Bulgaria with Noodles

Dear Markoi,                     Imagine my disappointment when I get a message from Malcolm Cooper, aka the Gibbon or the Capon, telling me that you are in fact still alive. As you can probably imagine, it really spoiled my day to receive this news. Well, maybe they have not put out all of the fires yet, so there is still hope! Of course, you are absolutely useless at replying to emails, so I am not surprised that I did not receive a reply to my last missive. In fact, it rather encouraged me to hope that you might perhaps have been burned to death, but now I have accepted the unpleasant fact that probably are still alive. You might be surprised when I tell you that Bulgaria used to be cheap. That was one of the reasons that we decided to retire here. The bad news is that Bulgaria is becoming more expensive. A lot of people say that this is some sort of preparation for joining the Euro. Perhaps you, like me, are just old enough to r...

The creeping standardization and privatization of education in the UK is coming about because companies are taking over the running of more and more schools. Of course, there are "economies of scale" if a larger organization is involved. Everything is easier and cheaper if all of the schools (and all of the teachers) follow the same plans and codes of practice. Instead of expensive textbo oks, everything is projected onto the whiteboard. Men in suits double-check that everyone sticks to the company's policies. Gordon Beningfield was a famous artist. His beautiful drawings and paintings of the English countryside were reproduced in a series of books. Beningfield's Butterflies , Hardy Count ry,   The Downland Shepherds  and quite a few other books were very popular, especially in Japan, of all places. So what has all of this to do with creative schools? That is a very good question. When he was a boy, the headteacher of his school called him into his office and said to ...

What a lot of nonsense and hot air! Assuming that they are not all replaced by robots in the near future, what schools really need are good teachers. How can teaching become a more attractive profession for talented young people? Does Ken Robinson say anything about this in his book? No? I thought not. In the UK, a significant number of teachers prefer to teach in private schools, as the salaries and the working conditions are often better. So what does Ken Robinson suggest? Close down all of the private schools? All schools, state and private, need to consider how to hang on to their brightest and best teachers. And how can we celebrate good practice, so that more lessons are engaging, effective and fun?  Everyone knows that OFSTED stands for Overpaid F*****s Shafting Teachers Every Day. When a school has an OFSTED inspection, it is often incredibly stressful for the teaching staff and it involves a lot of extra work, usually unpaid. An OFSTED inspection certainly does not encoura...

As usual, I got out of bed and took that naughty, pampered Plovdiv pooch for her walk. That was when I noticed some Police cars on the other side of the river. Later, as I was munching my toast (with yummy homemade marmalade) and drinking my second cup of coffee, the doorbell rang. It was an Army officer and he wanted me to move my car. That was when I realized that we were going to have the weird and rather Monty Pythonesque tradition of throwing the wooden cross into the river. About forty young men were actually in the river, trying to catch the cross that was thrown into the river by the Orthodox bishop. The water in the Yantra River must have been flipping freezing! Anyway, this all happened on and around Vladishki Most, the old wooden bridge next to our apartment. We could see the whole thing from the dining room window. Of course, this cross throwing and catching business is some strange Bulgarian tradition that is supposed to have something to do with the baptism of Jesus. Well...

I am still not well. The cough has gone onto my chest and I am feeling a bit weak. On the Internet I found these photos of a snowy Veliko Tarnovo and I thought that you might like them. Well, now it is 1st of January, 2025, and a Happy New Year to all readers of my blog. I am still not feeling good and this infection is on my chest.

I have been quite ill for the last ten days. Nothing too serious, just a nasty cough. Gradually I am recovering and beginning to get out and about.