She Had Me In Stitches

 

She Had Me In Stitches

 

The First Amendment

Rule 1 of the This Sort of Thing whimsical journal writing undertaking states that journal entries should contain no more and no less than one hundred words. 

Rule 14b(i) of the This Sort of Thing whimsical journal writing undertaking stating that restrictions imposed under Rule 1 may be temporarily suspended during periods of travel adventure is hereby amended to additionally cover entries in which health matters, natural catastrophes, nuclear oblivion, and other events deemed too interesting to be described in one hundred words.

Rule 14b(ii) states that rule amendments should contain no more and no less than one hundred words. 

 

16 August 2026, Sunday

The Committee of the This Sort of Thing whimsical journal writing undertaking passed a resolution to bring Rule 14b(i) into force.

Fifteen minutes before I was due to hop into the car to be ferried to the railway station in Gorna Oryahovitsa, I was poking about in the garden shed in the dark (I can’t remember why) and acquired a one-centimetre-long splinter of wood in my leg that lay almost parallel to the surface of my skin. Digging at it with tweezers and mopping up the ensuing rivulet of blood temporarily distracted my thoughts from the following day’s anticipated nasal surgery.

Thirty minutes later, at the point of being ejected from the car, I had combined feelings of pre-op nervousness and leaving home sadness. Priyatelkata, who wasn’t joining me, shed a tear as she said she felt the same way. There ain’t a woman that comes close to her, I thought to myself as she dried her eyes.  

On the first part of the journey I was looking at the Danubian Plain, which is flat and boring by Bulgarian scenery standards. But then there was a remarkable change in terrain as the train, at the dictate of the railway lines, entered the Iskra Gorge, a place where a lad might learn more about physical geography in a couple of hours than he probably would during an entire G.C.E. ‘O’ Level course. There wasn’t a whiff of an ox bow lake, but the sheer limestone cliffs rising to 1,500 metres, peppered with caves and adorned with glistening waterfalls were spectacularly beautiful, as were the wind-eroded pillars of rock standing shoulder to shoulder like smaller versions of what you might see in Cappadocia (i.e., the region of Turkey, not the kebab shop in Chippenham). At some of the old villages dotted along the valley floor, the train stopped for a maximum of one person to get on or get off. During this 150-kilometre-long stretch of geological grandeur, in the seat beside me sat a man who both looked and snored like a walrus.

But glacial-cut ravines in areas of Karst topography can’t go on forever, and eventually I arrived in Sofia. It took less than half an hour to traverse the city by means of the underground railway network and emerge from the James Bourchier metro station in the Lozenets district. It seemed strange to be back in this lovely suburb that I’d become quite familiar with on my previous trip to the capital. To make me feel at home, Vanya the landlady had left out a plate of homemade banitsa in the apartment I was renting from her, and a small black cat scratched on the patio door in the hope of getting a mouthful of homemade banitsa. The banitsa / small cat combination eased the turmoil in my mind.

Having cleansed myself of the grime that one accumulates on a long journey, I dined magnificently in the Cherry (which was to be my local pub for almost a week) before wandering across to the CBA supermarket for tasty comestibles to fill my fridge with. I’d always assumed that CBA was an acronym for Can’t Be Arsed. The checkout lady that I had dealings with proved me right. She could easily have been a blood relative of the bad-tempered Sisters Cholakov who staff our local shop at home. It saddens me to admit that those Bulgarians who aren’t absolutely lovely are absolutely awful. Thankfully there are very few of the latter, but they always seem to work in supermarkets.

 

Amazing Bulgarian Facts #4

The James Bourchier (pronounced boucher, like voucher and sloucher) halt on the Sofia metro system was named after an Irish journalist and political activist who lived in our capital from 1892 to 1915. As an honourable member of the Sofia Journalists' Society he acted as an intermediary between rival states during the Balkan War of 1912-13. He also introduced Irish traditional music to Bulgaria and Bulgarian traditional music to Ireland, to the extent that aficionados can still detect elements of each in each. And there’s a famous old painting of him dancing the Rachenitsa, renowned for its difficulty and the stamina required, in an austere rural tavern. His connection with the Lozenets district enhanced my feeling of being at home there.

 

17 August 2026, Monday

On the terrace of the very alluring King’s Bakery, on the corner of Lyubotran Street and Kapitan Todor Nochev Street, I sat at a table shaded by a Staropramen umbrella the size of Plzeň and attempted to have breakfast. All I could think about as I drank my death-black coffee and fed my bilberry croissant to the sparrows was my fast-approaching hospital appointment to have a big lump of ugly gristle removed from my nose. And by that I don’t mean my head!

First I was afraid, then I was irritated, as an elderly Bulgarian lady approached and snapped in her language that I was sitting at her table. It was the only table that was in the shade, and she claimed she always sat there because she couldn’t sit in the sun because she’d once had to have an operation on her face to resolve a skin problem because she’d spent too much of her life in the sunshine.

‘Snap!’ I snapped. Snap in Bulgarian is ‘shtrak’ (щрак), but I gathered that it’s not the name of a card game because she hadn’t a clue what I was talking about. Feeling a little vulnerable, I put my protective hat on, dragged another wrought-iron seat over from an adjacent sunny table, and let her make herself comfortable in what had been mine. From her tartan shopping bag on wheels, which she might have bought from Wilkinson’s in Swindon, she took a plastic bag containing a large slice of banitsa, and a bottle of boza (a malt breakfast drink made by fermenting various grains, common to the Balkans, Turkey and Central Asia). She told me she never bought anything from the King’s Bakery because it was far too expensive, but she enjoyed having breakfast in their garden.

Then we shared tales of our respective facial carcinomata and our life stories. Suddenly we had become friends, at least until she dashed off to babysit her granddaughter while her daughter was out all day being busy as a bank manager, and I dashed off to have a crucial organ split open by a dermatological surgeon. Before she went, she told me her name was Rumi (short for Rumyana), she shook my hand and wished me luck. My rendezvous with lovely Rumi had eased the turmoil in my mind.

At the Acibadem Clinic’s Dermatology and Venereology Department, Dr Kacheva was in charge of the torture chamber, but she had two equally lovely assistants at her side, one of whom was obviously a nurse and the other might have been the lady who replenishes the supply of chocolate bars in the vending machine in the corridor. I felt that I was the only person on the whole of the third floor of the hospital that wasn’t clutching a Twix.

The only part of the procedure that hurt was the anaesthetic, administered by means of a dozen small injections in and around my nose. Over my face was placed an absorbent surgical towel with a hole in it so my nose poked out. During the performance I could see nothing other than its fabric turning red as it absorbed increasing amounts of blood. I couldn’t say for certain because of my restricted view, but I think it’s safe to say that it was my blood. Then I heard a noise like the popping of a single bubble in a piece of bubble wrap, and Dr Kacheva announced, “The carcinoma’s gone, but so has half of your nose.” Although she had no noticeable sense of humour, she had me in stitches. There were eleven of them in all. It was the first time in my life that I’d ever had stitches.

Her needlework stung slightly because the anaesthetic was wearing off, but while she and the nurse were doing that, the confectionery lady left the room. During the operation she had kept her two colleagues entertained with a description of her recent holiday in Greece. I understood the Bulgarian words for Skiathos, blue sea, calamari, ouzo, lost flipflops and embarrassing rash. In her absence they whispered about her, and I had no idea what they were saying. I thought it very unprofessional of them to exclude a patient from a bit of juicy gossip.

Soon I was all patched up and feeling that I had a king-size mattress strapped to my face. I was introduced to the duty doctor who would change my dressings when I returned every morning for the rest of the week, and I was warned not to blow my nose. But that was it. It had been messy but easy. It had only taken an hour, and the worst bit was over.

In the garden of the little café beside the hospital entrance, despite being busy on the phone, I enjoyed my second coffee of the day significantly more than my first. With all the gory details, I had to report back to Priyatelkata at home and close family in England. And I had to ask Vanya if I could rent her apartment for an extra couple of days because I wasn’t going to be returning to Malki Chiflik as soon as I had originally thought.

I couldn’t wear my glasses. Well, I could put them on, but because they were resting on the big bandage, the lenses were level with my eyebrows. So I couldn’t read my book either, but I could lie on the settee, listen to the radio and engage with the still hungry little black cat.

In the afternoon, after a snooze, I went for a short walk to the pet shop to buy some cat food and give the local people something to stare at. I don’t think they’d ever seen a bandaged nose before. The pet shop lady looked terrified when I walked in. 

 

18 August 2026, Tuesday

I returned to the King’s Bakery and took delight in a freshly made hot apple banitsa with my breakfast coffee. In terms of taste, it was fabulous, but I could barely see it on account of the post-operative swaddling attachment that seemed to cover the whole of my face apart from a small opening for eating, drinking, breathing and sighing out loud. Each time I felt the dressing was getting on my nerves, I imagined it as a different fluffy white object, today’s early morning manifestation being a stoat in its winter coat. I had hoped to meet my new friend Rumi again, but there was no sign of her. She may well have been there, but I couldn’t see her because of my sheepskin noseband.

The doctor who dealt with me today was very friendly and professional, but she didn’t look old enough to be out without her mum. When she’d removed the dressing I saw in the mirror that the aftermath wasn’t as bad as I had expected. The stitched-up incision in the shape of an ‘S’ made it look as though they’d removed the carcinoma and replaced it with a scolopendra. My first thought was how would I stop cats from attacking me? My second thought was that it was better than what I saw on Crazy Ludo’s leg on a fortnightly basis. My third thought was that the harrowing stage was over and a significant chunk of the stress suddenly evaporated.

In my new semi-relaxed state I wandered out to the little café beside the hospital entrance. Deciding to deviate from my usual anxiety-reducing Bulgarian espresso as black as a photographic negative of a stoat in its winter coat, I asked for a latte. The rotund Turkish barista didn’t understand me. I wanted to tell her that foreigners who move to Bulgaria should learn the language, but most of the words I needed to do this were missing from my vocabulary. I pointed to the menu on the wall. Latte was the third item down on the list, written in Bulgarian and English, and Italian, I supposed (i.e. лате and latte). She still didn’t get me, so I reverted to what I would typically order, which she served with a smile. Then she gave me a free biscuit to compensate for the inconvenience, as you would when trying to get in favour with a difficult dog.

Fifteen minutes later, as I sat in the peace and quiet of the garden, the latte-free lady walked across and handed me her mobile phone. The voice at the other end of the active call explained to me in Bulgarian that it was Latife’s first day in the job, and she would only be able to do espressos and biscuits until the latte instructor arrived from head office at eleven o’clock. Sometimes I think Bulgarian chaos is merely the Irish chaos I grew up with, but in a different language.

My plans to go for a walk, read my book in the park, have something nice to eat at the Cherry and buy a couple of bottles of beer at the supermarket were eventually whittled down to dozing on the settee until it was bedtime. The black cat visited occasionally, and the hours of silence were peppered with supportive messages from loved ones, and where had I put the dogs’ brush? Vanya the landlady also asked me how I was getting on. I suspected that she was concerned that her crisp white pillowcases might become bloodstained in the night.     

My mind was still in a state of turmoil, though at a reduced level to that of preceding days, but the messages and the cat eased this. I was alone, and I had friends in Sofia who I could probably have stayed with, but under the circumstances I was happier being alone. 

 

---

Image:

Waiting at the James Bourchier metro station in Sofia. My own photograph.

 

Part Three:

La Vie En Nose