All the Chai in China

 

All the Chai in China

 

17 December, Tuesday

Another dollop of sweet sunshine and a generous helping of degrees Celsius. With big garden jobs all done for 2024, I pottered gloriously outside whilst humming the Percy Faith Orchestra’s Theme from A Summer Place.

The promise of an agreeable climate was instrumental in my choosing a summer place to emigrate to but I hadn’t anticipated there being summer weather on some winter days.

After eight years I’m assimilated into the Bulgarian way and couldn’t live anywhere else for all the chai in China, all the jam in Jamaica, all the bras in Brazil or all the knickers in Nicaragua.

 

18 December, Wednesday

Judy Garland once sang ‘It’s a great day for the Irish’ and I agree.

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar announced that his country would close its embassy in Dublin in light of ‘the extreme anti-Israel policies of the Irish Government’.

Ireland announced that Israel had reached its decision because of Ireland’s stance against apartheid, illegal occupation and ethnic cleansing.

Only days after Syria ousted its brutal President Bashar al-Assad, with a tentative but optimistic world hoping for a period of stability in the region, Israel has launched relentless air strikes on the Syrian military infrastructure.

Happy war, Christmas is over!

 

19 December, Thursday

Petrol station café days with the Essex contingent are always a laugh. We’re regulars there now so we’re always greeted with big smiles and slices of banitsa slightly larger than what the riffraff are served. We’re just waiting for them to invite us to join their darts team.

The woman that puts people right at Kaufland’s self-checkout bagging area also smiles when she sees me these days. I buy a bottle of alcohol even if I don’t want one so that she can make her joke about needing to see my proof of age. Language barriers are the greatest fun!

 

20 December, Friday

A good way to avoid procrastination is to not have anything to do in the first place. Feeling listless, I decided to compile a list of things to put off until later but before doing that, I did this:

• Drank three coffees.
• Looked up the Les Dawson themed range of erotic underwear on Amazon.
• Lanced the dog’s boil.
• Translated the lyrics of Chas ‘n’ Dave’s song Snooker Loopy into Bulgarian.
• Wondered why men have nipples.
• Sighed loads.
• Read three pages of a book.
• Dozed off.
• Spilt coffee.
• Shouted at the mop bucket.
• Found my notebook.
• Sharpened my pencil.
• Wrote this.

 

21 December, Saturday

The shortest day certainly lived up to its reputation. Daylight hours lasted a mere seventeen minutes; not enough to boil six eggs. The custom is to paint naked bodies purple and dance around standing stones but by the time I’d got the childproof lid off the bottle of woad it was dark.

Astronomers said Malki Chiflik’s winter equinox was at 11:19 a.m. Eastern European Time so I rejoiced the death of the crone year with late elevenses.

Frightful weather inflicted incarceration so the day in reality seemed like a very long one. Snow forecast for tomorrow arrived a day early.

 

22 December, Sunday

Winter so far had been kind so my petchka (петчка, meaning ‘wood stove’) had rested since March. Overnight snow and an eighteen-hour power cut changed matters as the electric heat pump system was immobilised. The fully loaded stove made the kitchen a place toasty enough to subdue bickering cats. It made coffee and boiled pasta too. The candle for reading (my only entertainment) added a further degree Celsius. An idyllic scene blighted only by the fear of further days without electricity. The lights came back on just before sunset but the internet decided it would need a day or two longer.

 

23 December, Monday

Rain took over where the snow had left off. Meltwater made the garden steps ideal for white water rafting.

Pisspot Penka, the cat that sees sanitation potential in every flat surface, ripped holes in the bathroom toilet wastepipe as I brushed my teeth. The downstairs alternative toilet is cold, damp, arachnid-infested and only slightly more comfortable than the boggy garden. My journey to Praktiker to procure a replacement was aborted as shoppers’ vehicles gridlocked the car park. Everyone, it seemed, was getting a lavatorial plastic concertina wastepipe for Christmas.   

Wi-Fi service resumed in the evening, except in the downstairs toilet.

 

24 December, Tuesday

Like a child on Christmas Day, I leapt out of bed before dawn. Also before dawn, I had beaten the Praktiker car park pests to buy my plumbing piece, returned home to eat a light lunch, and fitted and tested the new item of sanitary ware. On this dark day we didn’t really have a dawn.

Later in Ganchovets, I dined at the home of dear Belgian friends, Inge and Patje. Flooded roads that made my journey there almost impossible couldn’t be seen on the way back on account of the thick fog.

Whoever invented December deserves a good slap!

 

25 December, Wednesday

Hi, I’m Alexa. I’m writing about today because Turlough appears to be unresponsive. I believe he overdosed on a cocktail of fresh orange juice and Vitamin D tablets. 

A day of two halves (i.e. twelve hours each of rain and snow) was a day of no point for anyone yearning to be outside in the fresh air. The best bits, apparently, were that we didn’t have to eat sprouts or watch The Sound of Music on television.

My apologies if this isn’t a completely accurate account. Turlough uses many words not contained in my family-friendly vocabulary. We both require updates.

 

26 December, Thursday

Had I been able to leave the village, I’d have seen that across Bulgaria the festive shenanigans were completely done and dusted. It’s impossible, however, to say this evening that everything was back to normal as the blast of continuous snowfall entered its thirty-seventh hour.

We were without water for four hours in the morning. A frustrating time for the proud owner of a brand new toilet wastepipe. My neighbour Ismail, digging out his fruit and veg van so he could get to work, broke off briefly to tell me that all our problems were the fault of the Mafia.

 

27 December, Friday

Today was the 440^th birthday of Philipp Julius, Duke of Pomerania. Oh that made me feel so old. So I mourned his decline with some Thunderbird wine and a black handkerchief.

I’ve seen every episode of Thunderbirds countless times but never have I seen them drinking wine. Perhaps they were secret drinkers. Perhaps explaining why they lived by themselves on a secret island. I suppose you’d have to be pissed to try to rescue someone who was rocketing towards the sun or to have a friend who went round in a pink Rolls Royce chauffeured by a Rishi Sunak lookalike.

 

28 December, Saturday

At 3:00 p.m. I reminded myself how delightful Powers Gold Label Irish Whiskey is. It’s on a par with Barry’s Gold Label Irish Tea. What sets them apart is the Barry family’s ability to use an apostrophe where the Power family fails. I’d bought the whiskey at Heraklion airport on my way home from Crete in September but more than a year had passed since I last saw the tea on sale (in Morrisons or Morrison’s in Stockport).

The calming Cape Verde jazz of Carmen Souza provided the soundtrack for a day on which the forecasters’ thaw just didn’t happen.

 

29 December, Sunday

In 1990 I kept a diary.

Thirty-four years ago today I played shops on the living room floor all morning. The afternoon was one of great creativity using the Stickle Bricks Santa brought. My thirdborn child was twenty days old. I was contemplating my return to work after three joyous weeks that marked the arrival of her and the baby Jesus. Mother and infant slept most of the day having failed to do so during the night.

Leeds United beat Wimbledon 3-0 at Elland Road. We didn’t go. The stewards wouldn’t let supporters carrying Stickle Bricks pass through the turnstiles. 

 

30 December, Monday

I’ve recently acquired from a nearby antique shop, a model of a member of the Gasterosteidae family made from children’s colourful plastic interlocking shapes. I call it my Stickle Brick Bric-a-brac Stickleback.

Poor old Jimmy Carter’s dead. It seems a lifetime ago that he was pardoning Vietnam draft evaders and giving Panama their big canal back. Strange then that he was only eighteen years older than the Ewe-Esser-Vaye’s current boy Biden. Cuban bandleader, Moisés Simons composed a catchy musical tribute to him which is as jungle fresh in my head today as it was when it was written in 1927.

 

31 December, Tuesday

DJ Johnnie Walker’s death today brought sadness. On 1970s daytime radio he would consign Donny Osmond and Bay City Rollers records to the bin and instead play music by Bob Marley and Lou Reed. I met him once in a coffee tent at the Larmer Tree Festival near Salisbury. I could only say hello. He said the same… a missed opportunity! 

I imposed a 4:00 p.m. curfew on all menagerie members. Fireworks have never done their nerves (or mine) much good and we were expecting a bombardment. A mere half dozen exploded at ten past midnight… a delightful damp squib.

 

31.999 December, On the Cusp

For the first two hours of Bulgaria’s 2025 it was still last year in Britain and Ireland. When I worked on ships we’d stay up all night celebrating every midnight around the world, and the habit’s stuck. So at 2:00 a.m. I wished distant loved ones lovely wishes.

Wherever you are, the time between the bells and the bed is still a bit of the old year. The real freshness of January begins at breakfast time.

In 2025 I’m going to learn to read and write again. I lapsed. It’s not a resolution. It just seems like a good idea.

 

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Image:

Ivan, the mayor of Malki Chiflik, with his orange dream machine.

 

 

Part One:

Mad Dogs and Donkeys

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Song for Jimmy Carter

Lovely music... another click.