Aura Urziceanu’s Lullaby Effect

 

Aura Urziceanu’s Lullaby Effect

 

17 May 2025, Saturday

It rained deluginous rain all day. I lay on the bed with Boris the ever-present friendly cat, a bucket containing 15,432.4 grains (i.e. a kilogram) of boiled rice, my antibiotics collection which rendered my rakia collection out of bounds, and a pile of scratchy old vinyl LPs. When I find myself in times of trouble, Ian Dury comes to me.

Bulgaria, Ireland, Leeds United and Dana were all absent from both the FA Cup Final and the Eurovision Song Contest so I watched neither. БНТ (Bulgarian National Television) coverage of the Goat Show live from Plovdiv proved an absolutely scintillating alternative.

 

18 May 2025, Sunday

Reminding ourselves that where phones lose range, peace of mind begins, we drove beyond the sleepy village of Dobromirka to escape what this horrible week had given us. Looking across the lake from the dam at Gorsko Kosovo, we saw only forested hills and cliffs beneath a cloudless Balkan sky. Spring flowers added myriad flecks of bright colour to greens and blues as insects buzzed and birds sang. Bulgaria’s mountains, it seemed, absorbed our sadness to keep with the centuries of sadness of their own. Nothing else could ever lift our mood so, or make us feel more at home.

 

19 May 2025, Monday

We’d been worried about scabby, weeping sores that, despite an assortment of treatment methods, just wouldn’t heal. It was a slight relief to know they were attached to a cat and not to us, but not much fun for poor old Ludo.

Tired of our usual vets looking flummoxed and scratching their heads as much as the cat scratches his arse, we sought a second opinion. Dr Djambova, with her pinky-purple hair, was lovely. If ever I have scabby, weeping sores of my own I’ll head straight for her. She seemed to know what she was doing with Ludo too.  

 

20 May 2025, Tuesday

Admitting we have two hoovers might raise suggestions that we’re bourgeois. In our defence I’d say that neither bear the brand name Hoover and both are essential weapons in our struggle to maintain our dominant species status.

The heavy duty yellow one can suck up a dog hair from 100 metres but it’s cumbersome and takes longer to empty than to fill. The little red one removes poor dismembered lizards from the kitchen floor within seconds of a cat attack, but recently the battery’s been in a poorer state of health than the lizards.

Today we celebrated a new battery.

 

21 May 2025, Wednesday

I’m glad my disease will soon be gone because the main symptom is my inability to concentrate and it’s fair mucking up my life. Finding the right words in a conversation is a struggle, and this 100 words per day journal has become the limit of my writing capabilities.

I’ve no physical discomfort but the constant fatigue and feeling of uselessness gnaw at my mind like a tick at a fleshy human thigh.

I put down my pad and pencil briefly to think of fleshy human thighs but I’d forgotten what they looked like so I returned to the scribblings.   

 

22 May 2025, Thursday

 

The neighbours think we’re funny

Say we’re spending too much money

On fresh yoghurt and best honey

It’s the reason we are lardy

No shortage of fresh air

So much sunshine we could spare

Not a care what clothes we wear

We’re as tough as boots and hardy

 

No need to set alarm clocks

Woken daily by the farm cocks

Doing well this pair of old crocks

Though slightly going bats

In our garden full of bees

We’re creaking at the knees

Slyly hugging shrubs and trees

And still got seven cats

 

Reasons to be cheerful

For her and me

 

23 May 2025, Friday

A day of virtually nonstop thunder and lightning, but no rain. We felt anxious and lucky in equal measure as other parts of the country suffered bombardment from destructive tennis ball hailstones. Our wounds from last summer hadn’t fully healed.

We’ve often envied other villages where storks nest at the tops of electricity poles but this year we have our own, just near the bus stop in the square. They must be daft in the head to go perching themselves up there all unprotected with the wild weather that’s on the cards. Sometimes it’s hard to tell stork from nutter.

 

24 May 2025, Saturday

Plans for a picnic in the hills were shelved because of a scary weather forecast. No scary weather arrived until early evening and it wasn’t really that scary, just very wet. So we could have gone on our trip, though we probably wouldn’t have enjoyed it because we’d have been scared of the potential arrival of scary weather. In the big mountains in the south of the country it snowed but we spent our day working in our garden without fear of anything. A little lunchtime thunder prompted us to eat our picnic in the safe environment of the kitchen.

 

25 May 2025, Sunday

I had Elmore James’ song, The Sky is Crying in my head as it rained heavily every single minute of the day, plus a few hours at the other sides of the two midnights.

I considered writing a follow up and calling it The Soil is Drinking. Bulgaria needs all the rain it can get as digging a hole to plant a shrub requires a hammer and chisel, and weekend outings to picturesque reservoirs have a hide and seek feel to them.

Instead I sat around listening to Elmore James and drinking healthy stuff that typically didn’t taste very nice. 

 

26 May 2025, Monday

A tale of two local waterfalls, at Hotnitsa and Dryanovski. The former was the bigger but it didn’t involve much of a walk. Reaching the latter involved a wee hike through the ancient monastery, over an iron footbridge, up a lane, past a notable site from the War of Independence, into a forest and then onto an old stone bridge which was the perfect spot for observing powerful gushes. We both had one! Returning to the car was the same in reverse but with the addition of powerful coffee outside a rustic and cat-infested café by the powerfully flowing river.

 

27 May 2025, Tuesday

A man on the Yantra Today news website commented that he didn’t care about reservoir water levels because we’d all surely die of misery long before we died of thirst. The rain had stopped around 8:00 a.m., so I’d been feeling quite chipper until I read that. Then I began to agree with him when a tour of the garden revealed I had another disease to contend with. Three of my hardy lavender plants had been attacked by alfalfa mosaic virus.

Jollity returned as we walked over the old wooden Vladishki Most (Владишки мост, meaning ‘Bishop’s Bridge’) to admire the swollen river.

 

28 May 2025, Wednesday

Moving at the velocity of a slug with a limp, I descended the stairs at some sort of breakfast time, not knowing why. The tick disease plays havoc with my sleep pattern so I’m only fully awake between the hours of midnight and 6:00 a.m. It’s then I listen to Romanian Jazz played quietly, hoping for the lullaby effect. In the dark I wonder what’s spinning but by keeping a light on low I see it’s the whole room. The meter of Aura Urziceanu’s scat singing blends well with the vertigo’s motion in my head. She’s my Bucharesti night nurse.

 

29 May 2025, Thursday

Summer’s near and the time is right for biting between the sheets, sang Miroslava Reeves, Martha’s Bulgarian cousin.

Last night marked the kick-off of the new mosquito season. Despite having a slender segmented body, long legs, and specialized piercing-sucking mouthparts, no creature (with the possible exception of a hippopotamus) could be less welcome in my sleeping quarters than one of these parasitic little sleeveens.

The nocturnal whine of their wings is as damaging mentally as their sanguivorousness is physically. It’s almost as bad as snoring. A mosquito falls silent when its belly’s full but a snorer is quite the opposite.

 

30 May 2025, Friday

57% of Bulgarians want to keep the lev as our unit of currency. Politicians have suggested a referendum to decide, but Mistress Brussels said we can’t do that because it would slow down the process for introducing the euro next January. So now they’re talking about having a referendum to decide whether or not we want a referendum. 

The Finance Ministry has estimated there are 30 billion unbanked leva (£13 billion) floating about. That’s a lot of stuffed mattresses! To convert them to euro they must be banked but that’ll make them taxable. I’m glad I’m not burdened with wealth.

 

31 May 2025, Saturday

We’d always considered Samovodene as little more than a few houses either side of the E85 Romania-Turkey trunk road, and a place to buy half-dead live fish. Today we explored back streets to find architectural gems, beautiful gardens, statues of revolutionaries, a brilliant family-run market garden shop and outstanding views of the Danubian Plain.

Afternoon wrestles with garden mud were essential for the survival of newly purchased plants but the sun shone and the birds sang… so we shone and sang too! It had been a rubbish month but we thought we’d try another one, just to see. Tomorrow perhaps.

 

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Image:

One of the Malki Chiflik storks being exquisitely tame.

 

Part One:

Poor Penka’s Parting

Click on the link to read