tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-61409229670910322322024-03-13T08:42:48.250-07:00BeeZone in BulgariaApril 2012 we started a new life in Bulgaria. This is an online record of the highs and lows we experience by changing the rat race for a more laid back way of life.Beezonehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07652607785990497294noreply@blogger.comBlogger36125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6140922967091032232.post-69923451808729599762020-05-31T09:42:00.003-07:002020-05-31T09:42:49.177-07:00Here we go again<div class="x_MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #201f1e; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 15.6933px; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
Tuesday, Shumen Oncology centre</div>
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After consultation with a Gastroenterologist , today's appt was made for a 4 day stay to investigate my condition which was long spells of no bowel movement during this time my intestines were fizzing as they created gas and caused immense pain and discomfort. The staff here work like a well oil watch, it was a long painful wait for the second consultancy but it was worthwhile as the consultant decided that a stay in hospital was necessary and would be 4 days minimum.</div>
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This hospital looked brand new and had everything working and in excellent order, most notable were the rest areas positioned in front of massive panoramic windows, the couches were very expensive leather four seater's the style and comfort Id never experienced before.</div>
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The wards were set up as in Sofia with three beds (less than 5 years old at a guess) and plenty of cupboard space, with me installed in the last bed available in that ward, the guy on my left was getting ready to leave, he looked in a bad way and was travelling by ambulance somewhere .</div>
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Settled in and cannula'd up I was on saline solution and some mystery concoction, noting how comfortable the beds were and the free to view TV on the cupboards to while away the boring hours.</div>
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My roomy was an amiable chap but to say the least he was difficult to communicate with, imagine if you will the sound of water going down a recently unblocked drain, add a little Balkan flair and thats what I was hearing. My less than perfect yet translated straight from a Bulgarian language book seemed to be met with confusion, my guess is his accent was akin to listening to a turnip cruncher for the first time, this wasn't helped later on when the vacant bed was filled with a guy who sounded more understandable but the longer he spoke the more he picked up the other guys accent, making me feel rather less included, that said, the first thing he did for me was to cover me up with my sheet and bade me rest well.</div>
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One of the many mysteries in Bulgarian medicine is when the ask you to go shopping for sundries with no explanation, some of which are obvious others not so much, case in point, buy 3.5 litres of water, ok guess Ill be drinking a lot of water? Nah 3 litres was mixed with a potion which gives you the trots and you have to drink it all in 4 hours!! The taste reminded me of my Granny, lavender, rosemary, possibly Zoflora disinfectant and tasted like a concoction of them all with aftertaste to leave you nauseous. Well I managed 1 3/4 litres hell broke loose in shits and farts after 30 mins and didn't stop for about 4 hours, an experience so awful I contemplated asking for the previous hose up the bum treatment instead. Sleep was poor and bitty but just bearable.</div>
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Wednesday</div>
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6am roll call, drips temps and pressures taken, 8am Chief doctor calls with much smaller posse of students , seems to be a more tight knit group with lots of interest in patients problems. For me it was the day of investigation by MRI scanner and endoscopy so nothing related to me was said as they knew nothing much about my condition yet.</div>
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About 8:30 I was called by an orderly for my scan , seeing how I was struggling to walk she told me to wait and got a wheelchair and off we went off to the scan room. The scan took a while as I seemed to be too tall and too short for some of the scans they wanted to do but it was soon mission accomplished and back to my ward. Half an hours rest and it was the colonoscopy, I thought I read that the small intestine was 27 foot long, notwithstanding somehow her colonoscope was long enough to find last weeks dinner. They took tissue samples for analysis and the umms and ahhs seemed to suggest nothing untoward was found.</div>
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After the procedure I was asked about documentation from Sofia All we had brought with us was all we had, they suggested there was a lot of papers missing regarding the mechanics of the surgery to remove my kidney etc Anyhow it was time to eat and drink after 36 hours of fresh air and poop juice. Tracey like a shining star brought with her sustenance and additional "je ne cest quoi" to make my stay more filled full and less boring, the next 2 days were just monitoring and the occasional drip.</div>
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Thursday</div>
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1 PM got the results in short form which was bowel problem easily cured, the carcinoma on my lung less so.</div>
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How do I feel? Remote and numb</div>
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Friday</div>
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Trying to sleep with the TV on vol 8 and 2 broadly accented Bulgarians lying either side of me, speaking at vol 11 , when they deemed it was time to sleep, the room was filled with gutteral yosking and farting , I'm so glad I made it through the night, Coffee drunk and most things packed I waited for the final paperwork and Tracey to arrive yet again to take me back to paradise.</div>
<br />Beezonehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07652607785990497294noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6140922967091032232.post-44167531321113516472019-11-27T10:43:00.000-08:002019-11-30T04:25:57.751-08:00Not the End<style type="text/css">
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;">I
entered Alexandrovsko University Hospital at 17:00 on Friday 20</span></span><span style="color: black;"><sup><span style="font-size: small;">th</span></sup></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;">
and was sent to the emergency room where there was much discussion
about me being on the system. I was put on a saline drip for
rehydration and 5 hours later I was moved to ward 2, bed 2, floor 3,
this time just 2 beds in the ward, brightly painted yellow and blue
and apparently well equipped.</span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.35cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">As
we entered the room there was an unmistakable odour of tobacco smoke,
'This feel homely, thinks I'. My roommate Ivan, who looked like
Richard Dreyfuss, was quickly moving away from the open window and
greeted us with a smile and friendly dobur vecher. We exchanged some
pleasantries whilst I unpacked, I liked the cut of his jib.</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.35cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">In
the morning there was the usual to-ing and fro-ing of medical staff
at 6am, after they had finished Ivan asked me if I minded him smoking
out of the window, I replied if he didn’t mind me doing the same,
then all is good. I later found out the staff room for that floor
has an ashtray on the table.</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.35cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">During
the day Ivan invited me down to the local cafe for coffee and smokes,
often a bite to eat as the hospital food, although the best I’d
eaten so far, was still not so tasty. As we made our way through our
life stories, Ivan an international coach driver of many years, it
emerged that his kidney condition was found out, like mine, with a
CAT scan, 2 months previously and the total degree of cancer wasn’t
known. I could see he was scared, he didn’t know if the kidney
was all that was affected nor how long or intensive the operation
would be, I felt his anguish. We made the best of times though, as
the hospital policy on patients freedom to travel seems to be very
laisse-faire and you need tell no one you’ve left the building nor
returned. On the Sunday we went for a long walk into Sofia to locate
a tobacconists.</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.35cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">Ivan’s
son visited on Monday he spoke English well so I was able to fully
explain the pre-op embolisation I’d had to Ivan. In hindsight I’m
not sure this was such a good idea as he had passed that point,
although it did mean he was in surgery sooner than me and had to
endure just one lot of pain where as I had to endure 2 lots.</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.35cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.35cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">Tuesday
was supposed to be operation day for me, it started with a visit to
the anaesthetist where I would discuss my medical history and
allergies. This took about 15 minutes, then a walk back to my room
to await results. Both Ivan and myself were on nil by mouth and as
the day progressed the tension rose. We were unpacking our lockers
and labelling our bags and possessions, issued with a theatre gown
each and were now in some kind of limbo neither one place nor
another. At some point before now you have been to apteka for
wetwipes, water, thermometer, nappies etc. During the day Ivan had
a surprise, an orderly came into the room with a wicked almost
toothless smile and held up a vinyl hose whilst looking at Ivan. He
followed her instructions and went into the adjoining toilet, his
squeak and sharp intake of breath indicated what was happening. I
was almost expecting a cackle from the orderly, she did seem to enjoy
this part way more than she should. Ivan called me, I knew he was
in there with no toilet roll so I quickly gave him my spare roll. He
emerged a short while later with his eyes like saucers and the look
on his face could only say "well I wasn't expecting that!"
It was quite a funny experience, from the sidelines, to see and
hear it described with sound effects and I'm sure when translated he
said "without a by your leave"</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.35cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">The
orderly left, which left Ivan with a bemused look, I roughly
translated his comment as "why aren't you being subjected to
this abuse?" "Ne znyam" says I, (I don't know) with
equal bemusement and relief. Apparently he was 'nil by mouth' at
09:30 I was 'nil by mouth' at 17:30, so my time was coming, just a
while later.</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.35cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">I
then got the call, an experience I won't forget is how I would
describe it.</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.35cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">So
the dirty deed was done, bags packed, almost in the theatre gown when
I was given the news that I wasn’t going to surgery, the reason
being allergies and pulmonary test results were giving concern. So
back on food and water and visiting the allergy and pulmonary
departments.</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.35cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">The
hospital site is so big they have ambulances to transport people
about. I was given the nod and off I went with an orderly carrying
my ever growing medical file, via ambulance, to the allergy and
tropical diseases building, it looked very old and forbidding like an
old sanatorium. The lab technician, who had obviously been in this
job forever, ushered me in after a small wait and had me put my arm
through a plexiglass screen where he scraped my arm and put a variety
of fluids on to see my reactions to them, after 30 mins my reactions
were recorded. I was then told to go to Room 13, this sounded more
ominous than it was. It was just to be interviewed by a well spoken
nurse in English about my medical history with regard to allergies.
Back to the ambulance and off to pulmonary department. This building
looked even older and more forbidding, it had the most dangerous
looking lift I'd ever seen as it was an open cage with access/egress
from front and rear. I was given a lung capacity test, the results
led the doctor to tell me they are worried about my lung capacity,
but gave me no recommendations nor did any further tests to find out
why. I believe it’s because of an infection I caught whilst in
cardiology the previous week, which I’d asked, and been given,
treatment for from my GP Neli.</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.35cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">Back
in the ward I was given a prescription for anti-histamines which I
had to buy from the pharmacy across the road, these were to be taken
for the next 3 days to bring my histamine levels down. The 3 days
turned into a week, I made good use of the time by improving my
Bulgarian in written and spoken form, helped along by a new roommate
Penko he was in for a kidney operation too. As we exchanged life
stories I learnt he was the ex Deputy of Transport for Bulgaria and
responsible for the 2nd Danube crossing bridge in the west of the
country, as well as being in charge of finance for the Sofia metro
project. His English was good and we got on very well. After his
examination he informed me he would be having an embolisation like I
had, so I was able to give him the lowdown on what it entailed and
how conditions were across at Cardiology and what he would feel like
afterwards. I hoped I was a force for good. He left on Saturday I
think to be admitted into Cardiology.</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.35cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;">The
day after my surgery was postponed</span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;">
I was ambulanced to the cat scan dept, I presumed for an update for
Dr Georgiev on my embolisation to see how it was faring. Also that
day as I was getting dressed I felt a pinprick on my arm which had
swollen up, I showed it to the duty nurse who contacted Immunology.
So off I went with my friendly porter to have this thing looked at,
she initially looked at it, ummed and ahhd, took my file and asked me
to wait outside, a few minutes later she reappeared and declared it
was an external injury and I should go to Dermatology dept. This
declaration was in Bulgarian so I kind of got the gist of it but had
no idea of where it was, my porter had gone walkabout (ironic as she
did look aboriginal) I had my file so back to the ward I went.</span></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.35cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">After
10 minutes of relaxing in my bed the ward sister, phone to her ear
came rushing in saying "yes he’s here" with a big smile
on her face. Another 10 mins later we were at Dermatology who were
quick to determine it was an insect sting and would require an
anti-biotic and compress. I had an anti-biotic injection, the
compress however was never forthcoming, regardless the wound
disappeared in a few days.<br />
</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.35cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;">During
my waiting time my thoughts were drawn to Ivan’s bags still in the
wardrobe, I was thinking they have been there too long, I asked the
nurse if Ivan was in this area, </span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;">and
eventually, Thursday</span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"> or possibly Friday, she replied in the affirmative with a big smile, he was in the room I
would later be in. He greeted me with a huge smile and feeble
handshake, he looked ruined but in fairness his kidney condition
prior to surgery was far worse than mine. He had given me his wifes
phone number in case he didn’t come out of surgery. He was
expecting to have bad news after surgery, however it wasn’t and we
both cried with happiness when he told me the news</span></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.35cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.35cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;">This
brings us to the 2</span></span><span style="color: black;"><sup><span style="font-size: small;">nd</span></sup></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;">
Monday all signs of the operation happening are good so far, morning
visit from Dr Georgiev, as he arrives he is followed by at least 20
students and doctors who all try and fit into our small 2 bed ward,
what they expect to learn is a mystery as not only does Georgiev not
say much but most wouldn’t hear it anyway. As for me he asked how
I was feeling and maybe </span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;">told
me </span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;">surgery,
</span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;">was
still looking good for that day.</span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;">H</span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;">e
is treated like the Grand Poobah, I’m expecting excellence no less.</span></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.35cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;">.
</span></span>
</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.35cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">Surgery
day Monday 30th, a visit from Ivan to wish me luck set me up with
good feelings soon to be dashed by, woohoo another anal irrigation,
by the orderly who seems to enjoy that part of her job far too much.
My gear was never unpacked so just don the theatre coat and I’m on
my way to Alexandrovsko University hospital nerve centre. I
remember leaving my shoes on the rack by the door, sitting with 4
others, this was looking like a production line. The room was
massive and filled with what seemed like every single medical
apparatus recently invented, nothing old here. I remember getting
on the table and having yet another canula fitted then the mask and I
was out cold.</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.35cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">A
weird thing happens after surgery, you're taken from Alexandrovsko
hospital to St Ekaterinas hospital for recovery in their intensive
care ward, which is in fact just a gurney ride across the hallway.
Here I was to experience my darkest hours.</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.35cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">As
I came around I became aware of all the tubes I had attached to me, I
had 2 tubes draining my abdominal cavity, 3 or 4 drips in my arms, an
oxygen mask, I was wired to a heart monitor and had a catheter.</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.35cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">My
immediate concern was I couldn’t speak, I had a tube down my nose
into my stomach I couldn’t clear my throat which was full of gunk,
I felt nauseous and in pain. I did feel blessed though that the bed
was brand new electronic and multi functional so I could adjust my
position for some comfort. It was the nasal intubation that was
tickling my throat and triggering my cough reflex which caused my
abdominal muscles to tighten and caused me pain. It was like
drowning while being punched in the solar plexus, I was on my back
and I couldn’t move onto my side due to all the tubes.</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.35cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">I’ve
never felt so imprisoned, helpless and claustrophobic in my life, I
had to change this, the oxygen mask was first to go. I was able to
get some sleep but it was disturbed by this tube down my nose, I
tried to adjust it to a more comfortable position to no avail, it had
to come out, in truth I thought it was a short tube but what the heck
it was coming out. I pulled and pulled the diameter increased in the
middle which was a surprise but it was like a clear gel coating the
tube causing this, it came out without pain. I had no idea what this
tube was for exactly but figured if it was looking for food, I’d
had 2 arse vacuums I was empty. At last I could feel my voice box
though it felt like it was coated in pepper flavoured silicon, I
could now swallow to a degree. I removed the tube late at night and
it took a while for staff to notice and as it set off no beepers I
figured it wasn’t that important, proven out by the ward sister
when she did find out saying with a smile "I hope you won’t be
any more trouble tonight" and left the tube out.</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.35cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">I
was now at some sort of peace and slept to the morning in spite of
staff shouting across the ward like Grimsby fish wives, along with
other patients choking and setting off alarms. The time seemed to
stand still days and nights merged, the noise and pain were
merciless, I had no voice to complain with.</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.35cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;">After
2 nights I really was ready to scream and shout but with damaged
vocals this was impossible the best I could manage was an angry
whisper, knowing that this morning I would be back amongst familiar
staff and friendly faces gave me a focal point. Not a moment too
soon I found myself in bed 3 ward 3 able to move a little more
independently albeit with massive pain across my upper abdomen just
below the diaphragm. I have no idea how they stitch abdomen muscles
together but they did a splendid job. My new roommate was Hristo, in
for a prostate operation a very well read man with a great command of
English, he is an importer/exporter of goods, of German extraction
who shares my view on the 'green' mafia and global green stupidity, I
was with the right roommate. </span></span>
</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.35cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;">My
doctor was Nikolov a prodigy of Dr Georgiev, he looked after my
dressings, every day for 3 days and then 3 days </span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;">later,
my morning of discharge, it </span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;">
was changed for the last time here in Sofia. </span></span>
</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.35cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">Before
that happened though I was having my 8am chat with my Doctor about my
chest complaint which I picked up in cardiology, I got treatment for
it from my GP but there was little time for it to be fully fixed
before I had my operation, so Dr Nikolov had me go for another chest
xray which showed up nothing unexpected, this condition I had now was
usual after this type of surgery and to be honest most patients
seemed to have it.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: black;">At
</span><span style="color: black;">t</span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">his
point I have to mention the heroic efforts of Tracey my beloved, her
ability to pretend to cope with organising some of my children,
train, accommodation, clothes, food, livestock and her own health and well
being. Whilst keeping my mother, siblings and children informed of
progress. Tracey you are a legend, I thank you from the heart of my
bottom. Special thanks go to our friend Tracy (without an 'e') for blood donation and moral support. Thanks also to the others who donated and those who were willing but not needed. Eternal gratitude to Pete & Anne whose care of the livestock removed some of Tracey's stress.<br /><br />Current status external wound 90% healed, interior wound feels like 70%. Have gained a new thrombosis in my left leg, in good spirits and looking forward to getting back to work.</span><br /></span></div>
<br />Beezonehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07652607785990497294noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6140922967091032232.post-79223830796644349702019-09-18T11:31:00.001-07:002019-09-18T11:31:32.211-07:00What a contrast
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<br />
<div style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Following on from my first
ever stay in hospital, time for episode 2 and how surprising the
experience was when your inmates and staff are from different areas.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">We
went to see our GP and hand over the documents from Ruse hospital,
Neli read the documents intently, occasionally lifting her eyes above
her glasses, I could see this is a person who cares deeply for her
patients, when she had finished she looked at me with some sadness, I
said "well it could be worse?" she smiled and said "yes
it could be"</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">The
consultant at Ruse had</span><span style="font-size: x-small;">
recommended 3 surgeons, one in Sofia 329km one way, one in Pleven
</span><span style="font-size: x-small;">15</span><span style="font-size: x-small;">8km
one way, and Varna 130km one way, for reasons of professionalism and
access to the best equipment Neli chose Sofia, I’ve no more to say
about this other than it added to the stress, pain </span><span style="font-size: x-small;">and
expense</span><span style="font-size: x-small;">.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">So
</span><span style="font-size: x-small;">Neli</span><span style="font-size: x-small;">
booked </span><span style="font-size: x-small;">us </span><span style="font-size: x-small;">a
consultation with Professor Georgiev in Alexandrovska University
hospital Sofia. We shared driving over to Sofia which takes about 4
hours, when we arrived we were a little early so waited a while then
w</span><span style="font-size: x-small;">ere</span><span style="font-size: x-small;">
called in. Georgiev spoke great English and read through my papers
from Ruse then declared he wanted to do an ultrasound to check the
condition of my kidney, he declared it very big and asked me about
family medical history, from this he pondered a while and declared
that I should have a full prostate blood test and a pre-procedure,
</span><span style="font-size: x-small;">kidney embolisation,</span><span style="font-size: x-small;">
which involved closing off the arteries with silicon to starve it and
make it shrink, making it easier to remove, </span><span style="font-size: x-small;">which
he wanted me to stay and have done then</span><span style="font-size: x-small;">.
</span><span style="font-size: x-small;">Whilst at Ruse we had
been told there were 3 ways in which the kidney could be removed:
open surgery; manual keyhole surgery; robotic keyhole surgery, I
was adamant I did not want robotic keyhole and was leaning towards
open surgery. Georgiev stated quite plainly the only option was
open surgery, because of the kidney size. </span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Well
that was easy! So we were led to the cardiology dept with our new
documents from Georgiev along with all our paperwork from the
Bulgarian NHS, to be asked "where is your green certificate?"
We were not given a final piece of paper with a green stamp on it
to prove exactly what the other receipts do, that is prove, we have
paid into the system. Much complaining and disagreement led us
nowhere, we had to drive back 4 hours to get a stupid piece of paper.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;">
<span style="font-size: 10pt;">Anyway
after a drive home, then to the GP to have a note to explain what we
needed, off to Targovishte NHS the following day we had all we
needed. We had been given the suggestion in Sofia that we could
phone a friend, or neighbour, to go get the document and courier it
to us, this wouldn’t have worked as my I.D. documents and
signature were required. We tried to phone Prof Georgiev to
reschedule the mini op, we both had the phone put down on us, ever </span><span style="font-size: 13.3333px;">persistent</span><span style="font-size: 10pt;">, we called up a good friend who speaks like a native and
she got through and explained the situation to Georgiev and was told
we can arrive on Monday in Sofia and the op will take place. After
calling us back our friend said that they told her that we had just
upped and left with no explanation </span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Ok
off to Sofia again. This time it was Sunday, Tracey in her wisdom had
booked an Airbnb so she could stay there with my son Jim while I was
in hospital. Monday arrived and off we went to the cardiology dept
back to the room we were told to return to, which was cardiology
admin, which we </span><span style="font-size: x-small;">found
out</span><span style="font-size: x-small;"> was not the place
to be but </span><span style="font-size: x-small;">we were
directed to </span><span style="font-size: x-small;">what I can
only describe as a triage dept, I was hooked up to an ECG after an
age waiting, then much more paperwork was made, then off to the
Cardiology admin where much more paperwork was invoked with much
stamping, gluing and signing took place. I was told I would be in
ward 2 bed 4, so off we go to room 2 and empty my stuff into the
bedside locker.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">My
roomies were just one when I arrived, I wished him good day but got
no response, oh well. I settled down to the expected BP tests, blood
samples and IV being fitted. Over the next few days inmates came and
went, no connection was made with any no matter how much I tried.
Due to me taking a blood thinner tab</span><span style="font-size: x-small;">let</span><span style="font-size: x-small;">
that morning, they told me that the </span><span style="font-size: x-small;">embolisation</span><span style="font-size: x-small;">
wouldn’t take place until tomorrow.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">After
a good night sleep I was prepped for surgery went in to the theatre
at 11 am , I was shocked at the difference between the ward and
surgery department, which was like the Starship Enterprise blue
floors and yellow walls all properly sealed, no broken fixtures or
fittings and what looked like all the medical equipment you could
possibly need, at the side of the bed was a sliding gantry which
housed 4 massive flat screen monitors, above was a scanner which took
live images of my innards, it being that modern I wouldn’t be
surprised if it could also look into my soul and past history. </span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">The
surgeon spoke with an impeccable English accent which did much to put
me at ease and ran me through what the procedure entailed. He was to
run a catheter into my artery and check out my heart and good kidney
to verify their condition, before heading off to Keith to block the
supply and return </span><span style="font-size: x-small;">pipes</span><span style="font-size: x-small;">
and start the process of degenerating the cancer within. I was awake
all the time and was engaged in banter with a nurse about my life in
Bulgaria and why I chose there, etc. When Keith was blocked (the
procedure took just an hour) the pain really started and didn’t
stop for 3 days, no matter what they injected me with, I was
literally moaning and wailing almost constantly. </span><span style="font-size: x-small;">I</span><span style="font-size: x-small;">t
was agony, the next 3 days merged into one, at last there was light
at the end o</span><span style="font-size: x-small;">f</span><span style="font-size: x-small;">
the tunnel the pain was slightly being subdued and I noticed pain
from my hip, this was caused by the bed which had an old thin
mattress and equally old chassis. I was due to stay in another day
but I begged to be released as our airbnb was running out and would
be stuck with Tracey and Jim with nowhere to sleep if I was to stay
another night. I was subjected to more tests to check my wellness
and it was deemed I was fit enough to leave on that Thursday. I
really couldn’t leave there quick enough but had the nightmare to
look forward to of 4 hours of travel with a kidney which felt like it
had been in a liquidiser .</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Tracey
and Jim were fantastic, we were all stressed out and showing signs of
anger but we made it out of Sofia and eventually home, even being
able to stop at the chemist to pick up pain killers. Again our GP,
Neli, proved to be a godsend, the prescribed painkillers were on the
restricted list and although the prescription was on hospital paper
we didn’t have the ‘right’ papers again, a phone call to Neli,
out of her working hours, and she got the pharmacy to give us the
drugs on the understanding we would collect the correct paperwork
from her, and give to them, the following morning.<br />
<br />
Next
stage, after recovery and feeding up at home, is back to Sofia for
Keith eviction. </span>
</div>
<br />Beezonehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07652607785990497294noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6140922967091032232.post-42392283194021332662019-08-28T21:48:00.000-07:002019-08-28T21:48:01.822-07:00Enlightenment
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<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">24/08/2019</span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">It's not often I'm moved
enough to write for the sake of leaving my inner thoughts to
posterity, but here goes.</span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">6 days ago I went to Ruse
hospital to get a thorough check up on what was causing my
lameness/laziness. My right leg was swelling, if I stood too long,
and after a few steps my leg muscle went into partial cramps, it had
progressed to a point I was walking with sticks. <br />
<br />
Even
after living here in Bulgaria for 7 years talking to plants and
animals only goes so far in expanding ones Bulgarian vocabulary. So
in a foreign hospital with limited useful vocabulary I find myself.
The reception staff are helpful and in a mix of broken English, from
them, and broken Bulgarian from us, they direct me to the
consultant my GP has made an appointment with. This initial
consultant after examination takes me to see a neurological
consultant who tested with ultrasound my venous comings and goings
with no apparent problems. After this the initial consultant and
another doctor had a conflab on what to do next , deciding that an
overnight stay was appropriate so they could give me a CAT scan.
This would be my first ever overnight stay in a hospital in my life.</span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">I was led to ward 6, a small
very clean and airy room with 4 beds, very well appointed with
Aircon, well lit, en suite shared shower room/toilet and 3 other
patients. Angeliss, a farmer, was just out of surgery, colostomy
bag and nil by mouth, he looked in terrible shape. Angel, who was
also a farmer of a small holding, had two thrombosis, one in each
leg, and a problem with his hip, the other guy was Slavi, yep him a
farmer too, he had lower back problems and possibly urinary issues.</span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">The beds, let me just say that
even though they were newish looking, the design and construction of
them gave them a comfort factor of lying in a half filled scrap metal
bin. Given I was to spend much time lying down it was a less than
enjoyable experience to say the least. However, incorporated into
the design was a clever overheight feature whereby anyone over 5’6”
(1.524m) tall could dangle their pinkies through the ingeniously
designed footboard which wasn’t a board but bars, which made me
think of prison and become an inmate.<br />
<br />
My main reason for
writing this was to convey my thoughts and the feelings I experienced
during my stay. Angel was a guy of a similar age to me and took the
role of ward commander, he made sure everyone was comfortable, their
drip was operating correctly and alerted the nurses when they were
used up. He was often loud as often most Bulgarians are, it seems to
be a great language to converse with people in a different postcode
with clarity. Angeliss was waking up on day 2 , still "nil by
mouth" and was unable to speak with any clarity but Angel was
patient and began to understand his words and was assisting him with
comfort and fluids. Angel would often just talk in general to no one
in particular just inform anyone listening about news topics of the
day, little by little Angeliss was able to speak more clearly and was
able to take food and drink. He was asking about the other inmates
and how their conditions were and got to form a mental picture of who
we were and where we were in relation to him, as he wasn’t able to
move his head very much. Angeliss was given some exercises to
perform by clasping hands and raising them above his head, he cried a
few times, once due to I guess to feeling helpless and needing care
from others, but Angel was there to support him mentally and
physically along with some additional help from Slavi. Its a
humbling sight to see two partially lame patients lifting a big man
up in the bed so he can get comfortable and eat properly.</span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Angel invited me on the first
morning to join him and Slavi for coffee at the local cafe after
morning BP checks IV drips and injections. I was moved, they didn’t
know me from Adam, knew I didn’t speak Bulgarian well but that
didn’t seem to matter and it didn’t. We managed to communicate
our lifestyles and occupations, garden sizes, veggies grown and
animals kept, broached subjects like the EU and communism, it was
interesting to get an idea of how my generation of Bulgarians feel
about these subjects, made more interesting by having to interpret
the answer with reading body language.<br />
<br />
Having never been
admitted to hospital before I do not know if this sense of
camaraderie exists in Uk hospitals, in fact is it even possible
considering all the health and safety issues surrounding lifting
patients and such like?</span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Overall I was impressed with
the speed of service and the cleanliness. They don’t use overly
powerful cleaning agents although when the sink was scrubbed it
smelled like the orderly was using diesel.</span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br />
<br />
</span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Day 2 involved much puncturing
of skin and taking of pressures, now I had my drip needle inserted I
was an official inmate. An orderly (who was well beyond pension
age) arrived with a wheelchair to take me to the CAT scanner room,
the operator spoke good English and explained the procedure and the
scan was done, the results produced showed a scarring on my prostate.
I was asked if I'd had surgery there, the answer was no, so in the
afternoon I was wheeled down to the scan room again for a 2nd scan
with added dye, dripping into me, to improve the images.</span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br />
<br />
</span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Day 3 The results were in, I
had a kidney 4 times the size it should be and it was pressing on
things which caused me walking problems. It’s full of carcinomas.
How did I feel about this? The first word that comes to mind is
accepting, I kind of knew cancer would appear on my radar sometime in
my life. I was expecting them to say I had prostate cancer, so the
fact it was in my kidney was something of a surprise. My next
thought was “oh, so that’s why my kidney’s been hurting a
little” and here’s me blaming it on a bad back.<br />
<br />
The
right kidney is now called Keith, thanks to my kids, and is being
evicted asap, as the scans indicate the carcinomas are encapsulated
within Keith, so we are now looking at a simple kidney removal, apart
from potential poking about in my veins to remove lymph nodes.
Tracey was in attendance and we had the situation explained by the
Urologist who spoke English very well and couldn’t understand why
we weren't going to go back to the UK for the operation. Our answer
was simple, Time and Trust. It would take so long to be operated
on in the UK that it would be a wasted effort. I have total trust
in the Bulgarian system, our experiences in the past 7 years have far
exceeded what we expected from Bulgaria and conversely made us
realise how poorly managed, financially overloaded, inefficient and
not patient orientated the NHS is. <br />
<br />
I wrongly assumed I
would be homeward bound, now they had given me a diagnosis on the
cause of my leg problem and recommendations of hospitals/surgeons to
have Keith obliterated. No, today was also electrocution day,
they were concerned about my leg function so I went to an English
speaking, and pretty, skeleton and nerve specialist, who wired me up
to her computer and used a forked probe to send shocks into my nerves
starting at the foot. So far so good, then she put the probe behind
my knee, I said this will be interesting, it was, the shock sent my
leg shooting from the bed and almost took her eyebrows off with my
toenails. I was to stay the full 6 days for observations and
medication for my leg pain and blood condition (it was like me, a bit
thick).
</span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br />
<br />
</span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Day 4 Morning starts at 5:30
with a big DOBRO UTRO (Good morning) and switching on the arc lamps
to test our ability to endure pain from a different source and
perhaps stress levels. The orderlies come in and do a quick
assessment of things that need attention and leave, then the ward
sister comes in to first take blood pressures then deliver the
different drip liquids and hypodermics that maybe necessary. We have
time for a wash and brush up, tidy the beds and lie down again to get
hooked up to our respective drips. This kills an hour or so, then
breakfast is served, most often it’s a bread roll with a cheese
component and a cup of chai (tea) or hot milk. After this the ward
doctor came in to inspect our well being and administer any
injections and drop off our daily allocation of tablets. Now was
cafe time and off we went like the 3 lame musketeers hobbling along
the corridors and down in the lift to the awaiting cafe nestled
amongst a forest of trees. Something Bulgaria has been great at is
building sympathetically within woodland. <br />
<br />
It was great
listening to Bulgarian conversation between Angel and Slavi whilst
watching people go about their business around the woodlands/hospital
grounds. I was recognising many words and phrases in this
conversation so I interjected to Slavi with "Az misli toy imash
golyama gradina" roughly translating, in my mind at least, as
“I think you have a big garden” It made enough sense that both
my friends laughed out loud Slavi replied with "Da ima tree
decare" (yes I have 3 decares) we then started conversing with
many words I knew relating to gardens and animals, it felt so good to
enjoy the freedom of conversation. Then Slavi gets a phone call so
gets up and leaves us, I look at Angel quizzically and he tells me
“Slavi needs to go for tests” so we light another cigarette,
just before he turns the corner Slavi shouts back I am also needed at
which point Angel says “no rush, finish your cigarette” not long
after Slavi and an orderly meet me outside room 6 and we are
accompanied <span style="font-style: normal;">to
the neurologist. The neurologist located a throm in my right calf
muscle. Salvi had been seen first but it was touching to find him
waiting for me, once my examination was finished, I assumed Slavi
because he knew the way back, it turns out he didn’t.</span></span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br />
<br />
</span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Day 5 Just one more day to
endure and I would be home, I was loaded up this morning with 2 litre
bottles of something and a 1/4 litre of something else, I asked if
this was Gin and 2 tonics apparently it wasn't. At morning coffee I
asked the boys a question that had me perplexed - when you’re
talking to the village Baba about your health they always recommend
Rakia (which is a local brandy or moonshine) for ailments inside and
out, I asked why they had none in the hospital, they admitted it was
a mystery to them also. Knowing it was possible I wouldn’t see
Slavi tomorrow I wished him well and that his Op on Monday in Sofia
went well, he replied with of course we will meet up for coffee in
the morning.</span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br />
<br />
</span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Day 6 Time to leave. The ward
doctor came in at 8:30 and announced to me with a huge smile that If
I give her my lichna (residency) card I can go home, I was packed up
and sat on my bed like an eager schoolboy on his first school trip.
I forgot that when she had said yesterday, I can leave in the
morning, that could potentially include the minutes up to midday.
Eventually the paperwork was complete I was issued with, in
duplicate, a full description of the treatment and medications I had
been administered during my time there. The doctor showed me where
to sign and then pointed to my drip feed. When she removed it a
fountain of blood issued across the room, she was a little irate with
me that I wasn’t pressing the vein hard enough. Anyway I was given
a swab which I was to press onto my skin which made walking with
sticks and hand shaking somewhat awkward.
</span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Angel was also leaving today,
he in a similar condition was outside the doctors office, both
reluctant to spray each other and become proper blood brothers we
managed a masonic like handshake while holding our veins closed. He
said something about Slavi which gave me the impression he was having
tests that morning and wouldn’t be going for coffee, I hope to meet
them again at some point in the future. After a few more minutes the
vein had closed up, I went to collect my things and say goodbye to
Angeliss, he was moved to tears, I wished him all the best with tears
also.</span></div>
<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;">
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<div align="left" class="western" style="line-height: 108%; margin-bottom: 0.28cm;">
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</div>
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<br />Beezonehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07652607785990497294noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6140922967091032232.post-39443263734672999622016-12-28T08:35:00.001-08:002016-12-28T08:35:06.502-08:00Leko Po LekoI'm sure at least one of you is wondering why it has taken over 3 months for me to update the blog. Well despite this being about us and our life here the reasons concern others so you're only getting edited highlights, or lowlights, in this case. Different people, close to us, in 2 different countries have managed to hurt us by their actions and whilst we can't control the actions of others they still impact on us, so much so that a lot of thoughts and possible courses of action have taken precedence over moving our life and home here forwards. The situations still aren't resolved but we are slowly moving ourselves back on course, my view is as the person causing me heartache won't be alive for much longer (also a cause of distress) disrupting my life to pander to them is not an option. Paul is also moving forward but hurting a lot more than I am, so although we haven't discussed it in depth I suspect he is not yet clear on his course forward. Whatever others may think our priority has to be our own long term well being, and any decisions made will be based on that mindset.<br />
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I'm slowly learning to 'ignore' the tremors we feel from earthquakes in Romania, although one early hours of the morning, in September, did have me walking around the house, workshop and compound doing a burglar check before I realised what had woken me. Luckily we seem to be far enough away for no damage to be caused, although day after earthquake is always a check property day. We also rearranged the furniture in the kitchen/diner for winter living, just before we entered an Indian summer with the temperatures soaring again, pity we had already dismantled the pool and put it away for winter. As a result of moving the furniture we decided the pechka (woodburner) would be better on a different wall, so we needed to locate some tiles that would match the stone cladding. This we did, Paul tiled the wall, we moved the pechka and found out that location was not as good at heating the whole area, so pechka got moved back, but at least we don;t need to paint that bit of wall now. September saw us replacing the chickens that had gone as fox food, the place we got them from had far too high a cockerel to hen ratio and it took the birds some weeks to regrow their feathers, also as they were aviary, rather than free range, birds they are still much more skittish than our previous flocks.<br />
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September and October witnessed 'plot 5' being cleared and some of the raised beds being built. Much use was made of stakes and twine rearranging the layout to maximise returns whilst being usable and visually pleasing. The 2 main beds will be built in spring, after we take delivery of 2000 bricks (ouch). As I intend growing in this area during 2017, assuming I get it fenced off, from the livestock, not all the proposed beds will be completed next year and some growing still be at ground level. Rome wasn't built in a day. One of the biggest uses of time with the raised beds is filling them, luckily as we have been using next doors barn (unoccupied property) for storing cornstalks, as did the previous occupants of this house, there is some very nice compost/soil, it just means half filling feed bags and moving them over, any fuller and I can't lift<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">First of the raised beds, built and filled</td></tr>
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We had workawayers (they provide 25 hours work in exchange for bed and meals) from Taiwan,<br />
Spain, UK, New Zealand & Sardinia, they ranged from 'great' to 'yes well' but all helped move things along here, for which we are grateful. One of the things I find difficult to do, more than normal, whilst we have helpers here is work on the book, but hopefully first draft will be sent to publishers early next year.<div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Dojin helping Paul makes a Bodgers Bench</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Luis getting to grips with the lathe, he made some nice pieces.</td></tr>
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<br />Possibly our (Paul's) biggest achievement in recent months has been the, obtaining materials for and, building of a covered walkway along the back of the kitchen/diner. The roof of this area has had our first (hopefully more to follow) solar panel put in, whilst it's unlikely we will switch totally over to solar, at least in the foreseeable, it's a start. In addition having the kitchen basic structure in for the past year, and a bit, I'm finding the areas that don't work as well, like the back of cupboards, Paul has volunteered himself to make bespoke 'drawers; once I tell him what each area will need to contain.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The area to be covered</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Having the walkway means it's easier for Paul to fit the cladding</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Walkway, and solar panel, installed pre cladding</td></tr>
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I don't know if I have mentioned previously my challenge, to myself, of making curtains for the mezzanine windows ... well they are still not made but freezers have been organised and filled with assorted pies, clothes have been organised, rooms have been tidied. I did have a friend come over to help convince me the sewing machine doesn't hate me and although it behaved well while she was here it quickly reverted to its previous malignant behaviour<br /><br />
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December was a month of seeing many more people than normal. A friend who had borrowed our old Audi returned it, bringing with her a friend we hadn't seen in a long time, one without who our mezzazine wouldn't be as awesome as it is, so that was lovely. We visited the big bad city as we had to go and collect a CO2 regulator from someone who had brought one from Uk for us, we can get the cannisters of CO2 here but not the regulator?? only in Bulgaria LOL. Another day we visited friends with new piglets, sadly we are not ready, emotionally, financially or housing wise, to get our own source of crackling and bacon at this time ... one day. Solstice we had friends over for lunch. December also marks the beginning of us feeding the neighbours cat for a few months, sadly the first snowfall we had convinced Illiya that even with us just around the corner it was not in his best interests, healthwise, to stay in the village over winter, so he has moved to his daughters, in the city.<br />
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Beezonehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07652607785990497294noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6140922967091032232.post-59164341103338901352016-11-22T12:54:00.000-08:002016-11-22T12:54:53.112-08:00Social Media Destroying SocietyOnce upon a land in a time not too far away the internet, and by association social media, was a concept of science fiction stories.<br />
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In those halcyon days people fell out with each other, they disagreed, they sulked for a few days/weeks/months and then something happened and communication recommenced and friendships often returned to the pre-argument days.<br />
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School play grounds were full of ever changing friendship groups, based on person A being mean to person B (real or imagined) so person C forced to choose which person they liked more, when in fact person C had no idea about what was going on and couldn't understand why they couldn't be friends with both.<br />
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Work places also saw these changing dynamics. Fred wrote a report which had an adverse knock on effect for his colleagues. This resulted in Fred being ostracised during lunch breaks but then after a few weeks the full effect of his suggestions started showing positive benefits for those colleagues and the dynamics changed again.<br />
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Sometimes that return to the previous relationship was accompanied by laughter and merriment, as well as confusion over how they could have been so silly to allow such a misunderstanding deprive them of each others companionship. <br />
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Then into these times of arguments and misunderstandings the internet, a tool of research and communication over vast distances, arrived. Initially this important tool of communication was reserved for the educated, the professionals, the elite but eventually it was made available to the general populous. Why was such a powerful tool made available to all (who could afford it)? Some say it allows the masses to become more informed, others say it's to encourage the belief in freedom, most saw it as a way of increasing communication between all.<br />
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With the purported aim of increasing communication various social media sites (purely philanthropic and by no means a marketing weapon) were promoted to the masses and embraced with much enthusiasm. Sadly this new form of communication is a bit like a newborn, it came without an operators manual, old 'rules' didn't seem to apply and a whole new modus operandi was needed, and not just for the older users.<br /><br />Similarities to the school ground scenario could be seen by people taking offence at comments made by a friends friend and deciding to penalise the long term friend for associating with people who espoused such outrageous views. Other people would take offence at a friend posting pictures of many social gatherings they had never been invited to, rather than say (privately) 'hey, looks like you had a great time, is there a reason I never get invited to these fun things' they may brood and feel insecure, bottling up these feelings until they over-react and lose a good friend - who's only 'sin' is to have other friends who invite them out.<br /><br />I will admit to being guilty of some major mistakes with the new communication system, someone was regularly posting information that had a cumulative negative effect on my peace of mind so I removed them from my contacts. I later discovered site has a function which would have enabled me to simply stop seeing their posts, thereby keeping me happy and not offending them. I also discovered that if I was having a conversation with someone else, their friends could blame them for my views, just by the mutual friend not publicly disagreeing with me - In my world I expect anyone offended to say something along the lines of 'hey, that's a bit unfair, do you really agree with that'<br /><br />So is social media destroying society? I'd argue yes. People read something written by a friend, or a friend of a friend, and decide to be offended, even if the comment was not directed at, or even connected to them, rather than debate they block. People will also say they are too busy to have a phone conversation and then spend 30 minutes, or longer, having a typed discussion - my opinion of this is it's easier to hide your true thoughts/feelings when your voice can't be heard. Communicating by keyboard is impersonal and safe whereas feel life interactions and verbal communications can be fraught with danger (of emotions being displayed).<br /><br />I will continue to use social media but I hope it continues to play second fiddle to human interaction, either in person or by telephone.<br />
<br />Beezonehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07652607785990497294noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6140922967091032232.post-55035574891372107232016-09-13T23:29:00.000-07:002016-10-17T10:08:37.615-07:00Inserting omissions and catchup<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-tWsJsjOHKLY/V9hm8riKVKI/AAAAAAAABOE/feQ6qZBvqugGrjSCVswMLZbkv7gijTzhACPcB/s1600/002.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="148" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-tWsJsjOHKLY/V9hm8riKVKI/AAAAAAAABOE/feQ6qZBvqugGrjSCVswMLZbkv7gijTzhACPcB/s200/002.JPG" width="200" /></a><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Apologies (again) for the big gap between updates, much and little has been happening in our lives, most if not all of which is touched upon below.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">End of June the Brexit referendum was held, Paul and Tracey had opposing views and other than disagreeing about the best course of action we spent the time in the run up to put as much as possible in place for whichever outcome to have minimal short term effect on our lives in Bulgaria. Long-term effects are still unsure although taking dual citizenship is an option, English/Bulgarian, other than the underlying long-term implications the referendum results have not effected our life or relationships with Bulgarians.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Also in June Shadow and Pointy both had 3 kittens, Shadow managed to lose hers on what we assumed was a hunting expedition but a week later brought one of them home,. 2 of Pointy's died, of kitten causes, and then we had major trauma and Tracey in tears when she unloaded the washing machine and found the remaining one had been through the wash cycle. One thing we have noticed is the cats regulate their own numbers, although we think the kitten clamber into the machine herself not that Pointy put her there The thinking behind them self-regulating is in the month after the fire (2014) 3 o</span></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">f the cats had kittens and basically ignored and neglected them, one even giving birth as she was walking.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">In July a </span></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #545454; line-height: 18.2px;"><span style="color: black; line-height: normal;">British friend came to visit. She first visited us 2 months after we moved in, she just needed some sunshine in her life, her next visit was a week after the fire (she was told about it so she could cancel her trip). She was also supposed to come for the roof raising/one year on celebration last year but unfortunately her health didn't allow that. Diana is one of the few people who regularly tells Tracey when she's being unreasonable and directing her stress in the wrong direction, it doesn't stop us both loving her and appreciating her visits.</span></span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #545454; line-height: 18.2px;"><span style="color: black; line-height: normal;"></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #545454; line-height: 18.2px;"><span style="color: black; line-height: normal;">Tracey is having some interesting times currently, which means Paul is also, by association. Possibly it is an age thing but her forgettory is operating better than her memory. Luckily for both Paul knows her well enough to often know what she meant to say but also have the patience to talk her through things she has temporarily forgotten how to do (such as make a loaf FFS). Also the temperature is effecting Tracey more this year so she sends herself on major guilt trips about lack of achievement, whereas Paul seems to have accepted the pair of them have less energy and taking things slower doesn't mean things don't get achieved - eventually. Despite her forgetfulness the fact that Tracey has started writing down her recipes, rather than recreate them </span></span></span><span style="background-color: white;">from memory, has meant all the preserves and biscuits have turned out very tasty, although she does seem to have had some issues with new main course dishes she's creating - </span><span style="background-color: white;">not inedible just not her normal standard.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #545454; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; line-height: 18.2px;"><span style="color: black; line-height: normal;">The east wall of the mezzanine extension has been externally clad in timber, which was pre-treated, by Paul using a Japanese technique called shou sugi ban. Hopefully the south wall will be done this autumn and the north wall next spring/summer. Paul also started building balustrades for the mezzanine, walkway and landing after finding out Tracey nearly walked off the edge when half asleep. The area done so far is nearest the new doorway connecting the two parts of the house, and will double as a display/storage area, Ideas for the actual mezzanine and walkway are still being discussed but could see Paul leaving the woodworking for a while and welding some metal into beautiful safety rails. Paul also took the opportunity to use a beautiful piece of oak to make some storage drawers for the kitchen, </span></span></span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> Tracey thought he was going to do the adjoining cupboard first but now admits the drawers are so useful, that doesn't mean she no longer needs the cupboards.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #545454; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; line-height: 18.2px;">Tracey has spent some time unpicking seams, measuring, pinning and tacking material for the mezzanine bedroom curtains (heat retention in winter) and then took advantage of having a teenager around to thread the sewing machine for her. Unfortunately despite her best efforts much swearing and frustration followed as the the sewing machine seems to sew correctly for 10-15cm and then something goes wrong with the tension. Surprisingly she has actually asked a friend for help - to sit with her and point out the mistakes she is making, for someone who is not domesticated (other than in the kitchen) she is showing strong determination to master the art of sewing.</span></div>
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<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-HDOkERFx-c4/V9hejc8B_nI/AAAAAAAABLs/kudqThGCkOITM0jwdMdYfVGN3oaUsKBywCPcB/s1600/018.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="background-color: transparent; clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="238" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-HDOkERFx-c4/V9hejc8B_nI/AAAAAAAABLs/kudqThGCkOITM0jwdMdYfVGN3oaUsKBywCPcB/s320/018.JPG" width="320" /></a><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #545454; line-height: 18.2px;">Paul's youngest 2 children (17 & 15) arrived at the end of July for their annual months visit. the month turned out to be very mixed, one of the children learnt to ride a (pedal) bike, drive a car, spent time painting (art) with their dad, cooked some extremely tasty dinners (although the wok needed a blinking good clean from a few years none use)</span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #545454; line-height: 18.2px;">, visited neighbours but to be honest I'm struggling to think what opportunities the other child embraced, other than leave the internet and their room 3 times a day, for food. We did have a few trips out, including one to a Rock Monastery and Nature Park, somewhere Paul & Tracey plan to return to when the weather is cooler. We also went to a music festival, some friends had organised, and all agreed the highlight of the evening was their village ex-Kmet playing Bulgarian, and Russian, music on his accordion<br /><br /><span style="line-height: 18.2px;">Since illiya came home, after his broken hip recovery period, he is being introduced to English food as when Tracey makes things he can keep in his fridge and eat whenever, scones, pasties, biscuits, etc, Paul is being sent round with food parcels. One such delivery run resulted in Paul coming home with a workmans apron, from one neighbour and a a couple of days work, from another 2 neighbours, as well as 5 jars of honey off Bati Illiya.,</span></span></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #545454; line-height: 18.2px;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #545454; line-height: 18.2px;"><span style="line-height: 18.2px;"></span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #545454; line-height: 18.2px;">Also whilst the kids were here we had cause to visit a friend we hadn't seen for a few months her car had broken, beyond repair, and she was stuck half way up a mountain with 2 toddlers. Luckily the old Audi hadn't been sold as neighbour who wants it hasn't raised the money, so we offered it to loan it to her, giving her time to find the right car, at the right price. It also gave Paul the opportunity to visit an area of Bulgaria he had not been to previously and his initial reaction was someone had views to challenge our own.</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">We were woken up one night by a herd of elephants rearranging our roof tiles, the following morning a number of tiles, including a ridge tile had been dislodged. We think it may have been a byalka (pine martin) after the wasps nests, which every roof in Bulgaria seems to have in abundance. Tracey was hoping be hiding inside when Paul was replacing the roof tiles, possibly under the duvet, just in case Paul found a wasps nest and they decided to sting her. Commonsense over-road illogical fear though and she did assist, admittedly from the bottom of the ladder and ready to run if a swarm of wasps appeared.</span><br />
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<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Im9S1Qikf-8/V9hwQO9SxAI/AAAAAAAABOE/vmM3urrDGNMZ_ymzFOMfP8CP5f1C4y-AwCPcB/s1600/001.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="238" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Im9S1Qikf-8/V9hwQO9SxAI/AAAAAAAABOE/vmM3urrDGNMZ_ymzFOMfP8CP5f1C4y-AwCPcB/s320/001.JPG" width="320" /></a><span style="color: #545454; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 18.2px;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #545454; line-height: 18.2px;">Since the children went home we got the opportunity to buy dry winter wood at a good price, unfortunately being used to working in cubics, as opposed to tonnage, we slightly over ordered, we may not need to order anymore this decade. Moving it is a long slow process, especially as bits are being extracted for turning and making some garden furniture, which also adds to the storing it challenge. Why couldn't it have arrived when we had 2 teenagers to bully into helping us? </span></span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #545454; line-height: 18.2px;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; line-height: normal;"><br /></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #545454; line-height: 18.2px;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; line-height: normal;"><span style="color: #545454; line-height: 18.2px;">Very recently we received great news and news that was less great. We are to become grandparents at the beginning of 2017 - OK we may not be blood related to future parents, hell we don't even have the same nationality but our French 'kids' are expecting and we are claiming grandparent rights. Sadly the same day we learnt one of the most unique and talented individuals we know has succumbed to societal pressure, accepted, even embraced, the labels put on them and become a legalised druggie.</span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /><br /><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">This is being edited 17th October, due to my (Tracey's) last paragraph being taken as offensive and an attack<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">. </span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Yes it is an attack - on a modern society that puts people under <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">immense
pressure, and a pharmaceutical business that takes advantage of those
pressures. </span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></span>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #545454; line-height: 18.2px;"><br /></span></span>Beezonehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07652607785990497294noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6140922967091032232.post-91444660437147418232016-06-21T13:36:00.000-07:002016-06-21T13:36:14.092-07:00Bastards, Banks, Blablacars, Bees and Blowjobs.<br />
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As previously mentioned we visited France in April, the plan being to see friends and Tracey's father, although the trip was nearly cancelled when Tracey received a letter from her father confirming he would not be in France at the time of visit. Tracey was obviously very upset, and didn't believe her father's reason/excuse, this disbelief was confirmed after she spoke to her mother, who spoke to father's neighbours. The neighbours response when told of the reason given was "he's a lying bastard, tell them to come and stay here and we'll get him round for coffee". That was never going to be an option, as Tracey knew she couldn't be 3 doors away from her father if he was going to refuse to see her. Internet friends, we had never met, live about 20 minutes from Tracey's father and we had been planning on going over to meet them, when they initially heard we might not be visiting Haute-Vienne after all they had offered us accommodation there. After Paul had talked Tracey out of cancelling the trip they were contacted and told we would like to take them up on their accommodation offer, on condition they had some small jobs around the place we could help out with.<br />
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So trip back on Tracey continued to struggle organising transport, from Paris to Brittainy, and then from Brittainy to Charante - France does not seem to have embraced the idea of intercity buses and the website for SNCF is frustrating, to say the least. Luckily one of our previous French helpers sent Tracey a link to Blablacars, in fact she even offered to organise our inner France travel for us.<br />
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A Belgian guy who stayed here, and helped out, last year is now living in Sofia, with a girl he met when Tracey dragged him out for a day trip. We had arranged to meet them in Sofia for something to eat and a catch up, and although they had offered us a bed for the night we decided to go straight to the airport, after the meal, rather than disturb them at 3am (it was an early morning flight).<br />
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In Sofia Tracey started having minor panic attacks as her Postbank card was not working correctly, when she tried to withdraw cash. The Bulgarian currency wasn't needed until we got home - it was to pay the house sitter, but Tracey's need to be organised was being disrupted. We had a lovely time in Sofia with Geert & Nina, who insisted on accompanying us to the airport, leaving us with invitations to go and stay when we wanted to see something of our capital city. Practically the first thing Tracey did in the airport was find another bank machine, which also rejected her card, not good. Luckily we spotted a Postbank specific machine so Tracey decided to see if she could get it to give her a balance initially - pin number not recognised. We sorted it out when we returned to Bulgaria, the new/replacement card had not been registered on their system, banks fault.<br />
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Airport was fun, until just before the check in desks opened, with people watching. 30 minutes before the first desk opened things got a bit surreal - we had walked into the airport with our rucksacks, spent the night there unchallenged but now anyone attempting to enter ran the risk of being sent through a pre-security security check complete with bag scans. OK due to security threats cars are no longer allowed to pull right up to the doors, people arriving can be denied enter to the departures hall but ONLY if they don't arrive at least 30 minutes before the first desk opens. We're sure there is some logic there, somewhere.<br />
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Uneventful flight from Sofia to Paris, Beauvais, although we will NOT be flying Wizzair again. Wizzair seem to have squeezed an extra couple of rows of seating in, we always knew a budget airline would not be that comfortable for Paul (6'4") but even Tracey at a foot shorter struggled for leg room. At Beauvais we were being collected by a driver found through the Blablacars site <a href="https://www.blablacar.com/">https://www.blablacar.com/</a> before we left the departure lounge Tracey paid a visit to another cash machine, this time with her UK bank card, an audible sigh of relief was heard when it dispensed Euros. The driver, and his wife, who were driving us to Brittany, in a Peugeot 2008 powered by methanol, spoke no English, something we knew in advance, but we managed to have a pleasant 8 hour road trip with them (avoiding paeges) and communication although stilted did occur<br />
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We were dropped off at a car share car park (I love France) where Pauline and Guillaume were picking us up. Pauline and Guillaume, for those that don't know, are the french 'kids' who changed their plans after the fire staying to help us get over the worst and restoring sanity to our lives. They bought their own property in 2015 but took a break from it in June to come and visit for our 1 year anniversary roof razing party. Their new home is beautiful, even though it is a bigger building site than ours, Pauline could bring a sense of civilisation to a scrap yard. Paul & Guillaume spent a lot of time in Guillaumes workshop/barn/storage area whereas Tracey & Pauline seemed to spend more time outside with the animals or in the gardens. It might sound as though we were just doing our normal things in a different location but this is one couple we hope stay in our lives an awful long time - we seem to inspire and bounce off each other so well, both asking for the others input and both comparing ourselves (sometimes) unfavourably against the other. We did provide some practical help as well, with mud plastering one of the future kitchen walls, a skill Guillaume had first practised in our home. <br />
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Our time in Brittany came to an end too quickly, although Tracey has found the recipe for Kouign Amann which is basically a pastry using LOTS of butter and sugar, Paul is looking forward to the attempts to perfect this sugar laden treat.<br />
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From Brittainy it was another Blablacars road trip, this time in a Mercedes C class. . We think Dave & Stephany were most surprised at our mode of transport, but the driver was a businessman who did lots of long distance driving and enjoyed the company on trips. There was some trepidation about staying with Dave & Stephany as although we all got along online, and seemed to share similar thoughts and views, people in real life aren't always like their online personae. Well that was a wasted worry, the only negative, seemed to be they hadn't taken our request for jobs seriously enough but no fear readers, we (mainly Paul) managed to make ourselves useful. We arrived on Thursday afternoon and almost immediately we were offered the loan of the car if we wanted to go out/visit anyone, an offer initially refused. <br /><br /> Possibly other people know Tracey better than she knows herself as being only 20 minutes away from her father was playing on her mind so after establishing the car would be available Saturday we went shopping and then on to Tracey's fathers village. Tracey had categorically stated she did not want to knock on her father's door but did want to go and see the neighbours, to an extent it was a duty call as they are the only means the family will find out if he's injured, in trouble. or even dead. Once we arrived the duty side of the visit quickly slide into the background as they are a lovely couple.<br />
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Obviously the subject of Tracey's father came up, Roy had seen him 2 days earlier (despite him saying he was out of the country all month) this resulted in much anguish (it still hurts) and tears. After an hour or so Roy offered to go and see if Tracey's father wanted to come round for coffee and a chat, Tracey was in 2 minds as to this being a good idea or not - obviously she wanted to see her father but was also anticipating how she would feel if he decided not to come. She still suspects Roy was lying, to protect her, when he came back and said the house was all locked up and he got no answer at either door. Tracey is still making excuses for her fathers abysmal behaviour but none of those excuses are complimentary to him. If he feels the need to distance himself from his family that is his choice but she feels he should at least be man enough to tell the truth rather than make up fairy tales. A sad realisation is that Tracey will probably not see her father again, as although he is welcome to visit her in Bulgaria she will not go to, try and, visit him again to be rejected so cruelly.<br /><br />It must have been obvious, to Dave & Stephany, on our return that things hadn't gone well and their ignoring of the subject was much appreciated. We were sad to leave the following day whether this was because of the great people we visited in France or because we were headed to the UK is debatable. Dave & Stephany very generously drove us to Limoges airport for our flight to Manchester, where one of Paul's brothers collected us taking us to Paul's mum house.<br /><br />Sunday evening was a great catchup just chatting with Paul's mum, although Tracey didn't get a great nights sleep as Paul got the one spare room and Tracey had to share his mums bed (mum's religious and we're not married). Monday morning we had a wander around town (depressing, Ellesmere Port is the inspiration for Zombie Apocalypse scenarios) and then spent the afternoon visiting Paul's eldest son and his family, after we had picked up the new car his brother had obtained for us. (Audi A6) We paid Paul's mum another flying visit, to pick up our bags etc before driving to the North east, Tracey's family via Manchester beekeepers at Heaton Park. We'd luckily organised our travel to coincide with the first night of the newbee training session, so Tracey could visit her friends there, thankfully no stings were acquired as she'd left her epipens somewhere in the car. More time than was anticipated was spent with the beekeepers so we arrived at Tracey's mothers very late.<br /><br />The next couple of days were spent in a whirl of consumerist consumerism, including a family meal out at a restaurant one of the sisters had chosen. We nearly didn't make the meal as Tracey's youngest sister was driving and ran out of fuel half way there.<br /><br />Thursday arrived and with it time to head to the ferry, via Paul's middle son (and family) then Paul's ex=wife and his youngest 2 children. Overnight ferry Dover to Dunkirk gave us the opportunity to grab a few hours sleep, before starting our cross Europe drive home. Tracey first drove the new car in Germany where Paul stupidly said 'if you can catch that Ferrari you can have it', after spotting one overtaking us. A few minutes later Tracey asked him if he required her to get any closer to said Ferrari, she is very impressed with the Audis acceleration and still waiting for the Ferrari to be delivered. The new car also has cruise control which Tracey isn't convinced about, she appreciates it means better fuel consumption but finds it making driving much less fun, especially on long journeys.<br /><br />Although Paul's brother had serviced the car before handing it over one of the injector bleed off pipes was blowing so on route repairs were called for. As Paul is driving Tracey is dismantling a bic type pen and blowing the ink out - it takes a lot of blowing to clear the ink totally. Other than that the drive home was most uneventful, and we arrived home about 12 hours earlier than anticipated. .Beezonehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07652607785990497294noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6140922967091032232.post-77373144850505518842016-06-20T14:25:00.002-07:002016-06-20T14:25:54.341-07:00Spring has Sprung, into SummerIt's been a while since the last update, the main reason being Tracey is broken. Not broken terminally or even permanently but definitely broken. More about the reasons will appear in the blog update Bastards, Banks, Blablacars, Bees & Blowjobs.<br />
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Right then March we had - French doors in, but surrounding walls unplastered, They are now plastered, but I cant find photographic evidence.<br /><br /><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-BHSErjZ0kMQ/V2hOeKDSPSI/AAAAAAAABCk/a0t5ZWnk4QU_h5vXQkCfEIdjhaWVXsPtwCLcB/s1600/006.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-BHSErjZ0kMQ/V2hOeKDSPSI/AAAAAAAABCk/a0t5ZWnk4QU_h5vXQkCfEIdjhaWVXsPtwCLcB/s200/006.JPG" width="148" /></a><br />
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No corridor ceiling,<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">There are also lights in the corridor for the first time ever</td></tr>
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no door connecting the kitchen/mezzanine area with main house,<br />
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we were still camping out in main house, veggie stockade. aka kitchen garden, requiring mesh fencing, greenhouse was still being used as a dry storage area.<br />
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The veggie stockade was dug to 3 fork depth and 9 builders trugs of weed roots removed, unfortunately far too many were missed and weeding that area is still a daily chore. The future fruit/perennial garden is on hold due to lack of enthusiasm/energy/time. <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Veggie Stockade producing well</td></tr>
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Tracey continues to smuggle none meat meals into the menu, much to Paul's disgust (leek, walnut, bean sausages) The ducks geese and chickens decided to see who could lay the most eggs so we have more jars of pickled eggs in the cellar, a collection of assorted quiches in the freezer and 24 duck eggs were dehydrated for winter baking, in case the birds decide not to lay in the snow. One thing Tracey does do when she feels she's 'slacking' and unable to pull her weight is cook, often batch cooking for the freezer as well as that nights, and the next nights, meals.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Labneh in olive oil</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Pickled Eggs</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">One of a number of quiches for the freezer</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Onion Bhajis, for freezer</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Individual pizza bases, for freezer</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Dehydrated eggs, for winter bajking</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cookies, just because</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rhubarb Pie, for freezer</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Bacon, Onion, Mushroom Suet roll (a collection also in freezer)</td></tr>
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Tracey was also asked to complete an interview by expat.com who list this blog on their site, this is the link for those who haven't read it <a href="http://www.expat.com/en/interview/573_tracey-in-bulgaria.html">http://www.expat.com/en/interview/573_tracey-in-bulgaria.html</a><br />
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<br />We got 10 new chicks at the beginning of April unfortunately due to fox attacks we lost most of them, so the area that was going to be rabbit grow out enclosures (needed in about 3 months) has been moved up the priority list to provide secure inside/outside secure area for the poultry. Despite the urgency Tracey is still assembling materials and trying to find a location for the (none burning) wood that is currently in there seasoning. She has a location in mind but needs to work out if the current contents of new location have any potential future use. In addition she is having to take more breaks as seems to be suffering from heat stroke like symptoms much more than previous years - it could just be Paul recognises the early warning signs more and makes her stop working and get in the shade and have fluids.<br /><br />Since we have lived in Bulgaria Paul's youngest 2 children have been coming out for the summer - we said we'd pay for their flights until they are 18, but when the flights were being booked in December James decided he didn't want to come and Ruby could come on her own. Whether this was because Ruby is now 17 we don't know, what we do know is in April Jim asked if he could change his mind and come. He is now coming after phone calls to the airline because although at 15 he is old enough to fly by himself it is not possible to do an online booking without someone over 16 being booked at the same time.<br />
<br />April also saw Paul and Tracey visit friends in France and family in the UK, but we'll write about that in Bastards, Banks, Blablacars, Bees & Blowjobs (coming before the end of the month)<br />
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<br /><br />As the house is progressing we thought it was about time we got some grown up furniture. We have a 'new' king sized bed in exchange for some garden benches, to be made/delivered by next spring (the benches not the bed). Tracey has been keeping an eye on the expat selling groups and we have 3 chairs for the kitchen/diner area, to replace the one big leather recliner that dominated the space, unfortunately they were cash transactions rather than barter.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">1st purchase</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">2nd purchase a pair of matching chairs</td></tr>
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<br />Tracey also has a new residency card, as although we got the originals at the same time Paul's runs until November and her's expired May, joys of living in Bulgaria. This meant Tracey got to practice her filling in forms in Cyrillic, as the friends son we took with us wasn't confident about writing. Saying that he proved most useful as even though the questions included words he didn't know he had the language skills to ask for clarification. Some answers were put in the wrong places but instead of rejecting the form the official made corrections, obviously impressed with the effort (however feeble) made.<br /><br />That's it for the overdue update, but another blog will be with you within days<br />
<em><span lang="BG" style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; font-style: normal;"></span></em>Beezonehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07652607785990497294noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6140922967091032232.post-42555229657659007392016-02-29T14:04:00.001-08:002016-02-29T14:04:36.456-08:00Was this really the shortest month?Beginning of February we collected half a cubic of planked white oak, from the house of a friend who had kindly added it on to his timber order to save us paying delivery for such a, relatively, small amount. Half a cubic translated to 43 planks which is more than enough to make the replacement back door, currently being recorded as the Secret Door project, as Paul didn't want photos of the construction shared until it was completed. It's not quite finished but he is happy enough with progress for the photos to appear here. For the first few days, of having the wood, our main activity seemed to be sawdust production, planing the planks and then getting them to the same thickness. Tracey started getting very frustrated when Paul started using the micrometer and saying 'this plank needs going through again it's 2 thousandths of a millimetre out'. Guess who worked as an engineer in the past<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Micrometer on one of it's many outings</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">It was just a hole during summer, the old rug was put up to prolong kitchen use in autumn/winter</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Paul is happy with the way the door fits into frame</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">So it goes back into workshop for more work</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Don't have the hinges for the door window yet</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">It's in but not finished</td></tr>
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When we went to collect the oak we also got the opportunity to see the French Windows (henceforth to be called the Friendship Doors) in production. These came about as after the fire we were given the opportunity to change things we would previously have happily lived with, and because we were having a new kitchen/diner area Tracey thought it would be nice to make it easier to eat outside. We had been given some surplus, old patio doors to help with the rebuild and Tracey had asked Ian if he could modify them to fit the gap available, after checking with Paul, of course. It didn't take Ian long to work out that making doors, and a frame, from scratch was going to be much less labour intensive and result in a better quality door.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This is the window being replaced by friendship Doors</td></tr>
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Some of you may remember that November 2014 Paul got stopped, after the police caught up with us 5km later, for failing to stop and we thought it had all been forgotten about until the following February when the local police arrived to give him a 200 leva (about £80) fine and a 6 month driving ban. We were told we could collect the licence from the local police station in 6 months time. Haha. August last year we went to the local police station who informed us they didn't have the licence and it was probably in Gorna (location of 'offence'). Paul wasn't happy driving a 180km round trip on the off-chance his licence was in Gorna, so asked a neighbour, who used to be a police officer if he could locate its whereabouts. Turned out it wasn't in Gorna but at Targovishte police station, so off we toddled to collect it. The main police station redirected us to the traffic police where we waited in a none moving queue for an hour before Paul walked out, without his licence, obviously. Anyway Ian & his wife Tracy have a son who speaks very good Bulgarian and as we needed to choose hardware for the Friendship doors the 5 of us had a trip to Targovishte and Paul got his licence in probably less time than it took Tracey to decide which locks and handles she wanted.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px;">Friendship Doors in Ians workshop</td></tr>
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The evening of collecting the driving licence saw us receiving a 'phone call from our part time neighbours (they live in town when working and the village at weekends), Illiya, our Bulgarian papa, had broken his leg could we go round and help, take him to Razgrad and then on to his daughters in Varna, Paul picked up the keys we have for his house and went round with the car whilst Tracey found out more information before locking up the house and walking round. As Tracey was locking up Paul came running back as he was unable to get through the gate - luckily we can also access Illiyas house by going through our garden, fodder field and onto his property. By the time Tracey arrived Paul had unlocked the gate and was inside with Illiya. It took us nearly an hour to make Illiya comfortable, pack a bag, change into town clothes (don't ask us why this was important) and get ready to carry him to the car. During this time we received numerous phone calls frustrated that we were taking so long - Illiya is in his 70s our priority was doing things at his speed not for the convenience of others. For a frail looking man he is heavier than he looks but we got him to the car without dropping him and proceeded to Razgrad. Our thinking was we were going to collect our other neighbour, from their town flat, take Illiya to Razgrad hospital for initial treatment and then if the hospital authorised it take him to his daughters in Varna. Wrong. An old man, with a history of heart problems and a broken leg sat in the passenger seat of our car for over 2 hours whilst we drove him to Varna hospital, where we had to wait for a few minutes until his daughter arrived. We know the reasoning - he had had his spine operated on at this hospital, the system is computerised so all his previous conditions are known here but ... Anyway, the hospital x-rayed Illiya and also checked his heart, obviously they kept him in. the following evening we received an update that because of his existing medication they could not operate for 3 to 4 days, which actually meant 6 days because of the weekend. Illiya had broken his hip, it has now been operated on but the hospital anticipate 3 - 4 months of recovery.</div>
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We have previously mentioned our plans to visit some friends and Tracey's father, in France, Tracey had sent her father a card with the dates we would be in France and received no response. Contact is limited to snail mail and text messages, as he has neither internet nor landline, on his birthday Tracey sent him a greetings text and by the end of the day was getting concerned she had not received the normal acknowledgement so sent a second text. Things rapidly went downhill as the response informed her he had got the card/letter and 2 texts and the dates of our proposed visit might not be convenient, as he may not be around. After reading this Tracey was upset but also angry, she has not seen her father since February 2012 and he never goes anywhere. Tracey is still annoyed with her father but more so because she believes he is 'playing games' and being awkward because she did not check with him before booking that the dates would be convenient for him. To be fair the fact he has not spent a night away from his home since he moved to France it was reasonable of her to assume he would be there during our visit. At the moment we are waiting upon a promised letter, from him, with a definitive answer on if he will be there or not.<br />
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As the Secret Door project no longer needed Tracey to be in the workshop, and the weather has been good, she started working on some ideas in the garden, a day or 2 later than planned as she had strained her back moving Illiya. . Despite the fact we lost a number of birds recently to a neighbours stray dog we prefer the animals to be able to free range - in the winter this is relatively stress free but once the vegetables are transplanted out they will need protection. One of Tracey's plans involves using some of the old roof beams, not suitable for inside projects, to build a vegetable stockade. The idea being that during the growing season the gates for it will be closed, protecting the vegetables, and once all the crops are harvested the gates can be left open for the animals to scratch around in there. The other plan is to fence off a second area that will be for fruit and perennial vegetables, the animals will not have any access to this area. Hopefully blocking their access to large areas will also help with keeping the areas they have year round access to relatively weed free. it's an experiment and we will see if it works over time.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Corner post for the veggie stockade</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Posts positioned just need to add fencing mesh</td></tr>
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Paul wasn't totally happy with Tracey's method of positioning the posts, by eye, and doesn't really approve of her measuring distances by saying one full stride, or tips of fingers to opposite shoulder, is approximately 1 metre. When it came to choosing the height of the posts Tracey ran into problems and Paul took advantage of it. Tracey knows how tall she is in feet and inches (5'3") but had no idea in metric (1.6m) so asked Paul, who is 6'4", how tall she was ... his response 'Short' Funny man,<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">One of three tables now covered in seedlings waited to be transplanted</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Posts going in for the fruit/perennial area</td></tr>
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We received a 'phone call from our par<span style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 17.5636px;">t-time neighbours before the weekend to see if we could help them take some trees down. </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 17.5636px;"> Our response was let us know when you're in the village and if we have time we'll help. When they arrived Paul </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 17.5636px;">was presenting the Secret Door to the existing frame, to locate hinge positions, and Tracey </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 17.5636px;"> was varnishing the Friendship Doors. We were given Martinitsas, for 1st March, and told we were busy and did not have the time to help them</span></div>
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We can now see us moving back into the kitchen/diner part of the house before too much longer which is a relief to Tracey as she is currently cooking on the bedroom pechka (woodburner) and beginning to get a bit bored of food she doesn't get to play with during the production stage.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tracey's current cooking facilities, along with the halogen oven</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Friendship doors frame in postion</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ready for glazing</td></tr>
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Death is one of those areas where whatever we want to say about the person has the potential to sound trite and meaningless to those left behind. One of the followers of this blog has been very inspirational and encouraging to Tracey and it seemed that Tracey & Sara, despite only having met in the real world once, had much in common with their outlook on life and food. We knew Sara had joint problems but were totally shocked when her husband announced her death. Dave is continuing with Sara's blog which records their life and fantastic achievements since moving to Bulgaria. For those interested in a similar, but different rural life in Bulgaria we recommend a trip over to see <a href="http://debrazzaman.blogspot.bg/">http://debrazzaman.blogspot.bg/</a>, at the moment Dave is using it to come to terms with his loss but even that gives a personal insight into the Bulgarian traditions surrounding such a painful subject. <br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Whether it is the fact that we haven't one a big shop in over a month, so are running low on basics or Tracey's restricted cooking but Paul has been having weird dreams.<span style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21.4667px;"> It was the end of the world, to most people this would be enough of a </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21.4667px;">nightmare scenario right? No, what Paul's </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21.4667px;">nightmare was i</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21.4667px;">s that we have no baccy nor coffee nor meat stockpiled, meaning it will be a long slow healthy suffering. and dying as a veggie! Tracey is having evil thoughts of weaning him over to a veggie diet, starting off with one veggie meal a week, then 2, then 3 ..</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21.4667px;">.</span></span></div>
Beezonehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07652607785990497294noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6140922967091032232.post-58384077454756195472016-02-07T05:56:00.000-08:002016-02-07T05:56:08.078-08:00Water in various guises<br />
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Since the last update our main priority has been keeping warm and safe. Although we still have no backdoor, the oak is arriving for that this week, Tracey was determined to continue using the kitchen/diner area even though it had been accepted we could not sleep on the mezzanine this winter. Eventually Paul 'put his foot down' and made Tracey give up spending her time in the kitchen, even with the fire on she was bundled up to keep warm. The reasoning behind not wanting to move totally over to the main house was the lack of space to work on any significant projects, also you can't really strip old paint from furniture in areas where you are planning on sleeping, because of the fumes created. Tracey's solution to not being able to cook, or do any useful projects was to patch her old German army jacket which has definitely seen better days. The choice of heart and flower patches, along with replacing the buttons with more colourful ones seems out of character.<br />
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Now Paul's workshop is mainly finished and tools have been moved over from the cellar a major clean up and organisation was planned by Tracey. It took her about 2 hours before she realised how delusional her intention to have it finished in a day, or even a week, was, but leko po leko (bit by bit) as they say around here. It didn't help that Paul had very kindly decided to share his cold, complete with streaming nose, with Tracey so neither of us felt like doing much.<br />
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The first snow of winter was late, arriving on 31st of December, and didn't stay around for long at all. Not sure if it was because of the snow, or the hamper she was given xmas eve but out Baba delivered warm eggy bread mid morning - just as we were thinking about what to have for breakfast - life doesn't get much better than that. Despite the earlier snow Paul managed to dig up a bucket of fartichokes which Tracey had decided to ferment, after reading, somewhere, that this removed their more unpleasant side effect (still to be tested). <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-5iK6NZ4Wnag/Vrc9rHfChzI/AAAAAAAAA_w/98WFpuGzbSw/s1600/001.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="239" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-5iK6NZ4Wnag/Vrc9rHfChzI/AAAAAAAAA_w/98WFpuGzbSw/s320/001.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A selection of ferments<br /></td></tr>
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<br />
Proper snow arrived on the 5th of January, and made our garden look as good as the neighbours. Unfortunately proper snow comes with much lower temperatures so we had a few days of relying on bottled water, because of frozen pipes, we were also unable to flush the inside toilet as either macerator, or the sewage pipe, had also frozen. Unfortunately frozen pipes proved to be one of the lessor inconveniences, defrosting pipes can be much as we found out one evening. During the defrost process our shower fitting split gushing water everywhere at the same time that the macerator decided to back up adding sewage to the mixture. A bathroom floor covered in water and sewage is not something we recommend. At least this wasn't one of the days we were also without electricity, although for such a mild winter our electric and internet have been decided intermittent.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Z8_XfCFJw6Q/Vrc-AqaCzKI/AAAAAAAAA_0/dvnN_SZmTl8/s1600/007.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="239" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Z8_XfCFJw6Q/Vrc-AqaCzKI/AAAAAAAAA_0/dvnN_SZmTl8/s320/007.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cracked shower fixing</td></tr>
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<br /><br />Because of the frozen pipes restricting our access to useable water - the water in the IBC's is for the animals, and that from the well unsuitable for more than crops, we were thankful of the deep snow as it meant we could fill pans with it and melt it on the pechkas (woodstoves) for washing and cooking. Our bottled reserves were running low and were being used purely for much needed coffee fixes. <br /><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">At least we had an advantage when we decided to move to Bulgaria simply from the month we spent helpxing here and the amount of online research we'd done. There are many expat forums out there but one we found to be most useful was expat-blog now renamed <a href="http://www.expat.com./">http://www.expat.com.</a> As well as easy access to blogs written by people already living in the country it also gave us<span style="background-color: white; color: #212121;"> access to a forum, jobs offers, feedback from expatriates, country guides and much more! We highly recommended it for anyone considering starting a life in a new country. Seemingly there are </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #212121;">more than 1.5 million members worldwide with </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #212121;">3.672 of them being in Bulgaria. Unlike some of the other forums we looked at the participation rate is good and the answers are helpful and relevant.</span></span><br />
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Although we had planted garlic and red onion in the garden a few months and the main crop of white onions will be started from sets in April, edging the paths in the fodder field, Tracey decided to start some shallot, onion and leek seeds off, early January, - accepting they may not germinate due to the cold (they did germinate so now she's wondering where she can squeeze them in).<br />
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A week after the snow hit the weather was warm enough to visit town with just a t-shirt and cardigan on, unfortunately all the plans made that day came to nothing as the following day we were back to arctic conditions, sinking our spirits. So because Tracey couldn't do as she'd planned she retreated to the kitchen producing more jars of ferments and her first loaf, from Sid the Sourdough.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-aHV2bnguPZw/Vrc_U28wFII/AAAAAAAAA_8/CI-9JXSeZZQ/s1600/005.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="239" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-aHV2bnguPZw/Vrc_U28wFII/AAAAAAAAA_8/CI-9JXSeZZQ/s320/005.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">First attempt at sourdough, achieved the taste but texture need improving</td></tr>
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We'd asked our UK friends if any of them fancied a couple of weeks holiday in Bulgaria so we could visit Tracey's dad, and some friends, in France before going over to UK to pick up a new (s/h) car and driving back. Unfortunately work commitments meant none of them were able to help luckily a friend living in Bulgaria, who supplements her income by house sitting, was available so ideas about only one of us going were cancelled.<br /><br />February, so far, has seen little achieved apart from the Lemongrass and Dragon Palm rescued from the unheated area and put into intensive care and many seeds started in front of the, main house, landing big southfacing windows. (There were going to be more pictures but blogger doesn't seem to want to upload them, and after half an hours waiting they have been abandoned, by us)<br /><br />
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<br />Beezonehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07652607785990497294noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6140922967091032232.post-92070358562896137822016-01-04T02:40:00.004-08:002016-01-04T03:01:32.314-08:00Are Bulgarians Rich?<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I don't know if it's the season but the following story has been doing the rounds and a number of people have said it reminds them of Bulgaria and what they love about the country. I'd like to put another slant on this perspective.<br /><i><br />One
day a very wealthy father took his son on a trip to the country for the
sole purpose of showing his son how it was to be poor. They spent a few
days and nights on the farm of what would be considered a very poor
family.</i></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><i>After
their return from the trip, the father asked his son how he liked the
trip. “It was great, Dad,” the son replied. “Did you see how poor people
can be?” the father asked. “Oh Yeah,” said the son.</i></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><i>“So what did you learn from the trip?” asked the father<span class="text_exposed_show">.
The son answered, “I saw that we have one dog and they had four. We
have a pool that reaches to the middle of our garden and they have a
creek that has no end. We have imported lanterns in our garden and they
have the stars at night. Our patio reaches to the front yard and they
have the whole horizon.</span></i></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></span>
<div class="text_exposed_show">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><i>We
have a small piece of land to live on and they have fields that go
beyond our sight. We have servants who serve us, but they serve others.</i></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><i>We
buy our food, but they grow theirs. We have walls around our property
to protect us, they have friends to protect them.” The boy’s father was
speechless. Then his son added, “It showed me just how poor we really
are.”</i></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><i>Too
many times we forget what we have and concentrate on what we don’t
have. What is one person’s worthless object is another’s prize
possession. It is all based on one’s perspective.</i></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><i>Sometimes it takes the perspective of a child to remind us what’s important.</i></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><i><br /></i></span></span>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">'Our' baba collects scrap metal all year and in autumn gets us to load our van and take her to the recycling yard where we unload and it's weighed in. Brilliant, you might be saying, the Bulgarians recycle - No! privileged people recycle to feel good about themselves, baba recycles in order to be able to afford her winter wood. She insists on paying us for our time and fuel despite struggling financially, we've reached an agreement which protects her pride but doesn't case her financial distress - we charge her 2 leva (slightly less than a £) on condition we do any errands we need to do whilst out (we make sure we need to do at least one). We will receive a bottle of rakia, which she makes, and a bag of vegetables during the following week but we know she can afford this more than cash.<br /><br />'Our' dyado (and Bulgarian papa) needed a spinal operation a few years ago, at a cost of 2,200 leva (about £1000) luckily his daughter and son-in-law were in a position to pay for this operation. Considering the state pension is 230 leva/month (£100) how many pensioners need operations, that will improve their quality of life, but go without? Dyado has also asked us if we could take him into town, with the van, to collect some stuff he needed on more than one occasion. When asked when, the response has been 'when I have the money' - the latest trip was for winter fuel and it took him over 2 months before he had managed to either save or get the money from his family and buy this fuel. Dyado keeps bees and although he always offers us the money for fuel/time you can see his happiness when we tell him we need honey, rather than money, he normally gives us a bottle of his homemade rakia as well.<br /><br />Yesterday a Bulgarian, in his late 20's, who we gave a few weeks work to in 2013 called in to see us and ask if we had any work for him. Winter is our rest and plan, future projects, time so we were unable to offer him any work, at this time. We were able to suggest some companies that may have vacancies but at least one of these had to be disregarded as it would be official work - to get a legitimate job with a criminal record (drink driving) is difficult but even without the record he would need to have a medical before starting work, something he can not afford. Unemployment benefit here, just over 200 leva a month, is paid for between 4 and 12 months depending on how long you have been in tax-paying employment. Because this lad has not been able to get an official job he is receiving 40 leva a month financial help from the state.<br /><br />Some more of our neighbours could be perceived as financially stable. They are in their 50s, have 2 children in the 20's who have both been put through university, and have jobs. They also have an apartment in a nearby town, this goes back to pre-democracy days when the state wanted workers near their place of employment, and the village house, which they inherited from his parents. They consider themselves as poor, as they have no holidays, or money in the bank - days off from work are spent tending the land at the village house. Yes they could sell the apartment or the village house and go on a spending spree having foreign holidays but then what. They both work, different hours, so if they sold the apartment they would need 2 vehicles to reach work, if they sold the village house their food bill would increase dramatically.<br /><br />So does the fact that Bulgarian villagers have a lifestyle that those who come from the west aspire to make them rich? Minimum wage here is 420 leva (less than £200), a month. Even without the examples above what choice does that amount of money give you? Yes Paul and I moved here with the stated intent of 'out peasanting the peasants' however good we get at animal husbandry, crop growing/preservation, making do & mending we will NEVER reach that goal because we have choice. We love the community spirit, we love the freedom, we love the simplicity of our lives but we do not for one moment forget that our Bulgarians friends and neighbours think we are mad for walking away from the creature comforts and opportunities available in the west.<br /><br />In summary I would argue that Bulgarians are NOT rich, yes they have a lifestyle many of us admire, and aspire to, BUT those of us who moved here to live a simpler life had CHOICE.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />The ability to choose is what makes people rich.<br /><br /></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><i><br /></i></span></span></div>
Beezonehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07652607785990497294noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6140922967091032232.post-25275242484241207292015-12-27T10:59:00.002-08:002015-12-27T10:59:51.215-08:00Food, glorious foodThis food heavy blog starts off badly with Paul suffering after we had pan fried bass, we knew he had an allergy to shellfish but now don't know if it has extended to all seafood, or if his portion of fish was iffy. He was fed antihistamines and went to sleep it off, with Tracey checking on him every so often. His recovery was rapid judging by the sifting of sand (to remove debris), followed by his limewashing the workshop walls and then installing a consumer unit all before Tracey woke up.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Yg3V62MO9I8/VoAqphRvc_I/AAAAAAAAA-s/Z9qVga9LHuo/s1600/004.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="149" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Yg3V62MO9I8/VoAqphRvc_I/AAAAAAAAA-s/Z9qVga9LHuo/s200/004.JPG" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sand drying on top, cheesecake baking in the oven</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-0TL6Pf7RV_0/VoAlYrFwFwI/AAAAAAAAA80/namesDLMLN0/s1600/002.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-0TL6Pf7RV_0/VoAlYrFwFwI/AAAAAAAAA80/namesDLMLN0/s200/002.JPG" width="149" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Dedicated workshop.outbuildings consumer unit</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<br />We'd decided to cull 40% of the rabbits before winter really arrives for a few reasons: a) we had no spare cages for next years litters; b) we wanted some rabbit meat and c) the rabbits are the most time consuming animals to clean, feed and water so less rabbits means less time in sub-zero temperatures (which still haven't arrived at time of writing). Thanks to a friend we located natural sausage skins, going for pig intestine rather than the thicker cow because of rabbits more delicate taste. The killing and skinning throw up an unpleasant experience when one of the rabbits started screaming (in fear) as it was taken from Rabbit Ritz to the kill zone. Not something either of us had heard before or want to hear again, so in future the rabbits will be killed no more than 2 a time, even though they don't see the others die, or be skinned, they must sense it after a certain number. Tracey had been playing with various ideas for rabbit sausages for a few weeks but because a friend had requested a rabbit, and came to watch the kill, she narrowed the list down to 4 varieties, although her notebooks do contain the other ideas so no doubt more variations will appear on next years menus.<br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-uA-J5l6QMGo/VoAoPJN4MAI/AAAAAAAAA98/hsDw6grldmI/s1600/001.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="149" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-uA-J5l6QMGo/VoAoPJN4MAI/AAAAAAAAA98/hsDw6grldmI/s200/001.JPG" width="200" /></a></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">We ran out of sausage skins, so burgers became an option</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Not just any sausages, properly linked sausages</td></tr>
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Whether it was sausage 'designing' or some other random thought is unknown but Tracey decided that one evening the meal was going to be Scotch Eggs but made with eggs that had been preserved over the summer. The rabbit sausage meat wasn't used for this recipe and possibly that was a good move as we got to enjoy the experience without having to evaluate too many new flavours. We (Tracey) will be preserving many more eggs next year and her version of Scotch Eggs will be a regular feature of meals.<br />
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It was also the last Formula 1 race of the season so Tracey decided to experiment with some double ginger cookies, using ginger that had been previously preserved in syrup. According to Paul that's a recipe that doesn't need any tweaking, although the (vast) number he ate did give him indigestion.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Double ginger cookies</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Scotch Eggs and mac cheese for dinner</td></tr>
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We'd been asked a few months previously if we would go, in the van, with Bati (term of respect) Illiya to collect 'some fuel' for his pechka, we knew it wasn't wood as we'd already checked he had a healthy amount to see him through. It turned out he wanted 600 kg of coal, as this burns slower than wood and he doesn't need to keep feeding the fire overnight. He may have got slightly more than he paid for as Tracey 'forgot' she was in the empty van when it was on the weighbridge, and she decided to walk back to the weighbridge so she could have a smoke, arriving back after the van and coal had been weighed. Even though we took the opportunity to pick up some galvanised steel whilst in town that didn't stop us having to join Illiya in a rakia, mind you we don't think he expected the pair of us to unload the van and put all the sacks of coal into his coal store - there is an advantage in not being able to understand fully the neighbours.<br />
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Away from the kitchen and back in the workshop Paul was unhappy that the floor was uneven, and although Tracey had been arguing it wasn't a priority the floor has now been leveled, which even Tracey will admit makes sense when putting woodworking machinery on it. The machinery is slowly leaving the cellar and moving into the workshop which is now equipped with both mains and solar lighting, mains power, a wood burner and a well organised tool board. Now I bet you are all wondering what the first thing Paul made in his workshop of vast dimensions ... was it a back door to replace the heavy rug currently being used, was it a shoe rack, that Tracey has been asking for since year zero? Yep it was a shoe rack BUT not for Tracey rather for our neighbours daughter, who in Paul's opinion also has far too many shoes. teehee <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Shoe rack for Sisi</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-_ZABDLxzjiw/VoApI-1SiMI/AAAAAAAAA-c/C7NxT9SpIlM/s1600/008.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="239" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-_ZABDLxzjiw/VoApI-1SiMI/AAAAAAAAA-c/C7NxT9SpIlM/s320/008.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A well organised tool board, the bench is a work in progree</td></tr>
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It has also been decided that as Ruby is happy flying on her own, and Jim isn't visiting this summer We are going to see Tracey's father, and some friends, in France rather than visit the UK Our outward flight has been booked which is a bit of a gamble as we still haven't got a definite house-sitter organised. There is a possibility of a flying visit to the UK as the Audi is past it's best and Paul's brother is going to see if he can locate one for us. This is a much better option than buying one here as we know it will have been properly checked and nothing 'hidden' from us, although there is quite a nice one for sale, by a Bulgarian, nearby which we may check out. In addition to the Audi being past it's best before date the starter motor of the van decided to pack up mid December, until we manage to replace, or repair, it the van is only being used to go places where we can leave the engine running, or park on a hill.<br />
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Recently 2 of our neighbours needed help with some trees, so we gave ourselves the day off from pottering here and went round with chainsaw and enthusiasm. We expected it to be a couple of hours but 7
hours later we'd removed a 40(ish) year old walnut from the building it was
growing around and some major limbs off 5 other trees.
in exchange we received 2 metres of the 40 year old walnut, about a metre of younger
walnut, a bottle of rakia and a jar of honey. We now just need to
wait 2 years or so for the wood to dry (hopefully without splitting) and
then Paul can turn it into things of useful beauty. We do need to go back and cut the wood into log sized pieces for dyado, but we ran out off fuel and he's in no rush for the wood. When we got home Tracey rustled up a quick meal and Paul decided he was going to make a banana & ginger parkin, as one does after a days tree felling.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">You can see, near Pauls feet, where the tree is growing around the roof</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-KbE9oAJ7Rwo/VoAm8_QWg-I/AAAAAAAAA9Q/iVDYhTRg6Gw/s1600/003.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="239" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-KbE9oAJ7Rwo/VoAm8_QWg-I/AAAAAAAAA9Q/iVDYhTRg6Gw/s320/003.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Notice Bulgarian Health & Safety - no ropes, no safety gear and he's using a chainsaw up there</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This was the walnut and the roof it was growing round</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-W4edHeKOSbk/VoAnbifCx8I/AAAAAAAAA9g/4wpgniKXgr4/s1600/005.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-W4edHeKOSbk/VoAnbifCx8I/AAAAAAAAA9g/4wpgniKXgr4/s320/005.JPG" width="239" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This tree just needed some limbs removing</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-tYvBqCUgEgU/VoAniE6tpNI/AAAAAAAAA9o/gW64_M1hK34/s1600/007.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="239" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-tYvBqCUgEgU/VoAniE6tpNI/AAAAAAAAA9o/gW64_M1hK34/s320/007.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Home to cake making, and precision cutting</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-hihxE7AZlz8/VoAsfwbwteI/AAAAAAAAA_E/AY536SxTvZY/s1600/010.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-hihxE7AZlz8/VoAsfwbwteI/AAAAAAAAA_E/AY536SxTvZY/s200/010.JPG" width="149" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">One of the trunk pieces we got as payment</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-gN9HHBwphZg/VoAsQ80AbeI/AAAAAAAAA-4/ZGFVeEBZIDg/s1600/012.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-gN9HHBwphZg/VoAsQ80AbeI/AAAAAAAAA-4/ZGFVeEBZIDg/s320/012.JPG" width="239" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Planks, from the other piece of trunk had to be cut on site, because of their weight</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-k_QsVr2t604/VoAsx4bjNuI/AAAAAAAAA_Q/sl1uG54cujA/s1600/013.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-k_QsVr2t604/VoAsx4bjNuI/AAAAAAAAA_Q/sl1uG54cujA/s200/013.JPG" width="149" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Potential woodworking wood NOT for burning</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This was the damage the roof had caused to the tree</td></tr>
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As mentioned earlier we had decided to turn some of our rabbits into sausages and burgers, it's a pity we hadn't decided to downsize on the poultry as well. A local is currently in Germany, visiting family, and rather than ask family or friends in the village to look after his dog he just kicked it out on the street letting it fend for itself. As we have no crops growing at the moment the animals have been free ranging in the garden mainly, sometimes visiting the fodder field unfortunately the dog became aware of this and we lost 2 chickens and 2 ducks. Tracey upset a number of animal lovers, when she asked for advise regarding the official procedure for dealing with strays, a lot of animals lovers seemed to think we should not 'deal' with the dog, but restrict our birds to a smaller more secure area. A very good blog was written in response to the unpleasantness that the situation caused, you can read it at: <a href="https://livinginbulgaria.eu/is-it-time-to-stop-and-listen-to-people-before-judging/">https://livinginbulgaria.eu/is-it-time-to-stop-and-listen-to-people-before-judging/ </a> As a result of the bird losses for the first time since moving to Bulgaria we have had to buy eggs. <br />
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Tracey had asked a friend who was due to slaughter one of their pigs if she could buy a couple of pieces of back fat so we (she) could make some Salo and Paprikaspeck. When we went to collect it wasn't just the couple of pieces of back fat we were expecting, as the pig owners still had plenty of lard from last years kill they had given (yep they wouldn't take any money for it) us all the fat from the pig. Currently we have about 20 200g coffee jars of lard, and 4 boxes of back fat in assorted cures. In addition there are 3 bags of 'scracthings' in the freezer (lightly salted, sweet chilli and ginger), 4 bags of fat cubed for the poultry, once the temperatures drop, and 14 fat balls for them as well.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Lard at various stages of setting</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-peegqx-Ppr8/VoAUgx51f2I/AAAAAAAAA5w/d-E9TcCn7uA/s1600/017.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="149" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-peegqx-Ppr8/VoAUgx51f2I/AAAAAAAAA5w/d-E9TcCn7uA/s200/017.JPG" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sweet chilli on the left, lightly salted on the right</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-5vusZX9j09o/VoAhiBkg7jI/AAAAAAAAA7g/8-NAFjr7awU/s1600/002.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="149" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-5vusZX9j09o/VoAhiBkg7jI/AAAAAAAAA7g/8-NAFjr7awU/s200/002.JPG" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">poultry's winter treats</td></tr>
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As well as making goodies for us Tracey has also been adapting traditional English xmas recipes to incorporate local products, as gifts for baba & dyado. So christmas eve we delivered trays containing walnut shortbread, filo mince pies, cinnamon & orange cupcakes and apricot & walnut cookie truffles ... our rakia collection has expanded as a result of this. Bati Illiya also got a jar of lard included in his package, well he is our Bulgarian papa afterall.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-XfeqLjAGGGA/VoAavRiacQI/AAAAAAAAA6o/q69Dnx2w3l0/s1600/006.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="149" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-XfeqLjAGGGA/VoAavRiacQI/AAAAAAAAA6o/q69Dnx2w3l0/s200/006.JPG" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Random jars of homey fermented pomegranate</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-A9LcJI34iAU/VoAbVG4l9SI/AAAAAAAAA7A/uGumsPTdmio/s1600/009.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="239" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-A9LcJI34iAU/VoAbVG4l9SI/AAAAAAAAA7A/uGumsPTdmio/s320/009.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Walnut Shortbread</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-XT2dQVvvCdQ/VoAbLpOuwnI/AAAAAAAAA64/UfyXtNMTN3M/s1600/010.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="149" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-XT2dQVvvCdQ/VoAbLpOuwnI/AAAAAAAAA64/UfyXtNMTN3M/s200/010.JPG" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Dark Chocolate Truffles</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Te6O9kkafmw/VoAbj2Y1k_I/AAAAAAAAA7I/ZjB31k-Z4ZU/s1600/011.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="149" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Te6O9kkafmw/VoAbj2Y1k_I/AAAAAAAAA7I/ZjB31k-Z4ZU/s200/011.JPG" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Milk Chocolate Truffles</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-pk_UvUJN4es/VoAhcKHK9yI/AAAAAAAAA7Y/6eBcF6jNotg/s1600/001.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-pk_UvUJN4es/VoAhcKHK9yI/AAAAAAAAA7Y/6eBcF6jNotg/s320/001.JPG" width="239" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">We had to test one of each</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jTPCA0B9Ut8/VoAh7rVMgsI/AAAAAAAAA7w/lTYnIm8PfFk/s1600/004.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jTPCA0B9Ut8/VoAh7rVMgsI/AAAAAAAAA7w/lTYnIm8PfFk/s200/004.JPG" width="149" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cinnamon/orange</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Add caption</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ffJxG6Nq188/VoAiJPN86bI/AAAAAAAAA74/3pPgZkaq4zQ/s1600/006.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="149" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ffJxG6Nq188/VoAiJPN86bI/AAAAAAAAA74/3pPgZkaq4zQ/s200/006.JPG" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tracey admires those who can produce food that looks like the mass produced version</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Random cookies</td></tr>
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We approach the end of 2015 reasonably satisfied with what we have achieved this year (we can always do more/better) and both suffering with winter sniffles, probably as a result of the mild weather. Next year we will probably more actively encourage helpers from both <a href="https://www.workaway.info/644195941216-en.html">https://www.workaway.info/644195941216-en.html</a> and <a href="http://www.helpx.net/host.asp?hostid=16306&network=3">http://www.helpx.net/host.asp?hostid=16306&network=3</a> as in the past the really good ones have tended to arrive just as we need an injection of enthusiasm. It's all well and good living 'the good life' but building, growing and livestock doesn't give you a break and the volunteers with their fresh ideas and smiley faces benefit us more than a couple of days away would.<br />
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Wishing you and yours all the best for 2016. Whatever the year brings you remember to love, laugh and be happy.<br />
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Beezonehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07652607785990497294noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6140922967091032232.post-18141121104245018272015-11-25T10:52:00.001-08:002015-11-25T10:52:55.919-08:00Pre-winter update<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Due to not concentrating Tracey shrunk a mohair cardigan that her gran made her over 30 years ago. After her initial upset ideas for repurposing were considered, so far some has been made into terlitsi and a hotwater bottle cover (with rest put in material pile)<br />
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After hearing from a French guy in Macedonia with no place to move onto, we agreed he could come as a helper. Unfortunately he was a lot better on paper than in person, didn't like making decisions, had no opinions on anything and showed no interest, apart from when he asked why something had been done a particular way long after the job was completed and our thought process had moved on to other things. A couple of days after he arrived we heard of a couple of Bulgarian guys who were hitching to a nearby music festival and stranded about 10km away, so Paul went to collect them so they would be dry and fed (it was raining heavily). Luckily I'd made a big batch of veggie curry that night which was consumed with vigour, in exchange we had an evening of stimulating conversation - mixture of Bulgarian and English. Both the lads spoke good English but were happy for us to practise our Bulgarian on them, although they were surprised we were taking the effort to learn it.<br />
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The gates were completed and installation took two visits as the customers orchard and piglet field needed the gate posts concreting in, and allowed to cure. Paul still isn't totally happy with the finished article, but then again as an engineer building rustic was always going to be frustrating for him. Payment for the gates paid for the animals winter fodder which we needed to buy in as our fodder field failed terribly, with not being ploughed. It was a wonderful sight seeing them being ploughed this year. </div>
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Paul came to bed a while after me one night, got in and promptly leapt out shouting at me to put the light on. Something had 'stung' him and he was concerned it was a wasp (yes I react to their stings as well) luckily it was just a praying mantis so trip downstairs to get the camera was needed, he stayed in the bedroom for a while before unfortunately getting caught in a spiders web (possibly Sybil's).<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sybil the Spider</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Percy the Praying Mantis</td></tr>
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We have obtained a lot of extra vegetables, honey and rakia, from the assorted neighbours, over the past couple of months in exchange for Paul planing wood to size for them. We never realised how popular having a planer/thicknesser would make us. We also had our pumpkin and cabbage mountain added to when Paul repaired a neighbours roof, a job he wasn't happy doing as they wanted a cheap (materials wise) job doing rather than a proper repair. It doesn't bear thinking about what we'll be inundated with when they realise Paul now has his mig welder here. We love it really, the sense of community spirit and being able to help your neighbours is what life is about. With these vegetables given to us 'in payment' and what Tracey grew the jars of preserves is not only an impressive quantity but also the variety is wider than in past years, we eat much better than we we ever did in the UK. Because our grapes are not seedless they are not great for cooking with or dehydrating but Tracey finally found a use for them - grape juice, after which she dried the pulp (pomace) and ground it for flour, not something she will be repeating unless VERY bored.<br />
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Some none Bulgarian friends were going up to Ruse (builders merchants, lunch and homeware/giftshop) and invited us along. We don't see the other two couples as often as we possibly should. T'was a nice day for all concerned Paul got to indulge his tool fix habit and Tracey picked up some pretty fripperies for the house. It's always nice to spend a relaxed day but still achieve something, however minor. <br />
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Tracey kills house plants so is being brave this year and as well as splitting and transplanting herbs in the garden she has potted some up for inside the house over winter, as well as some of the hot chilli plants. We don't have a lot of confidence on any of them being alive in spring but they do have a chance with being edibles.<br />
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The goats, which we got in April, weren't proving to be a great success. Yes they were amusing, they were friendly - too much at times following us every where like dogs, but trying to build and entertain goats was possibly too much for us. We protected the trunks of the fruit trees we didn't want killing but in September we found a fence between the compound and garden broken resulting in loads of stolen green tomatoes, other tomato plants with snapped stems, raspberries 'pruned' and Krava had lost her collar again (we still haven't found it). Fence got repaired and we kind of accepted it as part of having goats and then the little darlings found out they could open the kitchen door, they also developed a liking for cement bags ripping them open, spilling contents everywhere. Eventually discussions were had about selling or freezing (after killing) so Tracey put an advert in one of the livestock groups and the goats went to their new home the following day. We had the goats 7 months, we sold them for more than we bought them for, Paul had always wanted goats but now we know we will stick with the smaller animals until closer to completing the building works and when we obtain more big animals they will be sheep. <br />
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It was mentioned earlier that we needed to buy in winter food for the animals this year and Illiya, our elderly BG neighbour located a source and offered to come with us to ensure we got charged locals price. In exchange he needed to do a few errands on route, that suits us fine - all part of the barter system. If only life were that simple! The errands were numerous and spread out, possibly Illiya felt he got the better deal because although Tracey had bread, meat and rakia for when we got back Illiya refused ours putting his meat, bread and vodka on our table. Tracey really needs to learn how to look like she's drinking without consuming alcohol, 2 glasses and she needed a pochifka (rest, aka nap). Our method of grain collection seemed to fascinate the Bulgarians - normally you take shovels and bags, filling the bags yourselves, they are then weighed and you pay. The only time the staff normally get involved is with the weighing and paying but if instead of shovels you take buckets, to scope into the grain mountain, the staff are intrigued and want to have a go at this 'weird' method - we did get nods of approval so it may become a more widespread practice. We unfortunately had a bit of an 'issue' with our gypsy neighbour who seems to have lost the saw she borrowed last year, she came round asking if Paul would go and chop wood for her (no idea where hubby is), she would pay for the chainsaw fuel. Normally this would not have caused an issue but Paul was in the middle of a job that couldn't be left, so Tracey suggested she return in a couple of hours when Paul may be finished. 2 days later she returned, again at an inconvenient time, and was very put out that she was offering to pay cash but we wouldn't go and do it immediately. We think she expressed her unhappiness to our local Baba who seems to have explained things to her as everything is now back to normal. We also had an interesting discussion at the door with another Bulgarian who had snapped his cars fan belt and seemed most surprised we didn't have the means to repair it, or a spare just sitting around.<br />
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Although Tracey would have liked parts of the house finishing before starting the barn rebuild nearly half the barn had been designated as Paul's new workshop which would be necessary if he were to build a stable door (replacement for the burnt backdoor - currently a heavy blanket) and other items necessary to get our home finished. So breeze blocks were purchased to build the east wall - this wall will be between the animal part of the barn and the workshop, breeze block will be a more effective fire break than a timber wall (Yes Tracey is still paranoid) We were progressing slowly and then Miki & Laura arrived from Barcelona, wow did their enthusiasm move that job along. It also helped that neither of them had a problem with heights, so were able to be more help to Paul than Tracey, who will now go up ladders but is in tears after the 3rd rung. This couple have joined the small bunch of helpers we are pleased entered our lives, NOT for the physical help they provide (we appreciate that from all helpers) but their personalities are such they bring a new lease of life to projects (rebuilding our home) that survive long after they leave. We are not just rebuilding it for us but also for them, not literally but helpers like this show so much faith, in us, and admiration for what we have achieved we can't give up, however tired we sometimes feel. Although now the temperatures have dropped Tracey has discovered her hip (dislocated summer 2014) is still causing her pain and restricting the weights she can lift/carry, so no doubt work will slow down considerably for the next few months. The barn/workshop is now at the stage where electrics are going in and whilst the tools need mains, or an excessive amount of batteries, the lighting will be supplied by LEDs, mainly for their quality of light but they have the added benefit that we can solar power them.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">3rd October 2015</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">8th October 2015</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">13th October 2015<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">17th October 2015</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">18th October 2015</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">4th Novemeber 2015 (South side of roof still waiting for us to locate tiles)</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">21st November 2015, Paul not happy about tiles being a different colour but we can possibly sort that at a later date</td></tr>
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Unfortunately we couldn't keep Miki and Laura but while they were here the workshop roof started being tiled, we had to wait a month before it could be finished as we had problems locating reclaimed tiles. Those we got weren't exactly the same but close enough to give us a leak free workshop roof, and far enough away to give Paul some more grey hairs.<br />
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Some of our winter clothes have come down from the attic and while up there Tracey decided to bring down some pictures for the kitchen/diner walls, there is a rumour she's going to turn into a girly girl. We also got round to ordering double glazed units for the east wall windows, that weren't in the original plans, but we loved the light that came through before we got round to boarding them up so decided more windows. Because of their none standard shape we expected to have to wait a week or so, but no we were told they would be ready for collection the following day.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Many more to come down from attic<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Each pane roughly 20cm by 100cm </td></tr>
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We have obtained a cooking pechka for the extension, and although that means Tracey has a comfortable temperature for her cooking and other potterings, the lack of a back door, and corridor ceiling/floor, means we are sleeping in the main house again this winter, rather than the above kitchen/diner mezzanine which will be our normal bedroom. On a positive note the giraffe wall is acting as a fantastic heat sink, if we have the pechka kicking out loads of heat, or on for more than a few hours in the evening, it's still got some warmth in it the following morning.<br />
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We also had a friend who lives a few hours away come visit with her son. Because we have local friends who originate from the same country Tracey invited them and another couple to join us for dinner. It wasn't her finest meal but, nobody died and, the company was more important than the food. She did refuse to tell them the ingredients of the cake (green tomato) until they had tried it, probably just as well, as all said they would have been reluctant to taste when in fact it was a nice cake.<br />
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Before the decision to get rid of the goats was made Tracey had started digging trenches, so she could use some of the old beams to fence off the garden. This action was triggered by the fun the animals are having with open access to all areas of the property, not just the compound. Even though the goats are not here anymore the fencing will continue as the birds can also be destructive, especially with newly planted seedlings. The plan is to have protected areas that will only be accessible to livestock when no crops are planted but the areas between these areas will be available for free ranging livestock. Unfortunately, rain has stopped play, with these projects although we may be able to complete before snows arrive, and if not they will be finished before planting commences. Talking of crops we had an unexpected crop of oyster mushrooms growing on wood we have stockpiled in previous years. Another decision Tracey made, regarding the gardens was to weed and cover (mainly old lino) areas she is unsure what is happening with. Helping Paul, with building works, and managing to stay on top of the demands made by the garden has proven difficult and whilst this may not be an ideal solution it prevents her getting disheartened by a mass of weeds.<br />
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You can also tell it's approaching winter as Tracey has switched from preserving to baking, although we seem to be getting a number of vegetarian burgers made for the freezer. Burgers are a nice way to store vegetables for winter usage, as not only can they be the main part of the meal but they also go well with meat - much to Paul's delight.<br />
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No pictures of cakes and biscuits because Paul eats them too soon.<br />
<br />Beezonehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07652607785990497294noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6140922967091032232.post-21004825361600987232015-09-08T05:08:00.000-07:002015-09-08T05:08:01.363-07:00A Summer of more fun than work.Sorry for the delay, in the update, it's not due to work this time but the fact we have been living life and managing to fit some fun activities in for the first time in over a year.<br /><br />Tracey had said, within a day or 2 of the fire that we were having a party on the anniversary to thank those who helped us, Bulgarian and ex-pats. As June approached this was looking like a very silly idea, in fact just a week before the date (all invites had gone out) we still had no kitchen. For most people this wouldn't be an issue, after all it's summer we could have a BBQ, yes and all the salads, breads, nibbles etc that HAVE to be home made, need a kitchen, bloody women. Anyway kitchen was usable, at least 36 hours ahead of the arrival of 40+ friends. The highlight for us was Pauline & Guillaume who interrupted their renovation process to come from France. Unfortunately our English friend, Diana, who had also stayed and helped in the aftermath had a medical condition that prevented her from flying over. Despite all the panicking, by Tracey, nobody was horrified by how little we had achieved, there is enough still to do, including the barn rebuild for those who'd given us remote support to get an idea of our starting point. At least one of those people commented that they hadn't realised how extensive the area affected had been. <br /><br />July saw the arrival of Ruby & Jim, Paul's youngest 2 children, for the summer. Last year hadn't been the holiday they had been expecting with us having no roof, electric, hot water, etc, etc so this year we didn't want them working on the property preferring them to enjoy 'normal' fun activities.<br /><br />
<i>Jim decorating a headboard</i><br />
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That didn't stop Ruby help us concrete a floor and act as her father's assistant on some rustic gates someone asked him to make for them. That's an interesting process - watching an engineer build rustic. In addition Ruby went to help a friend, as a photographer's assistant for a wedding he was working at. As a thank you our friend took his younger brother, Ruby and Jim out for the day to a local open air swimming pool - where Ruby experienced sunburn incident number 2, the temperature had dropped to 25 degrees C and there was cloud cover so she didn't expect it. <br />
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<i>Ruby's first ever apple pie</i><br />
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<i>Jim's jammy bodger biscuits</i><br />
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Beginning of August a friend was having a BBQ to celebrate being in Bulgaria for a year and kindly included the kids in their invitation to us. August also saw us acting out of character and booking a house sitter and a couple of nights away at the coast. Paul didn't think it was necessary and Tracey would have preferred the coast in the north of the country but as we were using the children as an excuse we went to the old town of Sozopol in the south. Sozopol itself is split between the old town and the newer area, our guesthouse was between the 2 so we managed to experience both. The main beaches were exactly what you would expect from a tourist destination but we found a rocky outcrop at the far side of the old town which was much quieter and interesting.<br /><br /><i>Coastal fun and games</i><br />
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Highlight of the holiday was buying a smoked roast chicken, some corn on the cob and having a picnic on the empty beach, the rest of the visitors heading towards restaurants and bars. The kids eventually had to return to the UK and it was Tracey's turn to go back with them. She had planned on going to France for a few days to see her dad before heading to the North East, of England, to see the rest of her family but left it too late to book the French flights.<br /><br />A week in the UK started with Paul's mum collecting her from the airport which gave them a wonderful opportunity to talk and get to know each other better. The following day Tracey's mum & sister, along with her sister's 2 grandchildren collected her for the trip up north. A detour had been organised to visit Tracey's ex mother-out-law, who has aged dramatically in the past 4 years. The remainder of the trip comprised of shopping, shopping and more shopping - Tracey was extremely glad to return home where life revolves around things that matter. That said, family is important to Tracey so how accurate her decision not to visit the UK next year proves to be we will wait and see.<br /><br />Little things have been done around the property and this year Tracey has managed to get produce grown in sufficient quantities to preserve some for over winter. Do we regret having a summer of none-achievement? No - we didn't move to Bulgaria and this lifestyle to work to deadlines. Yes - we are now at the end of summer and some things we wanted to achieve this year remain undone, life won't end because they aren't done though.<br />
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<i> Shelves seem to be getting fuller by the week, if not the day</i><br />
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<br />Beezonehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07652607785990497294noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6140922967091032232.post-75432127440206111092015-05-23T07:01:00.001-07:002015-05-23T07:01:42.909-07:00Oops 3 in 1<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Because it's nearly 3 months since the last update (and I normally waffle on a bit) we're trying a different format this month - few words and many pictures. Normal service will hopefully return next month. </span><br />
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Tracey decided to 'improve' the old light fittings she had acquired, although after she painted the egg holder pumpkin orange the paint had to be confiscated to stop the whole house becoming orange.</span><br />
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She also revamped some old window frames and offcuts of boards to make, pin boards & blackboards. The mirror was originally dark wood and painted as she wanted to check out the colour she, had already, bought for the kitchen wall</span><br />
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As the last blog ended our 'kitchen' was a blank room (with a planer thicknesser in the middle of it) walls needed plastering/boarding, a staircase needed building before we (Paul) could start laying tiles and building units. It's still a long way from finished but ...</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Somebody, we won't tell you her name, had the silly idea of stone cladding the end wall. Although Paul started it off he did receive help, Tracey took random literally and didn't realise she was supposed to be using a system. Seemingly you can tell more than one person was working on the wall.</span></div>
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As well as the inside work, planting and 'other stuff' has been happening outside, this has mainly been the work of a Belgium workawayer (Speedy), who has learnt to adapt his techniques to use what is available than automatically buying in materials. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Just under half the barn area has had the rubble dug out and a concrete floor laid, this will become the home of Paul's toys aka his workshop. Having this area done was upsetting for the first couple of days (starting area of fire) but now we can see the potential here, whereas before we discussed ideas but made no decisions..</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Because Paul and Speedy didn't seem to 'gel' when working together I needed to find another project for our enthusiastic Belgium - upcycling stones, bricks and </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">burnt rafters </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">into a covered sitting/dining area, seemed like a great idea. The tarp is temporary until Paul decides what he wants to do for a roof - favourite idea at the moment is woven saplings. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We haven't been working all the time, Tracey got a 24 hour pass to travel to a friends birthday, Paul, Tracey & Speedy went to a local restaurant for another friends birthday, and we all took the time to admire the few flowers currently in the garden. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In April Pita, Krava & Tinkerbell joined us. They were intended as breeding stock but the temptation to put the little darlingss in the freezer is growing teehee</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We've probably missed loads of our activities from the past three months, but you'll no doubt find them mentioned in future posts. Hopefully see you all in a month</span></div>
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<br />Beezonehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07652607785990497294noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6140922967091032232.post-64626105337171822832015-03-03T11:08:00.002-08:002015-03-03T12:37:35.894-08:00Quite a good little month<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So what have we been doing since we returned from our French jolly? Quite a lot, or at least that is how it seems. Our home rebuild is definitely moving forward probably not to a level where I should be thinking of decorating but that isn't stopping me.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Beginning of February didn't get off to a great start with a visit from the police. End of November we were going to help some friends out about 80 km away when a police officer decided to flag us down, at the last moment. Driving along a dual carriageway, near Veliko Tarnovo we see a police car with 2 inhabitants, as we reach the car the roadside door opens and as we pass the police officer gets out holding a stop sign, we assume for the vehicle behind us. Approximately 5 km later we learn of our error when sirens and flashing lights stop us. Paul, as driver, gets a right ear bashing for failing to stop, no explanation is given as to why they were requesting us to stop but he's eventually made to sign a piece of paper which he's told says he admits failing to stop. He is also told it will be passed to a higher authority to decide if any action will be taken. December passed, January passed and we heard nothing so forgot about it. 4th February local police turn up, with the Kmet's (mayor's) daughter, as translator. Upshot is Paul received a 200 leva (approx £75) fine and 6 months driving ban. We could contest it, once we'd paid, but it would mean going to the police station local to where we were stopped and requesting a court hearing. As I drive, the mileage and time involved made us decide against this course of action so I am chauffeur until the beginning of August. Just as well Paul is going to England to collect his children for the summer, otherwise collecting me and them from the airport could have been complicated.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18.2000007629395px;"><i>mezzanine floor has given us a safe surface for working on the walls</i></span></span><br />
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<i>as well as extra storage space, for building materials</i><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">My first drive of the van, which I've owned since October 2011, was to visit a builders merchants for 18mm OSB which we were planning on using for the mezzanine floor down, unfortunately Paul decided we would do our standard, as many jobs as possible in one trip, excursion which meant driving, and parking, in the centre of Popovo. OMG center of town equals pedestrians and other road users, luckily I hit nothing and killed nobody, but it was scary. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So mezzanine floor is now down and electrics have been run over to the extension consumer unit and from there to sockets and switches, meaning we no longer need to trail extension leads from the cellar and can work in the evening. This stage of work was done in short bursts with regular trips to the main house, so we could defrost in front of the fire with coffees. The wiring of the extension didn't go totally smoothly as, initially if we put any load on the system it bypassed the secondary consumer unit and tripped the main unit. Thankfully Paul's engineering brain enabled him to locate, and resolve the issue. For those wondering about us having a secondary consumer unit, we will eventually have 4 - the main one, in main house, one in the extension, another for the summer kitchen extension and finally the outbuildings will have the 4th, it's a system that will work for how we will be using the premises. </span><br />
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<i>Insulation and plasterboard being fitted</i><br />
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<i> Holes for sockets and light switches cut out before boards go up</i><br />
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<i>Consumer unit will be accessible once staircase is in</i><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Unsurprisingly my 2nd drive of the van was to a builders merchants, a different one this time, where we purchased rock wool, plasterboard, plumbing bits along with a few other odds and sods. The upper level of the mezzanine now has 100mm of insulation on the walls, ceiling still to finish, and has been plaster boarded out. We originally planned on plaster boarding the ceiling but we're now playing with the idea of covering it in ship lap, especially as we reached the decision to plasterboard downstairs rather than lime render as originally planned.</span><br />
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<i>Corner where staircase will be boarded out</i><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Oh joy of joys, I get to drive the van again - by the time Paul gets his licence back I will have perfected the knack of the double declutch needed from 4th to 3rd. This time no builders merchants involved but a trip to a friends house who was acting as go between in Paul's purchase of some new toys. He is now the very happy owner of proper (designed for heavy use) planer/thicknesser and a slightly less heavy duty bandsaw, along with hand planers, clamps and other bits and bobs. Add these toys to his lathe and other bits and I'm expecting some fantastically beautiful bits of wood to make an appearance in our finished home.</span><br />
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<i>One of Paul's new toys, which will NOT be living in my kitchen</i><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Despite us putting glass into the front door, and blocking the cats main form of entry they haven't left home yet, neither has Paul despite cake making taking very much a back seat this month. I started repurposing some bits and pieces which whilst aren't vital, at this stage, will be incorporated into our home. They are projects I can do whilst waiting for Paul to get to a stage he needs help that won't suffer from me just dropping and returning however long later.</span><br />
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<i>Checking the blackboard painted OSB offcuts fit in the frame before varnishing</i><br />
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<i>Frames painted, ready for black boards/pin boards inserts</i><br />
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Beezonehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07652607785990497294noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6140922967091032232.post-59826456637265617542015-02-06T11:02:00.002-08:002015-02-06T12:51:59.479-08:00Ooh La La<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Those of you who have been following our ramblings (thank you) may recall a friend inviting us to France, in fact she went as far as to pay for our travel. How could we refuse the opportunity of our first trip away together, not just since the fire but since we moved to Bulgaria nearly 3 years ago.<br /><br />Well even though our friend was paying for the travelling I was still determined to find the cheapest way possible which wasn't via Paris but Stanstead. What kind of crazy world is it when it's substantially cheaper to fly into another country and then take another flight, rather than fly to capital city of destination country and take the train? We also investigated bus and train from Bulgaria to France, again both were more expensive, than flying, and in addition took days rather than hours.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">So drive to Bucharest, leave car in offsite carpark, fly to Stanstead, on to Dinard, spend 5 days in France, with friend, before returning by same route. It sounds so simple.<br /><br /><br />Drive to Bulgarian/Romanian border was accompanied by drizzly fog but otherwise uneventful, although we did forget to stop in Ruse and pick up some spare tobacco. we stopped at a supermarket on the Romanian side of the Danube and although the Bulgarian version sells tobacco, the Romanian one only stocks cigarettes, but we did manage to get some ingredients for an 'as we drive' breakfast. About halfway to Bucharest we passed a plain white car with it's engine running, without a second thought - until we got pulled by the police about 4 kilometres up the road we get pulled over by the police who informed us we entered a 50 kph area at 71 kph. Paul's passport and driving licence handed over we wait for 30 minutes watching them pull in other cars in between dealing with the paperwork. Eventually one of the police officers returns with passport, driving licence and a piece of paper, all in Romanian, that he wants Paul to sign. From what we understand of what he said it was notification of a 195 leu (about £33) fine but he gave us no directions on where or how to pay!!! Anyway forward ho! The directions given to the offsite carpark were brilliant and even though we arrived 2 hours earlier then expected the staff were great at transferring us to the airport and explaining that they would pick us up at departures, rather than arrivals, as that way they didn't need to pay to enter the area. Nifty tip for when we need to pick up visitors from Bucharest Airport. Flight to Stanstead was uneventful but we got a shock on arrival when we found it wasn't a transit airport. We would have to take the transit train to the arrivals hall go through passport control and then go through security again before our next flight.<br /><br /><br />This wasn't an issue on the outward journey as we had 13 hours to kill but only an hour between landing and the gates closing for our 2nd flight on the journey home. The 13 hours were occupied with speaking to airport security, about our return flight, they responded that they advise 3 hours to reach your departure gate after landing - Ouch. Next we spoke to the airline staff who informed us that the gate actually closed 10 minutes after the time on our boarding cards and we should be able to make it if we ran, but if we missed the flight it may be cheaper to buy fresh tickets rather than pay the transfer fees. The on to the people manning the Fast Track service, who informed us that we would be allowed to use that option but it normally only saved 15 minutes over standard departure security. 15 minutes may make all the difference</span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">. Now we'd done all we could regarding the return flights we settled down to read, people watch and snooze. Stanstead airport have removed most of the seating to persuade people not to spend the night there - it's a perfectly good place to spend the night, if you have an early morning flight AND something to put between you and the cold tiled floor.</span><br />
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very small, even smaller than the one at Limoges, so no problems
spotting our friend as soon as we exited airside, with her was a German
girl who we later learned was there Helpxing. Luckily friend is as
much a coffee addict as we are so the hour long drive to her home was
interrupted by a coffee stop in a small village, one of the things I
love about France is the availability of coffee and the friendliness of
the people, even to strangers.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><i>Friends home</i> </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The day after we arrived was our friends xmas eve, followed 3 days later by her birthday celebrations (she moved both events back a month due to work commitments). Most of Friday passed in a catch up session interspersed with not a lot else, other than much admiration of a bowl Paul had made, and taken as a present. Saturday I was asked to make something with a pile of pigs lights for the lunch event a number of locals were coming to the following day. Taste wise I was happy with the finished article but would have preferred access to a food processor to make the texture smoother. </span><br />
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Pork Lights Dish</span></i><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Paul
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Scary ready to welcome guests</span></i><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Sunday was not our type of thing, really, but I still feel a bit of guilt about escaping to the kitchen, with Paul after about an hour. Most of the guests who attended were ex-pats who had resided in France for upwards of 6 years, with one French neighbour, who spoke no English, present. Lisa, the German girl, not the most popular nationality in Normandy, was the only person present who made a real effort to communicate with the French lady. One of the reasons I escaped to the kitchen is my French is too basic to small talk and it was embarrassing to listen to all the ex-pats talk to each other excluding the French person, simply by their choice of speaking their native tongue. Makes me more determined to improve my Bulgarian language skills.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Monday we had a trip to the coast, not Monmartin-sur-Mer or any of the typical Normandy landmarks but a smallish fishing town. Lisa came with us but preferred to do her own thing rather than accompany Paul and myself, whilst our friend when to visit someone she knew in the local hospital, arranging to meet us 5 hours later. When we arrived the tide was fully in so we started with a wander into town for a cashpoint as we were out of tobacco, this lead us to finding the fishing harbour, but unfortunately it was too late in the day for buying catches fresh from the boats. We then had a lovely, if gusty, walk around the </span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span class="_Tgc">peninsula finding some evidence of the defenses used during WW!! as well as fantastic scenery and that lovely sea air smell, which I miss living so far inland. Unfortunately the cameras batteries had died and the spare ones hadn't been charged. As it was a bit chilly on the cliff tops we decided to find a cafe and have a late lunch in town, this led to a wonderful talk between Paul and a young local lad about all kinds of subjects and ended up with us being shown the lads website and Paul being asked for input on business plans. I think it's just as well we had Remi/Julie and Guillaume/Pauline staying with us last year, I hadn't realised how much Paul's french had improved</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span class="_Tgc">. After a typical French lunch, about 2 hours we went back down to the coast to do some beach walking and foraging. Muscles were collected for eating, and we filled a couple of the daysack's pockets with empty oyster shells for an idea I'd had for friends birthday, the following day. It was so nice to have a full day of 'killing time' and seeing Paul relax for the first time in a couple of days. For those of you who hear killing time as a negative it isn't in our world, it's an opportunity to relax, think about everything and nothing and generally go where the day takes you. We don't seem to allow ourselves enough killing time days, and to be honest I don't envisage another one</span> for some time, but that is our choice at this stage of our life. One thing that did surprise us both was the number of closed down businesses and those who were opening for part days. The retail industry in France seems to be under more strain than it is in Bulgaria, if you go purely on the percentage of empty retail outlets and the number of signs in shop windows advertising 70% discounts off previous selling prices.<br /><br />Tuesday was our last full day in France and the local town had a market on, it is also renowned for it's copper industry so we were looking forward to a saunter around the market for a while in the morning, a leisurely lunch followed by a museum visit or 2. Unfortunately the day did not go to plan as just before lunch time Paul got rather ill, it wasn't as a result of me dragging him around the market - he actually bought more than I did. Thankfully we knew a car was returning to our friends village shortly after he took ill so were able to cut the trip short and get him back to the house. Unconnected to Paul being unwell we had both realised we were looking forward to the following day and returning home. It seems a horrible thing to say after our friends </span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">generosity but we both realised we were more comfortable in our own surroundings and nice as France is, it's not home<br /><br />Following morning was an early start to the airport for the journey home, after farewells at the airport, and provisional plans to revisit in 2019 we tried to get our seats on the plane changed to ones closer to an exit, desk staff told us this was not possible although once on the plane the stewardesses found us seats very near an exit and we were the first off the plane in Stanstead. Luckily we had landed at the terminal which contained passport control so didn't need to wait for the transit 'train' a rapid trot meant we arrived at a passport control empty of passengers, although they did seem a bit suspicious about our intentions. Because the flight, from France, had landed early the gates for our next flight had not yet been announced so we took the opportunity to nip outside for a smoke before going through security into departures. Flight into Bucharest was uneventful, the car parking company picked us up about 10 minutes after we phoned them. Unfortunately the flight time meant we hit the centre of Bucharest in rush hour traffic, even at that time going through the centre is much quicker with better quality roads, than using the ringroad. Once we cleared we started discussing the speeding fine and decided that they would probably make us pay it at the bridge, as this is where they check you do have a vignette for driving in the country, so must be computer linked. Nope we left Romania with the fine unpaid and have since spoken to a friend who has a collection of unpaid fines in his vehicles glovebox, from his frequent trips over the border. The weather was atrocious but it was nice to be home, or at least an hour away from our actual home. When we arrived at our house the cats mobbed us, although the other animals didn't seem to have noticed our absence, when we let them out the following morning.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span>Beezonehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07652607785990497294noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6140922967091032232.post-16349374200356746992015-02-05T08:54:00.002-08:002015-02-05T08:54:38.385-08:00Looking Forward<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">New Years Eve in Bulgaria is a noisy affair with many fireworks and gunshots and whilst in past years we may have watched the displays this year we welcomed the new year snuggled up under the duvet. Thinking about it, ending a day, let alone a year, cuddled up to the person who loves you and you love in return is a pretty cool thing to have in your life.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">New Years Day morning is not such a personal time. The village children come with the survachka, a <span lang="EN-GB">branch
is decorated with all kinds of coloured threads, dry fruits, peppers and
popcorn,</span> and and chant a verse chasing away evil and bad things that have happened
so you have a happy and prosperous new year whilst lightly being tapped on
the back with the survachka. This tradition, called Survakane, was originally performed by young boys and men, rather than children, and we've been told it is still conducted in cities, although in that case only family members receive the blessing rather than neighbours.<i> </i> In return the children get money and sweets, although I prefer giving fruit to sweets. Later that day Paul and myself indulged in my first attempt at pulled pork, not as good as I remember from mums birthday trip to new York, but worthy of tweaking the recipe . </span></span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">(<i>Survachka, a picture found online</i></span>) </span></span></span></h4>
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">During the month I also experimented with cottage cheese and orange cupcakes (variation on last months cottage cheese and cinnamon ones) and banana and coconut cake. The cottage cheese and orange will be a regular occurrence but the banana/coconut recipe is on back burner until I want to experiment more with it.<i><br /></i></span></span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-GB"><br />Because we were uninsured for last years fire our savings took a bit of a hammering so we have a new financial policy this year ... cash only purchases and all purchases to be recorded on a spread sheet. This is currently a temporary measure until we can stop concentrating on the house and start generating an income again but if it highlights serious areas of frippery it may become part of everyday living. <br /><br />We received a summons to the house of the neighbour we animal sit for as the English speaking neighbours were in the village. Despite our limited Bulgarian and his </span><span lang="EN-GB"><span>non-existent</span> English we can normally occupy a large amount of time and communicate enough for rakia and coffee conversations. The summons suggested he wanted to communicate without confusion, he did but it was nothing serious and more an excuse to ply us with coffee and wine. We ended up agreeing to animal sit for another weekend whilst he went to visit his daughter and on his return got plied with bottles of cornoil, packets of cigarettes and bread vouchers (for the village shop). This was much more than normal thanks, but we accepted as we thought he felt he was thanking us for the 3 weeks he'd been in America. as well. The male half of the other English family in our village was also at our neighbours, for wine and coffee, and I took the opportunity to ask if he would feed our animals for us while we were in France. I didn't want to ask Illiya because of his age and health, although I suspect I may owe him an apology for not asking.<br /><br />A friend who was leaving Bulgaria offered Paul and myself a double bed, and a single bed for mutual friends who live reasonably close to us. As we would need to take the van for the double it was just as easy to collect the single at the same time. Unfortunately the night before I decided it would be a good idea to poison the pair of us...I knew there was a valid reason for me rarely cooking English food, mince and dumplings is just too fatty and stodgy, especially when served with pasta because you're ran out of potatoes. Thankfully by the time it came to depart, for friends house, our bodies had excavated most of the nastiness. <br /><br />When we delivered the single bed it gave Paul a chance to look at a bandsaw and thickness/planer that were surplus to owners requirements. The downside of the delivery trip is his workshop needs to move up the priority list, if I want any of my cellar to be useful in it's original guise. Although an upside is the workshop will be attached to the barn so that may be rebuilt and housing sheep and/or goats sooner than anticipated.</span></span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-GB"><br /><br />Although this winter has seen little 'proper' snow it has seemed much colder, this feeling in confirmed when water coming out of taps like slush makes teeth cleaning an </span><span lang="EN-GB"><span lang="EN-GB">interesting</span> experience. A few days after cleaning teeth with slush we found the bathroom pipes, including the hot water supply, frozen solid. No problem - light the petchka (woodburner) pipes will defrost and then we can each have a nice hot bath in a warm room, mmmm it took over 10 hours for the pipes to defrost but we were lucky as the the room stayed warm overnight and prevented burst pipes which a number of friends experienced as the temperature dropped further.</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">Tracey's second trip, </span><span lang="EN-GB"><span lang="EN-GB">within a month, </span> to Veliko Tarnovo was another lunch appointment although this one was tinged with sadness. A friend whose past year has been tinged with much misfortune was returning to the UK ready to start work at the end of the month. 12 females and one slightly drunken male attended the farewell lunch, which seemingly got much more interesting after the group from this area left, with the remaining females managing (deliberately) to lose the male. </span></span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">The mild weather, i.e. not under a metre of snow, meant our gamble of not rearranging things so we had a winters worth of pre-chopped and stacked wood piled close at hand paid off. Sunny, warmish, days found Paul chainsawing both bought wood and those rafters which are too badly damaged to repurpose. As Paul loaded the sawhorse with the next batch of logs to cut Tracey bagged the sawn wood ready for lugging over to the area we're living in. The use of female logic meant Paul moved most of the bagged timber whilst Tracey made coffee, a system that works well.</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span lang="EN-GB">So
last week of the month approaches with a mad hunt for passports, they
were where there should have been, a place we obviously didn't check as
we're both terrible at returning things to their rightful place.</span></span></span></span><br />
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<span style="color: navy;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: navy;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="color: black;"> </span></span></span>Not sure why we haven't taken pictures this month but we'll try to improve on that in future posts.</span></span></span></span><br />
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Beezonehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07652607785990497294noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6140922967091032232.post-64500741482825360382015-01-04T08:38:00.003-08:002015-01-04T09:01:30.935-08:00Paul showing the first effects of cabin fever?Ok its cold and I’m in semi hibernation which gives me time to trawl you tube.<br />
<br />
I
happened across a link to The Citizens Hearing on UFO disclosure. This
is where people who have had experiences and interactions with things
not of this planet have the floor to deliver their statement under oath
to a panel of retired congressmen and women and ex senators in the Press Hall near Washington. I believe they in turn will take that information
to the senate and congress to try and get full disclosure of UFO
encounters etc.<br />
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<a href="http://youtu.be/SgucayRlc-U" target="_blank">http://youtu.be/SgucayRlc-U</a> <br />
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A
few months ago I researched an encounter in Rendlesham Forest after
watching a film called Hanger 10 , as interesting as it was I passed it
off as just a film. However since watching the video of The Citizens Hearing on UFO disclosure in which 2 USAF officers disclose first-hand
under oath what exactly they saw and experienced, I'm not so sure. Aside from the
possibility of there really being 'something out there' there was a much
more important issue arising from this hearing, that was the admission
by the panel that the President of the USA is not in charge of the
country!<br />
<br />
They admit that there is a secret financial/military/oligarchy
which rules the USA. For many years I had heard the term Illuminati and
assumed that that title covered just about anyone in the halls of power,
again, now I'm not so sure.<br />
<br />
I'm not sure if I am going insane now that I’ve
seen that video, but the more you look the more things start to connect.
Mentioning UFOs usually makes people switch off or start mocking,
however if you leave out the whole UFO part of the debate, you’re left
with a huge information hole of secrecy which separates the ordinary
members of congress and President from the people who really run the USA
and maybe the world.<br />
<br />
Its a long video, in fact the hearing lasts a
whole week , but this one in particular is worth watching to illustrate
my point , consider that there you have the panel who have served the
US government watching in awe the things they’re being told.<br />
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Please comment on this page as to what your views are, for the sake of my sanity :)<br />
Thank you.Beezonehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07652607785990497294noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6140922967091032232.post-5722025710989530162014-12-31T10:25:00.003-08:002014-12-31T10:25:56.742-08:00Cakes and CarsIt's the last day of 2014 and I know many expect us to be saying good riddance and hoping next year is a better year. We're not, 2014 was a GREAT year. Yes we had some hiccups but those hiccups gave us a fantastic opportunity to rebuild our home, even better. They restored our faith in the goodness of people, friends and strangers and showed us that together Paul and Tracey are a great team.<br />
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In the spirit of team-work December has been a month of weight gain for me as the experimental cakes I've been making to feed Paul's sweet tooth have been shared equally. It took many attempts but the recipes for Peanut butter cupcakes, Cottage cheese and cinnamon cakes, Choc and ginger cupcakes are now perfected although the Chocolate and Banana Juice cakes need more work as the banana flavour wasn't strong enough. Oh I forgot the coffee and walnut cupcakes which by now have become my fallback 'need cake' bake. I made a double batch on one occasion so I could thank Baba Bonner (lives across the green from us) for the <span class="st">terlitsi she made us. The gratitude with which she accepted the cakes, with some goose feathers she'd requested, was humbling after all the things she has done for us this past year.</span><br />
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<i><span class="st">Terlitsi (yes I always wear odd socks)</span></i><br />
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<span class="st">Paul and I went out for a day of builders merchants and supermarkets and it was only a few hours after our return that I realised I hadn't felt a sense of pessimistic dread on the approach home. previous trips out have resulted in a stomach sinking and general tensing up in the last few miles expecting to see our home burnt to the ground. Illogical I know but it happened and I'm pleased to be over that stage.</span><br />
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Following a flippant comment I made (do I make any other type) about a friends heart shaped Yorkshire Puddings a trip to Ruse and shops was arranged so she could increase her kitchen supplies. As our cats seem to enjoy eating silicon cake moulds I thought it a good opportunity to obtain some replacements, The tray, bread tins, cork sheets, board game and a few other pieces all magically jumped into my hands as I was walking around the store and refused to be returned to the shelves. During the trip on of our friends mentioned that a friend of hers needed a house sitter over the holiday period, the money originally offered seemed low for such a last minute request for a time most people want to be with their families. The possibility of earning some money for building materials did hold some interest, so I mentioned it to Paul who had no objections to us being apart over the festive period. Negotiations over financial <span class="st">reimbursement started being conducted via email, the outcome was not as much as I think it should have been but it meant we could obtain 120 square metres of good quality insulation materials without dipping further into savings.</span><br />
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We had an enquiry from a Taiwanese guy via Helpx who needed a host on
fairly short notice. My initial response was 'sorry, not this time of
year' but after I mentioned it to Paul my decision was over-ruled and
we contacted the guy to say he could come for a few days to give him a
base whilst sorting out a longer term host. It kind of went wrong from the start with Paul not taking a phone with him
when he went to collect and then the potential helper had decided to
get the train not the bus (stations miles apart) but it wasn't a
disaster and we ending up hosting someone who found jobs to keep himself
busy for a couple of weeks. I do think if we hadn't specifically
requested him to move on he would still be here but my mindset wasn't
geared to having others around. Winter is Paul and Tracey time -
little work gets done but we play with ideas, chop wood, potter with
numerous small jobs and generally just live.<br />
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Mid December some of the 'ladies' I know organised a lunch in Veliko Tarnovo and although I didn't want to go I did want to go. I'd missed the previous two through either being busy with the rebuild or too injured to drive the 90 kilometres, each way. A couple of friends in the area mentioned they fancied going so I volunteered to drive, this would prevent me from finding a last minute excuse for cancelling. I''m pleased I did 'con' myself into going as it was a great relaxing, and fun, time. However, the day before did witness me having a major 'hissy fit' when I found mice had nibbled at clothes which hadn't been protected by cinnamon sticks. We arrived in Veliko Tarnovo early as we knew there was a seasonal market on and I'd managed to get Paul a pair of long thick socks at last years, which unfortunately got burnt - he ended up with 4 replacement pairs. Driving back wasn't great, getting used to this scenario, thick fog meant the last 16 kilometres took me just over an hour to drive and I didn't see a pothole which meant I buckled another wheel rim. Thankfully Paul's judicious use of a club hammer sorted the buckled rim.<br />
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<i>The Ladies in front of Veliko Tarnovo Market</i><br />
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A couple of days before me leaving to do the house sitting a friend in France video Skyped us, a conversation that reduced me to tears. Because she is always busy with work at the end of December she celebrates her birthday and Christmas a month late (we have crazy friends what can I say) her birthday present to herself was going to be airline tickets for Paul and myself to help her celebrate. We accepted her statements that we needed a holiday away from here, together but also knew that money would be better spent rebuilding or home, and therefore live, here. Initially we didn't want to accept, what we saw as, charity but the fact that she said she wanted us there, made us swallow our pride and accept the offer. A deciding factor was the fact that she said she wanted to see us, she's as stubborn about admitting attachment to people as I am. So, weather permitting, we're off to northern France end of January for a week. We still need to find someone to feed the animals for us whilst we're away but that shouldn't be a major problem.<br />
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Paul and myself had a day to ourselves between the helpxer leaving and me going off to house sit. I have no idea what we did other than enjoy each others company.<br />
<br />
House sitting was uneventful and slightly boring, although I did manage to do some crochet and read 3 books. I often believe that we do not do as much as we should here but being put in a situation where the only thing that needs doing is dogs walked and dogs and cats fed made me realise how much our pottering does achieve and satisfy me. The lady I was house sitting for must have thought I was an idiot with my questions about when her wood burner flues were last cleaned, but I'd noticed straight away she had no fire extinguishers, or fire blankets. Initially she had been planning on getting a bus to her daughters, about 4 hours away but because of the quantity of stuff to take decided to drive. When I contacted her on the 26th to enquire about the time she expected to be returning the following day I was very surprised to learn she was returning via Sofia, as the weather forecast was not good. <br />
<br />
I left there on the 27th about 1730 hours not looking forward to the drive back in the dark and snow - although I knew once I got out of the valley a friend lived 15 minutes away and had told me to go there if the conditions were too dangerous for getting home. Desire to get back to Paul may have clouded my judgement but once out of the valley the drive home looked as thought it would be easy, unfortunately conditions deteriorated about 15 kilometres down the road. In addition to the (heavy) snow fall I now had fog to contend with, logically I was closer to friends house than home but ... Anyway I drove on, at a snails pace, but it wasn't long before Paull got the first of a few 'phone calls I passed a road sign for a place name I didn't recognise so became convinced I'd taken the wrong road. With the help of Google maps Paul was able to tell me I was on the right road and also told me upcoming landmarks. I went back to my plodding along and luckily nobody else seemed stupid enough to be one the roads as I didn't acquire a queue of traffic behind me. Eventually I got to roads I was familiar with and started feeling more confident about reaching home, oh dear, that confidence was misplaced as I swerved to avoid a big pothole and went into a skid. This, obviously, resulted in me phoning home again not because I expected Paul to come to my rescue but as I'd stopped inches from a ditch I needed to talk to Paul in order to calm myself down before attempting to reverse back onto road. I was a bit naughty as I told Paul I'd phone him once car was on the road but because there was now traffic around I took the opportunity of a break in the traffic to continue the homeward journey. He did get a 'phonecall about 30 minutes later when I needed to stop for a wee break, and spotted a layby not covered in deep snow.<br />
<br />
It was nice to get home, even though Paul did complain the meal he'd
prepared for me was burnt and probably tasted awful - it was
great. The following day I unloaded the car and was pleased that
despite the work they require Paul liked the lights I had acquired at a
reasonable cost. They will end up costing us more than new lights
but the shape and style will go well with the vaulted ceiling.<br /><br />
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<i>The large one was one of a pair, unfortunately t'other one didn't survive the fire . The 2 smaller ones are the new purchases.</i><br />
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I know those reading this have seen numerous pictures of the roof from inside but thought you might like the picture I took earlier this month showing the new roofline from the road leading to the house.<br />
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I hope some of you, at least, will return in 2015 to peruse my ramblings and in the meantime we wish you all the best of years.<br />
<br />Beezonehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07652607785990497294noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6140922967091032232.post-7127979078459595382014-11-27T07:34:00.001-08:002014-11-27T07:42:00.165-08:00Competitions and weatherSo Paul finishes working away and arrives home unexpectedly to find me having cereal for dinner, as it's not really worth cooking for one. I blame the friends he was working with as they had vehicle problems and the plan was for Paul to leave our van with them and me collect him the following day. But never mind the telling off I received Paul is home and after a few days rest, for him, we can get back to work on our home, a can we discuss a proposition we have received.<br />
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Since 17th October we have been going around to the neighbours to feed his dog and cat, which enabled him to visit his son and grandchildren in New York. I know our Bulgarian is not as good as it should be but we were definitely told 15 or 16 days. Three and a half weeks later! neighbour returns having had a great time and most grateful to us for animal sitting. The fact that he returned with gifts and then offered to pay us for looking after the animals (he bought the food and we refused his money) made me feel mean for getting frustrated about his delayed return. His pleasure at seeing his family also made me think again about a quick trip to France next year to see my father, not a snowballs chance in hell of him visiting me, here.<br />
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Pops place<br />
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After Illiya returned we decided to have a trip to Ruse in the van and stock up on building materials for winter projects. Unfortunately Paul damaged his back moving out old kitchen petchka (which I had sold) so we ended up going in the car, as it's more comfortable. this meant we didn't get plasterboard and more insulation but we did manage to buy a set of ladders that fold down to a sensible length but fold out to enable us, actually Paul, to access the roof easily. Much to Paul's delight I also managed to locate a set of metal wood planes in one of the DIY stores. We also added a new DIY store to our Ruse trips making a trip there consist of 4 DIY stores, a Chinese meal and very little else.<br />
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We were approached by researchers, for a channel 4 television programme, who had been given our details and after reading our blog wanted us to agree to Kevin McCloud spending a week here in January or February. Much as we like Mr McCloud we felt that the stated purpose of the programme was not appropriate to having a film crew here during 'hunker down' months. We also felt that anyone agreeing to appear on a 'inspirational self-sufficiency' television programme would be setting themselves up for a lot of back lash from some elements of the ex-pat community. It's not even as if they pay for the inconvenience - if they'd offered to finance a new barn roof they MAY have received a different answer. teehee<br />
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I manged to find a couple of very good condition preloved single beds for sale at a good price, and whilst not a double they'll be an improvement from Paul having a mattress on the floor. We can always push them together.<br />
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It's said that 'good things happen to good people' what a pile of crock! Some friends of ours, two of the nicest most generous humans around, had a major house fire in which the husband suffered bad burns trying to save one of their rescue dogs. Mutual friends discussed whether Paul and myself should be informed, I love them for being concerned enough to have the discussion but would have been so annoyed if they had kept the news from us. I understand they wanted to protect us and if I was going to return to being a blubbering wreck it wouldn't help the friends who needed help now. We couldn't drop everything and go when we heard but did manage to get to see them a couple of days later when we found out what they may have need of over winter. Following day we sorted out loaded the van with tools they had loaned us, after our fire, blankets/rugs and curtains ready to go help with the clean-up the next day. They have a house to live in, less than 50 metres from the fire damaged property, and when we left it was well on the way to having many life enhancing features, such as a woodburner and beds, ready for them to occupy. <br />
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We'd already 'stolen' some of the EPS (expanded polystyrene) boards from our extension for insulating between the beams in the main house and after seeing how our friends house, which was timber construction insulated with EPS went up, we are now stealing the rest, for ceiling insulation, and only using rockwool insulation in our extension.<br />
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Insulation between beams<br />
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As mentioned in the last update the staircase needed repositioning, otherwise Paul knocking himself out on a beam was going to be a regular occurrence. We cleared floor space so we had lots of 'wiggle room' and proceeded to play 'where will the stairs fit'. They've ended up about 4 inches (100cm) from their original location and in their original orientation. Oh well at least we now KNOW the other half a dozen possibles wouldn't work long-term. <br />
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Some of the staircase reject positions<br />
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The walls behind the staircase location have been deplastered, ready for
a new finish to be applied, and as I was on a roll the hallway also got
deplastered. Whether we do any work in this area during the next
couple of months will depend on the weather, we may just use winter as
an excuse for planning, designing and working on small projects near a
woodburner. The Bulgarian sunshine, which we normally see most days
even in the
depth of winter seems to have gone on holiday. I'm not sure if it's the
lack of sunshine, replaced by miserable UK type grey skies, or just
general tiredness that has produced too many slobbing days. Lots of
lists have been produced of things we need to do to move the rebuild
forward but as yet none of them have been translated into completed
tasks.<br />
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Partially deplastered hallway<br />
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I also won in two competitions. First one was a new tattoo, which I'm not ready for yet but the owner of the tattoo saloon (<a href="https://www.facebook.com/pages/117-Tattoo/1506529302909200?fref=ts">https://www.facebook.com/pages/117-Tattoo/1506529302909200?fref=ts</a>) agreed to me donating the prize to another friend who is addicted to getting tattoos and was our mainstay back in June/July. The second competition was ran by a UK friend, to get her crafts FB page (<a href="https://www.facebook.com/PoppyCameToo?fref=ts">https://www.facebook.com/PoppyCameToo?fref=ts</a>) to a hundred 'likes'. My middle sister tried to get me to chose things she wanted, yeah like that was going to work - I've got a home to decorate.<br />
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22nd of November we felt the earth move. Wayhey Initially I thought it was one of our kamikaze cats trying to jump through a closed window, but even they don't cause that much disturbance, an 11 litre water bottle was definitely wobbling. Google search showed that there had been an earthquake about 300 km north of us in Romania (5.3 on some scale or other), no damage caused here or elsewhere as far as I know. One good thing about Bulgarian house insurance (yes we have some now) is they don't refuse cover for acts of some mythical being, so earthquakes, floods, lightening strikes, etc can all be insured against.<br />
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In other news my mobile is on mute with friends contacting us via internet or Paul's mobile. It seems some sad individual is having problems sleeping so 'phoning us at silly o'clock, FYI silly o'clock is anytime that is too early to let the animals out for the day. The first couple of times, before we muted the 'phone it was great as we achieved so much in the extended day provided. Paul has been having problems getting to sleep due to injuring his back so after a couple of days early morning wakeup calls started taking their toll and the phone was muted. If it's someone who wanted to build bridges but hadn't built up the courage to talk they will have other ways of contacting us, if it's just a sociopath no doubt they'll get bored of not getting an answer.<br />
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In the past few days we have also updated our profiles on <a href="http://workaway.com/">workaway.com</a> and <a href="http://helpx.com/">helpx.com</a> so it is more reflective of where we are now. Since June we have just been adding updates which made the profiles very messy and confusing, not sure we're happy with the finished article but as we are unlikely to have any helpers before March we have plenty of time to fine tune.Beezonehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07652607785990497294noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6140922967091032232.post-43719128302949552512014-11-12T06:38:00.000-08:002014-11-12T06:41:09.335-08:00Reluctant updateOK I can't put this off any longer otherwise I'll never get back to giving you monthly updates. The last post from us was Paul in England for 10 days (mid August) lots and little has happened since then and as I'm still excessively emotional apologies, in advance if this posting is more disjointed than normal.<br />
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The helpxer who arrived just before Paul left for England gave me peace of mind regarding bee stings, or other accidents, by his mere presence but despite telling me I shouldn't be doing so much whilst injured never thought of offering to feed the animals, or us. He was very aware of social injustices and unnecessary consumerism but hadn't yet made the jump to adjusting his own requirements preferring to comment on others failings. To be fair I think when younger we are, nearly, all selfish idealists gaining insights on personal change and compromises as we age, and learn living in this world isn't as simple as we'd like it to be.<br />
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I deglazed, stripped, painted and reglazed what seemed like, hundreds of window frames (actually only 10 frames with 20 panes) whilst Paul was away although with hindsight it wasn't a clever move. I should have either left the glazing or cobbled together a lower work surface as the reaching up to press down, for the putty, aggravated my back injury. I also managed to lose the only immobiliser fob thingy in town. Luckily I had been meeting a friend and she drove me back to the village, but that meant for 4 days I had no car, phone, internet or other means of contacting the outside world.<br />
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When Paul returned we were able to repay, in a small way, some of the
help we received immediately after the fire. Although we had always
said we wanted to do all the work ourselves we had to accept that
sometimes you need others to take some of the pressure off you. One of
the couples sons has been training to become a plasterer and although
he hadn't done a full wall, let alone a full room before we employed him
to work on our home. Dayle lived with us during the week, and was a
pleasure to have around, I have eventually stopped referring to him as a
Stepford child.<br />
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As we now had electric decided it was time to pop into the Vivacom
shop and let them know our 'phone line wasn't working an we may have
burnt their box. Anyway engineer comes out, none of the boxes on the
back wall were anything to do with Vivacom
and we just had a problem with our base unit. One new base unit later
we can talk with our family, back in the UK. That seriously made me
feel better, I don't need to see them often but keeping in touch is
important to me, although if they managed to join the 21st century and
used Skype that would be so much better. Talking of Skype, when we'd originally had internet
put in they had taken the cable to the pole in front of the house and
just thrown a load of cable over the roof to feed in through the living
room window. Luckily although the fire had burnt (obviously) the
centre part of the cable there was sufficient at either end for Paul to
splice said cables together and get us internet access back. Wow at this rate, electric, hot water, phone, internet we may become civilised once again, then again this is us ...<br />
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Just as Dayle was finishing the plastering another friend, a carpenter,
informed us that he had juggled his work load to come over and help us
put the extension roof on. This was great news as David was
enthusiastic about our ideas to reuse some of the old timbers in the
roof, something the builders who did the main house roof had refused to
do. The old timbers weren't to be used as part of the main
structure, although they would add strength their main purpose was to
tie the post fire property back in with it's past. Oh yes and look
beautiful. Dayle was asked if he'd like to stay on for another
week, for 2 reasons mainly we hoped it would lead to him getting more
work (it did) and secondly I had to be honest about my limitations and
accept I wouldn't be able to work on this project. Hell I was still
having problems walking more than a few metres. As you'll no doubt be able to tell from the excess of photographs I am so happy with the roof. <br />
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I'm also very proud of Paul and the mezzanine he put in, with a LITTLE bit of help from myself. <br />
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At the end of September we visited a chiropractor, in Veliko Turnovo,
that a friend had recommended.. There is no appointment system just
queue and wait (4 hours) but on the upside if you decide to visit the
builders merchants after a couple of hours people keep your place in the
queue for you. The chiropractor relocated my hip and a spinal disc
or 2 but then told me no work for a couple of weeks and to take
painkillers/anti-inflammatories. I did rest, as much as possible,
for 2 weeks and even now I listen to my body much more, although I'm
still inflicting pain to myself - the work won't do itself and Paul is
still doing more than his fair share.<br />
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We had a couple of days
snow towards the end of October, which although earlier was nice as it
showed us where our winter preparations were lacking, apart from the
obvious not having 3 months of supplies in the cellar. This winter
is going to be a challenge as we are living in the (unfinished) main
house for the first time and we still have much work to do to finish off
the property. Although in all fairness to ourselves, I think the
fact that the extension has NO heating in it means we will do minimal,
if any, work on that until March concentrating instead on getting a
couple of rooms in the main house decorated. If we don't feel like
work we may just hibernate and start afresh in spring, although I do
have a couple of pieces of Bulgarian, furniture I want to refurbish and
we've put a petchka in the temporary workshop (main house spare room).<br />
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Before the really cold weather arrives we need to relocate the internal staircase that Paul, the genius, built. Luckily we didn't fix it into final position because using it, unfixed it's THAT good, has uncovered a siting flaw. This is nothing major and fits in with our ethos of living with ideas before making them fixed in stone, or wood in this case. The final positioning of the staircase does effect the kitchen design though, so we need to sort it so I can have a 'proper' kitchen again. Field kitchens, or corner of living/sleeping area kitchens, are all well and good but I miss creating proper meals and treats.<br />
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I mentioned earlier that Dayle helping with the extension roof led to more work for him it also led to work for Paul, helping on a building refurbishment. Unfortunately this meant he was away Monday morning until Friday night for a couple of weeks, Miss Independent I Can Do That had been taught it was ok to ask and accept help only for her 'teacher' to abandon her. Boohoo. It was a sad time but also I realised how much I had learnt about my own limitations, we had some MORE windows that needed stripping down and sanding and much as I love playing with power tools the size of these windows made them hard work so I did little and often. My favourite Bulgarian expression at this time is leko po leko (literally it means "slightly slightly" but tends to be used as English speakers would say "little by little")<br />
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Reading back over this post it has a definite negative feel about it. I apologise for that but will admit to having lost my mojo recently, as my strength returns it'll return and hopefully lots of little projects will be completed over the hibernation months. In between looking after the animals<br />
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<br />Beezonehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07652607785990497294noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6140922967091032232.post-43358860895346505062014-10-16T12:48:00.002-07:002014-10-16T12:48:54.786-07:00Five weeks with someone else's teenagers<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
13th July<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> - </span>a month since
the fire and I arrive home with Paul's youngest 2 children who are staying for
five weeks.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When the flights were
booked 8 months previously we started making a list of places to visit and
things to do with them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Unfortunately
all plans are null and void as rebuilding our home HAS to take priority.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However it was Jim's 13th Birthday the week
they arrived and we couldn't let that go unrecognised, so a trip to Ruse it
was.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>First off Jumbo, which I thought
was just a toy megastore but it's actually a home wares shop as well, Jim
picked up some plasticine and as it was his birthday how could we not get it
for him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then no trip to Ruse is
complete without a visit to at least one builders merchants so a flying visit
to Mr Bricolage was followed by a leisurely lunch in Ruse' main square.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span> </div>
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<br /></div>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-nC2ZDyYrOjM/VEAPgdUOpOI/AAAAAAAAAag/MjOb1YEcvro/s1600/046.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-nC2ZDyYrOjM/VEAPgdUOpOI/AAAAAAAAAag/MjOb1YEcvro/s1600/046.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-eCuv4WeJ86c/VEAXrM4wjxI/AAAAAAAAAeA/Ye_Vv0OvWRI/s1600/315.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-eCuv4WeJ86c/VEAXrM4wjxI/AAAAAAAAAeA/Ye_Vv0OvWRI/s1600/315.JPG" height="239" width="320" /></a><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-nC2ZDyYrOjM/VEAPgdUOpOI/AAAAAAAAAag/MjOb1YEcvro/s1600/046.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"> </a> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Paul choose the establishment based on the
food would appeal to the kids, not only because of the length of the waitresses
skirts/belts, at least that's his story.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After lunch we had a wander
around and Jim decided he needed to check the water temperature of each and
every fountain/water feature.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Agl96gTVAes/VEAX6rd6L6I/AAAAAAAAAeI/PUpZH_b-lSc/s1600/317.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Agl96gTVAes/VEAX6rd6L6I/AAAAAAAAAeI/PUpZH_b-lSc/s1600/317.JPG" height="239" width="320" /></a> </span><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-8K-3gpPgHNQ/VEAY8C6khVI/AAAAAAAAAek/XxY3CjsnEmE/s1600/320.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-8K-3gpPgHNQ/VEAY8C6khVI/AAAAAAAAAek/XxY3CjsnEmE/s1600/320.JPG" height="149" width="200" /></a></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><br /><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Ek2lb2UqX1w/VEAdvcM9chI/AAAAAAAAAgo/0MnDLPt5Sw8/s1600/336.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Ek2lb2UqX1w/VEAdvcM9chI/AAAAAAAAAgo/0MnDLPt5Sw8/s1600/336.JPG" height="149" width="200" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Luckily
he didn't want to check the water temperature of the Danube when we went for a
walk along it's bank. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A couple of days later and the builders are all finished,
off site and we can start on the other jobs that will make our house home
again.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not many teenagers get to work
with mud plaster and mix cement during their summer holidays but thanks to help
from a neighbour, Ruby and Jim Paul managed to get the concrete ring beam done
so work on roof 2 could begin when out master carpenter friend was available to
oversee.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-nC2ZDyYrOjM/VEAPgdUOpOI/AAAAAAAAAag/MjOb1YEcvro/s1600/046.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-FdYzEyc6_D8/VEAQ_KO2iBI/AAAAAAAAAbY/d9DwOL__MFk/s1600/208.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-FdYzEyc6_D8/VEAQ_KO2iBI/AAAAAAAAAbY/d9DwOL__MFk/s1600/208.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ZBbwoYpqoEw/VEAR-xkSqjI/AAAAAAAAAcI/9mCaXjKPxEM/s1600/232.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ZBbwoYpqoEw/VEAR-xkSqjI/AAAAAAAAAcI/9mCaXjKPxEM/s1600/232.JPG" height="150" width="200" /></a></div>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-RqCbXmFH-Lk/VEAS9bc9qhI/AAAAAAAAAc4/q5OpSy50Bc8/s1600/238.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-RqCbXmFH-Lk/VEAS9bc9qhI/AAAAAAAAAc4/q5OpSy50Bc8/s1600/238.JPG" height="150" width="200" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span>You may have noticed I wasn't
involved with concrete <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>making - the
month since the fire rudely reminded me not only was I a 'mere female' but I
was also getting older.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As I'd ignored
the warning signs my body was sending me I managed to cause some back injury
and dislocate my hip.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The hip
dislocation provided some light entertainment as Paul relocated it for me -
along with my ankle and knee doing sound effects as each one popped back into
place.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<div class="MsoNormal">
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<br />
More light entertainment was provided when a neighbour told us that Dencho (our
Kmet [mayor] who had driven past when the fire was blazing) didn't realise we
still had no electric and if we took our customer number up to his house
straight away he would get on to the electric company on our behalf.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Within 2 minutes Paul, Ruby and Jim are
walking up the hill to Dencho's house when he drives past them and waves when
Paul tries to flag him down.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The kids were
less than complimentary about him and he is now to be referred to as The
Kermit.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<br />
Despite my concerns about the holiday not being what had been 'promised'<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>both Ruby and Jim coped with the situation
very well, with only the odd moans about not going anywhere/doing
anything.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Paul did take them to some
local water falls one day, a couple of our friends also tagged along and
seemingly they had a nice time with a 'supermarket picnic' lunch.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>An international music festival had been
organised in a village about 30 kilometres away so all 4 of us went to that,
with Ruby and Jim staying longer and getting a lift home with a neighbour, as Paul
and I needed to get back for the animals.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-vkBsA-YZYPw/VEAVB1rfYGI/AAAAAAAAAdc/2jFb8NXIqFo/s1600/Palamartsa%2Bmusic%2Bfestival%2B2%2Baug%2B2014%2B005.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-vkBsA-YZYPw/VEAVB1rfYGI/AAAAAAAAAdc/2jFb8NXIqFo/s1600/Palamartsa%2Bmusic%2Bfestival%2B2%2Baug%2B2014%2B005.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We also went to a carboot sale
further afield although the main purpose of that trip out was to visit bigger,
and quite beautiful, waterfalls.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-McT-r86Y3P4/VEAVmBWgYJI/AAAAAAAAAdk/Bic8lnlOxfs/s1600/033.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-McT-r86Y3P4/VEAVmBWgYJI/AAAAAAAAAdk/Bic8lnlOxfs/s1600/033.JPG" height="239" width="320" /></a> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
know at least Jim was disappointed that we didn't get a visit to the coast and I
think both Ruby and Jim would have had a better time if we had been able to put
the pool up for the summer, but we would have needed electric to run the pump.<br />
<br />
A week before Paul was due to fly to the UK with the children we had a last
minute enquiry through Helpx from an Australian who wanted to come stay.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After ensuring he was fully aware that we
were still living in very basic conditions we agreed to his coming to help out
- if nothing else it meant that I would have assistance around the place for
heavy lifting whilst Paul was away.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Least said soonest mended.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<br />
Paul drove up to Bucharest airport for their flight to UK and I drove back to
Bulgaria.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We had been told that it was quicker to use
the ring road although Paul doubted this so drove straight through Bucharest.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On the drive back i was in 2 minds as
which route to take,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>but despite never
have driven there myself decided to go through the centre as the roads were in
much better condition than the ring road, and I was in a bit of pain at this
point.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even though I took the scenic
route, once or twice, I think Paul is correct and it's much quicker than the
ring road.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Once back in Bulgaria I
decided to stop at the builders merchants in Ruse to have a walk around and stretch
my muscles out, that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Visits to Baumaxx, Praktiker and Mr
Bricolage resulted in me returning home with some twin and earth electric cable
and some new light fittings - luckily Paul approved of my purchases on his
return.<br />
<br />
So now I have 10 days before Paul returns and although I think 5 weeks was too
long for a visit off Ruby and Jim, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>especially
this year,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the house is weirdly not
right with them not here.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Only consolation
about them not getting the holiday they expected is they got to experience real
life, with all its problems, and spend some quality time with their dad seeing
what an extraordinarily talented guy he is (even highlighting his daughters hair, with help from his son).<br /><br /><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-yo0ZG-AGUpI/VEAV3e8XzGI/AAAAAAAAAds/I8wxmrrTjhA/s1600/046.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-yo0ZG-AGUpI/VEAV3e8XzGI/AAAAAAAAAds/I8wxmrrTjhA/s1600/046.JPG" height="239" width="320" /></a></div>
Beezonehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07652607785990497294noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6140922967091032232.post-27771920537766927122014-10-16T01:24:00.000-07:002014-10-16T01:24:00.708-07:00Shocking Service<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<br />
ENERGO PRO<br />
<br />
On the 13th of June we had a house fire that destroyed our house, including the
electricity meter and fuse box. Whilst the fire fighters were still
there we had 2 visits from EnergoPro staff, one to make the wires safe and the
2nd one to take a photograph of the melted meter.<br />
<br />
A couple of weeks later we were starting to be proactive, rather than reactive
and realised we would need the electric back on, for the builders if nothing
else.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So on the 23rd June I went to the
Popovo office, with my friend who was on holiday here to find it all locked up,
a local suggested I speak to the electric desk in the post office, that was
also unmanned.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One of the post office
staff informed me Energo Pro staff would not be at work until the 26th of June,
don't you just love these random company holidays.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Fast forward to the 26th and a return visit
to Popovo office, 10am and all locked up so a trip across the square to the
post office where I'm told to try again at 12noon.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After wandering around Popovo, and a coffee
or 2 (the town's not that big) I eventually get to talk to a person, via an
interpreter they phoned,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and was
informed the paperwork needed to be issued at Targovishte office. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When I got back, from the 2nd failed mission,
Paul informed me the Energo Pro meter reader had been around!!!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><br />
Paul, Diana (friend) and myself went to Targovishte the following day,
because our spoken Bulgarian isn't great we wrote down what had happened and
our need for a new supply. We were told it would take a maximum of
7 days, and they would ring us when on the way.<br />
<br />
On the 2nd July an engineer called to reconnect us and informed us he could do
nothing as he expected us to have a meter and fuse box. We were
told to go to the Targovishte office and pay 250 leva. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The builders, who were on site by now, seemed
to have difficulty understanding why the electric company couldn't manage to do
a simple job like getting us power on site.<br />
<br />
We went to the Targovishte on the 3rd July and paid 220,32 leva (Approx £95)
and were told a maximum of 30 days!!!!!!!! I will admit to
having a incident of leaky eyes in Energo Pro offices.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And so the wait begins.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The leaky eyes resurfaced when we popped
into the supermarket on the way home and an acquaintance asked how things were
going.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She suggested we talk to a
local (English speaking) advocate who was good at solving problems, we didn't
know of him so she said she would wait for us to finish shopping then we could
follow her to his office.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The advocate
took copies of the paperwork we had been given and said he would need to go
into the Energo Pro offices but would phone us the following day.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We never received his phone call, possibly
because I wouldn't give him Power of attorney.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><br />
The following afternoon I took the train to Sofia ready for Saturdays flight
to the UK, possibly I was being overally optimistic but I fully expected to
return to a finished roof (builders off site) and working electrics.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Oh well. best laid plans and all that.<br />
<br />
Pepa & Boyan, our neighbours tried to help us, they contacted officials at
Razgrad, Targovishte and Varna who all informed them the delay was due to lack
of equipment. On the 26th of June the Popovo office had
at least a dozen meters. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How can
a company get a contract without government officials ensuring they have the experience
and equipment to supply what is expected of them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Oh yes, this is Bulgaria you need neither
experience or equipment if the brown envelope you hand over is padded enough. <br />
<br />
It takes until Sunday the 27th of<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>July
before we finally run out of patience and I send an email to Energo Pro
customer services informing them that if we do not have a supply by the end of
the week they will be in breach of contract and liable for any subsequent
expenses we incur.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I also suggested
that as soon as the contract was breached I was going out to buy solar panels
which they would be invoiced for.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We
received an automated response telling us to expect a response to the email
within, yes you guessed, 30 days!!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><br />
<br />
Monday 28th we get a customised response informing us that our request for an
'urgent connection' has been forwarded to the local office<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>WTF<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>We don't want an urgent connection we want what we paid for 25 days
previously<br />
<br />
Wednesday 30th July, I phone Energo Pro<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>to find out what is happening I am told, according to their terms and
conditions, they have until Friday to fit us a meter.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When asked if this means we will have a
supply by Friday I get the response "you should", pushing the point
and asking if the person I was speaking to meant we were 100% guaranteed a
supply by Friday she admitted it was possible but she wouldn't say definitely
yes, when asked for her name I was given a surname only and told I didn't need
more when I requested her full name.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Telling the Energo Pro customer services person I am entitled to know
the full name of the person I am speaking to under European Law obtains the
full name<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>-<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I have no idea if this is a European Law but
then most Bulgarian customer services personnel have no idea of European Laws
either.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><br />
<br />
2 hours after this 'phone conversation (which may have been more 'heated' than
the above paragraph suggests) we get an email informing us we will have a
supply by the end of the week.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
energy company will just connect to a meter outside the house everything after
that is up to us so as an ex-pat electrician had offered to connect us an
emergency supply to the house I 'phoned his wife to let her know he would
possibly be needed in the next couple of days.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Paul and I had already discussed not
wanting to rewire the whole house ourselves so this was an ideal opportunity to
give some work to someone who was offering some emergency assistance, he gives
us a temporary supply so we can get walls and ceilings ready for fittings and
then we employ him to do the rewire.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>We had been given a 16 way consumer unit, with a RCD and an Earth
Leakage breaker, which a friend had surplus to requirements so we knew wired up
correctly our electrics would be super safe.<br />
<br />
Thursday I am at the neighbours borrowing their internet connection when Paul 'phones
to inform me that Energo Pro have arrived and are putting us a meter and supply
in, so much for the 'phone call telling us they were on the way.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I wander back up the hill to double check
it's for real, this time, and then 'phone the wife of the electrician who had
offered to put an emergency supply in.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Energo Pro had nearly finished the installation when Paul decided that
we couldn't wait for the electrician and connected the mains to the consumer
unit and then on to some emergency sockets.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It's probably just as well he did this as the offer of assistance had
been 'just words'.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><br />
<br />
The Energo Pro engineers were fantastic and did a really good job of installing
our new meter it is just unfortunate that the administration side of the
company is absolute rubbish.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One thing
we did learn, which our Bulgarian neighbours weren't aware of is Bulgaria has
an energy 'watchdog'<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>- <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>their website is http://www.dker.bg<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>for those who may need it in future, we hope
you never do.<br />
Beezonehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07652607785990497294noreply@blogger.com0