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