Party time

I'm struggling to get back into the rhythm of writing these updates; what with having no workmen, and no expectation of them for a while yet either, I think you can expect these updates to be a bit less regular. After all this is a blog about The Old School, not about our day to day life as such. Anyway, onwards...

The party

The main excitement since the last update, whenever that was, was our second annual Old School Guy Fawkes party. This is about the only tradition that we have brought from the UK out here to introduce to our friends and neighbours in Bulgaria and it's a really good one to chose as it allows us to invite people over to mingle and enjoy our home, while we feed and water them prior to bonfire and fireworks...

A hard at work making Leek and Potato soup

All the dishes ready the night before the party

We actually had a few more than this later on

... though with the fact that up to that point we haven't had any rain to mention for five months we called off the bonfire to prevent us from burning the village to the ground. Despite this slight disappointment it was such a lovely evening and we had a really good mixed crowd; the Kmet came over and so did Bekir and Sally, with Bekir's son driving, and that alone made it awesome but then so many other of our friends came and I got to meet SandS's little baby boy who was sweet as anything. I was drinking water until the fireworks and after that didn't have all that much which was a good choice but the night did end with me doing a duet with Chaz to "Delilah" by Tom Jones, among other classics. The food was superb and there was way too much of it so the left overs got frozen for us to enjoy over the next few weeks. All in all it was a perfect night and not too overwhelming which was quite a relief for me as I had been dreading it slightly.

The Dining Room is starting to look finished

Internal curtains for the nook

A well deserved beer after a hard days graft

Finally a picture of us together

My dessert, suggested by the waiter and superb

The day before the party was a pretty busy one as we rushed around getting ready - A was cooking while I was cleaning and doing a few chores around the place like hanging curtains and putting pictures up and things like that. By the evening we were both pretty tired so rather than cook more we went to the other excellent local restaurant where I had Iskander Kebab and A tried a very similar one that was a bit more garlicky but still superb. We hardly ever get pictures together because one or other of us is always behind the camera so we asked the waiter to snap a shot and he got a lovely one. This was a great way to prepare ourselves for the next day. The pudding I had was rather special as well - total chocolate overload!

Chores and things

Other than the party we have both been busy around the place getting through the list of chores on our Trello board. While I'm not working, and there is no work on the horizon for me, I need to get a load of things done around the place.

Warming our soil up ready for potentially planting

A goes back up onto the roof

She is showing off here

The coal shed as of Tuesday morning before I dug any

First of all after putting the manure into the raised beds I put the glass over all but one of the sections. Now we've had a bit of a disaster as the weather has changed today and there has been really high winds and the one window I left off, leaning against the wall, fell over and smashed during today. Never mind. Talking of high winds the hat we put on the chimney above the bedroom had begun squeaking really badly so when the wind dropped a bit A went up there with some WD40 and sprayed it loads and now it isn't squeaking any more. She's definitely braver than I am. The biggest job on my list, still, is the coal shed. I've been doing two truck fulls every morning first thing and then not managing to get the second two runs in the afternoon as I've been busy on other things, but it is definitely making a difference. I hope this wind and rain (woohoo!! RAIN!) clears for the morning so I can do another couple of trips and keep the momentum up.

Slightly damaged

Now protected

More lovely curtains

Today I got a fair bit done, what with the coal shed as I've said, and then I put some metal edging up by the garage doors where the insulation has become slightly damaged by the door swinging and catching it. I headed out and got some more of this and also protected the edge of the worktop next to the cooker as the heat from the hobs has damaged the facade slightly. I also hung the curtains over the kitchen doorway, having got a battery for my cable finder and made sure I wasn't about to drill into any mains cables. The final thing, which took loads of time, was putting up the new TV in the nook - I had to go back out a second time to get a correctly sized drill bit but that ended up being a really good trip as I bumped into Venko at the petrol station and I haven't seen him since I got back. 

Other things

So other than that here are a couple of random pictures to accompany the final paragraph that doesn't have any specific pictures to go with it.

Beautiful hazy start to the day

Thelma found her new favourite place

We have had a good weekend of it; yesterday we got to go see Dom, who I had a beer with while I was in Mechelen, and meet his newly born daughter so that was really nice. We took a scenic route around to their house as well which was interesting as the road wound along the top of the ridge taking us away from our target. I've done some more modeling, though the pictures are on my phone and so I don't have them to hand and I can't be bothered to go get them so you'll just have to believe me; I've mocked up the first diorama for the model railway and also started on a wire wound tree.

So, with the wind howling outside, and the welcome rain falling, I'm going to sign this off and I'll be back at some point with another update. Thanks for reading.