1st August 1971

C/O British embassy

Boulevard Marshal Tolbukhin

Sofia

01/08/71

Dear Mum and Dad,

I am having my usual Sunday doing all the jobs I have not had time to do during the week. Tony has telexed to say he will be setting off sometime this weekend so I am looking forward to him arriving sometime next week. Life is very dull without him. It seems he has been ill with enteritis last week. I hope he has been well looked after.

I expect you will be coming back from Belton today and I am awaiting news of Paula and the baby. I hope mum still has a job.

I went up to Russe on Thursday and had a very pleasant day with the customer there. The plane back was delayed by a thunderstorm and I did not get back home until 1.00 am. I am quite independent now travelling on the trams buses and taxis.

On Friday we had a farewell party for one of the engineers, Dick A. who has been here about a year with his Bulgarian wife. We all went out to a restaurant outside Sofia that served fish on a tile. It was a lovely evening.

Yesterday Terry C invited me to dinner with his Bulgarian girlfriend Tanya. I spent all afternoon there not knowing that John H. was also phoning me to go out that evening. So you can see how my friends make sure I don’t get too lonely. In fact there was a party that evening at the American embassy and I met some very interesting people from the American and French Embassy. I never feel totally at home with the embassy people but one can’t choose your friends here and make the best of what is sent.

I had a telex from Andrea.L and V.L saying they are coming a week earlier than expected, arriving next Saturday. I am really looking forward to their visit as we get on really well with them.

I am constantly listening to the radio here; the world service is my companion. I shall go to the film tonight. Last week it was Barbarella which I had seen before so I hope it will be a good one tonight.

Love Tony and Gillian

The escape to the West was always appreciated after a time in Bulgaria and we seemed to be very good at wrangling trips to UK or Berlin to get away. We were much more aware of being monitored by the secret police and the antagonism of the local people . In a traffic jam people would scratch our car with a key as they passed and it was quite normal to have your wind screen wipers and hubcaps stolen or even your wheels. We did not make friends with any Bulgarians apart from Vasil our fixer and Dancha our cleaning lady. Vasil took us one day to a village outside Sofia where his grandmother lived. She kindly cooked us a traditional Bulgarian meal called kavarma- lamb or pork stewed in the oven with peppers potatoes and aubergenes. It was served with homemade pickles and fresh bread. It was a lovely meal.

In some ways the authorities had a very un-communist attitude. We had one experience of trying to go the Hotel Sofia night club and not being allowed in because our country Manager Terry C was not wearing a tie but one of those polo necked shirts which were in fashion in the west. Gill took the cloth belt off her trouser suit (another 70’s icon) and Terry used it as a tie.

At the time we were living in Sofia there was a great deal of fear amongst the general public, fear of being reported to the authorities for some minor misdemeanour, and fear at not being seen to be towing the quite extreme ‘Party Line’. At this height of the Cold War, Bulgaria was strongly aligned to Russia. We naively thought that to become a Communist Party member was simply a matter of applying; not so. We were told that only about 8% of people had been allowed to join the Party, and that took years of toadying, politicking and networking in order just to be considered. The rewards once you were  a member were significant, not necessarily in terms of wealth so much as privileges, job opportunities, promotion, access to hard currency and travel. For example, we came across special exclusive holiday resorts in the mountains and at the Black Sea with access guarded by police that were reserved just for Party Members. Party membership would lead to better housing, the possibility of a state car, and many other ‘perks’. If you had a party car you had special number plates. Police on traffic duty could recognise them and wave them forward at a junction or even manually change the traffic light so party members got priority.