dvanayset

It’s May, it’s rapidly turning into summer, the Gabrovo beer festival is in town (with one beer on sale… woo festi-val) and I spent a day hungover on Sunday which all culminated to mean that I have spruced up the old blog. New colour scheme – oooh, new font ooooh and nuff new features, including a soundtrack to listen to whilst you read (unless you’re at work in a stuffy accountants wearing business salmon and a ‘wacky’ tie) and a poll, on your right, which will change regularly and help me make some very important decisions – so make sure you vote people (if for no other reason than to halt the rise of Dave and Boris, who I was disappointed to see has pussied out of the environmentally driven lawsuit with Thames Water yesterday… not a good start, even if he is hilarious)

Settling into Gabrovo now. Got a couple of mates down the local boozer who have been revelling in Liverpool’s untimely demise against Chelski in the champions league semis. Neither of them speak a great deal of English but we have managed to communicate/bond in a multitude other ways. They are both local boys and as such conform to local boy status, namely: they drink shit loads of rakia; they love ‘the maiden’ (that Iron Maiden to those of you without permanent black eye liner) and almost all “heavy metal”… accordingly I told them I was a Sabbath man which got me nuff respect… well, until they got the barman to put some on the tin pot stereo and I didn’t recognise it at all… not entirely surprising as I only know one tune (gonna have to bite the head off a bat or something to redeem myself); they’re also well into football… or at least they can name almost every team in the football league including Grimsby Town and Oxford Unite…oh no, they’re not in the league anymore are they? Furthermore, they cemented their place as local lads when they asked “do you know Samantha fox?” - “why?” I hear you shout as Sam stupidly did, “big tities” came the response, compete with mime. Not bad for two guys whose vocab otherwise comprises “Yeovil Town”, “Iron Maiden-Number One” and “fuck you Manchester United”. They still don’t believe that the former page 3 idol is now a carpet muncher (sorry awful expression).

Anyway, enough about that, I thought it was about time for an update on the old mud palace. So here goes: Pete and I have been digging out floors downstairs so we can stop bashing our heads every 5 seconds on the ceiling; we’ve built a small retaining wall to stop the front of the house falling down on us when we dug out the floors; we’ve mortared ridge tiles on our watertight barn roof and constructed new ceilings in the dining room and lounge – yes that’s dining room and lounge. Not that you’d recognise either of the muddy walled/floored rooms as such, but hey, we’ve gotta call them something. So pretty busy really. We are also in the process of getting quotes for our new double glazed windows – all 12 of them - and connecting the place up to the mains electric supply… wooo yeah. If we’re not careful, we’ll be putting a toilet in next!

Photos to prove I’m not a liar have been uploaded onto Flickr here:http://www.flickr.com/photos/welsbyinbulgaria

Also, check these guys out – been lovin’ the hotstepper this week: http://tinyurl.com/59hp2e

Back in the UK for yet more weddings in June so maybe see you there… please feel free to assist in my costume decision making process on the poll to your right (really plugging the poll).

Oh – and also, nuff respect to Taylor, Stevo, Claire and Mum for getting involved and leaving some top comments last time round. Salty cheese in the post.
Ciao ciao za sega e fsichko hubavo

edinayse

There are only 3 things I remember about A level economics:

1. The words “demand” and “supply” which get mentioned together a lot;

2. If you put Robbo’s bag/files on the flat roof outside the classroom window, you can lock him out when he has to go out to get them… and he never learns to stop leaving his stuff unguarded, which means you can do it over and over and over again (which in hindsight may have something to do with his somewhat limited appearance (15 mins) in our three hour exam later that year); and

3. One of our classmates (I use the term loosely, I didn’t know his name then and this is all I can recall about him now) worked on one of the strangest stalls at Brackley Market. He sold bread and, wait for it…. shoes. Yep, bread and shoes, the two items no-one should be without! Aside from taunting him with jokes like: “what’s your best sellers then? Don’t tell me… don’t tell me…. it’s the loafers enit? And “have you seen the chumps new trainers… hovis air max!” we let him off lightly. I don’t think it made a bit of difference, he was still out there week in, week out making a living from his bread and shoes – perhaps he was taking in more about ‘demand and supply’ than the rest of us were after all?

I’ve also just remembered that he was expelled from his school in Brackley for putting a plastic bag over a teachers head – allegedly… jesus! He really was a chump.

Anyway, the point is I’ve been reminded of the legendary Brackley bread and shoes stall this week on a number of occasions. Why? Because Sam and I are back in the land of green and red track-suited couples, toothless women and cold chips, yes… Bulgaria… where market stalls are maligned for not having at least 4 strings to their bow. Any self respecting business cannot survive without a multi faceted, contrast based, bread-shoe business plan. In the space of two days I have been into a shop that exclusively sells plastic footballs, trainers, tinned food and clocks, and another which claimed to specialise in kitchen equipment but actually sold bed linen and pepper grinders, well grinder… which broke… after 3 grinds – oooh peppery.

We’ve actually been back for around 3-4 weeks, but been so busy getting ourselves settled again that I just haven’t had the time to stop and think until now. However, the good news is we have managed to find ourselves a penthouse apartment (ok top floor) in the nearby town of Gabrovo http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabrovo which looks like this:

…bought a s-wicked automobile to get around in (particularly pleased with the vinyl explosion – rude ass) :

and found Sam a job in a language school in the most important looking building in town:

Not bad work really I’m sure you’ll agree. You’ll note that Gabrovo is twinned with exotic locations like Shaki in Azerbijan, named after 80’s pop legend Shakin’ Stevens and Nowy Sakz, Poland’s castration capital (yeah ok that was a bit tenuous even in my best polish accent). I’d be keen to get some suggestions of where we could twin with in the UK – any ideas welcome. I’ll provide more info on Gabrovo each week to help you decide.

We’re also now hooked up to the internet at home so hopefully I’ll be in touch a bit more this time around. I’m gonna be all over your asses and I expect some freekin feedback this time too.

Oh and the house is still standing… and so is our barn complete with our home made roof still on it. Pete and I are back to the grind on Monday and we even have a programme this time around so if and when we get visitors from the real world, we should be able to tell you what jobs you’re gonna get before you get here – good eh.

That’s enough to get us started.

Ciao ciao za sega – fsichko hubavo

deset

How many men does it take to change a roof? Two, me and Pete (with a bit of help from toothless Ivan, an 83 year old, to pass up a few ridge tiles right at the end – I always knew he was a glory boy).

It’s official, Pete and I have actually done something to be proud of. Our barn, arguably the best building on site, was in a sorry stake after we raided the roof for stone plotches to repair the roof on the house. Worried that it wouldn’t last the winter without a roof, we decided that our challenge, with or without Anika Rice (who I hear still gets excited when the chopper goes up), was to repair and re-tile the roof in 4 weeks. We decided to use 2^nd hand clay tiles, rather than insisting on more huge stone tiles, to take a bit of weight off and to make our life a bit easier. We put our maths and language skills to the test and bartered good prices for 1800 tiles, 75m of replacement timbers and a decent drill. We also visited a couple of quarries to buy sand and aggregate to mix up a bit of concrete which was interesting… there’s nothing quite like thinking you’re arguing over price when in fact we’re talking about volume and ratio calculations… we got there in the end. For those of you who watched The Smell of Reeves and Mortimer, we bought our tiles from Uncle Peter who turned up for work in his xxs green felt blazer and crumpled top hat, on his home made petrol powered pedal bike – smooth.

So between snow storms we got our act together and got out into the cold in our best thermals and thinsulate to show the locals how real building work is done! And this is what we ended up with:

‘Undulating’ might be one way of describing it, ‘wavy’ perhaps? curvaceous even? Kevin McCloud would definitely call it ‘organic’. Straight lines are for architects and traffic wardens. Anyway, I like it and it’s waterproof which is all that counts.

Before I left, it’s fair to say that my accommodation arrangements were less that comprehensive and upon arrival, it quickly became clear that my back up plan (living in the van) was not really going to be an option with the temperature dropping to a “piss in your pants to stay warm” -7 at night. Miraculously though, an English couple in the village took pity on us and offered to put us up in their spare bungalow for a month! I couldn’t and still cant quite believe how lucky I was…not least because not only did they have a hot shower, flushing sit down toilet and heating, but the guy, Peter, an ex pub landlord, also turned out to be a legend in kitchen. I don’t know when you last had toad in the hole or stew and dumplings, but I can say with some certainty, not recently enough… get on with it… they’re amazing. So next time you’re passing through Burya, I can recommend a night at Peter and Sandra’s place (thanks a million).

While I’ve been playing at building, Sam has been doing some real work, training to be an English Language teacher in Sofia. At only 60-80 hours a week and her first teaching lesson on day 2 of the course, it sounded like a piece of piss really! So yet again, Sam has managed to out do me, passing her course and showing off by using apostrophes in all the right place’s. God I’m funny. It also meant we got to spend a bit more time in Sofia, which I like more each time I go.

So all in all, we’ve had a great time and managed to achieve shit loads. Lots of back patting all round: well done us.

Aside from the construction, and the self appreciation I’ve also been back on the trail of Bulgarian culture. Its a tough, salt laiden job but somebody has to do it. The highlight was definitely a 53^rd birthday party at which we were the special guests. A few glasses of home made wine and grape brandy later, it looked like this:

...good shit, chestit rozden den.

I’ve also decided to have a new feature as part of the blog: Myth busters, where I explain the facts behind some of the words most wondrous mysteries. First up, super models.

There is a reason that more supermodels come from eastern Europe than anywhere else, and on my last trip to Veliko Turnovo, I found out what it is: Carrots, shit loads of them. Sat in a pizzeria, chomping my way through a 12” diavolo with extra everything, I heard a girl on the next table order a salad, a carrot salad. It sounded like an uninspiring side dish, at best, but I guessed it might be ok to break up the mass of cheese on the pizzas. Little did I realise that a carrot salad could make up a whole meal, especially when it comprises just a huge pile of grated carrot. For 2 hours the girl sat, picking at her ‘salad’ no doubt enjoying every orange mouthful. She did at least have the dignity to wash it down will a full fat coke. It was obviously not as fulfilling as she hoped, as she only managed half of it – the fat cow.

I’m back in the uk for a while and will hopefully catch up with everyone. Back for more Bulgarian adventures in the spring if Tesco will give me the time off.

Ciao Ciao za sega