Bulgaria with Noodles

What is happening in the UK? Every time I switch on the BBC news, it just seems to be getting worse and worse. The “second wave” is a lot worse than the first one and everybody is getting fed up with lockdowns and more lockdowns. And a vaccine? Next year, perhaps.  Here is a photo of our restored, upgraded and fully-functioning fireplace and you can actually see it in action. Yes, our central heating system is now working properly. The pump comes on automatically, when the water temperature gets to thirty degrees. The bad news? Yes, there is some. The woodburning stove takes absolutely blooming ages to get the whole house warm, but the upside is that then it does stay warm once you have had the heating on for long enough. Although the fireplace does not make lots of nasty smokey smells, it does use an awful lot of wood (and then some more). Even though he did take so many good things with him, Allan did leave behind a big pile of dry wood for us to use and that is very fortunate ...

I have a new (and rather expensive) toy, a Husqvarna tractor mower. It arrived on Wednesday morning and it is one of those “ride on” mowers. This means that you do not have to push the blooming thing. In fact, you do not even have to get off in order to empty the huge grass box on the back of the mower, as there is a special handle that lets you do that without getting off your bottom. My new mower is only 2WD, whereas my neighbour Vincent has a 4WD version and he needs it because the lawn at one of his properties has quite a steep slope. The mower is very maneuverable and it has a tight turning circle, but of course even its top speed is not fast. It looks as though we will not be on the F1 circuit sometime soon, although I do recall reading somewhere that lawnmower racing is actually quite a popular sport in the UK!  As you can probably imagine, Irena is not altogether happy about my new plaything, even though she is smiling in the photograph. However, she was very happy about fi...

Yes, it is time for lunch. The Bulgarian Chardonnay from Targovishte is rather good and here they sell it in three litre boxes. Now that we have moved most of our bits and bobs from Kalotina, we can use our garden furniture. The view from the terrace was rather spoiled by the latest additions to the washing line, but hey ho, it was a very yummy lunch. The Elena region is supposed to produce some of the best agricultural products in all of Bulgaria, especially the famous Elenski but , a leg of pork that is dried and flavoured in some particular fashion. However, on this occasion we tried some locally-produced sheep's cheese and very good it was too, as was the salad.

A couple of days ago, we had our septichna yama emptied by a couple of chaps who arrived in Daveri with a huge lorry.  First they drove their big orange tanker lorry onto our lawn, the one that is next to the road and beside the stone wall, and in the process their lorry made some big marks in the ground. Then the massive pipe went through the round hole in the wall and down into the tank. After that, they switched on the pump and the contents were all sucked out.  The whole thing only took about twenty minutes. Even though our septic tank is made out of concrete and stone, it probably should be emptied every year or so. It certainly was quite full and we did not want to take any chances over the winter.

I became the Man with the Van last week, as we went (yet again!) to Kalotina. We hired an Iveco van and it took about five hours to drive there. A manual transmission diesel bus is not much fun to drive, I can tell you, and it was so NOISY. Irena and I mostly moved the bigger items: the black chair from my study, the white cabinet from the bathroom and the special box for shoes that was in the entrance hall. That means that Kalotina is now more or less empty. There are still some things that we want to bring to Daveri: a few chairs, some clothes, plates, and quite a lot of pictures.

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...

Central heating in Bulgarian is centralne tepline . Those are two words of Bulgarian that I have got to know rather w e ll since we first came to this country. We first had the Heat Pump central heating installed in our apartment in VT. (In some ways, that is quite similar to air conditioning.) Then it was the pellet burner and all of the radiators in Kalotina. Now we have a different system in Daveri, a large woodburner, an electric pump and pipes going to the radiators.  The good news is that we now have plenty of firewood, as we had five cubic metres d elivered and, with Vincent’s kind help, we cut d own some of the old trees that were spoiling the view from the house. And the bad news? The bottom parts of “cupboards” that were hiding the original electric heating system have all gone rotten and warped, as the pump was corroded and leaking. Smoke has discoloured the walls and ceilings in the kitchen and the sitting room, so you can see where Allan used to hang all of his picture...