Lying by the rooftop pool of the Hotel Sun in downtown Lefkosa, I felt like a cowboy about to stir from slumber beneath his hat to cause a scene. I had turned into someone in an Elmore Leonard story.
My view was a mountain range in full panorama with one hill entirely painted in the red and white flag of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus.
The poolside music was country and western. Several times a day it mingled with the call to prayer coming from the minarets along the main drag.
In this frontier society where West meets East, I felt like anything was possible.
I lay by the pool, watching the scene from under my baseball cap, listening to ‘The Yellow Rose of Texas’ and ‘Don’t It Make My Brown Eyes Blue’, the first song I loved as a child.
A few western women lay like me, cooking themselves in bikinis. One blonde lady had fallen asleep without an umbrella and her small head was like a pink ham atop her shoulders.
An American girl, voluptuous and expansive, did not – and I suspected could not – stop talking. The poor Turkish girl she’d taken captive made the right noises as she explained everything about herself in great detail, including where Miami was.
I sat by that pool listening to country and western music and the spirit of liberation was stirring
Turkish ladies swam in their clothes and bounced toddlers in the pool with no armbands on. One toddler sank to the bottom and another guest had to dive down to retrieve it, holding it upside down and beating it on the back to get the water out. The Turkish woman then scolded the child and everyone went on as normal.
There is no health and safety here. It’s outside the EU, outside mainstream Turkish jurisdiction. It is civilised in a way we can no longer be in the West. A pet shop near the hotel left its wares on the pavement every night, I noticed.
So, safe in a way that matters, and then this reckless abandon. People smoking cigarettes from packets with no warning pictures.
There are very few places left on Earth you can feel free. There are few that inspire you to step outside your constraints and do something ill-advised. Leave your wares out on the pavement.
Lean from swimming every day, back to my fighting weight, my skin bronzed to a desert tan, I was in an Elmore Leonard story, but I couldn’t decide which one.
It wasn’t Tishomingo Blues. It was a blues of a different kind. Midlife definitely. Creative certainly.
I was feeling unusual.
I could dive into the pool from the top of a pile of chairs like Leonard’s high diver Dennis Lenehan or I could do something else.
Every seven years or so, I feel it coming to the surface and I don’t even know what it is. It’s been coming up again and I’m apt to do something to exorcise it once and for all or push it back down.
I sat by that pool with the dusty mountain view listening to country and western music and the spirit of liberation was stirring. George Strait sang his song ‘Troubadour’: ‘Sometimes I feel like Jesse James.’
The Turkish ladies in their pyjama outfits and swimming dresses bounced toddlers in the water at the edge of the roof.
A little girl no more than three was keeping herself afloat by sheer willpower, her arms and legs battling.
It reminded me of how I was taught to swim: doggy-paddling down the length of the Livingstone baths in Coventry, as a woman walked beside me shouting at me to keep going. I got to the end of that length, which seemed to stretch for miles, gulping down chlorine. I’d have rather sunk to the bottom than grab the side and disappoint people.
I realised the pool was full of children. Several families had arrived at once. The old Don Williams two-step was playing:
‘Stay young, keep your wheels in motion
You’ve got everything that you need
Stay young with your rock ’n’ rollin’
All the best things in life are free.’
Although I’m not sure they are, because what I was doing here was costing a packet.
‘Oh, don’t you feel like playin’ the fool
Just Step outta line and break all the rules?’
Yes, yes I do.
Sometimes I feel like Jesse James.
You hit 50 and suddenly there is a younger woman behind you. You turn round one day and jump, for there she is. In the supermarket queue, on the next sunbed.
You are more interesting and experienced and you should be entering your most exciting phase. But you’re told to be pleased with less now and move over.
But what if you refuse? What if you put on a bikini and sit by a rooftop pool thinking, no one’s telling Rod Stewart to behave? Or the builder boyfriend’s father, a great rogue, still starting up, aged 80, with new girlfriends and with children of all ages everywhere.
The next morning in my budget room, I rang the BB to check in, and then I rang home, as in to my parents’ home in Coventry.
It was only 7 a.m. there and unusually my mother answered her mobile phone, which must have been next to the bed.
‘I’ve been away but I’m back now,’ she said. ‘I can’t work out how I got home.’ She was tearful.
‘It’s OK, Mum. It’s good you’re home.’
‘I’m all on my own.’
‘You’re not. Dad’s in the next room. He’s not up yet. Go and knock on the door. I’ll be back to see you in a week or so.’
‘Oh would you? I’m all alone. I’ve been away, but I’m back now. I can’t work out how I got home.’
Settling by the pool again, I was reassured by the sound system playing the same songs:
‘Sometimes I feel like Jesse James
Still trying to make a name
Knowing nothing’s gonna change what I am.’
What if I found a way? What if I was in the unregulated Turkish Republic of
Northern Cyprus because they do over-fifties IVF? What if I was on my second visit, not feeling any remorse for refusing to lie down? Except on this sunbed, as the country and western played:
‘I was a young troubadour when I rode in on a song
I’ll be an old troubadour when I’m gone.’
Join Real Life columnist Melissa Kite and business editor Martin Vander Weyer on our all-inclusive, luxury Spectator Mediterranean Cruise in June 2027.
Go to Spectator.com/medcruise for more information.
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