The Archers in Cyrillic Script

 

The Archers in Cyrillic Script

 

15 February 2025, Saturday

Priyatelkata, being the first to rise, discovered that Gaïa, our Shih Tzu (shit zoo), had made a nocturnal deposit on the kitchen floor. To make matters worse the dog had somehow got herself clarted in it. Transferring Gaïa from shit show to shower, Priyatelkata hurt her back and spent the remainder of the day bedbound.

We were without electricity for much of the afternoon. Not normally a big problem but wandering around in the dark where an incontinent dog lurked required extreme caution.

All in all, a shit day, as Samuel Pepys wrote in his diary on 2 September 1666.

 

16 February 2025, Sunday

The first album Planxty by Irish folk band Planxty, and Aladdin Sane by David Bowie were both released early in 1973. There was nothing glam rock about Planxty so kids at school in Leeds ridiculed me for buying the record, suggesting I lived in a lay-by and my mother was a gold-toothed, fortune-telling witch. Simultaneously buying Bowie’s album didn’t excuse me from their ‘travelling tinker boy’ epithet.

I still play both albums regularly at home but they’re never discussed. So I was delighted today to hear Priyatelkata singing the Planxty song Arthur McBride totally out of the blue… and tune.  

 

17 February 2025, Monday

We had that half-hearted snow. Had it not snowed at all I could have pursued an outdoor pursuit and had it snowed more heavily I’d have easily accepted that today’s fresh air was a non-starter. But it snowed lightly most of the day. Curses!

It was comforting to know we didn’t need to go out until suddenly we needed to go out to buy druggy stuff for Priyatelkata’s vape pipe thing and various food semi-essentials. The roads were only slushy then but later it snowed long and hard. I was glad that we wouldn’t be needing to go out tomorrow.

 

18 February 2025, Tuesday

It snowed… all day, and all of the night!

The Malki Chiflik Facebook group is like a probiotic yoghurt-coated version of The Archers in Cyrillic script. Today it contained anger.

The word on the ulitsa (улица, meaning ‘street’) was that our entire grit supply had been scattered in the children’s playground, so the short but steeply undulating stretch of road between us and the village square, and civilisation beyond, remained Torvill and Dean grade slippery. Some foresaw this and parked their cars in the square before the snow started. Others, not expecting stationary vehicles or such thick ice, collided with them.

 

19 February 2025, Wednesday

I considered going out to the garden to build a snowman, as suggested by friends and relatives living in warmer climes, but then I remembered I’m no longer six years old so my excitement level would be virtually non-existent. Even if I was still six, or even eight, I’d return to the house twenty minutes later feeling cold and wet and wishing I hadn’t bothered because it wouldn’t have looked anything like a real man, or even a conventional snowman, and it would melt within a day or two making everybody sad like the boy was in the Snowman film.

 

20 February 2025, Thursday

The toothless old widow who sits beneath the pomegranate tree in the square told me that her favourite Anton Chekov quote was ‘People don’t notice whether it’s winter or summer when they’re happy’ and then added her own words ‘It’s a bit like when you’ve drunk a litre of rakia’ as she squirted Ambre Solaire from a bottle onto her bare knees.

Yооrgan (юрган) meaning ‘goose feather quilt’ is an old Turkish word used by Bulgarians. Today was a yoorgan day because Bulgarians huddled in quilts while the whole country was covered by a quilt in the form of deep snow.

 

21 February 2025, Friday

Before the sun rose I leapt out of bed to photograph our garden thermometer to prove to the world that temperatures of -16° Celsius really do exist. Then I leapt back in.

Conscious that we’d had no exercise during the current cold snap, we braved a stroll to the big shop to buy vital victuals and instant KitKat Chunkies. On the return leg we tried to calculate the calories burned to calories swallowed ratio, hoping for an answer that didn’t imply gluttony. We soon gave up because we were in a rush to get home to put the dinner on.

 

22 February 2025, Saturday

As puddles appeared on the kitchen floor I blamed Gaïa the incontinent dog until I realised they coincided with the tap being turned on. 

When the weather’s mega-nippy we leave a tap partly turned on overnight as constant flow in the pipe reduces the risk of freezing. Beneath the sink the normally empty plastic wastepipe leading outside wasn’t empty and consequently there had been a gradual accumulation of ice which eventually caused a split.

I didn’t notice this until just before bedtime, so it was something to keep my mind occupied all night as I struggled to go to sleep.

 

23 February 2025, Sunday

An hour-long skirmish under the sink with deceased insects and arachnids in a collection sufficiently large to put the Natural History Museum to shame (plus a few live ones, plus cobwebs) proved my frozen pipe theory incorrect. The leakage was purely down to inferior quality plumbing materials. Ivaylo, our superior quality plumber, will be called tomorrow. Meanwhile the sink is out of bounds!

Normal diesel freezes in cars at -8.5°C, so in winter we buy the high performance stuff like Max Verstappen does. Despite this, the engine still chuntered as we drove off to buy a new washing up bowl.  

 

24 February 2025, Monday

In recent days I’ve questioned the validity of Anders Celsius’ temperature scale. He got zero right, which was more than Daniel Fahrenheit managed (he was probably on the sauce at the time) but a scale with nothing else on it isn’t really much kop.

My scale would contain no numbers but the following indicators:

1. Geordies wear jumpers
2. Too cold to emerge from the beneath the duvet
3. The optimum temperature of Guinness
4. Comfortable for wearing shorts
5. Safe to swim in the sea
6. The optimum temperature of coffee
7. As hot as the customer service lady in Kaufland
8. Total immersion in Guinness recommended

 

25 February 2025, Tuesday

With the snow gradually melting, I stepped out to inspect the garden but surrendered after ten minutes as the cold air hurt my face.

Ivaylo came to fix the problematic pipe beneath our sink. He’s a really nice fella but wouldn’t stay long as he had other pipes to plumb. We were secretly pleased because it enabled us to crack on with the physical act of washing up that we’d craved since Saturday.   

Easyjet emailed to remind me I’m flying to Manchester next month. It would be more useful if they could remind me to buy some canine worming tablets.

 

26 February 2025, Wednesday

A day for celebrating the fortieth anniversary of Priyatelkata’s twenty-first birthday.

It’s seven years since the so-called Russian Restaurant in town was sold to non-Russians but it retains the old epithet amongst immigrants as they can’t remember Asenevtsi, its real name. We went to enjoy the usual scrumptious fare and discussed the possible run up to, and outcome of, either one of us catching a dose of dementia.

The head waiter remarked that we discussed it five times during our ninety-minute stay, but at least we could remember the name of his restaurant whereas he can never remember our names.

 

27 February 2025, Thursday

Thanatophobia is an extreme fear of death or the dying process but better than atophobia which is the fear of digital auto-correction. However, the word thanatophobia has been in use much longer than atophobia, so sufferers of the latter might find their mobile devices erroneously correcting the name of their condition to make them think they actually have a problem with the former.

Another peculiar one is nomophobia which is the irrational fear of being without a mobile phone. You’d think misophonia would have been a better word for it but that’s already in use as the fear of pen-clickers.

 

28 February 2025, Friday

I wasn’t even out of my bed when Natalia, the mayor’s right-hand woman, phoned to summon me to the village office. I had a package to collect. From the postage stamps I immediately knew it was my long-lost Irish food parcel.

What better way to celebrate the end of the coldest month than with three kilogrammes of Flahavan’s Pinhead Oatmeal and twelve Crunchies, dispatched to me two months ago by my American friend Cathy in Kilkenny.

I’ll ration myself to one Crunchie per month for a year (having quickly dealt with January’s backlog). Watch this space to monitor my success.

 

 

---

Image:

The view through the window in my kitchen door on a day that could be described as frigid to nippy.

 

 

Part One

Please Tell Him That I Said Hello

Click to view