News from St James Park….
Some time at the end of April.
At last the weather is a bit awful and I can have a day in the house without feeling guilty in that English sort of way – you know …. the sun is shining therefore I must go outside. This works well in a climate where sun shining is rare but of course, in some places, like here, it just goes on shining day after day. I haven’t written this blog since February and thats because, one day just a month ago, it suddenly stopped being winter and spring just erupted. One day nothing, then next its was plum blossom everywhere and the grass started to grow – very quickly and very thickly.
I have considered getting an animal to keep the grass down in the field but after my episode with Alan Shearer, I’m a bit off grazing things. So its just me and the strimmer and of course its now decided to only work for 7 minute spells. I organise my day now around short bursts of strimming but sometimes I look up and see the enormous amount of grass and wild flowers and it’s a bit daunting. Why aren’t you using the traditional Kosa, I hear you say — because its too hard! Cutting grass with it requires precision Kosaring skills that only people like Drago have. I can cut down evil big weeds and I think I’m doing great then I look up and see Drago effortlessly scything away and making neat little piles. I aspire to having a lawn mower – one of those neat little things on a quad would be cool.
My first volunteers of the year arrived on exactly the first day of spring – it was snowing the day before – and they were great. Adele and Maxim from Brittany and their dog called Eureka. There were such great people to have around – they did loads of work, they cooked great food (French ..mais oui) and they were jugglers. Maxim got it organised to go and do a circus skills workshop up at the school (youtube videos to follow at some point). It was great fun and the kids loved it. He was also into cross country unicycling – this involves hurtling down steep hillsides on a unicycle – very impressive.
Adele is a journalist – she’s doing an article about Voditsa for her newspaper and we’re planning a photography project for next year. I did warn them of course that people sometimes end up wanting to live here and guess what happened after about 3 days?? Maxim is interested in setting up a circus troupe here so I thought I might put my career aim of being a pirate on hold for a while and I could run away with the circus. I love it when interesting exciting people come by here and then decide to stay.
Julie has also been back to visit and to finalise her house here – she’s coming for a while in the summer with the lovely Lielle and Dani who fixes strimmers. Hopefully she’ll be coming the following year for longer and maybe setting up some creative workshops for kids – could be circus related?
Lisa and her family are also here right now. She bought the huge piece of woodland in the next village last year and now she’s doing one of the houses up
16th May 2009.
It quickly stopped raining and i haven’t really been inside the house much lately but its actually getting hot now so I’ve adjusted my working time to stop myself from roasting to death in hot midday sun. Now I’m getting up at 6ish and getting outside by 7 and then for a couple of hours in early afternoon, I’m going to sit in the house and do my computer stuff – that the plan!.
The strimmer is driving me crazy – it just works for little fits and starts and there is no way I can keep up with the rate that the grass is growing. I’m back to thinking about watering again – it takes up so much time. Stuff is getting out into the garden – peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers – the usual stuff but I’m starting to think more about salads again but it’ll be another few weeks till my tomatoes are ready meanwhile the ones from the market are not the same standard – even if I do say so myself!
Its been great having Lisa and her kids around – she has done loads of work on one of the houses on her land in Osikovo and of course, lots of wood clearance. They’ve gone to Ireland for a month and then they’ll be back for most of the year. Their dog, Dilly, is with me now – I used to know her in Ireland – she’s old and deaf and stubborn like Jess.
A guy called Reuben has been here a couple of times now and has bought a piece of land up the back of my house – in the wild. Not sure what he’s going to do with but he’s been spending some time just sitting there playing is flute.
And two great new people from Rotterdam passed by the other day – great energy and interesting ideas. They’re off to Syria but they’re kind of looking for somewhere interesting to live – what can be more interesting than Voditsa?? They inspired me to start thinking about putting on a music and arts festival – thats a new idea that’s still floating about..waiting for the right people.
I have just moved outside – I’ve spent the last two days tidying everything up, sorting out tables ( I actually have 7 tables – dont know how that happened), getting the pots and pans moved out and getting back to walking a lot when I’m cooking – half the stuff is inside the house. We made a great new BBQ when the French volunteers were here and we christened it the other night. Sitting chatting and it struck me as bazaar that we were sitting, in the dark, half way up a field in Bulgaria at a table with a sparkly tablecloth and a candelabra..but the stars were great. But hopefully, that’ll be me outside till the end of September.
The cherries, apricots and plums will be starting soon – I actually have run out of jam and I think I’m ready for the onslaught this year – I was taken by surprise at the apricots last year but I am prepared to turn slightly orange this time.
It has been surprisingly windy the last few weeks – lots of pleasant breezes making a lovely noise in the trees and right now, its bringing a sweet scent of acacia blossom – so lovely – it always make me think nice places in the Mediterranean. That’s the first crop of the year that gets made into rakia.
I have a washing machine!!! Well its not exactly mine – it belongs to my new best friend Kareena. She has a house in the next village and comes here afew times a year. She borrowed the car for a couple of days and loaned me her washing machine in exchange. That may not be a huge thing for most people but it saves all the time going to the spring and …..the clothes are clean!
On an interesting note, I had a conversation with the Mayor of Voditsa the other day and he is interested in my development plan for the village. I got it translated into Bulgarian, I’m gong to meet with him to discuss it and then hopefully we’ll actually do something about it and get some EU money coming into the village.
I had an interesting random email the other day from a woman who manages events and wants to use this as a venue and maybe she wants to bring 80 volunteers here on a capacity building project in September ….interesting and loads of possibilities.
Great business opportunity : the bar and restaurant in Voditsa is for rent for 400lev a month – that includes electricity. Its fully equipped –although I haven’t actually been in the kitchen. It has huge potential to be a great place to hang out. It needs a little bit of reorganising and some good music – there is space to have a band on in the corner. This village so needs a buzzy little bar and a place to eat. If my development plans work out, there’ll also be a lot more people coming around this place in the future.
I had a little holiday – my friend Patti came over and took me for a few days in a nice hotel in Varna. We just walked about, talked and ate lovely cakes. It was a lovely week.
Its sheep’s milk season right now. I happened to mention that I would like to buy some sheeps milk yoghurt and two days later, a woman came round with 5 kilos. It was pretty nice but that is a lot of yoghurt when there is only me.
The sun has now moved away from the very hot place where I was relaying the path so I have to go back out and finish it. Lots of love to all my friends, how are you doing, whats the craic, where are you are…..send me your news.
Lece veche.