When Your Snow is Deeper Than Your Dog

 

When Your Snow is Deeper Than Your Dog

 

1 February 2026, Sunday

‘I’m just going outside and may be some time’ I said, opening the door to face the blizzard.

‘Could you pop in the shop for a loaf of bread?’ was Priyatelkata’s response.

Soothsayers suggested we’d be snowbound in our village until Thursday so, by leaving our car in the square, the trickiest part of its eventual first post-snowfall journey would be avoided.

Walking home, a woman said to me ‘Ooh, isn’t it cold!’ in Bulgarian, reminding me of Yorkshire women standing at icy bus stops forty-odd years previous.

Reunited with our toasty kitchen I heard, ‘And a bag of potatoes.’

 

2 February 2026, Monday

The snow was deeper than the dog, which made going for a poo rather difficult. But she managed, somehow, probably, and hopefully outside.

Is Frosty not a ridiculous name for a snowman? You’d get nowhere making one with that powdery snow when the weather’s turned frosty. The basic materials need to be soft and moist so he holds together. I’d suggest that Slushy’s a more suitable name. We were going to make one today but we’d no carrots, coal or inclination.

The poor dog returned to the back door, completely covered in snow. A perfect alternative to yer man Frosty.

 

3 February 2026, Tuesday

The snowplough machines dashing about Bulgaria at the moment to clear snowdrifts and to grit roads are known unofficially as grifters. The internet says that political and commercial organisations the world over are awash with grifters, even in hot countries. Surely there’s a fiddle going on.

The snow stopped so we walked to the shop. The Ronnie Wood lookalike checkout lady had an icy stare frozen to her face. We wondered how cold it had been in the shop until we remembered that she’d always looked like that.

Meanwhile, Johnny Ten Levs kept villagers warm with his rakia-rich fiery breath.

 

4 February 2026, Wednesday

The boss lady at café ‘Boyar’ said that as a sexagenarian I was entitled to a 10% discount off everything I buy for the rest of my life and gave me a card to prove my antiquity. She suggested restricting my use of the benefit as eating too many of her delicious fancies might shorten the rest of my life.

Walking round the Old Town it was as cold as a motorway service station chip, but the sun shone until way after five o’clock and warmed my heart. And it’s a lovely place on winter days before the tourists arrive.

 

5 February 2026, Thursday

As Nastradin Hodzha was riding on his donkey through the village, people noticed he was sitting on it facing towards its tail. They laughed and shouted at him ‘Nastradin, why are you sitting the wrong way round on your donkey?’

He surveyed the situation for a minute or two before replying, ‘The problem isn’t me sitting backwards. It’s the donkey going the wrong way!’

There wasn’t much going on here today so I thought I’d write about that to fill the gap. It happened in the year 1238 but I’m told by a reliable source that it’s a true story.

 

6 February 2026, Friday

In discovering that the Winter Olympics began today in Milan I also discovered that Bulgaria had a new president. Iliana Iotova had been vice-president but took the helm by default when the boy Radev stood down last month. Her first public duty was to sit beside J.D. Vance at the opening ceremony. I remember being set some awful tasks on first days in new jobs but that must take the biscuit.

We tend to win most of our Olympic medals for weightlifting and wrestling but it’ll be tricky competing on ice. Are those pervy-looking leotards they wear insulated and thermal?

 

7 February 2026, Saturday

Desislava tries very hard to encourage villagers to use the five-times-daily bus from the square into Veliko Tarnovo. The first kilometre of the journey follows a nice old road known as the Threshing Floor but then, at the junction where it joins the main Sofia-Varna highway, niceness vanishes.

Thankfully Desislava isn’t very persuasive, so when a car travelling at twice the speed of a policeman hit the bus’s side as it pulled out onto the dual carriageway, only the driver was shaken up as there were no passengers onboard. There were no injuries but Desislava’s task became significantly more difficult.

 

8 February 2026, Sunday

The customer service lady in Billa went to great lengths to point out that the terrible smell wasn’t coming from her or the produce but from outside drains struggling to cope with sudden excessive volumes of meltwater.

Would it have been rude of us to mention to her that the whiffy man in the rice and pasta aisle might have benefitted from a bit of redirection to the personal grooming products aisle? She probably just blamed it on the drains problem, which he probably hadn’t noticed.

A strange shopping expedition that took me back to Morrisons in Chippenham circa 2010.

 

9 February 2026, Monday

As evenings get lighter the world becomes darker. The works of James Joyce, Johnny Răducanu and Power’s distillery help me sleep at night but they can’t accompany me everywhere. I remembered feeling happier a couple of weeks back when I’d no computer. So I let the new model sleep all day and joy returned to my life.

In the afternoon I wrote letters to all the world’s political nutjobs who think that building walls will resolve problems, asking them if they’d build one around our living room. Yanko the gypsy will be here tomorrow morning to give me a price.

 

10 February 2026, Tuesday

Braving snow, we took Geriatric Gaïa to the groomer, a lovely woman whose profession always lodges the T Rex track The Groover in my head as earworm of the day, encouraging dormant brain cells to dance.

As the shih tzu shivered she had shaved from her enough hair to make another dog. It wasn’t the best day for such canine deforestation but her hirsute condition had been impairing her gait, vision and fragrance. However, with several million bacterial organisms made homeless, she was delighted to be able to lick her arse again without getting her head stuck in the undergrowth.       

 

11 February 2026, Wednesday

We explored the former Jewish quarter where archaeologists had found ruins of a thirteenth century synagogue. How did they know it was a synagogue? They said the absence of empty smoky bacon crisp packets was a dead giveaway. And where were all the Jewish people? Apparently, they’d been slaughtered by the occupying Turks in the eighteenth century.

A riverside wander took us to café ‘Boyar’ for fine coffee and old dried-up cake that the Jewish people might have been planning on having for their tea had they not been slaughtered. Coincidentally and disappointingly, the café didn’t sell smoky bacon crisps.

 

12 February 2026, Thursday

A new food processor was procured following smoke-related episodes with the old one. Somebody had used it to make papier-mâché (French for ‘chewed paper’) for artistic purposes. With a bucket of this gunge and a loaded pallet, Priyatelkata sculpts great works in colours as vivid as her mind. She’s a direct descendant of Matisse and Gaugin (well, she was born in the same country).

However, she has culinary skills to match, so this purchase was essential. She went to bed early with the machine, the manual and the ingredients of Chiles en Nogada. I watched the football and chewed paper.

 

13 February 2026, Friday

We got through the day free from attacks of aparaskavedekatriaphobia (the irrational fear of Friday the thirteenth). My Bulgarian mentor suggested taking safety precautions, such as spitting on babies to protect them from the uroki (уроки, meaning ‘the evil eye’), or spitting on our own bosoms if afraid. This cured my fear but gave me a crick in my neck.

There were still two hours of the day remaining when I wrote this, so if there’s no tomorrow in my journal you know a sad misfortune came over me while I was sitting on the settee with notebook, pencil and spit.

 

14 February 2026, Saturday

February 14 is the day of Saint Trifon Zarezan, the patron of viticulture. Celebrated by winemakers, gardeners, barrel-makers and innkeepers, it includes a variety of ancient rituals similar to wassailing in England’s west.

In our villages you won’t see frozen roses or heart-shaped boxes of chocolates. They’re the work of the fans of another, recently imported saint. To preserve our rich culture, Bulgarian traditionalists are calling for a boycott of the days of the ‘American Saints’ i.e. Valentine, Patrick and Hallowe’en.

A bright day, so I worked awhile in the garden and later enjoyed a splash of rakia, for Trifon.

 

 

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Image:

Our dog called Snezhinka (Снежинка, meaning ‘snowflake’) playing out in the snow. My own photograph.

 

The next part:

Coming soon.