This Sort of Thing - February 2024 - Early Doors

 

Introduction

Tempus flippin’ fugit! How rapidly my life whizzes by at the rate of 100 words per day. Time flies like an arrow but fruit flies like a banana.

There’s an extra day to write about this month. Where will I find the time? You see on the 29^th I’ve got an intercalary date to deal with. I wonder if it will be with an intercalary woman wearing an intercalary frock.

So, knowing that the prize for writing exactly 100 words for every day of February is a Jif lemon and the writer’s own bodyweight in pancake batter, I wrote this…

 

1 February, Thursday

Here in Bulgaria it was a day of remembrance of the victims of the communist regime. Friends who lived through those times tell me it was absolutely awful but admit that a few aspects of life have deteriorated further since the Iron Curtain was drawn back. Little is done to mark the occasion. A few wreaths are laid but what else can we do?

In Ireland it’s Imbolc, to celebrate the beginning of spring. Another country that’s suffered terrible times in the name of empire building.

Reading daily news hurts, but sunshine in our garden brought us great positive feelings.

 

2 February, Friday

We met English friends for a brew in the Viva café at the OMV petrol station by the nasty roundabout. They insist that although they used to live in Essex they’re really from Hertfordshire, so we allowed them to sit with us. And we’re regulars there now so the staff didn’t object. They dwell in lovely Kapinovo these days. Our cat ownership tally is greater than theirs so we were able to show off a bit.

But the rain came back. Mister Meteorologist said ‘No!’ but still it was a shit, wet grey day… the sort that inspires travel plans.

 

3 February, Saturday

I’ll be flabbergasted if the president doesn’t declare future thirds of Februarys as National Day of Mushroom Risotto. I spent most of the day either shopping for the ingredients for mushroom risotto, making mushroom risotto, eating mushroom risotto or dozing on the settee with a belly containing far too much mushroom risotto. I can’t wait for Lent so I can give it up.

The woman in the shop in the village where I bought my risotto raw materials looks more like Ronnie Wood every day. Funny he never comes to Malki Chiflik. I suppose our rakia’s too strong for him.

 

4 February, Sunday

I’ve spent the last month writing about my 2011 Iranian trip. It’s been an emotional journey as demanding as the original physical journey was. I’ve found myself pining for the mosques, the breakfast naan bread (I find toast and muesli so wishy-washy), the Del Monte mixed fruit salad flavour non-alcoholic beer and my old mate Mahtab.  

Mahtab’s email said that Priyatelka and I can go on one of her tours anytime we want but governments in the West say that if we do, and we get murdered, we shouldn’t go running to their embassies.

I wish politicians weren’t all snollygosters.

 

5 February, Monday

The sun’s warmth inspired me to hum Percy Faith’s Theme from a Summer Place all day, but exhaustion from compiling lists of outdoor jobs guided me back to the settee with tea and biscuit.

The bathroom shop shopkeeper made me feel old. Apparently shower trays are things of the past. Our timbered floor is unsuitable for the new mode. Ottoman architects were so remiss at times. Jolly good that Vasil Levski saw their kind off.

My heart’s been pulling me towards Africa since November 1957. I’ve a yearning to go to Togo. I expect it’s hot there, like our garden.

 

6 February, Tuesday

Priyatelkata was bussed to the capital city to rub shoulders with ‘ses amis français’ again. She collected her new passport but muttered ‘merde’ many times because she had to surrender the old one. So many exotic visas sadly lost. She vowed to replace them with new.

Human beings want to meet us for talking and coffee. Bulgaria’s brown bears are not asked to socialise at the end of their hibernation so why should we? Thursday 18 July, I decided, is a good day for that sort of thing. I hope they’re not all busy. Well actually I hope they are.

 

7 February, Wednesday

The computer repair shop boys are good for my ego. Whistling while they work to heavy rock music, their baggy jeans and sweatshirts make me feel like a sharp dressed man.

With technical skills outshining social skills a thousand fold, I imagine they are happy living alone in basements.

The job is done quickly and at little cost every time. But they have told me not to say a word to Bill Gates, as we may be fiddling him out of the price of a pair of children’s shoes. I hope the Microsoft kids don’t go to school in rags.

 

8 February, Thursday

Our personal grooming habits are suffering at the hands of protesting farmers. The only shower tray shop in the former Soviet Bloc, it seems, is by the Dunav River in Ruse but we found the roads blocked by tractors bigger than Thunderbirds. They have a beef with the European Union’s agriculture policy. Bulgaria is undercut and flooded with Ukraine’s cheap grain and vegetables. Even their chickens are going cheap. The very fresh ones are going cheep.

Our bathroom progress obstructed, we enjoyed wandering the Danubian Plain’s rolling countryside. After an ice cream in Byala I needed a shower but couldn’t.

 

9 February, Friday

‘We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the scars,’ I thought as Bulgarian ‘Scarface’ Sammy fixed our snow damaged gutters. I'm glad his price was agreeable as he looked like he might be quite adept at fighting.

Priyatelkata was away being ceramic with Women's Institute type people. They were making candlesticks today. I wasn’t sure I could be trusted with a Cludo weapon in their company.

At home I watched Zhivko and Stoyo (Gorbanov, not Marx, despite being the funniest Bulgarians) lopping trees that threaten our roof with every snowfall.

Whose idea was snow?

 

10 February, Saturday

My nose is my Achilles’ heel. I come from a family of weak noses. Whenever my Grandad sneezed every drink became a Bloody Mary, even tea. Cat Nouveau scratched my nose and I bled like a pig with a weak nose.

And my bones creak. Yesterday saw the start of the 2024 Terrible Pain Caused By Heavy Garden Work season. I removed a huge branch from a snow-damaged oak tree. I felt like I’m nearly 70 but really I’m only nearly 67.

Priyatelkata said the ceramics teacher reads what I write on my website. Is she my first ceramic fan?

 

11 February, Sunday

Despite residual agony from previous days’ horticultural exertions, I braved the vast expanse of land that will soon rival the gardens of Claude Monet and Suzi Kew. Endomorphs oozed from my every pore as I set about removing deceased boughs and briars from the edge of the forest. Poets might swoon over a droplet of blood on a rose thorn but I uttered words that were less than romantic.

Nature sprouted everywhere. From trees, bushes, grasses and bulbs. And I worked until darkness fell, just after six o’clock.

Such euphoria upon emerging from the agreeable end of winter’s dark tunnel.

 

12 February, Monday

I don’t like Mondays. They always herald the start of a new weight-loss diet which, in some weeks, has been known to continue until Tuesday afternoon. Our garden is our gymnasium, except today because it was very windy and it rained a bit.

I wasted hours faffing around on a genealogy website to produce what they call a family tree but what I see as just a list of names and how many kids they had.

It would have been much more interesting if some ancestors had scribbled a few words about themselves. This is my main reason for writing.

 

13 February, Tuesday

The village boys wanted our cut up tree branches to take to elderly folk for burning in their stoves. This would seem beautifully traditionally rustic if they weren’t selling the overpriced logs for cash to buy beer, marijuana and condoms. I’ll give the wood to our neighbour, Hassan, who has never found the need for any of these commodities as he’s always off his face on homemade rakia.

It’s Pancake Tuesday over the posh end of Europe but our Easter’s not until 5 May so even if Bulgaria had a Pancake Tuesday it wouldn’t be today, but we don’t anyway.

 

14 February, Wednesday

This wet but warm day so reminded me of the old times with Desdemona in Uttar Pradesh. I called for the boy to serve tea and tiffin at my table on the veranda where I sit these afternoons to enjoy Kipling. After a number of hours, I remembered we don’t have a boy and Mr Kipling hasn’t reached the Balkans yet.

It’s the day of Saint Trifon Zarazan, the patron of vine growers and wine makers. We rejoice his life with village rituals akin to wassailing, though rakia is much stronger than scrumpy so casualty rates tend to be higher.  

 

Part Two - This Sort of Thing - February 2024 - Last Orders

https://www.abctales.com/story/turlough/sort-thing-february-2024-last-orders

 

---

My own photograph of a chicken going chirpy chirpy cheep cheap.