Bulgaria with Noodles

Yes, it has come round again. Birthdays usually do. Every year, in fact. We started off by doing some wandering around in the Bulgarian countryside (always a good thing to do). It was a beautiful and warm Spring day, the last day of April and there was not a cloud in the sky.  Not surprisingly, Tina also thought that going for a walk was an excellent idea. (Yes, I know that we are actually holding the doggie in the photos, but really she did do some walking as well.) As usual, we went along the back road, up the hill and past the spring towards Arbanasi.  For lunch, we went to the strangely-named "Architect's Club" and we had some good food and a leisurely al fresco luncheon.  The stuffed peppers with yoghurt and walnuts were good, as were the Chardonnay, the super-cheesy chips and the main dish, a sort of meaty stew with peppers and lots of veggies. Of course, my Chinese readers will insist that I include some more foodie photos, so here we go. Super cheesy chips! Yummy...

Yesterday we had quite a shock. The previous owner of our house in Daveri, being the charming fellow that he is, had complained to the electricity company that we had not changed the name of the account (and yes, that was a bit careless of us). Anyway, two workmen from the electricity company turned up at our house in Daveri to DISCONNECT the electricity. They had already opened the main supply box, in order to turn it all off! Fortunately, Irena managed to persuade them not to disconnect our supply, on condition that we got the name of the account changed. I rushed off to Gorna Orachovitsa, a town next to Veliko Tarnovo, in order to change the name on the account. I had with me the Notarius Act (a bit like a Title Deed in the UK), in order to prove that it really is our house. Unfortunately, the women in the electricity office said that the Notarius Act has my name on it AND Irena's name, so she had to be there as well. This meant driving back to Daveri, collecting Irena and then ...

Somehow we survived the shock of the chimney fire and we also lived to tell the tale after our AstraZeneca jabs. Regular readers of Claire's excellent blog, Auntie Bulgaria , will know that she often has a section entitled "Gardening Bore". Well, just to be completely different and original, I have decided to include a section about what we have recently been doing in the garden and, as I cannot think of a better title for this series of posts, I am going to call it "Gardening Bore". So now you know. Is the video going to work? Well, this is the first time I have ever included a video in one of my blogs and so my guess is that no, it probably will not work. The video is supposed to show me cutting the grass with my new Husqvarna tractor mower. (Bosch never gave me a sponsorship deal, even after all of the free publicity I gave them in this blog, so maybe Husqvarna will come up trumps.) On the garden wall you can see all of the old cart wheels that I repainted. (...