Bulgaria with Noodles

Lawrence of Arabia would not appreciate the title of this post. Well, hard luck, T. E.  Now, just in case you had not noticed, our country house in Daveri has five wooden pillars or columns on the terrace, next to the kitchen. These pillars support the wooden balcony above and that, in turn, supports part of the roof. In other words, if there is a problem with these pillars, then the knock-on effects for the rest of the house are going to be pretty blooming awful. Well, in case you had not guessed, there really are some serious problems with these pillars. Allan, the previous owner of the house, had built concrete “boxes” around the bottom of each pillar. Vincent warned us about them when we first arrived in Daveri, but things seemed to be okay. Les, a former builder, said that there wasn’t a problem. He recommended linseed oil for preserving the wood and so I duly bought some and applied it to the columns, but of course I could not apply it to the bottom part of them because the...

I think that my old friend Peter enjoyed his holiday in Bulgaria. This year, we did not find lots of electrical problems for him to fix, so he actually had a real holiday for once. Tina was very pleased to see her Uncle Peter again.  I am sure that all of my Chinese readers will appreciate some photos of FOOD. As well as eating lots of delicious food that was cooked by my dear wife, we also went to a restaurant in Elena that was quite good, but a bit more upmarket (and more expensive) than the mehana we usually go to.  "Tikiya Kit" seems to be the name of the restaurant and no, I do not know what that means, but the food was yummy. We also had some rather good scoffing in Veliko Tarnovo.  The bad news is that my dear wife keeps making comments about my need for exercise and a diet!

There have been some terrible fires near Veliko Tarnovo, up on the cliffs near Arbanassi. The fires destroyed a lot of woodland.  Helicopters, firemen and plenty of volunteers finally managed to get the blaze under control.  Last night we had some rain, the first for several weeks. It was not a lot of rain, but every drop is precious. While we are on the subject of water-related things, perhaps I will mention that we cannot turn the water on in our house in Daveri. The pipe in the downstairs bathroom is bust. We are hoping that Vincent will be able to fix it for us. 

We are now back from Sinemorets and the return drive to Daveri was not quite as demanding as the journey to the Black Sea.  The good things? Well, the apartment was really well-equipped and had just about everything. Veleka Beach was – well, a beach. Not really sand, as it was fairly small stones. Quite pretty, if you like that sort of thing. I suppose that this part of the Black Sea coast, not far from the border with Turkey, reminds me a bit of Cornwall, without the dreadful possibility of meeting Nicholas Armfelt (thank goodness). The land is actually quite flat and then you have quite steep cliffs, little sandy coves and the fishing villages. Irena, for some strange reason, loves beaches and I think that they are pretty boring. I did manage to get some reading done:  Round the World in Eighty Days  (Michael Palin’s book of the BBC TV series),  The Wind in the Willows  (for maybe the tenth time),  Homage to Catalonia  (all about the Spanish Civil Wa...

Dear Adam, I had to write and tell you how much I enjoyed reading  Kings of the Yukon . This book has a kind of watery, flowing quality to the writing. Well done!    Lone Wolf  seems to have attracted some very positive reviews. (Yes, I will be ordering a copy from Amazon.) Is it a kind of metaphor for Europe, I wonder? Although Slavc somehow managed to cross the Alps to Italy, human migration seems to attract a lot of negative comments. When we had a house north of Sofia, near the border with Serbia, my wife was out in the garden one afternoon and lots of the dogs in the village were barking. Then she heard a long, low sound, coming from the mountains. It was a wolf. All of the dogs were suddenly silent. She said that it was very weird. I daresay you collected quite a few strange tales while you were researching  Lone Wolf.   As for me, your old teacher and his wife are still in Bulgaria. We left China about five years ago and then I did about eighteen mo...

This morning, I received another email from Adam Weymouth, one of my old students at Norman Court. That is Adam, on the right, in the white shirt. As well as coming to the Czech Republic with a group of Norman Court students, I also remember Adam as my brilliant Mortimer in Arsenic and Old Lace and then he went on to Winchester College. He has become quite a talented writer and in fact he won the  Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year  award for his first book,  Kings of the Yukon . Well, yes, it is all about salmon, but it is certainly not the rather tame but decidedly yummy fish from Kaufland that goes so well with my wife's homemade mayonnaise and a glass of Chardonnay.  It is all about wild salmon in Alaska, in case you were wondering.  Adam's writing is really rather good and it has a kind of poetry, a flowing and liquid quality that fits in with the fishy subject. However, the book is also very much about the human / fish interactions along the way, as th...