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 1st 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.
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