Friday 31st January

So, last day of January and still no snow to speak of.  Maybe February is going to assault us...more wood or no more wood...that is the question.  I walked by the wood yard this morning and was tempted..we need a good few days of sun again and then it will be dry enough to put straight away.

The sun was up already when I woke....I was late.  Outside temperature was minus four degrees, twenty one in which soon started rising as the sun grew stronger.  I didn't bother with breakfast, I'd arranged to start the lesson with my student at ten this morning and I would have been on time except that the windscreen was covered in ice so clearing it put me back five minutes so more or less on time.  Again I forgot that it was Friday and only just managed to find a space on the car-park in the centre....all street parking was taken up by cars or wheelbarrows signifying that at your own peril do you park outside my shop.  Obviously they were expecting deliveries.---and not of wheelbarrows.

I checked with my student's mum that he was awake and I carried on to the flat and as usual he was playing games on his phone.  The fire had been lit and it was really warm in the apartment so I sat down and we hadn't had a lesson for about eight weeks so it was a matter of getting back into the routine of me telling him that he had to stop playing the game...we had work to do.  He explained the game to me...in English and I think in someways it's much better that we have conversation.  All of the students in the school can read the text but few understand the meaning and it's easy to answer questions without again the understanding.  So I picked a simple text, a few American words in it that I have to substitute with the English equivalent for my own sake, and we read it through together.  We discussed the text using the dictionary to find the Bulgarian word which he writes over the top of the text and then get down to answering questions on it.  I did suggest at one point that he should be teaching me Bulgarian to put a twist on the lesson.  We finished around eleven thirty, he was itching to go and play football at this point so I went back to the shop, went through the text with his mother and the did a tour of the market since it was Friday and was asked where I'd got to.  I hadn't really been round Djebel for about two months and it was good to be missed.  

By this time the cold was getting though and I was feeling hungry so I headed to the soup kitchen for lunch...and yes, it was chicken soup again and they have put creme caramel on the menu so I ordered one of those.  Cost of lunch...just under two leva...last of the big spenders me.  I drove home, sat on the stairs watching the cats and the bird table and suddenly I noticed a black cat with pink legs and underbelly coming into the garden.  Not sure what had happened to it but there was no camera to capture it and I couldn't put it down to the drink since I don't imbibe.  Maybe it fell into something that it shouldn't have been near.

Ribs in the oven, book and me in the sun on the sofa and you can guess the rest.  It was four by the time that I woke up.  At four thirty Haciber came round to say hello after thirty days away in Turkey, she'd brought me coffee and a coffee mug from Canakkale which is situated on the Bosphorus.  It's a place that I would like to visit.  Her second visit was to bring me two bead cakes that she'd brought back with her....she went back home and I suddenly remembered that I'd not given her her Christmas presents, this year I was here and she wasn't so I went over to give them to her.  The cats were all back in her garden and I realised that all the ones that were terrorising my birds were hers.  I'm so pleased she's back.

I lit the fire, supper was ready so I served up my plate of bones and nibbled away dipping them in ketchup and mayonnaise.  Stuffed to the gills I managed to force down two eclairs and so much for my healthy diet today.  Saturday tomorrow...nothing doing so far....I didn't take the Beast in today for it's heater check so may do that in the morning...I'll see if I want to be lazy for the day or not.  Beautiful sunset tonight so just a few shots of that.  LN...I'm tired after my afternoon sleep....LN