Nor Any Drop to Drink

 

Nor Any Drop to Drink

 

17 October 2025, Friday

Inge and Patrick gave us a cups of coffee, lovely chocolate biscuits and more than 100 strawberry plants. Phase One in our plan to drown in soft fruits next summer involved me looking sharpish in the planting of them. It was dark when we arrived home and with weekend rain forecast there were complications. Gardening is supposed to be the most relaxing pastime but I felt I was under intense pressure. I imagined how I would be scorned with shame if a buttered scone were to go unjammed at an afternoon tea party next July. But sadly, postponement was unavoidable.

 

18 October 2025, Saturday

We’d decided to boycott Kaufland supermarket because their profits finance warmongers, but we occasionally return because:

a) They have good quality, reasonably priced dog food that our dogs love.

b)  Paying for goods at their self-checkout tills enables us to ‘launder’ up to 12 levs per transaction from our big stone pot containing nine years’ worth of loose change. A necessary step before Bulgaria’s adoption of the euro in January 2026.

Today my pockets brimmed with scrap metal as I waddled all the way to their pet food aisle only to discover they’d sold out of delicious Kaufland meaty chunks.

 

19 October 2025, Sunday

We’d always welcomed snakes to our garden. They eat vermin and bring exoticism without being threatening enough to make us feel like menu items ourselves.

Today’s visitor, half a metre of beautiful but brutal-looking horn-nosed viper, chose to sunbathe on our doorstep, stopping domestic traffic flow and hearts.

The risk of fatalities was apparently small. We humans had a local hospital at our disposal and cats’ reflexes are apparently three times the speed of a snake’s. But for our lethargic older felines I suspected that even suggesting three times the speed of a slug might be pushing it a bit.

 

20 October 2025, Monday

Fyodor the Fiat was in need of new pistons so we took him to Mechanical Nikolay where the TLC he spoke of probably stood for Tremendously Large Cost. He said he’d have it ready for us on Thursday (i.e. Thursday 20 November).

Bulgarian village life without a car isn’t impossible but it is messy, so we went to Radoslav’s Rentals and drove away in a shiny black Kia Ora as a temporary replacement.

On such a lovely sunny day we fancied an afternoon out in the new motor but accepted that finding homes for 100 strawberry plants was our priority.

 

21 October 2025, Tuesday

Yesterday, somebody had written in England’s Times newspaper that our Interior Minister, Daniel Mitov, had told them Bulgaria’s Government had evidence of direct links between Russia’s foreign intelligence agency and the gangs helping illegal migrants to cross Europe.

When I lived in Britain I’d read the Wiltshire Times. It came free every Thursday but was it the same rag? Through an advertisement I once bought a second-hand trailer for family camping trips. Today, only the concentration required for dismantling our fallen walnut tree could take my mind off the possibility that the trailer had been used for human trafficking purposes.

 

22 October 2025, Wednesday

Don’t tell Inge and Patrick but we went to Polski Trambesh to give half of the strawberry plants to Echo and Aleks. Drastic steps as our garden was all strawberried-out. At restaurant ‘Slavei’ the delicious set lunch culminated with an agreeable crème caramel. Echo told us her recipe was far better as it included carp and soy sauce, as did many of her Chinese recipes from home, including her lemon sorbet to cleanse the pallet between courses.

Nyama voda (няма вода, meaning ‘there’s no water’) is a common phrase in Bulgarian villages, and was particularly apt this afternoon when we arrived home.  

 

23 October 2025, Thursday

A day of great joy and celebration as a new Ó Maoláin arrived from the Cosmos. He’s the secondborn child of my secondborn child and his name is Owen. Mother and baby were both doing well apart from the fact that they lived in Manchester.

Meanwhile in Malki Chiflik, all baby deliveries and matters of personal hygiene were put on hold because of the continued interruption to the water supply. The mayor blamed this on an ever worsening crack pipe problem, but probably meant cracked pipe. Water company engineers couldn’t start work until they’d had a coffee. A Catch-22 situation.

 

24 October 2025, Friday

Was it mean of us to go away on a trip and leave the house-sitter lady sitting in a house where there was no running water? We gave her some strawberry plants by way of compensation before driving off to the wilderness to enjoy lovely hot showers in a wooden mountain cabin.

The nearby town of Apriltsi sat at the foot of the snow-capped Botev Peak, named after Bulgaria’s most famous poet and rising to 2,376 metres. Not prepared for serious rock climbing, we simply wandered old streets and graveyards before tucking into last weekend’s reheated specialities at Svatovete Tavern.

 

25 October 2025, Saturday

Only a thurible’s throw from the sixteenth century Troyan Monastery, the village of Oreshak was encircled by steep wooded hillsides stippled with more autumnal hues than you’d find in a crate of Laura Ashley colour charts.

It’s there that our lovely friend Milena has an old house with a herd of cats and bullet holes from revolutionary times. In warm sunshine she took us to a nearby spring to collect sulphur mineral water, and to walk around the beautifully preserved hamlet of Baba Stana. Captivating tales of her rural childhood in an older and harsher Bulgaria entertained us after dark.

 

26 October 2025, Sunday

A heavenly aroma floating from Milena’s stove woke us. An invitation to the perfect Balkan breakfast of homemade leak and potato banitsa. Sitting in her kitchen, as a young cat slaughtered a walnut and soft rain fell on a crimson carpet of leaves beyond the open window, we talked of common interests and fears we’d each accumulated from our global wanderings. But the atmosphere and friendship we felt confirmed for Priyatelkata and I that living in Bulgaria was the ultimate travel experience.

Back home in the evening, with the water supply still not restored, we cursed our adopted country’s inadequacies.

 

27 October 2025, Monday

I was overjoyed that Mishkin Den (Мишкин ден, meaning ‘Mouse Day’) had rolled round again. It was on this day that mice erupted from the abdomen of a pagan who St Nestor had defeated in a battle. We couldn’t find a pagan to celebrate properly so instead Priyatelkata and I exchanged gifts of cheese. On any other day we would have said that we made some sandwiches.  

In more religious households, women weren’t allowed to weave or sew, or use sharp objects for fear of inspiring mice to damage clothes and crops with their sharp teeth.

Still no water in our village.

 

28 October 2025, Tuesday

The old man who sits by the well with a pocket-size bottle of rakia in every pocket in case the well runs dry said, ‘Hello!’ Anybody engaged in such a pastime was sure to have a parched throat when there’s not been running water in the village for the best part of a week, though it was actually the worst part.

Priyatelkata and I went there to fetch water in earthenware pots that we carried on our heads, hoping to meet Bob Geldof along the way. Goats grazing at the roadside ran away from us because of the terrible smell.

 

29 October 2025, Wednesday

Manoushka the Magnificent, we’d noticed, was becoming a fat cat. This was due to her lack of exercise rather than her privileged lifestyle and obscene amounts of wealth. Introducing Weight Watchers fishy chunks to her diet would surely resolve the problem. We also bought a fluffy toy rat which was a big success as she spent the bulk of the day burning calories in her attempts to kill it.

We named the rat Radost (Радост, meaning ‘joy’) because of the smile on its face. My English friend Joy considers Radost a much nicer name than Joy and hopes to rebrand herself.

 

30 October 2025, Thursday

With a fat moon above and all good folk sleeping soundly in their beds with their goats for protection and good luck, the Karakonjuli (Караконджули) come out. These hairy little creatures with big eyes and noses are renowned for sitting at crossroads after midnight asking for favours or riddles from lost travellers. In recent times, because of satellite navigation systems, the travellers generally know what they’re doing and the wee folk feel a bit redundant. So it must have been them who restored our water supply during the night because after a week of drought the humans had obviously given up. 

 

31 October 2025, Friday

Aleks came over with 400 kilograms of shit. It was bagged, of course, in shitbags. Plastic shitbags, not Millwall supporters. A lovely gift from his mother who always has shit to spare. But it wasn’t any old shit. It was chicken shit for the garden, and it was good shit. We’ll need to fiddle with it a bit by mixing with water or leaves, but when it’s ready we’ll put it on the sage and the onions first. The mothers of friends I had in England never sent me chicken shit. In Bulgaria I feel more accepted by the people.

 

---

Image: My own photograph of Doorstep Snake of the Month.

 

And if you'd like to see a few recent photographs of our trip to the mountains,

click on this...

Stara Planina

 

Part One:

Water Water Everywhere

Click on the link to read