Down With the Kidz

Merhaba. Greetings from an Englishman Abroad (he/him).

Except I am not. Abroad that is. I am still in the Auld Sod visiting the Fams, as we style ourselves. And catching up with what’s hot and what’s not.

I have always prided myself on being Down with the Kidz. I am no dinosaur. The Special and I now have three grandchildren. We have to stay young and on trend. Although the two Young Gentlemen are both under one, Daisy is already hitting her teens at eight. So with Oasis on the mobile and sharply booted in Day Glo Nikes I am ready to rock.

Daisy in truth deals me a bit of an early blow when we go down to the local playing field in Longhope village for a kick around .

“Grandy! Can you put your top on!” she demands rather brusquely.

Unnecessarily brusquely actually. Anybody would think I was an embarassment rather than the trophy granddad that I clearly am. However, I demur and pull on the wife beater.

To be fair to Daisy she is at that age where image matters. She has her own rap handle (D Dizza) and cannot be compromised on the street. Image still matters, even though the Forest of Dean is not her Hood and even though the Forest is a little bit backward in these (and quite a few other) matters.

Identity politics and gender fluidity for starters. You will see from my opening lines that I am trying to get to grips with this latest hot political trend. It is all the thing amongst the young. So I am determined to get on top of it. I have not found it to be big in the Forest however.

The key thing is your pronouns. You should now give these at introduction so that everybody knows where you are orientated (or should that be whither?).

My initial reaction was delight that anybody under 70 would know what a pronoun is. At the age of nine, you see, and on the death of my father (see my earlier post) I was committed to distant Hertfordshire for a nine stretch without remission at the Royal Masonic School for Boys. At “Ston”, as we inmates called it, the uniform was grim, the food grimmer and the educational diet consisted mainly of grammar.

This latter, strangely, I took to. I did Greek grammar, Latin grammar, French grammar and lots of English grammar.

Not only can I can split an infinitive, I can butter it, char grill it and serve it with a side order of past participles. Gerunds and gerundives? No problem. But in most educational establishment from the 60s on, grammar fell victim to Creative Writing (just express yourselves my little flower).

So, as I say, to find that young people are interested in pronouns was a real lift. But then I discovered that nowadays you choose your pronoun. Sorry? You can be a she/her, a he/him, a they/them – if you like to alternate – or (get this) if you don’t wannabe boxed in you can even be xi/xin.

On reflection, in the West Country, where I hail from, the xi/xin might integrate fairly seemlessly.

“Thee zeen Worzel, young ‘un?”

“Worzel? Xi be ‘avin a zider inzide. Oi zeen xin a moment ago.”

No problem there then. But, imagine explaining the basics of gender fluidity to your Aunt Ethel.

As grandparents go, I am Out There and Switched on. But even I am struggling with this one. Also how will it work in Turkey? Assume that Turks get down with gender fluidity (quite a big stretch), then imagine the liberal Mayor of Istanbul, Ekerem Imamoğlu, giving it his best on the hustings

“Merhaba. Ben Ekrem Imamoğlu. O/onu”

You see the problem? O and Onu are used for masculine and feminine in Turkish. And often for the plural as well if you have already established that the subject is plural. So you cannot differentiate. This is the stuff of nightmares for we grammarians.

Apart from gender fluidity I am having a lovely time with the fams. The Young Gentlemen are such wriggly, kicky, happy creatures that they are a delight to be with. Daisy’s antics always make me laugh. So what else?

Well the weather has been hotter than Hades and here’s the thing; nobody has pools! When did that happen? No air conditioning either! That is a new one, surely. I have lived in in the Kalkan expat bubble for 10 years. I must be going native. I thought these things were universal. Very difficult to get a night’s sleep.

And the biggest challenge is that when you go for what we at the Masonic school learned to call a Long Visit there is no water at hand! The only provision is a roll of paper!!! Now admittedly it is not like the tracing paper supplied for the occasion at the Royal  Masonic School. This had all the absorbency of baking foil and was manufactured by the sinisterly named Izal company. But to those who have converted to the Islamic way of using running water for cleansing, then paper does not even begin to answer. Primitive.

But I am in danger of moaning! I do not do moaning (did you spot the gerund?). A week in Highgate with the newest entry Seth aged 5m (he/him. For now anyway) and then the flight home next Sunday. Hopefully the air bridge will remain open as two of our daughters and families are coming to stay in September.

And so back to Islamlar where, hopefully, the Great Drought will be over. Back to our Turkish Life. And back to our Turkish neighbours; Hatice, Mahmut, Serdar, Hasan et al may not be perfect as neighbours – I cannot understand a word they are saying for a start – but their genders are as fluid as a dry stone wall. In a complicated, unpredictable world I find this (shame on me) somewhat reassuring.

Up with the mask and on with the show.

Hepsine Ingiltere’den selamlar