I’ve Got a Gal in Tiramisu

1 January 2026, Thursday

Emerging from my chrysalis of December gloom I’d become a new superior lifeform. Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, I leapt from the bed and ran round the house rejoicing the arrival of January, a month named after Janus, the Roman god of beginnings, transitions and warehouse clearance sales. The sun shone all day.

I resolved to give up hope of the world ever being a better place, so effectively I’d given up my panic-infested insomnia. In Pavlikeni market I bought a tee-shirt with ‘I surrender’ printed in eight languages to welcome whoever chooses to invade us.

Gh géillim!

2 January 2026, Friday

In winter, groups of elaborately costumed men known as Kukeri perform traditional rituals to scare away evil spirits. Folklore experts say they’re a remnant of a Thracian cult of the god Dionysus. Tonight we watched them dance in the square beneath the fortress. They impressed and entertained but failed to scare away the five-year-old monster in pink that ran around on the wall only centimetres in front of us, restricting many people’s views.

Due to a combination of supply problems and a nation’s reluctance, we haven’t yet been able to spend a physical euro. People without bank cards will perish.

3 January 2026, Saturday

The first week of January’s traditionally the time when people return to the shops all the dodgy stuff that’s come their way during the festive period. What better time than now for President Gobshite to hand back his FIFA Peace Prize? Perhaps he could exchange it for vouchers or a FIFA Violating International Law Prize.

I like to think that getting his heavy mob to blast Caracas to bits and kidnap the Venezuelan president was a dress rehearsal for a raid on Tel Aviv to bring Adolf Netanyahu to justice.

In the meantime, I hope his next shit’s a hedgehog.

4 January 2026, Sunday

I usually ignore the pop-up advertisements that pop up when I turn on my computing machine. Years of waiting for one advertising pop-up toasters were in vain, but should I ever need split-crotch surgical support tights, a sit-on lawnmower in the shape of Harry Potter’s car, or a device for scratching my arse without getting up from the chair, then I know exactly where to find them.

Today there popped up a short video of a Bulgarian woman asking me in her native tongue if I’d like to learn to speak English. I was overcome with feelings of cultural assimilation.     

5 January 2026, Monday

Bemoaning bodily weight gains, we questioned how this could have happened. Our diet consists of healthy, fresh, locally-produced, home-cooked ingredients that give a wholesome glow during preparation, consumption and digestion. Perhaps we’d been too wholesome.

Local restaurant food is equally good. We know the staff and they know us. Their provocation with delicious morsels, often free of charge, is downright wicked but nice. Shopska salads and grilled fish at restaurant ‘Etno’ are irresistible but so is their freshly made tiramisu. Even our socks have felt too tight so sacrifices must be made. Either the tiramisu goes or the socks go.

6 January 2026, Tuesday

Barry’s Irish tea isn’t grown in Ireland and it’s not sold in Bulgarian shops. It starts off in East Africa, gets shipped to Cork for packaging, and then people in Canada buy some to sell online to international tea drinkers like me. So, the contents of the teapot that sat on my desk as I wrote this had travelled more than 25,000 kilometres. I was pleased it was perfect because sending it back would have been a right old rigmarole.

Eight packets (i.e. two kilograms) arrived today, on Bulgarian Orthodox Christmas Day. I must have been on Santa’s nice list.

7 January 2026, Wednesday

The euro is at last seeping into our society. A woman complained on Facebook she’d bought some Bulgarian produced vegetables in the market, paid for them with Bulgarian euro but was given change in French and German euro. ‘Why can’t all these countries in the European Union keep themselves to themselves?’ she asked in bitter upper case to emphasise her fury.

Elsewhere a man was arrested for trying to pay for a drink with a forged fifty euro note. Hats off to him for showing willingness to embrace the togetherness of our European cousins, albeit in his own unconventional way.

8 January 2026, Thursday

I learnt a new word. Not a Bulgarian one, but sort of English. America’s new word for kill is unalive because they’ve worn out the old one. I tried it myself with I could unalive a cuppa tea.

America’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (known as ICE though they’re not at all cool) unalived thirty-seven-year-old Renee Good in Minneapolis as she drove away from them. Trump called her a domestic terrorist. If he ever had a brain in the first place someone must have unalived it.

Former Leeds United star, Terry Yorath, died under completely different circumstances. Sad but civilised.

9 January 2026, Friday

I’ve always taken pride in my own personal symmetry. I dribble from both sides of my mouth at the same time, both of my feet are useless at football and there are exactly 623 hairs on each side of my philtrum.

What’s puzzled me lately in this respect is why the painful arthritis in my carpometacarpal joints rips through both thumbs with equal intensity when it’s the right one that does all the work. They’re only ever in action together when I’m practising my gymnastics routine on the parallel bars, working a nightshift at Mucky Monika’s Massage Parlour or typing.  

10 January 2026, Saturday

We spend very little money in cold weather, not because we’re canny with the cash, but because Bulgarian shopkeepers set their heating to gas mark Saudi Arabia. In Billa you could take a Findus frozen ready-meal for one (if they sold them) and it would be warm enough to eat before you reached the checkout. So when rugged northern types arrive, such as us, suffocation can only be avoided by either stripping down to vests and pants at the door or just nipping in and out sharpish to grab absolute essentials. Today I lost consciousness whilst buying a pork Viennetta.

11 January 2026, Sunday

I watched the snow falling. Intricately woven crystalline discs of virgin white delicately floating from sinister black skies.

I watched a garden disappear and four old episodes of Father Ted. I watched eight cats, two dogs and a European female sleeping. I slept myself, briefly.

I watched the pot on the stove so long that I saw it boil and I watched the contents of the food cupboard dwindle.

I watched the place beyond the trees where I’d have seen the sun set had it made an appearance at all.

I watched the side of our valley disappear. Everything disappeared.

12 January 2026, Monday

I watched the snow falling.

I washed old fountain pens I’d discovered in a box brought from England ten years back. Holding them underwater to squeeze the rubber part of barrels blocked and blacked with dried up ink left over from stories written long ago, I saw a frenzied attack of wrathful squids in my kitchen sink. Childlike satisfaction in the absence of candlewax to peel from a wine bottle neck.

A reminder of the pleasure to be had from writing on a sheet of paper with a fountain pen. A reminder of an Irish country schoolroom in another age.

13 January 2026, Tuesday

I considered going out into the garden to build a snowman but then I remembered that I was no longer six years old so the associated level of excitement would be virtually nil. And even if I had been six, or even eight, I would have returned to the house twenty minutes later feeling cold and wet and wishing I hadn’t bothered because my icy creation would have looked nothing like a real man, or even a real snowman, and it would melt within a couple of days making everybody sad and weepy like the kid in the Snowman film.

14 January 2026, Wednesday

The highlight of the day was the point in the mid-afternoon when the temperature on our terrace reached minus 6°C, having risen dramatically from the minus 14°C it had been at the point in the morning when I rose somewhat less than dramatically from the warm sanctuary of the bed. Had I known how the day was going to pan out I probably wouldn’t have gone to the trouble of rising at all.

The newsreader lady on the telly listed the names of the countries that Trump was going to bomb, invade or mispronounce, and Bulgaria wasn’t one of them.

15 January 2026, Thursday

Despite the day’s Arctic conditions, the Quink in my recently rediscovered fountain pen hadn’t frozen. The pen had become a necessity as my computer had fallen ill and needed to visit the menders whose shop sits at the top end of a precipitous street where car parking is impossible even on warm days. The snowplough’s deposits would have filled all vacant spaces and destroyed all hope. Two doors along from the computer shop there’s Mucky Monika’s Massage Parlour with a parking space to the front that’s constantly empty because people won’t use it for fear of wagging tongues, myself included.

16 January 2026, Friday

Wrapped tightly in her timeworn black shawl and warming her hands on the fleshiest parts of her goat, the toothless old widow who sits beneath the pomegranate tree in the square wailed a lament in old Bulgarian. As snow fell around her, jackals howled in the forest on the mountainside.

‘Is that an old battle song from the dark days of struggle for freedom from the cruel Ottoman Yoke?’ I asked her.

‘No, it’s I Feel Like I’m Fixing to Die Rag, by Country Joe and the Fish. Me and my Vladislav sang it at Woodstock in ’69,’ she replied.

17 January 2026, Saturday

It snowed again in the night. I was still without a computer and the desire or ability to leave the house.

In a second-hand shop in Castlebar years ago I bought a bundle of Edna O’Brien novels, and today I set about reading them. The feel and smell of old dog-eared brown pages soothes the mind as a fountain pen does. In my copy of Girl with Green Eyes there were no adverts, algorithms or Ukraine beauty queens asking for my bank details. But I did find Mrs F O’Riordan’s newsagent’s bill from August 1982. I love a good bookmark!

18 January 2026, Sunday

These January nights have been sixty degrees colder than last August’s afternoons were. The feathery snow that fell all day wouldn’t have warranted a mention had it not settled on a sheet of ice the size of an East European country.

However, the hiemal hellishness came with benefits, they being:

1. A potato peelings trek to the compost heap required six pairs of socks, so the sock drawer where they fester enjoyed a much-needed sorting out.
2. There was neither hide nor hair of a mosquito to be seen.
3. Thoughts of window washing were futile.
4. We didn’t have to talk to anybody.

19 January 2026, Monday

After nine years in the job, President Rumen Radev stood down as preparations began for this year’s general election to replace the government that resigned en bloc last November. Before hanging up his ermine boots he described our governance model as ‘a façade of democracy controlled by oligarchic mechanisms’, but he could have said that about any so-called democratic country really. He seemed alright to me, vetoing daft government decisions in all the right places.

He’s off to his mates’ place in Novosibirsk for a warm, apparently. Sam Allardyce will stand in for him for the rest of the season.

20 January 2026, Tuesday

We spent our final Bulgarian leva on dog food in Kaufland. We’ve still a few small denomination coins from the old times which are difficult to spend and will surely keep turning up like bad pennies, but otherwise we’re fully-fledged Eurozoners.

Already we’ve pockets full of small denomination brown coins from the new times which will probably also never be spent, but at least they’re shiny. Bulgarians’ hostile attitude towards the euro melted when they discovered this shininess. The wave of enthusiasm prompted the Finance Minister to consider adopting foil-wrapped chocolate coins from Christmas trees as our next new currency.

21 January 2026, Wednesday

Baba is our word for both grandmother and midwife, and today was the traditional feast of Babinden (Baba’s Day).

To mark the occasion, babies are bathed by the Baba and anointed in butter and honey (though we prefer toast). Young mothers provide bread, banitsa and wine that they’ve made. After the feast, the Baba’s taken to the nearest river, lake or well to be ritually bathed. Men may not participate, especially policemen. The day ends with Horo (community folklore dancing) in village squares.

Priyatelkata and I weren’t invited because we haven’t got a baby. Ah well, there’s always next year.

22 January 2026, Thursday

I self-diagnosed another acute attack of Turlough’s Wintery Abysmal Torture (T.W.A.T.). I’ve no energy, no enthusiasm, no appetite, constant nagging headaches, and I have hideous dreams if I manage to escape insomnia. Symptoms collectively contributing to an overwhelming feeling of wretchedness.

Restricted daylight, dank weather, and ground surfaces switching between ice and mud on a regular basis destroy all hope of getting any enjoyment from stepping outside. On the worst days (today being one of them) it’s a struggle to hold back tears. I hate winter and everything it brings. Apologies for the gloom. I’ll try to be cheery tomorrow.

23 January 2026, Friday

I briefly poked my head out of the door with the intention of doing some garden work to bring my mind and body back to life. What lay beyond the pile of snow that had slid from the roof seemed far from inviting, so I cleaned the fridge instead. There it was warmer, brighter and I found more things growing.

Outside, however, nature had struggled on, providing early signs of shoots and buds, and the uplifting sound of avian chirruping. In such harsh weather I was thankful to have been born a human rather than a bush or a tit.

24 January 2026, Saturday

By 8:00 a.m. I had already installed a new filter in the hoover. Success!

I spent the next twelve hours removing the new computer from its box, plugging an octopus family of cables into the back of it, downloading things I didn’t know I needed, and saying words I wouldn’t repeat in the company of nuns. Ticking boxes to prove to robots that I wasn’t a robot was particularly irritating.

By the end of the day, I had a brand-new up-to-date machine that worked exactly the same as the old one except one or two things were a different colour.

25 January 2026, Sunday

Another innocent civilian was murdered in the street by so-called law enforcement agents in Minneapolis. My thoughts on how powerful men are destroying our world could fill volumes, but thousands have already written similar, so I won’t. The news is deeply disturbing. I can’t close my eyes and make it go away.

As a distraction from current atrocities, I read a book about what an evil shower the Catholic Church had been in Ireland during the twentieth century. I felt the urge to swear at a nun but there were none handy.

Outside, the freezing fog lingered. Sunday, Bloody Sunday!

26 January 2026, Monday

The fog was warmer today than of late. I wondered if it was really foggy or had I just developed cataracts. I checked in the bathroom mirror but saw nothing. I wondered if I had really developed cataracts or was the mirror just a bit mucky.

Johnny Ten Levs would know. He had poor eyesight and only ever asked for money because he was saving up for a cataract operation. It was minutely possible that any change from cheap wine purchases had gone in his hospital jar. I wondered if he really had cataracts or was he just constantly pissed.

27 January 2026, Tuesday

On a day in great need of brightening up, our visit to Boyar café facing Tsarevets Fortress came as a brief ceasefire in our battle against ugly fat. In this respect, the delicious homemade cakes they tempted us with were akin to weapons of mass destruction, and the hazelnut lattes with which we washed them down were like dumdum bullets exploding inside our craving bellies.

We swore that this would be an isolated incident but the cruel café lady gave us loyalty cards and the promise of free stuff on our sixth visit. She should be charged with inciting gluttony.

28 January 2026, Wednesday

Bulgaria’s provisional government voted to close down our short-lived Anti-Corruption Commission. The proposal for the closure had been tabled by three-times former Prime Minister Boyko Borissov’s GERB party. Had the Commission’s Caribbean island, luxury yacht and Leeds United season tickets been made available to GERB officials then none of this unpleasantness would have occurred.

Searching for a few positives from the political catastrophe, Priyatelkata and I agreed that Boyko would be a great name for our next cat, or for a pop group formed by young men whose music and image are designed to appeal primarily to a teenage audience.

29 January 2026, Thursday

Lady Melania has a film out but nobody’s watching it, possibly because it’s not a nudey thing, which is unusual for her. Illegal immigrants hiding in cinemas where it’s being shown feel safe in the knowledge that nobody will find them there.

A poorly-timed release date, critics say. Perhaps if Carry On Trumping had been made years ago, with Barbara Windsor in the lead role and Charles Hawtrey playing the nutty husband, Melania would have enjoyed greater success. But I’m sure she’ll put all the disappointment behind her when she picks up the glittering FIFA award for Best Pantomime Dame.

30 January 2026, Friday

On the wettest days, drinking enough coffee to float Thunderbird 4 cheers me. Marooned on my settee I imagine myself being a guest on BBC Radio Four’s Desert Island Djezves programme, clutching my eight favourite Balkan copper pots along with the Complete Works of Hristo Botev and Roy Plomley’s autobiography. My chosen luxury item would be the Dagenham Girl Pipers.

Today my mind took me to a place where I was cast away with Richard Harris, Richard Ayoade, Richie Blackmore, Richard Dawkins, Richard Clayderman, Richard Piñanez, Little Richard and Nigel Farage in the first ever episode of Desert Island Dicks.

31 January 2026, Saturday

We said goodbye to Golyam Sechko (Голям Сечко, meaning ‘the Big Cutter’) otherwise known as January. He’s renowned for bringing severe cutting cold. Tomorrow Malak Sechko (Малък Сечко, ‘the Small Cutter’) arrives. He is February and the smaller, less fierce of the two folklore brothers, so we can start to look forward to the spring.

It was also the final day of the lev that’s been Bulgaria’s currency since 1881. We’ve had to change idioms as well as pricing and accounting systems. Two stotinki short of a lev (describing someone who’s not very clever) sounded much better than two cents short of a euro.

Photograph: The time I bumpted into Rumen Radev, President of the Republic of Bulgaria from 2017 to 2026.

This Sort of Thing - February 2026

Coming soon!

Birthdays come but once a year

And now mine’s been and gone again

So I’ve saved a moment to find the pad

And write this note dear Auntie Gwen

Great thanks to you for the wonderful gift

Of a dodgy Woolworth’s fountain pen

It’s the very thing a young lad would want

On that magical day when he turns ten

You know, my mother’s not entirely chuffed

The whole street heard the row, I think

From the kitchen a tirade of horror shrieked

‘A squid’s been slaughtered in my nice clean sink!’

This pen I’ll treasure though it has its faults

Oozing style in buckets like it oozes ink

I’d been secretly washing my jumper for school

If she’d seen its state she’d have raised a stink  

‘You can’t go sending that’ she said

When she saw my script on the once white page

My attempt at gratitude, at being polite

Had put the woman in another rage

‘It’s just a few blots, you can still read the words’

With my trembling voice I failed to assuage

So I’m asking you now for a better pen

In a few more years when I come of age

I didn’t have an Auntie Gwen. Aunties Maggie and Annie in South Shields were the kind benefactresses on this occasion, but they wouldn’t have rhymed.

Photograph: My recently purchased fountain pen that I used to write this very poem, though you probably wouldn’t have been able to tell from this if I hadn’t pointed it out.

1 December 2025, Monday

With only a month to go until our great Eurozone adventure begins, Bulgaria’s banks were today selling euro starter packs.

Costing 20 leva, each pack contains:

• 42 shiny coins with a total face value of €10.23, covering every denomination.
• A European Central Bank pen with the little bit of chain still attached at the top.
• A balloon with a picture of the face of European Union President, Ursula von der Leyen.
• A packet of crayons so we can cross out ‘euro’ and write ‘roubles’ on our banknotes in five years’ time.
• An ‘England Didn’t Qualify’ tee shirt.
• A cyanide tablet.

2 December 2025, Tuesday

Almost every Bulgarian city saw a political demonstration last night. Our nation hadn’t shown its anger on such a scale since 1989 and the dying days of Communist totalitarianism.

The offspring of those Communists run the country now. The old corruption remains but enhanced by the trappings of modern capitalism. Drawing back the Iron Curtain only revealed neighbours with a greater range of corruption. Sofia’s politicians couldn’t wait to join in. We’re a small and poor country but the big guns will lend us cash if we support their wars.

Today’s headlines read ‘The genie is out of the bottle!’

3 December 2025, Wednesday

Priyatelkata had read that a vintage steam locomotive would draw carriages along the Gorna Oryahovitsa to Veliko Tarnovo line on 20 December. ‘How delightfully festive,’ she remarked. ‘Let’s do it!’ she insisted.

Before entering the ticket office this chilly morning, we checked the train buffs’ website so we’d know exactly what to ask for. We’d to choose between meeting the real-life Snow White or sitting on Santa’s knee, and did we want a little boy’s or a little girl’s toy? Toot! Toot! All aboard the Paedophile Express!

We spent our train fare on lunch in a safe grownups’ café instead. 

4 December 2025, Thursday

At the Vasil Levski Palace of Culture and Sport, the performance by the Sukhishvili Georgian National Ballet was ballet dancing at a hundred miles per hour and leaping in the air in amazing costumes with mesmerising live traditional music and women dancers dressed as ice queens and lads twatting each other with real swords that made sparks fly. It was utterly breathtaking.

Later, as I climbed the stairs to bed, with arthritic knees feeling like victims of a Provisional I.R.A. punishment squad, I resigned myself to the fact that I’d never be a participating member of the Georgian National Ballet.

5 December 2025, Friday

A Russian oil tanker called Kairos, disabled and aflame following a Ukraine drone attack in the Black Sea just north of the Bosphorus, ran aground near our seaside town of Ahtopol.

It’s claimed that the Turkish didn’t want it on their patch so they towed it there with a tug. The word on the prom is that it was a deckchair attendant rather than the Bulgarian authorities who spotted the unusual nautical activity.

In a statement this evening, our Defence Minister said the lady who owns the Punch and Judy tent is prepared for all-out war.

Don’t panic Captain Radov!

6 December 2025, Saturday

Should we ever acquire another dog, we already know what we’ll call it. What fun it would be to arrive at the vet’s and ask if Dr Petrova could have a look at our pet, Rover.

Responding to Crazy Ludo’s fourth serious injury, this morning she became Vet of the Week. When I collected the patchwork cat in the afternoon she explained that the fragile state of tissue badly damaged by his first injury was a major contributing factor to the severity of subsequent ones.

When we have five narrowly-avoided-death stamps on his card we’ll get the sixth operation free.

7 December 2025, Sunday

A haiku for a drizzly December day…

Black black black black black

Black black black black black black black

Black black black grey black

I mentioned to Ismail our neighbour that the weather outside was oo-zhas-no (ужасно, meaning ‘frightful’). In the fifty-odd years he’d lived in Malki Chiflik, this was the first he’d known there not to be snow in November, so perhaps we were lucky. But we agreed that deep and crisp and even would be cheerier than damp and grey and soggy.

Then Johnny Ten Levs came in sight gathering cash to buy a bottle of winter rocket fuel.

8 December 2025, Monday

Forty-five years ago today John Lennon was murdered and I started a part-time evening job in the Cock Beck pub near my home in Leeds. The atmosphere in the bar was sombre. A wall-mounted television showed the Beatles’ film Help! People cried. The grief around me intensified the pain of my broken heart.

Gloom lingered during my next shift, and the next, and the next. After three weeks I’d had enough and left.

Passing by thirty-five years later, I called in for a pint. Were they still showing respect for John Lennon or was it just Leeds’ most miserable pub?

9 December 2025, Tuesday

The Mayor of Malki Chiflik received official correspondence from the President of the European Central Bank advising him that in preparation for Bulgaria’s admission to the Eurozone our local lad Johnny Ten Levs should be renamed Johnny Five Euro and Eleven Cents.

Johnny should also be converted from four-star to unleaded to comply with European Union directives on air quality. Buying him another tube of Maika Valyak (Майка Валяк, meaning ‘Mum Rollette’) simply wasn’t enough. Johnny pointed out that his daily bottle bank deposit of at least six empties renders him more of an environmentalist than any of the rest of us.

10 December 2025, Wednesday

Damp weather, veterinary care responsibilities and heavy-duty gardening demands had recently restricted our leisure time activities. To put matters straight this sunny day, we searched for the ruins of the Sarashka Mosque in the Old Town quarter. Destroyed in the 1890s when Bulgarian forces sent all the Ottomans back to Ottomania, no trace of it remained as other buildings had since sprung up and collapsed on the site. But we did find the distressingly neglected remnants of the underground steam hammam. Tunnels where sweaty men in the nip once wandered were now carpeted with empty beer bottles and crisp packets.

11 December 2025, Thursday

Choosing a favourite, we spent thirty minutes listing the Orthodox monasteries we’d visited. Something we’d never have predicted before emigrating to Bulgaria, but today’s trip to Sokolovsky Monastery near Gabrovo sparked the conversation.

The colourful old church, the spectacular mountain scenery, the story of the monks’ bravery in the uprising against the Ottoman Yoke, and the cat that became our guide all captured our hearts. In the middle of a courtyard immersed in flowers and greenery, the murmur of water flowing from a white stone fountain built in 1865 by master craftsman Kolyu Ficheto was all that disturbed the silence.

12 December 2025, Friday

Mass protests across Bulgarian in recent weeks prompted the government to resign but it’ll make little difference to our lives. We change governments as often as we change our underwear i.e. about twice a year. Until there’s an election they’ll continue to draw salaries.

Stanley Baxter died. I was slightly pleased because I thought he’d died twenty years ago, and greatly saddened because he had been the first person on the television to make me laugh.

Other news causing delight and sadness was the visiting deer that’s been eating our precious plants. But what could be more precious than nature?

13 December 2025, Saturday

Via an old Woolworth’s cassette tape played on a constant loop in Billa supermarket since 1973, Roy Wood was telling the world he wished it could be Christmas every day. I noticed this as a table groaning under the weight of Stollen (not stolen) bread cried out for a defibrillator.

I was sure that Billa’s shareholders with seasonal profits in mind would join Roy in his wishing. But had they for even a second considered the spread of the diabetes problem across Europe and the dire consequences of eating 365 (or multiples thereof for the gannets) mince pies per year?

14 December 2025, Sunday

An eggcup’s capacity of yellowy-red messy mass squirted from the hole in Crazy Ludo’s leg when the vet touched it. Shortly afterwards our beautiful sunny day was swamped with icy fogginess the minute we stepped outside in full gardener’s kit.

To lift our spirits, we turned to retail psychotherapy and became the proud owners of a state-of-the-art Vileda Supermocio - Torsion Power Model, which is much the same as an ordinary mop bucket but with a turbocharged wringer facility. It had been on my bucket list since the day I discovered the concept of floor mopping (Thursday 14 December 1972).

15 December 2025, Monday

I want to weep, every cell in my body aches and fire rips through my brain when I hear of groups of innocent people gathering on the sand to eat and enjoy each other’s company, as friends and families are inclined to do, and then to be murdered in cold blood by the evilest lifeforms to currently blight our beautiful planet. In Gaza it’s happened every day for years but yesterday similar horror struck on Bondi Beach in Australia. Since then, selective empathy has swamped the world as I’ve struggled to distinguish between the genuine theories and the conspiracy ones.

16 December 2025, Tuesday

Last week a message from Energo Pro (the local electricity boys) informed us that our power would go off for a couple of hours from 2:00 p.m. on Wednesday 17 December.  A couple of hours, experience had taught us, was the Bulgarian term for an indeterminate period of time.

Today at 2:00 p.m. our electricity went off for a couple of hours. Working a whole day ahead of schedule, we had to admire their efficiency. Unable to do anything else this dark afternoon we discussed the possibility that today’s outage was merely a rehearsal for something bigger and better tomorrow.

17 December 2025, Wednesday

Languishing in a brumal abyss, all the banter was about the fog on the Yantra. At least in hell it’s warm enough to manage without a big heavy jumper.

Energo Pro forgot to turn off the power at 2:00 p.m.

Does your granny always tell you that the old songs are the best? I’m inclined to agree with her. Confined to a living room, I worked my way north from fellow Teessider Chris Rea, via Alan Hull, to Frankie Miller, Gerry Rafferty and Rab Noakes. All I ever wanted, all I ever needed, was YouTube, Spotify and a bottomless teapot.

18 December 2025, Thursday

Energo-Pro turned off the electricity. We’d expected this on 17 December but powerlessness struck on 16 and 18 December, the prediction being the average of the reality.

In today’s two hours of daylight we visited Dryanovo for junk shop fun and lunch with de Belgische vrienden who’d been busy buying gifts for everybody in their village in anticipation of a virgin birth. Were nappies not more appropriate than chocolates and plastic sparkly things?

Fearing the most infernal darkness I felt strangely excited about the solstice only three restless nights hence. Maybe I’m getting used to these winter carnivals of horror.

19 December 2025, Friday

I’ve had many a message from my bank inviting me to take out loans, or life insurance, or the smiley woman with the dangly earrings that works at desk number four. Today’s message told me they’d converted all my money into euro.

At the year’s end our dear old lev, with its unique character and charm, will disappear. Lev is the old word for lion, and leva banknotes are decorated with interesting historical Bulgarians. Euro notes were designed by a pissed Austrian with a broken Spirograph.

Our Finance Minister insists he wasn’t pissed when he signed the Eurozone agreement. Pah!

20 December 2025, Saturday

If you’re sick of hearing about Crazy Ludo, I don’t blame you because so am I and so is Priyatelkata and so are all five vets at our local practice. He’s a lovely cat but tests have revealed a complex proteus mirabilis infection in the deep tissue of his left front leg which requires antibiotic injections every other day.

I suggested to Dr Gunchev that, because we spend so much time in their surgery, we might get an invitation to the vets’ Christmas party. He said they’re so busy dealing with Crazy Ludo they haven’t time for a Christmas party.

21 December 2025, Sunday

I’m intelligent enough to appreciate that winter gloom’s a temporary thing I shouldn’t fret over, but it beats me every year. I think my head’s got a mind of its own. I’d love to know what goes on in there.

Today was Ignazhden (Игнажден, meaning ‘Saint Ignatius’ Day’) marking the winter solstice and the start of cheering up a bit. I have friends around the world who share my loathing of the dark months. We always send each other cheery messages on this day.

A Japanese proverb I love goes ‘One kind word can warm three winter months.’ It’s very effective.

22 December 2025, Monday

The day being as grey as the Devil’s own washed out Y-fronts, I strayed away from our dwelling place only to see the vet squeeze the contents of a Cadbury’s Creme Egg from the hole in Crazy Ludo’s leg. There’s only one more antibiotic injection until Christmas! Dr Gunchev and I discussed how there was money to be made from feline injury themed advent calendars but we’d need to devise a method of waterproofing them to prevent seepage.

The shortest day had passed but the cheered-upness evaporated somewhat as I listened to the music of Chris Rea who died today.

23 December 2025, Tuesday

The old soothsayer that dwells in a cavern near Lidl foretold the arrival of demonic beasts from Asia’s icy heartland. So final winter preparations were required sharpish. These included shifting logs nearer to the house, stowing away terracotta plant pots, draining the power tools’ fuel tanks, filling the car’s fuel tank, stocking up our freezer, freezing up our stockings, lashing things that might flap, spotifying the Ronettes, sanctifying the soles of our wellies, buffing up the binnacles, searching for things we hadn’t camouflaged, racking the rakia, affronting the people at the back of the bus and finally filling the kettle.

24 December 2025, Wednesday

When I said Vassela Koleda (Васела Коледа, meaning ‘Merry Christmas’) to the Ronnie Wood lookalike checkout woman in our village shop, she didn’t respond with the usual grunt, and even smiled. So I’ll say it every time I’m in there in future.

The snow we’d anticipated was postponed until tomorrow and we had a rain replacement service instead which didn’t require shovelling away.

I discovered that it’s possible for the longest day ever to fall just three days after the shortest day of the year and that Belarussian rakia isn’t a patch on our homegrown nectar but comes in a lovely bottle.

25 December 2025, Thursday

Our hopes of venturing out to a forest or a mountain were dampened by a deluge so I sat several serene hours on the terrace with djezves of hot black Turkish delight on repeat, a book of ripping yarns from Aleko Konstantinov’s times and a playlist of soothing Romanian jazz. It’s a grand place for watching the wild birds at play but the wild birds were having none of it today.

I thought I might be the only living creature enjoying the great outdoors but the sound of distant chainsaws quashed my theory.

The rain stopped when the snow began.   

26 December 2025, Friday

A mere 15 centimetres of snow fell but following an overnight freeze only Olympic ice dancers were able to negotiate the lane into the village. We needed a jar of pickled pigs’ internal organs, which are very popular here in winter months, but I had a hole in my Adidas flesh-coloured leotard so I’d have been mocked had I ventured out. In our barn we found vintage Jaffa Cakes to accompany our morning coffee instead.

English immigrants flocked to Lidl where, apparently, Brussels Sprouts were on the shelves for the first time since the Tuesday before the Siege of Stalingrad.

27 December 2025, Saturday

Around 30,000 leva (£13,500) were destroyed when a bank in nearby Gorna Oryahovitsa caught fire. The wardrobe where an old man had kept his money safe for years had contained mothballs to protect other non-monetary items. Apparently, repellent substances in mothballs are easily flammable when heated. So after Dyado had handed over his life savings and gone home with a bucketful of euro, the leva banknotes that had absorbed the chemicals were put into a warm and cosy vault where the heat was just too much for them.

Prophets of doom suggested this was a metaphor for Bulgaria’s economic future.

28 December 2025, Sunday

Listening to Chis Rea’s music nonstop since his death last week kindled melancholy. Since then Perry Bamonte from The Cure and Brigitte Bardot from France also died, so today I had a new playlist of misery to listen to.

I already loved Brigitte’s song Moi Je Joue long before I learned of her dodgy political views, and she was very kind to cats and donkeys. In Leeds the main shopping street’s named after her, and who would ever argue with Leeds City Council?

I once went to see a The Cure tribute band but it turned out to be Placebo.

29 December 2025, Monday

I could remember British people going mental when their money went metric on Decimal Day in February 1971. That feeling of excited anticipation at having different coins in my pocket was revived by Bulgarians, except they were a lot moanier about it.

There was euro-related fear all around.

The old woman who sits by the well said that during an Amsterdam shopping trip all her family contracted syphilis. Hasan, who’s never had money or education to speak of, told me he hadn’t yet got his head round the lev. And our government Finance Minister had turned into a gibbering cabbage.

30 December 2025, Tuesday

President Gobshite, with his dayglow skin in his ticky-tacky palace, is insisting that visitors show five years’ worth of social media history before his stormtroopers let them into his country, though it doesn’t matter if they’re wearing trainers, jeans or silly hats. Have his technology-giant buddies not already probed our intimate places deeply enough to have their answers?

At Pavlikeni Tuesday market we can buy five pairs of nylon knickers for a couple of euro, so with top-notch trashiness on our doorstep why would we cross an ocean for more? I wonder if Mickey, Minnie and Melania wear nylon knickers.

31 December 2025, Wednesday

I didn’t want a new year. I wanted one of the nice old years recycled. I had really enjoyed 1974. Leeds United won the First Division title, Manchester United were relegated, David Bowie released his Diamond Dogs album, Edward Heath’s Tory government collapsed in Britain, and a girl called Alison wrote her name on my pencil case during a maths lesson.

As the sun set for the final time in 2025, the fireworks started outside and all our animals became distressed. I don’t like fireworks either so I just stayed inside and listened to the Australian ones on the radio.

Photograph: A lovely Bulgarian one lev coin which I shall secure with my other precious keepsakes for the remainder of my days. I photographed it alongside a 100 francs piece from the French Territory of the Afars and the Issas to give an idea of scale.

This Sort of Thing - January 2026

I've Got a Gal in Tiramisu

1 November 2025, Saturday

On National Awakeners' Day everybody gets a day off so they can stay in bed a bit longer, but this year it fell on a Saturday so we’ve to wait until Monday to stay in bed a bit longer.

It’s a day to honour people who preserved and revived Bulgarian identity, culture, and education during Ottoman rule, such as educators, writers and revolutionaries. If Hristo Botev and Vasil Levski were still alive all their drinks would be free today.

I tend to stay in bed a bit longer every day. Such a great mark of respect for my adopted country.

2 November 2025, Sunday

I forgot to mention that a few days ago we got our car back from the menders. The task was performed far more speedily than expected, but it cost us the price of a holiday by the Black Sea. Looking on the bright side, we’d put Mechanical Nikolay in a position to be able to afford a couple of weeks in Varna, provided that lugging his heavy wallet around with him didn’t give him a hernia.

Apparently the seaside weather was windy and cool today but in our garden it was sunny and warm, so we claimed a moral victory.

3 November 2025, Monday

Vlastta na naroda! (Властта на народа! meaning ‘Power to the people!).

After three days with an uninterrupted water supply, we woke to discover it had deserted us again. Talk of demonstrations to block the nearby dual carriageway faded as nobody wanted to be the first to stand in the busy road. A petition was the second suggestion at the mass rally in the square.

The good citizens of Malki Chiflik had had enough, all 313 of them. Though possibly not Johnny Ten Levs who’s never had enough, no matter how many times his requests for wine are declined by the village shop lady.

4 November 2025, Tuesday

A grand day for reptiles!

Whilst hacking back Russian Sage that had strayed into garden territory without invitation, I spotted a magnificent toad with a body as wide as my foot.

Tucked beneath a nearby stone path, our friendly viper woke, rubbed his eyes and went back to sleep.

Yesterday I used the final teabag from the two boxes of Barry’s tea I’d brought back from my recent trip to Ireland. Without regular infusions my blood turns cold, and my skin dry and scaly.

Both toad and snake were left undisturbed, but it’s been said that I’m quite the opposite.

5 November 2025, Wednesday

At the Vasil Levski Palace of Culture and Sport, the performance of Tant-sut na Epok-ee-tay (Танцът на Епохите, meaning ‘The Dance of the Ages’) could have been described as a history of the Ottoman Empire recreated using the medium of dance and a set designed by John Noakes, but without reference to the slaughter and slavery suffered by Bulgarians over five centuries. Only an Andrew Lloyd-Webber musical about 1930’s Germany on stage at the Tel Aviv Palladium could have been more inappropriate.

But for the intensely loud Turkish language commentary and musical accompaniment, it was like Riverdance with bare flesh and döner kebabs.

6 November 2025, Thursday

Crazy Ludo’s cat fight injuries are too frequent and repetitive to mention but today he peaked. Fully recovered from last week’s episode, we allowed him to go outside this morning. He returned this afternoon with swathes of skin missing from his front legs. To the vet’s we sped! When Priyatelkata and I die they’ll put brass plates bearing our names on the waiting room seats because we spend so much time sitting there.

Meanwhile, today was the birthday of Adolphe Sax (inventor of the saxophone), Johnny Giles (Leeds United and Ireland footballing legend) and Turlough Ó Maoláin (despondent cat owner).

7 November 2025, Friday

On the anniversary of many hangovers I was hangover-free, but our poor cat was looking rough when we picked him up at the vet’s. The stitched up patchwork of skin on his front legs and miserable look on his face were heartbreaking to see. Dr Tatchev said the nature of the injuries suggested he’d been asleep under a car bonnet when the engine was started.

As another four-week indoor recovery period began we considered changing his name from Ludo (Лудо, meaning ‘crazy’) to something else, but not Lucky, even though he was lucky to be alive. Eric seemed a safe bet.

8 November 2025, Saturday

Papa’s got a brand new chainsaw, but still loves his old one. The new baby’s for pruning the slenderer branches from trees, powered by rechargeable batteries and small enough to operate in bed. Using it for cutting toenails was briefly considered as weather conditions were too wet for working in the garden.

Papa watched YouTube videos about how much plastic is used to construct the average teabag and decided that the search for a proper one-man size teapot would resume. His small metal teabag contraption designed for loading with loose leaf tea was as much use as a chocolate teapot.

9 November 2025, Sunday

The perfect teapot smiled at us from a shop window in town but the shop was closed so we went for a coffee in the park. Bulgarians don’t really do tea unless it’s picked from a wild meadow and covered in bear shit.

An old Scottish friend never liked fancy herbal tea and always called it ‘ballet dancer’s tea’. An old English friend doesn’t like black tea and always calls it ‘monkey tea’. Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, the nineteenth century French socialist, philosopher and economist, who was considered to be the father of anarchism once declared that ‘all proper tea is theft’.

10 November 2025, Monday

Until today I thought that synaesthesia was a surrealistic Ken Russell musical about nasal congestion, but really it’s defined as a perceptual phenomenon in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway.

My experiences of it are:

• Whenever I see our neighbour Maria I smell rakia.
• I taste boiled diced swede on hearing the words ‘lunch bell’.
• The number 666 reminds me to visit the dentist.
• Vivid red conveys me back to a Leeds house party in 1981.
• When the light’s switched off at night, November invades my mind.

11 November 2025, Tuesday

True remembrance lies in the actions we take to prevent all further wars. I don’t know who said that but I wish it had been me.

It was Irish president Michael D Higgins’ first day of retirement. He’d continually reminded us of Ireland’s traditional policy of military neutrality that had always kept us from seeking NATO membership. Also a poet, a broadcaster and a grand fella altogether, Mickey D will be missed.

Thankfully, new girl Catherine Connolly seems to know what she’s on about. Bob Geldof and Conor McGregor considered applying for the job until they remembered nobody likes them.

12 November 2025, Wednesday

Dr Tatchev said Crazy Ludo’s wounds were looking good (not my choice of words) and, as every drop of the clinic’s medication had already been pumped into him, a return visit wasn’t necessary. We could have said he’d been discharged, but the word ‘discharged’ had been used in a different sense many times before when discussing this poor cat’s health. At home in his recuperation room, he looked bloody miserable which was a big improvement on last Thursday when he’d looked bloody and miserable. In two months Dr Tatchev and Dr Gunchev had both worked miracles on the same leg.

13 November 2025, Thursday

Papa’s got a brand new teapot. Its output is exactly one cup because tea isn’t made for sharing. Loose leaves go in a little mesh compartment that could be refashioned as a chastity contraption for a small rodent if tea was ever to become extinct. Boiling water’s poured in and because the pot is of glass construction I can watch the liquid turn the colour of John Power & Son’s Gold Label Whiskey, which is another beautiful drink but doesn’t have the same kick to it that the tea has.

In our house, other fine-looking teapots are available but faffy.

14 November 2025, Friday

Summer weather returned so sweat ran off me in torrents as I laboured under hot sun to coil up our hosepipe collection and collapse garden umbrellas and furniture. Such symbols of the summer months are things I treasure, so I kissed each of them goodbye as I lovingly placed them in the shed. Tears mingled with perspiration.

Absolutely nothing in the world is more exciting than seeing the first signs of shoots appearing on grapevines in spring, so chopping them all off today was as painful as chopping off my own leg. But they were dead anyway, so sod them.

15 November 2025, Saturday

I could only describe the feeling as orgasmic as I pushed my aging wheelbarrow for the first time after pumping a bit of air into the tyre. Its deflated state had been annoying me for months but I couldn’t find the foot pump. And besides, I’d always thought a foot pump was only for people with flat feet.

At last I understood why all those Formula One racer boys love pulling into the pits for the new wheels. Barnsley’s the pits but you wouldn’t go driving round that place in one of those flashy motors, as Lewis Hamilton will testify.

16 November 2025, Sunday

Hasan’s silver dream machine goes from nought to thirty in under an hour. It runs off electricity which is perhaps a bit risky as our village is without power almost as often as it’s without water. I asked if the lead would stretch to the shop from where he plugs his kettle in. He showed mild irritation and the place beneath the seat where the battery’s stowed. Today I became his БФФ (best friend forever) because I suggested he keep it in our spare parking space. The Hell’s Angel in me was hoping he’d let me have a spin on it.

17 November 2025, Monday

In Bulgaria there’s a coffee vending machine in almost every street. Many town centres have whole banks of them. The drinks they vend are usually alright as fresh beans are ground within the machine, so they make our country a happy country.

The adoption of the euro as our unit of currency on 1^st January will present problems. It’s illegal to change the machines before that date and a logistical nightmare to change them all on the day. The same applies with machines providing parking tickets, chocolate and condoms. We might have to wait until March for a cuppa, etc.

18 November 2025, Tuesday

Veliko Tarnovo’s posh new electric bus (the number 100) just about connects Mechanical Nikolay’s workshop with our favourite restaurant ‘Etno’, so we were able to simultaneously tuck into delicious zelevi sarmi (зелеви сарми, meaning ‘stuffed cabbage rolls’) and have our toxic emissions checked.

It was the day for the godishni teknicheski pregledi (годишни технически прегледи, meaning ‘MOT’) so we were nervous, not wanting our car to be the first ever in Bulgaria to fail the safety test. In 1972 a Dimitrovgrad driver initially failed for having full ashtrays in his Lada Niva but earned a reprieve saying his cataracts had prevented him from seeing them.

19 November 2025, Wednesday

News surrounding the switchover to the euro currency intensifies daily. They’re giving us extra public holidays on 31 December and 2 January to get used to spending the new money, but they’ve overlooked the fact that shops don’t open on public holidays.

They’ve also said that bank cash machines and card transactions won’t be available for a few hours late on New Year’s Eve, so we’re going to have to sit at home and see 2026 in with tea and biscuits. No change there then. In fact, us having a night out before Easter’s unlikely.

Euro crisis? What euro crisis?

20 November 2025, Thursday

During an afternoon visit to Scottish friends in Momin Sbor, Priyatelkata was completely lost as we discussed how much Glasgow had altered down the years, but sprang to life when the subject turned to the changing face of Veliko Tarnovo. We’d all lived there long enough to be able to include the phrase Eeh I remember when that was a …. in conversations. We then talked at length about the new plastic temporary roundabout outside the Law Courts, hoping that the good people at the Council would put it in the appropriate recycling bin when it was no longer needed.

21 November 2025, Friday

It didn’t rain and it wasn’t cold but the sky was black all day and it was Friday. I’d been hearing constantly about this Black Friday thing on the radio and on the internet, and the only way to stop my head exploding was to turn them both off. They’ll stay off until Yordanovden when I can be sure all the consumerist crap’s behind us. Why have this awful event at this awful time of the year anyway?

I went to Billa for some bread then I went to bed for some peace and stayed there until Black Saturday.

hashtaghatewinterandallitbrings

22 November 2025, Saturday

In the whole of Bulgaria, absolutely nothing at all happened today apart from the weather being strangely warm and a bit windy. I looked at older journals to see if previous 22 Novembers had offered more.

Seven years ago I fell down some icy concrete stairs in a dark car park. In the process of doing so I acquired a variety of cuts and bruises on legs and elbows, and a big hole in the knee of the new trousers I had bought only the day before.

Since then I’ve never bought trousers on 21 November and I’m still alive.

23 November 2025, Sunday

Weather forecasters predicted rain for the whole morning and the whole evening. It was nice to see they only got the middle bit wrong.

Another slow news day during which I read that on 23 November 1946, the English actress Diana Quick and the American political activist Bobby Rush were both born, but unfortunately historians failed to mention fictional character Billy Whizz.

And although this sounds like a schoolboy joke, today was also the anniversary of the death in 1803 of Roger Newdigate, an English politician after whom the scandalous behaviour of numerous subsequent English politicians could have been named.

24 November 2025, Monday

In warm sunshine, whilst sorting the year’s seed collection retrieved from the shed’s dark recesses for planting next March, I had reggae and ska classics playing on my phone. At the same time, the legendary Jimmy Cliff was dying of pneumonia in Kingston, Jamaica. A mere coincidence or a surge of Rastafarian energy? I didn’t know we’d lost him until late in the afternoon.

Neighbour Hasan had never heard of Jimmy Cliff (or even reggae music) but I enlightened him. In the street I encouraged him to sing ‘Прекрасен свят, красиви хора’ (Wonderful world, beautiful people) and I learnt the Bulgarian word for bemused.

25 November 2025, Tuesday

I really thought the problem of Crazy Ludo’s wounds was behind us, so we let him out for the first time in three weeks. At dusk I braved rush-hour bedlam to deposit him at the vet’s with a brand new huge gash in the same spot on his leg where his two previous huge gashes had been.

We love him to bits but we’re fucking sick of his disasters (pardon my Punjabi). Astonished vets’ eyes rolled like cherries in a one-armed bandit as I entered the surgery.

‘We need to be careful,’ said Dr Gunchev ‘Cats have only nine lives.’

26 November 2025, Wednesday

I really thought the problem of not having an adequately functioning teapot was behind us until the mother of all teapots, purchased only thirteen days ago, sprang a tiny leak. It was obviously all my fault because I made the mistake of washing it with a soft cloth, as instructed in the owner’s manual. In doing so I dislodged a minute chip from its fragile base. Vowing never to introduce hygiene to the tea-making process again, I scoured the house for a teabag for making a brew in a mug and wept almost as much as the cat’s wound wept.

27 November 2025, Thursday

Papa’s got another brand new teapot, the same as the previous one but bigger, and it’s from the same shop. Priyatelkata accompanied me to provide moral support in my time of pain. She even paid for it. Remembering me from last time, the shop lady’s eyes rolled like the eyes of the vets. 

We didn’t get a brand new cat but the old one was mended. Dr Gunchev suggested the cut was caused by an altercation with rusty metal, so only five stitches this time.

As the euro’s approach gathered speed we could no longer do bank transfers in leva.

28 November 2025, Friday

During our lunchtime visit to restaurant ‘Pizza Uno’, I ordered our food and paid for it using only words of the Bulgarian tongue. So I was disappointed that the waiter said ‘Bye!’ as we were leaving.

Lessons with Adelina have revived my yearning to attain fluency, but the best words are the ones that I will probably never need. For example, pud-pud-duck (пъдпъдък) is the word for quail, because that’s the noise the birds make when they want to make babies. Humans are lucky to be called humans as our species could so easily have been burdened with the name ow-about-it-luv.

29 November 2025, Saturday

International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People had me feeling inadequate. On a day of shitty weather in a small village hidden up a Bulgarian valley there was barely anything I could do to show support.

Two or three years ago I’d have walked to the shop for a KitKat to brighten November’s gloom, but I’d rather it stayed dark than see my money go via Nestlé to the Zionist genocide programme in Gaza. It still goes on, despite their so-called ceasefire. 

What did you do in the war, Grandfather?

I had a homemade scone with my afternoon cuppa.

30 November 2025, Sunday

The iconography’s long gone but Sofia’s imposing Stalinist architectural gems remain as the seat of our hotchpotch general assembly. Following Wednesday’s big demonstration there, the Finance Minister shredded the draft ‘tax everything’ budget. He had to because otherwise the crowd wouldn’t have let government members go home for their tea.

Pat McFadden at Britain’s DWP (Down With Pensioners) sent me a one-off, tax-free tenner to help with festive expenses. Not being the festive type, I felt a little embarrassed. So I deposited a corresponding amount in the tin of the blind man who plays the clarinet outside the post office.

Photograph: Out and about on a November day in my little town.

This Sort of Thing - December 2025 

How to Make Money with a Broken Spirograph 

1 October 2025, Wednesday

At 11:00 p.m. I read that at 11:00 a.m. today the civil defence sirens were tested across Bulgaria. We heard nothing. Perhaps the electricity company had cut the supply for essential maintenance purposes. Perhaps our sense of hearing had abandoned us. Perhaps there really was a nuclear attack, which currently would have been just as likely as my other two suggestions, and we’re all dead and this is just a dream.

Live each day as if it’s your last, they say. The highlights of my day were shopping in Billa (their marmalade is lush) and putting cream on cats’ scabs.

2 October 2025, Thursday

Today’s highlight was going to the vet to get Gaïa the Shih Tzu’s anal gland unblocked, making yesterday seem like one of the golden periods of my life.

It rained all day so we had the lights on in the house all day, apart from a three-hour stretch when the electricity company cut the supply for essential maintenance purposes. A nuclear attack might have brightened things up a bit.

This was a gloomy wet day to celebrate as nature’s tears bathed the parched earth. Those plants still alive in our garden this afternoon would survive until next June at least.

3 October 2025, Friday

My dear old Nan would say ‘it never rains, but it pours’ when two or more problems cropped up simultaneously.

In the last 36 hours Bulgaria’s had more rain than during the rest of this year so far. Coastal areas were hit by strong winds, extreme flooding, and even tornadoes. Elenite (pronounced ‘elen-ee-tay’) a seaside resort village, was virtually destroyed as flood water surging down a valley met opposing tidal waves. Roads and bridges were washed away and three people drowned.

Meanwhile in the Pirin and Rodopi mountains, and along the North Macedonian and Serbian borders, there was heavy snow. 

4 October 2025, Saturday

I try to keep this journal whimsical but today was a struggle as all the talk was about yesterday’s disaster in Elenite, and whose fault it was. Trees had been cleared from a valley to enable the building of a holiday village including homes, hotels, restaurants and a water park, without any consideration for nature’s wild extremes. All fingers pointed at builders and local politicians. Cleaning up and rebuilding would require huge amounts of time and money but may never happen as holidaymakers are unlikely to return.

Forecasters’ predictions of another equally intense weather system arriving on Monday bothered us.

5 October 2025, Sunday

Today’s warmth and sunniness surprised us but the muddiness didn’t. The disappearance of all limpness from garden flora delighted us.

Our scrubbing and cooking for the visit of Echo and Aleks was in vain as they stayed only ten minutes, leaving behind produce from their garden. Rough estimations suggested we’d dine on apple, egg and chips for twenty-three days.

In Tsarevo, the entire contents of a car park company’s office were swept into the sea during Saturday’s storm. The badly damaged safe washed up on the shore provided a refreshing change for beachcombers gathering banknotes instead of driftwood. Leva galore!

6 October 2025, Monday

The vet confirmed that Manoushka the Magnificent no longer had giardia in her gut but we’ve still no idea why she’s vomiting piccalilli, and what surges from the poor cat’s other end could be mistaken for mango chutney. We’re clearly in a bit of a pickle.

Examining Snezhinka the Wonder Dog, he said her tumour had slightly reduced in size and we should continue with her tablets. This was great news on a day we’d expected grim news, even though the medication causes her to be intercontinental all over the kitchen floor every night. It keeps us on our toes!

7 October 2025, Tuesday

It rained heavily every single minute of the day. Apart from enduring a little boredom we were fine in our house, but the Black Sea was full again. From all the poor people in Tsarevo who’d spent the last few days shovelling shit from living rooms, streets and amusement arcades there could be heard a collective ‘what’s the fucking point?’

While our country’s main exports were tomatoes and yoghurt we felt quite secure in today’s wicked war-torn world. Unfortunately, we’re becoming Europe’s major manufacturer of military drones which will bring in lots of money but possibly also lots of bombs. 

8 October 2025, Wednesday

Adelina became my fourth Bulgarian teacher and vowed to succeed where flawed geniuses had previously failed. She’s also proficient in French, German, and Greek, and dabbles in Norwegian, but we agreed that when haggling over goats in Pavlikeni market, only the mother tongue would be of any use.

Still it rained, all day long, and not just drizzle. The government issued red warnings, which meant that galoshes on feet and Kaufland carrier bags on heads were essential for those venturing out. We’re boycotting Kaufland because of you-know-what so we stayed at home all day.

Wildfire worries had finally fizzled out.

9 October 2025, Thursday

Our beloved walnut tree was ten to twelve metres high, too fat to hug in one attempt, and older than me. Totally majestic when I arrived here but struggling after last year’s hailstones, it finally gave up the ghost during last night’s deluge and this morning lay prostate across the garden. One of many to suffer the same fate locally.

In weak sunshine we stood on Vladishki Most (Bishop’s Bridge) to admire the swollen Yantra as it raged off towards the Danube carrying more dead trees. 

I hoped winter would be kinder than the early days of autumn had been.

10 October 2025, Friday

On World Mental Health Day, the Washington Overlord announced a ceasefire in Gaza but we’d be insane to recognise it as such while bombs were still going off and Palestinians were still being killed. And he forgot to mention the accountability of those responsible for the genocide.

While there’s a World Potato Day and a World Chess Day, I’d say a single day’s insufficient to adequately embrace psychological wellbeing. Might there be a touch of PTSD in Gaza? A month would be more appropriate provided it doesn’t clash with World Deny Human Rights Day, which seems to be every day.

11 October 2025, Saturday

It rained again, I was a bit hungover from World Mental Health Day, and freshly baked soda bread wafted from the kitchen, so I stayed in all day. Reading and writing have become as difficult as when I was five, but I had a stab at both for sanity’s sake.

Psychiatrist Rami Kaminski reckons Priyatelkata and I are otroverts, craving emotional independence and loathing the thought of being part of any group of people. Frida Kahlo, Franz Kafka and George Orwell were also otroverts. Were we not otroverts we’d be delighted to be members of a group that included them.

12 October 2025, Sunday

You know the mess it makes when a bit of toast falls on your carpet, buttered side down and all that? Well it's even worse when a seventy-year-old walnut tree falls on your garden. But it had been dead a year so in truth I should have done something about it before it toppled.

After a day spent grappling with the branches the job was half done and I was completely done. I too fell, but only exhausted into bed. Unlike the walnut, I had no beetle infestations, fungal growths or necrotic cells, at least that I was aware of.

13 October 2025, Monday

The Bulgarian government's planning on taking up a strategic role in the EU's Drone Wall defence initiative. They’re building factories to churn out sneaky death machines round the clock, expecting us to be Europe’s leading producer by 2028. Our Finance Minister’s rubbing his trouser pockets with glee as every new war will generate cash to build new schools and hospitals. Considering the current way of the world, I’d be surprised if we didn’t all end up with a school and a hospital each. What happened to those days when we’d just pop down to Argos whenever a drone was needed?

14 October 2025, Tuesday

We’d kept Crazy Ludo indoors so his badly wounded leg and allergy-related weeping sores could heal. He wasn’t happy about this but neither were his cohabiters, especially me and Priyatelkata. Today he’d finished his four-week sentence and his fluffy, mostly white fur made him a contender for a prize in the village cat show’s Formerly Scabby category. So we rewarded him with a couple of hours of freedom. He returned bloodied and limping. Looking like a bit of a dandy, he’d probably been roughed up by homophobic local strays. He later took the silver rosette in the Still Scabby category.

15 October 2025, Wednesday

No one can say Veliko Tarnovo’s behind the times. Today a new place called Trampoline Land opened near to the pigs’ and goats’ accessories shop on the retail park. I’d never heard of any other city boasting such an establishment. With winter approaching, Priyatelkata and I were incredibly busy darning holes in our underwear but we were excited about visiting the attraction sometime in the next two weeks when our work would be done. We’d read that there’s a lot more to it than just jumping up and down on trampolines. There’s also a bar and they serve Mexican food.  

16 October 2025, Thursday

Our nation mourned the recent death of Dobromir Zechev, the only Bulgarian footballer to have played in four World Cup final tournaments. He was 82 and probably in better shape than most members of our current national squad who this week lost 6-1 and 4-0 to Turkey and Spain respectively.

Such good news that after a week of persistent heavy rain our reservoirs were no longer empty. Not so good, however, that a large proportion of their contents was mud. As cappuccino-esque fluids flowed from our taps, purveyors of water in plastic bottles rubbed their hands with glee and disinfectant.

17 October 2025, Friday

Inge and Patrick gave us a cups of coffee, lovely chocolate biscuits and more than 100 strawberry plants. Phase One in our plan to drown in soft fruits next summer involved me looking sharpish in the planting of them. It was dark when we arrived home and with weekend rain forecast there were complications. Gardening is supposed to be the most relaxing pastime but I felt I was under intense pressure. I imagined how I would be scorned with shame if a buttered scone were to go unjammed at an afternoon tea party next July. But sadly, postponement was unavoidable.

18 October 2025, Saturday

We’d decided to boycott Kaufland supermarket because their profits finance warmongers, but we occasionally return because:

a) They have good quality, reasonably priced dog food that our dogs love.

b)  Paying for goods at their self-checkout tills enables us to ‘launder’ up to 12 levs per transaction from our big stone pot containing nine years’ worth of loose change. A necessary step before Bulgaria’s adoption of the euro in January 2026.

Today my pockets brimmed with scrap metal as I waddled all the way to their pet food aisle only to discover they’d sold out of delicious Kaufland meaty chunks.

19 October 2025, Sunday

We’d always welcomed snakes to our garden. They eat vermin and bring exoticism without being threatening enough to make us feel like menu items ourselves.

Today’s visitor, half a metre of beautiful but brutal-looking horn-nosed viper, chose to sunbathe on our doorstep, stopping domestic traffic flow and hearts.

The risk of fatalities was apparently small. We humans had a local hospital at our disposal and cats’ reflexes are apparently three times the speed of a snake’s. But for our lethargic older felines I suspected that even suggesting three times the speed of a slug might be pushing it a bit.

20 October 2025, Monday

Fyodor the Fiat was in need of new pistons so we took him to Mechanical Nikolay where the TLC he spoke of probably stood for Tremendously Large Cost. He said he’d have it ready for us on Thursday (i.e. Thursday 20 November).

Bulgarian village life without a car isn’t impossible but it is messy, so we went to Radoslav’s Rentals and drove away in a shiny black Kia Ora as a temporary replacement.

On such a lovely sunny day we fancied an afternoon out in the new motor but accepted that finding homes for 100 strawberry plants was our priority.

21 October 2025, Tuesday

Yesterday, somebody had written in England’s Times newspaper that our Interior Minister, Daniel Mitov, had told them Bulgaria’s Government had evidence of direct links between Russia’s foreign intelligence agency and the gangs helping illegal migrants to cross Europe.

When I lived in Britain I’d read the Wiltshire Times. It came free every Thursday but was it the same rag? Through an advertisement I once bought a second-hand trailer for family camping trips. Today, only the concentration required for dismantling our fallen walnut tree could take my mind off the possibility that the trailer had been used for human trafficking purposes.

22 October 2025, Wednesday

Don’t tell Inge and Patrick but we went to Polski Trambesh to give half of the strawberry plants to Echo and Aleks. Drastic steps as our garden was all strawberried-out. At restaurant ‘Slavei’ the delicious set lunch culminated with an agreeable crème caramel. Echo told us her recipe was far better as it included carp and soy sauce, as did many of her Chinese recipes from home, including her lemon sorbet to cleanse the pallet between courses.

Nyama voda (няма вода, meaning ‘there’s no water’) is a common phrase in Bulgarian villages, and was particularly apt this afternoon when we arrived home.  

23 October 2025, Thursday

A day of great joy and celebration as a new Ó Maoláin arrived from the Cosmos. He’s the secondborn child of my secondborn child and his name is Owen. Mother and baby were both doing well apart from the fact that they lived in Manchester.

Meanwhile in Malki Chiflik, all baby deliveries and matters of personal hygiene were put on hold because of the continued interruption to the water supply. The mayor blamed this on an ever worsening crack pipe problem, but probably meant cracked pipe. Water company engineers couldn’t start work until they’d had a coffee. A Catch-22 situation.

24 October 2025, Friday

Was it mean of us to go away on a trip and leave the house-sitter lady sitting in a house where there was no running water? We gave her some strawberry plants by way of compensation before driving off to the wilderness to enjoy lovely hot showers in a wooden mountain cabin.

The nearby town of Apriltsi sat at the foot of the snow-capped Botev Peak, named after Bulgaria’s most famous poet and rising to 2,376 metres. Not prepared for serious rock climbing, we simply wandered old streets and graveyards before tucking into last weekend’s reheated specialities at Svatovete Tavern.

25 October 2025, Saturday

Only a thurible’s throw from the sixteenth century Troyan Monastery, the village of Oreshak was encircled by steep wooded hillsides stippled with more autumnal hues than you’d find in a crate of Laura Ashley colour charts.

It’s there that our lovely friend Milena has an old house with a herd of cats and bullet holes from revolutionary times. In warm sunshine she took us to a nearby spring to collect sulphur mineral water, and to walk around the beautifully preserved hamlet of Baba Stana. Captivating tales of her rural childhood in an older and harsher Bulgaria entertained us after dark.

26 October 2025, Sunday

A heavenly aroma floating from Milena’s stove woke us. An invitation to the perfect Balkan breakfast of homemade leak and potato banitsa. Sitting in her kitchen, as a young cat slaughtered a walnut and soft rain fell on a crimson carpet of leaves beyond the open window, we talked of common interests and fears we’d each accumulated from our global wanderings. But the atmosphere and friendship we felt confirmed for Priyatelkata and I that living in Bulgaria was the ultimate travel experience.

Back home in the evening, with the water supply still not restored, we cursed our adopted country’s inadequacies.

27 October 2025, Monday

I was overjoyed that Mishkin Den (Мишкин ден, meaning ‘Mouse Day’) had rolled round again. It was on this day that mice erupted from the abdomen of a pagan who St Nestor had defeated in a battle. We couldn’t find a pagan to celebrate properly so instead Priyatelkata and I exchanged gifts of cheese. On any other day we would have said that we made some sandwiches.  

In more religious households, women weren’t allowed to weave or sew, or use sharp objects for fear of inspiring mice to damage clothes and crops with their sharp teeth.

Still no water in our village.

28 October 2025, Tuesday

The old man who sits by the well with a pocket-size bottle of rakia in every pocket in case the well runs dry said, ‘Hello!’ Anybody engaged in such a pastime was sure to have a parched throat when there’s not been running water in the village for the best part of a week, though it was actually the worst part.

Priyatelkata and I went there to fetch water in earthenware pots that we carried on our heads, hoping to meet Bob Geldof along the way. Goats grazing at the roadside ran away from us because of the terrible smell.

29 October 2025, Wednesday

Manoushka the Magnificent, we’d noticed, was becoming a fat cat. This was due to her lack of exercise rather than her privileged lifestyle and obscene amounts of wealth. Introducing Weight Watchers fishy chunks to her diet would surely resolve the problem. We also bought a fluffy toy rat which was a big success as she spent the bulk of the day burning calories in her attempts to kill it.

We named the rat Radost (Радост, meaning ‘joy’) because of the smile on its face. My English friend Joy considers Radost a much nicer name than Joy and hopes to rebrand herself.

30 October 2025, Thursday

With a fat moon above and all good folk sleeping soundly in their beds with their goats for protection and good luck, the Karakonjuli (Караконджули) come out. These hairy little creatures with big eyes and noses are renowned for sitting at crossroads after midnight asking for favours or riddles from lost travellers. In recent times, because of satellite navigation systems, the travellers generally know what they’re doing and the wee folk feel a bit redundant. So it must have been them who restored our water supply during the night because after a week of drought the humans had obviously given up. 

31 October 2025, Friday

Aleks came over with 400 kilograms of shit. It was bagged, of course, in shitbags. Plastic shitbags, not Millwall supporters. A lovely gift from his mother who always has shit to spare. But it wasn’t any old shit. It was chicken shit for the garden, and it was good shit. We’ll need to fiddle with it a bit by mixing with water or leaves, but when it’s ready we’ll put it on the sage and the onions first. The mothers of friends I had in England never sent me chicken shit. In Bulgaria I feel more accepted by the people.

Photograph: Our lovely River Yantra when it had turned into a cappuccino.

This Sort of Thing - November 2025 

The Strange Case of Dr Gunchev and Crazy Ludo

15 September 2025, Monday

Rising from my own bed’s a far trickier operation than getting out of a rusty rustic Irish cottage bed because mine’s the comfiest in the world. Similarly, no bathroom’s ever as luxurious as the one you have at home.

Having been deprived of sunny 34°C healthy civilised weather for two weeks, I gasped for breath all day and wondered if any native of Donegal had ever eaten breakfast outdoors or found the need to water a garden. Bulgaria has snakes but no Guinness. Irish people would perish here.

The day had flown before any attempt at real life was made.

16 September 2025, Tuesday

Ailing menagerie members formed a waiting list as long as a 1980s queue at a Bulgarian bakery. Multi-coloured fluids (puss pus) oozing from Ludo’s leg wound fast-tracked him to the front. He’s a great one for purring but fighting’s his forte. The vet suggested we return tomorrow to visit him, bringing grapes and Lucozade.

Priyatelkata and I decided ice creams would be nice. The shop lady’s promotional scratch card said we’d won another which we didn’t want. Uneaten, it would have died in the hot weather. We then discovered how difficult it was to give a Cornetto to a stranger.

17 September 2025, Wednesday

Ludo was discharged from the vets’ with a bucket of medication and instructions to stay indoors for a fortnight. Incarcerating our wildest cat, we knew, would be as trying as trying to get a concupiscent walrus to sleep in the guestroom.

Priyatelkata had hurt her back and I had a broken tooth. And hello, hello, I was in a place called vertigo again. But we were thankful that we were in better shape than the crispy brown plants occupying the patch of scorched earth that surrounded our home.

We discussed the increasing likelihood of us never going on holiday again.

18 September 2025, Thursday

Another rough day in veterinary terms. Snezhinka the wonder dog, who had a malignant growth removed from her paw last year, had developed a tumour in a canine armpit. Dr Gunchev gave us tablets to slow the development but said there was definitely no cure.

For the rest of the day raising a smile was difficult, but not as difficult as getting a tablet into the dog. I wondered how bad they must taste when a creature that spends so much of her day licking her arse kicks up such an almighty fuss when we’re putting medication in her mouth.  

19 September 2025, Friday

With all the terrible things currently going on in the world it was nice to have a bit of good news for a change. Our Prime Minister, Rosen Zhelyazkov, today rejected a proposed law that would have put restrictions on homemade alcohol production. The nasty men at the Ministry of Agriculture and Essential Victuals had suggested that each household should be able to produce a maximum of 30 litres of rakia and 500 litres of wine each year. Mr Zhelyazkov described it as ‘an unacceptable encroachment on the ancient way of life of the Bulgarians.’ And I’ll drink to that!

20 September 2025, Saturday

In Resen, from Plant Shop Dave, we purchased drought-resistant specimens in preparation for next year’s natural catastrophe even though this year’s wildfires still raged on mountainsides. Within Europe, only Spain, Cyprus and Greece had been hotter than Bulgaria in 2025. The time had come in my life to accept that I would never see another lupin. 

Perusing a nearby charity shop for second-hand books, I noticed a large St George’s Cross flag adorning a wall layered with grease from the all-day English breakfasts they serve. For what reason were the pages of Life’s Little Ironies by Thomas Hardy stuck together?

21 September 2025, Sunday

I finished reading a book for the first time in ages. I’d chosen something not too challenging to get me back into a reading frame of mind. I enjoyed it, though I’d forgotten what a bitch Milly Molly Mandy could be. But whatever happens in a novel it’s never as bad as what’s happening in the mother of all dystopian horror stories formerly known as the world today.

Finding homes in the garden for new horticultural babies partially cleansed my mind from war, pestilence and famine, but not drought. Planting one iris rhizome left me exhausted but determined to conquer.

22 September 2025, Monday

Always a grand day for a bit of celebrating because as well as it being independence day in Bulgaria and Mali, it’s Billie Piper’s birthday. So we went to Bey House for breakfast in the sunny garden and then to Praktiker to buy a couple of bags of compost because we were still peckish.

The autumn equinox, Cónocht an Fhómhair, is a significant point in Irish tradition, symbolising balance between light and dark as the day and night become equal. But after today, darkness prevails so every journal entry from now until the winter solstice will chronicle my chronic misery.

23 September 2025, Tuesday

Dr Gunchev had worked miracles with Crazy Ludo’s weeping wound. He also mentioned he was a Leeds United fan but during their seasons of absence from the Premier League he supported Arsenal instead. I was flabbergasted. Had he been drinking the disinfectant? Cheering on Turkey in the next World Cup was the only retaliation method I could imagine.

Bulgarian lessons with Dari resumed today after a summer break and I had forgotten всичко (everything). My recent Irish trip reminded me how much I enjoy talking to total strangers but I struggle to do that here. I need to up the леля (aunty). 

24 September 2025, Wednesday

We grumbled because for the second time this week we went a whole day without water. However, the local economy benefitted as, unable to cook or wash dishes, we visited Arbanashki Han garden restaurant for tasty nutrition.

In less developed countries many people never have a constant supply to their homes but at least they’re prepared for it. The Bulgarian water boys rarely give prior warning.

Within minutes of the taps gushing again we received a message from the electricity company advising us that we’ll be without power for three hours on 2^nd October. Smarty pants arse lickers or what?

25 September 2025, Thursday

A Bulgarian, Captain Simeon Petrov, invented the air-to-surface bomb by adapting hand grenades. The first was dropped on Karağaç railway station in Turkey on 16 October 1912. At that time Bulgarians were at war with the Ottomans who’d made themselves far too comfortable here and showed little sign of leaving despite 500 years of unsubtle hinting. So there was a reason for the bombardment; it wasn’t just for fun.

Whenever I see film footage of a bomb being dropped I’m tempted to shout out ‘That was our idea!’ But I don’t because, on reflection, it wasn’t a very good idea.

26 September 2025, Friday

I saw Hassan the neighbour whizzing up the lane on a shiny new electric mobility scooter. He’s several years younger than me but he’s lived through difficult times and has an estimated 876,000 Turkish cigarettes under his belt (and half of one behind his ear), so I was happy for him. Having not seen Slavka, his dear lady, in a while I presumed she must be waiting for him to attach a sidecar. I spent the rest of the day singing ‘roden da budeh deev’ (роден да бъде див, meaning ‘born to be wild’) to the tune of Born to be Wild by Steppenwolf.

27 September 2025, Saturday

I read that a nineteenth century German philosopher named Georg Hegel, having observed the actions of people in power, suggested that they were apt to create problems to which ordinary people would react. If they generated enough fear and hysteria, those ordinary people would not only accept a solution introduced which would limit their rights, but they would actually beg for it.

This idea is known as the Hegelian Dialectic and it seems to me that it’s being used on us today. Why else would a Bulgarian radio station play The Power of Love by Jennifer Rush two days running?

28 September 2025, Sunday

Our daily routine is currently like an episode of All Creatures Great and Small as we give tablets to two cats and a dog as well as applying sprays and creams to furry places and even to a place that should be furry but isn’t. All that would be required for us to complete the scene would be for one of us to shove an arm up a cow’s arse until the elbow disappeared. Unfortunately, or fortunately, we don’t have a cow. We discussed ways to improvise and laughed… cruelly. It would be libellous to mention the poor woman’s name.

29 September 2025, Monday

It rained! It was like being in Donegal, so a nice cup of tea on repeat seemed a grand plan. Mid-morning shivering dictated that I put on a jumper, darn it… well not all of it, just the elbows. Winter clothes are so uncomfortable, always taking me back to my straitjacket days.

The cloudy silver lining was that the garden was moist enough to render the evening watering rigmarole unnecessary. Hopefully that’s finished for 2025. I decided to make use of newfound spare time doing an Open University course in lying on the settee with a book and a cat.

30 September 2025, Tuesday

Sunshine returned but Gypsy ‘Mad Dog’ Django the violent cat hadn’t after a week adrift. Snezhinka the wonder dog’s cancer sadness had diluted our missing cat sadness. The world had too many sadness generators but at least I’d trimmed our bushes for winter.

Oh, I just wrote the word winter. I’d forgotten about that. I didn’t vote for it. Why can’t it be a four-yearly thing like the Olympic Games?

And now I’ve finished two complete years of this 100 words per day challenge. Well done to you for reading 73,100 words. Hang on to your hat for year three!

Photograph: Street art on a wall near the fruit and veg market in Veliko Tarnovo. It’s uncanny how the artist, who we’d never met, had so accurately reproduced an image of Snezhinka the wonder dog resisting medication. One minor inaccuracy is that the dog’s fur is white rather than pink but he words ‘I am more than alive’ in the bottom right corner delighted us.

This Sort of Thing – October 2025

Water, Water Everywhere, Nor Any Drop to Drink

I woke up in a big soft bed with an iron frame that in places had patches of rust bleeding through its roughly applied white paint.  After a few minutes spent assessing the situation I discovered that the bed was difficult to get out of, not because of any sort of physical problem with the bed itself but because of physical problems with my own aging frame on the morning after completing a momentous journey across the whole of Europe from east to west. I felt a bit like your man Gulliver who the little people had tied down by the arms and legs using thousands of tiny ropes and strings in Jonathan Swift’s novel. The structure to which I was attached had certainly not been acquired from a DFS Bank Holiday Sale as it looked old enough to have been the Sickbed of Cúchulainn that the Pogues once popularised in song. How many others had woken in it before me, and how many had failed to wake, bringing about the need for a wake? I imagined centuries of linen nightgowns, pennies placed on eyes closed by visiting priests, the rustle of busy rosary beads and the pouring of small glasses of poitín to keep the devil away. A big hole in one of the legs of the bed suggested there may have been some involvement with a bullet at some point in time. Or perhaps it was caused by metalworm, the tough no-nonsense relative of the woodworm.

The antique construction was extremely comfortable, almost filling a white-walled bedroom in a thatched cottage at the top end of Donegal’s Fanad Peninsula (Irish: Cionn Fhánada, meaning ‘the headland of sloping ground’). Had the ground really been sloping then rising from the bed wouldn’t have been so much of a challenge. Although I had dreamt in a unique combination of English and Bulgarian spoken in a Yorkshire accent, I had woken in a district of the Gaeltacht where the first language was Irish. Maidin mhaith (good morning), I said to Priyatelkata, using up 10% of my Irish vocabulary in one go.

Naturally, it being the first proper day of the trip, exploration and discovery were at the top of our agenda. We went in search of fresh scones because they don’t have such things in the cafés and pâtisseries of our homeland and we’d developed a bit of an addiction problem. However, we found little else but four kilometres of deserted beach washed by the great roaring Atlantic surf and bounded by a broad stretch of dunes at Ballyhiernan Bay (Irish: Bá Bhaile Uí Thiarnáin, meaning ‘gorgeous white sand with lots of Ringed Plovers running about but not a whiff of a scone’) with periods of sunshine and scattered showers. Heavier rain rising in sea areas Rockall and Malin pushed us on to take refuge at Fanad Head Lighthouse where there was a café serving homemade vegetable soup and freshly baked wheaten bread which we grudgingly devoured like we’d never seen food before. It’s incredible how rain rattling on a windowpane always heightens the heartiness of a good hearty broth.

The bread was gone in the twinkle of the eye so I used the sleeve of my jumper to mop up the final dregs of soup from the bottom of the bowl. As I did this, an old man wearing a Free Palestine tee shirt looked across at us from a neighbouring table and spoke in Irish. Being in a non-English speaking part of the world it seemed rude to answer him in English so we told him in Bulgarian that we didn’t understand what he was saying. This was our natural reaction as it was something that happened to us on a daily basis at home in Veliko Tarnovo. With all three of us having soon decided it would be far easier to compromise and proceed in English, he went on to tell us that the lighthouse was well worth a visit and that every day for the past week, dolphins had been seen playing in the sea lough nearby.

After sharing thank yous and goodbyes with the man in an array of languages that none of us were completely sure about, we walked the three or four hundred metres up the road to the lighthouse and parted with a fair few euro for a ticket entitling us to be shown round the place as well as up and down it. A young woman who went by the gorgeous Irish name of Bláthnaid started speaking to us in her native Irish tongue and then fell about laughing because she could see that we hadn’t a clue what she was on about. If she’d said good morning to us in her language it would have been a less confusing matter even though we were well into the afternoon.

She explained how in the old days, mercury was used to provide a low-friction surface for rotating the huge lenses that magnified the light, making them easier to turn. Mercury vapour, in conjunction with living an isolated life out on a rock on the edge of the middle of nowhere would often cause insanity for the lighthouse keepers and their families. But they’d all been automated since the 1980s and were operated from a remote site. I imagined a call centre in Bangladesh.

She also told us the story of a British naval vessel called the Laurentic that in 1917 struck two mines laid by a German submarine and sank within an hour. 354 men were lost in the disaster and bodies washed up on shore for weeks afterwards. Many had frozen to death in their lifeboats as they tried to reach land. Over the course of the next seven years Royal Navy divers went down to the seabed to recover most of the 3,211 gold ingots that had been on board. However, 22 bars were never found. Bláthnaid said that if we were to go for a swim and find one we’d be expected to tell the British Government because the gold was their property, but really it would be best if we told her and gave her half of the money because it was her that had put us on to it. But we didn’t go deep sea diving because it was raining.

At the top of the lighthouse Bláthnaid showed us a small LED light no bigger than a standard Lego brick which, although unimpressive close up, when magnified was far more effective than any of the previous methods for telling sailors to stay away. Bláthnaid said she had her own method for telling sailors to stay away. From that lofty point, had it not been for the sideways rain, there would have been magnificent views of Lough Swilly and Malin Head beyond.

I suspected that it was the rain that put the dolphins off the job of coming out to amuse the tourists. We sat in the concrete wildlife observation post for half an hour with an illustrated list in front of us depicting what we could expect to see, but only one single solitary cormorant came out to observe us. Thankfully the vegetable soup, Bláthnaid’s entertaining tour, and the rugged coastal scenery had all been very nice and made the visit an enjoyable one.

In the Pier Bar in Portsalon I had a couple of lush pints of Guinness (my first for almost two years) and Priyatelkata had a couple of pots of tea. We sat by a window so that we could look out for dolphins and seabirds but saw only sparrows pecking at almost empty crisp packets… Tayto, of course! In the distance we could see Ballymastocker Strand, the second best beach in the world. Bláthnaid had told us that it was actually the first best beach in the world but if local people went around making such a bold statement in public then visitors would start to argue that there was another one somewhere else that was better. Going straight in with the claim of it being second best averted potential disagreements and saved a lot of time.

2 September 2025, Tuesday

In the musty rustic cottage, using traditional Irish components bought at Tesco in Letterkenny, we prepared and ate our own five-star grade of Irish breakfast which comprised of soda bread, butter, jam and strong tea. It was all delicious but some of the joy was sucked out of the occasion when I realised that it wasn’t my clumsiness that was causing the runny mess all over the table but a leak in the base of the teapot. In some ways this was good because I always feel like a bit of a creep when I can’t think of anything to complain about at the point of writing a review on the Airbnb website at the end of a trip.

The Great Pollet Arch is Ireland’s largest sea arch and one of the star features of the Wild Atlantic Way. It stood in the wild Atlantic at a point only three kilometres from our musty rustic cottage. This spectacular rock formation was formed under the constant influence of the Atlantic Ocean which batters it every day, even on Donegal’s soft days, and with no regard for the half-day closing arrangements that were in force locally on Wednesdays, so we understood there was no guarantee that it would remain there for all eternity. With this in mind we wrapped ourselves up in our weatherproof clothing to protect us from the wind and rain, and to hide the tea stains on the front of our jumpers, and set off with a degree of urgency to have a look at it. It was impressive and gorgeous and we were completely alone there apart from a few cows that did a bit of mooing and pooing but gave no indication of being battered daily by the Atlantic (battered cows were more of a Scottish delicacy). Embracing the peaceful nature of our bovine friends, we took the time to thank them for their part in the production of the butter that had made our breakfast time such a wonderful event. They could in no way be blamed for the teapot debacle.

Milford was the nearest settlement to us to have anything that might be described as a population, that being 1,076 recorded at the most recent census. However, the figure couldn’t be completely relied upon as old Kathleen who lived by the Garda Station was struggling to get by despite the twice-daily poultices and the generous helpings of Jameson’s in her tea. The town had historically been called Ballynagalloglagh (Irish: Baile na nGallóglach, meaning ‘Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled pepper’) but the name was changed when a big flour mill was built there near the ford in the river. From its founding in the eighteenth century the mill formed the heart of the town’s economy until it closed in 1992 and the building in its most recent guise has stood completely derelict ever since. Such an ugly concrete monstrosity on the shore of the beautiful Mulroy Bay needed to have something done to it, either by means of tarting it up or knocking it down, and apparently both options had been discussed at length without a decision being made. In most places in the world it would have had a few weeds or maybe even a feral buddleia bush to give its appearance a glimmer of life, but as Milford was so close to the Atlantic and the warming influence of the Gulf Stream, there was a wild palm tree growing happily on its roof. 

The town centre with some nice old buildings no longer in use, particularly hotels and public houses, looked like it had seen much better times in the past and that poor Kathleen, when her day eventually came, wouldn’t be the first to have departed. It saddened us to see the place in such a sorry state and then it saddened us further when we saw that the out-of-town retail park, that had probably been a contributing factor in the old town’s decline, was also desperately short of people taking an interest. We found a branch of Lidl there and a huge shop that sold absolutely everything imaginable that could be made in China changing hands for less than a euro per item. Near to the big outlets was a row of smaller shop units that accommodated a barbershop, a pet food supplier, a Presbyterian church, a nail bar and a pizza takeaway.

We spotted a lovely old teapot in a second hand shop on the quayside in the little town of Ramelton (Irish: Ráth Mealtain, meaning ‘Fort of Mealtan and home of the Ó Donnells’) which was also lovely and old. They were only asking €8 for it but it was a bit on the large side. So we went away to discuss it over a pint of Guinness and a safe pot of tea in the Pier Bar in Portsalon. The fine porcelain receptacle’s sturdy construction and beauty would have assured accident free tea and periods of silent admiration back at the musty rustic cottage but its incredible volume might have led folks to believe that we drank too much.

Having decided not to go back to Ramelton for the teapot we used up the remainder of our drinking time learning to say thank you in Irish. It’s written as go raibh maith agat but it’s pronounced as guh-ruh mah a-gut, and whenever we said it we made the locals smile in the same way that Bulgarians smile at our attempts at their language when we’re at home. 

Photograph: Fanad Head Lighthouse. No dolphins were harmed in the taking of this photograph.

29 August 2025, Friday

As we said a fond farewell to our lovely little troupe of animals, our beautiful but sun-scorched garden, our unusually clean and tidy old farmhouse, and the village that we had come to know as home more so than any other place that either of us had ever lived in, Priyatelkata and I couldn’t wait to climb aboard the shiny red bus that would whizz us off away from there and through the Stara Planina range of mountains to Sofia. This was a journey that would mark the first leg of our expedition to a place far beyond, where the weather wouldn’t be so painfully hot and where we wouldn’t have to stand outside watering plants for two hours every evening while aerial bloodsuckers gorged upon our tender flesh. It was exciting to be going away, especially as our destination sat on the opposite edge of our continent. Other continents were available but our favourite had always been the one on which we had existed for most of our lives, and which contained all of the things listed above in its section labelled Bulgaria.

We’d lost track of the number of times we’d visited our capital city but we’d always found it an exciting place to explore on foot with its grand squares and bustling boulevards, fascinating back streets awash with life’s eccentricities, quirky boutiques and galleries, and lazy pavement cafés perfect for whiling away an hour or so with death-black coffee, freshly baked baklava and a constant flow of passers-by to watch, judge and comment upon. The city’s architecture spans the years that have elapsed from Roman civilisation, through five centuries of Ottoman occupation and a relatively brief period of Marxist indoctrination, up to the current era of nobody really knowing what the hell’s going on or who’s in charge. The majority of the buildings we found impressive as even the more sombre or dowdy specimens had been tarted up with skilfully painted and very colourful street art. We also noticed how very twenty-first century some of the Sofia people appeared to be, none of whom were engaged in conversations about growing aubergines or treating mastitis in lactating goats, so we already felt that we were a long way from home.

Such an overwhelming treat of Balkan mystery and style followed by the filling of our bellies with succulent spicy victuals would ensure us a good night’s sleep. As regular customers we already knew that the Taj Mahal near to the building that houses the Sofia National Opera and Ballet, and St Alexander Nevski Orthodox Cathedral was by far the best of the three Indian restaurants that Bulgaria has to offer. An ivory-white marble mausoleum on the right bank of the river Yamuna in the Indian city of Agra apparently shares its name, which just goes to show how far the glowing reputation of our eastern eatery had spread.

We were about to embark upon an adventure to find secluded beaches, quaint little fishing harbours, spectacular cliffs, remote lighthouses, terrific shipwrecks, crab sandwiches, sticks of rock and kiss-me-quick hats. Various guidebooks, websites and other reliable sources of information in the form of Irish friends had told me that Ballymastocker Strand, located only an oyster shell’s throw from where we would be spending the majority of our time, was once voted the second most beautiful beach in the world by readers of the Observer newspaper. We were eager to get there to throw our socks and caution to the wind.  How strange it seemed then that we were staying a night in an apartment in the Zhenski Pazar (Женски Пазар, meaning ‘Women’s Market’) quarter of the city. It was clean and comfortable and almost as salubrious as our cats’ accommodation at home in Malki Chiflik, but nowhere near as spacious and more than 500 kilometres from the nearest stretch of coastline.

30 August 2025, Saturday

I couldn't be arsed recounting the tale of all the routine faffing about at both ends of our flight. I don’t want to be reminded of it should I ever read this again in the future, and nobody finds that sort of thing interesting anyway, and €5 was an outrageous amount to have to pay for a cup of weak non-Balkan coffee, but at least that took my mind off the fact that I’d struggled to hang on to my trousers when a member of the Sofia airport security staff made me remove my belt. It’s always the same woman. I think she has the eye for me. She said it was because of 9/11, which I thought was the worst chat up line I’d ever heard.

Our departure being delayed by one-hour gave us time to pause for thought and realise that Ryanair was a palindrome, in a phonetic sort of way. As we sat in the aerodrome discussing palindromes, we considered the possibility that the route our aircraft would follow might be an orthodrome, and that we were showing symptoms of non-voluntary repetition syndrome. Fortunately, Priyatelkata knew a doctor in Drôme, a town in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region of south eastern France, who would be able to help us if our condition worsened.

As soon as all that flying about in the air nonsense was done and dusted it became apparent to us how grand it was to be back in Ireland. Hertz at Dublin airport provided us with a Fiat Panda, which we immediately nicknamed   Fionnuala the Fiat because Fionnuala is an Irish feminine name meaning ‘white shoulder’ and the car was white. The name (without the Fiat bit) is historically linked to the Irish mythological tale of the Children of Lir, where Fionnuala was transformed into a swan and cursed to wander Ireland for 900 years. We’d only booked the car for two weeks so we hoped that none of that would happen to us, but we checked the travel insurance small print anyway.

With everything in Ireland being closed at such a late hour apart from the pubs, we were relieved to discover that the late night Londis shop in the village of Collon was able to provide us with two traditional Irish microwave salmon tagliatelles.

Our pre-booked lodgings at Rathgillen Farm in the village of Nobber salved our tormented travellers’ weary minds, but we wished we'd arrived earlier to enjoy the County Meath surroundings and the refurbished old metal cabin accommodation which included a greatly appreciated kettle and a super comfy bed. A pint of Guinness would have been the cherry on the tagliatelle but a nice hot cup of Barry’s tea proved to be an acceptable alternative. One of the world’s most underrated natural phenomena is the fact that both Guinness and tea are only drinkable in Ireland. People in places like Lagos, Baltimore (the American one) and Yorkshire might tell you different but they’d be lying.

Ireland is almost as much home for us as Bulgaria is. We're always very happy to be in either of the two but getting from one to the other is always such a palaver. I’ve always felt that such a trip would have been enough to raise strong language from even Macha Mong Ruad (the beautiful High Queen of Ireland in the fourth century BCE with her gorgeous red hair and green velvet party frock) so it comes as no surprise that there’s no written record of her ever leaving the place despite her status as a sovereignty goddess and her riches. I could only assume that she loved her tea too much to risk travelling away from home and being given an insipid cuppa to drink. Such was the tedium of some aspects of our journey that you might even have heard a few mutterings from mild-mannered old me during the day and a half leading up to the moment we rolled into Nobber. The first night after arrival on any trip, with the boots off and the feet up at Camp 1, is always met with a huge feeling of relief and satisfaction.

We had found those initial few hours in Éire to be perfect but to have said so possibly wouldn’t have meant so to the local people. From the days of my childhood until some unannounced date during the last ten or fifteen years, if anything was considered to be adequate or better it would be described as grand. But then, all of a sudden, Irish people took to replacing grand with perfect. Everything these days is perfect if it isn’t shoyte. Being an old stick-in-the-mud I always find it harder to say perfect in the wrong context than I do to pronounce most of the unpronounceable words in the Irish language. But I had to try.

31 August 2025, Sunday

Having been roused from our slumbers on the stroke of ages before daybreak by cattle lowing in the field adjacent to our bathroom, and crows performing Riverdance on the metal roof of our temporary abode, we took advantage of our wakefulness and made an early start on the journey towards the Atlantic. It goes without saying that as we motored along we sang along to the old Thomas Davis song, The West’s Asleep, that we played in the car by means of the most modern digital technology. Quite incredibly, Bulgarian Spotify worked in the middle of Ireland, and Bluetooth was the same word in English and Irish as it was back at home. I couldn’t help but reminisce over family holidays during childhood days and being forced to listen to RTÉ which was still called Radio Telefis Éireann then and only had one station that broadcast fish market prices, the Angelus bells and the times that Holy Mass would be said in every parish in the country. All this on a car radio fuelled by turf from the bog, and it went on round the clock too, bearing in mind that the clock started at 7:30 a.m. and shut down at 11:50 p.m. Outside of those hours it was firmly believed that only sinners and fornicators would be awake.

Meandering down country lanes at an hour when rabbits still felt safe to venture from hedgerows, we made a vow to return to the Rathgillen Cabin on our next Irish trip and perhaps explore the green grassy slopes of the Boyne to take in some of the many impressive features of a rich Neolithic and sectarian history that there were to choose from. Planning a future adventure at a point only three days into the current one was something that Priyatelkata and I had always excelled at. Every journey we’d ever made had been a rehearsal for the next one. But all that thinking made us hungry so we stopped to have a bit of breakfast at Dooley's in the middle of nowhere in the middle of County Meath. A photograph of local boy Patrick Kavanagh, together with the words of his poem The Beech Tree, on the wall beside our table made the rashers, eggs and soda bread all the more enjoyable. We said we’d have tea when asked what we’d like to drink with our breakfast, and the waitress replied, ‘Perfect!’

When I was a kid living in the North of Ireland, on day trips to Donegal we could always tell when we’d crossed over the border into Éire by the poor condition of the roads. Today, as we drove through County Monaghan and into Tyrone in the North, the situation was completely the opposite to how it had been in the 1960s. However, we didn’t complain as the huge potholes and the road surfaces that varied across almost the whole spectrum on the road surface chart from grade twelve right over to grade four reminded us of home.  We didn't care much for County Tyrone though the imported Chinese-made Loyalist paramilitary group flags flying from lamp posts were of a much superior quality than the homemade jobs had been back in the dark days of the Troubles. Tyrone’s villages seemed altogether neglected but it was nice to drive through the Derry countryside with the Sperrin Mountains rising to the east of us, re-crossing back into European Ireland near Omagh.

Beyond the busy town of Letterkenny (Irish: Leitir Ceanainn, meaning ‘hillside of the O'Cannons’) it was an absolute joy to travel up the scenic western shore of Lough Swilly and to eventually arrive at the musty rustic cottage of our dreams near Portsalon (Irish: Port an tSalainn, meaning ‘Salt Port’).

Squally rain, excitement and exhaustion messed up our plan for an evening stroll round the local lough but we were well and truly in Ireland so we broke open a box of Barry’s teabags to celebrate and said ‘Feck it!’ because it’s quite acceptable to say the word feck in Ireland, but not to say top o’ the morning, Patty’s Day or Mrs Margaret Thatcher.

The Wild Atlantic Way (Irish: Slí an Atlantaigh Fhiáin) is a tourist trail that mostly follows Ireland’s Atlantic coast. During previous trips we’d already travelled and thoroughly enjoyed the giant’s share of the 2,500 km driving route that passes through nine counties and three provinces, stretching from County Donegal in the northwest to County Cork in the southwest of the country. Much of what we hadn’t previously seen lay in County Donegal, so we were looking forward to filling in a few gaps on our map.

Photograph: The musty rustic cottage of our dreams near Portsalon. 

This Sort of Thing - The Donegal Dally (Part Two)

To the Lighthouse Café

1 August 2025, Friday

July had ended with rain. Almost an hour of it. So the utilities boys, thinking we had enough water, cut the supply in the early hours. This always ruins the enjoyment of my day’s first wee and first coffee. They dug a hole in the road, possibly to find the source of the problem, but more likely to wee in.

The nursery in Pavlikeni was closed because nobody was buying plants in this hot weather. Passing charred fields and copses we drove to the Eye-tee-tay (Айтите, don’t know what it means) fish restaurant near Suhindol where even the prawns were dry.

2 August 2025, Saturday

Our village shop displayed prices in euro as well as leva. If Malki Chiflik was prepared for Eurozone entry then surely the rest of Bulgaria, and even Paraguay, must have been. Hoarders with cash secretly stuffed into palliasses and pouffes panicked. Our pot containing bothersome one, two and five stotinka coins, tap washers, a Jackie Charlton Esso World Cup coin, a few pesetas and a lot of dog hairs required attention or would be lost forever. 

Having never fully grasped the Bitcoin concept, I hoped the Ronnie Wood lookalike woman at the shop’s check-out would be savvy enough to help.

3 August 2025, Sunday

I’ve tried hard to be a veggie but I love a bit of roast chicken. Its crispy skin is scrumptious, as are outer layers on grilled fish, brown bread, homemade yoghurt and rice pudding. My rule is to never eat mammals or octopuses, and since Farage found fame I’ve given up gastropods too. Unsurprisingly, only vegetables vote for him.

Metro supermarket’s meat department is a massive walk-in fridge and a grand place to be on a toasty hot day. I went there to buy poultry for lunch but stayed the whole afternoon with a piña colada and a paperback book.

4 August 2025, Monday

Mechanical Nikolai fiddled with our alternator and had the car going like a rocket; albeit Stephenson's Rocket. In fact, it coughs out more smoke than the old steam locomotive and probably isn’t very legal. He’ll do some engine mending for us when he’s not so busy.

Veterinary Dr Dimitrova fiddled with our scabby cat, Ludo. Test results revealed allergies to almost every plant in Bulgaria. Grim news for a lad who stays outside nine months of the year. We paid a lot of money for those results so we’d hoped for something better. Fortunately, delightful Dr D had a plan.

5 August 2025, Tuesday

Not many people know this but Vesselina Kasarova (Веселина Кацарова) follows me. She follows me not in a pervy stalker sort of way but on Instagram. Most people probably don’t know she’s a Bulgarian mezzo-soprano, famed throughout the opera world. Born and raised in Stara Zagora, 100 kilometres from my home, she now lives in Switzerland. She hasn’t told me exactly where in case I follow her in a pervy stalker sort of way.

I’ve spoken many times with Billy Bragg and Nina Persson, but Vesselina’s my big namedrop job. Her website says she’s available for opera singing lessons. Should I enrol?

6 August 2025, Wednesday

My dear friend Coral would read this journal every month on the ABCTales website and remark, ‘Well I knew all that already!’ This because our closeness meant we were in daily contact.

Already aware of her terminal illness I was further saddened on hearing, from her daughter Sarah, news that she’d passed.

Coral’s other daughter Julia, also no longer with us, was another wonderful friend, decades ago. Coral loved the Bulgarian rakia I gave her when we met in March. Tonight I had a drop myself whilst reflecting on how privileged I’d been to have known these two remarkable women.

7 August 2025, Thursday

Little Manoushka lost her ovaries and uterus. She may have left them at the vet’s. She had them when she went out this morning but when she got home she noticed they’d gone.

Pulling out the dishwasher from its hole in the kitchen we found many disgusting things lurking within but none resembled feline internal organs. We did this to try to repair it, not just to satisfy the cat.

We’ll be needing a new one. A new dishwasher that is, not a cat… though you never know. The Technopolis shop offers home delivery. State-of-the-art midwifery is all the rage.

8 August 2025, Friday

Knock knock on my door

It’s Hike! a voice from beyond

Hike who? I replied

Maybe it’s because my haiku-writing skills are poor, but I find I can rattle one off whilst waiting for the kettle to boil. Writing poetry’s a different tetsubin of sushi, especially when languishing in an emotional void.

Working on the big ships, I visited Japan in 1978. I’d expected everyone to be speaking in seventeen-syllable unrhymed poems but they seemed interested only in the Bee Gees. The symbol on the tee shirt they sold me said ‘long life and happiness’ or something… polite I hoped.

9 August 2025, Saturday

In our garden there are as many earworms as earthworms.

A big noisy ruckus out in the street filled my mind with the song, ‘I Recall a Gypsy Woman’. They’re normally lovely people but I’d hate to fall out with one. My limited knowledge of the local tongue suggested she wasn’t entirely happy with her husband’s wedding anniversary arrangements.

At dusk, as I optimistically sprinkled resuscitative water on scorched earth, the aerial acrobatics of friendly chiropterans had me singing ‘Like a bat out of Blagoevgrad.’ The words didn’t flow, but with so much of Bulgaria burning, they sounded quite apt.

10 August 2025, Sunday

One day when he’d nowt else to do

A dyslexic young man from Otsu

Wrote this verse down for me

While brewing his tea

Saying ‘Look it’s an Irish haiku!’

With Japan on my mind, during a week that marked the eightieth anniversaries of the detonation of atomic bombs over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich publicly announced, ‘We are erasing the Palestinian State; first in practice and then officially.’

While ordinary people in the civilised world raise their voices in anger, their governments still do little, if anything. Does civilisation really exist?

11 August 2025, Monday

On a small scratch ‘n’ sniff piece of glossy paper proverb-of-the-day type thing, I read Tsveta Todorova’s profound Bulgarian words, ‘We’re always waiting for the right moment. We’re always waiting for something or someone.’ Which didn’t fill Priyatelkata and I with confidence whilst anticipating the arrival of food at our table at the Bella Vista restaurant (previously referred to as the Brutalist Communist riverside café).

Our meal turned out to be delicious, but there was no sign of dear Tsveta. She’d obviously got sick of waiting and opted to dine on capitalist fast food elsewhere, or eat her own proverbs.

12 August 2025, Tuesday

Manoushka’s brother from Sofia came to stay, forever! Thought to be lost, or even dead, he’d been found by our friend Milena, fighting for survival in the heart of the Slavija Quarter.

We named him Django (after the legendary Monsieur Reinhardt) because he seemed like a crazy cat that, given a couple of opposable thumbs, might rattle off Gypsy jazz tunes on a guitar, which would make a welcome change from him shitting under the bed.

Manoushka, who sleeps under the bed, wasn’t entirely thrilled. A harsh reminder that you can choose your friends but you can’t choose your family.

13 August 2025, Wednesday

Django’s lopsided mouth was easily spotted because he didn’t move all day. Not attempting to eat, drink, wee or poo suggested he was about to lapse. So it was off to the vet’s for the poor lad’s first visit.

His jaw and a lower canine tooth had been broken in the past. There was no wound or infection but the two parts of the fractured bone hadn’t fused back together and moved like a door hinge. All other problems were stress-related and would be resolved with the allocation of a private bedroom.

Stray cat stress became old immigrant couple stress.

14 August 2025, Thursday

A tee shirt with ‘I put the sexy in dyslexic’ printed on the front amused me. If I had one, I’d wear it constantly to lessen the trauma of living on Planet Earth. New cat Django stayed permanently under the bed with his sedatives. With nine lives available why be so afraid?

I managed to dodge global misery items until the evening when Priyatelkata suggested I watch a documentary about chlorpyrifos pesticide and its links to autism among children. I wanted to know when the Benny Hill Show would be back on but Bulgarian newsagents don’t stock the TV Times.

15 August 2025, Friday

The frenzied behaviour of birds in a tree, as I observed from our terrace, was a metaphor for Balkan history during the twentieth century.

Fat Serbian jays were put in their place by smaller but more aggressive golden orioles representing Croatia. Blackbirds, like Slovenia, kept their distance while sparrows were the Bosnians of the re-enactment, viciously battered on all fronts. All that any of them really wanted was a branch of their own and a few figs to peck at.

Lounging in my chair with juicy grapes from our vines, I was the fat old bystander. Just call me NATO.  

16 August 2025, Saturday

During the night, Trump and Putin met up in Alaska but failed to end any wars and didn’t even stay for their tea. Priyatelkata and I would have done better, preferring slices of cake to Nobel Peace Prizes.

Whoever it was that coined the phrase, as one door closes another one opens, may have had our new cat in mind. While he wasn’t eating and drinking we weren’t concerned by his lack of awareness of the location of his latrine facilities, but today the input problem was resolved leaving us to worry about his output. And he’s a big cat!

17 August 2025, Sunday

All our news in August is hot news, but today’s was extra hot. A Ukraine truck driver drove seven kilometres without noticing that one of his tyres had burst. Sparks flying from the wheel rim’s contact with the road ignited dry grass on the verge at various points and flames spread to nearby trees. Eventually the truck itself ignited. So, right on our doorstep, we had four big fires in the same afternoon. Fortunately, (if that’s the right word) only the truck and nature suffered damage. The driver was detained by police which, I imagine, was a rather painful experience.  

18 August 2025, Monday

Bulgarians are a bit miffed that we’ll be adopting the euro as our currency next January, but discovering that it’ll be at least five years before Romania can make the switch cheers them. In the world of high finance and international protocol, we’re way ahead of our northern neighbours. Crossing that line between very shit and just a bit shit makes a massive difference.

Our cat Vlad is from Romania. He’s always seemed morose and underdeveloped both physically and mentally. We asked our vet if there was a reason for this. His diagnosis was ‘Of course. It’s because he’s Romanian.’

19 August 2025, Tuesday

A 20° drop in temperature was quite a shock to the system, as was the rain that accompanied it. Such splendid news for gardens, reservoirs and firemen who’d been battling with burning things across the country for weeks. It was also good practice for our forthcoming Irish trip.

However, wintry weather dictated we drop the diet nonsense and eat the sort of food that sticks to your ribs. Etno restaurant was a pleasant place to dine with its friendly staff and magnificent views of the slowly swelling Yantra river. And because local people had begun their hibernation, it wasn’t busy.

20 August 2025, Wednesday

The warm sunshine returned. Yesterday’s grey skies and old women in bus shelters grumbling ‘Ooh, isn’t it cold!’ in the Bulgarian tongue reminded me of past journeys to work in Leeds and other cities in the Britain region. If the old women in bus shelters spoke English, they’d tell you they’re sick of hearing my grumbles too. But isn’t that what bus shelters are for? Except in Essex.

The bindweed with gorgeous big purple flowers (convolvulus arvensis) kills everything, including me. Hacking it down from small trees brings on a painful condition in humans known as dorsum hortulani (gardener’s back).

21 August 2025, Thursday

Bulgaria’s big news was that we didn’t go to the vets’ today and, with speculators fearing us dead, the price of shares in the company that makes feline pharmaceutical products plummeted on the Sofia stock exchange.

The good thing about our recent difficulties is that I’ve become able to spell the word diarrhoea without having to think about it. What chance the vets can spell onychocryptosis? It’s something that’s been on the tip of my tongue for years. But they won’t care because with all the money they’ve had from us they’ll be in the Seychelles by now sipping cocktails.

22 August 2025, Friday

Summertime, and the living is tempestuous. Midday skies were cloudless but on our return from town late in the afternoon we found a storm had trashed our village. Fallen trees lay everywhere, even in places where trees don’t grow. In our garden, five large branches had broken from walnut and mulberry trees, two of which had made Priyatelkata’s art shed inaccessible.

Inside the house there was no electricity. Grit and dust blown between ceiling timbers from the roof space covered everything in the upstairs rooms. Our new roof had held out but we felt desperately sorry for our distraught neighbours.

23 August 2025, Saturday

Feeling sure that fragile cat Django had escaped from an upstairs window made for a thoroughly miserable morning. We’d only opened it to waft his illness aroma. At approximately mid-afternoon he just turned up in the dining room. He’d probably been sleeping behind our life-size statue of Bianca Castafiore.

Whilst clearing up in the garden after yesterday’s storm I discovered that a combination of figs and blackbird feathers renders a sweeping brush inoperable; even one as robust as my Spear & Jackson Mark III with an ash handle. I’d never known wasps smirk before. They only sting when they’re grinning.

24 August 2025, Sunday

Washing machines with clogged filters kick up such a fuss! A flashing light would suffice instead of their awful noise and failure to drain. I wished that cat Django would fail to drain but he continued to ooze fluids. Outside, five injured trees whimpered in the breeze. Armed with the trusty chainsaw (which I don’t trust at all) I amputated two branches, returning to the house with all of my own limbs miraculously intact.

The storks had all flown off to Turkey or North Africa for winter, or maybe just the seaside for the weekend. And who could blame them?

25 August 2025, Monday

Malo and his four-man team of resourceful Roma lads arrived at 8:00 a.m. It took only two hours, one ladder, one chainsaw, ten cups of deadly coffee, two hundred even deadlier cigarettes and the ability to leap from branch to branch like squirrels to solve our arboreal problems. We were amazed that an ambulance wasn’t required.

Sadly, a lofty walnut in close proximity to our house had contracted terminal precariousness during Friday’s storm and required full scale euthanasia. However, its logs will keep our petchka burning all winter and its ashes will be scattered in beautiful places every morning throughout.

26 August 2025, Tuesday

A sneak preview of the new Bulgarian euro coin revealed it’ll feature the head of St. Paisius of Hilendar, a key figure of the Bulgarian national revival and author of The Slavo-Bulgarian History. Out goes St. John of Rila who’s been the face of the lev since 1999. It was a lot like finding out who’s going to play the new Doctor Who.

I harvested our red grapes so they’re ready for juice extracting tomorrow. We got a huge gardener’s bucket full but came nowhere near matching the bumper crop of 2022. Last year we’d none, so I mustn’t grumble.

27 August 2025, Wednesday

Yesterday morning, upon spotting an open back door, cat Django’s free gypsy spirit saw him make a bolt for it (a bolt for freedom, not a bolt for the door). Thinking we’d lost him saddened us but he returned in the evening, crying for food and aggressing our other cats. We’d planned to let him out eventually but not until we were sure his own rear entrance was functioning normally.   

In true Roma style, he’s since wandered and returned regularly but refused to cross our threshold. Where his lower canine tooth is broken we’re going to get a gold replacement.

28 August 2025, Thursday

Strange it seems, that on the evenings before we go away on a trip, the sunset is particularly beautiful, our garden seems more serene than usual, the neighbours are extra chatty, and all our menagerie members are playful and affectionate. Tomorrow we’re setting off in the direction of a place that I love but I know I’ll be slightly moist-eyed to be leaving this place that I love. Whoever it was that invented emotions can’t have ever gone on holiday or had a dog that seems to talk to them in a tone of voice that always suits the occasion.

29 August 2025, Friday

Journal writing ceased at the end of the 28^th day of the month because I never for the life of me know what day it is and I had it in my head that it was February. I knew there was a 75% chance that it wasn’t a leap year so I redeemed myself slightly.

Photograph: Bozhidar the Roma violinist fiddles while Bulgaria burns.

This Sort of Thing - The Donegal Dally (Part One)

Finding Fionnuala

As flashing eyes encircle

Pyres that crackle at dusk

An elixir of archaic song

Eases persecution’s pain

A balm for bedevilled souls

His caresses tease a guitar’s neck

Sparks fly from strings

Romanced and courted

With la touche manouche

Of his two able fingers

And his dukkerin dook

Nomadic riffs

Echoes of Rajasthan

Oh the Roma, Mama

They travelled with the Roma

Horses, camels, caravans

A living metronome

For wanderers’ lust

From canvas, roadside pitched

To those pearly palace portals

Spied from the edges of forests

Of banishment

From the edge of humanity

By Amritsar, Belgrade, Paris

From Jasenovac

From Auschwitz

Brown triangles stitched

On ragged coats

On ragged folks

A privileged few

In their settlement camp

Eat chickens he stole

From the Iron Crosses

Who love his music

But despise his race

And blood

When bombing ceased

His Hot Club pounded

Jammed and jazzed

Smoke cleared

Nuages paid for tickets

To walk to the beach

To smell the dew

To strum with Stéphane

In a Bohemian world beyond

As nostalgic ears encircle

Gramophones that crackle at dusk

From Jaipur City

To Galway City

Everyone wants to be

Gitáno for one day

Or to sit with Django

At the railway station

In Fontainebleau

Photograph: My own drawing of Django Reinhardt, thrown together and bodged about in the hope that one day I might get a job as a designer of album covers or novelty tea cosies.

1 July 2025, Tuesday

Thanks to Debbie Harry for being 80 today. Does she realise how old that makes me feel? It makes me feel 67, that’s what! But really I’m 67 and 8 months; I’ve always looked young for my age.

Feline Boris deposited an ex-woodpecker on our landing. He’d heard that woodpeckers were nice with cider. Our other beasts eat their quarry but not him. He’s not called Boris the Bastard for nothing.

Dear friend Milena delivered our lovely new cat from inner-city Sofia. She’s two years old, suffers from chronic PTSD, supports Leeds United and goes by the name of Manoushka.

2 July 2025, Wednesday

Yesterday evening our neighbours complained about Warrington Dave driving his van at breakneck speed along the lane where their grandchildren play. Priyatelkata jumped on WD the second he arrived for work this morning. He visibly physically uncontrollably shook during the rebuke and had no reply.

During the spur of the moment outdoor soirée that sprang from the complaint, the entire contents of a fridge were brought out to the garden table as Amelia and Ismael reassured us we were valued friends and not typical immigrants. Their words made us feel as good as Dave’s actions had made us feel bad. 

3 July 2025, Thursday

There’s no smile bigger than our vet’s smile when we present him with a newly rescued cat. His often surly manner conceals a heart of gold. He confirmed today that Manoushka probably (but not definitely) isn’t with child and treated her for every class of parasite except Prince Andrew. Unfortunately, my tick-related Lyme disease relapse was outside his remit.

Naiden’s merry band of men installed a big new external unit for our heating and cooling machine that had been battered to bejaysus by hailstones last summer. The insurance people had been very kind but Naiden plc might be labelled foot-draggers.  

4 July 2025, Friday

I was outraged by the fact that half the world was more outraged by a punk band’s anti-genocide chant than they were by the genocide itself. Words suggesting it would be a good idea if the Israel Death Forces were to go out of business upset those who were unaware that during the five days of the Glastonbury festival more than a thousand people were murdered in Gaza by Bob Zylan’s poor victims who were apparently ‘only defending themselves.’

To continue ranting… wouldn’t it be grand if there was a day when the whole world could celebrate independence from America?

5 July 2025, Saturday

I’ve a new little friend in the garden. He lives in a pile of stones near the zebrinus grass and comes out to play early in the mornings before the sun turns nasty. I’ve named him Atanas after our village’s patron saint. I’d say Atanas the Adder has a nice ring to it. I assumed he’s a he, though there’s no sign of his Milli Vanilli (rhyming slang). I also assumed he’d already been to the vet for the gentleman’s intimate modification, which explains the absence of genitalia. Should my little ophidian companion have babies then she’ll be renamed Ophidia.

6 July 2025, Sunday

Few things in the universe are hotter than this afternoon was in our Bulgarian country garden. I'll tell you now of some that I know and those I miss you'll surely pardon.

• A halftime Balti pie at Bath City’s Twerton Park stadium
• The fires of Hell
• Donna Summer’s stuff
• Emily Bishop’s temper
• The surface of Venus
• The customer service lady in Kaufland
• The sum of all 31 of Middlesbrough’s daytime temperatures during July
• The tin roof that Tennessee Williams’ cat sat on
• A Ford Fiesta from Leeds
• A Saudi Arabian country garden
• Tomorrow afternoon in our Bulgarian country garden, probably

7 July 2025, Monday

Summertime and the living was tricky. As the temperature peaked at 42°C, had I been asked to give up one thing I wouldn’t have picked water. But our taps were dry all day. Checking for a blockage I got my finger stuck in one. To take our minds off the problem, the twenty-four-hour pylon people switched off the electricity too.

We lunched a lazy long time beneath the linden trees at our favourite Arbanasi restaurant before tootling about the countryside to take advantage of the car’s air-conditioning contraption. Cool!

Power returned before bedtime but that desperately needed shower remained elusive.

8 July 2025, Tuesday

Before keeping an evening appointment with the cardiologist, I needed to cleanse my person. Thankfully the cheshma (чешма, meaning ‘old Turkish drinking fountain’) in the village square never runs dry, so old ten-litre mineral water bottles were filled enabling me to have a makeshift shower in the garden.

Arriving home with my healthy heart I found the water supply had returned in dribble form.

Meanwhile the forested hillside near Arbanasi was ablaze with a wildfire. Our favourite restaurant with the linden trees was at risk of obliteration.

But at least, like the land, Manoushka the new cat’s diarrhoea had dried up.    

9 July 2025, Wednesday

The wind was in from Africa. Hot and dusty, it burnt faces and lips as we drank cold beverages with Jessie outside the gallery.

A big digital display device in town provides essential information such as the time in Bogotá, daily fluctuations on the Sofia stock market, the president’s hat size, etc. Driving home at 7:30 p.m. from an emergency local yoghurt seeking mission, I noticed said device reporting an uncomfortable 36°C.

By the day’s end a helicopter with a big bucket had extinguished Arbanasi’s wildfire. Townsfolk hadn’t known that Veliko Tarnovo owned a big bucket, let alone a helicopter.

10 July 2025, Thursday

The rain in the night was most welcome, making irises sigh, zinnias zing and verbenas go bananas. 

Morning freshness was celebrated with brutalist breakfast in the riverside garden at the former communist hotel. Apparently, Leonid Brezhnev visited often during Bulgaria’s totalitarian epoch and loved their pop tarts. He also had a passion for locally produced herbal infusions, turning his nose up at imported Typhoo whilst reminding the proletariat that in 1840, French political philosopher Pierre-Joseph Proudhon stated that all proper tea is theft.

We’d become sugar-free, so we stole a few sachets to take home for when we have guests.

11 July 2025, Friday

A splash of essential oil on my exposed dermis will usually deter hungry mosquitos but even with my apocalypse-resistant working clothes and chainmail Y-fronts, the penetrative proboscis of a garden horsefly literally was a pain in the arse. Such monsters might be described as tabanidae to die for, or with.

I took a yoghurt pot containing liquid cat shit to the vets’ where a state-of-the-art testing kit revealed an organism the size of a little cat was living in the intestine of our little cat, Manoushka. It’s called Giardia, which would also make a nice name for a little cat.

12 July 2025, Saturday

Few things are more exciting than a first visit to a new village bazaar, so our trip to Gostilitsa (Гостилица, meaning ‘village for guests’) tucked away in the sunny foothills of the Stara Planina mountain range was an utter joy. We bought books, plants and Sri Lankan antiques from people from Ireland, Bulgaria, Russia and Sheffield.

Homemade cheesecake at the Scottish café near Stamboliyski Reservoir was the best in the world… ever!

The late evening open-air performance of Verdi’s La Traviata in the grounds of our local fortress was also enjoyable but the poor courtesan lass, Violetta, didn’t get better!

13 July 2025, Sunday

We spent twenty minutes trying to unlock the back door that always jams in hot weather. Shortly before we’d exhausted our supply of expletives we realised it worked better if we used the correct key. More expletives combined with uproarious laughter ensued.

I’ve learnt from a variety of sources that I say and write too much about Israel’s war crimes in Palestine. It sickens me that so few people care or even understand. So Adolf Netanyahu may as well come and shoot me while I’m queueing up for food in Lidl because I’ve lost all faith in the human race.

14 July 2025, Monday

Warrington Dave returned to work recounting tales of his Bavarian jaunt with his Bulgarian lover lady. He should be finished painting our house by the end of the week… a statement rather than a forecast because we want our garden privacy back asafp.

Dr Kruschev said I look thin and the vertigo is probably a side effect of the medication that I took to cure my vertigo.

Dr Dimitrova said it might take months to firm up Manoushka’s poo and prescribed new medication for her.

I worried that my vertigo was a side effect of erroneously taking the cat’s medication.

15 July 2025, Tuesday

A salty old sea dog named Turlough

Yearned each day for a bottle of Merlot

Or even one glass

Of something sweet from Alsace

To stop him becoming a psycho

His doctor had said to lose weight

He should limit what he’d masticate

But without crisps, bread or cake

Life’s a big belly ache

And as much fun as a week in Margate

Eating only ice cubes and green salad

His face turned increasingly pallid

So bad was his state

At the hospital gate

They described his wellbeing as non-valid

But scragginess can be groovy when weight-loss causes psychedelic hallucination.

16 July 2025, Wednesday

The man at the bus stop said to me, ‘A drop carves a stone not with force, but with perseverance’ before asking for a bit of change to buy a drop of rakia for keeping body and mind connected on such a hot day. When I refused he persevered with his request until I capitulated and gave him ten levs. This was no ordinary man. This was Johnny Ten Levs. My donation would have bought him four litres of homemade rakia. I suspect he’s still at the bus stop and that he’s never been on a bus in his life.

17 July 2025, Thursday

I loved our early evening thunderstorm despite it diluting my nice cuppa tea. Heavy rain refreshed all life forms, including Priyatelkata and I, but nothing was damaged. Frogs croaked all night and for the first time in weeks I slept (lay awake) under the bedcovers.

As a habitual insomniac I realised there were only twelve more sleeps until Christmas and even fewer until our Rodopi mountain holiday. However, despite having spent fifty years of my life wishing I was somewhere else, I’d lost that wanderlusting feeling and considered I might be happy just pottering at home during my twilight years.

18 July 2025, Friday

An email from our online pet food suppliers gave outrageously early warning of a Black Friday special promotion. It seemed that not even budgerigar owners were exempt from the year-round ravages of crass consumerism. I responded, asking them what perks loyal customers might expect on Blue Monday, Ruby Tuesday, Sheffield Wednesday, etc. and did they deliver to Israeli settlements in the occupied Nat West Bank?

No Warrington Dave painter man today. The task’s complete but for some outer windows he’s taken home to tart up. We’re expecting a windows update later in the month. Meanwhile we’re putty in his hands.

19 July 2025, Saturday

The annual week-long Veliko Tarnovo International Folklore Dance Festival kicked off tonight in the park and was spectacularly good, as always.

Performances from Argentina, India and Mexico were colourful and vibrant but Colombia outshone them all.

We loved the host nation’s performance because of our raging nationalism and we knew the music.

I’d never seen a dervish whirl quite like Egypt’s whirling dervish but he needed to know there’s more to life than just whirling.

The USA provided two women singing Take Me Home Country Roads and a bit of line dancing, and Turkey’s contribution was a bit shit too.

20 July 2025, Sunday

It seemed like today was the last of nine days’ graft to get our home shipshape for our eight-day holiday. The garden was super tidy and the fridge and oven were almost clean enough to eat from.

Our dear old Ottoman farmhouse was as good, I was sure, as anything that Airbnb had to offer. Strange then that we’d be paying Auntie Fiona to stay in it during our absence. However, I had to concede that although Airbnb regulations require visitors to keep premises tidy, it’s rare for them to be asked to deal with cats’ diarrhoea and weeping sores.

21 July 2025, Monday

At the Panorama Hotel in the Beklemeto Pass, stunning mountain vistas compensated for the absence of free biscuits with our coffee. Six kilometres further on at the colossal Arch of Freedom (a memorial to Bulgaria’s fallen heroes) a short walk amongst wild flowers and wild horses took us to the summit of the 1,595 metre (5,233 feet) high peak and an even better 360° view.

Koprivshtitsa oozed history, culture and architecture. At such altitude the weather was surprisingly hot. We’d been before, so we explored only a little.

Noisy ducks in the stream disturbed my sleep. The most loveable inconvenience.

22 July 2025, Tuesday

The rocky road to Devin (there are few rockier) saw us descend the Sredna Gora mountain range, cross the Plain of Thrace, and meander along the forested shores of the reservoir that fills the steeply sided Vacha valley as we climbed in our trusty Fiat to one of the jewels of the Rodopi mountains.

On arrival, further climbing took us to the clifftop Bornik Hill guest house where we were offered complimentary borovinki (боровинки, meaning ‘wild blueberries’) as we completed the registration palaver.

We’d travelled to the high Rodopis to escape the heat at home. Was Devin’s 36°C really an escape?

23 July 2025, Wednesday

We spent an absolutely joyous day in Yagodina (Ягодина, meaning ‘place of strawberries’). A beautiful village at the end of a narrow, winding road that follows a gorge that’s almost a tunnel in numerous places. It sits just below Durdaga peak (1,693 metres, or 5,555 feet above the sea) and is surrounded by meadows where the only activity is that of bees, bears, goats, gatherers, lovely smiley local people and the occasional jeep safari abomination.

A nearby cave, Dyavolskoto Garlo (Дяволското гърло, meaning ‘the Devil’s Throat’) is said to be the entrance to the underworld where Orpheus sought to retrieve his beloved Eurydice.

24 July 2025, Thursday

We ate breakfast in the old but touristy village of Shiroka Laka (Широка Лъка, meaning ‘wide bend in the river’) which is the home of the Rodopska Gaida (Родопска Гайда, meaning ‘Rodopi bagpipes’), Bulgaria’s national musical instrument.

We ate mouth-watering patatnik, a local dish made from grated potatoes, onions, Bulgarian cheese and a type of very mild mint called gyosum. A delicious early morning dish that always instantly makes me want to go back to sleep.

The rest of the day we spent tootling around the big town of Smolyan and the tiny village of Mugla with it’s beautiful forested mountainsides and prison.

25 July 2025, Friday

Our plan to rise before the sun and trek the Struilitsa waterfalls eco-trail disintegrated before we’d even gone to bed as our friendly neighbours Rosin, Kamelia and family kept us up until 2:00 a.m. chatting and laughing with them.

We kissed goodbye. They went home to Razgrad. We wandered. On the road from Dospat to Greece we found the beautiful village of Dolen. The Romans had founded it two millennia earlier. A for sale sign outside an old house suggested €5,000. A viewing wasn’t possible as it was obscured by a hundred years of briars and inside a princess snored.

26 July 2025, Saturday

The phenomenal heat had us beaten. At our 1,000-metre-high retreat, 38°C was criminally insane and so were we for trying to enjoy ourselves up there. So we toddled off back to our smallholding two days early. Low level homesickness and a fishbone lodged uncomfortably in my upper digestive bits for more than two days were also contributing factors.

The return journey through more mountains was slightly blighted by more heat and a malfunctioning alternator. The car, having shown great determination and loyalty, finally died as we parked by our gate. Being reunited with my own lavvy was the day’s highlight.

27 July 2025, Sunday

A horrible noise from my phone woke me at 3:56 a.m. Irritated at first, I soon accepted that the government were kind to alert me about a wildfire burning near two residential blocks only five kilometres from my bed. By early afternoon it was under control.

A horrible noise from my cat (Manoushka, the new one) woke me at 4:56 a.m. Irritated at first, I soon accepted that she was in season (not seasoning). The irritation continued all day as at no point was the situation brought under control.

Our village Facebook page lady reported an afternoon temperature of 44.5°C.

28 July 2025, Monday

Over the phone, mechanical Nikolai sounded excited, he being only minutes away from embarking on a week-long trip to the seaside. So, until his return, our car would be on holiday too. Hot, bothered and frustrated we rented a Clio from a place in town. Maintenant nous sommes Papa et Nicole!

At the vet’s, with four of our eight cats, everyone was talking about diarrhoea, vaccinating, neutering, scabbiness, lumpiness. All he was saying, was give us some money and come back on Friday for results.

A black cloud passed over the house bringing thunder, lightning and hope… but no rain.

29 July 2025, Tuesday

Keir Starmer ‘threatened’ Adolf Netanyahu. He said that if Israel didn’t stop genociding people in Gaza, the British Government would recognise a Palestinian state. Zarah Sultana said that Palestinian self-determination was an inalienable right, not a bargaining chip. I was pretty sure I was with Zarah on that one.

The sewing machine that Priyatelkata bought in a reputable electrical shop today cost ten times as much as the one she bought in a field near Gorna Oryahovitsa a few months ago. She was appalled at the difference in price until I pointed out to her that the new one works.

30 July 2025, Wednesday

I couldn’t agree

Said little

Said nothing

Simmered

Their words, my thoughts

Conflicting

Beyond reconciliation

More simmering

Zillions of them

Only one me

They couldn’t all be wrong

It must have been me

Did they not see?

Or care?

Unable to cure their blindness

I simmered

Older now

Still I care

But not about them

So I smile as I simmer

No longer alone

We simmer together

Daring to speak

Of our fears

I’d worked with madmen

They’re still out there

Caring for themselves

And their bankers

Harum-scarum tongues

Calling us eccentrics

Their sticks and stones

Bring numbness, not pain

31 July 2025, Thursday

Other villagers weren’t aware that today was Malki Chiflik Appreciation Day. Doubting that anyone could love this jewel of Balkan nature as we did, I wrote a little, Priyatelkata did her art, and we moseyed round our garden together. Above us storks circled as bees and butterflies danced in scented air. Eating and drinking homemade eatables and drinkables we talked to our animals.

The sky darkened but only love could bring the rain, bouncing off stones and leaves to announce its arrival. The earth’s sigh of relief rattled down the valley and we laughed in the coolness of the afternoon.

Photograph: Verdi’s girl, Violetta, going through the final stages of her illness. Alfredo has confessed once more his love for her and she dies comforted by the thought that she has received the forgiveness of the man she loved.

This Sort of Thing – August 2025

Bring Me the Head of St. Paisius of Hilendar

It’s long been an unwritten rule that on summer evenings, men will sit to chat and smoke their cigarettes on one of the window ledges of the shop next to the village mayor’s office in Malki Chiflik, and that women will sit on the other. Nobody knows why this should be, and few people question it in this forgotten corner of South East Europe where superstition and taboos have been rife for centuries.

In June 1913, just hours before the great earthquake struck to destroy eighty percent of local homes and livelihoods, Ekaterina Bakardzhieva, a maiden renowned for her exquisite appearance and unused but much discussed child-bearing features, placed her nether regions near to where Mitko the shopkeeper kept his onions, and soon the region’s walls came tumbling down. Such was the extent of her beauty that the proprietor had been overcome by the delight of seeing her recline on his gentlemen’s casement and consequently omitted to point out the bad luck and probable calamity that would arise from her sedentary faux pas. The nearby ancient city of Veliko Tarnovo had never before seen such devastation, and no female of our species had previously sat on the men’s window sill; the two unprecedented phenomena must have been linked.  Baba Zlata, the wise old woman who lived alone in the forest, confirmed that this was true. However, a wild and ferocious newt had knocked over her breakfast time cup of tea, staining her new long black cloak that she’d bought to wear for the next coven at her friend Baba Yaga’s cave, so she had been in a bad mood all day and wanted everybody else to be miserable too.

People had rarely spoken about this mysterious folklore byelaw. It was just assumed that everybody knew, but in Ekaterina’s case the consequences of her ignorance were catastrophic. She, of course, apologised profusely, and because she had up to that point brought so much joy and light to the lives of those around her, she was quickly forgiven. It took the municipality several years to rebuild the destroyed city but a village couldn’t survive without a shop and Mitko’s patience and suffering were rewarded with brand new premises relatively quickly. Having learnt from past mistakes, the architects’ plan included window sills of a more robust design. Suggestions that signs should be put up to indicate the different seating arrangements for ladies and gents were ignored as the top brass at the town hall, keen to save a few levs on their budget, remarked that they were already carved into the fabric of our mythos and didn’t need to be pointed out to anybody other than a fool.

For more than forty years the good folk of Malki Chiflik enjoyed warm fertile summers, cold cosy winters, ample crops in their fields, bountiful fruit harvests, and the arrival of many healthy babies. However, in 1954, on the eve of the swearing in of Todor Zhivkov as General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Bulgarian Communist Party (i.e. prime minister… a sort of Boris Johnson with a chestful of medals and little risk of being unelected) unhappiness returned to the village for a couple of its residents.

Mariyka Karavelova was a young woman who, with her waist-length black hair and olive skin, radiated grace, elegance and beauty. As she passed, the menfolk would say zdrav kato kucher na mecar (здрав като куче на месар, an old Turkish saying that means ‘fwaww!’). Unfortunately, having grown beyond school leaving age she had shown great reluctance towards tilling the land, and refused point blank to make any contribution in the village cooperative’s combined effort to increase annual dairy output by fifteen percent. In short, she was getting on the nerves and under the feet of her poor mother. Storming off to her bedroom to escape the nagging, she would have to turn the volume knob on her Zenith gramophone up to eleven so she could hear the music of the State Ensemble for Folk Songs and Dances led by Philip Koutev above the noise of the shouting of the irritable matriarch preparing goats’ offal pickle in the kitchen below.

So one night when there wasn’t much on the telly, it was agreed at a meeting of the family’s secretariat for the development of production, prosperity and domestic bliss, that an amendment should be made to the current five-year plan to provide for dear Mariyka getting off her arse, finding a bloke and moving out. But how and when might the removal take place?

There was great excitement throughout the People’s Republic as the day of the new leader’s inauguration approached. Committees in every city, town, village and hamlet took to organising great parties the likes of which had never previously been seen and the Agriculture Minister announced that each household would receive an extra bag of flour, a complimentary jar of sows’ nipple ointment and a framed photograph of either Elvis Presley or General Secretary Zhivkov, subject to availability. The star’s looks and overtly sexual body language were a key part of his iconic status. He was known for his distinctive hairdo, often styled in a quiff, and his preference for bold, flamboyant clothing, including jumpsuits and sharply tailored lounge suits. Onlookers admired his sideburns, expressive facial features, and a captivating stage presence that melded sensuality and charisma. Women of all ages, and some men, swooned whenever his name was mentioned, which meant that poor old Elvis rarely got a look in.    

Mariyka saw the forthcoming event as the perfect opportunity to find her beau and escape the oppressive Marxist regime of her mum and dad’s house that had seemed to make her life a misery despite allowing her unlimited access to the family Lipetsk T-40 tractor and making her partly party to the Communist Party’s Workers’ Day party-planning party. She spent hours in front of her mirror dressing herself in her nosiya (носия, meaning ‘regional traditional clothing’) hoping it was one of those two-way Soviet spy mirrors and that handsome uniformed officers concealed behind it would be admiring her youthful feminine looks. After much preening and pondering she decided that she looked the bee’s patellae but worried that her tsarvili (цървули, meaning ‘dancing shoes’) that her great-grandmother had hand sewn from the carnal leftovers of a holy day feast (i.e. calf skin) might clash with her trendy bobby socks. She’d seen photographs of Debbie Reynolds wearing bobby socks in a glossy magazine that her aunt had smuggled back from a girlie weekend with her mates in Minsk and, filled with envy, had fashioned a pair for herself from a discarded fertiliser bag. As long as she didn’t remove her shoes, no one would see the words ‘contains synthetic ammonia’ printed on the instep of the left one.

She had a quick run through her repertoire of Todor Zhivkov fans’ songs (e.g. I’m Just Todor from the Bloc and There’s a Guy Works Down the Chip Shop Swears He’s Engels) that for weeks she’d been learning off by heart and singing into her combine harvester starting handle that doubled up as a pretend microphone.  Then, Matryoshka-dolled up to the nines, she made her way to find a seat in the village square where the festivities were to take place. Her friends, all similarly decked out in the traditional dress of the former Moesia region of Northern Bulgaria, superstitiously beckoned her to sit with them on the women’s window ledge to the left of the front door of the village shop. But, taking heed of her mother’s demands, she found a seat on the opposite sill, near to a strapping young lad called Aleksandar Radoslavov, about whom it was said that he’d do anything to get his hands on a young girl’s starting handle. So it was beside him that she sat, and all night they talked and sang, and danced and laughed whilst enjoying huge helpings of the older villagers’ home produced food and drink, and each other’s company.

Instantly their Balkan hearts fluttered like the pages of Das Kapital in the wind of change, and soon they became lovers. Three months later, to their parents’ delight, they were married in the little church of Sveti Atanas near the old military infirmary halfway up the hill and lived together in a ramshackle house that they cleaned and restored together. With their home grown vegetables, and rich creamy yoghurt and fresh eggs from their animals, they followed a simple but healthy lifestyle. Families, friends and neighbours all talked exuberantly about when their first baby might arrive, but months passed and then years without any sign of morning sickness, food cravings or catalogues from Gree-zha za Mike-ah-ta (Грижа за Майката, meaning ‘Mother Care’). Murmurs rang along the valleys… the Karavelova girl must be barren! And the only explanation they could find for this was that she had sat on the men’s window sill at the village shop on the night of Todor Zhivkov’s celebration.

In the forest Baba Zlata rubbed her hands with glee whilst singing There Ain’t No Party Like a Communist Party Party at the top of her croaky old voice.

‘Poor Mariyka!’ the villagers all wailed, ‘But at least her mother’s got shot of her at last, and she’ll have taken with her those awful gramophone records she polkas to all night long in her bedroom when she could be castrating pigs.’ Aleksandar, her husband, sank into a state of utter despair thinking that for all the good his mannishness was doing him, he might as well move into the sty with the young barrows.

Today there is little mention of that sad tale from seven decades ago, and nobody ever mentions how it ended, apart from the fall of totalitarianism and the appearance of Coca Cola and KitKats on the shelves in Mitko’s grandson’s shop next to the village mayor’s office. Sitting on the wrong ledge came to be accepted as a reliable form of contraception for some residents, and for their numerous children and grandchildren.

Recently I took a walk to the shop to buy a bag of flour and a jar of sows’ nipple ointment. Sitting outside on a window sill I saw Dyado Petr and Baba Stefka; a pair of love-struck octogenarians with little regard for what others might think. They’re both old enough to remember the fascism that preceded Bulgaria’s forty-five years of communism. During both eras, the harsh regulations had little impact on ordinary poor people whose lives would be tough no matter what the country’s political situation was. Such simple folk stayed at home to work the land, rarely finding the need to even travel the four kilometres of road from our village to the mediaeval city of Veliko Tarnovo. Modern European federalism affects them more than the dictatorships of the past did as new laws prohibit them from driving their donkey and cart on the big road, which is now a dual carriageway connecting Sofia, Bulgaria’s capital, and Varna, it’s largest port. They can no longer earn a living from selling the misshapen peppers, tomatoes and patladzhan from their smallholding because misshapen is a concept that’s banned nowadays, just like Beatles records and Christmas were in the past. Even more upsetting for them is the pressure on them from Brussels to stop burning wood in their stove; their sole means of cooking food, heating water and keeping warm. But, on the other side of the stotinka, the new laws that have swept through the land have in some ways given them more freedom to enjoy their lives, as now they are at liberty to sit beside each other on the same window ledge at the shop. And having attained the ripe old age of eighty-six, neither of them worry about seismic activity or infertility anyway.

Photograph: Dyado Petr driving his donkey and cart through our village. 

1 June 2025, Sunday

During our springtime, we can wait ages for a few degrees Celsius to arrive and then, completely out of the blue, thirty-five turn up at the same time. Oozing vernal optimism, we saw to it that long trousers and socks were folded and put away as fly-swatting apparatus, salad tongs and thongs were re-commissioned.

As dusk fell, fireflies joined our celebrations. Their zoological name, Lampyridae, suggests they’ve swallowed lamps but really it’s just Latin for when your bits glow in the dark; a bodily function that makes getting up for a wee in the middle of the night less complicated.  

2 June 2025, Monday

Yesterday was the 149^th anniversary of Hristo Botev, our celebrated poet and revolutionary, being killed at the age of 28 by Turkish troops. Today, for two minutes at noon, his death was marked across Bulgaria with air-raid sirens, during which time pedestrians and traffic stood completely still. I’ve never witnessed such a show of respect for a national hero in any other country.

Nobody knows why it’s always a day late. Perhaps they missed it by a day on the first anniversary and then stuck to the same date in subsequent years to give the impression that it was deliberate.

3 June 2025, Tuesday

Weeping sores on my forearms suggested a bubonic plague outbreak but it was only silly old phytophotodermatitis, a skin reaction caused by contact with sap from fig trees, exacerbated by sunlight exposure. I’d lopped some small branches from one so I could reach behind to dig up a wild hop that was strangling it. Little thanks for doing a good turn!

So I updated my Tinder profile to explain that my lesions, although hideously ugly, wouldn’t require the use of leeches for bloodletting, and a bit of aloe vera gel would soon have them as right as twenty-one stotinki (ninepence).

4 June 2025, Wednesday

Since November 1980, my motto has been don’t you tread on an ant, he’s done nothing to you, but lately they’ve been irritating me. The ants living out in the garden are grand but those wishing to share our kitchen are less welcome.  

Lady Internet said ants abhor cloves but clove success requires the queen to tell the workers when cloves are in situ and to stay away. Unfortunately, like in human life, queens do very little so I suppose she’ll announce it to them in her Christmas speech. In the meantime, a cinnamon solution spray has been 80% effective.

5 June 2025, Thursday

In July 1977 I spent three weeks in Basra because of my job. Twenty-six years later I watched BBC news footage of streets I recognised engulfed in flame. I feared for the lovely Iraqis I’d known there. I still have nightmares about them.

Every report of Israel’s current atrocities in Gaza reminds me of Basra and other Middle Eastern places I’ve visited where peace hangs on a knife's edge.

England’s Starmer, who described Netanyahu’s brutality as ‘intolerable’, announced that he’ll spend billions to prepare Britain for nuclear war.

Remembering that Palestinians live in a nightmare, I had another sleepless night.

6 June 2025, Friday

I love these days of cloudless Balkan skies. It’s as if Baba Marta has gone out and left the light on. Fifteen hours of sunshine has me buzzing like an insect and singing like a tone-deaf bird. On my side of the garden gate the world is perfect. I wish every day for the rest of my life could be 6 June 2025, apart from the bit where I got chewed to bits by evening mosquitos. Swooping swallows and bats try to help but if they ate every single one of the airborne bloodsuckers they’d be too fat to fly.

7 June 2025, Saturday

Two and a half years ago we acquired some extra land, not by annexing it but by buying it from a nice Bulgarian gentleman with teeth like a Neolithic stone circle.

Today we could boast that our labour of love had borne fruit (had it not been for the fact that the birds had eaten it all). Displaying unhealthy levels of love for the mature trees and investing in babies we’d grown from seeds and cuttings, we’ve finally turned our 1,300 square metres of tick-infested joyousness into a country park.

All it lacks is an arty-farty gift shop and café.

8 June 2025, Sunday

Busloads of local people set off for Riyadh hoping to find cooler weather.

Meanwhile, predatory black bitey flies outnumbered the irritating people at Hotnitsa Village Bazaar. I dislike seeing items other than local produce on sale at such traditional events so my own hypocrisy irritated me as I invested three leva in a Jack Kerouac novel.

We took a picnic to Stamboliyski lake but so did every Bulgarian sun-worshipper, so we ate it in a shady spot on a dirt road halfway up a mountain where we had only eagles for company. They don’t like tuna pasta salad. How picky!

9 June 2025, Monday

I broadened my Bulgarian vocabulary today whilst visiting the polyclinic. The words for Lyme disease are Lymska bolest (Лаймска болест), the words for still got it are vuh-seh oshtay goh eemash (все още го имаш) and the words for the arrogant and rude assistant pharmacist are unprintable in any language.

Thankfully my dear friend Dimitar accompanied me as official translator. He told me about a previous English speaker who had required similar treatment years ago. I asked how she had fared. The Bulgarian word for dead is murr-tuv (мъртъв).

Later Priyatelkata and I ate a pizza at Restaurant Ego to celebrate my new party-size box of antibiotics.

10 June 2025, Tuesday

Many weeks had passed since Municipality Mustafa promised to cut the grass in our field. We were worried as he seemed to have disappeared off the face of the Earth and wondered if he’d been sent to a Gulag for using the municipality strimmer outside working hours.

Recently, State-Owned Sasho took over the job of keeping grass verges tidy. His Facebook photographs suggested there were few places he hadn’t strimmed, and every shot included his Lidl carrier bag. Was he more proud of his workmanship or his shopping?

Anyway, I saw Municipality Mustafa today, so the mystery was partly solved.

11 June 2025, Wednesday

A slow news day in Malki Chiflik as people, plants and parasites wilted in the heat and bees could be heard sighing rather than buzzing. I removed cobwebs and assorted insect egg sacs from the eaves in preparation for Warrington Dave arriving on Monday to tart up the house.

Alone with my thoughts, I couldn’t help but wonder did Gordon Honeycombe like Crunchies, is Iggy Pop addicted to Rice Krispies, and was J. R. Hartley the ultimate Fisherman’s Friend?

It’s really nice being sixty-seven years old with not much left on my to-do list. Tomorrow I’ll make a new list.

12 June 2025, Thursday

The old man who sits at the bus stop with a gap in his teeth where his cigarette snugly fits, confided in me, ‘In this weather, if you make hay while the sun shines you’ll have far too much hay and if the hard work doesn’t kill you then the fierce sun will. So it’s best to keep cool smoking cigarettes on a shady bench.’ Marlene Dietrich always looked cool with her cigarette, so he had a point. But to be totally convinced I’d need to see her doing it in a bus shelter with a gap in her teeth.

13 June 2025, Friday

I seemed to have returned to my normal energetic self after weeks of sitting about moaning about my Lyme disease and shouting ‘Back off! I’ve got a can of Raid!’ at garden arachnids. The polyclinic disease lady had cured me. I wanted to kiss her but, wary of other diseases she’s in daily contact with, I decided against it.

To test my restored oomph, I washed all our windows, inside and out. Belgian friends Patje and Inge joined us for dinner but didn’t comment on the sparkly panes, so that was a waste of time. I won’t wash them again.

14 June 2025, Saturday

Today there was a new war. Netanyahu, having almost completed the job of exterminating Gazans, began hurling missiles at Iran. I wondered if he sang the Chicago Blues song, ‘It ain't no fun when the rabbit got the gun’ as the ayatollahs returned fire.

Totally depressed by global hostilities, I searched the internet to see what we could eat when all the supermarkets have been bombed. We’ve a profusion of edible wild plants around us that should keep us alive, but unfortunately the bindweed that smothers our garden and chases me up the street in dreams isn’t one of them. 

15 June 2025, Sunday

Probably two or three weeks early, we’ve reached the point in the year when the ferocity of the horticultural battle recedes. In May our garden always looks like an Alpine meadow but by August it’s more like a Saharan wadi. We let much of the unwanted flora grow to keep the ground cool and moist-ish but some murderous twisting twining triffid-esque specimens take advantage of our hospitality.  

Bathed from head to toe in fluids manufactured to protect me from insects, sunburn, mad dogs and Englishmen, I was a walking chemistry lab as I strove to be at one with nature.

16 June 2025, Monday

It was lovely to spend the morning with New Zealand Jessie and her one-year-old boy, Boyan. Sitting beneath our fig tree with iced herbal infusions and Priyatelkata’s homemade muffins, we discussed the ways of the world. She shares our approach to life. Later we compared her to three other women we know of the same age (round about forty); they couldn’t be more different to each other. We don’t know any other one-year-olds at the moment so Boyan had no competition. I hope he grows up with her spirit.

I stayed by the fig tree all day. It’s safe there.

17 June 2025, Tuesday

We had the painters in. Not a euphemism but Warrington Dave titillating our home’s external surfaces. He’s really from Leigh but says Warrington because no one’s ever heard of Leigh, and nearby Warrington slips off the tongue like Paris, Rome and Madrid.

Worrying over the Israel-Iran horror show kept me awake all night. In Iran there are people I know. During my stay there in 2011 I found it the friendliest country I’d ever visited. My friend Farzanah replied to my Facebook message saying she was safe (for now) but terrified. She’d already left Tehran when the first missile struck.

18 June 2025, Wednesday

It sickens me… America and Israel worry about nutters with nukes destroying civilisation when in actual fact they themselves are the prime nutters.

Bedtimes bring temptation to take a stiff drink to aid sleeping. Five weeks had passed since a drop last touched my lips, so just one cheeky rakia would have meant the masters of war had beaten me. For sanity’s sake, all but butterflies and fluffy bunnies are excluded from my dreamscape.

Lunch in a garden restaurant in Arbanasi and afternoon watermelon in Echo’s vegetable garden in Polski Senovets were today’s nice things. We live such privileged lives.

19 June 2025, Thursday

A day of suffering for Priyatelkata. She incurred a serious garden injury as, whilst relocating a fledgling hydrangea struggling in the heat, she put her back out. Additionally, she too struggled in the heat and required relocating to a shadier spot.

The irritating hum of our air conditioning system together with the need to have all the windows closed while it’s operational, and its contribution to greenhouse gases mean that we don’t switch it on until the weather’s so hot that we see human flesh melting. It is, however, very effective as I had to wear my parka in bed.

20 June 2025, Friday

In astronomy terms, today was the longest day but, in Warrington Dave terms, it was the shortest as he arrived for work late with a hangover and went home early with the same hangover. A gut-busting cheese and lutenitsa butty and a long cool glass of paint thinners would have had him back on his feet quicker than you can say Boyko Borissov.

Meanwhile Boyko Borissov, itching to commence a fourth stretch as prime minister, visited our barely damp reservoir. He said it’s a depressing sight and something must be done, but he enjoyed his day out in the countryside.

21 June 2025, Saturday

In popular terms, yesterday was the longest day but, in scientific terms, the summer solstice happened at 5:42 this morning. Luckily we still had a drop of woad left over to repeat our pagan ritual without revisiting the druid shop in the mall.

Snezhinka stank like she’d been dead a week. Perhaps she’d been involved in a solsticial ritual but we couldn’t imagine any self-respecting pagan going within 1.609 kilometres of her. Her scavenging in bins the likely cause. You can take the street dog out of the street but you can’t take the street out of the street dog.

22 June 2025, Sunday

I’ve always had a strong dislike for Jim Davidson, Abba, Manchester United, Cilla Black, estate agents and Ken Barlow, but I would never say I hate them. Loathe is a word that’s not used enough these days.

The only people I’ve ever hated have been politicians, but not all politicians. However, there are currently so many that my 100 words per day writing limit restricts me from listing them here. So while the USA drops bombs on Iran, joining a war game where there can be no winner, I’ll have a game of Top Trumps instead. 

I also hate cauliflower.

23 June 2025, Monday

If I were a fish living in a lake near to a restaurant, I’d endeavour to conceal myself in the murky depths during business hours. At our lunchtime restaurant today, sheltered in a beautiful forested cliff-lined valley near Suhindol, aquatic colossi big enough to feature in an Ernest Hemingway novella leapt from the water every couple of minutes displaying suicidal tendencies whilst provoking our taste buds. We found the fat frogs and water snakes that hopped and slithered respectively in the shallows neither appetising nor on the menu. And huge spectacularly multi-coloured dragonflies! Surely nobody in the world eats dragonflies.

24 June 2025, Tuesday

To celebrate the anniversary of our acquiring Fyodor the friendly Fiat, we visited the avtomeevka (автомивка, meaning ‘carwash’) where the young banjo player from the film Deliverance restored its fluffy carpets and green paintwork for less than the price of a possum’s egg.

The nearby shopping mall provided shelter from ferocious sunshine but little else. The shops stocked only teenagers’ skimpy clothes or mobile telecommunications apparatus, so we killed time with delicious coffee adjacent to a chilled cakes cabinet that growled at us.

If Bogdan the Banjo washed thirty cars daily, he’d have enough cash for a Bakewell tart by Christmas.

25 June 2025, Wednesday

Our Romanian cat, Vlad, having always been a bit drippy, was terrified when a bird attacked him in the garden… twice! The bird was a beautiful golden oriole. Some immigrants call them golden Oreos out of ignorance, or golden arseholes out of a different kind of ignorance.

In Covid times we noticed we’d a pair nesting in a walnut tree, gradually multiplying to four more pairs in adjacent trees. Initially delighted, we welcomed them until we noticed they were scaring away the equally impressive, but slightly less aggressive, jay population. How long, we wondered, before they start occupying more territory?

26 June 2025, Thursday

If I were a fish living in a lake, I wouldn’t have to listen to Warrington Dave’s music while he stains my soffits. Those non-stop super-duper golden-oldie smash-hits on Radio Lobotomy broadcast live from the heart of Derby bring a level of cheesiness that even Tony Blackburn couldn’t match.

When the DJ ‘spins a disc’ by Tom Jones, Dave sings along clutching his paintbrush microphone. It's good to touch the brown, brown grass of Wigan.

We wrote in with a request to upset the applecart… If You Forget My Path I Will Curse You, by Romanian jazz queen, Aura Urziceanu.

27 June 2025, Friday

The car still being squeaky clean from Tuesday’s avtomeevka visit, I whizzed it up to mechanical Nikolai’s workshop for a service and to have squeaks removed.

Was I being helpful or mean? I’d taken it in early and when I returned to collect it two hours later he said he was shutting up shop and going off for a swim with his wife. Had it not been for me he would have had a whole day without income but also a whole day relaxing in a beautiful cool pool with lovely refreshing Bulgarian cocktails and his lovely refreshing Bulgarian missus.  

28 June 2025, Saturday

Balkan summer rain needs to be celebrated and breakfast at Bey House garden restaurant was the perfect spot for celebrants to rejoice last night’s storm even though the chairs, and consequently our pants, were a bit wet.

Posh plants we buy at nurseries struggle but wild plants just soak up the sun and flourish without a fuss. We talk to them, thanking them for being our coolest friends. If they could talk back, I imagine they’d ask for a piña colada and a Harold Robbins paperback.  Cutleaf Teasel, Italian Viper’s Bugloss, Greater Mullein and Grande Bardane… we love you all!

29 June 2025, Sunday

As neighbouring Turkey burned, holidaymakers from Galway to Guildford complained they couldn’t reach their air-conditioned timeshare apartments near Izmir because wildfires had closed the airport. Meanwhile envious Turkish farmers looked on from afar at Ireland’s 300 days of rain per year.

With yesterday’s torrential downpour completely evaporated, moles used pneumatic drilling equipment to surface for air and on every stone kitchen floor tile there lay some sort of animal trying to keep cool. My need for four tiles reminded me to stick to my diet.

Such discomfort hits us every summer but this year it arrived way ahead of schedule.

30 June 2025, Monday

Six months today, New Year’s Eve will be upon us. I hope the world’s a happier place by then and Warrington Dave’s finished painting our house. Perhaps conciliatory Trump could have a word and tell him to look sharp. He’d certainly get my vote for a Nobel prize if he would. Hitler was a house painter too, and he wrote a book, proving that even evil fascist dictators aren’t what they used to be.

By the year’s end my body mass indicator will have fallen and my number of grandchildren, cats and trees all risen… fingers crossed and hankies knotted.

Photograph: Some gappy teeth that I found on the kitchen table in an abandoned farmhouse in the Rodopi mountains. I would assume that they are still on that kitchen table.

This Sort of Thing – July 2025

Violetta Are You Better?

Crumbling bones and human dust

Lives destroyed, their pitiful remains

Lie scattered in unmarked pits

And red brick ovens across Europe

Had they all been given graves

Eight decades ago

They’d turn in them now

As Gazans flee their family homes

In search of a safer place

That won’t be bombed until next week

They bury their dead in back yards

And while cemeteries overflow

Thousands rot beneath the rubble

Not even a place in an unmarked pit

Survivors of Himmler’s heinous plan

Found that in their promised land

Of milk and honey

Watermelons grew

They knew exactly what to do

Having seen it done before

With genocide not herbicide

 Eighty years on from the horror scene

When Auschwitz gates were opened wide

We’ve new atrocities every day

If anyone should know better now

It’s they who shelled and shot and killed

The fifty-one people in the queue

For flour and rice at Khan Younis

Twenty-five miles of Levantine coast

Humanity’s bloodiest slaughterhouse

A death camp like never seen before

For sixty thousand murdered souls

And more who’ll fall in blood and dust

As close behind those tanks and guns

Follow deadly hunger and disease

Mistress Brussels, Donald McDonald

And Public Enemy Number Ten

Arm Zion then look the other way

Who cares about the rights of children?

Who cares about all those who starve?

Who cares about international law?

Only those with hearts and spines

Photograph: My own simple drawing of a phoenix; the very apt emblem of Gaza City.

1 May 2025, Thursday

We celebrated International Workers’ Day by not doing any work, which is what workers are supposed to do, but we are pensioners. For the sake of balance, I hope the workers will mark International Pensioners’ Day by not doing what we normally do. Will they manage without endless cups of coffee, pottering about aimlessly, singing along to old Serbian drinking songs at the tops of their voices and forgetting to zip their flies up?     

Our dentist and dog groomer (two separate people) didn’t have a day off work.  Priyatelkata and Gaïa the Shih Tzu, spent the morning with them respectively.

2 May 2025, Friday

What sort of people vote for this foetid Farage fiend? Apparently, their numbers swelled overnight, rather like Yersinia Pestis. I don’t think I’ve ever met one but I carry a bottle of Domestos with me at all times, just in case. Overnight they became particularly prevalent in Runcorn, a town I’ve never visited and now I’m sure I never will.

With her torso recently shorn, it was easier to identify and treat Gaïa’s ailments which included two broken teeth and a blocked anal gland. The vet suggested not letting her go on lasses’ nights out in Wakefield from now on.

3 May 2025, Saturday

As a week and a day had passed since Municipality Mustafa said he’d come at 5:00 p.m. to cut the grass in our field, we could only assume that his failure to appear was down to him having had his lips to the rakia bottle in celebration of Leeds United being crowned EFL Champions. Or maybe he’d already had a drop when he agreed to do the job and then, whilst waiting for the Alka Seltzer to kick in the following morning, the enormity of the task hit him. Who hasn’t said things whilst slightly tipsy that they’ve regretted later?

4 May 2025, Sunday

Balkan Holidays UK, a major British tour operator specializing in holidays to Bulgaria, announced that it has halted all its operations with immediate effect, resulting in the cancellation of every future booking. They’ve been doing cheap seaside holidays here since 1966. They say Europe’s unstable political climate is a major contributing factor behind their decision. I think this means they’ve realised we don’t want half a million tanked-up Reform UK voters weeing on our beaches every year. And mines from Ukraine occasionally floating about in the Black Sea probably take the edge off a stroll along the prom prom prom. 

5 May 2025, Monday

Morning sun shone bright on Malki Chiflik and I bought locally produced wine and coriander honey from the hippy chick up the hill. Dr Khrushchev said it’ll be ages before I die but, because I’ve a few years on him, I’ll be gone first.

Thunderstorms blighted the afternoon but YouTube let me watch live coverage of Glory Glory Leeds United’s open-top bus parade round Leeds city centre. More than three million filled the streets to cheer them. Everybody was there… Putin, Trump, Macron, Bono, Bobby Davro, Penelope Keith, my mate Dave, etc. A right old lump in the throat experience!

6 May 2025, Tuesday

Ederlezi, originally the Roma people’s day for rejoicing summer’s arrival, is called St George’s Day in more modern times. The custom is to eat lamb, drink beer and celebrate the work of the armed forces, but all of these contradict our way of life.

Courtesy of Facebook, we found Nikolay and Plamen to wage war on our triffid field. Likeable fellas who we renamed the Strimmer Twins. Things were going so well until mechanical failure hit. They needed duct tape for repairs but the shops were shut because of St George. Our comeuppance perhaps for being pinko pacifist party poopers.

7 May 2025, Wednesday

Having fasted overnight we went early for annual blood tests. The laboratory was a friendly place but we wished we’d taken lamb and beer with us.

The Strimmer Twins arrived with fully operational kit to complete our garden work for a price that had increased since the previous day. We gave them more than they asked for, which caused confusion.

Whilst visiting Glaswegian friends in Momin Sbor (Момин Сбор, meaning ‘young maidens’ gathering place’) we noticed a previously unnoticed beautiful stone cheshma (чешма, meaning ‘old Turkish drinking fountain’). A carved inscription said ‘Built in April 2025.’ Unbelievably, Glaswegian Brian isn’t a young maiden.

8 May 2025, Thursday

Habemus Papam! Olé! Olé!

At primary school in Middlesbrough, Sister Josephine told our entire class that if we were all good wee Catholics and we sent money away for the black babies, then one day any one of us could become the Pope.

At grammar school in Ireland the Reverend Robinson (a Presbyterian) taught us Latin, which I considered another step on my route to becoming the Roman Pontiff.

This evening a cardinal announced that they’d given the gig to a Chicago gadgey.

We had a night of thunder and lightning but no rain. Surely the wrath of Sister Josephine!

9 May 2025, Friday

With Ederlezi still on her mind, Priyatelkata bled sap from small branches on our fig trees which she simmered with goat’s milk and thyme to make a creamy kefir like the Roma people do. On boiled rice it was delicious. Stolen from the bowl in the fridge by means of dipping and licking a finger, it was magnificent.

I worked long hours beautifying garden parts too delicate for the Strimmer Twins to be trusted with. Sitting on the bench in a state of absolute exhaustion I felt that I was going in the opposite direction to the nature around me.

10 May 2025, Saturday

Long ago, I earned a living in an old pub in central Leeds where one of my responsibilities was to collect glasses from tables. Today we collected glasses in an establishment called Stanislav’s Specs Shop where we paid them a fortune. It rained all day so we regretted not having asked for those frames with the windscreen wipers like Elton John’s.

The weather forced us into the nearby Syrian restaurant where they serve the best homemade pizzas in Bulgaria. I had the albino Iranian beluga sturgeon topping while Priyatelkata went for the white Alba truffles… with beans, chips and tea.

11 May 2025, Sunday

A cherry tree was covered with hundreds of eastern tent caterpillars that had munched away half of the leaves in twenty-four hours. Priyatelkata consulted her big book of deadly potions. Soon after her garlic and elder brew had been sprayed on, they plummeted to the ground where hungry birds feasted on their marinated carcasses. 

We thought our tickets for the East European ethnic dancing show at the Palace of Culture were for this evening but on arrival we found a deserted venue and news that the event was scheduled for 5 November. Thank you USA for your ridiculous date formatting.

12 May 2025, Monday

During breakfast we saw two Eurasian golden orioles hopping about in a walnut tree. Some years we’ve had as many as eight visiting us. They come for the Rice Krispies.

Doctor Kruschev said my ultrasound scan showed all my internal organs to be the correct size and in the right place but blood test results indicated uric acid accumulations (gout) and Lyme disease. A strict diet and a trip to the disease lady at the polyclinic were recommended.

During our evening meal two storks flew low over our garden. They didn’t stop because they didn’t see anything worthwhile to eat.

13 May 2025, Tuesday

Priyatelkata endured the first round of treatment that would, on completion, give her a smile like American pianist and singer, Liberace. This afternoon, however, she had a smile like Irish pianist and singer, Shane MacGowan. I told her this and she laughed until the anaesthetic wore off. Sensitivity was such that food and drink were off her agenda.

On the other hand, 99% of my teeth remained intact so I could have eaten, but my rigorous good health regime dictated that I could only eat things that weren’t very nice, so I wondered what was the point of having teeth. 

14 May 2025, Wednesday

Early morning, I found Penka, our beautiful young cat, dead on the roadside. Wrapping her bloodied body in a bedsheet to bury in our wild garden where she used to play was one of the hardest things I’d ever had to do.

Heartbroken, we went to have summer tyres put on the car, seeing another dead cat on the dual carriageway en route. Desislava, the tyre centre owner, proudly introduced her cat’s three kittens playing outside her office. In the café next door, friends showed us photographs of all their pets, past and present.

We hardly spoke. A horrible day.

15 May 2025, Thursday

I’ve probably met many disease ladies but the one I saw at the polyclinic today had qualifications in diseases. Discussing symptoms that I’d presumed to be merely age related, she confirmed I had Lyme disease. The good news was that carrying a heavy bag of prescribed antibiotic and probiotic tablets home was the exercise I needed to help me with other health issues. The bad news was that I should only do moderate exercise while this Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, the worst of the symptoms, afflicted me.

Despite such intense tiredness, fretting over our dearly departed cat prevented me from sleeping. 

16 May 2025, Friday

Priyatelkata still suffered from oral sensitivity and bruising following Tuesday’s dental work. I cancelled my hiking trip in the Pirin mountains for health reasons, even though the end point would have been one of Europe’s healthiest places to be; the challenge having changed from avoiding falling off to avoiding nodding off. The weather, although sunny, was unseasonably chilly. The only comforting (i.e. stodgy) comfort food within the restrictions of our low-fat diet was boiled rice.

Aided by outdoor chairs, tables, umbrellas and a sweeping brush recovered from the darkest recesses of the shed, I prepared our sun terrace for summer.

17 May 2025, Saturday

It rained deluginous rain all day. I lay on the bed with Boris the ever-present friendly cat, a bucket containing 15,432.4 grains (i.e. a kilogram) of boiled rice, my antibiotics collection which rendered my rakia collection out of bounds, and a pile of scratchy old vinyl LPs. When I find myself in times of trouble, Ian Dury comes to me.

Bulgaria, Ireland, Leeds United and Dana were all absent from both the FA Cup Final and the Eurovision Song Contest so I watched neither. БНТ (Bulgarian National Television) coverage of the Goat Show live from Plovdiv proved an absolutely scintillating alternative.

18 May 2025, Sunday

Reminding ourselves that where phones lose range, peace of mind begins, we drove beyond the sleepy village of Dobromirka to escape what this horrible week had given us. Looking across the lake from the dam at Gorsko Kosovo, we saw only forested hills and cliffs beneath a cloudless Balkan sky. Spring flowers added myriad flecks of bright colour to greens and blues as insects buzzed and birds sang. Bulgaria’s mountains, it seemed, absorbed our sadness to keep with the centuries of sadness of their own. Nothing else could ever lift our mood so, or make us feel more at home.

19 May 2025, Monday

We’d been worried about scabby, weeping sores that, despite an assortment of treatment methods, just wouldn’t heal. It was a slight relief to know they were attached to a cat and not to us, but not much fun for poor old Ludo.

Tired of our usual vets looking flummoxed and scratching their heads as much as the cat scratches his arse, we sought a second opinion. Dr Djambova, with her pinky-purple hair, was lovely. If ever I have scabby, weeping sores of my own I’ll head straight for her. She seemed to know what she was doing with Ludo too.  

20 May 2025, Tuesday

Admitting we have two hoovers might raise suggestions that we’re bourgeois. In our defence I’d say that neither bear the brand name Hoover and both are essential weapons in our struggle to maintain our dominant species status.

The heavy duty yellow one can suck up a dog hair from 100 metres but it’s cumbersome and takes longer to empty than to fill. The little red one removes poor dismembered lizards from the kitchen floor within seconds of a cat attack, but recently the battery’s been in a poorer state of health than the lizards.

Today we celebrated a new battery.

21 May 2025, Wednesday

I’m glad my disease will soon be gone because the main symptom is my inability to concentrate and it’s fair mucking up my life. Finding the right words in a conversation is a struggle, and this 100 words per day journal has become the limit of my writing capabilities.

I’ve no physical discomfort but the constant fatigue and feeling of uselessness gnaw at my mind like a tick at a fleshy human thigh.

I put down my pad and pencil briefly to think of fleshy human thighs but I’d forgotten what they looked like so I returned to the scribblings.   

22 May 2025, Thursday

The neighbours think we’re funny

Say we’re spending too much money

On fresh yoghurt and best honey

It’s the reason we are lardy

No shortage of fresh air

So much sunshine we could spare

Not a care what clothes we wear

We’re as tough as boots and hardy

No need to set alarm clocks

Woken daily by the farm cocks

Doing well this pair of old crocks

Though slightly going bats

In our garden full of bees

We’re creaking at the knees

Slyly hugging shrubs and trees

And still got seven cats

Reasons to be cheerful

For her and me

23 May 2025, Friday

A day of virtually nonstop thunder and lightning, but no rain. We felt anxious and lucky in equal measure as other parts of the country suffered bombardment from destructive tennis ball hailstones. Our wounds from last summer hadn’t fully healed.

We’ve often envied other villages where storks nest at the tops of electricity poles but this year we have our own, just near the bus stop in the square. They must be daft in the head to go perching themselves up there all unprotected with the wild weather that’s on the cards. Sometimes it’s hard to tell stork from nutter.

24 May 2025, Saturday

Plans for a picnic in the hills were shelved because of a scary weather forecast. No scary weather arrived until early evening and it wasn’t really that scary, just very wet. So we could have gone on our trip, though we probably wouldn’t have enjoyed it because we’d have been scared of the potential arrival of scary weather. In the big mountains in the south of the country it snowed but we spent our day working in our garden without fear of anything. A little lunchtime thunder prompted us to eat our picnic in the safe environment of the kitchen.

25 May 2025, Sunday

I had Elmore James’ song, The Sky is Crying in my head as it rained heavily every single minute of the day, plus a few hours at the other sides of the two midnights.

I considered writing a follow up and calling it The Soil is Drinking. Bulgaria needs all the rain it can get as digging a hole to plant a shrub requires a hammer and chisel, and weekend outings to picturesque reservoirs have a hide and seek feel to them.

Instead I sat around listening to Elmore James and drinking healthy stuff that typically didn’t taste very nice. 

26 May 2025, Monday

A tale of two local waterfalls, at Hotnitsa and Dryanovski. The former was the bigger but it didn’t involve much of a walk. Reaching the latter involved a wee hike through the ancient monastery, over an iron footbridge, up a lane, past a notable site from the War of Independence, into a forest and then onto an old stone bridge which was the perfect spot for observing powerful gushes. We both had one! Returning to the car was the same in reverse but with the addition of powerful coffee outside a rustic and cat-infested café by the powerfully flowing river.

27 May 2025, Tuesday

A man on the Yantra Today news website commented that he didn’t care about reservoir water levels because we’d all surely die of misery long before we died of thirst. The rain had stopped around 8:00 a.m., so I’d been feeling quite chipper until I read that. Then I began to agree with him when a tour of the garden revealed I had another disease to contend with. Three of my hardy lavender plants had been attacked by alfalfa mosaic virus.

Jollity returned as we walked over the old wooden Vladishki Most (Владишки мост, meaning ‘Bishop’s Bridge’) to admire the swollen river.

28 May 2025, Wednesday

Moving at the velocity of a slug with a limp, I descended the stairs at some sort of breakfast time, not knowing why. The tick disease plays havoc with my sleep pattern so I’m only fully awake between the hours of midnight and 6:00 a.m. It’s then I listen to Romanian Jazz played quietly, hoping for the lullaby effect. In the dark I wonder what’s spinning but by keeping a light on low I see it’s the whole room. The meter of Aura Urziceanu’s scat singing blends well with the vertigo’s motion in my head. She’s my Bucharesti night nurse.

29 May 2025, Thursday

Summer’s near and the time is right for biting between the sheets, sang Miroslava Reeves, Martha’s Bulgarian cousin.

Last night marked the kick-off of the new mosquito season. Despite having a slender segmented body, long legs, and specialized piercing-sucking mouthparts, no creature (with the possible exception of a hippopotamus) could be less welcome in my sleeping quarters than one of these parasitic little sleeveens.

The nocturnal whine of their wings is as damaging mentally as their sanguivorousness is physically. It’s almost as bad as snoring. A mosquito falls silent when its belly’s full but a snorer is quite the opposite.

30 May 2025, Friday

57% of Bulgarians want to keep the lev as our unit of currency. Politicians have suggested a referendum to decide, but Mistress Brussels said we can’t do that because it would slow down the process for introducing the euro next January. So now they’re talking about having a referendum to decide whether or not we want a referendum. 

The Finance Ministry has estimated there are 30 billion unbanked leva (£13 billion) floating about. That’s a lot of stuffed mattresses! To convert them to euro they must be banked but that’ll make them taxable. I’m glad I’m not burdened with wealth.

31 May 2025, Saturday

We’d always considered Samovodene as little more than a few houses either side of the E85 Romania-Turkey trunk road, and a place to buy half-dead live fish. Today we explored back streets to find architectural gems, beautiful gardens, statues of revolutionaries, a brilliant family-run market garden shop and outstanding views of the Danubian Plain.

Afternoon wrestles with garden mud were essential for the survival of newly purchased plants but the sun shone and the birds sang… so we shone and sang too! It had been a rubbish month but we thought we’d try another one, just to see. Tomorrow perhaps.

Photograph: One of the Malki Chiflik storks being exquisitely tame.

This Sort of Thing - June 2025

Marlene Dietrich’s Gappy Teeth

Wasn’t it just grand

When our wee feet turned tanned

Seeing them dipped in

Glen Dun’s cool waters

That gurgled peat down the mountain

With the hue of Aunt Mary’s tea

That bubbled and stewed

In her old black kettle

On her old black range

To welcome those come in for a drop

On any old day of the year

Toes we had then of

The colour you’d find the toes

Of wains playing by the river

In distant Timbuktu

Wasn’t it just grand

When I returned to the townland

My feet again cooled in

Those same tan waters

That rippled by the house at Kinune

With the hue of old Dan’s whiskey

That cured and cheered

Kept in Uncle James’ jar

In the press by the delph

To welcome those come in for a drop

On any old night of the year

Toes I had then of

The colour you’d find the toes

We dipped in the river

In distant childhood

Photograph: My own old feet dipped in the peaty waters of the River Dun in Ireland’s County Antrim.

1 April 2025, Tuesday

Instead of saying April Fool, the French say Poisson d’Avril, which means April Fish. Do you think they always say fish instead of fool? If so, it might have a strange effect on some well-known song titles.

Consider these:

• The Fish on the Hill, by the Beatles
• Kissing a Fish, by George Michael
• Fished Around and Fell in Love, by Elvin Bishop
• What a Fish Believes, by the Doobie Brothers
• Fish Rush In, by Elvis Presley

However, this suggests to me that yer man called Fish, who was the lead singer with 1980s popular beat combo, Marillion, was no fool.

2 April 2025, Wednesday

The stuffed shirts who sit in the marble halls at Veliko Tarnovo City Council have decided to extend the grounds of the municipal cemetery by twenty-six acres. As much of Europe prepares for war I feel that such arrangements are a little pessimistic and excessive.

I had to smile at the comment of the man who, in his letter to the local newspaper, suggested that our council members only ever cater for the tourists with never a thought for the needs of ordinary people.

Priyatelkata and I have made a reservation for two; the date(s) and time(s) to be confirmed.

3 April 2025, Thursday

Governments usually piss me off but ours, remarkably, has a cunning plan.

Recently we’ve been boycotting supermarkets at weekends in protest against their inflated prices and the pocketing of profits by West European chains.

Our government has announced significant investment into the retail industry so every village will have its own shop, as they did in Communist times. The range of available goods will undoubtedly shrink but an intensified rejection of the supermarkets will become a possibility.

Generally speaking, Bulgarian victuals are rarely processed and are significantly healthier than imported food.

But Mistress von der Leyen in Brussels is cross.

4 April 2025, Friday

Stressed by current world events, I turned to Netflix for light relief. However, the series Toxic Town and Adolescence respectively reminded me of my home town Middlesbrough and the madhouse school I attended in Leeds. To complete the set, I searched the channel for blockbuster movies about the spiralling cost of Jack Daniels’ so-called whiskey, and personal trauma suffered by unemployed Archbishops of Canterbury. On the blood sports channel, Israel vs Palestine had gone into extra time.

Meanwhile on Facebook, Don Stiletto Italian flick knives (they should call them Netflicks) were advertised for sale. So that’s my Christmas shopping sorted!

5 April 2025, Saturday

Our valley echoed with the sound of petrol strimmers so, eager to feel part of the horticultural community, I joined in. This one dry and bright day, tucked in amongst a dozen wet and windy others, seemed like a now-or-never opportunity to strike back against the rampant vegetation that threatened the loveliest of trees and assorted Balkan flora, and which gripped my ankles with its coiling tendrils in dreams.

As two-stroke engines died, the evening sun’s illumination of jays feasting on insects in the freshly cut field made every aching muscle seem worthwhile. Woodpeckers and bee-eaters couldn’t understand the fuss.

6 April 2025, Sunday

I marked International Wee Timorous Beastie Day, with ants in my pants and ticks in my knicks.

The ants were formicating in a kitchen cupboard but, using my masterful negotiating skills, I convinced them they’d be more comfortable at the protestant family’s house just up the road.

I wasn’t aware of the tick until I’d removed half of it with fervent scratching of my itchy arm. So now I’ve to watch out for Lyme disease, one symptom being insanity. I wouldn’t know how to spot this but my constant companion, Napoleon Bonaparte, said he’d keep an eye out for me.

7 April 2025, Monday

Oh no! Snow! If we’d gone out, we’d have got wet and miserable so we stayed indoors to be just miserable.

Turning on a computer without seeing the words ‘Trump’s Trade Tariffs’ is currently impossible so we added the USA to the list of things we’re boycotting. It already included Israel, supermarkets, Wetherspoon pubs and Boxing Day hunts. It’s easy really as there’s no evidence of any of these in Bulgaria, except supermarkets.

However, we’re excited about tomorrow’s supermarket trip to specifically boycott commodities bearing barcodes beginning with 060 and 729 which are sourced in the USA and Israel respectively.  

8 April 2025, Tuesday

According to the social media lads, today was International Romani Day but our neighbours knew nothing about it. We decided it must be something only for the posh Gypsies living in eight-bedroom detached caravans with state-of-the-art ponies in leafy Berkshire. Today was probably just another day corrupted by Clinton Cards for consumerists to cash in on, like with Hallowe’en and Patrick’s Day. Fortunately, we don't have card shops in Bulgaria.

Our Roma people do have their special days, all based on folklore and tradition. On these days the mountain fills with lit candles and all the songs weep for love.

9 April 2025, Wednesday

Hearing that Blondie’s drummer, Clem Burke, had died a couple of days ago saddened me tremendously. I never met him but I'll never forget him. They were a band accused of the Torvill-and-Deanification of new wave music but they were still bloody good. I saw them at a gig at the Deeside Leisure Centre in North Wales on Saturday 19th January 1980. My ticket cost me £4.25. I still have the stub pasted to the cover of my copy of their Eat to the Beat album. The occasion was tarnished only by my having to stay overnight in St Helens.

10 April 2025, Thursday

If airline pilots, surgeons and soldiers worked to the same level of accuracy as weather forecasters, we’d all be dead by now. They can predict any old bollocks and when it comes out wrong they just chuckle and crack on with the next day’s fairy story. Yesterday’s ‘mostly sunny with a little light rain at teatime’ turned out to feature gale force winds, thunder, lightning, hail and snow. Do they use tarot cards?

For tomorrow I’ve done my own prediction of volcanic eruptions, earthquakes and a collision with an asteroid in coastal areas. Anything different will be a pleasant surprise.

11 April 2025, Friday

The toothless old widow who sits beneath the pomegranate tree in the square confided in me, ‘Snow and ice in April will hurt the tender shoots of our hostas but they’ll return even stronger under the Balkan sunshine’s healing rays.’ The old man sitting beside her with a cigarette lodged neatly in one of the gaps in his front teeth casually added, ‘Hosta la vista, baby!’

Our hostas were in a sad state though. Leaves that looked so green and strong yesterday now bore an awful resemblance to the boiled cabbage you’d have found on a 1960s Middlesbrough dinner plate.

12 April 2025, Saturday

Ten years ago I slept my first ever night in Bulgaria. Within twenty minutes of landing in Sofia I’d been conned by a taxi driver and car hire people. I vowed I’d never return. But you should never judge a country by its airport staff.

Arriving on the back of a hastily cancelled USA trip, there’d been little time for research. A Rough Guide book bought from the Heart Foundation shop in Devizes described the historic city of Veliko Tarnovo as unmissable. That was probably the best pound I’d ever spent as this beautiful place captured my heart within days.

13 April 2025, Sunday

Hotnitsa Village Bazar is always a place for surprises. Today I gained a log splitter, an apple turnover, muddy feet and a new Bulgarian teacher. Priyatelkata’s surprises were unsurprisingly different to mine, apart from the muddiness.

Local homemade curry’s a bit like rice pudding with bits of chicken in it, but we encourage their efforts. As we luncheoned at the summer garden restaurant in Arbanasi, in the warm sunshine I think the waiter thought he was in Varanasi. 

Strange but true… Bulgarians wobble their heads from side to side when saying yes, just as natives of the Indian sub-continent do.

14 April 2025, Monday

An official ceremony was held at the Graf Ignatievo air base near Plovdiv to present the Bulgarian Air Force’s first F-16 fighter jet. My combined pacifism and pessimism told me that there are many things our country needs more than it needs a swanky killer machine, and that one won’t really be enough unless we’re at war with Cleethorpes. I imagined all the pilots squabbling over whose turn it was to go next with the new toy. And how did our Prime Minister, Rossen Zhelyazkov, not notice that it had a USA barcode? I bet he still drinks Jack Daniels.

15 April 2025, Tuesday

If I wrote about the passing of every iconic influential individual from my more youthful days, this journal would become a mere obituary column. So I’ve elected to be selective…

Death of the Week: Pioneer of reggae music, eighty-year-old Jamaican, Max Romeo, left us on Friday. As a tribute I thought I’d either grow dreadlocks or put on an iron shirt and drive Satan out of Earth. Five days into my plan I’ve realised that the latter is probably the more doable.

Now I’m panicking in case another old favourite dies in the next day or two. Keep well Keef!

16 April 2025, Wednesday

I worked in the garden, made a bean casserole and wrote a story. I’ve little else to say really. Except, whilst working in the garden I noticed that this year’s crop of opium poppies is going to be bigger than ever. Perhaps I could add some to a bean casserole. What a story that would make.

Our colony of red lily beetles also thrives. Their shiny little scarlet bodies remind me of liquorice torpedoes bought from the sweetie shop when I was wee.

During Bulgaria’s Communist era, the president’s wife was called Red Lily, and she just loved the Beatles.

17 April 2025, Thursday

At Bar Tam’s open mic poetry night, I did my first ever stand-up performance. The audience and readers were of a 70/30 Bulgarian to English speaking mix so, using my knowledge of the local tongue, I opened with words of apology for having to revert to my first language to read my poems.

With my bit out of the way, the nerves’ state of tatteredness subsided. I enjoyed rubbing shoulders with very talented people. I’d never spoken face to face with poets before.

By closing time, I was a man with a mission. I need to write poetry in Bulgarian. 

18 April 2025, Friday

Sipping brown Bolyarka beer on a balcony overlooking everybody’s favourite bend in the Yantra, atop which stands our beautiful gallery and horse monument, each kissed by vernal sunshine, I debriefed with Jessie and Ivo from last night’s fun.

We concluded that speaking in public was never going to be dangerous where 70% of the audience didn’t understand our language. Next time I’ll try comedy. Merely speaking in Bulgarian should suffice as whatever I say usually brings laughter, or at least a smile to the host nation’s faces.

To avoid boring any non-football readers, I’ll say just this… Oooh, Leeds United!

19 April 2025, Saturday

Sing…

I'm a gardener and I'm okay

I ache all night cos I strim all day

I cut down weeds

Breathe petrol fumes

Ticks love to feed from me

In evenings I’m often groaning

While Priyatelkata laughs at me

My suffering from chronic muscular pain distracted me from including these words in my song:

industrial respirator mask

protective goggles

hot sun

steep slope

piss off Priyatelkata, it’s not funny

I doubt even David Attenborough could justify the existence of the black creatures that multiply in the long grass and hurt when they bite. They’re like mini horseflies… pony flies, perhaps. 

20 April 2025, Sunday

There are no chocolate Easter eggs where I live, partly because consumerism is only in its fledgling stage and partly because, on a hot day such as this, they would appear in liquid form.

Children enjoy real eggs coloured with homemade vegetable dyes that they smash against each other’s. If their egg doesn’t break they’ll enjoy good health and if it does, they can eat it.

This year our German supermarkets sold ready-made rainbow eggs from Polish factories. They’re happy to earn pots of cash from centuries-old Bulgarian Orthodox traditions. For the first time, Easter was celebrated with E numbers.

21 April 2025, Monday

Having banged six goals into Stoke City’s net, Glory Glory Leeds United secured promotion to the top tier of England’s football league. Sadly, Pope Francis missed it, having died in the morning. Catholic friends assured me he’d be back by Thursday.

One day in 1963, headmistress Sister Josephine sent us all home from school an hour before the Angelus bells rang, to pray for the soul of Pope John XXIII who’d died. It was no time to be doing sums.

My Ma, who’d usually meet me at the school gate, was shocked by my arrival, exclaiming ‘Your dinner’s not ready!’

22 April 2025, Tuesday

Hasan told me I’m malko mek v glavata (малко мек в главата, meaning ‘a little soft in the head’) because I strimmed the long grass and weeds alongside a 200 metre stretch of the roadside verge near our house. ‘It’s the work of the municipality!’ he scolded.

Municipality Mustafa visits twice a year to give us a onceover (or twiceover). His method alternates between strimming and blasting with apocalypse strength weed killer. The latter is certainly effective but I fear we’ll all die. I’d rather go to my grave with strimmer wounds.

Apparently, Mustafa’s liquid death is what we pay our village tax for.

23 April 2025, Wednesday

This summer I’ll explore Bulgaria’s remotest mountains. The hiker’s lodge where I’ll scoff, quaff and snore sits at twice the altitude of Ben Nevis.

I’ve begun a brutal fitness regime as between now and departure I must shed a kilogram of ugly fat every forty minutes to return to my fighting weight. Not that there’ll be anybody up there to fight with as even the bears don’t venture above the tree line. 

I trimmed my toenails and whiskers to commence the weight loss and emptied my bottle of Irish whiskey (inside me) to remove temptation. Some call me Mr Motivator. 

24 April 2025, Thursday

Approaching the counter, I said, ‘Good morning. I’d like to make an appointment for an eye test.’

The young lady assistant replied, ‘What? In the butcher’s?’

Over at the vet’s, Ludo was voted Difficult Cat of the Month. The injection he had would initiate the healing but at home we must rub antibiotic cream on a wound in his groin twice daily. Following the first application, Priyatelkata and I had wounds of our own.

Living in rural Bulgaria I find that my skin is punctured one way or another every single day. I had imagined retirement to be more blissful.

25 April 2025, Friday

This season, Municipality Mustafa will mostly be an eco-warrior. We saw him strimming the verges, his evil herbicide now confined to history. Having gradually befriended him, today he agreed to help us maintain our vast pampas using the municipality’s strimmer, for a reasonable fee.

At Pavlikeni nursery I bought an American oak tree. I’ll use its botanical name, Quercus Alba, for US boycott purposes. The nursery lady said her husband works as a painter and decorator in London. Every time she stays at his shared house in Wembley she arrives home pregnant, apparently because the water is different in England.

26 April 2025, Saturday

If you don’t want to know about our pomegranate trees, look away now. We have three, all still immature, and all embracing the spring in different ways. One has only tiny leaf buds on its branches, one has nothing growing on its branches but very healthy new shoots coming up from ground level, and the other has a profusion of young leaves sprouting from old wood. How can this be? I didn’t know that pomegranate trees had different traits. I’ve pored over a dozen copies of Which Pomegranate magazine but the suggestion is that they should all be the same.

27 April 2025, Sunday

Malki Chiflik’s Facebook page lit up with gossip this afternoon. Apparently there was a Gendarmerie truck parked outside the village shop. Residents gagging for tasty gossip suggested our little Co-op was a narcotics outlet. Others said they’d known for years that it was a front for any number of the following: money laundering, human trafficking, prostitution, Littlewoods Pools and dry cleaning.

I thought that maybe it was just a matter of the boys in black nipping in for a packet of fags and a bottle of cheap plonk to take the drudgery out of policing a place where nothing happens.

28 April 2025, Monday

On being told the price of a new pair of bifocals, Priyatelkata overindulged in the bowl of complimentary boiled sweets on the reception desk in an attempt to get her money’s worth from the optician. Only minutes later she had lost a crown from a tooth and had to phone the dentist to make an appointment for repairs. Meanwhile, blood gushed from my lip because I was biting it hard in an attempt to stifle laughter.

Gaïa, our elderly Shih Tzu, might be going blind. We discussed taking her to the optician’s too, or getting her a Labrador guide dog.

29 April 2025, Tuesday

Past attacks of writer’s block were eventually overcome but in recent months I’ve been unable to shake off my reader’s block. The bedside table groans under the weight of good books anticipating my attention, but reaching a fourth chapter has become an inexplicably insurmountable task.

Is this a common failing in the human mind? Might I fall victim to other obstacles such as butcher’s block, breeze block, Soviet bloc, Jenny from the Block, the H-Blocks or toilet rim block?

Irritating rashes on my hands caused by hairs picked up from cactus stems during garden weeding distracted me from mental failings.

30 April 2025, Wednesday

The array of home produced fruit and vegetables in Polski Trambesh market was second to none. However, once we’d bought what we needed, I found that all interest disappeared. Browsing through tomatoes and aubergines is as much fun as browsing through a nuns’ outfitters.

During lunch with friends Echo and the Bunnyman in nearby Restaurant Venezia, we chewed the cud with the Shopska Salata.

Working all afternoon in warm sunshine with my beloved trees, it seemed like the winter had gone for good, and I spent April’s final daylight hours in the company of bees, slow worms and green lizards.

Photograph: The bottom of our field is a marvellous place for finding cherries and ticks. 

This Sort of Thing - May 2025 

Aura Urziceanu’s Lullaby Effect

Rain in horizontal sheets lashed against the window like it was blowing straight in off the Atlantic, but that was because it was blowing straight in off the Atlantic. Even coming face to face with an obstacle as imposing as Clare Island that sits in the waters where the ocean becomes Clew Bay didn’t do anything to take the terrific power out of the gale that it arrived on the back of. There’d be no wading around in search of bits of wave-polished sea glass and shiny pebbles with my socks in the pockets of my trousers and the legs of my trousers rolled up to the knees today, I thought. Today, herself and I would be seeking entertainment within the confines of our four whitewashed stone walls.

A good hot bowl of Flahavan’s pinhead oats is enough to warm the heart of your cockles on any day of the year and we’d plenty of that in the pantry. We’d also mouth-watering loaves of homemade soda bread from a shop in the main street, a handsome slab of butter donated by the lady at the farmhouse up the lane in exchange for the telling of our full life stories, and probably the finest rashers in the world that we’d bought at Kelly’s award-winning butcher’s shop in Newport. There was a fridge in the kitchen but it seemed more in keeping with the spirit of our adopted village to use the pantry instead, and it was probably colder in there than it was in the fridge anyway. Within its dark confines nothing went mouldy or runny, and a bottle of porter was always at the perfect temperature for drinking, so that was good enough for me.

However, tempting as it may be and despite what Mr Wetherspoon says, you can’t go on eating breakfast all day, with or without a glass of the black liquidation with the froth on the top, so by ten in the morning I was seeking pleasure elsewhere. Wiping crumbs and raspberry jam from her chin and slippers, my dear lady travelling companion set up shop to commence work on an aquarelle painting of the scene that lay beyond the four small window panes. She was going to be needing a lot of dark blue and black, unless she was just painting the window itself and the condensation that accompanied it.

Having already studied the central heating controls in depth and put my smalls on a hot wash in the rattling roaring rusting semi-automatic contraption that stood by the back door, I turned to the bookshelf tucked snugly into the alcove beside the chimney breast for stimulation. As well as few prized but dusty old Babycham glasses, a statue of the Virgin Mary and a faux solid 24 karat gold trophy that someone had been awarded years earlier for winning the pool tournament in a pub that no longer existed, there were a couple of dozen paperbacks. I always find it interesting to look through collections of books left behind by homeward bound holiday makers, even if they include little or nothing that I’d want to read myself. On the shelf before me I found almost exactly what I’d expected. The neatly fitted old wooden plank decorated with historic cigarette burns and coffee mug stains held volumes by the likes of Wilbur Smith and Jackie Collins along with the usual Harry Potter, Fifty Shades of Grey (presumably a study of the local weather) and 1001 Sudoku Puzzles kind of stuff. There was a West of Ireland guide book written in French, a couple of German novels, a book about St Patrick spending the whole of Lent praying on top of the nearby sacred mountain Croagh Patrick in 441 AD, and volume two of a Teach Yourself to Speak Irish course. But it was the very last book that I picked up that really struck a chord.

Beginning on a forgotten day sometime during my mid-twenties I’d gradually developed a fondness for the poems of William Butler Yeats. I’d previously parted with half a euro to become the new owner of a hopelessly thin ‘Best of’ paperback in a charity shop in Athlone, I’d read a few of his longer works online, and I’d visited the beautiful spot where he was buried Under Ben Bulben in Drumcliffe graveyard near Sligo. But now I had in my hands a musty, dog-eared copy of the complete collection of his poems expressing his powerful personal feelings and the dilemma thrown up in social and political terms by Ireland’s arrival in the modern world. I had, and still have, strong feelings of my own in this respect but, unsurprisingly, Yeats describes his far better than I do mine. The feel of the book warmed me as much as the ancient cast iron stove beside which I would sit and read for a number of hours that I wouldn’t take the trouble to count.   

Some of Yeats verse is short and easily digested but other poems go on for pages and pages, taking as long as an hour to read and an hour more to digest, if I manage to get that far at all. My previous attempts at this had been hampered by everyday life’s time restrictions and distractions but, on this wild Mayo day, I had little else to do. So I immersed myself in the book as The Wild Swans at Coole might have done with their lake.

By the middle of the afternoon the murderous weather outside had subsided in inverse proportion to my hunger and need for a cup of tea. So I eased my way out of the book with a canter At Galway Races. With my thumb still lodged between pages 146 and 147, I managed to fill the kettle and put it on a lit gas ring before starting to think about a search for a bookmark. It was a tidy house, and it wasn’t our house, so there was nothing obvious lying around that would meet the requirements. Minutes later, with the kettle’s whistling silenced, I scalded a couple of Barry’s Gold Blend teabags in the shiny alloy teapot that had no doubt seen a myriad or more teabags scalded during its long life. The next step was to make a visit to the pantry for the purpose of slapping some of Bridie’s butter on a couple of slices of the other Bridie’s gorgeous bread, pausing briefly to panic that time was running out for the great bookmark hunt.

Salvation came as I entered the pantry for a second time to get the bottle of milk for turning the tea’s colour from black to terracotta. It was then that I saw an oblong piece of paper fall from somewhere in the middle of the nine-hundred-page tome held loosely in my hand. Making its way fluttering, flapping, spiralling and drifting in a zigzag motion down to the floor took round about the time it might have taken to read Tom the Lunatic on page 319.

I’d like to point out at this juncture that more than half of the book comprises of explanatory notes, so you shouldn’t be put off reading the poetry yourself. It’s all good stuff, even when there’s no soda bread and butter around.

Suddenly more interested in what had escaped from the leafs of Yeats’ book than in anything else, I tore a piece from the red cardboard of the Gold Blend teabag box to insert as a makeshift marker and turned my attention to examining the mystery item that had landed on the floor.

To my dismay and delight, I found that it was an Ulster Bank five pound note in as pristine a condition as it would have been the day it rolled off the Orangemen’s printing press. An item of legal tender that had somehow found a home on the wrong side of Michael Collins’ dividing line on the Island of Ireland. It was of no use to me in my current surroundings but in Derry or Armagh it would have bought a lovely pint of stout, or two and a half loaves of soda bread… no definitely a pint of stout! Technically, it was even possible to spend it in Great Britain, though there its validity would have been questioned and argued about up until to a point beyond which the pub had closed.

The design of the note was a bit uninspiring, it being predominantly brown and displaying on its front side pictures of an unrecognisable mountain, Belfast harbour and the Giant’s Causeway. Coming from that part of the world I would have expected to see on it the face of the English Queen or maybe Arlene Foster, Ian Paisley or Liam Neeson. On the reverse I found the crest of the Ulster Bank which included the obligatory heraldic lions, and the mythological Red Hand of Ulster (in brown). The crest also bore the bank’s Latin motto, Nihil Impossibile Erit Vobis, which translates as Nothing Will Be Impossible For You (a big hit for Sinéad O'Connor in 1990).

This little piece of monetary joy became the bookmark in my borrowed book for the remainder of our stay. This seemed the right thing to do as it had been lurking in there for heaven only knows how long before I discovered it. A week later I managed to buy my own copy of Yeats’ Poems in a gorgeous little bookshop (they offered free coffee to customers, but not Barry’s tea) by the quay in Westport, but my problem was that thoughts of keeping the fiver seemed tantamount to stealing. To put my mind at ease in both directions, I put the Ulster Bank note in my own book and replaced it in the cottage’s book with a Bulgarian ten leva note, which was about the same value. In pencil I wrote on the original book’s inside cover, in English and Bulgarian, an apology for the lack of availability of a lovely pint of stout in the Veliko Tarnovo region that I call home but with the promise of a grand cup of Barry’s Gold Label tea at our house if the reader should ever care to get in touch.

A strange consequence of this experience is that now, whenever I borrow a book or buy a second hand one, before starting to read it I always check to see if there’s any money hidden inside. It’s a bit like birthday cards but the whole year round, and I’m disappointed every time.

It’s a pity that my bookmark hadn’t been a Central Bank of Ireland twenty punts note from the 1980s as that would have had on its front a picture of yer man W.B. Yeats himself, together with the Irish legendary giant, Cú Chulainn. I also regret that his poem Brown Penny hadn’t instead been entitled Brown Fiver.

Photograph: My copy of William Butler Yeats’ book of poems together with its priceless wee bookmark.

1 March 2025, Saturday

When Britain’s boy Starmer visited America’s ungulate Trump he took a letter from England’s king Charles. Apparently he had a family size bag of Cheesy Wotsits in his other pocket in case the letter didn't do the trick.  

Ukraine’s president Zelenskyy was bullied on telly by Trump and his bitch Vance. The civilised world was appalled.

The last time Leeds United won promotion to English football’s top league, a plague of Covid 19 struck so celebrations were diluted and delayed. It looks like it’s going to happen again soon but this time World War III will be the party pooper.

2 March 2025, Sunday

Trump’s got me all out of kilter with my journal so I’m only writing about yesterday today. Are there no bounds to the harm he’s capable of?

Yesterday at 11:00 a.m. I ate my Crunchie allocation for the month of March (i.e. one Crunchie). A gift from the people of Ireland sent by my friend Cathy, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Bob Geldof had a hand in it. Whilst crunching I congratulated myself on holding out for eleven whole hours.

Today I stared at the nine remaining Crunchies before sniffing them, caressing them and returning them to their box.

3 March 2025, Monday

Bob Dylan’s people grumbled because at last night’s Academy Awards ceremony in Hollywood (the one in America, not the one near Belfast) their film didn’t win any cherries. I wonder why some people call the awards the Oscars. Perhaps they’re sponsored by a dog food manufacturer. And I wonder if there’s an award for the best usherette.

Today was the first day of the 2025 Bulgarian Independence Day season. This one (aka Liberation Day) marked kicking the Ottomans (Ottomen?) out of our country in 1878. The Russians helped us, but we’ve other independence days to celebrate kicking them out too.

4 March 2025, Tuesday

With doors and windows flung open, an invigorating breeze swept through the house. Animals, some of which were ours, wandered freely in and out. I love Bulgaria’s transformation from winter’s depths to spring’s joyous arrival within a matter of days.

But beware Baba Marta (Баба Марта, meaning ‘Grandmother March’)! This temperamental old woman brings nice weather for her spring cleaning on 1 March but if her brothers (January and February) annoy her she summons the return of brumal brutality. It’s a proven scientific fact that any snowflakes seen after 1 March are merely feathers from her mattress as she shakes it outside.

5 March 2025, Wednesday

When forced into the chipper machine, fingers and limbs amputated from snow damaged bushes and trees came out at the other end as mulch. Knowing I was returning them to the earth gave me a bit of a buzz. I found myself singing Cab Calloway’s classic song Minnie the Moocher, but with moocher replaced by mulcher. As I sang, my face and arms took colour from the sun’s most welcome rays.

After my day’s work I had accomplished a lot and felt absolutely terrific. After twenty minutes in the armchair I felt terrifically painful, wondering if I’d ever walk again.

6 March 2025, Thursday

They say you should listen to your body but this morning all I could hear was creaking joints. Exercise and hard work are great for people who are fit but for the unfit they’re a health hazard. I declined the offer of cake when we met our Kiwi friend Jessie for coffee, so tomorrow’s garden work should be a doddle.

I joined the population of Canada in not buying Jack Daniels from supermarkets. They’re boycotting American products in protest at Trump’s trade tariffs. I’ve never bought Jack Daniels so I felt I was a leading campaigner. And rakia’s much nicer.

7 March 2025, Friday

As anti-American feeling intensified at our end of the street, I removed myself from the Twitter abomination to become an ex X account holder. I imagined President Musk sitting at home in Texas and crying into his Coors Light.

My bedraggled mate, Johnny Ten Levs, who drinks a Canadian brand of anti-freeze to keep warm, confided in me that he’s having nothing to do with Twitter either. He hadn’t specifically picked out Twitter to boycott. He’s just turned his back on reality in general, which I tend to think isn’t a bad approach to the mess the world’s in today.

8 March 2025, Saturday

Today was Todorovden (Тодоровден, meaning ‘the day of St Todor’). It’s also known as Horse Easter because it’s the start of the Easter Lent and it heralds the arrival of spring, so Bulgarians traditionally go out on their horses to examine their fields and decide which crops they will grow.

This year it coincided with International Women’s Day which was marked in our house by me cooking the dinner AND washing up. We usually do one or the other.

The double celebration meant the town was insanely busy and there were no parking spaces. I wished I’d gone there on horseback.

9 March 2025, Sunday

It was a grand morning for Hotnitsa selski pazar (селски пазар, meaning ‘village bazaar’ but the immigrants say ‘car boot sale’). We bought plants, honey and minor items of traditional Bulgarian junk whilst avoiding people we used to know. Local country folk seem to do very well selling home-produced wares for very little money, so everyone’s always happy and smiley.

This year they’ve done away with the greasy burger van. Greasy burgers are called greasy kebapche here. They’re great gear for people watching their weight as the look of one (burger or van) would put you off your food for a week.

10 March 2025, Monday

The thermometer showed 26°C which was more than 40° warmer than two weeks ago.

We were all day in the garden, planting and pruning whilst fawning over new shoots. Plum trees were on the cusp of blossoming. Hungry woodpeckers, territorial jays and a myriad of bees provided the soundtrack.

I had an hour away from the horticulture to gather together things to pack for my forthcoming trip to England. I tried to check the Manchester weather on the internet but our Wi-Fi was having a day off. I’ll cry into my tripe and cowheels if it’s not sub-tropical there too.

11 March 2025, Tuesday

The old man who sits by the well with a cigarette lodged neatly in one of the gaps in his front teeth and fingerless gloves that weren’t always fingerless but he’s never been much good at striking matches said to me, ‘Give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day. But give a man a fishing rod and he’ll be away at the lake a whole weekend with his mates and a bottle of rakia and not have to listen to his wife harping on about the hole that needs fixing in the roof of the goat shed.’

12 March 2025, Wednesday

The normally jovial women who work in the Viva café at the petrol station were all a bit sullen this morning when we went for breakfast. Word must have got round that I was about to leave the country for a couple of weeks. It’s not uncommon for people to wander away from Bulgaria and never come back.

A flick through the dictionary confirmed that immigrants generally settle permanently in their host country, while expatriates know from the outset that their stay will be temporary, usually for a few years, before returning to their home country.

I’m a committed immigrant!

13 March 2025, Thursday

Today I became a temporary emigrant travelling on a red bus and an orange Easyjet from Veliko Tarnovo to Manchester (the one on the outskirts of Leeds, not the one in New Hampshire).

Some passengers clapped as the plane touched down on Lancastrian soil. I threw a bouquet of flowers whilst shouting ‘Bravo!’ and ‘Encore!’ The young Scouse couple sitting beside me continued with their argument that had started on the runway in Sofia.

Daughter Sophie ferried me to her Disley home (not Disneyland) where I was welcomed with lashings of tea, much anticipated hot cross buns and great-to-see-you hugs.

14 March 2025, Friday

I was served Greek yoghurt from Oldham, pasteurised honey from more than one EU country and hot cross buns from Patisserie Stacey. A Balkan breakfast to make me feel at home.

Accommodated on the edge of the Peak District, a family stroll to look at dry stone walls, sheep, daffodils and people in woolly bobble hats singing The Happy Wanderer as they boldly went seemed essential.

Daughter Sophie’s neighbours had never before met anyone from Bulgaria but did once have some visitors from New Zealand. All places east of Hull being exactly the same in that Watford Gap Syndrome way.  

15 March 2025, Saturday

An early celebration of the seventieth birthday of my former missus, Hilary, was marked by the gathering of our children (three, I think), plus two offspring they’d produced, plus partners, plus in-laws and offspring-in-law. Fifteen persons in all but that figure came close to being slightly reduced as the surprise element almost gave the birthday girl a heart attack.

Day One of such gatherings traditionally comprises of a family quiz and fish and chips from the chip shop. The mushy peas or curry sauce question always gives attendees a bigger headache than anything asked during the course of the quiz.

16 March 2025, Sunday

A posh lunch was had in Disley’s White Horse restaurant where the ooh-you-haven’t-changed-a-bit brand of conversation dominated. I love them all but I prefer to meet family in twos and threes rather than in one massive noisy group. I’m much the same with bees.

Afterwards an Uber (which I’d expected to be German but had a more South Asian feel to it) transported me with daughter Rose and her beau Markell to the fashionable Reddish district of Stockport. There I enjoyed the film about the Irish language rappers Kneecap while my hosts struggled with eyelids weighed down by afternoon beer.

17 March 2025, Monday

Like many of Europe’s top attractions, Stockport is closed to visitors on Mondays. Daughter Rose and I found alternative points of entry via the Coffee Block café in the stylish Victorian era neo-classical Prudential Buildings, a couple of charity shops (buying up their second hand books to occupy my mind during Bulgarian winters is always a feature of my trips to England) and a branch of Asda built in the Soviet brutalist architectural style, though slightly less sparkly.

We celebrated St. Patrick’s Day with lavish helpings of homemade lentil lasagne, a Hugh Grant horror film and a hot cross bun.

18 March 2025, Tuesday

Seán and three-year-old grandson Toby visited. Easter biscuits were handcrafted but poor icing skills had their decoration looking more like scrambled eggs than the baby chicks that the recipe suggested.

At Franca’s Deli & Coffee we were served cake and coffee before meeting up with Markell and their lovely dog Tufty in the park where Stockport’s toughest canines lurked. Back at the house we found a game of hide and seek in a garden measuring 4x4 metres to be quite a challenge.

Another Uber returned me to Sophie’s where we dined on takeaway Indian food (my favourite thing about England).

19 March 2025, Wednesday

On the Bristol train I sat in close proximity to two dangerously loud ladies, one of which had recently been released from prison. They were travelling to Wolverhampton to meet with two gentlemen for research purposes. Their mission was to rewrite the Kama Sutra in monosyllabic text with body fluid stains for illustrations.

In Bristol city centre I was asked for financial support by a young man representing a charity working to reduce inner city knife crime. I obliged but longed to be back in Bulgaria.

Angela, my longest standing friend, met me at Frome station. There I felt safer.

20 March 2025, Thursday

Wells, being England’s smallest city, hopefully had England’s smallest incidence of inner city knife crime. Today’s problem was having to request such an implement to apply cream and jam to my scone at a table outside a café in the sun-kissed medieval market place. Angela had a slice of cake, remarking that she had never heard of a crazed killer running amok with a pastry fork.

Wandering narrow old streets, lush lawned gardens and places frequented by bishops and toff schoolchildren provided a peaceful environment for discussing the highlights of the seven years that had passed since we last met.

21 March 2025, Friday

The railway journey to Hampshire passed without incident. Nobody spoke, not even the non-existent ticket inspector. My colour photographs of the mudflats of the Solent at low tide came out in black and white as homesickness for Veliko Tarnovo’s paradisiacal vistas tugged at ventricles.  

Sister Beverley (my own sister, not a nun) met me at Cosham station where we had met many times before. Had the sun shone at all in the years since my previous visit?

Her house was new and bright but she had become husbandless and catless so we had much to talk about, but mostly cats.

22 March 2025, Saturday

Winchester was similar to Wells though outlets for procuring ten Bic lighters for a quid outnumbered scone cafés on a ratio of four to one. However, housed in the Cathedral's Inner Close, the Deanery Bookstall had the finest array of second-hand books this side of Hay-on-Wye.

A combination of Beverley not feeling tiptop, overcrowded streets and cold grey weather brought the outing to an early conclusion. So we hopped on the hop on bus to the neatly manicured car park and drove back to spend the remainder of the day with tea, books and chat, but without Indian takeaway food.

23 March 2025, Sunday

My English adventure had surprisingly produced no rain until we went to be beside the seaside at the seaside town of Bosham, whose claim to fame was that it’s one before Cosham in the alphabetical list of Hampshire towns that end with osham. A pub with nice fish and chips sheltered us for a drizzly hour.

With Beverley still not match fit we returned to her abode to look at family photographs. Snaps of aunties, uncles and an anti-internment in the North of Ireland demonstration in London’s Trafalgar Square in August 1971 brought back fond memories of our shared childhood.

24 March 2025, Monday

Foxes frolicked in the sun as I stood in Beckenham cemetery at the memorial stone of Julia, my dear friend from forty years earlier, and her little brother, Robert. Stories of their unnecessary passing had been only Facebook messages until then but suddenly, in the company of their mother, Coral, and sister, Sarah, the reality hit me.

Lunch in the Elm Tree pub extended into afternoon coffee as we shared stories, mostly about Julia. Each of us learning things we hadn’t previously known.

Sadness, happiness and surreality combined at the end of a lovely day spent with two lovely people.

25 March 2025, Tuesday

Walking briskly round the park, Sarah regaled me with more tales of Julia and former neighbour, David Bowie, before trains propelled me northwards. Being the only passenger in the quiet carriage from Euston to Stockport, I could enjoy sweeping panoramas of Stoke-on-Trent and Macclesfield in silence. 

Rose and Markell welcomed me back, escorting me to the Mekong Cat and the Swan with Two Necks for sustenance and refreshment. Two fine establishments that became my favourite restaurant and pub in the Greater Manchester area respectively.

The day ended with a return to Disley, my favourite village in the Greater Manchester area.

26 March 2025, Wednesday

In New Mills Sophie and I admired the old mills, the older canal and the very old river. In the equally admirable On the Bridge Café we ate Turkish eggs and I exchanged Slavic greetings with a diner I heard conversing in a Slavic tongue. Another magnificent second hand bookshop and a shop selling draught muesli sparked plans for a return visit. England’s lovely if you manage to find the right bits. You can see New Mills from Sophie’s garden.

The final evening of my adventure was a bit of a summing up session. Had I met the trip objectives?

27 March 2025, Thursday

Granddaughter Freya’s tears made my heavy heart heavier as goodbyes were said in the drop-off car park two miles from Manchester Airport. I was sad to be leaving the people I love but happy to be returning to the country I love.

Sitting amongst a large Bulgarian family at the rear of the plane we observed the cabin crew’s failure to sell Easyjet’s in-flight Benson’s and gin. Uproarious laughter followed my suggestion that they’d do better flogging Fanta bottles filled with homemade rakia.

Dear old friend Dimitar transported me through the mountains for joyous reunification with Priyatelkata and our menagerie.

28 March 2025, Friday

I spent the day in zombie mode. Any suggestion that jetlag was the cause would be inaccurate but I definitely had some sort of lag. Determined to shake off this affliction, my list of achievements was as follows:

1. An hour-long tour of the garden during which I complied a mental list of jobs to do to keep nature’s explosion under control. So no more holidays until February!
2. An hour-long emptying of the travel bag and filling of the washing machine.
3. An hour-long lying on the bed with eyes shut.
4. An hour-long repeat of point 3.
5. An hour-long big satisfied sigh.

29 March 2025, Saturday

In Bulgarian we shouted ‘They don’t have voices but we have voices!’ (Те нямат гласове, но ние имаме гласове!). Some waved placards demanding an end to animal cruelty. I couldn’t help but admire the most vociferous of the protesters but wondered what they might achieve, if anything. Outside of Western Europe and North America, animals are kept mostly for working or eating. I also questioned the need for such a strong police presence and why they had not brought their police dogs with them. Guilt, perhaps?

Glaswegian Anne Marie had suggested that we attend. In a café nearby we discussed the exhausting nature of trips to Britain.

30 March 2025, Sunday

Having spent the afternoon scrubbing every pot, pan and shelf in our kitchen cupboard to cleanse them of mouse toilet by-products, I reminded our cats that in Eastern Europe animals are kept mostly for working or eating.

The day was an hour shorter than usual to help wartime farmers. It’s possibly my favourite day of the year as it heralds the start of longer evenings and proves that I’ve survived another winter.

The extra hour of daylight enabled me to shovel mouse shit until bedtime. Bedtime for me, that is. The feline workforce had been sleeping most of the day.

31 March 2025, Monday

Today April showers arrived early in Malki Chiflik, as did summer torrential downpours. In supermarkets coffee prices have increased by 25%, suggesting a trade tariff, but what have we done to upset Brazil? The boy Trump said he is ‘pissed off’ with the boy Putin because he’s not doing war properly. Netanyahu knows the way! I left my glasses in England and without them I can’t find my way to the optician’s. Priyatelkata and I have eaten all the hot cross buns I brought from Stockport. Myanmar has been flattened by an earthquake. Why did I get out of bed?

Photograph: One of the many bridges in the town of New Mills on the edge of England’s Peak District.

This Sort of Thing - April 2025

The Fish on the Hill

I thought Mrs Landau's ten children were all ten years old. With their endearing friendly smiles, confident but polite manners and NHS spectacles they were almost identical. The boys wore yarmulkes to cover the crowns of their shaven heads and had wispy side curls of hair while their sisters were all dressed in light grey woollen cardigans and dark grey calf-length skirts. But apart from those barely distinguishing features they were clones of each other, and most likely of their cousins and their neighbours’ kids.

We were always made welcome with tea and biscuits on our Friday visits to pay the rent. 'Don't bring the money if the sun's low in the sky,' Mrs Landau would say, 'because our Sabbath will have commenced. Just bring double the following week.' Sometimes when we were a bit short we'd invent a sunset, but we had to be careful as two consecutive early Friday sunsets were frowned upon. I think that was something that Moses had decreed on a scroll.

***

In the café that shook violently every time a train went over the heavy iron railway bridge at Finsbury Park Station, Jamil served great plates of rashers and eggs with hot buttered toast like paving slabs, and steaming great mugs of terracotta tea.

'How do you like your bacon done Paddy?' he'd ask all his customers, including the few that weren't Irish. Faded photographs of Colonel Gaddafi and Liam Brady smiled down from the wall behind where he stood from dawn to dusk, frying up anything he could lay his hands on. Crispy brown Sellotape from a different decade had all but abandoned its duties but thankfully the layers of chip fat that had built up gradually over the passage of time, like mineral formations in a limestone cave, held Jamil’s heroes in place.

***

On a still day in our attic flat, with the window open and the television’s volume turned right down, we could hear the groans of the Arsenal supporters a mile or two away at their Highbury football stadium. I went there once. It was an uncomfortable experience. The game was too dull for staying awake and the wind was so cold that sleeping was not at all possible. The opposition on that occasion were local rivals, Tottenham Hotspur, so there was a large police presence. I couldn’t understand why so many of them, clad in riot gear, had piled out of their armoured Ford Transit vans because by the time the referee had blown the half-time whistle they too seemed to be struggling to stay awake, as were their dogs.

The Argentine World Cup winner, Ossie Ardiles, was playing for Tottenham in those days. I saw him once in the car park at Safeway’s supermarket at Stamford Hill. That brief exchange of hellos was infinitely more exciting than the match had been.

***

At the corner shop, pint bottles of milk with crown caps were sold at five times the going rate, and a glass display cabinet was always filled with freshly baked bread buns with holes in the middle. It was there that Eli explained to me the concepts of kosher milk and bagels. His bagels were delicious but I went to the Spar shop up the road to buy the cut price gentile milk. In true grocer’s style he wore a light brown overall coat buttoned up at the front, but beneath it he had on the black clothes required by his religion, and his black fedora never lost contact with his head.

***

Beecher's was a cosy little place, recently refurbished in a horse racing theme with bits of old saddles, sheepskin nosebands and stable boys fixed to every wall. The doors of the ladies’ and the gents’ facilities were marked ‘mares’ and ‘stallions’ respectively, which some customers found amusing and others found a little intimidating. During the 1980s it was essential that pubs wishing to attract new customers each had their own theme. I thought an Hasidic Judaism theme pub would have gone down well in the area but Mrs Landau’s section of the community would never have frequented, or even condoned it.

The clientele were friendly but the beer was rough. We wondered if it was a by-product of a race horse but the pump handles behind the bar had ‘Ben Truman’ written on them, so he must have been the culprit. Phil Collins and Madonna dominated the juke box but nevertheless it was a decent place for a rare night out.

***

Moira was two and loved to push her own pushchair back and forth from one end of the laundrette to the other as if she'd been forced to take part in some sort of sponsored endurance test. Meanwhile her mammy, who ran the joint, would sort out the service washes left in black plastic bin bags by those who rushed through life. In her soft Connemara accent she’d remark upon clothes she wouldn't be seen dead in herself as she held them up for all to see.

Moira loved cheese and onion crisps and showed no fear when asking if she could have one from the packet poking out of my coat pocket as it hung on a peg by the big driers which were labelled as such in case people new to the laundrette world didn’t know what they were.

On Monday evenings I'd always be in there with a book to pass the time while I kept one eye on our washing as it frothed and spun and tumbled. Walking home, I'd call at the Chinese chippy for something for our tea. Shanghai Tam was proud of the high standard of the freshly cooked fish and chips he sold but not of his noodles. He’d never been to Shanghai, or even China. His father had settled in England in 1942, having fled the Philippines as a Japanese invasion threatened.

***

Poor old Alice would shout in the street. She'd always lost something. Would we help her to find her husband, her daughter, her mother, her dog, her shopping bag, her dentures? A different missing item on each appearance. And could we find a few coins in our pocket to help her out until pension day? Her weekly pension day was often as many as six and a half days away. I suspected that she was a terribly thirsty lady, but we never saw her in Beecher’s. All she’d really lost was her marbles. People treated her kindly but I still couldn’t help but feel sorry for her.

***

On sunnier, work-free days we'd step out to nearby Clissold Park. On tube trains and buses we could travel for a couple of hours to escape the city and find a rural spot that would turn out to not really be any better than what we had on our doorstep, so we didn’t.

Hip hop, ghetto blasters and hoodies were new back then; an interesting innovation for us to observe from the bench where we ate our egg and cress sandwiches. We always sat in a spot where there were no discarded cider cans or hypodermic syringes so that the bad-tempered, authoritarian park keeper couldn’t accuse us of breaking his rules or contravening the local by-laws that he could recite by heart. We quite liked Push It! by Salt-N-Pepa but the parky was more of a Merle Haggard / Waylon Jennings sort of a fella, which probably explained his constant aura of wrath and his cowboy boots that didn’t go at all well with his Hackney Borough Council uniform.

***

Close to the pub and the laundrette there were two reservoirs, imaginatively named East Reservoir and West Reservoir, probably by a senior manager in the planning department of the Metropolitan Water Board, where we were sure water boarding must have gone on.

On summer evenings it was mesmerising to stand on the bridge that carried Lordship Lane across the equally imaginatively named New River to watch hundreds of starlings take to the sky in dark murmurations that could be mistaken for billowing clouds of smoke. There may have even been thousands but counting them was a bit tricky. From late afternoon until the sun went down they would soar and swoop to catch the midges that hovered above the water. Strange, I thought, to see such a miracle of nature only four miles from the centre of London.

***

The streets, perhaps more accurately described as leafy avenues of plane trees, were busy with people from early morning until long after darkness had fallen. Some were doing their shopping or dashing to work while others would leisurely pass the time of day with friends.  Children played, usually under the watchful eye of their mothers or older sisters, but sometimes not. Skipping ropes and dreidels (four sided spinning tops painted with Hebrew letters) were very popular.

Every corner had its small gathering of men in black. Garbed in long jackets and even longer overcoats, wide-legged trousers and large circular fur hats; their white shirts were their only non-black garments. They spoke Yiddish, a strange tongue for us, so we couldn’t tell their business haggling from their social chitchat. Eavesdropping was futile. Sometimes we’d see Mr Landau and he’d throw in a few English words about the weather, or the Arsenal, or our colourful clothes (which weren’t really) while his friends looked on, smiling from side curl to side curl.

With so many people about we always felt safe. The area wasn’t typical of the inner city.

***

For four months in 1986, after work on Thursdays we’d travel on the bus to Hackney for our antenatal classes at the Mother’s Hospital of the Salvation Army. At first, we were excited at the possibility of a brass band playing Oh for the Wings of a Dove as our child came into the world, but then a little disappointed on discovering that ownership had been taken over by the National Health Service in 1948 and that a cassette tape of Now That’s What I Call Music Two was the best that we could hope for.

This red brick maternity hospital had been declared open in October 1913 by Princess Louise, Duchess of Argyll; a woman named after two of the area’s pubs. Its outer walls were smog-blackened and it could have done with a lick of paint, but otherwise it seemed perfect. The brand new, enormous and flashy Homerton Hospital under construction a mile away was due to open soon, taking on the responsibility and work of a number of small local hospitals and clinics that would immediately be closed. It was anticipated that the redundant buildings would be converted into convenience shops, wine bars or unofficial shelters for the homeless.

Our cosy little place that we had become accustomed to and were completely happy with would cease birthing, most likely on the very day that our baby was due. Everything went smoothly with the pregnancy apart from the fact that nobody could confirm the location of the labour ward we would eventually be going to for the final act of the gestation process. It all depended upon Health Ministry approval being granted, without which the handover between medical establishments couldn’t take place. This caused heightened levels of stress amongst the hormonally unbalanced and their pregnant wives and girlfriends.

Ukraine’s Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station disaster struck during this time so parents-in-waiting would ask questions about the possible effects of airborne radioactive materials on the wellbeing of unborn children to which midwives who didn’t really know the answer would reply with conviction, ‘It’ll be grand!’ A lady who was thirty-eight weeks into her pregnancy announced that she wanted a termination because she had read in the Sun newspaper that her baby might be born with two heads.

***

I only ever spent two nights alone in our flat, they being the two nights after our daughter was born. I was too euphoric to sleep but soon realised that I should have made better use of the silence as, following the arrival home of mother and infant, the nights were disturbed way beyond what we’d imagined and during every night for the following six weeks only limited sleep was possible. For half of each night we couldn’t sleep because the gorgeous wee one wouldn’t sleep and for the other half of the night we couldn’t sleep because she was sleeping so peacefully that we were worried there was something wrong with her. She slept the most soundly when we pushed her round Clissold Park in her pram (not buggy) but Hackney Borough’s by-law number 27, section 15, sub-paragraph 3 forbade the pedestrian cossetting of the newly born after 8:00 p.m.

The most difficult part of those early days of her life was accepting that she had met all the criteria required for her to be officially labelled a Cockney. Being simple northern folk, we wondered what had we created?

***

We were sad to leave Stoke Newington but we too wanted to have ten children and our flat in Fairholt Road was already too small for us and our new baby girl. Mrs Landau said she could find us a larger one but the higher weekly rent would have meant us going cold and hungry and having to use Shanghai Tam’s chip wrappers for nappies. She really wanted us to stay, and we wanted to stay, but we couldn’t and we didn’t and we never saw her again.

So here’s to you Mrs Landau. We all loved you more than you will know.

Photograph: Some of our neighbours in our street in Stoke Newington in 1986.