1 February 2025, Saturday

Across the country, wreaths were laid as Bulgaria bowed her head in the annual remembrance of the victims of the communist regime. Warm sunshine displayed a welcome contrast to the political and humanitarian darkness of our past.

I love January but February’s better. With each amble round the garden I discover more new shoots on my awakening horticultural babies. I even discovered a wild plant I didn’t know we had, that being a Butcher’s Broom with a single red berry.

And there was still a glow in the western sky when I learned that Leeds United had beaten Cardiff seven-nil.

2 February 2025, Sunday

Did you know that France has a different pancake day to the rest of the world? Yes, today was La Chandeleur (translating into English as Candlemas), the day on which Priyatelkata and her compatriots eat crêpes and drink cider. Apparently Pope Gelasius loved a pancake so this custom was his idea.

Falling exactly forty days after Christmas, it marks the midpoint between winter and spring. In Eastern Orthodoxy it’s the time for taking down the Christmas decorations and women can be purified by presenting a lamb as a burnt offering. So it was quite a busy day in our house.

3 February 2025, Monday

Determined to teach those naughty people in Latin America a lesson, supporters of the porcine president of the Ewe-Esser-Vaye are apparently boycotting coffee grown in Colombia and buying Italian coffee instead. I hope for their sake that it travels well. I wonder if they’ve realised yet that the white powdery stuff that covers most of Greenland isn’t cocaine.

Meanwhile Bulgarians aren’t worrying about the effects of Trump’s proposed trade tariffs as they already can’t afford to buy his stuff at the original price and our only exports are healthy food and migrant workers which would never catch on in America.

4 February 2025, Tuesday

In Pavlikeni market, Gostilnitsa Ranchoto (Гостилница Ранчото, meaning ‘The Ranch Inn’) serves delicious fish dishes at little cost. A visit was overdue, Priyatelkata urged.

The sun shone, the rural scenery en route rolled resplendently and both restaurant and waitress were bright and cheerful. Unfortunately, the fish was a let-down, but we agreed that only our obsession with food had tarnished our day.

Seeing an old man with a crutch fall on the pavement, we stopped to help him up. He was embarrassed at having nothing to offer by way of thanks. I was humbled by his embarrassment. His day wasn’t so good. 

5 February 2025, Wednesday

The morning’s light snowfall was enough to make me appreciate every single one of the duvet’s togs. I love them and I’m sure that if I could identify them individually I’d have affectionate names for each.

Having run to a deserted Bulgarian valley to escape the rat race, I still find a need for further escapism. Netflix is ruining my life but these dark nights with a modest supply of rakia in me it’s a balm for the brain.

It might have been John Lennon who said, ‘Time spent watching Netflix is not time wasted unless you get wasted yourself.’

6 February 2025, Thursday

Clouds obscured the sun only minutes into my walk in the afternoon sun. Finding the Helicon bookshop’s warm glow irresistibly inviting I entered, browsed and purchased.

Vladimir Dimitrov Maistora (Владимр Димтров Майстора) is considered one of the most talented 20th century Bulgarian painters. I once visited his museum in Kyustendil, his birthplace, and was overawed by his pulchritudinous depictions of rural scenes and culture from the country’s romantic but harsh post-Ottoman period.

In a café opposite the bookshop I found his biography, written in Bulgarian, difficult to put down. In only forty minutes I had read the whole of the first three paragraphs.

7 February 2025, Friday

Destructive moles mess with my garden. I don’t mind their mole hills because that’s all part of nature but they damage roots of trees and bushes I’ve nurtured for years. My friend Zhivko said that to rid my land of such nuisances I would need a bucket, a thick book and a shovel. I should place the bucket upside down in the garden, sit on it and then read the book until a mole pokes its head out of the ground. At that point I should hit the mole on the head with the shovel. There is no other way!

8 February 2025, Saturday

Fifty years ago this week, Dana’s recording of her rock anthem, Please Tell Him That I Said Hello held a place in the BBC’s Official Top 40 Singles Chart.

My cousin Séamus in Randalstown spent years poking around in dark musty places to piece together our family tree. One of the most interesting of his findings was that the 1970 Eurovision champion, Dana Scallon (originally Rosemary Brown from the Creggan estate in Derry), is a distant relative of ours. If you look at a photograph of her I’m sure you’ll agree that she and I are almost identical in appearance.

9 February 2025, Sunday

At the cinema in the shopping centre’s basement we had reached the midway point in the Bob Dylan biopic, A Complete Unknown, before Priyatelkata remembered she didn’t like his music. Luckily for her it only lasted two and a half hours. Luckily for the cinema staff we stayed to the end because there was nobody else there.

Driving home, she sang some of his songs, suggesting she’d enjoyed the film at least a little. Unluckily for me, her voice wasn’t quite as melodic as Bob’s.

I’d hoped the soundtrack would include Subterranean Homesick Blues (Подземни Носталгия По Дома Блус) sung in Bulgarian but was disappointed.

10 February 2025, Monday

Having never before visited the old village of Novo Selo (Ново Село, meaning ‘New Village’) we were surprised to find a thriving community huddled round a square with two shops, a café-bar, a beautiful old church and an impressive mosque.

The brightly painted building we were sure was an antique shop turned out to be the home of Daniella and Vladimir, two Bulgarian artists who’d recently returned after living twenty-one years in Albuquerque. They invited us in to their Aladdin’s cave to look at their own beautiful ceramics and paintings, and incredible artefacts from their travels. New friends on a beautiful day.

11 February 2025, Tuesday

Flicking through a travel journal I read that five years ago today Priyatelkata and I were in the mountain town of San Cristobal de las Casas in Mexico’s poorest state, Chiapas.

I always look back on that six-week backpacking trip with great fondness so I’d forgotten those two nights at the mamá of all grubby hostels. I had a cold, she had hurt her back and the local cuisine comprised almost entirely of mushy red beans and Doritos, so there was more life in the bacteria on the shower curtain than there was in us. But we loved it there.

12 February 2025, Wednesday

A short verse about a slightly longer verse…

With the weather too cold to leave home

I sat down and I penned me a poem

Posted on the writers’ website

No one’s yet told me it’s shite

But I suspect a few readers might groan

The brave outdoor thermometer growled -13°C at breakfast time and the day’s high point was when it hit zero but by then I’d decided to devote my time to drinking tea and daydreaming. The daydreaming was the subject of the poem I wrote this poem about but I forgot to mention the tea in both.

13 February 2025, Thursday

The town of Dryanovo gets its name from dryan (дрян, meaning ‘cornelian cherry’) because they grow in wild profusion there. We spent the afternoon buying weird old stuff in the huge derelict factory that’s now a junk shop hypermarket so we saw no such trees.

Forty years ago Dryanovo industrial estate employed thousands of workers. We wondered where they’d gone. It being alarmingly colder inside the shop than out, they’d probably all perished from hypothermia.

There were no dryan trees in Café Algrota (perhaps the Bulgarian for ‘grotty’) either but there was magnificent coffee, cake, our Belgian friends and warmth.

14 February 2025, Friday

At Gorna Oryahovitsa’s Friday market, Priyatelkata bought a 1988 model Singer electric sewing machine. She’d previously only owned a pedal-operated one but, having recently seen the Bob Dylan film, she’d decided to go electric.

The stallholder tried to power up his generator to demonstrate that it worked but the generator, which appeared brand new, strangely wouldn’t start. Eventually he gave up and offered to reduce the price if she would take him at his word.

Back home the machine was declared kaput but we know a man who fixes everything electrical so there was only a little grumpiness and swearing.

15 February 2025, Saturday

Priyatelkata, being the first to rise, discovered that Gaïa, our Shih Tzu (shit zoo), had made a nocturnal deposit on the kitchen floor. To make matters worse the dog had somehow got herself clarted in it. Transferring Gaïa from shit show to shower, Priyatelkata hurt her back and spent the remainder of the day bedbound.

We were without electricity for much of the afternoon. Not normally a big problem but wandering around in the dark where an incontinent dog lurked required extreme caution.

All in all, a shit day, as Samuel Pepys wrote in his diary on 2 September 1666.

16 February 2025, Sunday

The first album Planxty by Irish folk band Planxty, and Aladdin Sane by David Bowie were both released early in 1973. There was nothing glam rock about Planxty so kids at school in Leeds ridiculed me for buying the record, suggesting I lived in a lay-by and my mother was a gold-toothed, fortune-telling witch. Simultaneously buying Bowie’s album didn’t excuse me from their ‘travelling tinker boy’ epithet.

I still play both albums regularly at home but they’re never discussed. So I was delighted today to hear Priyatelkata singing the Planxty song Arthur McBride totally out of the blue… and tune.  

17 February 2025, Monday

We had that half-hearted snow. Had it not snowed at all I could have pursued an outdoor pursuit and had it snowed more heavily I’d have easily accepted that today’s fresh air was a non-starter. But it snowed lightly most of the day. Curses!

It was comforting to know we didn’t need to go out until suddenly we needed to go out to buy druggy stuff for Priyatelkata’s vape pipe thing and various food semi-essentials. The roads were only slushy then but later it snowed long and hard. I was glad that we wouldn’t be needing to go out tomorrow.

18 February 2025, Tuesday

It snowed… all day, and all of the night!

The Malki Chiflik Facebook group is like a probiotic yoghurt-coated version of The Archers in Cyrillic script. Today it contained anger.

The word on the ulitsa (улица, meaning ‘street’) was that our entire grit supply had been scattered in the children’s playground, so the short but steeply undulating stretch of road between us and the village square, and civilisation beyond, remained Torvill and Dean grade slippery. Some foresaw this and parked their cars in the square before the snow started. Others, not expecting stationary vehicles or such thick ice, collided with them.

19 February 2025, Wednesday

I considered going out to the garden to build a snowman, as suggested by friends and relatives living in warmer climes, but then I remembered I’m no longer six years old so my excitement level would be virtually non-existent. Even if I was still six, or even eight, I’d return to the house twenty minutes later feeling cold and wet and wishing I hadn’t bothered because it wouldn’t have looked anything like a real man, or even a conventional snowman, and it would melt within a day or two making everybody sad like the boy was in the Snowman film.

20 February 2025, Thursday

The toothless old widow who sits beneath the pomegranate tree in the square told me that her favourite Anton Chekov quote was ‘People don’t notice whether it’s winter or summer when they’re happy’ and then added her own words ‘It’s a bit like when you’ve drunk a litre of rakia’ as she squirted Ambre Solaire from a bottle onto her bare knees.

Yооrgan (юрган) meaning ‘goose feather quilt’ is an old Turkish word used by Bulgarians. Today was a yoorgan day because Bulgarians huddled in quilts while the whole country was covered by a quilt in the form of deep snow.

21 February 2025, Friday

Before the sun rose I leapt out of bed to photograph our garden thermometer to prove to the world that temperatures of -16° Celsius really do exist. Then I leapt back in.

Conscious that we’d had no exercise during the current cold snap, we braved a stroll to the big shop to buy vital victuals and instant KitKat Chunkies. On the return leg we tried to calculate the calories burned to calories swallowed ratio, hoping for an answer that didn’t imply gluttony. We soon gave up because we were in a rush to get home to put the dinner on.

22 February 2025, Saturday

As puddles appeared on the kitchen floor I blamed Gaïa the incontinent dog until I realised they coincided with the tap being turned on. 

When the weather’s mega-nippy we leave a tap partly turned on overnight as constant flow in the pipe reduces the risk of freezing. Beneath the sink the normally empty plastic wastepipe leading outside wasn’t empty and consequently there had been a gradual accumulation of ice which eventually caused a split.

I didn’t notice this until just before bedtime, so it was something to keep my mind occupied all night as I struggled to go to sleep.

23 February 2025, Sunday

An hour-long skirmish under the sink with deceased insects and arachnids in a collection sufficiently large to put the Natural History Museum to shame (plus a few live ones, plus cobwebs) proved my frozen pipe theory incorrect. The leakage was purely down to inferior quality plumbing materials. Ivaylo, our superior quality plumber, will be called tomorrow. Meanwhile the sink is out of bounds!

Normal diesel freezes in cars at -8.5°C, so in winter we buy the high performance stuff like Max Verstappen does. Despite this, the engine still chuntered as we drove off to buy a new washing up bowl.  

24 February 2025, Monday

In recent days I’ve questioned the validity of Anders Celsius’ temperature scale. He got zero right, which was more than Daniel Fahrenheit managed (he was probably on the sauce at the time) but a scale with nothing else on it isn’t really much kop.

My scale would contain no numbers but the following indicators:

1. Geordies wear jumpers
2. Too cold to emerge from the beneath the duvet
3. The optimum temperature of Guinness
4. Comfortable for wearing shorts
5. Safe to swim in the sea
6. The optimum temperature of coffee
7. As hot as the customer service lady in Kaufland
8. Total immersion in Guinness recommended

25 February 2025, Tuesday

With the snow gradually melting, I stepped out to inspect the garden but surrendered after ten minutes as the cold air hurt my face.

Ivaylo came to fix the problematic pipe beneath our sink. He’s a really nice fella but wouldn’t stay long as he had other pipes to plumb. We were secretly pleased because it enabled us to crack on with the physical act of washing up that we’d craved since Saturday.   

Easyjet emailed to remind me I’m flying to Manchester next month. It would be more useful if they could remind me to buy some canine worming tablets.

26 February 2025, Wednesday

A day for celebrating the fortieth anniversary of Priyatelkata’s twenty-first birthday.

It’s seven years since the so-called Russian Restaurant in town was sold to non-Russians but it retains the old epithet amongst immigrants as they can’t remember Asenevtsi, its real name. We went to enjoy the usual scrumptious fare and discussed the possible run up to, and outcome of, either one of us catching a dose of dementia.

The head waiter remarked that we discussed it five times during our ninety-minute stay, but at least we could remember the name of his restaurant whereas he can never remember our names.

27 February 2025, Thursday

Thanatophobia is an extreme fear of death or the dying process but better than atophobia which is the fear of digital auto-correction. However, the word thanatophobia has been in use much longer than atophobia, so sufferers of the latter might find their mobile devices erroneously correcting the name of their condition to make them think they actually have a problem with the former.

Another peculiar one is nomophobia which is the irrational fear of being without a mobile phone. You’d think misophonia would have been a better word for it but that’s already in use as the fear of pen-clickers.

28 February 2025, Friday

I wasn’t even out of my bed when Natalia, the mayor’s right-hand woman, phoned to summon me to the village office. I had a package to collect. From the postage stamps I immediately knew it was my long-lost Irish food parcel.

What better way to celebrate the end of the coldest month than with three kilogrammes of Flahavan’s Pinhead Oatmeal and twelve Crunchies, dispatched to me two months ago by my American friend Cathy in Kilkenny.

I’ll ration myself to one Crunchie per month for a year (having quickly dealt with January’s backlog). Watch this space to monitor my success.

Photograph: The view through the window in my kitchen door on a day that could be described as frigid to nippy.

This Sort of Thing - March 2025

Hot Cross Buns and Fish and Chips