This Sort of Thing - January 2024 - Starter

 

Introduction

And here’s another month of writing exactly one hundred words about the events of each day. And my old English teacher would tell me I should never start a sentence with ‘and’. And she told me my handwriting was backhand. And she probably never wrote on a laptop. And she smelt of a soap rationing situation.

I’m told that the prize for writing exactly one hundred words for every day of January is a party hat and the writer’s own bodyweight in leftover After Eight thin mints. I need to know if this includes the individual wrappers?

I wrote this…

 

1 January, Monday

An old Bulgarian blessing goes... May the winter potholes in your road all be shallow and filled in by the Council or a local benefactor before the Day of Lazarus dawns.

Secured in our bunker, Priyatelkata and I, together with nine of the Ten Domesticated Animals of the Apocalypse, survived the rakia-fuelled pyrotechnic onslaught at midnight. It had been simmering the whole day. The end of the year or the end of the world? I often wish I lived in Auckland so it would be over sooner.

According to George Harrison, the smile's returning to the faces. Ours, at least.

 

2 January, Tuesday

Rejoice Bulgarians! It’s Karamanovden (the Ox Festival, or St Sylvester’s Day).

Last night the young men crept out and secretly cleared manure that has lingered in cowsheds since Christmas. The hosts left out soup, bread and wine for them. Today they may be invited as guests by a host they have fallen in love with but, to keep the animals healthy, meat will not be served. Tomorrow, when hangovers are more abundant than pure thoughts, there will be bacon butties.

Priyatelkata reminded me I am already in love and have overeaten to the extent that my preferred pronoun is ‘them’.

 

3 January, Wednesday

Upholsterer friends Dеlyan and Steli performed grand leather patchwork jobs on our easy chairs. Although very comfortable, they had lacked character since day one of ownership, then further reduced to the trendy modern furniture of a warzone by our menagerie’s acts of mindless vandalism.

A surprise CD that Delyan had compiled was a mix of laidback jazz and blues that transformed our living room into the lobby of a 1950s posh hotel, relaxing us as much as the newfound cosiness of the chairs did.

The antidote for such relaxation, we discovered, is five-minute barrages of shouted profanities towards claw-wielding beasts.

 

4 January, Thursday

Sputnik 1, the first artificial Earth satellite, launched by the Soviet Union in October 1957, fell to Earth from orbit 66 years ago today. Sputnik (Спътник), a word stolen from the Bulgarian language, means ‘travelling companion’. Priyatelkata and I are sputniks; a fitting term of endearment that sends radio pulses to my cosmodrome.

Scottish friends at lunch in the Shtastliveca (Щастливеца) restaurant are our oldest friends, reminding us of how long we’ve been here and why we came. They’ve been here longer. Sometimes, but not often, mingling with the other immigrants is pleasing.

Sputniks with Glaswegian accents and perfect reasons to celebrate.

 

5 January, Friday

A list of tiresome procedures caused early morning frowns. However, my mastery of the Bulgarski tongue raised smiles, even laughter, from friendly staff in the bank, cat food shop, car insurance shop, internet shop and V-kooso-terr-yah (Вкусотерия) café, so grimaces evaporated.

Our water supply was noticeably absent. We’re clean-living people so never in desperate need of showers, and a dozen rose petals suffice for dealing with our toilet habits. The redundant kettle displayed melancholy but the waterworks workmen, being fully aware of bedtime cocoa rituals (we’ve sent threatening letters in the past), ensured all was well by this lovely day’s end.

 

6 January, Saturday

Some of us still don’t realise Bulgaria's Orthodox Church switched to the Revised Julian calendar in 1968 enabling Christmas Day to fall the same day as in America, where Christmas was invented. So today we’re running round shouting ‘It’s Christmas!’ in true Noddy Holder style.

Today’s actually Yordanovden (Йордановден), the celebration of the baptism of Jesus. A priest blesses a holy cross to hurl into the nearest river. Young men from his congregation break the ice and jump in to retrieve it. The finder will enjoy good health for the year. Fine festive fare, singing, dancing and ambulances complete the tradition.

 

7 January, Sunday

Only ten more sleeps to Christmas... is that an advantage or a disadvantage of being an insomniac?

In the world of football, in an FA Cup game against Peterborough, Patrick Bamford scored for Leeds United what will probably be voted Goal of the Century. In the world of Bulgarian football, we’re two weeks into a winter break to accommodate climatic conditions that make sporting events impossible. Today Veliko Tarnovo, kissed by the sun, was tee-shirt warm.

In the world of gardening jobs, I made little impression but in the world of sitting about reading a book, I displayed remarkable talent.

 

8 January, Monday

Two days ago I was saddened to hear of the death of Mario Zagallo. Having won two World Cups as a player with Brazil, he went on to coach their finest ever national side. Today Franz Beckenbauer died. He, another legendary name from the 1970 Mexico World Cup, the most dazzling football tournament of my lifetime. Sports stars and rock stars drop like flies. Soon there’ll be none surviving to nurture my nostalgic daydreams.

This is my 100^th day of writing 100 words per day so to mark the occasion I have decided that my 10,000^th word will be GooooaaaAAAALLLL.

 

9 January, Tuesday

Tuesday is language lesson day. My two teachers (via Zoom), are among my favourite people in the world.

Darena in Sofia chats to me in English and I reply in Bulgarian. We discussed fussy eaters, her sister’s new old house, her crazy cat woman neighbour who has fewer cats than me, and the pleasure of sharing an irreverent sense of humour.

Miroslav in Veliko Tarnovo is qualified so lessons are structured. My many hours of preparation (late last night) were ignored as we conversed about local cafés and cake. My homework for next week is a slice of walnut torte.

 

10 January, Wednesday

A proper Bulgarian winter’s day. Powdery snow on the ground, ice like glass on the roads, zero degrees or fewer on the thermometer, woolly Leeds United hat on my head and beautiful sunshine.

Needing victuals, I walked to the shop. The usual lady assistants, who look like the Rolling Stones, were absent but there was a new check-out lady who was singing. Nyah-mah oo-dob-let-vor-ennie-eh (няма удовлетворение) are the Bulgarian words for ‘No Satisfaction’ being sung by another woman at the customer service desk.

In the square I had my annual chat with Ivan the mayor. Happy New Year. He liked my hat.

 

11 January, Thursday

Priyatelkata was in Sofia today. She had an appointment at the French Embassy to get her passport renewed. There was too much ice and snow around to travel through the mountains by car so she went on her bicycle, onions swaying on handle bars in the Arctic wind.

Snowbound with the menagerie, I felt intimidated and no longer a member of the dominant species. I retired to my bedroom with coffee, book and self-defensive baseball bat. Their incarceration makes them want to fight.

Strange that these bullies lack the intelligence to recognise that I don’t know the rules of baseball.

 

12 January, Friday

Bitterly Baltic weather rendered it too icy to go out. I spent most of the day writing. Priyatelkata created her masterpiece, An August day on the road to Polski Trambesh in aquarelle. All other living creatures in the house slept, ate and squabbled.

It was Mississippi Fred McDowell’s birthday. Had he still been alive he’d have 120 candles on his cake and every right to have the blues as America and Britain’s air strikes on the Houthis in Yemen came as an escalation of the genocidal war in Gaza.

It was far from being cold in the Middle East today.

 

13 January, Saturday

There’s an old Bulgarian proverb that goes: It is said that he who labours all of the day to till the land is worth his weight in salt. But what of he who works in the chip shop where salt and vinegar are free?

It’s strange that Bulgarians don’t put vinegar on their chips, preferring instead rustic yoghurt-based dressings or wobbly substances their mothers preserved in jars during Communist times. In fact, they don’t even have chip shops, and this proverb isn’t old.

I know exactly how old it is because, with nothing much happening today, I wrote it myself.

 

14 January, Sunday

A writing group friend set my mind alight with the suggestion of the possible existence of security budgerigars. I envisaged tough young street chicks rounded up by thuggish recruiting officers and promised the earth as they’re transported to remote mountain boot camps to be pushed to their limits physically and mentally. 

On graduation they’d pursue careers guarding bullion vans. The less successful becoming city centre pub bouncers and the failures spending a life behind bars with a cuttlefish.

My Auntie Mary’s budgie’s name was Beauty. Alison Moyet’s 1987 hit, Weak in The Presence of Beauty makes much more sense now.

 

15 January, Monday

I read recently that a cat’s speed of reaction is three times that of a snake so there is no need to worry about the feline vs serpentine confrontations that take place in our garden.

Whenever I open our back door to let a furry beast in or out on an arctic day such as this I have to remind myself of the words ‘three times the speed of a snake’ as they leisurely saunter over the threshold.

If we had snakes as pets, we would surely freeze to death.

A sloth came calling but we pretended to be out.

 

Previous bit: This Sort of Thing - December 2023 - Side B

https://www.abctales.com/story/turlough/sort-thing-december-2023-side-b

 

Next bit: This Sort of Thing - January 2024 - Main Course

https://www.abctales.com/story/turlough/sort-thing-january-2024-main-course

 

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Image:

My own photo – an icy January day on the hill leading up to the shop and the Church of Sveti Atanas in Malki Chiflik.