Bulgaria with Noodles

When we first bought the house, we did not really notice them. Then we saw them and said that we really must do something about them, sooner or later. I am writing about the splendid, old-fashioned cartwheels that we found hanging on the garden wall and by wall of the house, next to the front door. The bad news is that no one has looked after them. If you paint cartwheels every other year or so, then there is no problem, but they will start to rot if you leave them too long. The other piece of bad news is that it takes ages to paint them! It is a slow job and you just cannot rush it. The red ones needed three or four coats of paint, but now they do look rather good, I must say.

Well, Trump's second impeachment seems to be over, but the pandemic shows no signs of ending sometime soon. Maybe the Bulgarian government has plans to distribute the vaccine to everyone, but when will this actually start to happen? In the meantime, we are lucky to be able to stay in our country house and keep safe. In these days of the Coronavirus, the most exciting thing that we do is to take the dog for a walk.  The good news is that Tina is a naughty little doggie and she always enjoys herself. It makes Irena and me happy to see our little dog having a good time. The countryside around Daveri, although bleak and bare in winter, still has a wonderful, wild beauty that makes me think of that rather weird and emotional Gerald Manley Hopkins poem: What would the world be, once bereft Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left, O let them be left, wildness and wet; Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.

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Just in case you have not noticed, I have not been making a lot of blog posts recently. Hardly any, in fact. Well, the truth of the matter is that nothing much has happened.  We did have some SERIOUS snow, about 50 cms deep and not the feeble 5 cms you get in the UK, a useless excuse for snow that barely covers the grass.   We have now been living at our house in the village of  Daveri since August of last year and that is more or less all that we have been doing. The pandemic is not over and maybe it will not really be gone until almost everyone on Planet Earth gets vaccinated. When will that be, I wonder? The good news? Yes, there is some. Even after some serious snow, maybe fifty cm deep, the Coronavirus is not going to stop the return of the Spring. It is coming.  We had a little foretaste today, when all of the snow finally melted and even the tulips that my dear Irena had planted at the bottom of the garden last year started to show some signs of life. The...

Each week, I still receive e-mails from teachers around the world, asking me about what it is like to teach in international schools. Here is a recent one that gives me an excuse for including lots of photos of China. Happy New Year from Co.Tyrone! I hope this email finds you, your wife and the dog well. Alas, we are locked down again and remote learning is now the reality for the foreseeable future. Ireland actually has the highest percentage of Covid cases in the world now. We are increasingly concerned about the news coming out of China and it seems there is a real chance we will not get into China in July. Currently no UK citizens or flights are allowed in. I have also read that dependent visas will not be issued even when things open up initially. To say that we are concerned is an understatement and it is hard to predict next week, never mind six months into the future. Would it be naive not to look for a Plan B?  Again, your advice is much appreciated. And here is my reply. ...

Tina is a naughty little doggie. She has a lot of energy and she is more than a bit disobedient. Irena and I took her for a walk this morning. For once, the sun was shining and we did not mind the cold too much. As usual, the Bulgarian countryside was beautiful, empty and huge. We simply must get a couple of sledges and all of the skiing gear. It is crazy to be in the countryside, with lots of snow-covered hills all around us for at least a month or so each year, and yet we have absolutely no winter sports equipment at all.

If you have been faithfully reading my blog, then by now you should be an expert on centralne tepline . (That is Bulgarian for "central heating", just in case you have forgotten.)  In Daveri, keeping our home toasty-warm is quite a time-consuming business. I usually go downstairs at about 4 or 5am and give the fire a good raking, so that lots of the ash goes onto the tray underneath the metal grate. Next to the fireplace we have an impressive-looking collection of tools to use. They look like instruments of torture from the Middle Ages.  Then I put some more wood onto the fire and, if I am lucky, there is soon a good blaze going once more. Then I go down again and put on some more wood at about six, when a naughty little doggie asks for her breakfast and she needs to go outside, to do her business at the bottom of the garden. Then I get another snooze until 8am or thereabouts when, if I am lucky, my dear wife brings my morning mug of tea up to the bedroom.  After breakfas...