The Tale of the Housemaid’s Knee

 

16 October, Wednesday

If our Golden Labrador that we had when I was a kid was still alive it would have been his sixtieth birthday today. Today was also the sixtieth anniversary of Harold Wilson being elected as Britain’s Labour prime minister. The dog was called Bruce, which seemed a good idea at the time but these days I’m not so sure. I think Harold would have been a more suitable name.

I currently have a cat called Boris but he’s not named after a British prime minister. He’s named after Borislav Mihaylov, a former Bulgarian international goalkeeper whose nickname was ‘The Cat’.

 

17 October, Thursday

For five months, my long days of land tilling tasks ended only when I became too hot and sweaty to continue. This evening I had to stop at 6:30 because I was absolutely freezing and the diminished light meant I was in danger of tilling the wrong bit.

After years of reading psychiatry text books, talking to experts in the scientific analysis of miserable twats and sticking pins in voodoo dolls of people who ‘simply adore the changes of the seasons’, it turned out I’m a victim of a condition called S.A.D. This, I believe, stands for Sadistic Autumnal Damnation.

 

18 October, Friday

In the previous encounter with Vivacom, visiting engineers told me to return my old router. Shop lady Nikol, two metres tall with Siouxsie Sioux eyebrows sprayed on by the men who put the white lines on the roads, efficiently applied all her sadomasochistic skills to help.

Thirty minutes later the obsolete box was deregistered. Another bout of east European bureaucratic rubber-stamping was about to commence as my complimentary forty-inch telly emerged from a storeroom. But suddenly, a heavily equipped Ghostbusters-style cleaning team stormed the shop warning, ‘leave or be cleaned!’

Shielding her eyebrows, Mistress Nikol smiled and growled, ‘Tomorrow then.’

 

19 October, Saturday

By mid-September Bulgarian coats are buttoned up to Bulgarian chins as temperatures plummet to 20°C. I spend very little money because blasting in-store heating makes it too hot to stay any longer than it takes to buy a fan.

Polski Trambesh mineral bath opens the whole year round, except from late October to early May. Today marked my final visit before earthly orbiting habits plunge northern latitudes into an abyss of gloom. The two minutes between casting off clothing and immersion were precariously nippy but in the hot water, as a solitary soaker for ninety minutes, I found my Nirvana.

 

20 October, Sunday

Sunshine’s my favourite thing, with daylight coming a close second. Currently, as deprivation sets in, it’s on my mind constantly.

I’ve read that Solar rotation varies with latitude. The Sun isn’t a solid body so different latitudes rotate at different speeds. Its rotation period is twenty-five Earth days at its equator and thirty-three days at seventy-five degrees of latitude.

So beware if you live somewhere miserable and wet on the Sun and want to get away to top up your tan. You may find that the time difference between home and destination is more than the length of your holiday.

 

21 October, Monday

Chores completed today:

• At the Vivacom shop - Collect my free television.
• At the insurance office - Renew the annual car insurance. Kremena found me cover even cheaper than last year’s (i.e. 220 Лева = £100) despite Priyatelkata’s white knuckle bumper car ride.
• At the car tyre shop - Make an appointment to have winter tyres put on the new car. Today’s temperature reached 30°C. Desislava said I already have winter tyres but they’re all mixed up and not balanced, rather like me.

New chores added today:

• At home - Get the new television out of its box, rather like me.

 

22 October, Tuesday

At my city centre social gathering place, a woman asked what I’d be doing for New Year. Sticking fingers into the ears of the menagerie to prevent firework trauma was the real answer but that’s difficult to say in Bulgarian.

Four cats required annual vaccinations but, at setting off for the vet’s time, only one could be found and she lacked enthusiasm, so I had immense difficulty getting her into her box. However, the bleeding scratch on my arm took my mind off the gardening-based muscular pain in my kneecap that had escalated from ooff! to aarrgghh! since breakfast time.

 

23 October, Wednesday

I’m currently a victim of Prepatellar Bursitis; a fluid-filled sac behind the kneecap that can cause as much pain as a weekend in Huddersfield. More commonly known as housemaid’s knee, it’s one from a group of uncomfortable conditions that includes policeman’s heel, jogger’s nipple, tennis elbow (sometimes called tennis arse), brewer’s droop, handmaid’s tail, organ grinder’s monkey, and Steamboat Willie.    

Wise Dr Google suggests rest, drugs and an elasticated knee support will cure me. Previous episodes have been overcome by retirement. The thought of returning to work so I can retire again caused me more distress than the condition itself.

 

24 October, Thursday

My leg felt fine when I woke this morning but preparing coffee and porridge set me back to the level of discomfort experienced immediately prior to yesterday’s pill-popping party’s commencement. Perhaps this housemaid’s knee is so-called because if I’d had a housemaid to prepare my breakfast for me I wouldn’t have had to stand in the kitchen for fifteen minutes putting weight on my patella.

Lying on the bed the whole day with limb elevated and brain depressed, I worried about the possible development of pressure sores. Early evening tea and toast taken in relatively pain-free circumstances allayed many fears.

 

25 October, Friday

A friend informed me that housemaid’s knee is sometimes referred to as carpenter’s knee, apparently because Karen was a slave to it. Today the pain in my patellofemoral joint had eased significantly so I thought a little light physiotherapy might help further.

Spring cleaning was the perfect test as it not only proved I was able to stand on both of my own two feet but it saw the shovelling out from behind furniture of my summer collection of former insects, decapitated mice and Cornish Mivvi wrappers. Spring cleaning in spring is much easier though not as exciting or disgusting.

 

26 October, Saturday

I could easily imagine John Logie Baird’s frustration as he switched on his newly invented television in 1926 to discover there was nowt on. Today I removed my telly from its packaging and followed a setting up palaver I’m sure Mr Baird himself would have struggled with (could he remember his Google password?), before finding that there was nothing worth watching.

I persevered with an episode of CSI: Minsk and a two-hour documentary about funny things that have happened whilst castrating goats, presented by Claudia Winkleman.

I pressed the off button then pressed wild flowers in the hefty user manual.

 

27 October, Sunday

Last night I lay awake for hours wondering where the sun had gone, and then suddenly it dawned on me.

Bureaucrats dictated that summertime ended at 2:00 am today, but in the garden it was still sunny and warm so a few vulnerable babies still required watering.

They gave us an extra hour to play with. I spent mine writing a letter to the second under assistant to the Minister for Time Wasting at the National Assembly of the Republic of Bulgaria, advising him that Boreas (god of winter and ice) was more qualified than he when making such decisions.

 

28 October, Monday

Bulgaria saw a general election yesterday. Exciting stuff as it was the first we’ve had since June, upping the annual average in the eight years I’ve lived here to one.

Results announced today were as inconclusive as ever so there’ll probably be another vote in the spring. The fifty long days in office as British Premier ‘enjoyed’ by Liz Truss are admired and envied by our politicians.

I’ve suggested an amendment to the Constitution of the Republic of Bulgaria enabling the final outcome to be settled with a penalty shoot-out, but the powers that almost be don’t have the balls.

 

29 October, Tuesday

I’m away on a wee trip soon. Nowhere special, just Serbia, on the other side of the Balkan Peninsula where they speak a form of Bulgarian which they like to pretend is their own language. It’s rather like expecting everyone to talk like Joanna Lumley but getting Wayne Rooney instead.

So I went into town to buy holiday essentials; a lovely new hardback travel journal and a foaming glass of Shumensko to sip whilst caressing, sniffing and licking (collectively adoring) the virgin notebook. Scruffy scribblings scribed in foreign cafés, railway stations and guest houses ensure that a trip lasts forever.

 

30 October, Wednesday

The pet food shop now stocks live mice, gerbils, hamsters and tropical fish. I accused the proprietors of overdoing attempts to sell the freshest cat food but these are alternative pets, apparently. With streets awash with homeless animals (but not fish because it never rains) it’s difficult to imagine Bulgarians exchanging hard earned cash for such creatures.

A pathetically meagre crop survived wild summer weather to dangle from my grapevines like an unhealthily thin person’s haemorrhoids. I usually harvest them to extract juice but this year I’ve left them for the birds. Hours of entertainment from the perfect wild pets.

 

31 October, Thursday

Priyatelkata drove me (by car, not by whip) to the bus station to start my trip. We no longer travel together because she’s downgraded herself to Kvartirantkata (Квартирантката, meaning ‘the lodger’). It was good while it lasted… well, most of the time.

Hotel Central Club Sofia boasted free sachets of Nescafé, black wallpaper and a lift that travelled at twice the speed of fog. The woman working in Orsetti Pasticceria insisted I eat the last slice of pizza because I looked hungry. The woman laughing at the next table said I looked completely the opposite.

My true love is the Balkans!

 

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Available soon in all good dodgy bookshops… The Housemaid’s Knee, by Turlough Ó Maoláin.

Apologies to the author Margaret Attwood for taking the cover of her book (The Handmaid’s Tale) and mucking about with it. The alternative to this would have been a photograph of my fat hairy knees, so all the world must be grateful to her.

 

To read the previous bit, click on the link:

Seven Roofers Roofing