conversation with Tezcan.
Turns out that he has been stealing drink from the bar and is not to be trusted at all.
It also appears that Paul is not destined for a career in bar management.
Scene 23
I am somewhere in Australia (I now live in a state of nervous tension, with one eye at 30° to the other watching my mobile phone for the latest missive). Children cover your ears. It's a text message from Taz.
"Get this fucking Steve out my fucking restaurant". I ring Anne, she rings back, I ring Anne, it's a mystery.
A text message from Tezcan.
"Steve is everyday taking drugs with Murat, he is taking ecstasy, cocaine and speed, he is not here"
Actually it wasn't as succinct as that, after a good half an hour of phonetic detective work I translate it.
I ring Anne, she rings back, I ring Anne...
Steve is in the kitchen cooking Tezcan's lunch.
Murat is a barman whose dope usage caused his sudden departure from The Sky Bar (Tezcan's cocktail bar), I am impressed that he has ramped up to hard drugs so quickly, and a serious cocktail at that in anybody's book.
Anne and I conclude that Steve's shaking must be alarming Tezcan somewhat. An explanation of what severe alcohol withdrawal is like is called for. As well as being the whitest person you have ever seen, Steve has a shaved head and a chronic case of the jitters, imagine a cross between Hunter S Thompson on a bad day and the scene from Blazing Saddles where he says "But I shot with this hand".
Scene 37
I arrive in England after two weeks in Australia, Anne has almost broken out in hives over extended phone calls with disingenuous chefs (his words) and irate Turks. Not having seen my wife for two weeks I only get to say hello for 36 hours before she is on a plane to Turkey, last seen heading for Gatwick with fifty metres of fake red velvet and a baseball bat.
Scene 42
I arrive in Turkey with kids for half term and I’m met by everyone at the airport with a minibus, Anne is not speaking, Steve is not shaking. Ominous.
It transpires that there is a "missing" two litres of vodka from the house that Anne bought to welcome me. I leave the astute reader to draw their own conclusions.
We are now open as a fully functioning bar and restaurant. I use this term in the loosest sense possible. Where to begin...
The kitchen is amazingly clean, but a strange thing is happening, every time Steve goes in a member of staff rushes in behind him, and Sherif the sous chef comes running out.
For the next exercise you will need a pencil and some paper - two inches of foam, raki breakfasts, chip oil pans, naked flame, fire extinguishers.
I am told that you could see the pillars of thick black smoke from the beach.
The staff now check Steve when he comes for work in the morning for shaking, if there is none, a member of staff is put on 'extinguisher duty'.
Sherif now cooks for the staff. Which if you will indulge me reminds me of Sherif's interview during my last visit. I had had a word with Tezcan about his snap decision making over matters of staff - I kept meeting people in the market who said "Hello, I'm your barman", and explained that Steve was very anxious over the choice of assistant chef and needed to interview them to ascertain their level of competence. (yes, I know, it's Turkey and haven't I learnt anything yet, rich veins of irony to be mined etc).
Tezcan agrees that he will help translate and we will proceed one sentence at a time. Steve and I sit down, Tezcan and the prospective chef stand before us, refusing a seat. "so this is the new chef" says Taz and proceeds to walk off. Hold on I say, what about the interview...
"What is your English like?"
"OK"Now I rather foolishly took this to mean that his English was OK, what it actually means is OK is the only thing he can say in English.
Luckily Steve has learnt "tamam" Turkish for OK so now they are both equipped for a life together in a confined space full of sharp knives and boiling fluids.
You can reorder the following sentences any which way you care to relive the rest of the interview, with Tezcan translating.
"What sort of cooking can he do?"
"He has worked in a kitchen for the last two years"
"What did he cook?"
"Nothing"
"But he worked in a kitchen for two years?"
"Yes"
"So what did he do?"
"He worked in a kitchen for the last two years"
"OK, did he cook?"
"No"
"Did he chop vegetables and prepare dishes as sous chef then?"
"No"
"So what did he do?"
"He worked in a kitchen for the last two years"etc
combined with the occasional
"He has not worked for the last year"
which confounded my mathematical ability, we think he probably washed up and emptied the bins... meet the new assistant chef.
Scene 51
Steve cooks me a curry.
With poisonous fermented rice.
Apparently he had served Tezcan a pork stew last week. Now last time I checked Turkey was a muslim country so quite why Steve was cooking pork and beans for the staff meal is beyond me, but we won’t go there, the interesting part is that he had left it out for two days in the incredibly hot Turkish summer. Not bad, in the first three weeks of opening he has poisoned two out of the three partners. Now I see why Sherif cooks for the staff, and it turns out his food is delicious.
Fiek who owns a restaurant two doors down pops in one day for a drink and asks how Sherif is doing, "Why?" Anne asks, turns out Fiek trained him as a chef four years a go, only everyone forgot to mention this.
Steve is now homeward bound, his Turkish adventure over but he has taught Sherif to make pukka curries and pizza toppings, there are sad farewells, and sighs of relief as the dreams of being burnt to death in your sleep finally stop.
Sherif is elected new chef and Taz sets out to find him a kitchen toto.
I leave for the UK with the kids with my new house husband job.
Scene 58
Turns out Jessica does work for us, but only for tips. Jessica has fallen madly in love with Yiannis who has come over from England to work the summer in the bar with us. Yiannis is 22, Jessica is 16, Huseyin is 34, Jessica is Huseyin's girlfriend. Huseyin is the manager. Work out the rest. We can't sack her because she doesn't work for us.
One night she pockets a whole £8 tip, the rest of the staff go what can only be called apeshit. Maybe now is the time to introduce Human Till no1 and no2. They are cousins, and not from the village. They are also both rather scary and indeed everyone treads very carefully around them.
Their job is to sit at the bar and stare at people without smiling. They do this incredibly well.
Oh and they take the money as well.
I think I can safely say that they stop just short of the end on a sliding scale of gangsterism.
Human till no2 is punching the wall in anger. Jessica decides to leave. So both Yiannis and Huseyin are still plaster cast free.
It's an England football match a few nights later and Jessica is in to watch and is very very pissed. Forgets she doesn't work here and starts chatting with customers, tensions rise. Jessica is given a chat by Anne (the only person Human Tills 1 & 2 smile at, rather worryingly) and is 'guided' out by Anne. Later Jessica's father turns up and is even more pissed, a huge shouting match ensues where he defends his daughter, quite why he is letting his 16 year old daughter shag a 34 year old Turk escapes me but hey. We are now pieless in Gaza as Jessica's mum makes the pies, or did.
Scene 64
Anne and I are back in England. Air hostesses now say "the usual sir?" to me. Tezcan has hired a Turkish chef at great expense.
Scene 66
The police raid the bar, Anne and Yiannis run to the bushes to hide as they don't have work permits. Followed by Ye***, Human Till no2. Meanwhile Taz is having a huge row with the police and Tur*** is and I quote "threatening to shoot Eddie's feet off". Eddie is our landlord and suspect number one for grassing us up over something.
A quick diversion if you will. Human till no2 (I think it may be no1 but this anecdote could apply to either), is walking home one night from the bar when three men step out of a car and ask him whether he is a man. We hear reports that all three were found much worse for wear lying in the road. Human Till is in work the next day humming away, but complaining that he has hurt his leg slightly.
Now it turns out that the police are here to extract protection money, this explains why we haven't been visited by gangsters on an extortion racket, which is something that's been puzzling Anne and I for a while, it's because the police do it for them (apart from the fact most of the gangsters appear to be working for us). A kind of inverse Vegas if you will.
Now Tezcan, bless his cotton socks, refuses to pay them, not on moral grounds you understand but on the principle they will come back wanting more, so he suffers loss of business for a few days every now and then, which explains how the Sky bar was shut for three days by the police for playing loud music.
So anyway, there's Anne and Yiannis lurking in the shrubbery along with Human Till no2, Anne asks him what he's doing there and he says he is not who everyone thinks he is.
He's wanted for murder and living under forged papers.
I suggest to Anne that maybe she shouldn't be working with such a type. "Oh no, it's alright he had to kill him while he was in prison, it was self defence". Well that's alright then isn't it.
I joke "Oh I suppose he stabbed him with a homemade knife", having seen Midnight Express one too many times. "Oh no, he used his bare hands". Oh well, problem sorted then.
So after solving his prison issue, he pretends he’s ill and then while he's being transferred to hospital, he escapes.
And comes to hide out at our bar.
Scene 71
I arrive back in Turkey in time to witness another barman being sacked. This one I didn’t even have a chance to learn his name. Now he's required not to just leave the bar but to actually leave town as well. There really is never a dull day here.
So I have a meal with my visiting in-laws at my restaurant. We have feta salad to start, except there's no feta. Jenny and I have fish but only one of us has chips. Tom has curry, but there's no poppadoms, but at least there's pickles. If pickled cabbage counts.
So I go in the next day to sack our new expensive chef not wanting to cause a fuss that evening in front of the customers. I find Tezcan having a chat.
"Hi Taz, I've come to sack the chef".
"But my friend, you cant"
"Why not!, he cooked a meal last night and... (repeat above paragraph)"
"Because I sacked him two days a go"Six weeks open and we've gone through four chefs and three barman. And guess who had to cook the curry last week, yes, me.
So you may be wondering why I have so much free time to type all this up - it's because we've been shut by the police for playing loud music. The Sky Bar has been shut again for five days for staff wearing grass skirts, Tezcan has been harassed for having a fierce dog, and spent a night in the cells for having a moped without a licence - you really can't make this stuff up.
Things have resolved themselves because Human Till 1 and 2 have a cousin who's a police chef and Taz went and had a word. You really have to love this place, only here could a wanted felon in hiding speak to his police chief cousin over police corruption in the bar where he's hiding out. The worrying thing is that I no longer find this sort of thing surprising or unusual. So now our local police chief has been reassigned to a less touristy area. Which is handy really as he was in the paper recently being quoted as saying that tourism was ruining Turkish moral and decency etc, and even singled out The Sky Bar as an example.
We are now even friends with the money runners, sorry police. I turned up the other day to hear this good news and was told that Taz was having a meeting to settle things so he didn't have to "duel with guns", and sure enough there are two police (out of uniform this time) at the bar having a heated discussion with Taz. My turn to hide in the shrubbery.
Being Turkey we were allowed to stay open for the European Cup final where football comes before law and order, but on Monday afternoon they were back (in uniform this time). Now this bit is so cute, they shut your bar by tying a label around it with a piece of string and sealing it with wax. I presume it looks really officious around a door but since we are an open air bar we posed a bit of a problem.
I was there when they arrived, they actually have an official ball of string, and Yiannis and I get to visit the shrubbery once again, though not before I took a surreptitious photo.
We open tomorrow and Adam has kindly sent me "I fought the law and the law won" by The Bobby Fuller Four, which we shall play VERY loudly as we open tomorrow night. And return to the usual shenanigans with our rivalry with the Sky Bar, only here would someone open another bar and go into competition with themselves. We had had The Sky Bar crew working for us while we were closed which had it's moments, the last night Yiannis found two of them removing all our highball glasses and while trying to stop them, half the glasses fell and smashed. Comedy moments, you have to love them. Later that night Human Till no1 paid a visit to The Sky Bar and our remaining glasses are back.
I needed money cos I, I had none
I fought the law and the law won
I fought the law and the law won
I miss my baby and I, I feel so sad
I fought the law and the law won
I fought the law and the law won
Ironically I am now fashionably late for publishing my own column on being fashionably late, so I’m going to have to curtail the whole thing about manifestos, exit with my recommendation, and bring up being fashionably late again next week. On time.
“Hench” by Natalie Zina Walschots
https://www.harpercollins.com/products/hench-natalie-zina-walschots
I have read some astounding novels recently, some very clever, a few probing the issues of our times, this one is simply the most enjoyable read I’ve had in quite a while.
Nothing deep. Just terrifically good fun. Very millennial zeitgeisty humour. And possibly the only book where using Excel is made to look cool. Because I’m fashionably late I am going to, this one time, cut and paste the publishers blurb.
Anna does boring things for terrible people because even criminals need office help and she needs a job. Working for a monster lurking beneath the surface of the world isn’t glamorous. But is it really worse than working for an oil conglomerate or an insurance company? In this economy?
As a temp, she’s just a cog in the machine. But when she finally gets a promising assignment, everything goes very wrong, and an encounter with the so-called “hero” leaves her badly injured. And, to her horror, compared to the other bodies strewn about, she’s the lucky one.
So, of course, then she gets laid off.
With no money and no mobility, with only her anger and internet research acumen, she discovers her suffering at the hands of a hero is far from unique. When people start listening to the story that her data tells, she realises she might not be as powerless as she thinks.
Because the key to everything is data: knowing how to collate it, how to manipulate it, and how to weaponize it. By tallying up the human cost these caped forces of nature wreak upon the world, she discovers that the line between good and evil is mostly marketing. And with social media and viral videos, she can control that appearance.
It’s not too long before she’s employed once more, this time by one of the worst villains on earth. As she becomes an increasingly valuable lieutenant, she might just save the world.
A sharp, witty, modern debut, Hench explores the individual cost of justice through a fascinating mix of Millennial office politics, heroism measured through data science, body horror, and a profound misunderstanding of quantum mechanics
Further viewing
Legs & Co - 'Bankrobber' Top Of The Pops The Clash
https://genius.com/The-clash-bankrobber-robber-dub-lyrics
References
Legs & Co - 'Bankrobber' Top Of The Pops The Clash. See above
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it — George Santayana https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/George_Santayana
https://fiveminutehistory.com/out-of-africa-10-inspirational-quotes-from-karen-blixen/
Legally I have to tell you I might get five pence or something from Bookshop dot org should you purchase something, but really I just want to stick it to Amazon and keep independent bookshops alive. Yeah, rebel me, bringing the man down from the inside etc etc.
Three things.
1. I used to the love the missives from Turkey. It may have been miserable for you but for the rest of us...
2. The video of I Fought the Law makes everything all right. Legs and Co less so. I don't remember the Orange Juice Rip it Up style beeps on Bank Robber. Thankfully they dispensed with it live.
3. Remember that post about brevity?