The Mandarin Cherries

 

The Mandarin Cherries

 

1 January 2025, Wednesday

Wandering Veliko Tarnovo’s old streets gives me a tremendous feeling of calmness and pride, especially these mild, sunny winter days. Feeling a bit mushy and gushy I called in at the Retro Café for a good strong cup of the darkness. It’s a grand place for writing the first lines of a poem but people talked to me so pencil and paper never met. Chesteeta Nova Godina (Честита Нова Година, meaning ‘Happy New Year’), they said, as they shared the cake they’d brought from home. The café owner gave us plates.

With 1/365^th of the year complete I still hadn’t seen a cloud.

 

2 January 2025, Thursday

Gabrovo is 392 metres above sea level but today, due to its snow, it was 393 metres. I always visit Lipitee café (липите, meaning ‘the linden trees’) sheltered in Aprilovska Street’s magnificent avenue.

Previously I’ve called at the Russian Shop for marinated herring, oreshki biscuits and bottles of rich dark Baltika 6 Porter. Putin-based sanctions made the import of Soviet wares impossible so now they’ve only Bulgarian copies and expensive vodka that nobody’s ever going to buy while we’ve our own wonderful rakia.

A heavy industrial past has earned Gabrovo the epithet, the Manchester of Bulgaria. But I think it’s alright.

 

3 January 2025, Friday

Three hours was just long enough to catch up with the Essex Contingent at the petrol station coffee café, but I forgot to buy fuel for the car while I was there. My stance on ignoring aggressive in-yer-face advertising seems to be a bit too effective.

Whilst making prawn bhuna for tea I struggled to remove the lid from my jar of garam masala. My eventual success was accompanied by a great mushroom cloud of yellowness that tinted my grey beard and eyebrows. I considered further spice spreading to make me look blonde. I’m told that I’d have more fun.

 

4 January 2025, Saturday

Curiosity took me to our new Korean supermarket. I came away with enough dried shredded seaweed to last me a lifetime (i.e. a 300g packet).

Nice Bulgarian people run it and it’s much different to what we’re used to but I wonder about its survival as, in these parts, anything not containing yoghurt, tomatoes or figs turns noses up. I’ll definitely return as their savoury meat balls are the dog’s bollocks.

In the Retro Café across the road I asked the owner if he’d been to the Korean shop. He said he only liked food containing yoghurt, tomatoes or figs.

 

5 January 2025, Sunday

I visited Echo and her Bunnyman (husband Aleks) at their house in Polski Senovets for a delicious combination of homemade Bulgarian and Chinese food. They preserve cherries fallen over a wall from their neighbour’s tree. I’m given a jar each time I’m there but the neighbour gets none because he complains about their wall. The cherries are always redder on the other side.

Echo’s first language is Mandarin. Her English is very good but she gets the words pension and penis mixed up. She told me ‘Aleks have two penis’. Apparently he’ll get another from the government when he’s sixty-eight.

 

6 January 2025, Monday

It was Yordanovden again (Йордановден, meaning ‘St John’s Day’). Bulgarian Orthodox gentlemen follow the custom of leaping into a frozen river to dance, chant and retrieve a crucifix chucked in by a priest. The finder’s guaranteed a year of good health and luck. Others observe from the bank, cheering, eating traditional food and discussing Taylor Swift.

In recent years the event has lacked atmosphere because the weather’s been too mild. The river selected for human immersion should display all the properties of a Slush Puppie (except the chemical food colourings and flavourings) but was too runny to be taken seriously today.

 

7 January 2025, Tuesday

Our Meteorological Bureau reported that 2024 was Bulgaria’s warmest year since 1930. Thinking back to those lazy, hazy, sweaty days of summer, I’d say that ‘warm’ was a bold understatement. 1930 must have been a record year for sales of Cornettos and Ambre Solaire. How did folks survive in such heat? Fascism was becoming very popular here at the time so I suppose that would have taken their minds off it.

We’re also told that electricity prices will rise by 8.24%, taking the sting out of our power cut days when we’ll enjoy thinking about how much money we’re saving.

 

8 January 2025, Wednesday

It’s the most wonderful time of the year!

Warm sunshine prompted the turning off of the heating machine and an all-day open back door policy. Liberation of the frustrated menagerie restored household calm. In the garden, small buds were budding in every direction. Trees and bushes I’d feared dead in August had made it. Had they been able to ingest cake and rakia I’d have thrown a funky flora party. I made the decision to clean the windows so I could enjoy this spectacle from inside the house too… tomorrow, perhaps!

However, the meteorology killjoys are sending snow on Saturday.

 

9 January 2025, Thursday

My Nan would always run the hoover round an hour before her cleaning lady arrived. I’m the same with my teeth so the dentist had little to do when I visited for descaling and polishing. Daily gargling with Cillit Bang would make him redundant.

He asked if his cabbage leaf remedy had cured my knees. I told him I’d bought a cabbage in the market but, being the glutton that I am, I’d eaten it on the bus going home. He couldn’t understand why he’d found none lodged between my teeth. The finger of suspicion hovered between glutton and liar.

 

10 January 2025, Friday

From the big plum tree flattened under the weight of the snow, I removed the small branches with loppers, a saw and my newly polished teeth. What remains requires chainsaw action but the steep slope situation scares me. I need someone here to drive me to the hospital if I cut my leg off, or someone in need of an amputation who could do the job for me.

Another day of spring weather. I’ve eaten my final Vitamin D tablet and feel cured so I’ll buy no more until October, which is only nine months away… oh, Im dreading it!

 

11 January 2025, Saturday

A taxi drove into the back of my car in the Kaufland car park exit queue. It was my fault, the driver insisted, even though I was stationary. Had I been moving he wouldn’t have hit me, at least not until I hit the car in front of me. Angrily pointing out his cracked headlight and multiple bodywork scratches (mostly concealed beneath a layer of dirt) he demanded 120 leva (£54) for repairs. In my best Bulgarian I said ‘my-nata vee’ (майната ви, meaning ‘some words you wouldn’t say in the company of nuns’).

Priyatelkata arrived home in the evening. Perfect timing!

 

12 January 2025, Sunday

A day of talking, laughter and tears. My French soulmate of more than five years had returned at short notice. During her two-month stay in Paris she had detested almost everything about it, coming to realise that she desperately missed her Bulgarian life of simplicity and tranquillity. It’s often said that once a person has lived in our adopted country it’s impossible to leave.

Priyatelkata’s first full day in Bulgaria called for a resumption supper at the Russian restaurant where we had eaten a last supper under very different circumstances exactly eight weeks earlier.

Eastern Europe 1 Western Europe 0

 

13 January 2025, Monday

Priyatelkata joined me as a guest at my exclusive club, Cybar, for a butty and a brew. How nice to see someone else struggle to get up onto those ridiculously high and heavy stools constructed from decommissioned Ilyushin Shturmovík wartime aircraft. Vacating our table, we found it easier to press the button to activate the ejection seat than to jump down in the conventional way.

A visit to a new shop stocking good quality art materials in addition to aisles of Chinese-made tat convinced Lady P that leaving Paris, the art capital of the world, had been a good idea.

 

14 January 2025, Tuesday

Pisspot Penka, has unusually large ears for a cat. Priyatelka trawled the web and discovered that she may be a Savannah cat; a rare hybrid developed in the twentieth century by crossing an African Serval with a European domestic cat. This would explain her lack of fear, her constant following me around and outright refusal to share eating and toilet areas with other cats. American people have been known to pay up to $26,000 for such a feline.

Feeling the symptoms of a cold coming on, I slept in the shed to avoid any risk of infecting our ultra-valuable moggy. 

 

15 January 2025, Wednesday

It seemed my head was full of boiling soup all steaming from the holes in my face. My entire body plunged into a febrile state from the cauldron’s fierce heat as my bones ached like I’d spent a night in the West Belfast Orange Lodge when they were just after hearing about the poster of Dana on my bedroom wall. 

Bulgaria eased my suffering with a stoked-up petchka and bucket of logs, enough rakia to float the Sheralga, the best settee in the Balkans (bought in a DFS autumn sale in Swindon) and an array of lazy cats for company.

 

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Image:

Echo’s preserved neighbour’s cherries (it was the cherries that were preserved, not the neighbour).

 

And if you’d like to see a few recent photographs of where I live, click on this.

January at Home

 

Part Two:

Shenanigans with Catkins

Click to view.