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Some like it hot 10

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You have bought your property in Bulgaria and now you have to decide how to keep it warm in the winter. Is it better to have a pellet stove or a logburner? Well, this is a bit of a non-question if you have an apartment. Your apartment probably will not have an outhouse that could serve as your woodshed and so you will not want to have the mess and hassle that comes with a logburner. If you are going to be burning firewood, as opposed to pellets, then you will have significantly more ash. That is not a problem if you have a garden, as ash is a very good fertilizer for many plants, but most apartments do not have their own gardens and so a pellet stove would be the sensible choice. Pellet stoves normally have an electric pump to push the water round to all of the radiators, so they really are central heating for all of your property. With a log burner, it might be connected to the radiators or you could have a “standalone” that just heats one room. What are the main differences between...
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Some like it hot 9

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A year or two ago, I wrote a series of Facebook posts about how to keep your Bulgarian house warm during the winter months. Now that the nights are getting longer and colder, I thought that it might be help to repeat some of the points I made in my previous posts. In the Bulgarian countryside, most people heat their homes with wood, while in UK logs fires are banned just about everywhere or else you have to get all kinds of permits and safety inspections. If you can get your hands on some cheap (or free!) firewood, then during the winter months you will be able to keep your house cosy and warm for almost no cost. In the UK, your central heating may well cost between £200 and £300 per month and probably a lot more if it is oil-fired. Let's assume that you turn on the heating in October and switch it off at the end of March. This means that in the UK, keeping your home warm during the winter might be costing you as much as £1,800! In Bulgaria, the person to talk to is the mayor o...
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Shtastliveca

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  There are quite a lot of restaurants in Veliko Tarnovo. Well, VT is quite a touristy sort of place, so that is not surprising really. As well as having a name that is hard to pronounce and even harder to spell, "Shtastliveca" is supposed to be the best restaurant in VT. Recently it has been done-up and re-decorated, so Irena and I were wondering if at last we should have lunch there. We have driven past  "Shtastliveca" I do not know how many times and occasionally I have thought of eating there, but usually we have been put off by the long queue of hopeful (and hungry) customers waiting for a table.     Well, we turned up about two in the afternoon for our wedding anniversary on the 25th. For once there was no long queue, but we did have to wait for about ten minutes. Inside, yes, it is nicely decorated and very busy. This was October, for goodness sake, but the place was still packed.  What about the food? There was a bit of a problem and it nearly meant tha...
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Sveta Gora, again

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We were back in Veliko Tarnovo for a few days. Yes, every ten days or so, we leave Daveri and go to VT for some serious shopping and this time we had to meet Fiona and hand over Lucky to her.  After a spot of "retail therapy" and saying our canine goodbyes, we took Tina to Sveta Gora park in VT, next to the university. It is a huge park, with rather a lot of steps and some great views over the city, as well as some lovely autumnal colours. Tina liked it too.
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Goodbye, Lucky

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Yesterday we came to Veliko Tarnovo and we brought Lucky and Tina with us. At eleven o'clock I met Fiona and Colin on the wooden bridge. Fiona has arranged for Lucky to travel to the UK, where she will be adopted by her new British owners.   Yes, it was painful, in case you were wondering, but Irena and I have discussed this and decided that we must do what is best for Lucky. The journey (by road and then the Channel Tunnel) to the UK will be difficult for this little doggie, but in the end we hope that it will be worth it. 
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Norman Court 2

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I have always loved guns. Perhaps it is the smell of gun oil, a little sweet and a little bit bitter. My mother would never let me have any sort of gun when I was a boy, so starting the Shooting Club at Norman Court was a way to turn the clock back, to get a second chance at something that I had missed in my own childhood. One of the large cellars was just the right length for a shooting range and it was not long before I had painted it and installed some spotlights. Target shooting with .177 air rifles and pistols is a harmless hobby, one that calls for a steady handy, concentration and patience. One of the first things I did was to join the PSRA and introduce an element of competition with shooting certificates. If your score was good enough, then you would receive one of those rather smart little enamelled badges: green for second class, red for first class, blue for marksman and yellow for mastershot. Getting your second class badge was quite easy, but you had to be very good ind...
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Norman Court 1

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When you are in yours 60s, nearly in your 70s, then the only thing you look forward to is the past. You start thinking about your life and wondering why it turned out the way it did. Well, I started with Lord Wandsworth College, aka the London Water Closet, then I wrote a few posts about Oxford, La Sainte Union teacher training college, Perrott Hill and then WHS, Windlesham House School. Now it is time to write about Northaw, aka Norman Court Preparatory School. For well over a century, the British preparatory schools stood in a distinctive world of their own – shaping generations of pupils, demanding discipline, and ‘preparing’ them for their public schools. Many prep schools flourished, others faded, and a few, like Northaw (later Norman Court), lived several lives across different names and settings. Norman Court finally lapsed into extinction in 2012. Like most prep schools, Norman Court had the familiar rituals of boarding prep schools – their rural locations and the beautif...
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