23rd October 1971

23/10/71 Sofia

Dear Mum and Dad,

Sorry I have not written for two weeks but as usually we have been very busy. I can’t find your last letter but reading the previous one I realise your crafty attempt to temp us back to the UK with cottages in Meriden. However we still do not know what we will be doing next year but we will let you know as soon as we know. It is possible we will stay in Bulgaria a little longer as the job market is very flat at the moment.

Some goods news- I may be coming to England for a week in November. I will let you know the dates when I know them myself. I don’t expect it will be the same time as Tony is in England that would be too much to ask.

Let me tell you why I have not had time to write for two weeks. Last week we had two dinner parties we were invited to. One on Wednesday with Sonia LeB who is the wife of one of the ILO experts and the second with Gusty from the Austrian embassy on Friday. We left both after midnight.

Secondly the VW stopped one day and after having it towed to the VW garage they found one of the fuel injection heads was not working and of course there were no spare parts available in Bulgaria because of the lack of hard currency. This happened on the same day we had a letter from VW in Austria saying they would refund the £200 we spent on having the automatic transmission replaced. We are looking forward to receiving the money.

On Saturday (after the dinner party which went on till past midnight) I got up at 5 Am and drove to Thessaloniki on my own in the Daf to buy the spare parts for the VW. Tony could not come because the VW was on his visa and he could not leave the country without it. I did the journey in record time-5 hours and successfully purchased the part. I decided to have a meal and a siesta but went to sleep about 2 pm and did not wake up till the following morning. I drove home on Sunday without seeing much of Greece apart from the hotel bedroom of the Delta hotel.

On Monday we went to Russe for a couple of days coming back to Sofia on Wednesday midday. Wednesday evening we had to entertain john P who was visiting Bulgaria and who is the ICL compensation expert. He is also quite rich from his family connections and was making us very envious with his tales of a house in Hampshire with two horses, three dogs and three cats.

Tuesday evening we went out with two ICL visitors from Yugoslavia and then to the American embassy where we saw an amusing film called ‘support your local sheriff’. The VW is still not working completely correctly so Tony has taken it down to Greece on Friday to get it tuned. I could not face going to Greece two weekends running as under the new rules it is difficult to leave one car here and drive together in one car.

To stop me being lonely Terry and Tanya invited me to dinner on Friday night and we spent the evening paying dice. This is probably due to communication difficulties of not having a common language. Terry and I talk in English, Terry and Tanya in Bulgarian, Tanya and I talk in French and we play dice in Bulgarian.

That brings me to Saturday and my first chance to write to you. I am hoping Tony will come home this evening but he may have to stay until Monday if they can’t fit the car in on Saturday morning.

I am hoping we will have a quiet week next week but Tony may have to go to Romania for a few days to do some systems work- it is very difficult to produce children when you never see your husband!

There are two parties on next weekend because of Halloween, one at the British Embassy on Friday and one at the American Embassy on Saturday. The Americans are having a Ball in November and we are invited. I shall regret having given away my evening dresses but it will be an opportunity to wear the black cocktail dress I have which has been sitting in the wardrobe for two years.

We learnt on Friday the landlord wants his flat back so I guess I will be busy flat hunting next week. We are not too upset as things are always going wrong on this flat; the bathroom is often like a cave with water dripping everywhere with puddles under the cistern. But I suspect all Bulgarian flats are the same.

This last week has been very cold but the trees are splendid in their autumn colours. Today has been milder but very windy and as a result there have been autumn leaves whirling everywhere and collecting in drifts at the side of the road.

This week I had letters from Pat S and Jane M. Pat is enjoying South Africa and is not ready to return home to England yet. She appears to be having a gay social time with plenty of boyfriends and has made friends with some of the South African ballet company which has led her to going to modern ballet classes once a week.

Jane has moved to Zambia where her fiancée is working for the FAO and they are returning to England in February to get married.  I have started smoking again after stopping for five weeks during the holiday. I have resolved to stop again and will try some of the tablets you can buy to help you stop. The best way to stop is never to start in the first place.

I had better finish now before this letter gets too heavy. I will endeavour to write next week as usual. Give my love to Paula and family. I hope to see them all in November. Also love to Nanny- I expect she is having her usual gay social life. I expect dad’s chrysanthemums are looking lovely- if only I could spell them. Mum should be doing some good flower arrangements with them.

Love for Now

Gillian and Tony

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Gill did not tell her mother about the strange experience she had in Greece, After sleeping for about eighteen hours she was awakened by the sound of sirens- like the modern whooping police or ambulance sirens you get today. Gill had never heard anything like it before and was at a loss to know what was happening- World War Three? The evacuation of Saloniki? A huge fire? She looked out of the window to find the streets empty of normal traffic but full of menacing tanks driving down the street with sirens blaring out. This was not the sight she wanted to see and did not calm her anxieties one little bit. She quickly dressed and ran downstairs to reception to find out if the Russians had invaded or some other tragedy was talking place. The staff quickly reassured her it was a Nato excercise which had been planned for some time. Very relieved she went for breakfast. Later driving back to Sofia she caught up with the tanks near the border but after Czechoslovakia she was quite used to overtaking a convoy of tanks on narrow bumpy roads.

It is difficult to remember the exact trips we took to the UK. Gill joined Tony in the UK for some time in November where she spent a week learning the new construction software written by Dr S so she could support the software back in Bulgaria. This had been one of the main grumbles of ICC (Institute of constructional cybernetics) where Gill worked as they had been promised the software with their machine. Tony was in the UK with a group of managers from the ILO project visiting the various factories of ICL and certain valued customers who would sing the praises of the ICL machines. At that time in the UK theatre censorship had been withdrawn and there were a flurry of new plays and musicals pushing the boundaries. We took the Bulgarians to HAIR not really realising the extent of the nudity and innuendo. We also went with our country manager Terry C, on his recommendation to a Spanish restaurant with live flamenco dancing. The Bulgarians were not at all entertained by these decadent Western shows. I went back to Sofia with Dr S after a week but Tony’s trip lasted a further couple of weeks.