Kazakh Stan and Kazakh Olly

 

Kazakh Stan and Kazakh Olly

 

16 July 2026, Thursday

I felt I was the only living creature in the garden that couldn’t fly. From the insect world all the usual suspects buzzed, hovered and flapped around me, in the fig trees golden orioles and jays fought over ripening fruit, and overhead mummy and daddy storks were out with their babies flying for the first time. I even saw a horse fly… it bit me on the arse so I whacked it in the fascicles.

Apparently male horse flies have weak mouthparts, but females have mouthparts strong enough to puncture the skin and gardening clothes of large animals. Very unladylike!

 

17 July 2026, Friday

Amazing Bulgarian Facts #3

When Bulgarians shake their heads from side to side they mean ‘yes’ and nodding means ‘no’. This gesture reversal is something that still confuses me after all my time here. I’ve seen the same happen in India and Sri Lanka.

It’s a national characteristic that everybody knows about, but nobody ever acknowledges something else that I’ve noticed myself.  My strange observation is that when Bulgarians wipe their feet on a doormat their foot movements are from side to side rather than from back to front. I expect my Nobel Anthropology Prize is already in the post.

 

18 July 2026, Saturday

I decided I wanted to be able to touch my toes with my fingers behind my back whilst leaping up in the air. That’s what the group of dancers from the Republic of Georgia were doing at the opening night of the International Folklore Dance Festival. They’re always the best of the bunch, though Kazakhstan came a close second. Also on stage were Cuba, Panama, Guam, Costa Rica, Venezuela, and the host nation, Bulgaria.

The event was friendly, colourful and highly entertaining. I’d never before seen so many smiling faces. Despite everything, there are still beautiful people in this world.

 

19 July 2026, Sunday

So football didn’t come home. In fact it hadn’t even gone away. The current World Cup trophy, designed in 1973 by Italian sculptor Silvio Gazzaniga, is permanently kept at the FIFA Museum in Zürich. The replica handed to the Spanish victors by the Trump-Infantino alley of clowns was made from squeezy bottles and sticky-back plastic.

I’d got sick of hearing the phrase ‘It’s coming home!’ and latched on to the belief that every time somebody repeats it, an artefact should be removed from the British Museum and returned to its original home. Can Bulgarians have our Thracian coins back please?

 

20 July 2026, Monday

The Michelin Guide compilers announced they’ll never include Bulgarian restaurants because our food isn’t tasty and our waiting staff are surly. Well as far as I’m concerned they can go and shove their poncy reference books up their Poularde en Vessies as they’ve overlooked the fact that that our food is very healthy and affordable, and that our lovely restaurant staff are only ever rude when dealing with pretentious twats.

A wasp stung the end of my finger. I was told I shouldn’t go poking fingers in holes. How was I to know? Wasps’ nests should carry a pulsating beacon.

 

21 July 2026, Tuesday

Although slightly touristy, Tryavna’s a lovely old town. Situated on the northern slopes of our nearby Stara Planina mountain range, the air feels much cooler there than at home on our hot Veliko Tarnovo days.

It’s famous for its history of textile manufacturing and typical National Revival architecture, featuring numerous cultural monuments, museums, and expositions. Also it’s the birthplace of the nineteenth century Bulgarian poet Pencho Slaveykov and revolutionary Angel Kanchev.

At the Mekhana ‘Starata Loza’ (Механа ‘Старата Лоза, meaning ‘the Old Vine Tavern’) for the price of a packet of French Monster Munch we dined on the finest victuals known to man.

 

22 July 2026, Wednesday

We chose tonight for our second visit to the Folklore Festival because the line-up comprised of all our favourites.

The dancers radiated colour apart from Georgia in their traditional all-black strip. Costa Rican and Venezuelan ladies floated about waving the hems of their frilly dresses to occasionally reveal their undies (I averted my gaze, of course), the Georgians were fast and furious in their leaping, and the Kazakhs moved gracefully to music performed by their own musicians on traditional instruments.

When the Kazakh group’s leader sang ‘My Country, My Bulgaria’ in Bulgarian, the arena flooded with tears of Balkan emotion.

 

23 July 2026, Thursday

Our government received a diplomatic note from the Iranian government warning that if we continue to allow American warplanes to refuel at domestic airports and military airbases in Bulgaria, we’ll become a target for Iranian missiles.

Apparently, the planes that fill up at Sofia airport are the sort that are used to refuel in mid-air those brutish big bombers that come over from England. So the B52s and suchlike can fly all the way to Iran, do all their killing, and fly back again without having to stop. But what happens if the pilot needs to go to the toilet?

 

24 July 2026, Friday

Doctor Tatchev won ‘Vet of the Week’. He said the infection in Crazy Ludo’s huge weeping stinking bloody hole in his leg that appeared only yesterday was more than two days old. The cat’s allergy problems seem to infect the tissue of his entire front left leg, and when it gets really bad he chews the skin off, almost to the bone, to try to relieve the discomfort. This explains why the problem’s always in the same place.

Medication and sympathy were applied in large doses. And it turned out he’s not a street fighter after all. Poor old Ludo!

 

25 July 2026, Saturday

At the Stara Zagora State Ballet production of Swan Lake in the fortress grounds we wished we’d taken two jumpers for the chilly evening.

Those poor ballerinas in their tutus! Such mad dresses protecting neither their modesty nor their skinny wee bodies from freezing were more like the Elizabethan collar you’d put round a post-operative dog’s neck to stop it licking its wound. Sticking out horizontally in a circle they’re useless except perhaps to keep your feet dry in the rain. 

Blame it on the former South African archbishop after whom they were named! Did he ever wear one himself?

 

26 July 2026, Sunday

In Gaelic football terms, family history pushes me towards Antrim, but travels through Ireland’s most beautiful county remoulded me a Mayo fan.

Today Mayo beat Kerry in the All-Ireland final at Croke Park, lifting the Sam Maguire Trophy for the first time in seventy-five years.

Travelling home by bus from Dublin after their 1951 victory, the team bus failed to slow down for a funeral cortege, so an angry priest cursed them to never win another championship so long as they lived. Paddy Prendergast, the last survivor, died in 2021 but Catholic priests still curse, especially those who support Kerry.

 

27 July 2026, Monday

Baba Stoyanka sat beneath the pomegranate tree in the square, drinking yarrow wine from her great-grandfather’s pewter flask very quickly because of the bullet hole in it, and because she can’t get enough. She told me, ‘Youth without love is spring without a flower’ before confiding that she’d lost her youth, love and flower all at the same time on the night Tsar Simeon was sent into exile.

It was incredible to witness the throng of bees working frenziedly after sunset on the beautiful flowers of our Bird of Paradise of the Desert tree. We call her Priscilla for short.

 

28 July 2026, Tuesday

Bulgaria’s two rudest and most miserable women have both worked for years in our local shop, Vanyo Cholakov (Ваньо Чолаков).

Agrafena (Agro for short) is the image of Rolling Stone, Ronnie Wood in his current guise. Her hobbies include Albanian cigarettes and going to the dogs.

Katerina, sporting a mullet hairstyle that would put legendary penalty-misser, Chris Waddle, to shame grunts louder than Maria Sharapova but unfortunately doesn’t play tennis.

The new girl, Chancroidka, was polite and smiley for the first two weeks but she came through the basic training to emerge as a fully fledged new member of the Sisters Cholakov. 

 

29 July 2026, Wednesday

Late one evening every summer, a huge aerosol comes round our village on the back of a truck spraying out a gas more toxic than the Scunthorpe air to supposedly kill all the mosquitos, ticks and strigoi stone dead. And tonight was the night.

During my early evening garden-watering ritual, an involuntary donation of blood sufficient to make an award-winning Clonakilty black pudding was sucked from my bare limbs by flying piranhas aware of their fate and seeing me as their last supper.

But in their final throes of death they’ll have laid millions of eggs to hatch out tomorrow.

 

30 July 2026, Thursday

I’d like to complain about our new hoover. Its turning circle is double that of the old model, and it has lights on the front so that we don’t miss any of the muck. However, it shows up lizards’ crispy body parts (thanks to our cats) and dog hairs (thanks to our dogs) that we wouldn’t normally have seen. Consequently our electricity consumption is up.

But it’s nice to listen to the symphonies of Shostakovich whilst dashing away with it. Our local newspaper reported on this with the headline ‘Orchestral Man Hoovers in the Dark’.

Groan… old joke… I’m sorry. 

 

31 July 2026, Friday

Having been foolishly optimistic that for the first time in ten years we’d get through July without a scorching forty-plus-degrees day, we found ourselves seared and saddened in the devil’s own fan-assisted oven.

Dinner in Bey House’s garden restaurant, where the live entertainment comprised the songs of the Buena Vista Social Club sung with a Bulgarian accent, eased us out of a difficult day.

The Gypsy wedding in the village square made us wish we could speak their language and join in until we saw how sweaty the guests had become. The time wasn’t right for dancing in the street.

 

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Image:

Three of the ladies from the Kazakhstan traditional dance group waiting to go on stage at the International Folklore Dance Festival in our park. My own photograph.

 

Part One:

The Evolution of the Lettuce