A Different Tetsubin of Sushi

 

A Different Tetsubin of Sushi

 

1 August 2025, Friday

July had ended with rain. Almost an hour of it. So the utilities boys, thinking we had enough water, cut the supply in the early hours. This always ruins the enjoyment of my day’s first wee and first coffee. They dug a hole in the road, possibly to find the source of the problem, but more likely to wee in.

The nursery in Pavlikeni was closed because nobody was buying plants in this hot weather. Passing charred fields and copses we drove to the Eye-tee-tay (Айтите, don’t know what it means) fish restaurant near Suhindol where even the prawns were dry.

 

2 August 2025, Saturday

Our village shop displayed prices in euro as well as leva. If Malki Chiflik was prepared for Eurozone entry then surely the rest of Bulgaria, and even Paraguay, must have been. Hoarders with cash secretly stuffed into palliasses and pouffes panicked. Our pot containing bothersome one, two and five stotinka coins, tap washers, a Jackie Charlton Esso World Cup coin, a few pesetas and a lot of dog hairs required attention or would be lost forever. 

Having never fully grasped the Bitcoin concept, I hoped the Ronnie Wood lookalike woman at the shop’s check-out would be savvy enough to help.

 

3 August 2025, Sunday

I’ve tried hard to be a veggie but I love a bit of roast chicken. Its crispy skin is scrumptious, as are outer layers on grilled fish, brown bread, homemade yoghurt and rice pudding. My rule is to never eat mammals or octopuses, and since Farage found fame I’ve given up gastropods too. Unsurprisingly, only vegetables vote for him.

Metro supermarket’s meat department is a massive walk-in fridge and a grand place to be on a toasty hot day. I went there to buy poultry for lunch but stayed the whole afternoon with a piña colada and a paperback book.

 

4 August 2025, Monday

Mechanical Nikolai fiddled with our alternator and had the car going like a rocket; albeit Stephenson's Rocket. In fact, it coughs out more smoke than the old steam locomotive and probably isn’t very legal. He’ll do some engine mending for us when he’s not so busy.

Veterinary Dr Dimitrova fiddled with our scabby cat, Ludo. Test results revealed allergies to almost every plant in Bulgaria. Grim news for a lad who stays outside nine months of the year. We paid a lot of money for those results so we’d hoped for something better. Fortunately, delightful Dr D had a plan.

 

5 August 2025, Tuesday

Not many people know this but Vesselina Kasarova (Веселина Кацарова) follows me. She follows me not in a pervy stalker sort of way but on Instagram. Most people probably don’t know she’s a Bulgarian mezzo-soprano, famed throughout the opera world. Born and raised in Stara Zagora, 100 kilometres from my home, she now lives in Switzerland. She hasn’t told me exactly where in case I follow her in a pervy stalker sort of way.

I’ve spoken many times with Billy Bragg and Nina Persson, but Vesselina’s my big namedrop job. Her website says she’s available for opera singing lessons. Should I enrol?

 

6 August 2025, Wednesday

My dear friend Coral would read this journal every month on the ABCTales website and remark, ‘Well I knew all that already!’ This because our closeness meant we were in daily contact.

Already aware of her terminal illness I was further saddened on hearing, from her daughter Sarah, news that she’d passed.

Coral’s other daughter Julia, also no longer with us, was another wonderful friend, decades ago. Coral loved the Bulgarian rakia I gave her when we met in March. Tonight I had a drop myself whilst reflecting on how privileged I’d been to have known these two remarkable women.

 

7 August 2025, Thursday

Little Manoushka lost her ovaries and uterus. She may have left them at the vet’s. She had them when she went out this morning but when she got home she noticed they’d gone.

Pulling out the dishwasher from its hole in the kitchen we found many disgusting things lurking within but none resembled feline internal organs. We did this to try to repair it, not just to satisfy the cat.

We’ll be needing a new one. A new dishwasher that is, not a cat… though you never know. The Technopolis shop offers home delivery. State-of-the-art midwifery is all the rage.

 

8 August 2025, Friday

 

Knock knock on my door

It’s Hike! a voice from beyond

Hike who? I replied

 

Maybe it’s because my haiku-writing skills are poor, but I find I can rattle one off whilst waiting for the kettle to boil. Writing poetry’s a different tetsubin of sushi, especially when languishing in an emotional void.

Working on the big ships, I visited Japan in 1978. I’d expected everyone to be speaking in seventeen-syllable unrhymed poems but they seemed interested only in the Bee Gees. The symbol on the tee shirt they sold me said ‘long life and happiness’ or something… polite I hoped.

 

9 August 2025, Saturday

In our garden there are as many earworms as earthworms.

A big noisy ruckus out in the street filled my mind with the song, ‘I Recall a Gypsy Woman’. They’re normally lovely people but I’d hate to fall out with one. My limited knowledge of the local tongue suggested she wasn’t entirely happy with her husband’s wedding anniversary arrangements.

At dusk, as I optimistically sprinkled resuscitative water on scorched earth, the aerial acrobatics of friendly chiropterans had me singing ‘Like a bat out of Blagoevgrad.’ The words didn’t flow, but with so much of Bulgaria burning, they sounded quite apt.

 

10 August 2025, Sunday

 

One day when he’d nowt else to do

A dyslexic young man from Otsu

Wrote this verse down for me

While brewing his tea

Saying ‘Look it’s an Irish haiku!’

 

With Japan on my mind, during a week that marked the eightieth anniversaries of the detonation of atomic bombs over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich publicly announced, ‘We are erasing the Palestinian State; first in practice and then officially.’

While ordinary people in the civilised world raise their voices in anger, their governments still do little, if anything. Does civilisation really exist?

 

11 August 2025, Monday

On a small scratch ‘n’ sniff piece of glossy paper proverb-of-the-day type thing, I read Tsveta Todorova’s profound Bulgarian words, ‘We’re always waiting for the right moment. We’re always waiting for something or someone.’ Which didn’t fill Priyatelkata and I with confidence whilst anticipating the arrival of food at our table at the Bella Vista restaurant (previously referred to as the Brutalist Communist riverside café).

Our meal turned out to be delicious, but there was no sign of dear Tsveta. She’d obviously got sick of waiting and opted to dine on capitalist fast food elsewhere, or eat her own proverbs.

 

12 August 2025, Tuesday

Manoushka’s brother from Sofia came to stay, forever! Thought to be lost, or even dead, he’d been found by our friend Milena, fighting for survival in the heart of the Slavija Quarter.

We named him Django (after the legendary Monsieur Reinhardt) because he seemed like a crazy cat that, given a couple of opposable thumbs, might rattle off Gypsy jazz tunes on a guitar, which would make a welcome change from him shitting under the bed.

Manoushka, who sleeps under the bed, wasn’t entirely thrilled. A harsh reminder that you can choose your friends but you can’t choose your family.

 

13 August 2025, Wednesday

Django’s lopsided mouth was easily spotted because he didn’t move all day. Not attempting to eat, drink, wee or poo suggested he was about to lapse. So it was off to the vet’s for the poor lad’s first visit.

His jaw and a lower canine tooth had been broken in the past. There was no wound or infection but the two parts of the fractured bone hadn’t fused back together and moved like a door hinge. All other problems were stress-related and would be resolved with the allocation of a private bedroom.

Stray cat stress became old immigrant couple stress.

 

14 August 2025, Thursday

A tee shirt with ‘I put the sexy in dyslexic’ printed on the front amused me. If I had one, I’d wear it constantly to lessen the trauma of living on Planet Earth. New cat Django stayed permanently under the bed with his sedatives. With nine lives available why be so afraid?

I managed to dodge global misery items until the evening when Priyatelkata suggested I watch a documentary about chlorpyrifos pesticide and its links to autism among children. I wanted to know when the Benny Hill Show would be back on but Bulgarian newsagents don’t stock the TV Times.

 

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Image:

Bozhidar the Roma violinist fiddles while Bulgaria burns. My own photograph.

 

Part Two:

Bring Me the Head of St. Paisius of Hilendar

Click on the link to read