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 28th 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.
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