Nomad

Clearing the flat here in Sofia for a 4 month absence - during which my landlady may rent the place out. 
Michael Palin's BBC 's "Other Europe" series has him today on BBC Entertainment here in Bulgaria in the Plovdiv gypsy quarter; then onto in Edirne in a container lorry; and then in Istanbul at the Bosphorus. As I watch, the idea comes of renting a flat in Istanbul for 6 months or so from next spring. This at the same time I am contemplating buying a flat here in Sofia - or in the old part of Brasov! 

Tomorrow early I hope to leave Sofia and cross the Danube border at midday before the returning Romanian holiday-makers from the Black Sea cram the border. Then on to the Carpathian house for last-minute tuning before making the drive through Hungary, Slovakia, Austria, Germany and Belgium to Scotland ( via the Zeebrugge overnight ferry) by mid-May

Verily I am a nomad! Indeed I was just counting how many addresses I've had over the last 25 years - it works out at 25, a new one each year on average. That's why it has sometimes been impossible for me to fit some bureaucratic requirements eg informing of change of address!! Scottish courts used to (may still) have a term for people like me - NFA (No Fixed Abode). As a young magistrate in the 1970s, many of the miscreants who appeared before me were so designated. "Nomad" or "peripatetic" sounds so much better!     

At a time when commentators are trying to work out how the 20% of French voters who supported Le Pen's candidacy for the French Presidency will cast their vote in the second round next Sunday, it's useful to read again what was in my blogpost of 29 April last year about populism

The sculpture which I recently bought at Astry Gallery is, aptly, called "Paddling his own canoe" and is by Petra Iliev

Great art in Sofia

A flurry of artistic activity, starting on Thursday morning with a visit to the designers of my booklet on Bulgarian Realists to organise the CD which will accompany it (with 800 photos of Bulgarian paintings of that period); and to get an initial rough copy. 

This last was particularly needed to take with me to the midday invitation I had received to visit what had been the home of one of Bulgaria’s great painters - Tsanko Lavrenov. The invitation came from his grandson (Plaven Petrov, now the owner of the Loran Gallery) who has turned the flat in one of Sofia’s nice old areas into a great showpiece for this self-taught artist from Plovdiv. 
Born in 1896, Lavrenov viewed with suspicion the new artistic trends coming from Western Europe, wanting instead to establish a style more faithful to local traditions. He spent considerable time in monasteries in the area and on Mount Athos, studying the paintings and books in the archives. He was a close friend of Zlatyu Boaadjiev and Danail Dechev. 
Plaven had been impressed that a foreigner was so interested in Bulgarian art as to prepare and publish – at his own expense - a booklet on the subject. Over wine, we explored some of the peculiarities of the Bulgarian market. Then an inspection of the superb collection he has of his grandfather’s paintings. He was kind enough to present me with this print signed by Lavrenov himself.

Evening saw another great Vernissaj at Vihra’s Astry Gallery – this time showing some of young Maria Raycheva’s output from a visit she made recently to Paris.

Notre Dame and the Seine must be the most over-painted subjects of all time. Tackling them again runs therefore the risk of boredom – the artistic equivalent of a cliché. 

And I feel that the painting shown behind Maria in the photograph does fall into that category. 
Others, however, do show a really original touch – including a couple I bought. 



And while there, I also bought two fine 
bronzes - by Petra Iliev. 

This is her "Lady with Double Bass"

Friday morning, it was a visit to the Sofia City Art Gallery’s special exhibition of Ivan Nenov, another of Bulgaria’s greats -  but this time in the modernist style. 

He lived to the grand old age of 95 and apparently remained active and dignified to the end. 

He is known for his portraits of women on the beach or at windows but, over his long life, was very versatile and went through different stages. He traveled extensively in the 1930s and took part in international exhibitions of modern art in Italy and Germany.

However, he was declared a formalist in the 1950s and, for almost a decade, could not exhibit his works. Instead he focused on ceramics and mosaics. In 1975 he managed, somehow, to give his first solo exhibition in Sofia (previous attempts had been thwarted). Rehabilitated in the late 1950s, he was elected in 1994 an academician in the Academy of Sciences.

Peeling the layers of the onion

The way the media control our politicians (and shape the way we look at the world) was laid bare by yet more stunning information thrown up by the continuing investigation in Britain of the operations of News International (the Murdoch Empire). We didn’t learn a great deal from the appearance of Murdoch and his son some months ago in front of the UK Parliamentary Committee on Culture – except perhaps that he has a beautiful young Chinese wife and suffers (as does his son) from memory lapse. But an official inquiry (Leveson ) is now looking (in public) and in detail at the behind-the scene operations of media owners, their contact with politicians and their ethics. It has revealed, for example, howthe Scottish First Minister (Alex Salmond) bought the political support of Rupert Murdoch  - the the News International (NI) newspapers suddenly, as result, switching from hostility to the nationalist cause to support. Even worse, the inquiry has laid bare the private contacts there were between News International lobbyists and the Minister who had the authority to decide whether NI would be allowed to take-over a new TV media channel. Polly Townbee has a powerful article on the story which sets out very well the political issues which are at stake. The article should be erad by everyone - 

The picture emerges of a party deciding long before coming to power to gift Rupert Murdoch a media and cultural dominance beyond anything seen yet. So much is known already: the Prime Minister made a hasty speech threatening to abolish the regulatory agency which tries to ensure competition and standards in the communication industry (Ofcom). . The relevant Minister (Hunt) rejected Ofcom's advice to refer the BSkyB bid to the Competition Commission. Cameron was completing what Margaret Thatcher began – and all for what? Fickle support from Rupert Murdoch's press.

Thatcher broke every rule, twisted every regulation and bent EU law to give Murdoch a newspaper and television dominance unthinkable in the US or most countries. We have ranted and railed helplessly over the decades, pointing our finger every time politicians of any party kowtowed to the man they feared. Democracy was bound to be suborned. That's precisely what competition law is there to prevent: monopolies are monsters. Is there anything so exceptional about Rupert Murdoch? He's canny and fly, but probably no more so than many sharp-witted businessmen who spot their chance in a flabby market.

All he has done is exactly what Adam Smith (the real one) famously said every businessman does given half a chance – corner markets and conspire against the consumer. The success of his business was built on gaining the edge by evading regulators and avoiding taxes, as all companies will unless stopped. So let's not obsess over his character.

 If you think this is a navel-gazing media story, here's a reminder of what Hunt was about to unleash on the country, with Cameron and George Osborne's approval. If Murdoch were allowed to own all BSkyB, within a year or two he would package all his newspapers on subscription or online together with his movie and sports channels in offers consumers could hardly refuse, at loss-leading prices. Other news providers, including this one, would be driven out, or reduced to a husk. His would be the commanding news voice. Except for the BBC – which his media have attacked relentlessly for years.Sky's dominance over the BBC is already looming: now past its investment phase, Sky's income is multiplying fast at £5.5bn a year, against the BBC's static £3.5bn. Sky's growing billions can buy everything, not only sports and movies, but every best series: the BBC trains and develops talent, predatory Sky will snatch it. Nor is Sky that good for the Treasury: for every £1 in Sky subscriptions, 90p flees the country, straight to News Corp and Hollywood in the US.

The BBC is remarkable value for money: Sky subscribers can pay £500 a year, the licence fee is £145 for masses more content. Sky is parasitic, as its own subscribers watch many more hours of BBC than Sky, so Sky would collapse if the BBC denied it its channels. Yet the BBC still pays £5m a year for appearing on its platform, a deal struck by Thatcher to help Murdoch.The sum was cut, but in all other countries commercial broadcasters pay national broadcasters for the right to use their content – not the other way round. The BBC should be paid a hefty fee from BSkyB to compensate for the 16% cut it suffered, partly as a result of Murdoch lobbying. The cut was pure spite, since the licence fee has no connection with Treasury deficits. Pressure persists to deprive viewers of listed national events saved to watch free on BBC: Wimbledon and the rest would go the way of Premier League football.

If it does nothing else, this scandal will stop the government daring to give anything more to Sky. Much as the Tories detest the BBC – which, like the NHS – stands as a defiant symbol of non-market success, expect no overt attacks on it for a while now. But the BBC charter comes up for renewal in 2017: a Tory victory at the next election would liberate them to follow their vengeful instincts.Jeremy Hunt was within days of giving Murdoch everything, because the government wished it. A token gesture would have put Sky News behind Chinese walls, but on all previous precedent, soon his newspapers, print, online and TV would have merged into a single newsroom. That would require repeal of the law imposing impartiality on broadcasters.

But already Murdoch's friends were softening up opinion against old-fashioned, dull TV news, unsuited to the rowdy, opinionated internet era: Fox News would soon be here. If the arrival of Murdoch's kick-arse Sun was a shock, we'd look back on it as an age of innocence compared with what Fox would do – look what it's done to US politics.Cameron has said it is his ambition to finish Margaret Thatcher's work. As she privatised nationalised industries, so he would marketise the public sector, with his NHS commercialisation and his promise to put all public services out to tender. The dismantling or shrivelling of the BBC would soon have followed. If the Guardian journalist, Nick Davies, had not exposed the hacking of a missing and murdered girl’s phone in the nick of time, all would have been lost – an odd way for the BBC to be reprieved.

The 81-year-old under scrutiny this week rambled a bit and remembered nothing to his own detriment. He was an unsatisfying villain, as most are. But the villainy here is not about one man. He stands as an Adam Smith lesson in the primacy of competition law and what happens when politicians let the free market rip to do political favours.

A famous British politician (Aneuran Bevan) once wrote a book in which he compared his search to discover where power lay in Britain to the peeling of an onion - each layer stripped, there was yet another beneath it. With the current, public inquiries in Britain, we seem to be getting to the core......

I couldn't find an appropriate painting to illustrate the title - and have used this instead this Stanio Stamatov painting which was pulled out of the Shumen archives specially for me to view.

Some relevant social science work!!

The British Academy has been a rather mysterious body for me which only impacted a year or so ago when I noticed a fascinating discussion they had organised around an important book  The Strange Career of British Democracy produced a  few years back by one of the country’s best political scientists - David Marquand. 

Today I was alerted to a series of papers they have commissioned and produced under the title New Paradigms in Public Policy which consists of what look to be clear and stimulating papers by such key names as Gerry Stoker – Buildinga New Politics; Peter Taylor-Gooby Squaring the Public Policy Circle; Andrew Gamble – Economic Futures; and Ian Gough - Climate Change and Public Policy 

Their website (above) indicates a body which is playing a very important role in encouraging the application of social science minds to the problems we face in contemporary society - 

The British Academy, established by Royal Charter in 1902, champions and supports the humanities and social sciences. We are an independent, self-governing fellowship of scholars elected for their distinction and achievement. Our purpose is to inspire, recognise and support excellence in the humanities and social sciences, throughout the UK and internationally and to champion their role and value. As a Fellowship composed of nearly 900 distinguished scholars, we take a lead in representing the humanities and social sciences, facilitating international collaboration, providing an independent and authoritative source of advice, and contributing to public policy and debate

The painting is a Dobre Dobrev - a demonstration in Sliven in 1945

Introducing the Bulgarian Realists

What would be achieve without deadlines? Or,as Doctor Johnson said, “Depend upon it, Sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully”!

The knowledge that I will be away from Sofia for some four months at least has put sufficient pressure on me to be able to fill in a lot of the gaps I had in the text of my draft booklet on Bulgarian Realist painting of the last century – and to decide to go for a modest first venture of a 60 page booklet with an accompaning CD Rom.

Yassen (here in the Konus Gallery) and Evelina (in the Dobrich municipal gallery) have been very helpful in supplying me with much needed information on a dozen or so of the painters. But, typically, I keep encountering at this stage, new artists and new information.

First a glorious 1987 book on the satirist Marko Behar (1914-73) which my friend Alexander Aleksiev drew to my attention on Sunday at his tiny Alladin’s cave at 38 Tsar Asen St.

Behar combined elements of Grosz, Kollwitz and Beshkov – but was very much his own man. I imagine him a bit like Bert Brecht – the German poet of the period.

And then late Monday afternoon, I was cycling around various galleries to ensure I had the right names and addresses for the Annexes to the booklet and went into the Lorian Gallery which I discovered recently at 16 Oborishte St in the University area. Recently moved to this location, they have a smallish display downstairs with more expensive stuff upstairs eg a Tanev. They have started to produce special books on artists – and I was shown a delightful one on an artist I had never heard of – Margarita Milidjiiska. And their current exhibition also introduced me to another new painter (for me) – Boris Dankov who produced charming landscapes in the 1960s.

Anyway, at 08.30 this morning, I duly delivered the final text of the booklet - now entitled Introducing the Bulgarian Realists - how to get to know the Bulgarians through their paintings - to the designers.
The painting at the top of the post is my latest acquisition a Georgi Velchev who lived from 1891-1955.

Balkan idyll in the sun?

The latest issue of Vagabond has an interesting article on the fate of many working class Brits who were attracted a decade ago by British TV programmes to buy cheap property in the Bulgarian countryside. The piece is called British homes across rural Bulgaria lie empty. Where have all the people gone? and makes the following interesting points -

The Britons who came at this time had never had the financial assets to dabble in UK property, nor any experience of speculation. Obsessed with land ownership and investment potential, the idea of a life in the sun without a mortgage was just too big a dream to pass up. By day, they would wrestle physically on village streets and by night, sedated by the tropical chirping of crickets, cheap alcohol and impossibly attractive waitresses, they would discuss their numerous purchases and renovation plans.
It was basically so damn cheap and easy, the exchange rate was good and the Bulgarians more than willing to ship old baba off to a flat in town, vacating the decaying village home, previously considered worthless. Everything was for sale and everything was within their budget. We felt like Allan Sugar and Donald Trump all rolled into one!
But few actually thought about the implications of a life spent in a rural village. Might not self-sufficiency be difficult, when you have never looked after a plant or a pet before? It’s not actually sunny all year round. Winter can be bloody freezing and then there is the complex Bulgarian language.

The British in Britain harp on endlessly about immigrants who can't speak English. They harbour a deep resentment against anyone who would have the audacity to arrive on British soil without being absolutely fluent in English. Taking up residence here, this irony goes unnoticed as they proceed to shout louder and gesticulate more wildly, in the hope that Bulgarians will understand. Few villagers would really expect you to arrive speaking their small nation's incredibly difficult language, but they do appear a little shocked that most have no idea of Russian, French or German, all languages many "simple" rural people can actually use rather well.
Welcome to neo-colonialism on a village scale. My wealth here gives me status and power. If you want a share, speak to me in Enger-lish!

Not surprisingly the number of British residents here in Bulgaria has fallen dramatically - from a peak apparently of about 40,000 in the boom times to about 5,000 now. Even for those prepared to make an effort to integrate, there have been pitfalls to navigate -

Many have fallen foul of unscrupulous British agents and tradesmen who preyed on gullible and frightened newcomers. Naturally distrustful of the foreign and non-English speaking Bulgarians, they turned to their fellow expats for assistance, only to lose everything. Stories of thousands of pounds sent for renovations which were never started, theft s and houses sold several times over are the expat urban myths of rural Bulgaria.
Loneliness, culture shock and alcoholism have also played a significant role, as have unrealistic financial planning or the complete lack of it in some cases. These people, however, have largely returned home, tail between their legs, once again to plug back into our cosy little social security system. Maybe that's the point to all this. We are a spoilt and privileged nation, and with the numerous financial safety nets Brits have to fall back on, we have little need for research or planning prior to making these life-altering decisions. If it all goes "belly up" we can go home and start again, courtesy of the State. We will be OK. A house, an income, healthcare and education, all for free. We can take enormous risks on crazy, un-thought through dreams based on little more than sunshine, and not worry about ending up with nothing, destitute and ruined. Maybe if we had to plan more and actually think about what we could lose, we wouldn't take such insane risks with our families' futures.
But, that said, it's these very same attributes that have brought some Britons to successfully integrate in villages across Bulgaria. This new and vital human influx has given many rural communities a tiny but significant fighting chance, against the mass tide of urbanisation and the possibility of remaining on the world map for a few more decades to come.

The wood carving was one of two I have just bought from Svetlin Mitov who is a great wood sculptor who has a stall  at the corner of the SUM building near the Mosque.This original cost only 40 euros!

Moving On

My run down to Sofia on Monday coincided with the Easter return to Sofia – the last 80 kilometres of the (generally 2 lane) Balkan Highway which is normally a delight was this time pretty stressful with the Testerone Teddies aggressively racing right up to the bumpers of cars they considered inferior.

Just 2 weeks to close down here before I start the long run to Scotland for an important event there in mid-May. I find it very difficult to contemplate leaving Sofia’s charms – even although there is every chance I will be back in the late autumn.

The deadline puts some much-needed pressure on my project about Bulgarian realist painting of the past century. Tomorrow I see a designer about the possible next possible step. That is a small booklet which would give brief details about 175 Bulgarian painters - with a CD containing images of about 1,000 paintings. Depending on its reception, I could then develop to the book I had originally imagined.

Easter in Sirnea

A wet Easter Sunday here in Sirnea. My old neighbour, Lucita, brought me yesterday some small meat offerings and a couple of painted eggs; and at 08.00 this morning I received a call from Viciu down the hill which started with the greeting Hristos a înviat! (Christ is risen!) to which I was able to give the appropriate response Adevărat a înviat!(He has indeed – or does it mean His Resurrection is the truth??
The call carried an invitation to come for an Easter brunch (and small Tuica) at 09.00.
He had been up all night – at the church with the rest of the village from 01.00.-04.00! And hadn’t slept since. I felt duly ashamed.
I had noticed how few visitors there seem to be in the village this year – only one car in the hotel car-park and no sound from the guesthouse down on the mainroad from which there are normally sounds of gaiety on such holiday weekends. Viciu reports a television comment that people had been going to Bulgaria instead – cheaper and nicer!
According to tradition, there shall be no partying, no weddings, no having fun and not a great deal of anything in fact during Lent, unflinchingly observed by many in Romania, right up until midnight on April 14th. Only when the priest emerges from his church with a candle (around 00:10) to declare that ‘Hristos a înviat’ can the faithful who have abstained from smiling, sex or chocolate for the past 40 days once again indulge their desires. And then only after the biggest meal of the year. That meal will invariably be lamb (miel). Indeed, Easter is the one time of the year Romanians eat lamb, and it can easily be found in shops. Every part of the lamb is used: the head goes in the soup, the organs are used to make ‘drob’ (a kind of paté), and the legs are slowly roasted in red wine and served with roast potatoes and spinach.
You should also be prepared to eat more than a few hard boiled eggs. Before the main meal (which, we have yet to mention, gets eaten after the return from midnight mass, at around 1am) eggs are cracked.
Dyed in bright colours (often, but not always red) on Good Friday, hard boiled eggs are cracked between family members with the words ‘Hristos a înviat’ and response ‘Adevărat a înviat’. The eggs should then be eaten.

I’m not into development issues so much at the moment – but this is a good discussion of an issue which has been vexing that community recently - Results-focussed reporting. The piece is written by one of the community’s most thoughtful writers - Owen Barder – who also does a good podcast series on development issues called Development Drums. The latest interview is with Tim Harford who is a journalist at the Financial Times and the author of The Undercover Economist and, most recently, of Adapt: Why Success Always Begins with Failure. In this interview, he talks about the implications for development of his idea that successful complex systems emerge from a process of trial and error and suggests three principles -

you need to try a lot of different things; they need to be small enough that failures will not ruin you; and you need to be able to distinguish success from failure, which some systems are very ill-equipped to do.