Bulgaria with Noodles

Mark and his guys came to our house in Daveri the other day. Finally, finally all five of the old wooden pillars or columns on our terrace have been replaced with new ones. They are stained and have long grooves on them, so they look very smart and stylish.  On the first day, the scaffolding was erected and the old columns were removed. The columns actually went down some way below the stone surface of the terrace, so the wood had to be removed and the holes were filled in with concrete.     Of course, once the old columns had been removed and the concrete had been put into the holes, there was not much else that the workmen could do. That is why they had to come back four days later to finish the job, after the concrete had hardened. Well, I must say that the new columns do look rather splendid. The columns are mounted on metal "stirrups" that are embedded in the concrete. The whole operation cost 7,000 leva (about three thousand pounds). This sort of building work ...

Life is not too bad, I suppose, but the garden is still terribly dry and Mark and his workmen still have not replaced the wooden columns. He has not even given me a date when he will make a start on this!  We have some new neighbours. Well, they do not always live just opposite our house, but quite often recently they have been there. Marine has a lot of these cows and they are all going to be made into very, very expensive Wagyu beef. Wagyu is the Rolls Royce of beef. Originally Wagyu cows came from Japan and their beef really is the very best meat that you can eat. As for Vincent, his derrick or drilling rig or whatever you want to call it is getting higher and higher. Occasionally he climbs up to the top of it and whacks it with a hammer. While we are on the subject of drilling,  Irena has to go to the dentist again next week and she is not really looking forward to that. Yes, it is dreadful that this Charlie Kirk person has been murdered in America. Even thoug h he was a b...