Monday 21st December 2020

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas... In contrast to the UK, especially the southeast where my relatives are located and who are now experiencing tier 4 lockdown conditions, here, the Christmas decorations are up, and plans are afoot for having some friends round on Christmas day for feasting and merriment. I love putting my tree up with the lights and strings of beads and collection of gaudy baubles which have been added to over the years.

This year there are two trees: mine, plus the little one which had been left by the previous owner, fully decorated and on display, up in one of the upstairs rooms. It's suffered a year of being covered in debris and dust, and being squashed under mounds of belongings, but yesterday I brought it down, took all the decorations off, gave it a rinse under the tap and re-potted it in a jar of stones. It's now on the table on the patio, complete with its handmade decorations and strings of lametta; Christmas past and present.

I've still a bit more food shopping to do, mostly just some fresh fruit and veg, but I'll leave that till tomorrow or Wednesday. Even if the shops are heaving it'll be nothing as nightmarish as last weeks trip turned out to be.

There's a sweet old Bulgarian lady who lives further up the street, who brings me a big bottle of fresh milk each Saturday, in exchange for the occasional lift into Gabrovo to do some shopping. She's 88 years old and suffered the complete loss of her house in a chimney fire some years ago. Since then she's lived in her barn which has been sectioned into a couple of rooms, but is no where near in a finished condition. She's constantly waiting for her grandson to come and finish renovations, including the creation of another room which will give her a dedicated bedroom area, but he's always busy with work and lives a several hour drive away, so so far very little has been achieved. She actually gets a relatively decent pension each month, so I and other neighbours have said to her many times, stop waiting for your grandson and get someone else in, at least to do basic repairs, but she won't. I don't know how she does it to be honest. Even just living next to a burnt out roofless shell of your old home would be dreadfully demoralising for me, but she just gets on with it.

I think she's quite a proud person, and doesn't like accepting help for nothing, hence her insistence on bringing me milk in exchange for the odd lift, the most recent of which was last Thursday.

I didn't really need to get much for myself, but sometimes I pretend that I need some things, otherwise she won't go, so I was anticipating quite a short trip, still giving me plenty of time to tidy up ready for some friends who were coming over later in the afternoon. We'd agreed to go sometime between 10 and 10.30am, but time came and went and still no sign of her. Eventually I went up to her house to see what was happening and discovered her shopping bags abandoned in a heap in the lane but no sign of her. Then she appeared around the corner, picking her way through the overgrown grass and weeds which leads around to the back of her property - she'd gone back to find her handbag which she'd forgotten. Surprisingly she also had a big carrier bag of pears which she put into the boot of the car which was a bit confusing. Anyway, off we headed into town.

She'd also brought her old extension lead with her which she explained had stopped working the other night having burnt out! It turns out that the only electric socket she has is one near the edge of her patio (under cover thankfully) and so she runs this extension lead into the house and powers all her appliances from it - fridge, TV, electric cooker and a heater. Yes, clearly overloading the capabilities of the extension, hence the burn out. Frightening stuff and I need to get the guy who lives next door to her to try and insist she get an electrician in to put her a couple of sockets so she can plug things in safely, otherwise I'm scared she's on track for yet another house fire.

We parked up near an electrical store and went in to get a new plug and multisocket bit for the cord. The woman in the shop also agreed that she shouldn't be plugging so many things in to one socket so maybe if enough people keep dogging at her she'll get someone in to do a bit of wiring.

After that it was a quick walk round to the lottery shop to claim her scratch card winnings and blow it all and more on another ticket. Then it was back to the car to head to the next shop.

I needed some plastic sheeting ready to protect the patio from snow blowing in so we both bought several metres. It was kind of funny listening to the shop assistant trying to clarify exactly what my friend required as the plastic comes in several different widths. I'd bought three metres from the four metre wide roll, after which my friend said she'd like 'three metres and two metres'. Do you want three metres of two metre wide? asked the assistant. No, from the same one Julie got, she replied. Okay, three metres of four metre wide? No, I want three and two. At this point I stepped in explaining she wanted a three metre strip and then a separate two metre strip from the same roll. Had we really been shopping for an hour so far and still not touched a supermarket?

Back in the car and then literally 100 yards round the corner to the Lidl supermarket. Where are we going now? she asked. To Lidl's I said, and it's right here. What's here? (It was starting to sound like that old 'Who's on first' baseball sketch). It's a supermarket, I said, you can get your food here. Still looking bemused she got out the car, and it wasn't till we were at the trolleys that she suddenly laughed and realised we were right by the shop entrance. I think she'd seen the car park but not noticed the building at all. In we went and began going up and down the aisles. I picked up a few things here and there but strangely my friend didn't seem to be getting anything at all. Through the check-out and back to the car.

Do you need to pay any bills? I asked. Yes, she said, the electric and water. So off to Kaufland where there's an EasyPay desk by the entrance where you can pay bills. As we arrived she announced she was going to buy here food here too. Couldn't she have got it at Lidl I wondered, hoping that Kaufland wouldn't be too busy. I need to find Boris the taxi driver too, she suddenly said, which completely threw me, making me wonder if I'd not heard her correctly. Why's that, I asked. To give him the bag of pears as a present, she said. Are you kidding me? He could be working anywhere, and I'm not familiar enough with Gabrovo to start driving round all the backstreets looking for Boris. I'll phone him when we come out, she said. No, how about phoning him now and then he can arrange to come here in a while when he's not working, I said. Good idea, she agreed and started rummaging in her handbag for his number. Her bag has everything piled into one or two compartments in no particular order - bills, till receipts, other scraps of paper, loose money... She started opening every bit of paper to see if she could find his number. Don't you have his number in your phone? It turns out not. You need a book to write all your numbers in, I said. Apparently she had one but lost it in the house fire - guess what I'm getting her for Christmas! After a good ten minutes of searching she came up empty handed and said she'd have to leave it.

Kaufland was a slow trek. Despite her bagful of paper she never makes a shopping list, and remembers things in a random order. Luckily by now I've a vague idea of what things she normally buys, so as we reach each aisle I ask do you need... and nine times out of ten the answer's yes. The other thing she likes is a bargain, so I have to seek out the cheapest option for each item too. We almost made it to the check-out when she realised she needed some wheat - the kind you boil, sort of like a pearl barley type of thing. I've never bought it but guessed it might be near the rice, back round near the entrance to the store. I searched around but couldn't see it, so accosted a nearby assistant who confirmed it was there but among the pulses. By now we'd been out for about three hours. I had visions of phoning my friends to tell them to hang fire for another hour or so.

Back in the car and another fruitless rummage for the taxi number. Her plan was now to head to where he works and if he wasn't there to pass the pears onto a friend to give to Boris. You'll have to tell me where to go, I said, as we headed off in the car. I'd thought she'd said it was near the station so as we approached the roundabout I asked her which way. I don't know if she didn't hear me or what but I was now at the roundabout with traffic behind me and no instructions so made a random turn and then asked again, where does Boris work. Near the bus station, she said, but leave it, we'll bring the pears another time. No, no, no, we're doing this now, I thought as I did a big

u-turn at the next roundabout and headed back towards the bus station. Guess where the bus station is? Yes, right back at Lidl where we'd been a couple of hours ago!

Parking up close to the taxi rank she went up to the first car and asked if Boris was around. The driver phoned the elusive Boris who said he was about 5 minutes away, so we stood there and waited. Another taxi eventually arrived and hurrah it was Boris. I passed him the bag of pears which he seemed pleased with and then told us to get in. Poor guy was under the illusion he was actually picking up a fare, and looked utterly bemused when my friend said she was going home in my car and only wanted to give him the pears. Sorry Boris, hope you didn't turn down any other fares to collect your fruit.

Finally back home for a large glass of Baileys and a great afternoon and evening recovering with friends. Hopefully my neighbour won't need any more shopping till after the new year!