Marlene Dietrich’s Gappy Teeth

 

Marlene Dietrich’s Gappy Teeth

 

1 June 2025, Sunday

During our springtime, we can wait ages for a few degrees Celsius to arrive and then, completely out of the blue, thirty-five turn up at the same time. Oozing vernal optimism, we saw to it that long trousers and socks were folded and put away as fly-swatting apparatus, salad tongs and thongs were re-commissioned.

As dusk fell, fireflies joined our celebrations. Their zoological name, Lampyridae, suggests they’ve swallowed lamps but really it’s just Latin for when your bits glow in the dark; a bodily function that makes getting up for a wee in the middle of the night less complicated.  

 

2 June 2025, Monday

Yesterday was the 149^th anniversary of Hristo Botev, our celebrated poet and revolutionary, being killed at the age of 28 by Turkish troops. Today, for two minutes at noon, his death was marked across Bulgaria with air-raid sirens, during which time pedestrians and traffic stood completely still. I’ve never witnessed such a show of respect for a national hero in any other country.

Nobody knows why it’s always a day late. Perhaps they missed it by a day on the first anniversary and then stuck to the same date in subsequent years to give the impression that it was deliberate.

 

3 June 2025, Tuesday

Weeping sores on my forearms suggested a bubonic plague outbreak but it was only silly old phytophotodermatitis, a skin reaction caused by contact with sap from fig trees, exacerbated by sunlight exposure. I’d lopped some small branches from one so I could reach behind to dig up a wild hop that was strangling it. Little thanks for doing a good turn!

So I updated my Tinder profile to explain that my lesions, although hideously ugly, wouldn’t require the use of leeches for bloodletting, and a bit of aloe vera gel would soon have them as right as twenty-one stotinki (ninepence).

 

4 June 2025, Wednesday

Since November 1980, my motto has been don’t you tread on an ant, he’s done nothing to you, but lately they’ve been irritating me. The ants living out in the garden are grand but those wishing to share our kitchen are less welcome.  

Lady Internet said ants abhor cloves but clove success requires the queen to tell the workers when cloves are in situ and to stay away. Unfortunately, like in human life, queens do very little so I suppose she’ll announce it to them in her Christmas speech. In the meantime, a cinnamon solution spray has been 80% effective.

 

5 June 2025, Thursday

In July 1977 I spent three weeks in Basra because of my job. Twenty-six years later I watched BBC news footage of streets I recognised engulfed in flame. I feared for the lovely Iraqis I’d known there. I still have nightmares about them.

Every report of Israel’s current atrocities in Gaza reminds me of Basra and other Middle Eastern places I’ve visited where peace hangs on a knife's edge.

England’s Starmer, who described Netanyahu’s brutality as ‘intolerable’, announced that he’ll spend billions to prepare Britain for nuclear war.

Remembering that Palestinians live in a nightmare, I had another sleepless night.

 

6 June 2025, Friday

I love these days of cloudless Balkan skies. It’s as if Baba Marta has gone out and left the light on. Fifteen hours of sunshine has me buzzing like an insect and singing like a tone-deaf bird. On my side of the garden gate the world is perfect. I wish every day for the rest of my life could be 6 June 2025, apart from the bit where I got chewed to bits by evening mosquitos. Swooping swallows and bats try to help but if they ate every single one of the airborne bloodsuckers they’d be too fat to fly.

 

7 June 2025, Saturday

Two and a half years ago we acquired some extra land, not by annexing it but by buying it from a nice Bulgarian gentleman with teeth like a Neolithic stone circle.

Today we could boast that our labour of love had borne fruit (had it not been for the fact that the birds had eaten it all). Displaying unhealthy levels of love for the mature trees and investing in babies we’d grown from seeds and cuttings, we’ve finally turned our 1,300 square metres of tick-infested joyousness into a country park.

All it lacks is an arty-farty gift shop and café.

 

8 June 2025, Sunday

Busloads of local people set off for Riyadh hoping to find cooler weather.

Meanwhile, predatory black bitey flies outnumbered the irritating people at Hotnitsa Village Bazaar. I dislike seeing items other than local produce on sale at such traditional events so my own hypocrisy irritated me as I invested three leva in a Jack Kerouac novel.

We took a picnic to Stamboliyski lake but so did every Bulgarian sun-worshipper, so we ate it in a shady spot on a dirt road halfway up a mountain where we had only eagles for company. They don’t like tuna pasta salad. How picky!

 

9 June 2025, Monday

I broadened my Bulgarian vocabulary today whilst visiting the polyclinic. The words for Lyme disease are Lymska bolest (Лаймска болест), the words for still got it are vuh-seh oshtay goh eemash (все още го имаш) and the words for the arrogant and rude assistant pharmacist are unprintable in any language.

Thankfully my dear friend Dimitar accompanied me as official translator. He told me about a previous English speaker who had required similar treatment years ago. I asked how she had fared. The Bulgarian word for dead is murr-tuv (мъртъв).

Later Priyatelkata and I ate a pizza at Restaurant Ego to celebrate my new party-size box of antibiotics.

 

10 June 2025, Tuesday

Many weeks had passed since Municipality Mustafa promised to cut the grass in our field. We were worried as he seemed to have disappeared off the face of the Earth and wondered if he’d been sent to a Gulag for using the municipality strimmer outside working hours.

Recently, State-Owned Sasho took over the job of keeping grass verges tidy. His Facebook photographs suggested there were few places he hadn’t strimmed, and every shot included his Lidl carrier bag. Was he more proud of his workmanship or his shopping?

Anyway, I saw Municipality Mustafa today, so the mystery was partly solved.

 

11 June 2025, Wednesday

A slow news day in Malki Chiflik as people, plants and parasites wilted in the heat and bees could be heard sighing rather than buzzing. I removed cobwebs and assorted insect egg sacs from the eaves in preparation for Warrington Dave arriving on Monday to tart up the house.

Alone with my thoughts, I couldn’t help but wonder did Gordon Honeycombe like Crunchies, is Iggy Pop addicted to Rice Krispies, and was J. R. Hartley the ultimate Fisherman’s Friend?

It’s really nice being sixty-seven years old with not much left on my to-do list. Tomorrow I’ll make a new list.

 

12 June 2025, Thursday

The old man who sits at the bus stop with a gap in his teeth where his cigarette snugly fits, confided in me, ‘In this weather, if you make hay while the sun shines you’ll have far too much hay and if the hard work doesn’t kill you then the fierce sun will. So it’s best to keep cool smoking cigarettes on a shady bench.’ Marlene Dietrich always looked cool with her cigarette, so he had a point. But to be totally convinced I’d need to see her doing it in a bus shelter with a gap in her teeth.

 

13 June 2025, Friday

I seemed to have returned to my normal energetic self after weeks of sitting about moaning about my Lyme disease and shouting ‘Back off! I’ve got a can of Raid!’ at garden arachnids. The polyclinic disease lady had cured me. I wanted to kiss her but, wary of other diseases she’s in daily contact with, I decided against it.

To test my restored oomph, I washed all our windows, inside and out. Belgian friends Patje and Inge joined us for dinner but didn’t comment on the sparkly panes, so that was a waste of time. I won’t wash them again.

 

14 June 2025, Saturday

Today there was a new war. Netanyahu, having almost completed the job of exterminating Gazans, began hurling missiles at Iran. I wondered if he sang the Chicago Blues song, ‘It ain't no fun when the rabbit got the gun’ as the ayatollahs returned fire.

Totally depressed by global hostilities, I searched the internet to see what we could eat when all the supermarkets have been bombed. We’ve a profusion of edible wild plants around us that should keep us alive, but unfortunately the bindweed that smothers our garden and chases me up the street in dreams isn’t one of them. 

 

15 June 2025, Sunday

Probably two or three weeks early, we’ve reached the point in the year when the ferocity of the horticultural battle recedes. In May our garden always looks like an Alpine meadow but by August it’s more like a Saharan wadi. We let much of the unwanted flora grow to keep the ground cool and moist-ish but some murderous twisting twining triffid-esque specimens take advantage of our hospitality.  

Bathed from head to toe in fluids manufactured to protect me from insects, sunburn, mad dogs and Englishmen, I was a walking chemistry lab as I strove to be at one with nature.

 

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Image:

My own photograph of some gappy teeth that I found on the kitchen table in an abandoned farmhouse in the Rodopi mountains. I would assume that they are still on that kitchen table.

 

Part Two:

If I Were a Fish

Click on the link to read