This Sort of Thing - March 2024 - L'ouverture

 

Introduction

A sixth month of writing 100 words per day. March brings enormous pleasure with its vernal equinox, ritual adjustment of clocks, assortment of vivid colours from nature’s explosion, Balkan folklore malarkey and a halftime pint with St Patrick.

These meagre daily offerings were my only attempt at writing this month. Encouraging the beauty of our land whilst grappling with weeds the likes of which Tarzan might swing from, fills my days and leaves me aching all over (quivers down the backbone, I got the aches down the knee bones, etc.). Even my typing finger suffers as contented exhaustion envelopes me.

 

1 March, Friday

Today Bulgarians celebrate Baba Marta (Баба Марта, meaning ‘Grandmother March’).

Baba Marta, a temperamental woman, brings nice weather for her spring cleaning on 1 March. If her brothers (January and February) annoy her she summons the return of bad weather. This is the beginning of spring and any snowflakes seen after today are merely feathers from her mattress as she shakes it outside.

We give each other red and white bracelets (symbolising health and fertility), worn or hung in trees for luck until the first sign of spring appears; most commonly plum blossom or the arrival of the storks in our skies.

 

2 March, Saturday

For Priyatelkata and I, the first signs of spring are tremendous pains in our muscles and joints as we attack our expanse of garden wilderness park with a wave of shock and awe.

The shock comes from us realising how much work there is to do and the awe is more of an ‘aaarrrggghhh’ as we drag our weary bodies up to bed at the end of gruelling days.

We could do with one of those ice baths that athletes use to relieve sore, burning muscles but I don’t like the cold so I’d have to keep my jumper on.

 

3 March, Sunday

My journal entries for March might be a bit repetitive. They say there’s more than one way to skin a cat (we’ve counted five so far) but there’s only one way to attack a field of aggressive spikey shrubs. Workdays differ only in the variation in nosey passers-by who always have suggestions to make. I congratulate myself in my ability to mutter under my breath in Bulgarian.

Today was Liberation Day. The 146^th anniversary of us being freed from the Ottoman Yoke. We wave Russian flags because they helped us. In September we have Independence Day when we despise Russians.

 

4 March, Monday

Born and raised beside the North Sea and Atlantic Ocean, I struggle to accustom myself to warm sunny weather on Bulgarian public holidays. Garden centre sales of barbeques today exceeded one per capita of population as galoshes were kicked off and Chalga music enchanted mountainsides.

We lack a swimming pool in our garden but luckily the water heater in the cupboard beneath the kitchen sink sprang a leak enabling our menagerie to recreate the beauty of a Serengeti water hole just beside the fridge.

The disaster necessitated cleaning of the cupboard, now tidy for the first time in eight years.

 

5 March, Tuesday

By noon our man Ivaylo had condemned our water heater and installed a new one for only 240 shiny leva (£100). The rusty innards of the discarded machine resembled a wartime landmine which I half buried by our garden gate to deter strangers from our parking place.

Magnificent spring sunshine highlighted how filthy our windows had become thanks to felines pawing at them to gain entry to the house. Cats lack the thumbs needed for turning door keys. Installing a cat flap would allow other creatures to enter, upsetting the domestic bliss. I bit the bullet and cleaned the windows.

 

6 March, Wednesday

I’m a writer not a chainsaw murderer, so I only use my Husqvarna 236 for felling deceased trees and giving them a decent send off. My main source of cardiovascular exercise recently has been the 48 pulls on the starter cord each time I’ve used this deadly contraption. The man in the psychopath supplies shop disappeared behind a curtain with it, re-emerging two minutes later to report no problems found. Back in my wilderness I found only 12 pulls were required to bring it to life. I considered this a 75% success. 

Fancy complicated coffee machines give me similar headaches.

 

7 March, Thursday

On wet days I sit on the terrace and write, or read. Today was a day for reading Patrick Kavanagh.

At school they gave us poems, every single one of them bland and meaningless in my world. I thought I hated poetry until I found my own poets. Patrick was one. He told me to dance with Kitty Stobling and I have done, though she has a different name.

I had a very pleasant journey, thank you sincerely

For giving me my madness back, or nearly.

Had I lived in Dublin in the 1950s I’m sure we’d have been friends.

 

8 March, Friday

It being International Women’s Day, my international woman and I took Ludo, our scabby international cat, to the veterinary clinic to discuss feline allergies. Two vets saw us. Our visits generate money and laughter for them so they seem to appreciate these appointments as much as our sick beasts do. They said the scratching and bleeding should stop soon, at least for the cat.

At Вкусотерия (Ver-koose-oh-terr-yah) Café, another regular haunt, we ate not international but Bulgarian food served by more smiling Bulgarian faces.

It’s important to point out that no business connections exist between the veterinary clinic and the café.

 

9 March, Saturday

Priyatelkata bought a solar panel device in Praktiker to power up her woodland garden art shack. Because it’s portable, when the sun sets she can hop in the car with it and drive to a place where it’s still daytime and continue her electricity generating.

If Yuri Gagarin was still alive it would be his ninetieth birthday today. I don’t normally like fireworks but I had a whim to light the blue touch paper on a rocket to mark the occasion.

Incidentally, the possibility of me singing ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight’ is always just a whim away, a whim away.

 

10 March, Sunday

Standing by the linden I beheld resplendent white blooms of plum trees in every direction except where my view was obstructed by the rustic timbers of our shed. Incredible that such beauty could exist in close proximity to a place stuffed to the rafters with all the shit that we don’t want in the house but don’t feel ready to throw away.

Serenaded by birdsong and the hum of a myriad of bees, swarms of those awful black flies that I’ve only ever seen in March in Bulgaria sucked sweet blood from uncovered limbs. The first weeping sores of spring!

 

11 March, Monday

Balkan folklore dictates that the second Monday of every third month be known as ‘Anal Gland Monday’. Luckily for us, nobody else in the Balkans knows this so we were first in at the vet’s at 8:30 am to have our Shih Tzu unblocked. Following this, our breakfast turned out to be a simple affair.

Our neighbour Hasan worked in a nearby garden, his feet protected from thick mud by clinical white wellington boots, presumably acquired from where he’s previously worked as a brain surgeon or slaughterhouse attendant. His cigarette tar cough so similar to the call of the jay.

 

12 March, Tuesday

Crado (aka Cat Nouveau) is a big boy now. He caught a slow worm to wrestle on the terrace, as Tarzan might with a crocodile. A reminder that the vernal equinox approaches fast, bringing that time of year when our kitchen floor is littered with dismembered baby lizards.

Thunder, lightning and deluge prevented any outdoor work. Our dogs hid under furniture whilst others living nearby, tormented by the static electricity accumulated in their fur, howled like crazed beasts from Hades. A Verdi CD played loud drowns out all external noises.

None of this ever happened when I lived in Leeds.

 

13 March, Wednesday

Correspondence from the Mayor of Dryanovo advised me today that on 20 December I became a victim of a traffic speed camera, but for 14 лева (£6) the matter could be put straight.

Letters are rare here. Utility bills are digital and Christmas cards non-existent. There’s no delivery service so we collect mail weekly from the office of our village mayor, if we remember. An animated television series called Postman Petko and His Black and White Kotka would be lost on Bulgarian kids.

Junk mail is yet to be invented so we’re never mythered by Domino’s Pizza, UKIP or Jehovah’s Onlookers.

 

14 March, Thursday

Hurroo! It’s the 27^th Annual International Rivers Day!

So what’s your favourite river? I’m torn between the very local Yantra and the not too distant Dunav, the former meandering spectacularly but the latter being the second longest in Europe, just pipped by the Volga.

I was born by the Tees and have since lived near an Ouse, Avon, Thames, Clyde and Medway, but they all looked a bit dreary and mucky.

We could do with some new rivers and it seems that during the last 24 hours, persistent rain has formed one in our garden. I’d love an oxbow lake. 

 

15 March, Friday

Ding Dong! The Patriarch’s dead!

Neophyte, the Head of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, has shuffled off his immortal coil. Religious people here say he did a good job, not once displaying unorthodox tendencies.

We’ve had many Patriarchs, Leontius of Preslav getting the ball rolling in 919 AD. I must admit that Neophyte never gave me any cause for complaint. He’s our version of the Pope but not as famous. You’d never see his face on a commemorative teapot in a Galway souvenir shop.

They’re taking bets on who’ll replace him but in the meantime Neil Warnock is in temporary charge.

 

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Image:

The old pear tree close to our house is currently one of the most beautiful living organisms that I have ever encountered.

 

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Part Two - This Sort of Thing - March 2024 - La finale

https://www.abctales.com/story/turlough/sort-thing-march-2024-la-finale