This has been a very difficult time for me and a dramatic start to the year. As you know Jess has been ill since the summer. She had a tumor on her neck and she eventually died peacefully in her sleep at the beginning of the month. Its so strange that she isn’t around now – I’m so used to taking her needs into consideration and of course I don’t have a companion now to go on walks. She had a good life though and she was quite well travelled for a dog. She had a lot of friends and she used to get lots of emails!
Around the same time, Geordie, one of the cats, disappeared. His sister, Little Jackie, disappeared last September and this really brings home the reality of life at the edge of the wild. There are jackals and wolves and things like that just beyond the end of my field and I guess that I should consider the very many creatures that those two cats killed and ate. What goes around comes around. But I miss them both and Ziggy now has no-one to play with. I’ll get a couple more kittens in the spring.
But the saddest thing happened yesterday. Tino is dead – he was shot, presumably by a hunter who may have thought he was a fox. Jorge, next door, is very angry with me because he says I should have kept Tino tied up all the time. I think that if Tino could have spoken, he would have agreed that a short life of freedom is better than a long life as a prisoner. He was tied up during the day but I used to let him off at nights and he always came back the next morning. It’s a bit of a different thing having pets here – a new set of things to think about but now there is just me and Ziggy and he seems happy to be a well fed, fat fluffy house cat. Tino and Jess are both buried up on the hill and I’ll plant trees for them in the spring.
Its been a while since I did a blog and I guess the most significant thing to talk about is the weather. Climate confusion is maybe more apt than climate change – it is weird and there isn’t much pattern to it. The winter was a long time coming – it didn’t really get cold till the end of December. We had snow and it was around minus 15 for quite a few nights and minus during the day too. Then two days ago, it was +15o – it was warm and the sun was bright and its January! There was actually a wasp that flew by the door today -it was also obviously confused. I might have to move myself out of this hibernation mode and go and do some outside work.
Christmas was lovely although we didn’t actually have one! I went down to Istanbul to meet Elly and we had a couple of days being tourists. Actually we didn’t do much that was really touristy – Elly spent the time trying on loads of ball gowns and wedding dresses in some great retro shops. I love the fact that I can get a bus from the end of the road to do a bit of shopping at the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul – cool. I had a lovely volunteer called Dawn here to look after the animals while I was away and her and Elly and I had a ‘Christmas Day’ together when we got back.
I bought a neat little weekend suitcase in Istanbul but when we got off the bus at the end of the road, it was about 5.30am and I discovered how noisy a wheely case can actually be. We woke up every dog in the village as we walked home – it was also very cold!
I now have three books on the go -writing them that is- I haven’t yet found the momentum to carry on with my story of all the houses I’ve lived in – its still stuck on 70,000 words and I’m waiting for inspiration. I also started to write a book about community development – that’s coming along but needs lots of attention and now I’ve started a cookery book. I realised how often people ask me how I made something or could they have the recipe for whatever we just had for dinner. I don’t have recipes and sometimes what I end up cooking isn’t what I set out to do. So I’m writing a non-recipe cook book. If anyone wants to be a tester for my non recipes, let me know.
But I don’t really have time for all this writing because of course I now have the internet and it takes up loads of time! Before, if I had a question, I probably just let it go cos I didn’t have the information to answer it – now I can find out the answer in an instant but that instant usually leads to more browsing and curiosity and suddenly, an hour has gone. Elly got me into Facebook too – fun but takes up time.
This winter is so different from last year which was new and everything was pretty and a novelty, including being cold. This year I’m just annoyed at the lack of insulation but as its not snowing and not freezing, hibernation isn’t really working.
Some good things have been happening though – I met a couple of interesting people, Marc and Cara, who live in Palamartsa, near Popovo. We’ve been talking about doing development work and the three of us are going to set up a company for sustainable training and development and this will hopefully lead to EU funded projects. Its very exciting and we have already been asked to be a partner in a transnational project. Its going to be about lost traditions around food and I guess this means we’ll get new cooking ideas and skills and get to eat good Bulgarian food. We’re also thinking about a project to explore commercial production of organic hemp and running a short festival to bring together traditional skills and new technology – that’s really exciting and its good to get my brain working again.
Its been a very long time now since I had any real income here and things are now looking quite dire. The property business is taking off but there’s a bit of a recession, I do believe, in other parts of the world which seems to be stopping people from buying houses. But there’s also a lot of people who just want to escape the UK and that’s interesting because, ultimately, we want people to come and live here. It is the middle of the winter right now and we do have a few viewing trips organised for the spring so hopefully it’ll work out.
I’m having a rethink about volunteers this year. Looking back on last year, everything got screwed up by my disastrous long term volunteers who came in May. It took me a long time to recover from that and it also meant that I had to restart finding volunteers – the whole thing was a waste of time and made me question why I was doing it. Fortunately, the rest of my volunteers made up for that experience and I’ve learned a lot but the whole work plan for the summer never got off the ground with that poor start. This year I am looking for a long term volunteer who can manage the garden while I do building things and try to earn some money – I just need to find the right person. I had one enquiry room a woman who asked if there were ballet lessons nearby for her daughter – that might go in my list of mad things that volunteers ask.
Happy New Year to anyone that I haven’t already said that too. Lots of love from me and Ziggy.