Eight Out of Ten Bulgarians

 

Eight Out of Ten Bulgarians

 

16 November, Saturday

Rakia Maria was walking by as I was leaving the house. She said she liked my new car, which is Bulgarian for can I have a lift into town? She’s got a heart of mercury so I willingly obliged.

Her ability to shout is coming on much better than her ability to put her hearing aid in. A few more offers of lifts and I fear I’ll become deaf myself.

I don’t enjoy shopping in Kaufland. Maria hates it so never goes there. Making a mental note of that, I remembered I’d still hear her if she was in Lidl.  

 

17 November, Sunday

Beautiful sunny hard frost mornings lift spirits but not leaves. Today saw the first of the season causing all remaining foliage to flump from trees, carpeting the ground. Acacias are always the most impressive. This, supplemented by a little new growth brought on by the recent rain and sun combination, brought colour back to the summer’s scorched earth.

Priyatelkata’s last full day in Bulgaria called for a last supper at the Russian restaurant. Tomorrow she’ll embark upon her huge France and Senegal adventure. We decided dessert could wait until she returns.

It’s a time for positive thoughts whilst awaiting regrowth. 

 

18 November, Monday

Having seen Priyatelkata onto the bus to take her to the other side of my world I resisted any temptation to go home to listen to my twenty-four album Gilbert O’Sullivan CD box set and instead bought new secateurs to brighten my melancholic mind.

The maître d' at Café Cybar invited me to take up membership, the benefits being discounts on food and drink, live music events and Bulgarian companionship. How could I refuse? It took me back five decades to East Leeds Labour Club where, as a member, I once chatted in the gents with British Chancellor, Denis Healey.

 

19 November, Tuesday

Waking from an excellent night’s sleep to see sparkly sunshine, I chose to take breakfast al fresco. Halfway through a second jug of coffee I noticed my eudaimonia had returned, providing sufficient enthusiasm to send me out on a mission to buy cat food.

The young lady assistant in the pet food shop had false fingernails that appeared to be wooden. She looked like she had ten of those pencils you get free in Ikea attached to her hands. I wanted to ask if it was painful when wiping her bum but I couldn’t remember the Bulgarian word for splinters.

 

20 November, Wednesday

I pruned my grapevines. Experts in this field (and every single Bulgarian is one) insist that brutality’s the key to a bountiful crop next year. During summer months they drape themselves across the asma (асма, meaning ‘cast iron vine-supporting framework similar to those things cricketers practice batting in’) providing a beautiful green shaded place, but today’s butchery reduced them to pitifully naked old sticks.

I signed up with Bluesky, supposedly like Twitter but without the hate. I’ve been with the old Twitter thirteen years and never really got my head round it. Bluesky is so similar that I hate it already.

 

21 November, Thursday

The man at the bus stop said that a recent poll had revealed that 30% of Bulgarians can juggle but 75% of Bulgarians hate jugglers.

Not to be outdone, I added that eight out of every ten Bulgarians make up 80% of the population.

Equally interesting, my neighbour Hasan has more than the national average number of legs. He has two, but because there are more people with just one or no legs than there are with three or more, the average is less than two. Slavka, his lovely wife, has more than the national average number of steel teeth.

 

22 November, Friday

At what point during the sunny to cloudy transition does a town become miserable? I’ve enjoyed many a cheery day in Gorna Oryahovitsa with its bric-a-brac market and pavement cafés but today’s dampness and blusteriness meant neither were possible. For stallholders selling big knives and axes it was business as usual but doily peddlers were blown away.

My supermarket experience was delayed while staff sought the parents of two very young unsupervised children kicking the living shit out of each other by checkout number four. It transpired they were an American family, which seemed an acceptable explanation to everyone present.

 

23 November, Saturday

Can you get morning after pills for cats?

The wild windy weather prompted me to pity poor Jacques, the mystery black cat that visits us sometimes. He ate some of our cat food then fell asleep on the back of the settee. So when I was going out I decided not to disturb him.

My little lady Penka is a couple of weeks away from having her intimate modification done by the vet. For more than two hours she was in the house alone with butch Jacques and his space hopper testicles.

I returned to find both asleep, purring simultaneously.

 

24 November, Sunday

Does owning nine garden hoses deem me a vulgar materialistic member of the bourgeoisie? I’d never counted them before as they’re usually spread across the vast open expanses that I must irrigate now I’m no longer one of the landless proletariat. Today I was a worker tasked with their draining, coiling, tying and hanging on nails in the shed. I calculated that if I had a couple more, and I connected them end to end, I could water rhubarb patches in southern Romania.

The highlight of my day was correctly writing the word bourgeoisie without the aid of a dictionary.

 

25 November, Monday

I passed a couple of hours sitting on a bench with a book in Acacia Park whilst waiting for mechanical Nikolai to beckon me from up the road with my car’s new technical inspection certificate. Four old Bulgarian women joined me saying it was warmer outside in the sunshine than in their houses. One remarked that Vitamin D from the sun helps them with the low moods they get in the winter months, as does a daily dollop of pure Bulgarian yoghurt (for which I am already a glutton). They’ll never know how our little chat lifted my low mood.

 

26 November, Tuesday

Winter poked its nose in at us last week but this afternoon 20° Celsius returned and I was jolly glad to see them. As English snow melted, much of Chippenham (where I lived for eighteen years) was under water today. Luckily the local population has webbed hands and feet. It’s the fish I feel sorry for.

Poorly punctuated Guns N’ Roses announced that they’re coming over to do a gig in Sofia next summer. World tours only ever spread east of Rome when a band is on its uppers. Maybe they’ve noticed that their name summarises Bulgaria’s history and culture.

 

27 November, Wednesday

Realising that today we were a mere five weeks away from 1st January put spring in my mind and a spring in my step. It’s then that life returns to the world and plastic snowmen return to lofts.

My dear old Nan from superstitious Sunderland always stressed the importance of a house being spotless for the New Year so, to get things moving, I put the hoover on and removed a rodent’s decapitated carcass from the back doorstep (something that she never mentioned).

Also, electricity people came to install a new meter. My Nan would have cracked open the port.

 

28 November, Thursday

According to the dusty volumes of my Encyclopaedia Balkannica:

• One hundred and sixty-two years ago today, Notts County F.C. was founded, making it the oldest professional Association Football club in the world. But at the time, surely it would have also been the newest.
• Sixty years ago today, American President Lyndon B. Johnson adopted a plan for a two-stage escalation of bombing in North Vietnam. Just saying!
• Thirty-four years ago today, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher resigned as leader of the Conservative Party. Good news, it seemed back then, but the damage was already done.

Today I did some dusting.

 

29 November, Friday

Accepting that we might soon have proper nasty winter weather, I prepared myself for an afternoon of insulating my tubes to reduce the risk of their freezing and cracking.

In a Lidl bag for life I assembled my professional insulator’s kit… fully charged power tool, rawl plugs (named after their inventor, John Joseph Rawlings, who I thought had been responsible for Harry Potter), long bendy foam things and a KitKat Chunky.

Stepping outside I was confronted by sky as grey as Methuselah’s Y-Fronts and wind as cold as a witches’ titanium replacement knee joint.

The KitKat might need replacing too.  

 

30 November, Saturday

I only believe in ghosts when ghostly stuff happens. As I struggled to find today’s 100 words, inexplicably an empty rakia glass on my desk moved half a centimetre. Sleeping cats jumped!

My house is approximately 160 years old. In its time it has witnessed cruelty and hardship in the form of imperialist occupation, revolution, fascism, communism, wars, ethnic persecution and a major earthquake (on June 1, 1913). So, if tormented souls really exist, this place must be home to a gang of them.

Many thanks to the one that stayed up late to provide inspiration for my writing tonight.

 

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Image:

I couldn’t find within my vast portfolio a photograph pertinent to the events described in my journal, so here’s a picture of a stray cat with an Adolf Hitler moustache that I sometimes see in town. 

 

Part One:

A Tale of Two Balkan Cities