All the President’s Haemorrhoids

 

All the President’s Haemorrhoids

 

1 September 2026, Tuesday

I shelled out €30 to have Fyodor the Fiat purged of filth. Sitting in a nearby café with coffee, book and broad September smile, I thought back to the last time he had seen soapy water and calculated that the cost had amounted to less than €1 per week.

Frustrated by facial wounds holding me back from garden work, I decided I’d at least do something about our grapes, swollen and throbbing like Donald Trump’s haemorrhoids. Hours of boiling, mashing, filtering, tasting, and bottling in the kitchen produced a ten-litre batch of delicious red juice, from the vines, that is.

 

2 September 2026, Wednesday

We drove the winding mountain road to the far side of Gabrovo for lunch at restaurant ‘Pusturvata’ (Пъстървата, meaning ‘The Trout’). Clinging to the bank of a burbling tributary of the Yantra, and in the shade of tall maples and ashes, this gorgeous little eatery glowed in the rural Balkan scruffiness and friendliness that we love.

It would have been foolish to have ordered anything other than a trout, mine being so fresh it still had a Parachute Adams hooked in its mouth. But I suppose it’s better to have a fly in your trout than a trout in your fly.

 

3 September 2026, Thursday

We’d been lucky the previous two years, as fierce summer storms had swept away our entire crops of grapes before we could harvest them. But this year’s calmer weather had left us with a glut to deal with.

The white ones were long and juicy, so for a couple of weeks we’d been picking bunches willy-nilly and stuffing our faces with them. The red ones, however, were not really for eating, as they contained large seeds. Rakia grapes are what our neighbours call them.

Again I spent four hours extracting juice from a batch. Our running total hit twenty-four litres.

 

4 September 2026, Friday

Baba Stoyanka sat beneath the pomegranate tree in the square, shouting death threats at the butterflies whilst struggling to light her pipe with damp matches. She said to me, ‘Turlough, my knickers are wet.’

‘That’s because it’s raining,’ I replied.

‘Is it? How did that happen? You know, I vaguely remember it raining before!’ But I don’t think she or many other Malki Chiflik villagers did.

The afternoon downpour prevented me from picking grapes, but it also removed any requirement to water the garden. Every cloud has a silver-coloured bucket full of water, as dear Baba Stoyanka might have professed.

 

5 September 2026, Saturday

Again I spent much of the day boiling grapes. It’s not as much fun as it sounds, but, with the 2026 harvest all in, we could boast forty-seven litres of rich red juice.  

I’ve always been quite a versatile person, so this afternoon, following advice from the hippy woman at the top of the hill who keeps chickens and an eye on the rest of the village, I turned my hand to steaming eggs. The end result was the same as with boiling eggs, but the shells were easier to remove.

I am the steamed egg man… goo goo g’joob!

 

6 September 2026, Sunday

The second of Bulgaria’s three annual independence days. Today we celebrated our reunification with Eastern Rumelia in 1885, though most of us have no idea where it is or was. Amazon delivery vans have become stranded there because it no longer appears on maps. I suppose it’s a bit like England being reunited with Danelaw, or Trowbridge with reality.

However, the day’s another good excuse for drinking beer and eating kebapche while kids are made to dress up like they were born 150 years ago and dance to a rap version of Tih Byal Dunav (Тих бял Дунав, meaning ‘The Serene White Danube’).

 

7 September 2026, Monday

Five months after his first appearance, our new neighbour, Nicki, worked on the wild land he’d bought beside our meadow. He had no Mrs Niki with him this time but was accompanied by his mate and a selection of power tools.

While we were telling him how much we were looking forward to him building a house and moving in, he was spraying weedkiller everywhere, and we were thinking fuck off with your toxic chemicals.

He’s very white, apart from green patches behind his ears, and comes from Veliko Tarnovo. We have much to teach him about Bulgarian village life.

 

8 September 2026, Tuesday

The scab fell off the hole in my nose. I don’t know what happened to it, but already I have a new one. They’re as easy to grow as buddleia.

Dr Kacheva’s ‘advanced lap surgery’ hadn’t worked. Her plan was to cut a horseshoe-shaped flap of skin, stretch it over the excision site, and stitch it so the only evidence of dermal disturbance would be the stitches. They’ve nicely healed, but the hole remains.

It slightly bothers me but doesn’t hurt, and there’s a strange sensation as if a butterfly was constantly flapping on it. Perhaps I’ve become a buddleia.

 

9 September 2026, Wednesday

Everywhere we look we see gambling advertising. We’re able to bet on anything here. I currently have a €10 double on Albert Tatlock making a comeback in Coronation Street and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse lining up at the post for the 3:35 at Doncaster on Saturday. Wooo! I’ll be rich!

Bozhidar Bozhanov, co-chairman of the Yes, Bulgaria political party and member of the National Assembly, is as sick of it as I am. So he’s proposing a nationwide ban. Our local branch of Efbet is offering odds of a thousand to one on him getting anywhere with that.

 

10 September 2026, Thursday

Hristo Botev popped round for a cuppa so I wrote this…

 

with savage broken hands pluck

us from this wild land

lift us above Strandzha’s moon

our hearts beating fiercely

pump the blood of a nation

scalding, tainting

every blistering kiss

from here we’ll fly

in realms amongst heroes

to watch over, protect

woodlands, summits, caves and graves

and lands we lost

oh Levski we’ll sleep

until awakened by time

in fields as green as their envy

in mountains black like our sea

where nights become the mornings

of our dreams

and our children laugh

while our bear cubs play

 

11 September 2026, Friday

It’s a long story, but courtesy of a mutual friend in Ireland, we met some new friends who lived near to us in Bulgaria. We all got on well with nice coffee in a nice café in town. The only difficulty being that French Priyatelkata didn’t understand a word of what Sunderland Paul was saying. But strangely, his ‘howay’ sounded very similar to Bulgaria’s ‘hai-day’ (хайде) both of which mean ‘come on’.

In the evening Auntie Anne paid us a visit. She was hands-down the best house-sitter lady we’d met, so she got the job. Now to make holiday plans. Canny!   

 

12 September 2026, Saturday

Yesterday, on a mountainside near Stara Zagora, a large wildfire broke out. Fire appliances from many towns were called out. The authorities suspected arsonists.

Last night, near the village of Tsareva Livada, midway between here and Stara Zagora, a large fire broke out at a munitions factory owned by a pro-Ukraine businessman. There were multiple explosions as it spread from warehouse to warehouse. All the fire appliances were at the other fire, so it spread into a forest and towards the village. The authorities suspected Russians.

Nobody was harmed, but there was extensive damage at both sites, especially the latter.

 

13 September 2026, Sunday

Friends had recommended a new restaurant called Route 44 in Sherametya, the next village to ours. It was one of those American road diner places, but the chips were alright.  

The food at the Serbian restaurant opposite looked far more appetising, but we’d felt disturbed by the hero-worship Serbs had shown towards their war criminal, Ratko Mladić, the ‘Butcher of Bosnia', at his funeral in Belgrade a week earlier.

Two neighbouring eateries, each linked to mad, murderous national leaders. In the nearby farm shop we recomposed ourselves as we considered how many had decomposed as a result of their crimes.

 

14 September 2026, Monday

Hristo Botev was still here, in spirit, and giving no indication of when he’d be leaving. When he nipped outside for a ciggie, I wrote this…

 

Young Botev wrote poetic works

And hated our land ruled by Turks

When he sent them back to Constantinople

Of them staying there, he was quite hopeful

And our freedom would be one of the perks

 

Writing limericks containing the word 'Constantinople' is difficult, but extracting grape juice was a doddle. I completed the task today, declaring a grand total of forty-seven litres. We finished eating all the white grapes, which was even easier.

 

15 September 2026, Tuesday

Scab Two fell off the former hole in my nose, and I won ‘Paragraph of the Day’ on the Paragraph Planet website for creative writers who can’t manage more than seventy-five words at a time. The scab wasn’t the subject of the paragraph, but both incidents brought smiles to my face.

A large branch carrying a mass of unripe pears fell from our pear tree, the cats killed a snake by the garden tap, and poor old Gaïa, the Shih Tzu, visited the groomers, so at least now we can see her cataracts even though she can’t see anything herself.

 

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Image:

My own photograph of my own swollen and throbbing, juicy red grapes.

 

Part Two:

Coming soon!