This Sort of Thing - February 2024 - Last Orders

 

15 February, Thursday

Turlough the genealogist becomes more active every day. Eight years ago I posted off a bottle of spit and a month later received an email saying my DNA is 56% Irish, 43% Scottish and 1% Scandinavian. My mother grinned when I told her the results showed 80% Afro-Caribbean and 20% milkman.

I also learned that for a fee I could use a website to build my family tree. Having recently succumbed, I’ve had many late nights fiddling about with their suggested sources. Apparently I had a great x5 aunt called Isabella Heavysides. Suddenly every penny of the subscription seemed worthwhile.

 

16 February, Friday

We met our young Chinese friend at the OMV petrol station café. She calls herself Echo because her real Mandarin name is totally unpronounceable. Her Bulgarian husband couldn’t make it for coffee because he was in New Zealand working on a ship. A very nice man but when they’re together I struggle not to call them Echo and the Bunnyman.

Her brother-in-law asked her to childmind his ten-year-old son every weekday afternoon for two months, so she suddenly decided she needed to visit her mother in China. Her airline ticket cost her almost $2,000. He must be an awful child.

 

17 February, Saturday

Priyatelkata and I regularly discuss our need to do another off-the-beaten track adventure. She’s found a Bulgarian travel company offering guided tours in remote parts of Iraq. It looks wonderful but I’m reluctant because I’ve been to Iraq before, in 1977. Surely it can’t have changed much in 47 years.

She spends her days drilling holes in gourds to make Turkish table lamps. She says she’ll sell them to finance the purchase of a little holiday cottage by the Tigris.

Neither of us has ever been to Great Yarmouth, but neither has the woman that runs the Bulgarian travel company.

 

18 February, Sunday

As a borderline gadgie, I’ve noticed that the joy of converting unkempt litter-strewn wilderness into beautiful woodland is directly proportional to the muscular agony that tears through my body in the evenings. Some people enjoy pain. I can get it on my doorstep for free. The Bulgarian Dominatrices’ Union would be livid if they knew.

Some mornings, whilst perched au toilette, I notice that from a nearby tree a Bulgarian dark red squirrel sits and stares through the bathroom window. Rude, considering the trouble he goes to in hiding his own nuts. I’ve never encountered a peeping Squirus Vulgaris before.

 

19 February, Monday

We went to renew Priyatelkata’s Bulgarian long term residence permit. The woman that works at the Immigration Office is lovely. We’ve known her years. I’m surprised more people don’t apply to live in Bulgaria.

Desislava Daihatsu has developed respiratory problems so we took her to see Nick the quick mechanic. He’s going to have a look at her tomorrow.

Something ordered from a website has been delivered but nobody knows where. The courier’s office couldn’t help so we began door-to-door enquiries.

We enjoyed the lunchtime sizzle of sea bass but news of family health problems in Martinique soured the day.  

 

20 February, Tuesday

Sofi met with French woman, Mathilde. Outside Café Yasna, in the cobbled Ulitsa Mednikarska, they sipped café noir and nibbled langues de chats whilst discussing rent and cats.

I took Ludo, our scabbiest cat, to discuss his weeping sores with our lovely young vet. She knows our cats’ names off by heart. Something I often struggle with myself.

Yesterday was Vasil Levski’s birthday. Born in 1837, he is Bulgaria’s ‘Apostle of Freedom’. We saw hundreds of schoolchildren lining up with their teachers to lay single carnations by his statue. I felt as proud of them as they did of him.

 

21 February, Wednesday

Luncheon was by Kolyu Ficheto Park with les Belges. Inge walked with crutches because of an unfortunate incident involving a small dog. Patje had recovered from falling off his ladder.

Needing to see a man about a field near Nova Zagora we instead saw Petya the nice Notary. During her childhood her grandfather was mayor of our village. She feared our invitation for tea at our house might stir old emotions.

Sammy the builder started work. He drives a van that originally belonged to a Bulgarian soup manufacturer and is liveried accordingly. From now on he is our Souper Man.

 

22 February, Thursday

The hours without an internet were painful. A dodgy connection, the Vivacom man suggested over the phone. I agreed, likening the trauma to the cutting of our umbilical cords.

At the Immigration Office Priyatelkata got her new leech-nah karta (лична карта, meaning ‘personal card’) so she can stay in Bulgaria at least until she’s an elderly lady.

A beautiful day so we celebrated with Turkish coffee and cake on the terrace of the new Café Reste in Arbanasi, admiring spectacular views across our city and the snow-capped Stara Planina range beyond.

Sammy broke our garden chair but I still adore this country.

 

23 February, Friday

Vivacom sent two internet repair men, as promised. They quickly repaired whatever it was that was broken, as promised. Then the one that spoke a little English expressed interest in my 61 year-old framed photograph of Leeds United. I was tempted to damage a cable so he’d have to return tomorrow.

Priyatelkata’s pain is her art. She bleeds aquarelle! It was a bed-bound day for her to recover from an affliction called Turkish lamp maker’s back. However, she leapt from her sickbed like a Turkish lamp maker’s salmon when I returned from town with sirene (Bulgarian feta) and spinach banichkas.

 

24 February, Saturday

I’ll mention dear Finbar in County Kerry because he’s the only person in the world with whom I discuss the ups and downs of having supported Leeds United since 1968. Leeds are the Tsigani of the football world and last night we beat Leicester who should stick to making crisps.

Harry Secombe was on my mind because if he ruled the world every day would be the first day of spring, but we seem to have missed it because today’s weather was the stuff of the first day of summer.

In Leicester they sang Justin Hayward’s ‘Forever Autumn’ dirge.

MOT

 

25 February, Sunday

Only the risk of smelling worse than Gaia, our Shih Tzu, deterred me from garden work. Bulgaria had run out of water for the day so bathing was impossible. The aroma of food at Вкусотерия, (pronounced Ver-koose-oh-terr-yah) our posh, healthy burger café saved our plant-based bacon.

In local mythology, Gaia is the personification of the Earth and mother of Uranus. The awful smell of the decaying dog food that adheres itself to our Gaia’s long facial hair takes something away from these magnificent tales of mighty gods.

Though Pan had sex with goats, which fits in well with our village customs.

 

26 February, Monday

The sixtieth birthday of my beloved, Paris-born, half-Breton, half-Algerian, totally eccentric Priyatelkata.

Agreeing that her birthplace was too distant, we visited Elena in our local mountains. The main road had the builders in but a lengthy alternative of narrow lanes, steep hillsides, dense forests and trips of goats eventually got us there with petrol tank and bellies equally empty.

Although lacking a tower, Elena oozes hospitality, history and culture. Paris lacks beautiful mountains and deliciously healthy Balkan food. We often hear French voices in Elena but never Bulgarians in Paris; an indication of which is the better place to visit.

 

27 February, Tuesday

Mitso the heavyweight champion cat of our lane lost his first fight so stayed overnight at the veterinarian (the best cut man in Bulgaria) to recover from facial surgery to drain obnoxious fluids. With a creature that sleeps all day it’s difficult to tell if the eye will survive.

The Priyatelkata Birthday Festival continued at the Bey House Restaurant in town. Yesterday lacked luxury but today we ate like Sultans. The Aussie waiter spoke Bulgarian and educated English but lapsed into his native tongue at the mention of sheep.

We’d never met a posh Australian before. We nicknamed him Brucephalus.

 

28 February, Wednesday

In Bulgarian lessons I learn how to say the black cat is on the red roof. Talking to Sammy our builder I learn much more. In his language we discussed:

• Kaufland, our local German supermarket, pays his 18-year-old son £290 per month for full-time employment.
• Bulgarians worry more about the ethnic tension rising between Serbs and Albanians in Kosovo to the west of Bulgaria than about Ukraine in the east.
• The nearby Yovkovtsi reservoir has less water in it now than it used to have during hot summers.
• Putin will never invade our village because even taxi-drivers can’t find it.

 

29 February, Thursday

When clocks are retarded for the daylight saving thing in October, people often rejoice at spending the extra hour in bed. Today we decided to do exactly the same with the extra day.

Beneath the bed are tins of soup, beans and sardines, stockpiled in anticipation of a nuclear holocaust. Armageddon needs to come soon as our crisps are fast approaching their best-before date. We’ve already eaten the chocolate because it would surely melt if Oppenheimer’s deadly toy was detonated. A kettle and a good paperback completed our requirements. 

We didn’t even have to get up to adjust the clocks.

 

Part One - This Sort of Thing - February 2024 - Early Doors

https://www.abctales.com/story/turlough/sort-thing-february-2024-early-doors

 

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My own photograph of a small section of a roadside trip of goats somewhere between Zlataritsa and Elena.