Bulgaria with Noodles

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...

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...

Yes, Lucky is still with us, in case you were wondering. We have grown rather fond of this sweet little doggie, but Irena and I have decided that we must do what is best for her. We are still worried about friction between Tina and Lucky and it is clear that Tina is not really happy about the new canine arrival. Lucky will be coming with us to VT and then we will be handing her over to Fiona, who will arrange her transport to her new owners in the UK. The other day we went for one of our favourite walks, along the river. It is just down the hill from us, before you come to the village of Maryan. On the way back to the car, a sheepdog appeared, followed by some sheep and a shepherd. Well, fortunately Lucky and Tina were both on the lead, so there was no unpleasantness.  

Yes, you need rather a lot of wood if you are going to be using a woodburner to keep your house warm during the winter months. Well, we are going to cheat a bit and we will go to our apartment in Veliko Tarnovo when the weather gets really cold, but we will still use a fair bit of wood in November and then some more in March. Tina seems to be quite interested in what has been going on in the woodshed. It took me a long time to cut up all of the old wooden fence and most of that firewood is good for starting the fire, as it is painted with oil, but otherwise it is not much good. I was therefore very interested to see a large tree that had been blown down in a storm. The tree had been lying there for a year or two. The bad news is that it was about half a kilometre from our house and that is quite a long way when you are pushing a wheelbarrow full of logs. The chainsaw worked really well, like a hot knife going through butter. Using a chainsaw is not so easy, but I am beginning to ge...

Lucky is a very sweet and affectionate little doggie. She first appeared in Daveri a couple of months ago and she was living in our neighbours' garden. (These were the neighbours who live across the road from us, not Mariana and Vincent.) For a while, we thought that the neighbours had adopted her, but then they were away for a week or more. Nobody seemed to be feeding Lucky, so we started giving her food. Then Irena noticed that Lucky was in heat, probably for the first time, so we moved her into our garden. Lucky is adorable and loves sitting on your lap. She follows you round the kitchen, so you have to be careful that you do not tread on her or get tripped up.  The bad news is that Tina is not happy about Lucky's arrival. Two female dogs sometimes have issues with each other. Another problem is that soon we will be leaving our country house in Daveri and moving back to Veliko Tarnovo for the winter. Two dogs in one small apartment would be a bit difficult.   

What an appalling faux pas ! One has to conclude that our new Archbishop of Canterbury certainly did not mull it over carefully when deciding to give the Hubert Walter Award for Reconciliation and Interfaith Cooperation to a Pakistani Imam. Then some awkward person pointed out that Imam Ashrafi has suggested that Osama Bin Laden should have been honoured as a “Sword of Allah”, in response to Salman Rushdie’s knighthood. So what did this bimbo bishop do? She has withdrawn this award, a sort of clerical Hokey Cokey. Yes, it seems to me that Archbishop Mullally really has not thought this one through at all. For a start, this award is supposed to be for “reconciliation and interfaith cooperation”, so why give this award to any Pakistani imam? If there is so much reconciliation and interfaith cooperation going on in Pakistan, then why are Christians in that country still living in fear? Sometimes it is Muslim mob violence, with the Pakistani police standing by doing little or nothing, an...