26th September 2010

I am now, it seems, something of a land baron. Imagine my surprise when, just a week before flying to see my stepbrother David in Bulgaria, a letter from the Council dropped through the letterbox announcing that I had been granted an allotment.

I cycled over for a look and found it was a “split” plot, divided neatly in two, just the right size to keep two people in vegetables without the need for a tractor. It was across town, a brisk ten-minute pedal away. I promptly sent off the agreement and committed to the princely sum of £12.50 per year in rent.

On my return from Bulgaria, I set to work: clearing the ground, hacking back a hedge that had designs on world domination, and digging over four rows each day. The soil was heavy, but promising.

The very next day, another letter arrived from the Council. I had been granted another allotment, this one much closer, on Welland Park Road. A visit revealed it was rather less picturesque than the first and somewhat unkempt, but the soil was excellent.

I rang the Council and spoke to a Mr Parrott (yes, really). I explained that I’d already started work on the other plot, but would quite like this one too. He confessed it had been his mistake, and as it was his error, I could keep both. So now I have two allotments, one at £12.50 a year and the other at the slightly grander rate of £14. At this rate, oil drilling is surely only a matter of time.

On Wednesday, I drove to Thurcroft via Newark to see Charlotte and Ellis, then on to stay the night with Nan. The next day, I chauffeured Nan back to Harborough.

Bulgaria: Sunshine, Chainsaws, and Burnt Bread

Friday saw me collecting Roger Woolnough from Braybrook, and the three of us (Nan, Roger and yours truly) caught the 6:45 pm train to Luton Airport. Our Wizz Air flight to Sofia was fashionably late by an hour, finally departing at 11 pm. In a minor miracle of logistics, we managed to be first onto the plane, first off, and first out of the airport, a brilliant display of teamwork that would have impressed the Red Arrows.

At 3 am Bulgarian time, we were met by David and Genya outside the Terminal. A bumpy three-and-a-half-hour drive later (on roads that appear to have dodged any improvements since our last visit), we reached Ritya and collapsed into bed.

Too tired to travel far for the first few days, Roger and I busied ourselves in true holiday style by chopping down trees and sawing logs for David’s winter fuel. When we weren’t pretending to be Bulgarian lumberjacks, we ventured out for cheap and cheerful meals in local restaurants, visited the monastery, explored the old capital of Veliko Tarnovo, and browsed the Dryanovo market.

Then the heatwave hit, 35°C in the shade. This meant any real work had to be done by 10:30 am, after which the day was best spent near the pool. Only David and I braved the water; the others preferred the safety of the sunshade. Roger and I bought some honey from a bee-keeping neighbour and talked ambitiously about long walks, none of which actually happened once the temperature took hold.

Nan filled the downtime with an endless supply of stories from her youth, some of which may even have been true. One cool evening, we lit the lounge fire. The insulation David and I had installed the previous November worked so well that the place turned into a sauna within minutes. We decided to bake bread in the oven above the fire, a fine plan until the heat got the better of it. Some loaves were burnt beyond recognition, and as I happened to be in the toilet at the crucial moment, I returned to find that all of the charred offerings had been assigned to me.

The return journey was a rerun of the outbound one, except in reverse. We left at midnight, drove four sleepy hours to the airport, were first on and off the plane, then spent two hours at the train station waiting for a Sunday service hampered by track works. Late in the evening, we were back in Harborough, and it was straight to bed.