Bulgaria with Noodles

Beam me up, Scottie! We had an interesting experience the other day. It was a snowy and chilly morning, so I put an extra log or two onto the fire. Then Irena said that she could smell some burning plastic. Well, I could not smell anything. About half an hour later, we found that a lot of the tiles in the bathroom had cracked. Well, the chimney from the main fireplace goes up through the bathroom. And the chimney was on fire! Then we started to notice the smoke that was coming from the ceiling. Yes, we have a wooden ceiling for all of the top floor, with big wooden beams. I managed to get up into the loft (the first time I had ever been up there) and yes, we had a serious fire. Some idiot had left a hole in the cement floor behind the chimney and now there was a serious fire inside the wooden ceiling. Well, to cut a long story short, I made a hole through the cement floor of the loft and poured in lots of water. Fortunately, this did not cause a huge electrical problem, even though the...

Several people have tried to contact me through this blog, as they miss my input on the TES forums. Well, the truth is that the TES teacher forums have disappeared and there is a technical problem that means that I cannot write replies on my blog at the moment. For years, I have been scribbling bits and pieces on the TES forums, as I would like to help other teachers, if I possibly can. Then the TES management (or mismanagement) decided to get rid of all of the forums, closing them down and scrapping them completely. To say I was upset by this would be a bit of an understatement. The good news is that there is now a replacement, staffroom.boards.net, and many of the old crowd from the TEs forums have gradually migrated to these new forums (or is it fora?) Including, of course, a smelly old hippopotamus.

Dear John, It is always good to receive an e-mail from you, old friend, and it is even better to get one in these sad pandemic days. We are here in our country house in the Bulgarian countryside and in some ways that is lovely, but really we are more or less stranded here as prisoners. Like everyone else, we are wondering when life is going to return to something like "normal". Well, I have put rather a lot of woodash on my new veggie beds. Maybe I will not be putting on any more! I know that tomatoes like alkaline soils, but perhaps one can overdo things. I was very sad to read about your sister. Do you normally go out to see her a couple of times each year?  I cannot believe two thousand quid for a British Airways ticket. That is outrageous. Perhaps you should do a Michael Palin in reverse. Get a cheapie flight to New York and then take the train across America. I would love to do that. I mean, if it is going to be a twenty-hour journey anyway, then you might as well take a...