ALI TUMAY

I am fulfilling a commitment that I had made while delivering a training here in London last summer.

For years I had this website which festered by itself, forgotten in some forlorn part of the web, with expired badges and stale inputs. I made a commitment that I would upgrade my content, make the website come alive. This would be my mirror to the outside world, offering my interpretation of life, people, events, and my own self.

Of course I remained true to the Italian saying ““Tra pensare e fare, c’è di mezzo il mare”, that is, between having an idea and actually implementing it, there is the sea… But now I’ve crossed that sea and landed on the shore, with a redesign and content that will be slowly updated.

There is still a learning curve that I need to negotiate, that is to muster the quirks of WordPress. We’ll see…

When asked what colour they were I had replied “chicken broth”. Age 5? Food is always an integral part of my consciousness. Endless menus and food combinations constantly being uploaded, edited and published. Also, so much for my perception of colour. Chicken broth isn’t brown, but then what is the closest colour?

I was told I would never need glasses because I passed the eye test with flying colours… In 198X. Now, my glasses have a perfect combination:

• Astigmatism (so no matter how big my smartphone’s screen is, all I see is fuzzy barcodes without glasses)
• Hypermetropia (walking into hotel showers is a nightmare, which is the shampoo, the conditioner, the body wash?)
• Myopia (I can drive and read the road signs -still having to count the exits in a roundabout, but that has to do with my sense of direction, not sight-, and I don’t wear glasses when I run, can make out what my pace, and more importantly the heart rate is)

But whoever invented progressive lenses must be (if not already there) in Heaven, even St Peter might have benefited from the invention. It is pure 4K Ultrahigh definition vision. I sometimes can’t believe the difference in vision, looking at a plant first without the glasses and then with them. Amazing!

So, the glasses are a key part of my appearance. I don’t leave without them. I’ll grow old, very old, and wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled, and keep adjusting my glasses as I near the time when I meet those nonagenarian neighbours again.

Every now and then I think of having laser treatment and entertain the idea of ditching glasses… Two words come into my mind: Final Destination. I doubt it very much that one is left alone in the doctor’s surgery during the treatment and end up in the pavement with a laser-scorched eyeball popping out of your skull only to be crushed by a car, but I think I’ll stick to glasses… For now. That is except when it rains, I hate it, especially when a vagabond raindrop manages to hit me in the eye, followed by its companions that manage to create a myriad of mini-lenses on my glasses. That’s when a voluntary downgrade to blurry eyesight is in order. I’d rather struggle with my vision than moan about rainy glasses.

Greying and in good condition. Not abundant, no Leonidas here but I do have one. Not that I would like to be Leonidas. A real six-pack wouldn’t hurt. Might have the urge to shave it one day, one day in the distant future. Yes, just like the typical Turkish lie of having blond hair when we were young, I did have a six-pack 20 kilos ago. I am (and was) hardly someone you could call lanky.

Born weighing 5.8 kilos one sunny August morning following eleven hours of labour (my poor mum), I was rather chubby until high school, but hang on, the beard was the topic, so more about the fat kid later.

Alexander the great forbade his soldiers to have long beards, not because of discipline, but rather because long beards served as handles for enemy soldiers in the battlefield to lift poor Alexandrian soldiers’ heads and slash their throats. Makes sense. Must be a very bad way to die. But after all, is there an easy way? Dying in your sleep maybe. My mum died in her sleep, just as she had wished, but a couple of decades too soon.

Now, the beard. I’m not very hairy, and this was a bonus during military service. I could go for a week without a shave and no, the drill sergeants do not run cotton pads on your face to see if you shaved properly, it is a myth. Maybe in the presidential guard they do. But I was too short to even be considered for that regiment. Now, I find it easier to let it grow and I trim it every week, it isn’t sparse, but again, no Leonidas either.

Hair, greying but still in good condition. I used to like Peter Criss and his “salt and pepper hair”. Good voice too, “Beth I hear you calling….”, but not impressive as a drummer. He is still better than Phil Rudd, the latter sounding no better than a rhythm machine stuck at the simplest setting… Albums and albums long. One of the reasons why I’m not a big fan of AC/DC. I’m not sure if they’ll be devastated to read this. Another Phil (Collins) said in an interview, when asked what he had wished he had, said (touching his scalp) “more of this” and (touching his gut) “less of this”. I would give all my hair and take all his gut to play the drums as he does. My downstairs neighbours would have loved that. Not that they knew Phil Collins, but they knew this teenager playing on the floor just above them. In retrospect I feel sorry for all the times they had to endure me practicing Exit… Stage left, the whole album from The Spirit of Radio to La Villa Strangiato. Only they would hear me butchering the drum parts while I felt like I was playing just like Peart listening to the album on the headphones. Peart must be spinning in his grave. Not sure of those poor nonagenarian neighbours. Too little, too late.

Short hair now after 15 years. When I had it long, I liked the Morty/Einstein look too, but the family disagreed. Comb hair immediately after shower and you have an older Andy Garcia and it dries to match my Bitmoji. Don’t comb and let it dry by itself, here’s Morty. I’m quite happy with the (much) shorter version, people thought I had the nits when they saw me with the short version. To be fair, it was a bit shorter than I had expected, but then it grows, doesn’t it?

No bald patch, so even with the wild long hair version, I couldn’t be Morty. I’ll limit the similarity to intelligence. I hereby solemnly, irrevocably and proactively exonerate my wife for suffocating me with a pillow if I become bald on top and resort to the “thatched roof” style to cover it. Seriously, wear a toupee, one can still tell it is not your original hair, but at least it looks more, hair-ish? Or shave your head, Skinheads have been out of fashion for decades. Easy on the booze though, or people will call you Phil Mitchell. I’d rather be likened to Jack Branning. For one, you can understand when he talks, unlike Max.. Max requires subtitles. Max the fornicator. Do the producers of Eastenders have a project team to determine who he’ll sleep with next? Does someone an Excel file for Max, Ian, Jack (even Jack!) on how many relationships they had in the square? Easy to summarise Eastenders to a beginner though, they all have affairs with each other’s wives, husbands, sisters, sons, daughters, brothers, distant cousins, sometimes all at the same time, there are always secrets and as the episodes go everyone knows about them except for those who will be directly affected if the secret is revealed. Inevitably it is revealed of course…So, until the next affair, illegitimate child or secret, doof doof doof.

The good thing about wearing your hair short is that you don’t have to dry or style it. Got to have it trimmed regularly to avoid looking like Pugsley, just that…