Tuesday 25th January 2022

It’s been incredibly cold lately with snow and temperatures well below zero. As soon as it gets like that my garden becomes a haven for birds who gorge themselves on the feeders I put out: sunflower seeds, peanuts, dates and a couple of chunks of fat. It’s brilliant seeing them swooping down for the food, and regular visitors are great tits, blue tits, nuthatches, chaffinches, jays, hawfinches and even a pair of willow tits. Some weeks my bird feeder shopping bill outweighs that for my own food. I also hung up a couple of chunks of raw chicken skin the other day and the great tits have gone mad for it. I’m a bit worried about potential raids on the chicken farm up the road by hoards of carnivorous , now they’ve got a taste for it. Another little critter seeking shelter from the cold recently has been ratty.

Remember when I started renovating the kitchen and I went all around the edge between the ceiling and walls filling every gap with a thick layer of concrete to stop any incursions? Well blow me if about a month ago I heard the pitter patter of feet above the new kitchen ceiling. I was devastated! How could they still be getting in? Well, as long as it definitely couldn't get out of the ceiling and into the pantry I guess it wasn't the end of the world. So most evenings I heard the little scratchy sounds at about 10pm and then it went quiet as I presumed ratty curled up to sleep.

The other night, however, I was up in the room above the kitchen sorting some clothes out, when I heard the familiar noises, this time of course from under the floorboards. Sukey cat was with me and she immediately sat like a statue, staring at the floor, so I sat on the bed and watched with her. Suddenly a little hand stretched up from a gap between the boards, followed by a twitchy nose, and then an eye peered out. Sukey was quivering with excitement but kept still as the rat was still out of reach, merely looking up at us, cheeky thing. I sat for a while longer hearing it rustle around and occasionally sniff at the gap again, but eventually got fed up with this, took Sukie back down to the kitchen, made a cup of tea and got into bed to read for a while.

A few minutes later, out of the corner of my eye, I saw one of my slippers move. Looking down there was ratty, bold as brass on the rug next to my bed. As soon as he knew he was spotted he scuttled off out the room and I shot off to the kitchen to retrieve some weapons, i.e. Molly and Sukie. Molly could smell something was up as soon as she got upstairs and started sniffing all round. From being very young, whenever she played with toys I'd say "killlllll" and she'd get all excited and attack the toy. So now, if I give the same command, she gets all hyped up and into attack mode. Feeling safe after telling her to 'killllll' I got back into bed to carry on reading. Sure enough less than a minute later there was a thump, and when I went to look, Molly was standing there with a mouth full of rat, growling menacingly. Don't worry, Molly, no one's taking that off you! I put Sukie back downstairs so she wouldn't disturb Molly and cosied up in bed where I fell asleep to the sounds of happy chomping from the room next door.

With all the recent snow I finally got around to doing something I've been wanting to do for years, and that's to try skiing. I'm incredibly lucky in that I live less than an hour away from a small ski resort called Uzana, up in the mountains south of Gabrovo. I go up there quite a lot during summer as there are lots of hiking trails and the views are absolutely stunning, but thus far I've never made it up in winter. That's partly due to having an ordinary little car without four wheel drive, and although I know the road up to the resort will be regularly cleared by snow ploughs, I think my vehicle would still struggle on any steep icy bits. In fact, as an aside, I recently went to the water fountain in the nearby village of Michkovtsi to fill my water bottles (I get all my drinking water from here on the advice of a water board worker who told me the tap water in Mezhdeni isn't very good for drinking) and as I turned a corner to go back home, the car got slower and slower before coming to a complete standstill as my wheels span on the packed ice on the road. Quite a scary moment as I was forced to then gingerly slither back down the hill and find a different, less icy way back out of the village. Back to the skiing.

Luckily I've got friends with much better vehicles who could give me a lift. There are several ski runs at the resort, but only a couple are operating during the week as it's pretty quiet there then which was perfect for a complete beginner like me. The one we went to is called Emar and has a nursery area for complete beginners, plus a drag lift to go up a steeper slope. I haven't been up there but I believe you can get off the drag lift at three different stages depending on your ability. Next to the ski areas is another long slope where you can go sledding. The ski lift costs 25 levs for the day, and hire of boots, skis and poles was 20 levs.

The first thing the guy asked was my shoe size and height. Apparently the skis need to come roughly to your chin. If you've never skied before then you won't know how weird the boots feel! Your feet and shins are instantly locked in position, and to walk about you have to bend your knees and clump around. Once equipped, I shuffled over to the nursery section to have a play.

Luckily a friend came in with me in the beginning as I wasn't even sure how to get the skis on! I was pretty nervous as I've no sense of balance, so at first I stayed on the flat bit, just pushing myself along with the poles and trying not to fall. Once I got confident with that I started side stepping up the hill and practising coming down and then doing a plough stop where you point the back of the skis outwards to slow down.

It was lucky there were lots of sturdy fence posts, as a few times my plough went into action way to late to stop me, so I had to come to a halt by grabbing a post. The guy watching told me to make a much wider plough shape. He also had to come and pick me up after I fell over and lay there flailing around completely unable to stand up.

By the end of the day I was quite happily coming down the nursery slope, doing a bit of a swerve left and right, and coming to a stop before hitting the barrier. I'd call that a huge success.

It's now February and we've had more snow today, so we're planning to go back on Thursday this week. I'm trying to contact the ski centre to see if I can have a proper lesson this time, and if at the end of the day I can be in control of my speed and can turn left and right it'd be fantastic.

I was a bit gutted on Sunday night to discover a big chunk of the stone wall on the street side of the orchard had completely collapsed. To be honest, it’s been leaning out at a scary angle for a long time, so the fall was inevitable. Thankfully the rocks didn’t tumble out onto the road (unless they did and some irate motorist stopped to sling them out of the way) but we’re all heaped on the grass verge.

Not wanting the soil to erode and cause even more problems, I was out there Monday morning rebuilding. My dry stone walling skills are completely self taught and always centre on making the base a bit deeper then stuffing the rocks back as straight as possible. I hadn’t been working long when a passing car stopped and the driver jokingly said he’d see how well I did before hiring me to do his wall. I replied that my efforts would probably cause the rest of the wall to collapse by the next day, to which he uttered those magical Bulgarian words “ ще стане!” Literally it means “it will become” but is used in the sense of “it will work”. You hear it all the time, especially when someone possibly more qualified is watching your efforts. Me: Hey, my house is falling down but I’ve wrapped some duct tape round it Passing neighbour: Ще стане! If it doesn’t ‘стане’ I’m sure my next efforts will also be cheered on, but for now it’s looking okay.