You may know the name if you are interested in modern Balkan literature. You may have read her short stories or poetry in anthologies and literary journals in Britain, Ireland and the United States; Selected, a trilingual volume in Bulgarian, Greek and English; or A Visit to the Clockmaker, a book of verse published in Cork, Eire.
On 19 February every year many Bulgarians gather in central Sofia, in the square encircled by the Serdika Hotel, the Foreign Art Gallery and the Faculty of Journalism. If you happen to be in the area you will probably be confronted by strict security as President Parvanov will be in attendance, standing before a line of elite troops and laying wreaths at a small monument in the middle of the square.
A cold winter morning in the village of Rosen some 25 km from Burgas. What has brought me here is a letter from a Vagabond reader who complained about the inadequacy of the Bulgarian social services (see Vagabond No. 4). Along with her Bulgarian friend Tanya and another British expat, Susanna, Catherine Almond has been looking after a Bulgarian lady who is in a difficult predicament. She is immobile and incontinent and can't do anything for herself.
You know how it is. It's Monday morning. Your sleep has been shattered by the interminable bloody yapping of a street dog somewhere in the inky blackness beyond your window. Your alarm clock won't go off for another hour yet, but you know you'll never get back to sleep, so you drag your reluctant backside from between warm sheets and go make some coffee.
You think: Sigh.
Showered, dressed, and with sufficient caffeine in your system to approach the new day with a semblance of humanity, you step out onto the gritty Sofian street to walk to the taxi rank.
Darren first started taking pictures at university in Bristol where he got involved in the photographic club. “I met some inspiring photographers that helped me get over my fear of approaching people with my camera,” he says. “In a way it helped me get over the shyness I had suffered from during my childhood, because to photograph people you need to get close to your subject and engage with them.”
In the past few years, however, the mass destruction of nature has started again. First it was the Black Sea coast, now the construction has moved to the mountains.
Soon the coast will be one endless resort all the way from Durankulak in the north to Rezovo in the south, and all the mountains will be one giant ski run. And then, oh joy, we are all going to be millionaires. There will be no trees, no beaches, no nothing - just buildings, ski runs and resorts. Exactly which tourists will be enticed by this concrete jungle is another question.
For example the first stanza of the original written by Tsvyatko Radoslavov in the first half of the 20th Century was:
Proud Balkan Mountains (Горда Стара планина,
Blue North by their side до ней север се синей.
Vitosha shines like gold in the sun Слънце Витоша позлатява
Istanbul is white and far away към Цариград се белей.)
But the Communist rulers decided it was not good to mention Istanbul in the anthem - Turkey was an "enemy" NATO and capitalist state at that time. So it became:
What happened to the Polish plumber?
He now stands forgotten in the EU because of the scarecrow of the new kids on the bloc, the Bulgarians and Romanians. At this delicate moment, the old EU members are receiving disturbing news. Both Bulgaria and Romania are being targeted by their non-EU neighbours in pursuit of more convenient citizenship. Applicants in Romania are mainly from Moldova, while Bulgaria is welcoming its Macedonian brethren.
I'm sorry to report that today, on the ground floor of our building, I found a fresh pile of human excrement. It took me by surprise, but it is only the last instalment in a series of unprovoked attacks on the building. So far it has featured the theft of bikes and the smashing of window panes on the entrance door. When a workman came in a white van to put in a new pane of glass, I went to chat to him and let off some steam. Turned out he had far more steam to let off. In fact, he was the human Flying Scotsman.
"What's wrong with them, why do they do this?" I asked rhetorically.
Those Bulgarians who reached Britain in the early days after EU accession should be sure to mention Saddam Hussein in their bedtime prayers. In his final hours, the former Iraqi dictator spoke of his execution as self-sacrifice. He perhaps hadn't pictured Bulgarian emigres as the ones who'd go free in his stead. But, as in many countries, Saddam's hanging just before New Year filled virtually every page of every newspaper in Britain for days, leaving no room for those other bogeymen the media plainly had in their sights: our new EU cousins from Romania and Bulgaria.
If you enter Bulgaria from Turkey through the border checkpoint at Lesovo the first thing you'll be greeted by after passport control will be some tanks lurking on both sides of the new, EU-sponsored road.
Don't panic. They've never fired on anyone, thankfully, except for drills. You can even stop to inspect them if you like. No one will halt you, which will lead you to surmise that the decrepit pieces of machinery have been abandoned, save for the clusters of snakes that have made them their homes.
Winter sports facilities in Bulgaria are enjoying a lot of investment interest. About half a billion euros has been put into hotels and holiday villages in Bansko alone. The Super Borovets project is expected to attract between 150 and 200 million euros by 2009 and there is increasing interest from investors. This is all to the benefit of ski enthusiasts, because Bulgaria now boasts magnificent runs and facilities at prices that are still much more competitive than in the Alpine resorts.
Mount Vitosha
You may not particularly like Bulgarian streets because of their narrow pavements, missing flagstones and parked cars, but you will probably not notice these shortcomings on 14 February. Shops and pubs are decorated with hearts and pink balloons, women are more beautiful than usual and young people are kissing on every corner.
And then you encounter a group of Bulgarians who are obviously slightly tipsy. The mixed company loudly praises Trifon Zarezan. Several yards further you come across a baffling scene.
"Is there no carnival in Bulgaria?" you may ask yourself on 17 February while watching TV reports about the start of the carnival season in Venice, Rio de Janeiro and New Orleans. The answer to your question will come on the following day, the first Sunday before Lent. In Bulgaria it is called Sirni Zagovezni and is the last day Christians are allowed to eat meat before the 40-day period of fasting. On this day, in a gesture long-forgotten in our everyday lives, people ask forgiveness from their relatives and friends for any wrong they may have done by kissing their hand.