Lying architects, and a trip out

The morning started with an early alarm call, only the second I've set since I arrived, and a fairly long period of snoozing. I was in no really hurry for this day to start as I had arranged for Lubo to come over to talk through what he had told me the other day which the letter he gave me did not back up.

Buds appearing on my tea trees; I love these in the summer

It was a gorgeous day however and eventually the draw of a cuppa, and the fact the sun was shining in through the windows and making me feel bad, dragged me from my pit and inside. The cuppa was definitely the first thing on the agenda and then chatting online for a bit and eating an orange for my breakfast and finally pushing Sassy through into her room so she could have a run around. I was waiting for 9am when Lubo was due to arrive and therefore not really able to do very much else. About five minutes late I noticed that he was walking through the corner of my property from the lane; he never brings his BMW down my lane ever.

I went down to see him and he had started to get the documents out on the table tennis table which was not good for me; I was wanting to scan stuff for my own records. The conversation started calmly enough with me asking for the new skitza and seeing that it had the correct land on it (which was a bit of a relief) and then bringing up the story he had told me about the reason for the rejection of the PuP.

To cut a long (and at points private) story to a shorter public story we had some raised voices, I expressed extreme frustration that I was paying him to do a job that he was not doing and he offered to give me that money back. I expressed that not having the PuP was not satisfactory to me and he said that (direct quote) the letter from Sofia was "bullshits" and not correct. Hmmmm. A little while later the Kmet arrived and appeared to back up Lubo's story, nodding along when the renovation work was described to him.

I got rid of Lubo after a while saying I would talk to him next week but I was feeling quite suspicious at this point and had read something in his body language (and the words he had actually used) that led me to suspect he was nervous and paddling desperately to escape from a difficult situation. To my shame (now; I really do wish I hadn't) I paid him the money I owed for getting the electric installed and that was that; I will probably get him here next Monday for the next installment of our discussion.

More of that later.

Ground based spiders web

With Lubo gone and this whole thing settling in my head I decided to do something useful for a bit while waiting for my friend to arrive for our trip to town. I took the wheelbarrow over to where Rambo's run is going to be to do a really careful and slow check of all the ground for glass or plastic. Now he would probably be OK if there was glass there but I'd rather be safe than have him hurt himself. When I got there I was distracted by the site of loads of spiders webs, made close to the ground, which were glistening with dew at that time. They were pretty and all over the place. Amazing. It took a little while and was quite pleasant in the warm sun.

Really red abdomen on this fly

At one point I noticed a strange looking fly on the wall and grabbed my camera; unfortunately it flew around almost immediately but I was able to snap a couple of pictures and this is the one which shows its bright red abdomen off best. It was flitting around quite a lot while I was watching it and seemed to be focusing on the grass and not the flowers. There were quite a lot of other buzzing things flying around there too, visiting the tiny flowers which are everywhere on the ground and that is really good; when I get my fence and start putting proper plants and flowers in I hope to get loads of wildlife to visit.

Lionel the Lion

My next task after the glass pick was to pull the lion out from Rambo's shed and clean it up. I had noticed this last year but decided to leave it be until I arrived full time this year as it would need a bit of care to bring it back to a better standard. It looks like it used to be hung up somewhere and I am going to have to work out where to put it.

Strengthening bars in place on his tail

I pulled it back to the porch on the wheelbarrow and got my broken broom head and used it to brush all the cobwebs and dust off both sides. There was quite a lot of this on it and I had to be quite careful as bits of the wood it is made from had become warped and some were quite close to snapping off entirely. I found some flat metal joining pieces and flipped him over, then put a strengthener across all of the joints that were loose and most of the others, and now he is back to being rigid and not close to falling apart. Success.

Plastic over the windows

Finally for my tasks of the morning I spotted that the Swallows were starting to fly in and out of my landing again and as I am going to be getting the windows in soon I think I don't want them expecting to be able to come inside in case they lay eggs and then can't get to their nest because of my windows. I had some plastic sheeting left over from last year so I have just loosely nailed this up to stop them gaining access and I think seeing the window man tomorrow is now a priority.

And so I settled down to wait for my friend, in the sun with a book, and very pleasant it was too though I found myself nodding off and struggling to focus on the words. She arrived shortly afterwards and we were pretty quickly in the car and heading towards town. My tasks included posting some stuff to my dad, going into a bank I have an account at, but no card or access to the funds, and picking up some immigration forms (though I can't do the immigration process until I've sorted the bank).

My successes were nil; at the post office the queue was stupid - not long just people kept walking up and pushing in and as a foreigner it is hard to impose yourself in those situations. I gave up eventually. I will work some other way of returning my parents' items to them. The same situation happened in the bank, though this time we just took one look at the queue and walked out as I was getting hungry. On our way to the chicken shack we walked past a flower shop where my friend bought some pots of stuff and I bought a Clematis to have as a climber somewhere, maybe my entrance porch I think. Lovely.

Chicken just before we demolished it

The chicken was really nice (as per usual) and we enjoyed watching the Turkish families walking past on their holidays. As my friend observed it really is obvious down in this part of the country that you are in a foreign land; some places are very English and this is not one of them. I for one like it like that. After lunch we headed back to the car and then realised we hadn't even picked up the forms from immigration. Oh well, there will be another time and it was a nice little trip to town without achieving anything.

The valley upstream

From there we headed off the half hour drive to the abandoned power station I had found with my parents the week before. My plans here had been to take extensive photographs and use my wheel to measure distances however it quickly became apparent that the extent of the property was rather larger than I had previously realised. The towers extended down the river and round the far bend. After about half an hour of wondering around, climbing inside some of the square, land based, relay stations which are empty, we headed back to Thomas and I will come back when I have an entire day to devote to measuring and surveying.

If you didn't know to look you wouldn't have seen him

The wildlife over here is outstanding and I kept disturbing colourfully patterned lizards which dashed away and hid before I could photograph them. In the pools which were fed by the running water from the pipe in one of the main buildings there were loads of frogs, actually there were frogs everywhere but these were the ones we could see. One of them hopped away and submerged itself to hide however we had spotted it and I got my zoom lens out and got some really good pictures of it. You just have to love the closeness to nature that you can experience here.

After this we headed back through town and finally did something that was on our list; we picked up some curtain material for me to put up in Room 13 to stop the sun shining through and blinding me while I'm sat at my desk. We will make this into a blind at some point maybe this week, maybe next, maybe the week after but at least I have the material now. It will make a big difference to my comfort particularly once I start work again.

Now THAT is a mug!

And so we got back and now I am sat here drinking tea from the huge mug I got yesterday from the house clearance (we've been invited back so maybe I'll do the blind and then we can go back over there again) and feeling exhausted after the day; possibly I think the stress with Lubo is not helping my state of mind and it is tiring my out because I am continually having to think about it. I may be going into the Obshtina on Thursday as my friends are going to come over to help me out (thank you so much for all you have done guys!) and we shall find out exactly what the Kmet there, or at least the head architect, is saying. I'm not going into detail here but I have pretty much had it confirmed that once again Lubo was not straight with me this morning, despite my obvious irritation at being lied to, and that is why I wish I'd kept my money in my pocket and not felt obligated to pay him back anyway.

Oh well. Life goes on and I will get to the bottom of this; I just wish people would be straight with me and not try and wriggle and twist and lie and cheat to avoid fulfilling their responsibilities.

So now I am going to chop some potatoes up to make chips or wedges or something and try and make my own chips for the first time ever. I will probably be back to add to this blog later with the success or failure of this venture, and I will hopefully not be dragged next door again for a second dinner as my chicken at lunch did me quite well enough thanks.

My dinner which was as lovely as it looks

I am back and I have a series of pictures of me making chips for the first time and, having just eaten them with ham (ok, the stuff I call bacon in the morning) and eggs they were absolutely divine! I am totally going to do that again! Used nearly 5L of vegetable oil but it can be put back in the bottle, huh.

Chipping my tatties

After five minutes over the heat the first bubbles appear

The bubbles are slowly growing my vigorous

Finally the bubbles are giving it some welly

The final product; seasoned with salt and pepper

So there you have it; I have just pulled Sassy in from her room, luckily she was in her cage as it has got dark really quickly and I didn't really notice this happening. The fire is chugging away nicely throwing out lots of heat (though I will have to keep chopping wood as I haven't kept it up the last two days and I'm burning through what I have quite quickly) and now I am going to drink a beer and chill and chat and wait and then head to bed early.