1 March, Friday
Today Bulgarians celebrate Baba Marta (Баба Марта, meaning ‘Grandmother March’).
Baba Marta, a temperamental woman, brings nice weather for her spring cleaning on 1 March. If her brothers (January and February) annoy her she summons the return of bad weather. This is the beginning of spring and any snowflakes seen after today are merely feathers from her mattress as she shakes it outside.
We give each other red and white bracelets (symbolising health and fertility), worn or hung in trees for luck until the first sign of spring appears; most commonly plum blossom or the arrival of the storks in our skies.
2 March, Saturday
For Priyatelkata and I, the first signs of spring are tremendous pains in our muscles and joints as we attack our expanse of garden wilderness park with a wave of shock and awe.
The shock comes from us realising how much work there is to do and the awe is more of an ‘aaarrrggghhh’ as we drag our weary bodies up to bed at the end of gruelling days.
We could do with one of those ice baths that athletes use to relieve sore, burning muscles but I don’t like the cold so I’d have to keep my jumper on.
3 March, Sunday
My journal entries for March might be a bit repetitive. They say there’s more than one way to skin a cat (we’ve counted five so far) but there’s only one way to attack a field of aggressive spikey shrubs. Workdays differ only in the variation in nosey passers-by who always have suggestions to make. I congratulate myself in my ability to mutter under my breath in Bulgarian.
Today was Liberation Day. The 146th anniversary of us being freed from the Ottoman Yoke. We wave Russian flags because they helped us. In September we have Independence Day when we despise Russians.
4 March, Monday
Born and raised beside the North Sea and Atlantic Ocean, I struggle to accustom myself to warm sunny weather on Bulgarian public holidays. Garden centre sales of barbeques today exceeded one per capita of population as galoshes were kicked off and Chalga music enchanted mountainsides.
We lack a swimming pool in our garden but luckily the water heater in the cupboard beneath the kitchen sink sprang a leak enabling our menagerie to recreate the beauty of a Serengeti water hole just beside the fridge.
The disaster necessitated cleaning of the cupboard, now tidy for the first time in eight years.
5 March, Tuesday
By noon our man Ivaylo had condemned our water heater and installed a new one for only 240 shiny leva (£100). The rusty innards of the discarded machine resembled a wartime landmine which I half buried by our garden gate to deter strangers from our parking place.
Magnificent spring sunshine highlighted how filthy our windows had become thanks to felines pawing at them to gain entry to the house. Cats lack the thumbs needed for turning door keys. Installing a cat flap would allow other creatures to enter, upsetting the domestic bliss. I bit the bullet and cleaned the windows.
6 March, Wednesday
I’m a writer not a chainsaw murderer, so I only use my Husqvarna 236 for felling deceased trees and giving them a decent send off. My main source of cardiovascular exercise recently has been the 48 pulls on the starter cord each time I’ve used this deadly contraption. The man in the psychopath supplies shop disappeared behind a curtain with it, re-emerging two minutes later to report no problems found. Back in my wilderness I found only 12 pulls were required to bring it to life. I considered this a 75% success.
Fancy complicated coffee machines give me similar headaches.
7 March, Thursday
On wet days I sit on the terrace and write, or read. Today was a day for reading Patrick Kavanagh.
At school they gave us poems, every single one of them bland and meaningless in my world. I thought I hated poetry until I found my own poets. Patrick was one. He told me to dance with Kitty Stobling and I have done, though she has a different name.
I had a very pleasant journey, thank you sincerely
For giving me my madness back, or nearly.
Had I lived in Dublin in the 1950s I’m sure we’d have been friends.
8 March, Friday
It being International Women’s Day, my international woman and I took Ludo, our scabby international cat, to the veterinary clinic to discuss feline allergies. Two vets saw us. Our visits generate money and laughter for them so they seem to appreciate these appointments as much as our sick beasts do. They said the scratching and bleeding should stop soon, at least for the cat.
At Вкусотерия (Ver-koose-oh-terr-yah) Café, another regular haunt, we ate not international but Bulgarian food served by more smiling Bulgarian faces.
It’s important to point out that no business connections exist between the veterinary clinic and the café.
9 March, Saturday
Priyatelkata bought a solar panel device in Praktiker to power up her woodland garden art shack. Because it’s portable, when the sun sets she can hop in the car with it and drive to a place where it’s still daytime and continue her electricity generating.
If Yuri Gagarin was still alive it would be his ninetieth birthday today. I don’t normally like fireworks but I had a whim to light the blue touch paper on a rocket to mark the occasion.
Incidentally, the possibility of me singing ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight’ is always just a whim away, a whim away.
10 March, Sunday
Standing by the linden I beheld resplendent white blooms of plum trees in every direction except where my view was obstructed by the rustic timbers of our shed. Incredible that such beauty could exist in close proximity to a place stuffed to the rafters with all the shit that we don’t want in the house but don’t feel ready to throw away.
Serenaded by birdsong and the hum of a myriad of bees, swarms of those awful black flies that I’ve only ever seen in March in Bulgaria sucked sweet blood from uncovered limbs. The first weeping sores of spring!
11 March, Monday
Balkan folklore dictates that the second Monday of every third month be known as ‘Anal Gland Monday’. Luckily for us, nobody else in the Balkans knows this so we were first in at the vet’s at 8:30 am to have our Shih Tzu unblocked. Following this, our breakfast turned out to be a simple affair.
Our neighbour Hasan worked in a nearby garden, his feet protected from thick mud by clinical white wellington boots, presumably acquired from where he’s previously worked as a brain surgeon or slaughterhouse attendant. His cigarette tar cough so similar to the call of the jay.
12 March, Tuesday
Crado (aka Cat Nouveau) is a big boy now. He caught a slow worm to wrestle on the terrace, as Tarzan might with a crocodile. A reminder that the vernal equinox approaches fast, bringing that time of year when our kitchen floor is littered with dismembered baby lizards.
Thunder, lightning and deluge prevented any outdoor work. Our dogs hid under furniture whilst others living nearby, tormented by the static electricity accumulated in their fur, howled like crazed beasts from Hades. A Verdi CD played loud drowns out all external noises.
None of this ever happened when I lived in Leeds.
13 March, Wednesday
Correspondence from the Mayor of Dryanovo advised me today that on 20 December I became a victim of a traffic speed camera, but for 14 лева (£6) the matter could be put straight.
Letters are rare here. Utility bills are digital and Christmas cards non-existent. There’s no delivery service so we collect mail weekly from the office of our village mayor, if we remember. An animated television series called Postman Petko and His Black and White Kotka would be lost on Bulgarian kids.
Junk mail is yet to be invented so we’re never mythered by Domino’s Pizza, UKIP or Jehovah’s Onlookers.
14 March, Thursday
Hurroo! It’s the 27th Annual International Rivers Day!
So what’s your favourite river? I’m torn between the very local Yantra and the not too distant Dunav, the former meandering spectacularly but the latter being the second longest in Europe, just pipped by the Volga.
I was born by the Tees and have since lived near an Ouse, Avon, Thames, Clyde and Medway, but they all looked a bit dreary and mucky.
We could do with some new rivers and it seems that during the last 24 hours, persistent rain has formed one in our garden. I’d love an oxbow lake.
15 March, Friday
Ding Dong! The Patriarch’s dead!
Neophyte, the Head of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, has shuffled off his immortal coil. Religious people here say he did a good job, not once displaying unorthodox tendencies.
We’ve had many Patriarchs, Leontius of Preslav getting the ball rolling in 919 AD. I must admit that Neophyte never gave me any cause for complaint. He’s our version of the Pope but not as famous. You’d never see his face on a commemorative teapot in a Galway souvenir shop.
They’re taking bets on who’ll replace him but in the meantime Neil Warnock is in temporary charge.
16 March, Saturday
Despite the return of the sun to our valley, I was unable to labour on the land because of lower back pain. Assembling new flat-pack furniture, a joint venture enjoyed with Priyatelkata in her creativity hut, seemed the perfect alternative though not the antidote.
The standard of our conversation fluctuated with each turn of the free Allen Key. How strange that spasm, orgasm and sarcasm rhyme. Almost poetic!
Would it be cruel to expect six-year-old children in Vietnamese sweatshops to assemble the furniture they’ve already done a 15 hour working day to manufacture?
Free Allen Key! Why? What’s he done?
17 March, Sunday
Iris is 80% Irish.
Today, to justify wearing green knickers and leprechaun hats, the whole world claims to have had an Irish granny. Plastic Paddies waving Côte d'Ivoire flags and bawling out traditional Bing Crosby songs about good luck and smiling eyes make eejits of themselves while Ireland looks on thinking if they could just have their six counties back they’d be grand.
Senior Irish politicians are away in America to celebrate, maybe expecting an Oscar like Cillian Murphy. Surely McMullan’s Central Bar in Cushendall would be an altogether better place for the craic.
And please don’t call him Patty.
18 March, Monday
It’s the Eastern Orthodox first day of Lent. Strange that Ireland too didn’t consider seeing out Patrick’s Party Day before beginning the fasting. We’re also midway through Ramadan, so that must also be a Catholic thing. For me, every day is one for neither fasting nor feasting.
In Ireland (maybe Australia too) it’s St Sheelah’s Day. Historians suggest she was either the mother or sister of Patrick but aren’t sure because they were all so hungover from the previous day’s strong drink shenanigans.
A welcoming Sheelah Na Gig ancient stone grotesque (complete with engorged vulva) hangs perpetually above our door.
19 March, Tuesday
I empathise with brown bears’ trepidation upon emerging from the hibernation den each spring. Will the world still exist and, if so, will there be sustenance available? I have similar concerns wondering if the petrol strimmer will start. But today it did and my heart purred in time with its two-stroke engine. The wheelbarrow’s never a problem.
Any flora enjoyed by pollinators, I allow to grow. But Bulgarian gardens in March are known to go a bit mental and there exists great danger of being overcome by Sticky Willy (Galium Aparine) and friends. Only a good thrashing can prevent this.
20 March, Wednesday
I love the Bulgarian Health System. Within two hours of seeing Dr Kruschev this morning for the annual safety check I was back home with the wheels in motion to hopefully ensure I’d survive another twelve months in this mad world.
An electrocardiograph seemed like a good idea. The nurse who is always by his side, and who looks remarkably like the woman who changes over our winter/summer car tyres twice a year, attached her jump leads to my erogenous zones and I started first time.
The blood test laboratory woman looked like Amy Winehouse and took the piss… literally!
21 March, Thursday
It was the vernal equinox today, or yesterday. Only Wikipedia knows this for sure. I’ve long admired those purple druidy people for building their megalithic stone structures without the use of JCB’s or cheap migrant labour, but I’m astounded to know that they must have had internet access 5,000 years ago.
I replanted some of my Empress Tree seedlings at the edge of our weather-damaged neighbouring forest.
Priyatelkata told me it’s lucky to stand in a pile of dog shit on the first day of spring. Had I not done, I might have strimmed it which would have been messy.
22 March, Friday
The black flies from hell that suck sizeable quantities of blood from my flesh (nearly an armful) whenever I venture into our garden at this time of year were cursing their luck today. These beasts hate bonfires but I love them. I lit one on the patch of land we are battling to semi-cultivate.
With my vampiric assailants subdued by smoke I could graft all day without having to shout profanities to scare them away, which don’t work anyway probably because of the language barrier between us. They don’t bite our Bulgarian neighbours, which I consider tantamount to racial discrimination.
23 March, Saturday
In Moscow more than 130 people died in a terrorist attack on a rock venue.
The world is shocked but not horrified. Social media isn’t awash with users declaring ‘I stand with Moscow’. Charlie Hebdo didn’t even get out of bed. Innocent people died but they were only innocent Russians.
Meanwhile in Gaza, far more than 130 people died. Well I assume so as that appears to happen on most days. The world no longer seems shocked. Innocent people died but they weren’t even Russian. They weren’t white or Christian.
Lviv was on fire too.
These warmongers everywhere sicken me.
24 March, Sunday
Breakfast in the garden was interrupted by storks. It’s hard to concentrate on a bowl of Lactobacillus Bulgaricus (the deliciously healthy yoghurt of the Republic of Bulgaria) when seven of these beautiful creatures decide to circle overhead. We’d previously seen several above our house but never more than three at a time, and never circling. Possibly just vultures in fancy dress that assumed my age-related deteriorating physical state rendered me decomposing carrion.
They flew off eventually, our cold coffee was replaced by hot and the rest of the day was spent working the land and further diminishing my physical state.
25 March, Monday
In cold Monday morning rain I returned to our doctor for the classified results read by James Alexander Gordon. I can’t boast elite athlete status but there’s nothing wrong with me that losing a few kilograms won’t put right. An ultrasound scan revealed a meze of internal organs all the right size and in the right place and I’m not having a baby but the possibility of an ingrown toenail can’t be ruled out.
I finished reading Sara Pascoe’s book ‘Animal’. This absolute eye-opener I found very funny and extremely educational in terms of bodily bits and attitudes towards womenfolk.
26 March, Tuesday
Cat Crado began the day with a lump almost the size of his head on his head. Near his bed wriggled a sсоlореndrа (25cm long venomous leathery centipede). Fearing a fatality, our vet drained a pot of gooey unpleasantness from his protrusion under general anaesthetic. It turned out to be only an abscess.
Our beautiful animal with long white hair looked utterly pathetic when part-shaven, splattered with blood and iodine and wobbling drunkenly in a state of semi-anaesthesia.
The sсоlореndrа, although displaying none of these features and having been found not guilty of inflicting the injury, didn’t fare so well.
27 March, Wednesday
We went to the KAT (Bulgarian for DVLA) to pay my speeding fine. Policewoman Plovdiv gave me a 30% discount, presumably because I’m a regular customer. Across the road we paid the annual council tax for our house, a reasonably affordable 32 leva (£14.50).
Dimitar at the metalwork shop said he could do amazing things structurally in our garden. He’d once been to Belfast on holiday with his SS Titanic obsessed father. They’d loved the craic in the pubs on the Falls Road but felt intimidated on the Shankhill. So I’ll be accompanying them next time as their cultural attaché.
28 March, Thursday
If every flower on our pear tree produces fruit there’ll be no room left for a partridge. Should we call the man from Del Monte? Whether fruitful or not, the old tree close to our house is currently one of the most beautiful living organisms that I have ever encountered.
A bridge spanning the top end of Chesapeake Bay near America’s Baltimore (the scariest and dirtiest place I’ve ever been) collapsed when a ship bumped into it. In 1977 I went under that bridge in a ship in both directions. It looked a bit rickety then. Luckily I wasn’t driving.
29 March, Friday
The Friday market in Gorna Oryahovitsa has moved from the town centre to the football stadium car park. Better organised but lacking the atmosphere and our favourite gypsy stallholders. We bought old Bulgarian stuff that would interest only the most eccentric.
Restaurant ‘Bulgaria’ in Gorna Oryahovitsa, closed by the disastrous effects of the global pandemonium, has reopened but lacking the atmosphere, tasty menu and our favourite staff. Perpetually hungry, we vowed to persevere with the new owners.
Our favourite garden centre in Lyaskovets reopened after winter closure. Well-stocked, as ever, but the boss woman still lacks the ability to smile.
30 March, Saturday
The day of the new asma (асма); the Bulgarian word for the metal structure for training grapevines. We intend training ours to bring cups of tea and sandwiches on demand.
With the temperature in the shade reaching 32° Celsius, Rado and his sidekick welded together large sections of metal in the sunniest part of our garden. He must already be accustomed to hardship looking as much like Wayne Rooney as he does.
In the cool of the early evening I tied our poor battered and bruised vines in place and they are happy again. I heard them singing Red Red Wine.
31 March, Sunday
Apparently the clocks changed at 2:00 am, but not ours. I had to change ours manually myself. However, the stretch in the evening super-compensated for this inconvenience. Green shoots sprouted all around, as if they’d been waiting.
Bulgaria was admitted to the Shengen Area so now we can wander willy-nilly within the European Union without having to talk to Border Police. I’ll miss the nice woman who mans the crossing near Durankulak. She taught me the Romanian words for hello, thank you and clinic.
We ventured no further than our gate. In our world the only borders are herbaceous ones.
Photograph: The old pear tree close to our house is currently one of the most beautiful living organisms that I have ever encountered.