Bulgaria with Noodles

Even though no one ever bothers to write any comments on my blog, my article for The Daily Mail attracted more than 700 hundred comments. As might be expected, most of these comments did not have much in the way of punctuation, correct spelling, common sense or anything else, but a few of them were quite witty and perceptive.  As usual my comments are in italics and I have added some photos that were taken by my old friend Peter, when he came to stay with us in the summer. Let's start with this rather sad comment. I loved where we live, but the town is increasingly being built on. We can’t get a doctor’s or dentist’s appointment and the roads are gridlocked. Everyone is miserable, but I think that other countries have their own similar issues. Here is a rather different perspective from Kent.  It’s all OK when you are fit and well, but if you become unwell, requiring family and social support, then that changes everything After twenty years, if you decide to return to the ...

Dear John,             Tuesday, 8th October, 2024  It is always splendid to receive an email from you, old fellow. When I was teaching at the British School of Bucharest, I used to get twenty or thirty emails every morning. It used to drive me mad! “Oh Lord, deliver us from email…” As I think I may have mentioned to you, Peter and I have made a bet that Trump will go to jail as a result of the hush money case. Now I am not sure that I really understand how the American criminal justice system works. My guess is that if the Police think that someone has done something a bit naughty, then that person is charged and put on trial. After the trial is over and the defendant has been found guilty, then of course he or she can appeal to a higher court. However, in order for the higher court to take up the appeal, then there has to be some grounds for appeal court to consider, such as new evidence that was not available at the time of the trial or mis...

I am not really a big fan of  The Daily  Mail , but my wife and I do love Bulgaria, our adopted home. That is why I agreed to contribute to this article and no, I was not paid a penny for my efforts. Even though this article had my name on it, I did not actually write it. Katrina, a freelance journalist, was the lady who cobbled it together from pieces in my blog and from what I told her in a long telephone conversation.  As you may have guessed, there were quite a lot of mistakes in it. For a start, the photo of the house in the article is not a picture of our house at all! The Bulgarian word for cheese is sirene , not brinza . The beginning of the piece also says that we go skiing regularly. I have never been skiing in my life! In my opinion, it is a rather pretentious and expensive way to break your leg, especially if you are skiing with Gwyneth Paltrow. There were several other examples of my comments being "jazzed up" or edited in ways that distorted the truth. ...