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