At Home with the Rhizomes

 

At Home with the Rhizomes

 

15 September 2025, Monday

Rising from my own bed’s a far trickier operation than getting out of a rusty rustic Irish cottage bed because mine’s the comfiest in the world. Similarly, no bathroom’s ever as luxurious as the one you have at home.

Having been deprived of sunny 34°C healthy civilised weather for two weeks, I gasped for breath all day and wondered if any native of Donegal had ever eaten breakfast outdoors or found the need to water a garden. Bulgaria has snakes but no Guinness. Irish people would perish here.

The day had flown before any attempt at real life was made.

 

16 September 2025, Tuesday

Ailing menagerie members formed a waiting list as long as a 1980s queue at a Bulgarian bakery. Multi-coloured fluids (puss pus) oozing from Ludo’s leg wound fast-tracked him to the front. He’s a great one for purring but fighting’s his forte. The vet suggested we return tomorrow to visit him, bringing grapes and Lucozade.

Priyatelkata and I decided ice creams would be nice. The shop lady’s promotional scratch card said we’d won another which we didn’t want. Uneaten, it would have died in the hot weather. We then discovered how difficult it was to give a Cornetto to a stranger.

 

17 September 2025, Wednesday

Ludo was discharged from the vets’ with a bucket of medication and instructions to stay indoors for a fortnight. Incarcerating our wildest cat, we knew, would be as trying as trying to get a concupiscent walrus to sleep in the guestroom.

Priyatelkata had hurt her back and I had a broken tooth. And hello, hello, I was in a place called vertigo again. But we were thankful that we were in better shape than the crispy brown plants occupying the patch of scorched earth that surrounded our home.

We discussed the increasing likelihood of us never going on holiday again.

 

18 September 2025, Thursday

Another rough day in veterinary terms. Snezhinka the wonder dog, who had a malignant growth removed from her paw last year, had developed a tumour in a canine armpit. Dr Gunchev gave us tablets to slow the development but said there was definitely no cure.

For the rest of the day raising a smile was difficult, but not as difficult as getting a tablet into the dog. I wondered how bad they must taste when a creature that spends so much of her day licking her arse kicks up such an almighty fuss when we’re putting medication in her mouth.  

 

19 September 2025, Friday

With all the terrible things currently going on in the world it was nice to have a bit of good news for a change. Our Prime Minister, Rosen Zhelyazkov, today rejected a proposed law that would have put restrictions on homemade alcohol production. The nasty men at the Ministry of Agriculture and Essential Victuals had suggested that each household should be able to produce a maximum of 30 litres of rakia and 500 litres of wine each year. Mr Zhelyazkov described it as ‘an unacceptable encroachment on the ancient way of life of the Bulgarians.’ And I’ll drink to that!

 

20 September 2025, Saturday

In Resen, from Plant Shop Dave, we purchased drought-resistant specimens in preparation for next year’s natural catastrophe even though this year’s wildfires still raged on mountainsides. Within Europe, only Spain, Cyprus and Greece had been hotter than Bulgaria in 2025. The time had come in my life to accept that I would never see another lupin. 

Perusing a nearby charity shop for second-hand books, I noticed a large St George’s Cross flag adorning a wall layered with grease from the all-day English breakfasts they serve. For what reason were the pages of Life’s Little Ironies by Thomas Hardy stuck together?

 

21 September 2025, Sunday

I finished reading a book for the first time in ages. I’d chosen something not too challenging to get me back into a reading frame of mind. I enjoyed it, though I’d forgotten what a bitch Milly Molly Mandy could be. But whatever happens in a novel it’s never as bad as what’s happening in the mother of all dystopian horror stories formerly known as the world today.

Finding homes in the garden for new horticultural babies partially cleansed my mind from war, pestilence and famine, but not drought. Planting one iris rhizome left me exhausted but determined to conquer.

 

22 September 2025, Monday

Always a grand day for a bit of celebrating because as well as it being independence day in Bulgaria and Mali, it’s Billie Piper’s birthday. So we went to Bey House for breakfast in the sunny garden and then to Praktiker to buy a couple of bags of compost because we were still peckish.

The autumn equinox, Cónocht an Fhómhair, is a significant point in Irish tradition, symbolising balance between light and dark as the day and night become equal. But after today, darkness prevails so every journal entry from now until the winter solstice will chronicle my chronic misery.

 

23 September 2025, Tuesday

Dr Gunchev had worked miracles with Crazy Ludo’s weeping wound. He also mentioned he was a Leeds United fan but during their seasons of absence from the Premier League he supported Arsenal instead. I was flabbergasted. Had he been drinking the disinfectant? Cheering on Turkey in the next World Cup was the only retaliation method I could imagine.

Bulgarian lessons with Dari resumed today after a summer break and I had forgotten всичко (everything). My recent Irish trip reminded me how much I enjoy talking to total strangers but I struggle to do that here. I need to up the леля (aunty). 

 

24 September 2025, Wednesday

We grumbled because for the second time this week we went a whole day without water. However, the local economy benefitted as, unable to cook or wash dishes, we visited Arbanashki Han garden restaurant for tasty nutrition.

In less developed countries many people never have a constant supply to their homes but at least they’re prepared for it. The Bulgarian water boys rarely give prior warning.

Within minutes of the taps gushing again we received a message from the electricity company advising us that we’ll be without power for three hours on 2^nd October. Smarty pants arse lickers or what?

 

25 September 2025, Thursday

A Bulgarian, Captain Simeon Petrov, invented the air-to-surface bomb by adapting hand grenades. The first was dropped on Karağaç railway station in Turkey on 16 October 1912. At that time Bulgarians were at war with the Ottomans who’d made themselves far too comfortable here and showed little sign of leaving despite 500 years of unsubtle hinting. So there was a reason for the bombardment; it wasn’t just for fun.

Whenever I see film footage of a bomb being dropped I’m tempted to shout out ‘That was our idea!’ But I don’t because, on reflection, it wasn’t a very good idea.

 

26 September 2025, Friday

I saw Hassan the neighbour whizzing up the lane on a shiny new electric mobility scooter. He’s several years younger than me but he’s lived through difficult times and has an estimated 876,000 Turkish cigarettes under his belt (and half of one behind his ear), so I was happy for him. Having not seen Slavka, his dear lady, in a while I presumed she must be waiting for him to attach a sidecar. I spent the rest of the day singing ‘roden da budeh deev’ (роден да бъде див, meaning ‘born to be wild’) to the tune of Born to be Wild by Steppenwolf.

 

27 September 2025, Saturday

I read that a nineteenth century German philosopher named Georg Hegel, having observed the actions of people in power, suggested that they were apt to create problems to which ordinary people would react. If they generated enough fear and hysteria, those ordinary people would not only accept a solution introduced which would limit their rights, but they would actually beg for it.

This idea is known as the Hegelian Dialectic and it seems to me that it’s being used on us today. Why else would a Bulgarian radio station play The Power of Love by Jennifer Rush two days running?

 

28 September 2025, Sunday

Our daily routine is currently like an episode of All Creatures Great and Small as we give tablets to two cats and a dog as well as applying sprays and creams to furry places and even to a place that should be furry but isn’t. All that would be required for us to complete the scene would be for one of us to shove an arm up a cow’s arse until the elbow disappeared. Unfortunately, or fortunately, we don’t have a cow. We discussed ways to improvise and laughed… cruelly. It would be libellous to mention the poor woman’s name.

 

29 September 2025, Monday

It rained! It was like being in Donegal, so a nice cup of tea on repeat seemed a grand plan. Mid-morning shivering dictated that I put on a jumper, darn it… well not all of it, just the elbows. Winter clothes are so uncomfortable, always taking me back to my straitjacket days.

The cloudy silver lining was that the garden was moist enough to render the evening watering rigmarole unnecessary. Hopefully that’s finished for 2025. I decided to make use of newfound spare time doing an Open University course in lying on the settee with a book and a cat.

 

30 September 2025, Tuesday

Sunshine returned but Gypsy ‘Mad Dog’ Django the violent cat hadn’t after a week adrift. Snezhinka the wonder dog’s cancer sadness had diluted our missing cat sadness. The world had too many sadness generators but at least I’d trimmed our bushes for winter.

Oh, I just wrote the word winter. I’d forgotten about that. I didn’t vote for it. Why can’t it be a four-yearly thing like the Olympic Games?

And now I’ve finished two complete years of this 100 words per day challenge. Well done to you for reading 73,100 words. Hang on to your hat for year three!

 

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Image: My own photograph of street art on a wall near the fruit and veg market in Veliko Tarnovo. It’s uncanny how the artist, who we’d never met, had so accurately reproduced an image of Snezhinka the wonder dog resisting medication. One minor inaccuracy is that the dog’s fur is white rather than pink but he words ‘I am more than alive’ in the bottom right corner delighted us.