Dear Peter, Part 2

Dear Peter,

It was even more splendid than usual to get an e-mail from you, old fellow! I was a bit worried.

As for me, you will not be surprised at all when I tell you that I have NOT been working hard. Yes, once or twice I have turned on the computer and maybe I have played NAPOLEON: TOTAL WAR for a few minutes. But I have also found the time to get beaten at badminton by my dear wife and to play ball with that naughty and rather smelly little dog. She definitely needs a bath (the dog, not my wife!)


Irena is due to fly off to the Crimea on 3rd September and she will not be back until 1st October. That is, of course, assuming that she gets a negative COVID test in Veliko Tarnovo before she leaves and then another one in Simferopol, her hometown, before flying back. If she gets a positive test while she is in the Crimea, then I suppose that they will not let her get onto the plane. Then her Russian visa will expire if she cannot fly back to Sofia. Oh the joys of international travel!

You will be pleased to know that I am NOT going to ask you how much these restaurant meals you had with your mother must have cost you. A heck of a lot, I am sure. Last week I had lunch with some French friends from Sofia. There were five of us and the bill came to 75 leva and that is about thirty pounds. They are very nice people and Ira and I got to know them through the church we used to go to in Sofia. Anyway, they came back to our apartment for coffee. They all liked our apartment and the wonderful view from the dining room window, so I decided to be kind and give them a lift in the car, so that they would not have to walk all the way back up the hill to where they were parked.

So what else have I been doing, apart from snoozing in the afternoon after yet another boozy lunch and taking the dog for a walk? Well, I have been doing a slow and dirty job, namely painting our wooden fences with old engine oil. It is much cheaper than wood preservative and it does not stink so much. The bad news is that it takes ages and we have rather a lot of wooden fences, as you have seen from all of the photos I have sent to you.


It took me a long time to paint the lines for the badminton court and now I really must do something about all of the holes and awful cracks in the ground. (We have not had any proper rain here in Bulgaria since May and today the temperature is going to be over 30 degrees, yet again.) I am also planning to buy a proper, full-sized badminton net, as the one that we have at the moment is a bit of a joke and it just is not wide enough.

As for my blog, www.bulgariawithnoodles.blogspot.com, you will be pleased to know that it continues to flourish and it is cruising to 80,000 “hits”, so someone somewhere must be reading it.

What other news is there? Not much. (Oh dear! I am beginning to sound a bit like Peter Adams.) I had a bit of a scare last week, as someone told me that I should be submitting tax returns to the Bulgarian government and paying tax on my TPS pension. Gasp! Well, I wrote to my attorney in Sofia, Sylvana, and she said no, you do not need to pay any tax on an overseas pension. Panic over.

Best wishes from Bulgaria,

Simon

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