Still in VT!

Yes, we are STILL in Veliko Tarnovo. It is now the 20th of March and I am wondering if we will go back to Daveri in April. Or maybe May. The other week we had a good walk with the VT Walkers, so I am including a few photos. It was great to be able to offer them some hospitality in our apartment when we did a walk around VT.

Bad news. Ira has some serious problems with her teeth (or rather the lack of them). She has had quite a few X-rays and they have made her feel rather ill. She needs quite a lot of work done to repair all of the damage to her teeth, so maybe she will have some implants.

More bad news. The car sounds more like an old tractor and I am planning to take it to Stanislav on Thursday. Adrian reckons that Stanislav is the man. We shall see! Although I would like to keep that old X-Trail on the road a bit longer, I might not have any choice and so I could have to get rid of it and buy another car.

As for my pension arrangements, I filled in the S1 form and the pension application form. (The S1 form means that the UK government will cover my medical costs in Bulgaria, as I am shortly to be an OAP.) Both of them took me rather longer than anticipated! I have printed them off, together with one or two supporting documents, and I think that I will send them off by DHL. It is a bit quicker and these are really important documents, so it is vital that they actually get to where they are supposed to be going.

As for the National Insurance contributions, I do not know what to do. I suppose I could try phoning them, but I suspect that it will be a waste of time. They will just say, “Yes, Mr Hill, we will get round to answering your letter, one of these days.”

So Trump has started a war with the Houthis and Israel has re-started the war in Gaza. Business as usual. The Houthis have been a bit naughty, attacking ships as they go through the Gulf of Hormuz, so this was more or less to be expected. No one really thought that the truce with the Palestinians would last much longer, with or without the hostages (if there are any still alive).

The Big Orange One, aka the Idiot in the White House, has been outmanoeuvred by the Europeans. It really does look as though most of the countries in the EU and Canada are going to rally round Ukraine. For a start, Germany and some other countries have realized that the first thing you need, if you are going to win a war, is a flipping huge pile of money. The EU is prepared to stump up the cash and countries like France, Germany and Sweden already have some weapons that are far superior to anything that the Russians have.

Trump is such a scumbag! Not satisfied with trying to destroy NATO, he also wants to wreck the American economy. The Canadians are absolutely fed up with Trump. The Canadians aren’t just putting tariffs on American products, in response to the tariffs Trump put on Canadian goods. No, many shops and businesses all over Canada are refusing to sell ANYTHING that is made in America.

In some ways, Elon Musk is even worse than Trump, if that is possible. The good news is that Tesla shares are crashing and no one is buying Elon’s cars. 

I was watching a very interesting video on YouTube the other day that claimed that Russia has already lost something like 10,000 tanks in this war. That is a staggering number. It also means that the remaining tanks that Putin’s armies still have are some really old ones that have been pulled out of storage. (How much does a tank cost? Some of the most modern ones cost millions of dollars per tank!) As Ukraine is re-armed with the most modern western weapons, so the Ukrainian forces will have a huge technological advantage on the battlefield.

Another YouTube video said that Russian losses in the war are fast approaching a million soldiers. That number includes deaths, serious wounds, desertion and MIA (Missing In Action). Again, that is an incredibly high number. I therefore have the overall impression that Putin’s war machine is suddenly going to collapse, in the not-too-distant future. Yes, Putin has control of the state security apparatus, with a huge network of spies and informers, but I just cannot see the Russian people putting up with this slaughter for much longer.

Car and teeth problems have delayed everything, so now it looks as though we shall be finally making the move to Daveri a week today, assuming that Stanislav does his thing. And not before time!