1 January 2026, Thursday
Emerging from my chrysalis of December gloom I’d become a new superior lifeform. Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, I leapt from the bed and ran round the house rejoicing the arrival of January, a month named after Janus, the Roman god of beginnings, transitions and warehouse clearance sales. The sun shone all day.
I resolved to give up hope of the world ever being a better place, so effectively I’d given up my panic-infested insomnia. In Pavlikeni market I bought a tee-shirt with ‘I surrender’ printed in eight languages to welcome whoever chooses to invade us.
Gh géillim!
2 January 2026, Friday
In winter, groups of elaborately costumed men known as Kukeri perform traditional rituals to scare away evil spirits. Folklore experts say they’re a remnant of a Thracian cult of the god Dionysus. Tonight we watched them dance in the square beneath the fortress. They impressed and entertained but failed to scare away the five-year-old monster in pink that ran around on the wall only centimetres in front of us, restricting many people’s views.
Due to a combination of supply problems and a nation’s reluctance, we haven’t yet been able to spend a physical euro. People without bank cards will perish.
3 January 2026, Saturday
The first week of January’s traditionally the time when people return to the shops all the dodgy stuff that’s come their way during the festive period. What better time than now for President Gobshite to hand back his FIFA Peace Prize? Perhaps he could exchange it for vouchers or a FIFA Violating International Law Prize.
I like to think that getting his heavy mob to blast Caracas to bits and kidnap the Venezuelan president was a dress rehearsal for a raid on Tel Aviv to bring Adolf Netanyahu to justice.
In the meantime, I hope his next shit’s a hedgehog.
4 January 2026, Sunday
I usually ignore the pop-up advertisements that pop up when I turn on my computing machine. Years of waiting for one advertising pop-up toasters were in vain, but should I ever need split-crotch surgical support tights, a sit-on lawnmower in the shape of Harry Potter’s car, or a device for scratching my arse without getting up from the chair, then I know exactly where to find them.
Today there popped up a short video of a Bulgarian woman asking me in her native tongue if I’d like to learn to speak English. I was overcome with feelings of cultural assimilation.
5 January 2026, Monday
Bemoaning bodily weight gains, we questioned how this could have happened. Our diet consists of healthy, fresh, locally-produced, home-cooked ingredients that give a wholesome glow during preparation, consumption and digestion. Perhaps we’d been too wholesome.
Local restaurant food is equally good. We know the staff and they know us. Their provocation with delicious morsels, often free of charge, is downright wicked but nice. Shopska salads and grilled fish at restaurant ‘Etno’ are irresistible but so is their freshly made tiramisu. Even our socks have felt too tight so sacrifices must be made. Either the tiramisu goes or the socks go.
6 January 2026, Tuesday
Barry’s Irish tea isn’t grown in Ireland and it’s not sold in Bulgarian shops. It starts off in East Africa, gets shipped to Cork for packaging, and then people in Canada buy some to sell online to international tea drinkers like me. So, the contents of the teapot that sat on my desk as I wrote this had travelled more than 25,000 kilometres. I was pleased it was perfect because sending it back would have been a right old rigmarole.
Eight packets (i.e. two kilograms) arrived today, on Bulgarian Orthodox Christmas Day. I must have been on Santa’s nice list.
7 January 2026, Wednesday
The euro is at last seeping into our society. A woman complained on Facebook she’d bought some Bulgarian produced vegetables in the market, paid for them with Bulgarian euro but was given change in French and German euro. ‘Why can’t all these countries in the European Union keep themselves to themselves?’ she asked in bitter upper case to emphasise her fury.
Elsewhere a man was arrested for trying to pay for a drink with a forged fifty euro note. Hats off to him for showing willingness to embrace the togetherness of our European cousins, albeit in his own unconventional way.
8 January 2026, Thursday
I learnt a new word. Not a Bulgarian one, but sort of English. America’s new word for kill is unalive because they’ve worn out the old one. I tried it myself with I could unalive a cuppa tea.
America’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (known as ICE though they’re not at all cool) unalived thirty-seven-year-old Renee Good in Minneapolis as she drove away from them. Trump called her a domestic terrorist. If he ever had a brain in the first place someone must have unalived it.
Former Leeds United star, Terry Yorath, died under completely different circumstances. Sad but civilised.
9 January 2026, Friday
I’ve always taken pride in my own personal symmetry. I dribble from both sides of my mouth at the same time, both of my feet are useless at football and there are exactly 623 hairs on each side of my philtrum.
What’s puzzled me lately in this respect is why the painful arthritis in my carpometacarpal joints rips through both thumbs with equal intensity when it’s the right one that does all the work. They’re only ever in action together when I’m practising my gymnastics routine on the parallel bars, working a nightshift at Mucky Monika’s Massage Parlour or typing.
10 January 2026, Saturday
We spend very little money in cold weather, not because we’re canny with the cash, but because Bulgarian shopkeepers set their heating to gas mark Saudi Arabia. In Billa you could take a Findus frozen ready-meal for one (if they sold them) and it would be warm enough to eat before you reached the checkout. So when rugged northern types arrive, such as us, suffocation can only be avoided by either stripping down to vests and pants at the door or just nipping in and out sharpish to grab absolute essentials. Today I lost consciousness whilst buying a pork Viennetta.
11 January 2026, Sunday
I watched the snow falling. Intricately woven crystalline discs of virgin white delicately floating from sinister black skies.
I watched a garden disappear and four old episodes of Father Ted. I watched eight cats, two dogs and a European female sleeping. I slept myself, briefly.
I watched the pot on the stove so long that I saw it boil and I watched the contents of the food cupboard dwindle.
I watched the place beyond the trees where I’d have seen the sun set had it made an appearance at all.
I watched the side of our valley disappear. Everything disappeared.
12 January 2026, Monday
I watched the snow falling.
I washed old fountain pens I’d discovered in a box brought from England ten years back. Holding them underwater to squeeze the rubber part of barrels blocked and blacked with dried up ink left over from stories written long ago, I saw a frenzied attack of wrathful squids in my kitchen sink. Childlike satisfaction in the absence of candlewax to peel from a wine bottle neck.
A reminder of the pleasure to be had from writing on a sheet of paper with a fountain pen. A reminder of an Irish country schoolroom in another age.
13 January 2026, Tuesday
I considered going out into the garden to build a snowman but then I remembered that I was no longer six years old so the associated level of excitement would be virtually nil. And even if I had been six, or even eight, I would have returned to the house twenty minutes later feeling cold and wet and wishing I hadn’t bothered because my icy creation would have looked nothing like a real man, or even a real snowman, and it would melt within a couple of days making everybody sad and weepy like the kid in the Snowman film.
14 January 2026, Wednesday
The highlight of the day was the point in the mid-afternoon when the temperature on our terrace reached minus 6°C, having risen dramatically from the minus 14°C it had been at the point in the morning when I rose somewhat less than dramatically from the warm sanctuary of the bed. Had I known how the day was going to pan out I probably wouldn’t have gone to the trouble of rising at all.
The newsreader lady on the telly listed the names of the countries that Trump was going to bomb, invade or mispronounce, and Bulgaria wasn’t one of them.
15 January 2026, Thursday
Despite the day’s Arctic conditions, the Quink in my recently rediscovered fountain pen hadn’t frozen. The pen had become a necessity as my computer had fallen ill and needed to visit the menders whose shop sits at the top end of a precipitous street where car parking is impossible even on warm days. The snowplough’s deposits would have filled all vacant spaces and destroyed all hope. Two doors along from the computer shop there’s Mucky Monika’s Massage Parlour with a parking space to the front that’s constantly empty because people won’t use it for fear of wagging tongues, myself included.
16 January 2026, Friday
Wrapped tightly in her timeworn black shawl and warming her hands on the fleshiest parts of her goat, the toothless old widow who sits beneath the pomegranate tree in the square wailed a lament in old Bulgarian. As snow fell around her, jackals howled in the forest on the mountainside.
‘Is that an old battle song from the dark days of struggle for freedom from the cruel Ottoman Yoke?’ I asked her.
‘No, it’s I Feel Like I’m Fixing to Die Rag, by Country Joe and the Fish. Me and my Vladislav sang it at Woodstock in ’69,’ she replied.
17 January 2026, Saturday
It snowed again in the night. I was still without a computer and the desire or ability to leave the house.
In a second-hand shop in Castlebar years ago I bought a bundle of Edna O’Brien novels, and today I set about reading them. The feel and smell of old dog-eared brown pages soothes the mind as a fountain pen does. In my copy of Girl with Green Eyes there were no adverts, algorithms or Ukraine beauty queens asking for my bank details. But I did find Mrs F O’Riordan’s newsagent’s bill from August 1982. I love a good bookmark!
18 January 2026, Sunday
These January nights have been sixty degrees colder than last August’s afternoons were. The feathery snow that fell all day wouldn’t have warranted a mention had it not settled on a sheet of ice the size of an East European country.
However, the hiemal hellishness came with benefits, they being:
- A potato peelings trek to the compost heap required six pairs of socks, so the sock drawer where they fester enjoyed a much-needed sorting out.
- There was neither hide nor hair of a mosquito to be seen.
- Thoughts of window washing were futile.
- We didn’t have to talk to anybody.
19 January 2026, Monday
After nine years in the job, President Rumen Radev stood down as preparations began for this year’s general election to replace the government that resigned en bloc last November. Before hanging up his ermine boots he described our governance model as ‘a façade of democracy controlled by oligarchic mechanisms’, but he could have said that about any so-called democratic country really. He seemed alright to me, vetoing daft government decisions in all the right places.
He’s off to his mates’ place in Novosibirsk for a warm, apparently. Sam Allardyce will stand in for him for the rest of the season.
20 January 2026, Tuesday
We spent our final Bulgarian leva on dog food in Kaufland. We’ve still a few small denomination coins from the old times which are difficult to spend and will surely keep turning up like bad pennies, but otherwise we’re fully-fledged Eurozoners.
Already we’ve pockets full of small denomination brown coins from the new times which will probably also never be spent, but at least they’re shiny. Bulgarians’ hostile attitude towards the euro melted when they discovered this shininess. The wave of enthusiasm prompted the Finance Minister to consider adopting foil-wrapped chocolate coins from Christmas trees as our next new currency.
21 January 2026, Wednesday
Baba is our word for both grandmother and midwife, and today was the traditional feast of Babinden (Baba’s Day).
To mark the occasion, babies are bathed by the Baba and anointed in butter and honey (though we prefer toast). Young mothers provide bread, banitsa and wine that they’ve made. After the feast, the Baba’s taken to the nearest river, lake or well to be ritually bathed. Men may not participate, especially policemen. The day ends with Horo (community folklore dancing) in village squares.
Priyatelkata and I weren’t invited because we haven’t got a baby. Ah well, there’s always next year.
22 January 2026, Thursday
I self-diagnosed another acute attack of Turlough’s Wintery Abysmal Torture (T.W.A.T.). I’ve no energy, no enthusiasm, no appetite, constant nagging headaches, and I have hideous dreams if I manage to escape insomnia. Symptoms collectively contributing to an overwhelming feeling of wretchedness.
Restricted daylight, dank weather, and ground surfaces switching between ice and mud on a regular basis destroy all hope of getting any enjoyment from stepping outside. On the worst days (today being one of them) it’s a struggle to hold back tears. I hate winter and everything it brings. Apologies for the gloom. I’ll try to be cheery tomorrow.
23 January 2026, Friday
I briefly poked my head out of the door with the intention of doing some garden work to bring my mind and body back to life. What lay beyond the pile of snow that had slid from the roof seemed far from inviting, so I cleaned the fridge instead. There it was warmer, brighter and I found more things growing.
Outside, however, nature had struggled on, providing early signs of shoots and buds, and the uplifting sound of avian chirruping. In such harsh weather I was thankful to have been born a human rather than a bush or a tit.
24 January 2026, Saturday
By 8:00 a.m. I had already installed a new filter in the hoover. Success!
I spent the next twelve hours removing the new computer from its box, plugging an octopus family of cables into the back of it, downloading things I didn’t know I needed, and saying words I wouldn’t repeat in the company of nuns. Ticking boxes to prove to robots that I wasn’t a robot was particularly irritating.
By the end of the day, I had a brand-new up-to-date machine that worked exactly the same as the old one except one or two things were a different colour.
25 January 2026, Sunday
Another innocent civilian was murdered in the street by so-called law enforcement agents in Minneapolis. My thoughts on how powerful men are destroying our world could fill volumes, but thousands have already written similar, so I won’t. The news is deeply disturbing. I can’t close my eyes and make it go away.
As a distraction from current atrocities, I read a book about what an evil shower the Catholic Church had been in Ireland during the twentieth century. I felt the urge to swear at a nun but there were none handy.
Outside, the freezing fog lingered. Sunday, Bloody Sunday!
26 January 2026, Monday
The fog was warmer today than of late. I wondered if it was really foggy or had I just developed cataracts. I checked in the bathroom mirror but saw nothing. I wondered if I had really developed cataracts or was the mirror just a bit mucky.
Johnny Ten Levs would know. He had poor eyesight and only ever asked for money because he was saving up for a cataract operation. It was minutely possible that any change from cheap wine purchases had gone in his hospital jar. I wondered if he really had cataracts or was he just constantly pissed.
27 January 2026, Tuesday
On a day in great need of brightening up, our visit to Boyar café facing Tsarevets Fortress came as a brief ceasefire in our battle against ugly fat. In this respect, the delicious homemade cakes they tempted us with were akin to weapons of mass destruction, and the hazelnut lattes with which we washed them down were like dumdum bullets exploding inside our craving bellies.
We swore that this would be an isolated incident but the cruel café lady gave us loyalty cards and the promise of free stuff on our sixth visit. She should be charged with inciting gluttony.
28 January 2026, Wednesday
Bulgaria’s provisional government voted to close down our short-lived Anti-Corruption Commission. The proposal for the closure had been tabled by three-times former Prime Minister Boyko Borissov’s GERB party. Had the Commission’s Caribbean island, luxury yacht and Leeds United season tickets been made available to GERB officials then none of this unpleasantness would have occurred.
Searching for a few positives from the political catastrophe, Priyatelkata and I agreed that Boyko would be a great name for our next cat, or for a pop group formed by young men whose music and image are designed to appeal primarily to a teenage audience.
29 January 2026, Thursday
Lady Melania has a film out but nobody’s watching it, possibly because it’s not a nudey thing, which is unusual for her. Illegal immigrants hiding in cinemas where it’s being shown feel safe in the knowledge that nobody will find them there.
A poorly-timed release date, critics say. Perhaps if Carry On Trumping had been made years ago, with Barbara Windsor in the lead role and Charles Hawtrey playing the nutty husband, Melania would have enjoyed greater success. But I’m sure she’ll put all the disappointment behind her when she picks up the glittering FIFA award for Best Pantomime Dame.
30 January 2026, Friday
On the wettest days, drinking enough coffee to float Thunderbird 4 cheers me. Marooned on my settee I imagine myself being a guest on BBC Radio Four’s Desert Island Djezves programme, clutching my eight favourite Balkan copper pots along with the Complete Works of Hristo Botev and Roy Plomley’s autobiography. My chosen luxury item would be the Dagenham Girl Pipers.
Today my mind took me to a place where I was cast away with Richard Harris, Richard Ayoade, Richie Blackmore, Richard Dawkins, Richard Clayderman, Richard Piñanez, Little Richard and Nigel Farage in the first ever episode of Desert Island Dicks.
31 January 2026, Saturday
We said goodbye to Golyam Sechko (Голям Сечко, meaning ‘the Big Cutter’) otherwise known as January. He’s renowned for bringing severe cutting cold. Tomorrow Malak Sechko (Малък Сечко, ‘the Small Cutter’) arrives. He is February and the smaller, less fierce of the two folklore brothers, so we can start to look forward to the spring.
It was also the final day of the lev that’s been Bulgaria’s currency since 1881. We’ve had to change idioms as well as pricing and accounting systems. Two stotinki short of a lev (describing someone who’s not very clever) sounded much better than two cents short of a euro.
Photograph: The time I bumpted into Rumen Radev, President of the Republic of Bulgaria from 2017 to 2026.
This Sort of Thing - February 2026
Coming soon!