Meeting with the Architect, or at least trying to

For the week running up to my trip to meet the architect I was unable to get hold of Chaz to confirm the meeting however he had let me know he was going to be indisposed for an uncertain length of time. I did not have a contact detail for the architect (Veselka) so I did not want to presume the worst and not go, in case she turned up waiting for me.

So my I flew out on my usual routine, arriving at E's late on the Saturday night and settling myself with a small beer and a chat. Then to bed as a busy day was in store for the Sunday.

A little lizard which was outside E's house

I'd arranged to meet Veselka on Monday as this gave me the Sunday to get to the school (MY school!) and give as much of it a clean as I could. We are up and out of the house for about 9am and got there by about 10, having bought some bread, cheese and spicy sausage for lunch. Oh, and a huge bottle of water too. We also picked up a padlock, and a hasp, to allow us to secure the door of the store room.

The School had been empty for (apparently) about eight years and when they left they abandoned loads of interesting stuff which was now spread out all over the floors of each room; on the first viewing we had started the process of taking some of the funkiest stuff and saving it but this time we would be trying to leave each room totally clear.

The first room before we had cleared it

With commendable energy we started out on the room I wanted to be the Living Room and both started sorting through the piles of paper and other detritus. I picked a box and started filling it with slides; thousands of them were scattered all over the place. E built a pile of interesting looking posters and other bits of paperwork and slowly but surely between us the piles of things to keep grew, while the room cleared.

The pile of things to be kept

My box of saved slides

We took a break to pop down into the local town and bought some sweeping brushes, a wheelbarrow and some dust masks and, with much struggling to get the wheelbarrow into the back of the small car I had hired (eventually sorted when I thought to open one of the windows for a handle to protrude through) we were back to the school and starting the cleaning in earnest.

A decision had been made between us that we had fannied around enough picking up stuff to save and we should start to work more efficiently. Soon we had settled into a good routine, with E wielding the brush and me shoveling the dust and rubbish into the wheelbarrow, then bumping it down the steps outside and up to an old sandpit we'd picked as a tip. Anything burnable we were stashing into black plastic bags for burning at the end of the day.

The wheel barrow and waste pile

In this manner we swiftly finished the first room and sped through the next one too. The second room was the one we were calling "Room 13) and is the most intact of all the rooms. It had been picked to act as a store room for all the things we were saving.

Room 13 with our saved stuff

During our cleaning the friendly neighbour turned up again, with her son in tow, and as is their habit she had brought some drinks for us as a welcome gift. She was to make herself helpful (if in a very forceful way) throughout the weekend; at one stage she attempted to take the brush from my hand to show me how to clean up properly and E had to be quite firm to get her to stop trying to take over.

My neighbour and her son, with E

After Room 13 we started on the corridor and then the room at the end which will be my bedroom and after that we were totally exhausted and headed back to E's, stopping on the way for some bottles of beer. E cooked a fantastic meal of spicy sausage with potato salad on the side and the beer slipped down very easily until my bed called.

The next day was the day the architect was due to arrive however, with no confirmation having been received we had no idea when she would turn up. This meant we had to be at the School all day to wait for her and constrained our day quite severely. We stopped off on the way again to pick up some more hasps and padlocks, and a few small carabiners to put the keys on, and got to the school in good time. In the absence of architect we got back onto the cleaning.

The neighbour once again put in an appearance and her husband (who had brought the yoghurt drinks the first time I ever went there) got involved in the cleaning spirit, shoveling the rubbish from the corridor downstairs that their hay had left behind, and carrying it off on his back to dump somewhere in common land.

Our second fire, burning well

Half way through doing that last large room upstairs we were reaching the limits of our energy and decided to go and start the fire and burn as much of the waste as we could. We started the first fire in a bit of an exposed location and let it burn down, then started a second in a more sheltered location but, sods law, the wind started swirling and the sight of hot embers being blown towards a barn full of hay (MY barn) encouraged us to allow that to die down too. In the end we dragged all the rubbish into said barn and left it in one of the rooms, where I will deal with it when I'm here full time.

We eventually finished the final room and without having had any sign of the architect decided to call it a day. On the way down the hill it was decided to try a different route back. This took us the other way along the river and eventually we were blocked by a combination of a very wide river crossing (passable) and a very steep bank on the other side (questionable).

The ford and the steep bank

It was not a wasted trip as we both paddled in the water, washing the dirt and dust of the day away and that feeling of relaxation in the soles of my feet was worth the slight detour.

Me paddling

That night we were both too tired to consider cooking so we went to a small cafe in the nearest town and had a lovely meal; the whole thing, including two beers each, came to less than £9. I love Bulgaria.

All in all this was a successful trip as the upstairs of the School had only one cluttered room (the old lab which had the blown in window which it was too risky to try and move alone) and the downstairs had also been tidied substantially. The neighbours had a key for the padlocks (apart from the store room) and the building was a little more secure than before as well with the padlocks informing anyone who investigated that the school was now under new ownership.

The several stages of the cleaning a corridor

Unfortunately I was back to square one with the architect and, with winter looming and the roof showing signs of further damage being imminent, I knew I'd be back sooner rather than later to meet more architects and get the next step into progress.