In my first Bulgarian blog, I mentioned that I contracted a tummy bug which we suspected came from eating eggs, David felt unwell too and unlike myself, he continued to eat despite there being an unpleasant ‘movement’ through his body for around five days (I thought he might explode at any time). And then, a few days ago I again felt unwell and took to my bed for most of the day. The previous evening I had made a Thai Green Curry and suspected that was the culprit, yet David felt fine. Maybe Bulgarian bugs treat him more kindly than me.

Though the weather has turned wet and chilly our Turkish labourers have again returned to Ritya to earn some money. After completing our renovation work inside we got back to working outside with them, but with constant rain, the garden has turned into something resembling the Somme. Each evening I looked forward to the Turks going home so we could change into dry clothes and make a fire.

On one of the days we constructed a set of steps from the fruit garden to the vegetable plot. The task involved linking a gutter downpipe to a drainage pipe. It rained all day.  Though eager to help, we discovered that our helpers were not very good at mixing concrete, despite many times explaining the need to get the mixture of sand and cement consistent, they kept producing something resembling slurry, and as a consequence, we had to adjust the quantities ourselves.  Like their Bulgarian counterparts, they don’t appreciate the value of using a spirit level and look bemused when in each section, we checked the fall of the drainage pipe they were installing. Did they think water flows uphill? However, we have a sense of humour and despite several cock-ups we finished the steps and piping in record time.

On the day Wales took on France in the Rugby World Cup, we started digging a ditch through the garden to house the drainage pipes. During the morning, the Turks had been tasked with levelling the ground for the laying of a path, we had explained in depth how we wanted it done and drew a diagram to make it clearer. While David drove to Dryanovo to fetch the piping we had ordered, I retired inside to listen to the match on the radio.

At half-time, I went to check on how the path was progressing. Despite previously stressing that after levelling the ground, they were to barrow sand onto the surface and tamp that down before laying the plotchas (large flat stones), I discovered they hadn’t bothered with the sand and placed the plotchas onto bare earth. Aghast, I told them to remove the plotchas and go and get the sand and spread it, then left to watch the second half of the game. When shortly afterwards David arrived back, he commented that they hadn’t done much, so I explained.

What we take for granted as a way of doing things in Western Europe, here in Eastern Europe many of these ‘givens’ are an alien concept, that to them is just a waste of time. They don’t put down sheets etc. to protect the owner’s surfaces or equipment from paint, cement or staining liquids. They prefer to use their judgement rather than a ruler or a spirit level. They never clean up at the end of a task/day, but most annoying of all is they don’t use their initiative. After constructing the steps and before the concrete had gone off, I had to stop one of the Turks from breaking plotchas on the steps because it was a convenient hard surface, not just once, but twice!