I don't have any books written in Latin but I've a pile of books written in Bulgarian because of where I live. I enjoy trying to translate but I couldn't honestly say that any of them are page turners.
Beer's only really caught on in Bulgaria in the last thirty years apparently, so what we have is a copy of the wishy washy dribble that's typical of other south European countries. But the wine here's gorgeous and also cheap and when we're out for a drink we tend to go for the rakia.
Having said all of that, I'd kill for a pint of Guinness.
It's Guinness's porter that has me this way
For it's sweeter than buttermilk and stronger than tay
But when in the morning I feel kinda rough
Me curse on Lord Iveagh who brews the damn stuff
Drink it up, men, it's long after ten
Glad to hear you're still with us. I thought you'd chopped off a vital organ with your lawnmower or drowned in snot or something. Bulgarian weather's a bit shit at the moment. It's been foggy for days and hovering around 0°C. Is it beach weather where you are? Where is it that you are?
I don't have a job at all. I retired ten years ago. But I've been mad busy today. The snow's coming soon, possibly tomorrow, so things in the garden needed doing / putting away. The rushing about caused by leaving everything until the last minute warms you up.
That was an altogether gorgeous song, written by folk singer Ewan MacColl for his bit of fluff, Peggy Seeger. I knew his second wife, Jean Newlove. She was the mother of Kirsty MacColl who was also a brilliant song writer until she was killed.
Joan Baez was always a bit too screechy for me. I love folk music but predominantly Irish stuff. My house and my head are full of it. Balkan Gypsy music is catching up since I moved over here though.
I never liked skiffle. Lonnie Donegan was the man for it in Britain and Ireland. Imagine if the Beatles had stuck with it. I am the Walrus played on a tea chest bass.
I like nearly all of the Beatles music but the psychedelic stuff's best and some of the McCartney songs (eg Maxwell's Silver Hammer and Oh bla-di-bla) are a load of old bollocks.
Desmond's a gobshite, and Hey Jude's another that makes me want to drill holes in my own knees because the sound of my screaming would be a better thing to listen to.
The George Harrison stuff was always good. They should have given him a bit more time.
The Beatles' 2006 Love album's a strange sort of uninterrupted remix of some of the best of all their stuff à la George Martin. Do you know it? It took me a few listens to be convinced but these days it's a proper cheer-me-up record. By then Mister Martin had realised that chopping three minutes off the end of Hey Jude made the song bearable.
George Harrison was the youngest of them, and the nicest, and Olivia his missus was by far the nicest of all the Beatles' wives and partners. Martin Scorsese's documentary about him called Living in the Material World is well worth a watch if you haven't already seen it.
I’ve got their ‘One’ album which is well worth having but much different to ‘Love’ which is an extremely well done remix of all sorts of their stuff including some early live recordings, some that they sang in German, some album tracks, some bits of hysterical fans screaming, a few very short spoken bits, and so on. There are no breaks between the tracks. They merge beautifully into one.
Another favourite is ‘Let It Be Naked’, which contains all the same tracks as the original ‘Let it Be’ album but with all the Phil Spector overproduction stripped away (which they had all hated, apparently). The Naked version of ‘Across the Universe’ is stunningly good.
George Harrison got Eric Clapton to play lead guitar on While My Guitar Gently Weeps for the White album because he was sick of all the other Beatles not taking him and his songs seriously. His first solo album ‘All Things Must Pass’ is as good as any of the later Beatles albums, in my opinion. I bought it from the Scene & Heard record shop in Leeds the day it was released and I still have it.
George wrote songs but very few of them were recorded by the Beatles. Lennon and McCartney wrote the bulk of them together in the early days but from the middle to the end they wrote them separately even though they were credited to Lennon-McCarney on the record labels. It's usually easy to spot who wrote what in a Come Together vs Maxwell's Silver Hammer sort of way. George's All Things Must Pass debut solo album (a triple album) had loads of good stuff on it because in his frustration he’d been saving them up. My Sweet Lord was the first single lifted from it and it’s still one of my favourites of all time.
Ringo wrote Don't Pass Me By and Octopus's Garden. Bless 'im!
Лека нощ, pronounced as 'lekka nosht' is Bulgarian for good night. Russian is another of the Slavic languages so they (the noisy neighbours) use a lot of our words, and they stole our beautiful Cyrillic alphabet.
I worked on cargo ships. Fifty years ago from now I'd have been somewhere in the Java Sea. Singapore to Jakarta or Makassar. Or maybe somewhere else out that way.
Which port do you work at? On the last ship I was on we loaded phosphates in Tampa and Fort Lauderdale. They flew me home from Tampa. The ship left before I did so I had about eighteen hours to kill in the airport. I sat at the same table as the members of the band Styx while I was having my breakfast and had a good chat with them. They were only going to New Orleans.
It's 2026 here and it has been for nearly two hours and the next time we leave the house we have to take a new currency with us because we changed from the lev to the euro at midnight.
It was the first day of the euro here today. We tried to spend some in a restaurant but they didn't have any in their till for giving change, so they were only accepting card payments. Everywhere else was closed. Sunny day... I love January.
I've a stack of leva and euro notes at the moment, as have most people here. We're prepared for something to go wrong. I prefer cash anyway because the banks and the government don't.
Part of the joy of going on holiday is having to deal with a different currency to what we've got at home. But now we're using the same money as most of Europe. So we're looking for a country that doesn't use the euro. Serbia, Romania and Turkey are all just a few hours drive away but we've been before. Bulgaria's Finance Minister should have thought of this before he signed on the dotted line.
canter
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riddim
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pasta
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Hector
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Travolta
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Hip-hop
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Bunny Wailer
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One heart
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sanctums (or sancta)
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Vivimus
Written on the inside of my Latin textbook at school a long long time ago...
Latin is a language
As dead as dead can be
First it killed the Romans
And now it's killing me
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Goldfish
I don't have any books written in Latin but I've a pile of books written in Bulgarian because of where I live. I enjoy trying to translate but I couldn't honestly say that any of them are page turners.
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Wensleydale
Beer's only really caught on in Bulgaria in the last thirty years apparently, so what we have is a copy of the wishy washy dribble that's typical of other south European countries. But the wine here's gorgeous and also cheap and when we're out for a drink we tend to go for the rakia.
Having said all of that, I'd kill for a pint of Guinness.
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Disintegrate
It's Guinness's porter that has me this way
For it's sweeter than buttermilk and stronger than tay
But when in the morning I feel kinda rough
Me curse on Lord Iveagh who brews the damn stuff
Drink it up, men, it's long after ten
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Stoma
The ditty's something I couldn't take any credit for myself. It's a verse from a traditional Irish song made popular by the Dubliners in the 1960s.
Yer Beatles and yer Stones... pah!
Drink it Up Men, the Dubliners
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Laxative
Notre Dame's also a Catholic girls' school in Leeds. Vanessa O' Connell went there. Do you know her? She's class... or at least she was in 1980.
Oh, and get well soon!
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Splendour
Our garden was too foggy and icy for working in today. I made a list of things to do out there tomorrow. So I'm exhausted now.
If someone or something is class it means they're really good or really nice in many ways.
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Rebirth
I hope you're alright over there TJW. Keep talking!
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Hello fella! How are you doing? Are you anywhere near getting over this sickness of yours yet?
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phlegm
Glad to hear you're still with us. I thought you'd chopped off a vital organ with your lawnmower or drowned in snot or something. Bulgarian weather's a bit shit at the moment. It's been foggy for days and hovering around 0°C. Is it beach weather where you are? Where is it that you are?
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Belfast sink
I had to google your girl and your temperature. I hadn't realised there was more than one Belfast in the world.
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Strings
And she sells merchandise too. Not the sort of thing you'd want on your bobble hat.
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Punch & Judy
Bobble hat: A close-fitting hat with a bobble or pompom on top, typically made of wool and worn in cold weather.
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bliss
But warmer than a skull with a pompom.
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domination
My football was yesterday. Glory Glory Leeds United beat Crystal Palace 4-1. Thrashed them in fact. Dominic Calvert-Lewin is the new god.
I hope your team wins.
I hope your hope for a return to work works.
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John Power & Son
Well done on the work front.
I don't have a job at all. I retired ten years ago. But I've been mad busy today. The snow's coming soon, possibly tomorrow, so things in the garden needed doing / putting away. The rushing about caused by leaving everything until the last minute warms you up.
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Angus
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Horseradish
Bulgaria's back to normal today.
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mangy
Thursday was abnormal in Bulgaria. All that glitter and plastic palaver. To real Bulgarians the real Christmas is on 6 January.
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website
I've a Bulgarian lesson first thing in the morning and it's Sunday evening at the moment and I haven't done my homework yet. This is so 1972.
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gossip
That was an altogether gorgeous song, written by folk singer Ewan MacColl for his bit of fluff, Peggy Seeger. I knew his second wife, Jean Newlove. She was the mother of Kirsty MacColl who was also a brilliant song writer until she was killed.
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flibbertigibbet
Joan Baez was always a bit too screechy for me. I love folk music but predominantly Irish stuff. My house and my head are full of it. Balkan Gypsy music is catching up since I moved over here though.
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sheela na gig
I never liked skiffle. Lonnie Donegan was the man for it in Britain and Ireland. Imagine if the Beatles had stuck with it. I am the Walrus played on a tea chest bass.
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crabalocker fishwife
I like nearly all of the Beatles music but the psychedelic stuff's best and some of the McCartney songs (eg Maxwell's Silver Hammer and Oh bla-di-bla) are a load of old bollocks.
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minger
Aye, Revolver's top of the list here too.
Desmond's a gobshite, and Hey Jude's another that makes me want to drill holes in my own knees because the sound of my screaming would be a better thing to listen to.
The George Harrison stuff was always good. They should have given him a bit more time.
Turlough
The Beatles' 2006 Love album's a strange sort of uninterrupted remix of some of the best of all their stuff à la George Martin. Do you know it? It took me a few listens to be convinced but these days it's a proper cheer-me-up record. By then Mister Martin had realised that chopping three minutes off the end of Hey Jude made the song bearable.
George Harrison was the youngest of them, and the nicest, and Olivia his missus was by far the nicest of all the Beatles' wives and partners. Martin Scorsese's documentary about him called Living in the Material World is well worth a watch if you haven't already seen it.
You didn't leave a word.
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grotesque
I’ve got their ‘One’ album which is well worth having but much different to ‘Love’ which is an extremely well done remix of all sorts of their stuff including some early live recordings, some that they sang in German, some album tracks, some bits of hysterical fans screaming, a few very short spoken bits, and so on. There are no breaks between the tracks. They merge beautifully into one.
Another favourite is ‘Let It Be Naked’, which contains all the same tracks as the original ‘Let it Be’ album but with all the Phil Spector overproduction stripped away (which they had all hated, apparently). The Naked version of ‘Across the Universe’ is stunningly good.
George Harrison got Eric Clapton to play lead guitar on While My Guitar Gently Weeps for the White album because he was sick of all the other Beatles not taking him and his songs seriously. His first solo album ‘All Things Must Pass’ is as good as any of the later Beatles albums, in my opinion. I bought it from the Scene & Heard record shop in Leeds the day it was released and I still have it.
What does JSO mean?
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frostbite
I googled JSO and got Juvenile Sex Offender.
It's 1;30 a.m. here now and there's sleeping to be done. More tomorrow. Лека нощ.
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Indecent
George wrote songs but very few of them were recorded by the Beatles. Lennon and McCartney wrote the bulk of them together in the early days but from the middle to the end they wrote them separately even though they were credited to Lennon-McCarney on the record labels. It's usually easy to spot who wrote what in a Come Together vs Maxwell's Silver Hammer sort of way. George's All Things Must Pass debut solo album (a triple album) had loads of good stuff on it because in his frustration he’d been saving them up. My Sweet Lord was the first single lifted from it and it’s still one of my favourites of all time.
Ringo wrote Don't Pass Me By and Octopus's Garden. Bless 'im!
Лека нощ, pronounced as 'lekka nosht' is Bulgarian for good night. Russian is another of the Slavic languages so they (the noisy neighbours) use a lot of our words, and they stole our beautiful Cyrillic alphabet.
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Vogue
I worked on cargo ships. Fifty years ago from now I'd have been somewhere in the Java Sea. Singapore to Jakarta or Makassar. Or maybe somewhere else out that way.
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passion
Which port do you work at? On the last ship I was on we loaded phosphates in Tampa and Fort Lauderdale. They flew me home from Tampa. The ship left before I did so I had about eighteen hours to kill in the airport. I sat at the same table as the members of the band Styx while I was having my breakfast and had a good chat with them. They were only going to New Orleans.
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flatulence
It's 2026 here and it has been for nearly two hours and the next time we leave the house we have to take a new currency with us because we changed from the lev to the euro at midnight.
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Belgium
We've just been out to lunch with some Belgians. I didn't detect flatulence but they're probably well versed at concealing it.
I'm with you on the fireworks front. I just don't get them, and they scare the living shit out of our cats and dogs and they kill the wild birds.
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politicians
It was the first day of the euro here today. We tried to spend some in a restaurant but they didn't have any in their till for giving change, so they were only accepting card payments. Everywhere else was closed. Sunny day... I love January.
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therapists
I've a stack of leva and euro notes at the moment, as have most people here. We're prepared for something to go wrong. I prefer cash anyway because the banks and the government don't.
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mendacity
I always try to keep cash but it never seems to want to stay.
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HOT
steamy
Part of the joy of going on holiday is having to deal with a different currency to what we've got at home. But now we're using the same money as most of Europe. So we're looking for a country that doesn't use the euro. Serbia, Romania and Turkey are all just a few hours drive away but we've been before. Bulgaria's Finance Minister should have thought of this before he signed on the dotted line.
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... ZAP ...
teaser
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Tassles
I’m the same, except I sing Je t'aime… moi non plus that was a huge hit for de Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin in 1969.
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Pages