Bulgaria with Noodles

Recently I received an email from my old friend and I was very sorry (and angry) to read about his mother’s ear problems. She has been in a lot of pain. Bloody National Health Service! What a flipping disgrace! You work hard and pay your taxes all your life and then what? When you really need the NHS, it isn’t there! Well, maybe it might be there, after you have waited three weeks to see your GP and then waited another year for an operation. Here in Bulgaria, the hospital in Veliko Tarnovo is not exactly ultra-modern. In fact, it is a bit tatty and could do with several coats of paint. However, Irena and I have always had fairly prompt treatment. Even if we turn up to our GP without an appointment, as we usually do, we do not have to wait more than an hour and sometimes we hardly have to wait. Just about every hospital in the UK charges about five quid an hour to park your car in the hospital carpark. In VT, I have never paid a penny to park my car near the hospital. I suppose, like mo...

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...

Dear Peter, It is always magnificently amazing to receive an email from you, my dear chap! Thank you also for the scanned bank statements. Yes, it is quite clear that Barclays have NOT transferred any money, so I am going to write to them again. This time I will ask them to set up a regular transfer every six months, so that we do not have this problem again. Yes, we are still in Daveri. It has been flipping cold and wet too. When is summer finally going to arrive? Did I mention the home-grown asparagus? It was absolutely delicious, even though it makes your pee extra-stinky. I am sure that there is some special chemical in asparagus that produces this strange and smelly change. The problem is that we really need to have thirty or forty asparagus plants, if we are hoping to scoff the stuff on a fairly regular basis for a month or two. The good news is that asparagus is a perennial, so that means more next year! My guess is that if you were to have had the time and fairly large ...