8th december 1971

8th December 1971

Sofia

Dear Mum and Dad

Anton is going to England tomorrow so I am taking the opportunity to write you a quick note to let you know we are OK. I posted all the Christmas cards in Bulgaria last week so I hope they will be arriving soon.

Tony is in Rumania at present but should be coming home tomorrow provided the planes are flying as we have a lot of snow here at present. He went on Tuesday so he has only been away for 3 nights which isn’t too bad.

I have had some trouble with the Daf as the battery is not charging properly and so it is not starting well. Typical it waits until the weather is cold and Tony away before playing up. I spent about half an hour getting the ice off the windows only to find it won’t start – very annoying. Anton decided he would help by adjusting the points and then it would not start even with a 12 volt battery. We are wondering why. Tomorrow I will get a new battery. We were hoping to go to Greece this weekend but I don’t expect we will now especially if the weather is bad.

Social life has been mainly entertaining ICL friends but we shall be busy as there is a carol service at the embassy and an invitation to the Ambassadorial residence on the 23^rd- evening dress. I hope my black cocktail dress will do.

Our rises came through. Mine £143 not too bad considering the market at the moment. I don’t know what Tony has got yet. We also had £200 bonus this month which pays for the new record player and watches. In spite of this I am still short of ready cash (Tony has it with him) and have about £4 at present which is hampering my Christmas shopping. I shall have to tackle scrooge Fifield tomorrow and get some more.

I am listening to my record of Stravinski’s Firebird. I never realised it was in stereo before. All the scratches sound loud on the new record player. When I am in England I shall buy some new unscratched records.

There are no flights on the 31st of December so we will have to fly a different day. I will let you know when we have bought the tickets.

I hope all the family are well and that you have a lovely Christmas with the children. Give my love to Paula, David and family and Nanny.

Love to you both

Gillian and Tony

We later found out that the point settings on the Daf are quite unlike any other car which accounted for the failure to start once Anton had ‘fixed’ the points.

Tony made several trips to Rumania during our stay in Sofia. Again it was on an old Antinov plane which never seemed too air worthy so you were always glad when you landed safely.

This was before the atrocities of the Chauchescu regime. At the time Rumania was allied to China rather than Russia, having fallen out with the Russian regime. Tony bought some Russian Palek boxes in the duty free shop in Bucharest and we remember he paid about £3 for them. He also bought some nested Russian dolls for our niece. There were many Chinese goods for sale there at the time. Bucharest was still a beautiful city with Parisian type buildings which were later demolished to be replaced with Stalinist style megalithic tower blocks. The people were more friendly and Southern European in nature.  It was easier getting around as Romanians used the Latin script, unlike the Cyrillic script in Bulgaria. Tony found the department stores had more goods to sell than most communist countries and the people seemed happy and well dressed. The Hotel International was modern and comfortable and much more Western in style than the hotels in Bulgaria. We had two customers there, one in the shipyards who were pleased to see Tony. The second was one of those mysterious customers who disappeared after the computer was shipped. There was an open air museum of old farm buildings outside the city that Tony visited which was very interesting. What happened a few years later to Rumania was very sad and shows that politics do have an effect on the people being governed. It really is not the case that all politicians are the same, or all governments the same. The quality of the leadership of counties does impact on the citizens and their economic prosperity and freedom.