Bulgarian life
David Pumpkins
There’s an old Saturday Night Live sketch with Tom Hanks where he’s playing this bizarre character called David Pumpkins. (Google it. It’s weird as shit.) And I think about that weird-ass sketch, and his funny suit, and the dancing – oh God, the dancing – every...
Autumn again
It feels like I start every other post like this: how is it [insert month/season here] already?! But indulge me while I do it yet again. Because it’s somehow October, if you hadn’t noticed, and all hope of pretending it’s still, ahem, ‘late summer’ has well and...
The B-word
Watch out, Brexit’s about. It’s had a few drinks, it’s feeling lairy, and it’s ready to fuck your shit up. As you can probably guess, I’m not exactly Brexit’s core target audience, what with me actually living in Europe, and being a soya milk-drinking, wet lefty...
Summer nights, dry days
If you haven’t yet seen the Perseid meteor shower this August, you might have already missed out. It peaked across the evenings of the 11th and 12th. (But you might still catch some tonight, the 13th.) It’s become an annual ritual for us, to stay up and watch for...
Sofia vs Plovdiv: Which is better for a city break?
I’m back! If you follow my adventures on Instagram, you’ll know that we’ve been away in Plovdiv, Bulgaria’s second city, and Sofia, the capital. After 15 months of pandemic life, I was in desperate need of some city action – and with both of us being fully...
Vaccinated
We had our second COVID-19 vaccines last week and, boy, are we pleased with ourselves. We’re so grateful to have been vaccinated for free in Bulgaria – we would have gladly paid for the privilege – and to have both doses done so soon. (For the folks back home,...
Be more Blanche
We went back to the fabulous plant shop in Sofia last week. I mean, we were supposed to be in Sofia looking at ovens. (Our electric oven hasn’t worked for years and every time spring rolls around, when we no longer want to put the woodburner on just to cook...
Dumpster-diving window beggars
This is our life now. Every time we go out, we’re on high alert for abandoned wooden windows to finish off the rustic greenhouse. We eyeball people’s gardens as we drive by. We scour municipal bins. We tell anyone who’ll listen, ‘We’re looking for old windows. DO...
April, is that really you?
My calendar, filthy liar that it is, is trying to convince me that it’s April. But that can’t be right, can it? How are we already a quarter of the way through 2021? How can time fly when none of us are having any fun? It doesn’t seem fair. As it’s April Fool’s...
A trip to Troyan Monastery (but mainly, Bulgarian pottery)
I have never seen Troyan Monastery as quiet as it was last Friday. True, the main chapel is currently undergoing restoration, but I was still surprised to see the rest of the complex so empty and, well, monastic. There were more people browsing the wooden bowls and...
Wanted: An unsociable person’s guide to making friends
It’s hard to make friends later in life, isn’t it? I often wonder how people do it. So many of my longstanding friendships started in the workplace or stretch all the way back to my college and university days, so now that I work from home and am about as likely to...
Gratitude (I’m not a robot)
Seems a lot of people back home are grateful that there’s now a roadmap for bringing the UK out of lockdown. I’m not really one for strong ‘feelings’ (she says, in air quotes, like feelings are something marketers made up to sell ice cream), so I’ve always felt,...