shesht

Just spent a lovely week with mum and Claire – the gin is still running through my veins and the crucial supplies of strawberry crusha have been safely received and stashed. Sams growing library og English language literature was doubled and now contains such highbrow material as the guardian crosswords book and the June edition of Heat – oooh hasn’t Britney lost a lot of weight.

We met the tourists off the plane in Sofia with a ‘Welsby’ poster and treated ourselves to a fancy meal in the poshest place we could find… it set us back a whopping 135 leva for three courses each and two bottles of wine… what a rip off (international currency converter if you’re that interested- http://www.xe.com/ucc). Whilst in Sofia, we ‘did’ the cultural bits including the Alexander Nevski Church, Lady’s Market so called cos its full of crap that no-one in their right mind would buy unless it was a saturday and one hadn’t bought a top in at least a week, and most importantly the posh toilets in the department store where you are even allowed to ‘sit down’.

We also finally managed to find our way to the Apartment which I have been tryig to find for a couple of years on and off and after all that effort it turned out to be one of the best bars I think I have ever been to. It is exactly what is says on the tin… an apartment… admittedly a pretty smooth apartment, made up mostly of living rooms, but an apartment none the less. You go to the kitchen to get your drinks and snacks from the fridge, pay the lady with the purple nipples, then go and take a seat in one of the lounges, each of which has a computer complete with internet, downloaded tunes, films, games or whatever else you fancy to entertain you and your mates. There seem to be sufficient rooms for everyone to have a room each. The lounges are all decorated slightly differently and as such attract slightly different clientele. They seem to have most bases covered from an intimate twosome by the telephone table in the hall, to a seriously chilled out jostic filled Glastonbury diner out the back. It is obviously run by some arty type who seems to spend much of his time painting the lady in the kitchen, hence the over familiar nipples. The most astounding thing is that a place like this can exist in the centre of a bustling, otherwise familiar, European capital city, right next door to one of the big chain restaurant chains here “UGO”. Will definitely be going back to pump some rude drums and bass and show the three amigos (gutted I didn’t do it at our leaving do… “take the amigos clothes”).

With mum and Claire here, we also took the opportunity to do the touristy bit in Turnovo, so have now visited the city art gallery after ringing the bell to be let in by the last remaining female KGB agent in the world who then followed us round the fabulous selection of a-level art pieces in their collection (along with some decent sketches from WW1) and the medieval fortress complete with 60s pscycadelic church. The highlight for me was a woman inside the church pressing play on tape of the wailing monks every time someone walks in to the church… hours of fun to be had walking towards the exit then suddenly turning back inside… she had an itchy trigger finger. Apparently, the fortress is the focus of a ‘sound and light extravaganza’ complete with ‘lasers’ which takes place whenever they can persuade a tour bus full of yanks to pay for it. I have yet to witness this spectacle but hope Claire will upload the photos she took of the poster outside the tourist info office which I’m sure will do it justice.

Hopefully my sis will write a guest blog here at some point soon and upload a few photos so you can get an idea of what she thought of this place too. I doubt she will be able to live up to the high standards already set, but she will no doubt do her best. xx.

House Update

The roof is coming along slowly. Kolyo, Atanas and Datcho are trying their best but frankly couldn’t work any slower if they had me tied to their back. The main structure is now complete so the felt and the plotches (huge stone tiles) should be going up in the next couple of weeks.

Pete and I have decided to build the ceiling and insulate the roof ourselves. Not only because we are able, but also so we have a ceiling this year. It might also mean we avoid a ceiling full of bits of finger, which Kolyo keeps losing! It’s only a matter of tie until his chain sawing whilst standing on the eaves of the roof without any safety gear at all loses him more than a bit of finger.

In trying to avoid piping our sewerage into the local river along with the rest of the locals and to minimise the cost of constantly emptying a septic tank, we are also looking into the practicalities of installing a dry toilet indoors. We hope to be able to deal with all the ‘black water’ this way and direct the grey to a suitable septic facility somewhere behind the house. All of this will of course change once we realise that the house will stink and we cant have numbers 1 and 2 simultaniously. More research required. IN fact Millsy better get his wedding out of the way cos I need to spend some quality time discussing the pros and cons of an inverted u-bend sometime soon.

The barbarian will be here at the weekend… conveniently flying into Bucharest (that’s in Romania Taylor). So Sam and I are off to meet him if they let us across the border. By all accounts no one has told border patrol that both Bulgaria and Romania are now in the EU so that should make for an easy crossing. Those patrol guards who are aware are so pissed off at losing the bit of power they had, that they ensure everything takes 8 times as long… so looking forward to that trip. I’ll make sure Clays makes up for it digging out the swimming pool or something.

A couple of photos from the last week for your pleasure to sign off:

Ciao Ciao, and leka nosht