3rd October 2013 

Another delightfully grim, rainy day greeted us, reliable as the Queen’s Guard at Buckingham Palace. In the morning, it was back to the loft, where I set about laying insulation in one of the side sections. Naturally, this involved first clearing rubble, filling a few overly ambitious sossal holes, and then covering it all with wire mesh until my supply ran out. Meanwhile, David was in full electrician mode, wiring up two lights in the new loft and another two in the original, untouched loft, illuminating every dark corner and cobweb-riddled crevice. Once the last wire was begrudgingly clipped in, we declared it lunchtime.

Lunch was a bowl of gloopy goodness: boiled rice drowned in pasta sauce, with a scatter of peas thrown in for nutritional purposes. Surprisingly, it was almost palatable and undeniably filling. Banjo even got a share, happily expanding his waistline in solidarity with ours.

The afternoon, cold and miserable as a soggy sock, saw us turn our attention to the pool barn. Erected by local hands last year, it sported a roof with a worryingly dramatic bow; collapse was no longer a hypothetical. On my last visit, we’d added some strategic supports and even laid foundations for a pillar, but had never quite got around to putting up the wood. David had promised to finish the job after my return to the UK, but, as with many noble intentions, it had languished in the “we’ll get to it” pile.

We cleared gravel and scouted a few flat stones (plotchas) to set the new pillars on. Using a car jack and a suitably heroic plank, we managed to lift the most egregiously bowed beam by roughly 8 cm. Upon release, the roof tiles shifted in a manner best described as “panicked but orderly.”

David nipped into Dryanovo for wood while I took Banjo for a stroll, later collapsing on the bed and nearly drifting off before his return. The task seemed simple enough, Bulgarian-style: fire up the chainsaw, cut three plinths, nail them into place, then measure and cut the first pillar. We were ready to raise the beam to heroic heights, but the base refused to play ball. We swapped planks, ditched the jack wheels, experimented with various plotchas, and even tried a few nearby tree trunks, yet nothing would give us a stable footing.

As dusk descended, a desperate David unearthed the cesspit cover, plopped it under the jack, and, miraculously, it worked the first time! If it could survive the Bulgarian effluence, it could certainly handle a humble beam. We watched in triumph as the roof snapped into place, everything more or less straight and sound. Emboldened, we cut the next pillar and positioned it under the beam, but fading light and rising damp finally got the better of us, so we retreated inside, soggy but victorious.

Dinner was another hearty sausage pasta bake, enjoyed beside a crackling fire, followed by a film as the rain pattered steadily on, mocking our industriousness.