Strimmer Time and the Living is Easy

 

Strimmer Time and the Living Is Easy

 

1 May 2026, Friday

I won’t grumble about our rain because much of the country had snow, and a stretch of the Pamporovo to Smolyan road (a scenic treasure on our summer travels) was destroyed as a forested mountainside decided it would be happier if it slid a couple of kilometres downhill.

It being International Worker's Solidarity Day nobody was at work, except for the workers who were trying to restore solidary to the slippery mountain. I estimated they’d need much more than a day.

Whenever there’s something to celebrate or mourn, we go to a restaurant. Arbanashki Han warmed and cheered us today.

 

2 May 2026, Saturday

Anne-Marie and I attended the Pavlikeni Egg Festival, respective partners having dobbed out. Most of the eggs had been beaten and baked into homemade cakes but for sale there were also fresh ones from a variety of birds. My favourite was the Zhar-ptitsa (Жарптица, meaning ‘Firebird’) that lays its eggs already fried.

Every Bulgarian festival has children in traditional dress dancing to traditional music played far too loud but not as loud as their sharp-elbowed photographic mothers shouting ‘Move! I can’t see my baby!’ So festivalgoers can’t really see the performance so the kids might as well just dance at home.

 

3 May 2026, Sunday

Newspaper people have predicted that the price of imported food, which has already rocketed, will rocket further. What they really mean is that hot dog sausages and KitKats will become unaffordable so we’ll forced to eat those tasty big rozova tomatoes, the best probiotic yoghurt in the world, and vine leaves stuffed with rice and fresh herbs. The price of rocket won’t rocket but that’s because we call it rucola (рукола) and it’s homegrown.

Young Bulgarians worry that we’ll starve to death without Coco Pops, with wry smiles people of my generation hark back to simpler times, and dentists fear redundancies.

 

4 May 2026, Monday

In the ten seconds that the back door was open, Crazy Ludo escaped like a cat out of hell. It’s impossible to keep him in the house. Ten hours later he returned looking bedraggled and dazed. It seemed wrong to be relieved that he had minor cuts but as there’s nothing he enjoys more than a serious wound we knew that we’d been lucky.

Have other cat owners experienced such problems? I never heard of Cleopatra, Postman Pat, Ernst Stavro Blofeld, Minnie Caldwell or Mrs. Slocombe having to constantly dash off to the vet to get their moggies stitched up.

 

5 May 2026, Tuesday

Last October, at Priyatelkata’s request, our friend Aleks brought us sixteen bags (each weighing 25 kgs) of manure from his mother’s chickens. Unloading left our poor wheelbarrow a shadow of its former self.

Google has told me that basic composting, or making chicken manure tea as a fertiliser is hard work, hideously smelly and a health hazard. So the gloop has remained in the bags in the sun attracting gargantuan horseflies.

Today I noticed black fluid oozing from one of the bags. It looked like the blood of a beast from hell. What a chicken shit idea that had been.

 

6 May 2026, Wednesday

Bulgaria had a holiday to celebrate Gerg-yov-den (Гергьовден, meaning ‘Saint George’s Day) with yet more children in traditional dress dancing to traditional music played far too loud while far-too-loud parents drank beer and played DC Dark Legion on their phones.

For our neighbours the day still bears the original Turkish name, Ederlezi. It’s celebrated by Roma people across the Balkans to mark the return of spring and new beginnings. In our street the occasion was marked simply with roast lamb, a splash of rakia and scratchy vinyl records of Gypsy jazz.

Priyatelkata and I celebrate every day in our own way.

 

7 May 2026, Thursday

Feeling rough, I blamed strimmer overload. As soon as me and it are strapped together that Born to be Wild song rattles my brain and I can’t stop strimming. The lower reaches of our garden require extensive T.L.C. and the result of a good threshing is remarkably satisfying. It’s so much like a prairie we’ve got a Laura Ingalls Wilder tribute act living there.

Unfortunately the machine’s motor’s close to my head, making exhaust fume inhalation unavoidable. Am I becoming a petrolhead? The effects are unpleasant but at least I can understand why Jeremy Clarkson behaves the way he does.

 

8 May 2026, Friday

If thunderstorms came in packaging that bore the words ‘Please let us know if you’re not completely satisfied with this product’, as KP salted peanuts do, then this evening I’d have been turning out my pockets for the receipt.

Our garden had become as dry as a chip cooked in an air fryer so, filled with gleeful anticipation, I awaited the thunderstorm promised by the meteorology squad. With all the expected bangs and flashes it arrived at teatime but it forgot to bring rain. Consequently I spent an hour after the storm with hose in hand baptising tender newborn lupins.

 

9 May 2026, Saturday

Giro d’Italia, the world’s second most important stage cycle race, came past our village. Seeing the usually busy road totally deserted as we awaited the cyclists’ appearance was incredible in itself, but then to be within touching distance of so many world-famous athletes was awe-inspiring, even though we didn’t know their names.

Of course we didn’t touch them because if one falls off a bike, many fall, as was the case in Merdanya, twelve kilometres back from us, where enough competitors were hurt to fill four ambulances. And also it’s a bit pervy to go touching people you don’t know. 

 

10 May 2026, Sunday

It was siling it down for most of the day so perfect conditions for creativity. I’d promised I’d write about the Boomtown Rats for a dare, so to get the ball rolling I did a bit of research and ended up listening to the Rats all day. Those first two singles were classics! I loved that band until the boy Geldof gave the Live Aid cash to the wrong Ethiopians and turned himself into a gobshite.

I don’t like Mondays. Tomorrow we’re at the vets with both dogs and a blocked anal gland, but I’ll get the writing done too. 

 

11 May 2026, Monday

At 4:00 a.m. I remembered that I was supposed to be writing not about the Boomtown Rats but about Manila in the Philippines. An easy mistake to make. I used to have a mate whose job it was to put Ls in Manilla envelopes.

Doctor Tatchev said Snezhinka’s tumour hadn’t got any bigger and Gaïa (the whole dog) was 25% smaller. He prescribed mild sedatives for her dementia. Were we to give them to her or take them ourselves? In her sleep she makes noises like thick broth boiling that keep us awake. We call it Soup of the Night.

 

12 May 2026, Tuesday

After a calm night we remarked upon how effective Gaïa’s medication had been. Then, entangled in the permanently soggy hair that surrounds her mouth, we spotted a white capsule she must have spat out as we were drugging her yesterday evening. Shih Tzus are neither cooperative nor hygienic dogs.

Our hearts ached for the people of Tryavna, a beautiful historic town just forty kilometres from us. This afternoon they were blasted to bits by hailstones the size of hens’ eggs, reminding us of June 2024. Having survived another winter’s menace, the perils of summer weather now return to torment us.

 

13 May 2026, Wednesday

At the Irish Embassy in Sofia, in Bulgarian, I asked the woman if she spoke English. Smiling, she replied in Irish so I was linguistically stuck. Thankfully I could thank her in Irish for my new passport.

Fearing death by icy wind I visited the Regional History Museum and almost died in its stifling heat. But it was interesting to see old photographs of places I recognised before stepping outside to see them in real life. The old back streets ooze character. I’ve never needed an old-fashioned tobacconist’s but now I know exactly where to go if ever I do.

 

14 May 2026, Thursday

As people across the globe start to worry about a new virus I’ve wondered if it’s just a little something to distract us from all the wars that currently dominate the news. But Professor Todor Kantardzhiev from the National Centre for Infectious and Parasitic Diseases (he helps me with my embarrassing rash) said that Hantavirus infection has been known in Bulgaria for decades. Yay! We did it first!

The Health Ministry’s advice is to keep rodents at bay, so we may need to recruit more cats, and possibly even a raptor or two. The vets are going to love us.

 

15 May 2026, Friday

After twenty-one years in Bulgaria, our brand-new friend Claire’s moving back to Ireland. It’s sad because she’s a lot like us. We went to her house in Velkovtsi to buy some of her lovely things that we absolutely didn’t need. She said she knows our house, having fitted the recycled timber kitchen cupboards in it sixteen years ago, and gave us valuable advice for composting chicken shit.

In gorgeous sunshine we enjoyed eating rustic fare in Dryanovo’s finest caff, getting semi-lost in the mountains, and observing masses of motorcyclists preparing to block main roads in protest at escalating insurance premiums.

 

16 May 2026, Saturday

Having first checked that Elon Musk had no involvement in the manufacture of electrically-powered strimmers, I bought one. It worked as well as our petrol one but without the deadly C.O.P.D. feature. I thought that on such a bright day surely solar-powered garden implements would be more suitable, but they don’t exist.

The Stihl shop man said real gardeners call such devices brush cutters rather than strimmers. He looks just like Ed Miliband, and his brother looks just like David Miliband, or vice versa. But where’s Steve Miliband these days? I loved that Fly Like an Eagle song he sang.

 

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Image:

Just a few of my delicate but sparkling nipplewort blooms.  My own photograph.  

 

Part Two:

I’m Only Happy When It Rains