All the President’s Biscuits

 

Afternoon Tea with Orpheus

Nothing moves, there is no breeze

No birds fly by in the cloudless sky

No creature has the will to disturb the cruel tranquillity

Not even bees

Too warm to swarm or gather pollen from the sunflowers

That mockingly smile as earth cracks at their feet

Gaping fissures, desperate mouths craving rain

 

Chilled Rodopi chai

Gurgles, teases, surges

Splashes jug to glass

To throat, a scratchy arid place

Dusty, as dry than the Plain of Thrace

To the health of Orpheus, my dearest friend

I drink

Refreshed I lift my pen

I write

My note of thanks

One hundred words…

 

1 July, Monday

Today Bulgarians celebrated July Morning, a festival by the Black Sea where Stonehenge solstice types rejoice with traditional music, dancing and smoking mackerel or something. The perfect spot as this is where Europe gets its first glimpse of the rising sun each day.

We’re 240 kilometres from the sea so instead we visited our Chinese friend Echo in Polski Senovets. Her man’s in Alaska working on his ship. Often prone to loneliness in her city apartment, this time she’s at their old farmhouse. Her face had colour and smiles on it. Bulgarian village life suits her. There’s no better tonic.

 

2 July, Tuesday

Ooh, a storm is threatening my very life today, I sang as a day’s garden work completed the clearing up from the previous storm.

Zoom Earth is a brilliant app for seeing where your next devastating downpour is coming from. Ours was booked in for 8:00 pm but we also watched Hurricane Beryl move across the Caribbean (Priyatelkata worried about family in Martinique).

It took thirty minutes to wrap our smart new car with carpet, cardboard, hessian sacks and a plastic car cover. It lacked only a bow on top.

Then we waited… hang on to your hat Mother Bulgaria!

 

3 July, Wednesday

The merciless meteorology arrived at 8:00 pm, as promised, and it rained solid (well, liquid) until dawn. Strategically placed tin cans compensated for newly acquired holes in the roof as the sky flashed and the valley shook. Stressful yes, but at least the garden won’t need watering for a few days.

Empires are terrible evil things but without the Ottoman Empire we wouldn’t have Bulgarian coffee and without the British Empire there’d be no curry. At Tempo restaurant this evening we had that rarest commodity, Bulgarian curry. It’s like rice pudding with bits of chicken and broccoli… but no papadams!

 

4 July, Thursday

Meeting the Essex contingent at the OMV petrol café, we discussed living nightmares like storm damage, the rise of neo-fascism across Europe, young Archie Gray leaving Leeds United to sign for Tottingham Hotspur plus the usual goats, tomatoes and young gypsy girls that dominate every Bulgarian conversation.

Later, to distract my thoughts from the awful world beyond our garden gate, I shaved my head. The first time in a while, so my pale bonce contrasted spectacularly against my suntanned face. I looked like a Black and White Minstrel gone wrong… not that they were ever right in the first place.

 

5 July, Friday

Hurroo! The Conservatory Party has been all but eradicated from Britain. Unfortunately, Nigel Fromage remains. I’d go over there to kick him up the arse but it’s hard to tell which part of him that might be.

Early morning neck craning with Ivo and the Builders (a great rock band name) saw new roof and gutter plans begin to take shape. The poor old roof has one more Balkan winter to embrace before a tile is lifted.

Priyatelkata’s packed holiday bag sitting in a corner had dogs, cats and me moping around the house all day hoping she wouldn’t go.

 

6 July, Saturday

Strange that a dreary bus station should be the scene of great emotions. Reluctant waves and weak smiles from either side of tinted glass as Priyatelkata embarked alone on her adventure in the shiny red Irizar I6 (our favourite type of bus… so many memories). Meanwhile, alighting passengers were met with welcoming shrieks of excitement. She’ll only be away a week but I’ll miss her like the hydrangeas miss the rain.

Home alone and anticipating huge shenanigans, I bought teabags and sat on the terrace all afternoon reading a book. While one cat’s away, all the other cats do play.

     

7 July, Sunday

There was a bit of a do in the square. The mayor promised traditional music and dancing while something resembling a former animal sizzles on charcoal grills. I said yes but later thought no. It was to raise money to repair the hailstone damaged church roof. Poor people with damaged roofs of their own being asked to cough up whilst the heavily endowed Orthodox Church keeps its purse firmly shut. Our gypsy neighbours weren’t invited and late night fireworks scared our dogs. Sometimes Priyatelkata and I feel we’re drifting over from our two-man ethnic minority to another slightly bigger one.

 

8 July, Monday

Bulgarian Nature Study - Lesson 1

The nasty invasive weed of the month is Pokeberry (Phytolacca Americana), as sung about in Elvis Presley’s 1973 hit, Polk Salad Annie.

With lush green leaves, three-metre high woody red stems and almost black berries, it looks nice but it’s almost predatory and it won’t take die for an answer. Sprouting in the most unusual places it makes daily strimming, hoovering, showering and plucking essential.

The above ground bits are deadly poisonous but the gypsies make their Viagra from its roots. Closely following the recipe determines whether you have local or general rigor mortis. 

 

9 July, Tuesday

I’ve had numerous insurance office encounters just lately but today I was in a new one. Its only memorable feature was the incredibly sweaty handshake of the lady assistant. I expect it was because she was excited to see me.

I detest the shopping mall (not just ours, but all of them). However, there’s a nice bookshop that sells English language material and a magnificently cool top-floor coffee café with views of the distant mountains. Apparently, dozing off there is frowned upon.

Late afternoon my green garden fingers shifted some sad looking shrubs. July’s ferocious weather’s killing them / us.

 

10 July, Wednesday

Hot Balkan summers heighten my Catholic guilt during evening garden watering sessions. Perhaps I should turn to Orthodoxy. But if the Yovkovtsi Water and Storm Door Company just bear with me they’ll see our young trees flourish to become the lungs of our village. The earth around us will cool and we’ll have saved the planet, or at least Malki Chiflik.

A great night for televisual football. Ludogorets (Лудогорец, meaning ‘crazy people of the forest’) from up north in Razgrad, beat Georgia’s Dinamo Batumi in a Champions’ League preliminary. We live by a small forest. Do they call us that too?

 

11 July, Thursday

A man at the bus stop said to me, ‘Life, like a cup of tea, can bring pleasure to the most oppressed victim of the feudal regime. But take heed, we do not all have biscuits to put in the saucer.’ I replied, ‘It doesn’t look like the bus is coming’ and wandered away to the shop to buy some ginger nuts.

The man was right, almost. Bulgarian biscuits tend to be wafer-based imposters manufactured here in Veliko Tarnovo. Anything more substantial is packed with asphalt jam and imported from Turkey.

Only the Mafia and the President have Rover Assorted.

 

12 July, Friday

People in Varna grumbled. It was their hottest day since 1916, but still only 35.5°C which was a full 5° less than here. They’re such sissies over by the Black Sea which is technically just a lake anyway, despite having dolphins, lighthouses and lobster-coloured lager louts from Croydon.

Whilst using the petrol strimmer I’m not bothered by mosquitos and I sweat a kilogram in weight every twenty minutes. If I was sure that exhaust fumes do less harm to lungs than the DEET in insect repellent does to skin, I’d spend summers with a two stroke-engine constantly under my arm. 

 

13 July, Saturday

My friend Dimitar did national service in the Bulgarian Army in the 1980s. Back then everyone here was terrified that Reagan and Thatcher would hurl their cruise missiles over from Greenham Common. Dimitar led a team that operated a system for shooting down western weapons of mass destruction and the population felt safer in the knowledge that a Soviet Bloc listening station’s twenty-minute warning would be adequate time in which to deter them. He said that despite practising with this defence system every single day for two years, it still took them two hours to unload it from the truck.

 

14 July, Sunday

To mark the occasion of Bastille Day, our house was stormed by a rowdy mob of French people (Priyatelkata’s family), destroying the luxurious silence enjoyed by me and the menagerie during the past week. But nobody was guillotined. They don’t even have a pencil sharpener.

Dashing like an eejit to get the place tarted up for them, I knocked together a spicy vegetarian cottage pie for tea. They love Bulgarian cuisine so I told them the dish was called пикантен зеленчуков вилен пай, which is Bulgarian for spicy vegetarian cottage pie. Well it’s my own recipe which I concocted in Bulgaria, so why not?

 

15 July, Monday

Priyatelkata’s daughter and two grandchildren (called Malia, Keinoa and Laina) are here on holiday for a week recovering from their holiday in Crete. Priyatelkata’s glad to be home and recovering from her week in Crete with her family. I was glad to have humanoids to talk to for a change and spent the day recovering from my week of tilling the land beneath a searing sun.

Hasan the neighbour was mixing concrete on the road all day. With a bag of cement, a wire coat hanger, a roll of duct tape, and a bottle of rakia, Bulgarians can build anything.    

 

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Image:

My own photograph of the sun rising over the Black Sea, not this month but last summer..

 

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