19th September 2013

The day began on a rather unsavoury note, courtesy of our old friend “Bulgarian sweet and sour chicken.” At around 1 a.m., my stomach staged a protest, and fifteen fraught minutes later, the offending dish was evicted. Peace was restored, and I crawled back into bed, grateful for a ceasefire.

By 7 a.m., alarms were ringing. David, looking slightly green himself, admitted he wasn’t at his best but soldiered on. Banjo and I went off for a long constitutional, hoping Sevdolin might be hard at work on our return. No such luck, though he turned up shortly after 9 am with his usual good cheer. Milen, however, was conspicuously absent, proving once again that promises and punctuality don’t always mix.

Sevdolin set to work on the wood store roof, while David and I tackled the house roof. My task was building up the apex at one end; David busied himself coating rafters with beetle killer after reinforcing them with nails. Trouble was, the timber was so hard it mocked his hammering, bending nails with ease. Eventually, he resorted to drilling every hole first. Slow going, but effective.

Lunch was a simple but refreshing garden salad, enjoyed in the shade of the wood store roof. Given the blistering heat of the morning, none of us were exactly sprinting back to work afterwards. Lugging buckets of mortar up the ladder left me longing for an afternoon siesta, but the job wasn’t going to finish itself.

While David dashed into Dryanovo for more beetle juice, I patched up the walls beneath the beams. Oddly enough, the clear blue skies and sweeping forest views made the labour feel almost enjoyable. Caught up in the spirit of the place, I even fired up the chainsaw to cut the replacement beams. Precision isn’t a chainsaw’s strong suit, but I like to think the results passed for “Bulgarian standard.”

We finally downed tools at 7 p.m., chatting about the forecast and hearing reports that rain was drifting over from Sofia.

Dinner was a no-nonsense pasta bake, this time spiced up with sausage. Unlike last night’s experiment, every morsel vanished without complaint. Then came our standard evening routine: a film, followed by the welcome embrace of bed.