La Vie En Nose

 

La Vie En Nose

 

19 August 2026, Wednesday

Again I went to the King’s Bakery for breakfast, and again there was no sign of dear old Rumi to talk to. Instead, I tried to chat to the young, heavily tattooed lad who ran the place. His name was Tattoo. I wondered if he had a sister called Piercing. Unfortunately, he wasn’t very chatty. In fact, his sole contribution to the conversation was, “Four euro fifty please!”

At the hospital, the task of prodding and poking at me had been handed back to Dr Kacheva. In the nine days since we had first met, I had developed an overwhelming urge to call her Dr Ka-ching, because it sounded a bit like her real name and because every time I saw her it cost me money.

She said she wasn’t happy because my hole was swollen and wet, and she didn’t like the oedema beneath my eye. So I told her I didn’t care much for her makeup and her knees were a bit fat. She went on to assure me that a course of antibiotics would soon sort out my hideous disfigurement. “Don’t worry!” were words she had repeated to me over and over again each time we had met, and I was beginning to accept her advice, particularly when taking into consideration the fact that I had at no point needed to take painkillers. She also told me that I’d need to return to the hospital the following two mornings for my nasal cladding to be changed and for me to be given lessons so that I’d be able to care for my wound singlehandedly at home and that she was confident I’d be able to leave Sofia on Friday.

At the little café beside the hospital entrance I ordered an espresso from Latife. She gave me a huge smile, a perfectly prepared latte, and a biscuit that she charged me for. She too had been growing in confidence.

Back at the apartment, I slept the whole afternoon. The nervous tension of the past few days had left me feeling washed out. This may sound a bit soppy, but my little carcinomatous alien being had really had me on edge because it was the worst thing I’d ever had wrong with me. I’d been very lucky, as my only previous hospital operations had also been minor and involved the removal of wisdom teeth, tonsils and adenoids. They were always taking things out and never putting anything back. Were they collecting parts to build a clone of me?

It was the cat scratching on the patio door and crying for food that eventually woke me up, so I fed her and decided that I too would benefit from something to eat. I strolled out to the Cherry and then walked right past it, telling myself that I was becoming too much of a creature of habit and that I should rekindle my spirit of adventure, despite having my nose buried beneath a hot water tank’s thermal insulation jacket.

In a street a couple of hundred metres further on, I found Restaurant ‘Lampata’ (Лампата, meaning ‘The Lamp’). It was a lovely, relaxed sort of place with tables arranged in the shady part of its garden and a fine array of Bulgarian food on the menu. The waiter had a good look at my face and then, being half friendly and half nosey, asked me if I’d been fighting. For ten minutes I struggled with my best Bulgarian to explain to him the story of why I was there and what I’d had removed, but on reflection it would have been far easier and quicker to say that I had been fighting and that he should see the state of the other fella.

I’d noticed how fond people were of staring at the upholstering of my nasal region. The waiter had been fascinated, and I sensed that other diners had eavesdropped on our conversation. Earlier in the day, a young child walking along with his mother had pointed at me and said, “Oooh, look at him!” The woman, instead of telling him not to be rude, almost decapitated herself as she turned her head to get a better look and replied to him, “Oh, yeah!”

I couldn’t blame them, because I’m the sort of person who also enjoys a good stare at anything a bit peculiar. However, I’d always tried to be discreet about it. But in future, having become familiar with Bulgarians’ protocol for dealing with such matters, I would gawp to my heart’s content. I considered entertaining them further and at the same time cashing in on the situation by taking my bandage collection and sitting by an ATM with a piece of card bearing a handwritten message stating that I’d recently had a carcinoma removed. I’d have a cardboard coffee cup placed at my feet for donations. I could even take Snezhinka the Wonder Dog and extend the message to say that she had cancer too.

The smile briefly disappeared from my face as it dawned on me that beneath my dressing lay a scar in its embryonic stage, and once developed it would mean that my career as a glamour model would be over. But I cheered up again, remembering that liberated from the strict rules of the catwalk world, I’d again be able to go for a pint and eat crisps.

Walking back to my lodgings, I passed the Cherry. Two of the waiting staff saw me and waved. I hadn’t the heart to tell them that I had already eaten, and I hadn’t the space in my belly to tell them that I hadn’t.

 

20 August 2026, Thursday

My morning routine was becoming a bit predictable, but one or two minor adjustments cropped up to keep it interesting.

At the King’s Bakery, my breakfast haunt, the young lad called Tattoo was absent, so I assumed that the middle-aged tattooed woman working there in his place was his mother. “Hello Mrs Tattoo,” I said to her as I ordered my usual early morning fare, and she responded with her son’s usual early morning response of “Four euro fifty please.”

At the hospital, today’s doctor was the nicest so far. She wrote me a list of the kit I would need for changing my dressings at home, she told me how to do it, and she told me not to tell any of the other doctors that she had told me in case the bosslady duty doctor, who I would see the following day, didn’t think my lesion was sufficiently healed for me to be left alone with it. Before opening the door to leave, I thanked her for her care and the care of all the other members of the Dermatology and Venereology Department (DVD) who had looked after me with such kindness. She was delighted to hear this, saying that patients in Bulgarian hospitals never expressed thanks to staff for providing the service that was expected. It was the same on buses.

I, however, had felt compelled to say thank you, as I’d benefited from very good quality healthcare for not very much money, as another of the socialist beliefs of my youth was torn up. Bulgaria generally had been good to me since my arrival in the country ten years earlier, but the way the current shock to the system had been dealt with professionally and with such expedience was the cherry on the immigration cake. It had been a day less than three weeks since I’d first gone to my G.P. with my lumpy problem.

Thoughts of going home cheered me up no end and had me brimming with glee. I decided that to maintain my jolly mood I should refrain from brooding in the flat all day and instead go for a long walk around the bits of the Lozenets district that I hadn’t already explored.

So, on foot, I discovered Café Freya, where I called in for a coffee, mainly because it had the same name as my granddaughter, and she would have been delighted at the news. I spent an interesting hour looking around the Hristo Stoichkov Museum containing photographs, videos and artefacts of Bulgaria’s best ever footballer (he was Johann Cryuff’s favourite player of all time and the only Bulgarian ever to have won a Champions League winner’s medal). I saw the Paradise Centre from outside, it being the country’s largest shopping mall and a hideously ugly building. And finally, I walked through large tracts of South Park, which I imagined would have been beautiful in spring, but today it was a mass of parched yellow vegetation and dried-up lakes and ornamental pools. Information boards fixed to wilting trees notified me that it was the home of several species of owl and numerous other birds, but I didn’t see any and I wasn’t surprised. They’d all gone elsewhere for a drink, and who could blame them? 

As darkness fell I enjoyed my last supper (well, last for the time being) in the Cherry. The food during my stay had all been gorgeous, and the staff were all friendly and chatty. Apart from all the gouging, the blood, the stitches and the oozing of serosanguineous fluid, it had been a marvellous holiday.

So with Operation Nose Job virtually complete, I wrote flamboyantly and at length in my journal for the final time before suspending the temporary Rule 14b(i)… the strictly one hundred words per day rule.  

 

21 August 2026, Friday

The bosslady duty doctor questioned me at length on my ability to dress the hole in my nose by myself. Upon mentioning the fact that I had studied wounds at my Maidenhead seat of learning many years before, she seemed satisfied that I wouldn’t die.

On the middle seat on the back row of the hot bus from Sofia to Veliko Tarnovo, there was no air-conditioning vent. I wondered if it was perspiration, exudate or my will to live that I felt seeping from my nasal cavity.

The welcome home celebrations were immensely touching, especially from Snezhinka the Wonder Dog.

 

22 August 2026, Saturday

I learnt from my daughter Rose that, whilst out walking in Stockport, Tufty her Puli dog, was attacked by a Bully XL dog. It took four people to prise the monster’s jaws apart to release little Tufty. It then pursued daughter and dog into the assumed sanctuary of a kind passer-by’s car where two men had to punch it several times in the face to persuade it to leave.

Tufty was fine, but Rose required a hospital trip for bleeding bites and grazes, and several witnesses were badly shaken. The local constabulary, when called, said they’d be getting in touch.

 

23 August 2026, Sunday

It was a grand day for garden work, but I didn’t as, in accordance with Dr Kacheva’s guidelines, I was exercising due diligence in respect of stooping, sweating, getting mucky and festering. Sitting on the settee all day, I still managed to sweat and fester.

Two days into my DIY wound management programme I was delighted with my progress. Looking in the bathroom mirror, I still wasn’t kissable, but the sight of my own face no longer made me want to vomit. That old magic I had demonstrated daily during my many years as a professional foot-hacker was still there.

 

24 August 2026, Monday

We found Crazy Ludo’s leg in a huge mess again this morning. Antibiotics and steroid treatment he’d had on his previous vet trip were still within their expiry date inside his scabby little body but were unlikely to help as they’d only been semi-effective in this latest fight against infection.

Priyatelkata and I hadn’t told each other that we’d both been thinking about euthanasia, but when Dr Dimitrova suggested it, we agreed, as the poor cat had been enduring a miserable life for almost a year. Saying goodbye to him was one of the most heart-wrenching experiences of my life.

 

25 August 2026, Tuesday

A rough journey back to Sofia for nose hole inspection purposes. The train from Gorna Oryahovitsa ran ninety minutes late, and on a day as hot as Dasht-e Lut, the air conditioning failed. A large wobbly man a few seats from me removed his sweaty shirt to fan himself and nearby passengers. I couldn’t say I was grateful.

It was a relief to be back at my temporary home in lovely Lozenets. I had dinner, a beer and a natter with the manageress in the Cherry. With a heart still heavy from losing Ludo, I discovered Dolly Parton had died.

 

26 August 2026, Wednesday

On the Nepal-Tibet border, an avalanche caused flash flooding of unbelievable proportions, bringing widespread death and destruction as towns, villages, forests and absolutely everything were swept away. YouTube videos contained the most dramatic natural disaster footage I had ever seen. It was sickening to see people and animals die on film, but compulsive viewing. For once we couldn’t blame it on right-wing politicians, but fingers pointed at climate-change deniers.

Dr Kacheva said my lump had been a more aggressive than expected squamous cell carcinoma, but I still shouldn’t worry. But I did, all the way home on a cooler bus.

 

27 August 2026, Thursday

A message from our new house-sitter, pet-sitter, doesn’t-give-a-shitter lady said she was cancelling our arrangement for next week because her goldfish was constipated, or something like that. We’d booked to stay three nights in the old city of Stara Zagora.

Our prime reason for going was to give her a trial run because she was new, but we’d also been looking forward to a few days away. Whilst perfecting my new party trick of tossing Smarties in the air and catching them in the hole in my nose, I accepted that I was happy to just relax at home instead.

 

28 August 2026, Friday

Hasan had put great effort into tidying up his garden. This rare phenomenon, we mused, could be attributed to one of the following:

• His dear wife, Slavka, was coming home from her latest long-term stay in hospital in Pleven.
• Slavka was never coming back from hospital, so he was planning to sell the house.
• Our mayor had given him a bollocking because it was such an eyesore.
• He had become a member of the Beautiful Gardens of Bulgaria Association.

On the bank at the front of his house there wasn’t a weed to be seen. Team Monsanto had struck again!

 

29 August 2026, Saturday

Today was the fifth anniversary of my becoming a member of the highly acclaimed ABC Tales Dot Cotton Dot Com online creative writing group. I celebrated with a large glass of surgical spirit from the bottle I’d been using in my wound hygiene regime whilst listening to the 1982 album The Lexicon of Love by ABC. Then I got a headache trying to work out which of my literary friends it had been who played that sexy xylophone on ‘Poison Arrow’. My money was on the woman from Darlington who writes those lovely happy endings to Joni Mitchell protest songs.

 

30 August 2026, Sunday

Wouldn’t you just die without Pancho Vladigerov?

On a hot afternoon, when I’m going nowhere except the golden triangle that links the kettle, the fridge and the settee, it’s nice to experiment with a bit of music by someone I’ve never heard of before.

Vladigerov, apparently, was the most influential Bulgarian classical composer and had a name that’s ripe for making a Ken Dodd-esque joke out of. But when one listens to the likes of Vladigerov, one finds that one becomes too sophisticated to engage in such crude frivolity.

But above all, his was lovely music and a wonderful discovery.

 

31 August 2026, Monday

I’d always lived for the summer and in recent years thrived in Bulgaria’s August heat, but my positive attitude towards the final hot month was beginning to creak under the strain. This year it had been a bit shit, and not just because of climatic conditions. As it drew to a close, I told myself I should be grateful for having got through it, even though poor little Ludo hadn’t, and hoped for a better September.

My final deed of August 2026 was to accompany Priyatelkata to the vets to have Gaïa the Shih Tzu’s anal gland unblocked. Oh rejoice!

 

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Image:

Crazy Ludo, a happy little cat in happier times. My own photograph.

 

Part One:

Oh Ambassador You Are Really Scaring Us