Bulgaria with Noodles

Yes, they have finally arrived! The twelve sections of metal fence from PRAKTIKER were delivered today*. We had to make a special trip to Daveri, so that we could accept the delivery. Anyway, we cannot really do anything about this new fence until the spring comes along. I do not actually know what I am doing (what a surprise!) and I have never put up a fence before. But hey, there is a first time for everything. The old wooden fence is about twenty years old, so it has a nasty habit of falling down and then breaking into pieces. What worries me is that of course the fence sections are not going to be exactly the same length as the current old wooden fence. So what are we going to do? Cut one section of fencing, so that it will fit the gap? Or maybe we should build a little bit of extra stone wall at one end, in order to fill in the space. Yes, the Ukrainians have re-taken Kherson, but so far the Russians have not joined up the dots and they do not seem to realize that Putin is a t...

The other day the sky was looking grey and ominous. I saw an advertisement in the TES for an English teacher at St. George’s School. I was quite tempted to apply, for about twenty seconds, but then I recovered my senses. How do you know that Autumn is coming? We drove back to our apartment in Veliko Tarnovo from our new home in Daveri the other day, an easy 45-minute drive, and the trees were the most amazing mixture of colours: the greens, yellows, browns and reds. For once, Irena did the driving and so I had the time and the leisure to enjoy the scenery, the beautiful nature of the Bulgarian countryside, the sort of thing that we used to have in the UK before we built all over it. Another indication that Winter might not be too far away is that Tina, the naughtiest Jack Russell in Bulgaria, becomes very interested in finding warm places in the kitchen for a good snooze. You can also guess that Autumn is coming because my dear wife becomes obsessed with her hunter-gatherer tendenc...