Hot Cross Buns and Fish and Chips

 

Hot Cross Buns and Fish and Chips

 

17 March 2025, Monday

Like many of Europe’s top attractions, Stockport is closed to visitors on Mondays. Daughter Rose and I found alternative points of entry via the Coffee Block café in the stylish Victorian era neo-classical Prudential Buildings, a couple of charity shops (buying up their second hand books to occupy my mind during Bulgarian winters is always a feature of my trips to England) and a branch of Asda built in the Soviet brutalist architectural style, though slightly less sparkly.

We celebrated St. Patrick’s Day with lavish helpings of homemade lentil lasagne, a Hugh Grant horror film and a hot cross bun.

 

18 March 2025, Tuesday

Seán and three-year-old grandson Toby visited. Easter biscuits were handcrafted but poor icing skills had their decoration looking more like scrambled eggs than the baby chicks that the recipe suggested.

At Franca’s Deli & Coffee we were served cake and coffee before meeting up with Markell and their lovely dog Tufty in the park where Stockport’s toughest canines lurked. Back at the house we found a game of hide and seek in a garden measuring 4x4 metres to be quite a challenge.

Another Uber returned me to Sophie’s where we dined on takeaway Indian food (my favourite thing about England).

 

19 March 2025, Wednesday

On the Bristol train I sat in close proximity to two dangerously loud ladies, one of which had recently been released from prison. They were travelling to Wolverhampton to meet with two gentlemen for research purposes. Their mission was to rewrite the Kama Sutra in monosyllabic text with body fluid stains for illustrations.

In Bristol city centre I was asked for financial support by a young man representing a charity working to reduce inner city knife crime. I obliged but longed to be back in Bulgaria.

Angela, my longest standing friend, met me at Frome station. There I felt safer.

 

20 March 2025, Thursday

Wells, being England’s smallest city, hopefully had England’s smallest incidence of inner city knife crime. Today’s problem was having to request such an implement to apply cream and jam to my scone at a table outside a café in the sun-kissed medieval market place. Angela had a slice of cake, remarking that she had never heard of a crazed killer running amok with a pastry fork.

Wandering narrow old streets, lush lawned gardens and places frequented by bishops and toff schoolchildren provided a peaceful environment for discussing the highlights of the seven years that had passed since we last met.

 

21 March 2025, Friday

The railway journey to Hampshire passed without incident. Nobody spoke, not even the non-existent ticket inspector. My colour photographs of the mudflats of the Solent at low tide came out in black and white as homesickness for Veliko Tarnovo’s paradisiacal vistas tugged at ventricles.  

Sister Beverley (my own sister, not a nun) met me at Cosham station where we had met many times before. Had the sun shone at all in the years since my previous visit?

Her house was new and bright but she had become husbandless and catless so we had much to talk about, but mostly cats.

 

22 March 2025, Saturday

Winchester was similar to Wells though outlets for procuring ten Bic lighters for a quid outnumbered scone cafés on a ratio of four to one. However, housed in the Cathedral's Inner Close, the Deanery Bookstall had the finest array of second-hand books this side of Hay-on-Wye.

A combination of Beverley not feeling tiptop, overcrowded streets and cold grey weather brought the outing to an early conclusion. So we hopped on the hop on bus to the neatly manicured car park and drove back to spend the remainder of the day with tea, books and chat, but without Indian takeaway food.

 

23 March 2025, Sunday

My English adventure had surprisingly produced no rain until we went to be beside the seaside at the seaside town of Bosham, whose claim to fame was that it’s one before Cosham in the alphabetical list of Hampshire towns that end with osham. A pub with nice fish and chips sheltered us for a drizzly hour.

With Beverley still not match fit we returned to her abode to look at family photographs. Snaps of aunties, uncles and an anti-internment in the North of Ireland demonstration in London’s Trafalgar Square in August 1971 brought back fond memories of our shared childhood.

 

24 March 2025, Monday

Foxes frolicked in the sun as I stood in Beckenham cemetery at the memorial stone of Julia, my dear friend from forty years earlier, and her little brother, Robert. Stories of their unnecessary passing had been only Facebook messages until then but suddenly, in the company of their mother, Coral, and sister, Sarah, the reality hit me.

Lunch in the Elm Tree pub extended into afternoon coffee as we shared stories, mostly about Julia. Each of us learning things we hadn’t previously known.

Sadness, happiness and surreality combined at the end of a lovely day spent with two lovely people.

 

25 March 2025, Tuesday

Walking briskly round the park, Sarah regaled me with more tales of Julia and former neighbour, David Bowie, before trains propelled me northwards. Being the only passenger in the quiet carriage from Euston to Stockport, I could enjoy sweeping panoramas of Stoke-on-Trent and Macclesfield in silence. 

Rose and Markell welcomed me back, escorting me to the Mekong Cat and the Swan with Two Necks for sustenance and refreshment. Two fine establishments that became my favourite restaurant and pub in the Greater Manchester area respectively.

The day ended with a return to Disley, my favourite village in the Greater Manchester area.

 

26 March 2025, Wednesday

In New Mills Sophie and I admired the old mills, the older canal and the very old river. In the equally admirable On the Bridge Café we ate Turkish eggs and I exchanged Slavic greetings with a diner I heard conversing in a Slavic tongue. Another magnificent second hand bookshop and a shop selling draught muesli sparked plans for a return visit. England’s lovely if you manage to find the right bits. You can see New Mills from Sophie’s garden.

The final evening of my adventure was a bit of a summing up session. Had I met the trip objectives?

 

27 March 2025, Thursday

Granddaughter Freya’s tears made my heavy heart heavier as goodbyes were said in the drop-off car park two miles from Manchester Airport. I was sad to be leaving the people I love but happy to be returning to the country I love.

Sitting amongst a large Bulgarian family at the rear of the plane we observed the cabin crew’s failure to sell Easyjet’s in-flight Benson’s and gin. Uproarious laughter followed my suggestion that they’d do better flogging Fanta bottles filled with homemade rakia.

Dear old friend Dimitar transported me through the mountains for joyous reunification with Priyatelkata and our menagerie.

 

28 March 2025, Friday

I spent the day in zombie mode. Any suggestion that jetlag was the cause would be inaccurate but I definitely had some sort of lag. Determined to shake off this affliction, my list of achievements was as follows:

1. An hour-long tour of the garden during which I complied a mental list of jobs to do to keep nature’s explosion under control. So no more holidays until February!
2. An hour-long emptying of the travel bag and filling of the washing machine.
3. An hour-long lying on the bed with eyes shut.
4. An hour-long repeat of point 3.
5. An hour-long big satisfied sigh.

 

29 March 2025, Saturday

In Bulgarian we shouted ‘They don’t have voices but we have voices!’ (Те нямат гласове, но ние имаме гласове!). Some waved placards demanding an end to animal cruelty. I couldn’t help but admire the most vociferous of the protesters but wondered what they might achieve, if anything. Outside of Western Europe and North America, animals are kept mostly for working or eating. I also questioned the need for such a strong police presence and why they had not brought their police dogs with them. Guilt, perhaps?

Glaswegian Anne Marie had suggested that we attend. In a café nearby we discussed the exhausting nature of trips to Britain.

 

30 March 2025, Sunday

Having spent the afternoon scrubbing every pot, pan and shelf in our kitchen cupboard to cleanse them of mouse toilet by-products, I reminded our cats that in Eastern Europe animals are kept mostly for working or eating.

The day was an hour shorter than usual to help wartime farmers. It’s possibly my favourite day of the year as it heralds the start of longer evenings and proves that I’ve survived another winter.

The extra hour of daylight enabled me to shovel mouse shit until bedtime. Bedtime for me, that is. The feline workforce had been sleeping most of the day.

 

31 March 2025, Monday

Today April showers arrived early in Malki Chiflik, as did summer torrential downpours. In supermarkets coffee prices have increased by 25%, suggesting a trade tariff, but what have we done to upset Brazil? The boy Trump said he is ‘pissed off’ with the boy Putin because he’s not doing war properly. Netanyahu knows the way! I left my glasses in England and without them I can’t find my way to the optician’s. Priyatelkata and I have eaten all the hot cross buns I brought from Stockport. Myanmar has been flattened by an earthquake. Why did I get out of bed?

 

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Image:

My own photograph of one of the many bridges in the town of New Mills on the edge of England’s Peak District.

 

And if you’d like to see a few a few holiday snaps from England, click on this

A Few Holiday Snaps from England

 

Part One

Johnny Ten Levs vs Jack Daniels

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