Thursday 16th July 2009

Yes, we are still here, at Shiroka Luka, in deepest Bulgaria, visiting the orphans. This morning I couldn’t help it – could one little outfit do any harm? Should we be monkish and self-denying just because of the orphans? Besides I could hardly go nude. Wouldn’t the children love to see frockage as worn in London, Paris and New York?  Is not this what I have to give them? My wildly low-waisted, simple, pure Marc Jacobs blue check cotton slacks could not be wrong – with the Paul and Joe scoop-neck plain white T-shirt.

I struggled into the pieces, after the cave bathroom which gets completely drenched by the shower, and after my exercises (Pilates plank, sit-ups, and press-ups: no gym here of course). I stepped out of the hotel in small triumph and ran straight into one of the orphans, lurking in the street as they do. You won’t believe it, but the child was wearing my outfit, identical, copied down to the last detail of the T-shirt I spent a whole day hunting down in London. There was nothing for it but to scurry straight back indoors and change.

Later I decided to look at the shops. In this mountain village you can buy cow bells, mushrooms and rocks. At the main store the paper goods are kept in locked chamber recalling the famous  temperature-controlled cheese room (not actually locked but it might as well be) at La Fromagerie in Highbury, London. I bought some kitchen paper to mop the floor, lav, cover over the lav paper etc  in the cave bathroom. I adore kitchen paper. I always carry a few sheets in case of accidents.

Robert Nevil was not impressed. You always have to remember he was brought up on a farm. Later at lunch Anthony Mottram wanted to know what the orange flecks in the rice with mushrooms were. I said, ‘Carrot’. ‘There’s always carrot in vomit,’ Robert Nevil remarked. It was a rather filthy lunch, it is true, but really…

As yesterday, at five the orphans hoarded into a smelly kind of theatre in the village for a performance, by some Bulgarian Hindus, of Indian music with sari tying and yoga thrown in. Anthony Mottram behaved badly during the yoga and worse when the musicians appeared to go into holy transports. ‘I can’t take it,’ he hissed. Robert Nevil showed his photographs of his visits to Calcutta, including images of himself turned into a puce and fluorescent green mess as a result of children throwing paint at him. Apparently this is a formal part of the Hindu festival of Holi.

It was an almighty worry to stop the orphans from getting run over outside the theatre. There is a busy road right there. Some of them are no more than five. Last night on the way back from the restaurant, a poor little cat was run over by the one car in the otherwise empty street. The driver stopped, inspected the corpse, shrugged his shoulders and deposited the remains in the roadside dustbin.