Dear Malcom 3
Dear Macolm,
A friend of mine is still teaching, so I am wondering whether he did actually go on strike and stand there on a picket line with a sign, demanding more money? No, probably not.
No, there were no tremors or earthquakes here in Bulgaria, although I believe that some nearby other countries did have some. The situation in eastern Turkey and Syria really is very, very bad.
The war in Ukraine also continues on its bloody course. The UK Ministry of Defence has more or less agreed with the Ukrainian authorities' estimates that more than 800 Russian soldiers are being killed every day. At the moment, it looks unlikely that the West will give the Ukrainians the fighter jets that they are asking for, but then again it was not so long ago that it seemed impossible that western countries would supply the Ukraine with any tanks. That red line has now been crossed, so why not another one?
If and when western tanks do actually arrive in Ukraine in significant numbers, will it make any difference to the outcome of the war? My guess is that it will, as many of the Russians' best tanks have been knocked out and a lot of their most experienced commanders are dead.
My dear wife is not at all happy because the Bulgarian government has ordered the TV stations to stop broadcasting Russian channels. Well, the Russian channels were full of pro-Putin propaganda, so I suppose that the Bulgarian government’s decision was overdue. As you can probably imagine, my dear Irisha believes that the “special military operation” is really the fault of NATO and America. It was not really Putin’s fault for ordering his troops to invade Ukraine. Of course not! My sweet wife also thinks that Ukraine and Russia are really one and the same country and so Putin just wanted to help the poor Ukrainian people by getting rid of the nasty Nazis who had illegally seized power in Kiev (or Kyiv!)
This evening I was chatting with another friend who is currently in the UK. (John was my deputy head when I was in Egypt.) Like just about everyone else, he was telling me how absolutely horrible things are in the UK: strikes everywhere, NHS in crisis, inflation, interest rates going up again and now the housing market is collapsing! Well, John has flying lessons and he is off to Cuba in April, Egypt and then he is going to the USA in August. He cannot be hard up, even though it seems that no one in the UK can afford to turn their central heating on and the food banks keep running out of food.
Yes, there really does not seem to be much chance of Julian Sands being found alive. For a long time, I have had the impression that Hollywood “stars” are often (but maybe not always) quite selfish people who feel that they are entitled to whatever they want. Well, it was not sensible to go hiking in the mountains in the middle of winter! As well as losing his own life, Julian Sands also put the safety of those who were searching for him in danger. And what about the cost of this sort of search operation? Not cheap, I would guess.
I also like to go for a walk in the countryside, but not in the Sierra Nevada mountains. My walking group, the VT Walkers, meet on Wednesdays and that is the high point of an otherwise very boring week. This week we just went for a walk around Assenova, the district of VT where we live! Not very exciting. We did have a meal together afterwards in Arbanassi and that was fun, although eight leva (about four pounds!) for a plate of chips was a bit expensive. (Arbanassi is an expensive area, as lots of Bulgarian pop stars and corrupt politicians buy houses there.)
As for meals, for lunch the other day we had a really good scoff with my friend Adrian, round at his place. Some good black beer went down well the toad-in-the-hole and the roast potatoes. Adrian is an Irish builder and he is quite a character.
It has been absolutely FREEZING here in VT for the last few days. It was minus ten the other night! We have a couple more cold days and then the temperatures will be going up again, so I will be hoping to persuade The Boss that it really is time for us to go back to our country house Daveri, where I am planning to get on with insulating the loft and making a start on the new fence. I have never ever put up a fence in my life, so I really do not know what to do. How hard can it be? I have to fix the posts on the top of the stone wall and then I will ask our neighbour to weld the sections of metal fence onto the posts. Well, that is theory.
Best wishes from a chilly VT,
Simon
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