Bulgaria with Noodles

Whenever we want to go away anywhere, the perennial question is, "What do we do with the dog?" We took Tina with us to Zakynthos and Samothraki, but this time we decided to leave her at a boarding kennel. Tina does not really like travelling and you cannot have a good beach holiday if dogs are not allowed on the beach. Accommodation options are also more complicated if you have to find somewhere that is "pet friendly". Herbie's boarding kennels, to the west of Veliko Tarnovo has had some good recommendations on Facebook, so we thought that we would give it a try. Ian and Sylvie, the owners of the kennels, are really nice "doggie people", Yes, I am sure that it must have been distressing for Tina at first, but she soon settled in and enjoyed playing with the other dogs. On our way back from Corfu, we picked up Tina and brought her back to VT. Although she has lost some weight, there is nothing wrong with her appetite and so she is determined to restore ...

Dear Malcolm,                 Thursday, 3rd May, 2023 How are you, old fellow? I always enjoy reading your emails and of course they bring back memories of our time in the Magic Kingdom. Well, I have finally reached the grand old age of 64. I am looking forward to being 65, as then (at long last) I will be getting some money back from Her Majesty’s government. I suppose that now it ought to be “His Majesty’s government”, as King Charles III has become our new royal ruler. Camilla seems to be a total cow and the other two King Charleses were disasters, so I do not have much hope for the new one. What a flipping waste of money, this silly coronation nonsense! On my birthday, we went into Elena, a local town about 10 kms away from our country house, as there was a rather good folklore festival. Lots of music, singing, dancing and old-style Bulgarian costumes. It was all put on for the tourists, I suppose, but ...

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 ...

This is the first time that I have written a piece for my blog in a long while, as not much has been happening. As usual, NO ONE has been writing any comments on my blog. It is rather depressing! Has the Bank of England interest rate really gone up to 4%? Will it be going higher? I am very glad that I do not have mortgage in the UK.  I really do not think that the war in Ukraine is going to end next week. However, a rapid collapse of the Russian army really does look like a possible outcome. The deployment of modern tanks could completely change the overall balance of forces on the battlefield. This will probably happen because the Russians have hardly any tanks left, apart from some ones that are really old and outdated. When the war started more than a year ago, Putin thought that he was going to capture Kyiv in a day or two, but it all went horribly wrong. This just shows that predicting the future is a hit-and-miss affair, especially in a war. Part of the problem is that Putin ...

Dear Macolm,                                                It is always interesting to get an email from you, old fellow.    A friend of mine is still teaching, so I am wondering whether he did actually go on strike and stand there on a picket line with a sign, demanding more money? No, probably not.  No, there were no tremors or earthquakes here in Bulgaria, although I believe that some nearby other countries did have some. The situation in eastern Turkey and Syria really is very, very bad.   The war in Ukraine also continues on its bloody course. The UK Ministry of Defence has more or less agreed with the Ukrainian authorities' estimates that more than 800 Russian soldiers are being killed every day. At the moment, it looks unlikely that the West will give the Ukrainians the fighter jets that they are asking for, but then again it was not so long ago that it seemed impossible that western c...

Well, perhaps it was not the very best walk that I have been on with the VT Walkers, but at least it got me out of the apartment and gave me some exercise.  Although the walk through the woods to the Blue Lake will probably be beautiful in the summer, in the middle of January it is not quite so pretty. Tina, that naught little doggie, had lots of fun, playing with the ever-energetic Sisi.

One of the best things about being an expat is that often you really do not know much about what is happening in the UK. Is the sitaution really so bad back in Blighty? How is that things have fallen to pieces so quickly? Or has the present crisis been coming for a long while? Although Rishi Sunak seems to be a decent sort of chap and a big improvement on that useless Liz Truss, I suppose that the problems in the UK are just too big and there are so many of them. Oh yes and I heard that all of the driving test examiners are on strike as well.  My friend Peter sent me a copy of my bank statement. Yes, it does look as though my TPS pension has gone up a bit. Maybe some inflation in the UK is not such a bad thing.   Certainly here in Bulgaria the health service is NOT falling to bits. Okay, yes, it could be better and some of the hospitals and clinics are a bit shabby, putting it mildly, but really the doctors and the nurses seem to do a good job. Irena and I are still in the pro...