15th August 1971

C/O British embassy

Boulevard Marshal Tolbukhin

Sofia

15/08/71

Dear Mum and Dad

Thank you for the letter and the photographs. It was lovely to see you all, especially the new baby. It is the only photo I have of Nanny. I must say I thought mum looked very tired and I hope she is recovered from looking after the G’s. I have not had much to write about lately. Tony arrived back on the 3^rd. He had been ill in England with enteritis and appeared to recover but had a relapse this weekend and I had to starve him for 24 hours. He seems much better now.

Last weekend A.L.and V.L. arrived from Prague and they have been staying with us all last week. We had some good evenings talking about Czechoslovakia and the old times. They have gone to the black sea for a week and we were hoping to join them for the weekend but Tony’s bad stomach prevented us. We are sitting on the balcony in very hot sunshine, Tony is reading while I type this.

We are looking forward to our holiday in Turkey and have been looking through the brochures Tony bought back from England and planning our route. It looks an interesting country full of history and ancient remains. There are some good camp sits called Mocamps run by petrol stations.

There are more ICL people her now as Terry C is back with his Robin Scimitar car which is really beautiful and Anton B. and Frano K. are here with their wives and children. So we should have a bit more company in the next few months. We have not been out much lately, only a walk in the mountains last weekend to sun bathe and a few meals out in folk restaurants. We could not go to the film because V.L. being a Czech national would not be allowed in.

We have looked at the films we took in Greece but they are not very good. We did not take enough time in filming so there a few disjointed shots of this and that. I shall look forward to seeing David’s films of Marc’s birth when I come home. Perhaps he could sell them on for a few hundred pounds to an ante natal clinic. David and Paula could turn their children into an advantage as TV stars.

I hope Paula is able to cope and that the baby is well behaved. Is he still going to be an experimental baby? I thought having a Russian second name was in the hope he would be a good obedient party member and do as he is told.

No more news now. I hope I shall be able to come and see you before the end of the year but our future plans are very hazy at present. I expect Nanny is living it up in Rhyll at present, we hope she has a good time. I hope Auntie Dorothy has a good holiday in Coventry. Lots of love to everyone

Love

Gillian and Tony

During this period we experienced several brushes with both the normal police and the secret variety. For some time now we had been aware that we were being watched and our movements logged, and they were none too discrete about it. We also suspected that our apartment was bugged (the occasional buzzing from a point in our lounge wall was something of a give-away). For hours on end a large black Russian Volga (GAZ 21 Saloon car made in Gorky) with Government Ministry number plates would also sit in our car park. Inside there were always two men in dark suits watching our flat, relieved from time to time by a new shift.

We would also receive anonymous silent phone calls from time to time to check on whether we had left home of not. During these silent calls we did note that we could hear typewriters clacking away in the background. Whoever was calling us knew the appointments we had set up with customers and appeared to be checking that we were not fitting in some other detour. We are not sure who told us, but somehow we had learnt that there was a feature of the Sofia telephone system at that time that if the phone hand-set was not replaced, the person calling could not use their phone.

So one morning when the phone rang and we got the silent treatment, we told them that we were not going to replace the hand-set until they spoke to us – still silence, so we went off for breakfast. Half an hour later we returned to the phone and asked if anyone was there; still no response. But on the third time of asking a timid voice, speaking English with a Bulgarian accent said, ‘Please will you replace the phone’. After that the calls ceased for quite a while. We assume they had a schedule to follow checking up on various foreign visitors and we had found a way to disrupt the secret police timetable.

The authorities were very sensitive about revealing the locations of what they considered ‘strategic’ assets; power stations, electricity pylons, hydro electric schemes & so on. As a result such places were never shown on the road maps that we could purchase in local shops. We were out for a drive one Sunday afternoon following a road shown on our map that went through a large forested area. However we suddenly saw to our left a really superb large lake, nowhere to be found on the map. Just the spot for our picnic. We were apparently miles from anywhere and no towns or villages were shown on our map. We had parked our car and walked the short distance to the lake shore, no more than 30 meters, when we saw the surreal sight of a uniformed policeman emerge from the trees. He ushered us away & sent us on our travels. We can only assume that all such places, even in the middle of nowhere, were constantly guarded.

Back in Sofia, the following weekend, a major football match was scheduled at the stadium not far from our flat. This was the first time we had been made aware of a match and so we wandered down to the main approach road just out of interest. I’m sure it would not happen today, but back then any public demonstration was frowned upon and to our great surprise all the football fans were walking sedately along the road with not so much a cheer or a football rattle breaking the peace. Needles to say there were plenty of uniformed and plain clothed police around. A short way further along the main road we saw a police car towing a large caravan, parked on a wide stretch of pavement. Out of the caravan came several policemen who watched the crowd and every so often grabbed a young man with long hair or a young woman wearing a mini-skirt. The young men were forcibly taken inside the caravan and emerged minutes later with their hair roughly cut short, and the women would exit with a very large blue indelible ink stamp (about 6 by 9 inches) impressed on the seat of their skirt. We couldn’t read what the stamp said but we guess it was not complimentary. 

There was no tolerance of new western ideas of young people’s dress fashions or hair length preferences (nor pop music as it was called then nor any other ‘subversive’ western trends). The police saw to that too.