How to Make Money with a Broken Spirograph

 

How to Make Money with a Broken Spirograph

 

17 December 2025, Wednesday

Languishing in a brumal abyss, all the banter was about the fog on the Yantra. At least in hell it’s warm enough to manage without a big heavy jumper.

Energo Pro forgot to turn off the power at 2:00 p.m.

Does your granny always tell you that the old songs are the best? I’m inclined to agree with her. Confined to a living room, I worked my way north from fellow Teessider Chris Rea, via Alan Hull, to Frankie Miller, Gerry Rafferty and Rab Noakes. All I ever wanted, all I ever needed, was YouTube, Spotify and a bottomless teapot.

 

18 December 2025, Thursday

Energo-Pro turned off the electricity. We’d expected this on 17 December but powerlessness struck on 16 and 18 December, the prediction being the average of the reality.

In today’s two hours of daylight we visited Dryanovo for junk shop fun and lunch with de Belgische vrienden who’d been busy buying gifts for everybody in their village in anticipation of a virgin birth. Were nappies not more appropriate than chocolates and plastic sparkly things?

Fearing the most infernal darkness I felt strangely excited about the solstice only three restless nights hence. Maybe I’m getting used to these winter carnivals of horror.

 

19 December 2025, Friday

I’ve had many a message from my bank inviting me to take out loans, or life insurance, or the smiley woman with the dangly earrings that works at desk number four. Today’s message told me they’d converted all my money into euro.

At the year’s end our dear old lev, with its unique character and charm, will disappear. Lev is the old word for lion, and leva banknotes are decorated with interesting historical Bulgarians. Euro notes were designed by a pissed Austrian with a broken Spirograph.

Our Finance Minister insists he wasn’t pissed when he signed the Eurozone agreement. Pah!

 

20 December 2025, Saturday

If you’re sick of hearing about Crazy Ludo, I don’t blame you because so am I and so is Priyatelkata and so are all five vets at our local practice. He’s a lovely cat but tests have revealed a complex proteus mirabilis infection in the deep tissue of his left front leg which requires antibiotic injections every other day.

I suggested to Dr Gunchev that, because we spend so much time in their surgery, we might get an invitation to the vets’ Christmas party. He said they’re so busy dealing with Crazy Ludo they haven’t time for a Christmas party.

 

21 December 2025, Sunday

I’m intelligent enough to appreciate that winter gloom’s a temporary thing I shouldn’t fret over, but it beats me every year. I think my head’s got a mind of its own. I’d love to know what goes on in there.

Today was Ignazhden (Игнажден, meaning ‘Saint Ignatius’ Day’) marking the winter solstice and the start of cheering up a bit. I have friends around the world who share my loathing of the dark months. We always send each other cheery messages on this day.

A Japanese proverb I love goes ‘One kind word can warm three winter months.’ It’s very effective.

 

22 December 2025, Monday

The day being as grey as the Devil’s own washed out Y-fronts, I strayed away from our dwelling place only to see the vet squeeze the contents of a Cadbury’s Creme Egg from the hole in Crazy Ludo’s leg. There’s only one more antibiotic injection until Christmas! Dr Gunchev and I discussed how there was money to be made from feline injury themed advent calendars but we’d need to devise a method of waterproofing them to prevent seepage.

The shortest day had passed but the cheered-upness evaporated somewhat as I listened to the music of Chris Rea who died today.

 

23 December 2025, Tuesday

The old soothsayer that dwells in a cavern near Lidl foretold the arrival of demonic beasts from Asia’s icy heartland. So final winter preparations were required sharpish. These included shifting logs nearer to the house, stowing away terracotta plant pots, draining the power tools’ fuel tanks, filling the car’s fuel tank, stocking up our freezer, freezing up our stockings, lashing things that might flap, spotifying the Ronettes, sanctifying the soles of our wellies, buffing up the binnacles, searching for things we hadn’t camouflaged, racking the rakia, affronting the people at the back of the bus and finally filling the kettle.

 

24 December 2025, Wednesday

When I said Vassela Koleda (Васела Коледа, meaning ‘Merry Christmas’) to the Ronnie Wood lookalike checkout woman in our village shop, she didn’t respond with the usual grunt, and even smiled. So I’ll say it every time I’m in there in future.

The snow we’d anticipated was postponed until tomorrow and we had a rain replacement service instead which didn’t require shovelling away.

I discovered that it’s possible for the longest day ever to fall just three days after the shortest day of the year and that Belarussian rakia isn’t a patch on our homegrown nectar but comes in a lovely bottle.

 

25 December 2025, Thursday

Our hopes of venturing out to a forest or a mountain were dampened by a deluge so I sat several serene hours on the terrace with djezves of hot black Turkish delight on repeat, a book of ripping yarns from Aleko Konstantinov’s times and a playlist of soothing Romanian jazz. It’s a grand place for watching the wild birds at play but the wild birds were having none of it today.

I thought I might be the only living creature enjoying the great outdoors but the sound of distant chainsaws quashed my theory.

The rain stopped when the snow began.   

 

26 December 2025, Friday

A mere 15 centimetres of snow fell but following an overnight freeze only Olympic ice dancers were able to negotiate the lane into the village. We needed a jar of pickled pigs’ internal organs, which are very popular here in winter months, but I had a hole in my Adidas flesh-coloured leotard so I’d have been mocked had I ventured out. In our barn we found vintage Jaffa Cakes to accompany our morning coffee instead.

English immigrants flocked to Lidl where, apparently, Brussels Sprouts were on the shelves for the first time since the Tuesday before the Siege of Stalingrad.

 

27 December 2025, Saturday

Around 30,000 leva (£13,500) were destroyed when a bank in nearby Gorna Oryahovitsa caught fire. The wardrobe where an old man had kept his money safe for years had contained mothballs to protect other non-monetary items. Apparently, repellent substances in mothballs are easily flammable when heated. So after Dyado had handed over his life savings and gone home with a bucketful of euro, the leva banknotes that had absorbed the chemicals were put into a warm and cosy vault where the heat was just too much for them.

Prophets of doom suggested this was a metaphor for Bulgaria’s economic future.

 

28 December 2025, Sunday

Listening to Chis Rea’s music nonstop since his death last week kindled melancholy. Since then Perry Bamonte from The Cure and Brigitte Bardot from France also died, so today I had a new playlist of misery to listen to.

I already loved Brigitte’s song Moi Je Joue long before I learned of her dodgy political views, and she was very kind to cats and donkeys. In Leeds the main shopping street’s named after her, and who would ever argue with Leeds City Council?

I once went to see a The Cure tribute band but it turned out to be Placebo.

 

29 December 2025, Monday

I could remember British people going mental when their money went metric on Decimal Day in February 1971. That feeling of excited anticipation at having different coins in my pocket was revived by Bulgarians, except they were a lot moanier about it.

There was euro-related fear all around.

The old woman who sits by the well said that during an Amsterdam shopping trip all her family contracted syphilis. Hasan, who’s never had money or education to speak of, told me he hadn’t yet got his head round the lev. And our government Finance Minister had turned into a gibbering cabbage.

 

30 December 2025, Tuesday

President Gobshite, with his dayglow skin in his ticky-tacky palace, is insisting that visitors show five years’ worth of social media history before his stormtroopers let them into his country, though it doesn’t matter if they’re wearing trainers, jeans or silly hats. Have his technology-giant buddies not already probed our intimate places deeply enough to have their answers?

At Pavlikeni Tuesday market we can buy five pairs of nylon knickers for a couple of euro, so with top-notch trashiness on our doorstep why would we cross an ocean for more? I wonder if Mickey, Minnie and Melania wear nylon knickers.

 

31 December 2025, Wednesday

I didn’t want a new year. I wanted one of the nice old years recycled. I had really enjoyed 1974. Leeds United won the First Division title, Manchester United were relegated, David Bowie released his Diamond Dogs album, Edward Heath’s Tory government collapsed in Britain, and a girl called Alison wrote her name on my pencil case during a maths lesson.

As the sun set for the final time in 2025, the fireworks started outside and all our animals became distressed. I don’t like fireworks either so I just stayed inside and listened to the Australian ones on the radio.

 

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Image:

A lovely Bulgarian one lev coin which I shall secure with my other precious keepsakes for the remainder of my days. I photographed it alongside a 100 francs piece from the French Territory of the Afars and the Issas to give an idea of scale.

 

Part One:

The Quest to Find the Sarashka Mosque