Sunday 20^th July 2009

Robert Nevil’s morning greeting: ‘How dare you use the shower before me!  Now I shall have to wade through your leavings.’ It is true that I have failed to wield the kitchen paper. There was an end-of-show party last night. My strength is gone. At breakfast Robert and Anthony have a high-minded discussion about the future of the Orphanage, the problems faced by the teachers and carers and so on. I am considered too simple to participate. If I protest, they accuse me of having harboured Saddam Hussein in my coal hole. I fall to dreaming: if only I could give £50,000 or £500,000. What a difference that would make! If my mine could only get going (I have a mine, or part of one, at present inert. I don’t think I’ve mentioned it before), then I could truly donate. Suddenly I’m imagining Robin Smallmeal’s sinister black Bentley drawing up at the Orphanage as he and Simon Limpney arrive to buy it outright. What an opportunity for Limpney to install droves of ensuite bathrooms equipped with Molton Brown products (a bit high-street if you ask me). There would be courses in pure-breed cat management and how to show your cat at a cat show. This is Simon Limpney’s great thing at the moment – so I hear. We have not been on speakers for the last two years, owing to my shameful behaviour over Simon’s Christmas Day call.

Then, the most extraordinary thing, but on the way down from Shiroka Laka (after another sad farewell to the orphans) the Sofia road is lined with billboards showing a portly middle-aged gentleman in a striped apron, with rouged cheeks and an aubergine rinse advertising processed cheese in either packets or bottles. It is Robin Smallmeal – posing before he went grey presumably, unless it is yet another wig. How bizarre that the head of landfill sites (or whatever) in England should have a second career as an advertising model in the former Communist bloc. Of course, it might not have been him, but I really am as certain as I can be.

We stop for lunch. Robert Nevil says the cheese (not presumably that advertised by Smallmeal) is like chewing on a condom and outrages a German mime mistress (one of the theatre troupe who have been helping the orphans) to whom we are giving a lift with a stream of unkind remarks about the state of the Bulgarian ladies’ hair. ‘They must have a conditioner that promotes split-ends,’ he says. It is true that we have not seen a single hairdressers. All the hair must be home hair. Very few ladies have escaped an aubergine or bar mitzvah-red rinse. It is a poor country, I know, but really they would do better to leave their hair alone.

At length we gain the Maria Luisa in Sofia. It is a four-star – greetings at the door, help with the luggage. You see, we are putting the orphans behind us. The receptionist is a little tart but I barely notice. The minute I enter the hushed lobby I am engulfed by waves of delightful ease. The two-star at Shiroka Laka was charming but there must have been an underlying strain. Anthony Mottram and I take a respectable twin, absolutely suitable for a pair who have been together for 40 years. Nevil is housed elsewhere. We lie on the beds, hoping to wallow in luxury. But it is stiflingly hot. The window doesn’t open. We fuss around the air conditioning controls to no effect. I call down to the lobby. The receptionist comes into her own.  She offers no apology; all she says is that another room, which she calls a ‘suit’, will cost 30 euros extra. I hand the phone to Mottram, who knows these parts. ‘We will take the other room but we will not be paying extra. Think about it and call back in five minutes.’ She does this but has not budged. ‘Have you had any training in customer relations?’ Mottram enquires. She must have said, ‘No,’ because he says, ‘It shows.’ By now the bell-hop has appeared. Mottram complains about the receptionist. The bell-hop explains that she has her position to hold. Also she is very beautiful. He shows us the ‘suit’ which is a larger room with a kind of low barricade in the middle of it. Mysteriously the price has dropped to only 10 euros extra. We take it. ‘Bulgarians are normally so charming,’ Mottram says to the bell-hop, ‘but that receptionist has had hers specially striped out.’

The bell-hop was by no means as nonplussed by this as he might have been.

Later when we descend to the lobby different staff are on duty but we can tell by their fantastic screw-on grins that they have been warned.