Dear Peter 4


Dear Peter,

Well, if you took your mother out for lunch, then I am sure that you will not want me to remind you of the very worst aspect of eating out in the UK: the bill! Yes, prices here in Bulgaria have gone up a bit, of course, but on the whole having a good scoffing session is not going to cost you the better part of a hundred quid.

At the moment I am listening to the Steely Dan CD that you kindly brought with you.

We are now in VT, as we needed to do some serious “retail therapy” and on Tuesday morning I have to go back to the hospital, to see Doctor Ivanov. The anti-inflammatory pills he prescribed are very good. I have hardly any pain and I can just get on with my life. Okay, I probably will not be doing any marathon runs in the near future, but the knee seems to be more or less normal. I even played badminton the other day and Irena beat me, yet again.

We went to a really good barbecue at a friend’s house in Petkovtsi on Friday. (Petkovtsi is the first village that you come to if you turn left at the crossroad, instead of right for Daveri.) For once, the meat was actually cooked properly. In fact, it was delicious and so I ate even more than usual! Although barbecued meat is probably full of carcinogens and lots of other things that will shorten your life, it is rather yummy when it is done properly.

This Lucy Letby woman seems to have murdered rather a lot of babies. I just cannot understand how someone who trained and qualified to become a nurse could do such dreadful things. On the other hand, I do not understand how the Conservative government could have been allowed to destroy the National Health Service and yet Rishi Sunak is still in Number 10. Maybe that is much worse than killing a few infants.

The Law locks up the man or woman

Who steals the goose from off the Common

But leaves the greater criminal loose

Who steals the Common from the goose.

Lefties, Socialists and other silly people believe that people are all fundamentally good and it is only the faults in society that make them do bad things. I do not agree. While the Bible says that God regretted making human beings, a scientist like you will probably say that Good and Evil are old-fashioned ideas and they have no place in a modern society. So is Evil just another name for mental illness? But if bad people are really insane, then what is the point of punishing them?

AJ arrives two weeks from today. I think that he will probably stay with us in Daveri for about a week and then we will do VT. Then we will do the Rila Monastery and Melnik before I leave him in Sofia. Then I think that he wants to do some things on his own, before going to Israel for a week or two. I do not think that AJ has any property back in the U.S. of A., so maybe he will want to buy a house or an apartment in Bulgaria!

You will be pleased to know that the new Barclays card reader thing is so amazing that you do not need to bother sending me scans of my bank statements. I can download my bank statement from the Barclays App whenever I want. It really is rather good. Another good thing was the 150 quid that arrived in my account, by way of an apology for the mess they have made of things over the last four or five months!

My blog has nearly reached 100,000 “hits”. It has been going for about five years now.

Any news from Deborah? Today it was over 30 degrees here in VT and that was quite warm enough for me. In Baghdad, it is probably 40+ every day!

Best wishes from Veliko Tarnovo,

Simon




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