The Strange Case of Dr Gunchev and Crazy Ludo

 

The Strange Case of Dr Gunchev and Crazy Ludo

 

16 November 2025, Sunday

Hasan’s silver dream machine goes from nought to thirty in under an hour. It runs off electricity which is perhaps a bit risky as our village is without power almost as often as it’s without water. I asked if the lead would stretch to the shop from where he plugs his kettle in. He showed mild irritation and the place beneath the seat where the battery’s stowed. Today I became his БФФ (best friend forever) because I suggested he keep it in our spare parking space. The Hell’s Angel in me was hoping he’d let me have a spin on it.

 

17 November 2025, Monday

In Bulgaria there’s a coffee vending machine in almost every street. Many town centres have whole banks of them. The drinks they vend are usually alright as fresh beans are ground within the machine, so they make our country a happy country.

The adoption of the euro as our unit of currency on 1^st January will present problems. It’s illegal to change the machines before that date and a logistical nightmare to change them all on the day. The same applies with machines providing parking tickets, chocolate and condoms. We might have to wait until March for a cuppa, etc.

 

18 November 2025, Tuesday

Veliko Tarnovo’s posh new electric bus (the number 100) just about connects Mechanical Nikolay’s workshop with our favourite restaurant ‘Etno’, so we were able to simultaneously tuck into delicious zelevi sarmi (зелеви сарми, meaning ‘stuffed cabbage rolls’) and have our toxic emissions checked.

It was the day for the godishni teknicheski pregledi (годишни технически прегледи, meaning ‘MOT’) so we were nervous, not wanting our car to be the first ever in Bulgaria to fail the safety test. In 1972 a Dimitrovgrad driver initially failed for having full ashtrays in his Lada Niva but earned a reprieve saying his cataracts had prevented him from seeing them.

 

19 November 2025, Wednesday

News surrounding the switchover to the euro currency intensifies daily. They’re giving us extra public holidays on 31 December and 2 January to get used to spending the new money, but they’ve overlooked the fact that shops don’t open on public holidays.

They’ve also said that bank cash machines and card transactions won’t be available for a few hours late on New Year’s Eve, so we’re going to have to sit at home and see 2026 in with tea and biscuits. No change there then. In fact, us having a night out before Easter’s unlikely.

Euro crisis? What euro crisis?

 

20 November 2025, Thursday

During an afternoon visit to Scottish friends in Momin Sbor, Priyatelkata was completely lost as we discussed how much Glasgow had altered down the years, but sprang to life when the subject turned to the changing face of Veliko Tarnovo. We’d all lived there long enough to be able to include the phrase Eeh I remember when that was a …. in conversations. We then talked at length about the new plastic temporary roundabout outside the Law Courts, hoping that the good people at the Council would put it in the appropriate recycling bin when it was no longer needed.

 

21 November 2025, Friday

It didn’t rain and it wasn’t cold but the sky was black all day and it was Friday. I’d been hearing constantly about this Black Friday thing on the radio and on the internet, and the only way to stop my head exploding was to turn them both off. They’ll stay off until Yordanovden when I can be sure all the consumerist crap’s behind us. Why have this awful event at this awful time of the year anyway?

I went to Billa for some bread then I went to bed for some peace and stayed there until Black Saturday.

hashtaghatewinterandallitbrings

 

22 November 2025, Saturday

In the whole of Bulgaria, absolutely nothing at all happened today apart from the weather being strangely warm and a bit windy. I looked at older journals to see if previous 22 Novembers had offered more.

Seven years ago I fell down some icy concrete stairs in a dark car park. In the process of doing so I acquired a variety of cuts and bruises on legs and elbows, and a big hole in the knee of the new trousers I had bought only the day before.

Since then I’ve never bought trousers on 21 November and I’m still alive.

 

23 November 2025, Sunday

Weather forecasters predicted rain for the whole morning and the whole evening. It was nice to see they only got the middle bit wrong.

Another slow news day during which I read that on 23 November 1946, the English actress Diana Quick and the American political activist Bobby Rush were both born, but unfortunately historians failed to mention fictional character Billy Whizz.

And although this sounds like a schoolboy joke, today was also the anniversary of the death in 1803 of Roger Newdigate, an English politician after whom the scandalous behaviour of numerous subsequent English politicians could have been named.

 

24 November 2025, Monday

In warm sunshine, whilst sorting the year’s seed collection retrieved from the shed’s dark recesses for planting next March, I had reggae and ska classics playing on my phone. At the same time, the legendary Jimmy Cliff was dying of pneumonia in Kingston, Jamaica. A mere coincidence or a surge of Rastafarian energy? I didn’t know we’d lost him until late in the afternoon.

Neighbour Hasan had never heard of Jimmy Cliff (or even reggae music) but I enlightened him. In the street I encouraged him to sing ‘Прекрасен свят, красиви хора’ (Wonderful world, beautiful people) and I learnt the Bulgarian word for bemused.

 

25 November 2025, Tuesday

I really thought the problem of Crazy Ludo’s wounds was behind us, so we let him out for the first time in three weeks. At dusk I braved rush-hour bedlam to deposit him at the vet’s with a brand new huge gash in the same spot on his leg where his two previous huge gashes had been.

We love him to bits but we’re fucking sick of his disasters (pardon my Punjabi). Astonished vets’ eyes rolled like cherries in a one-armed bandit as I entered the surgery.

‘We need to be careful,’ said Dr Gunchev ‘Cats have only nine lives.’

 

26 November 2025, Wednesday

I really thought the problem of not having an adequately functioning teapot was behind us until the mother of all teapots, purchased only thirteen days ago, sprang a tiny leak. It was obviously all my fault because I made the mistake of washing it with a soft cloth, as instructed in the owner’s manual. In doing so I dislodged a minute chip from its fragile base. Vowing never to introduce hygiene to the tea-making process again, I scoured the house for a teabag for making a brew in a mug and wept almost as much as the cat’s wound wept.

 

27 November 2025, Thursday

Papa’s got another brand new teapot, the same as the previous one but bigger, and it’s from the same shop. Priyatelkata accompanied me to provide moral support in my time of pain. She even paid for it. Remembering me from last time, the shop lady’s eyes rolled like the eyes of the vets. 

We didn’t get a brand new cat but the old one was mended. Dr Gunchev suggested the cut was caused by an altercation with rusty metal, so only five stitches this time.

As the euro’s approach gathered speed we could no longer do bank transfers in leva.

 

28 November 2025, Friday

During our lunchtime visit to restaurant ‘Pizza Uno’, I ordered our food and paid for it using only words of the Bulgarian tongue. So I was disappointed that the waiter said ‘Bye!’ as we were leaving.

Lessons with Adelina have revived my yearning to attain fluency, but the best words are the ones that I will probably never need. For example, pud-pud-duck (пъдпъдък) is the word for quail, because that’s the noise the birds make when they want to make babies. Humans are lucky to be called humans as our species could so easily have been burdened with the name ow-about-it-luv.

 

29 November 2025, Saturday

International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People had me feeling inadequate. On a day of shitty weather in a small village hidden up a Bulgarian valley there was barely anything I could do to show support.

Two or three years ago I’d have walked to the shop for a KitKat to brighten November’s gloom, but I’d rather it stayed dark than see my money go via Nestlé to the Zionist genocide programme in Gaza. It still goes on, despite their so-called ceasefire. 

What did you do in the war, Grandfather?

I had a homemade scone with my afternoon cuppa.

 

30 November 2025, Sunday

The iconography’s long gone but Sofia’s imposing Stalinist architectural gems remain as the seat of our hotchpotch general assembly. Following Wednesday’s big demonstration there, the Finance Minister shredded the draft ‘tax everything’ budget. He had to because otherwise the crowd wouldn’t have let government members go home for their tea.

Pat McFadden at Britain’s DWP (Down With Pensioners) sent me a one-off, tax-free tenner to help with festive expenses. Not being the festive type, I felt a little embarrassed. So I deposited a corresponding amount in the tin of the blind man who plays the clarinet outside the post office.

 

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Image:

Out and about on a November day in my little town. My own photograph.

 

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