I have picked up the hire car from the rental place. They didn't have a car in the category which I booked; so they have upgraded us to a Bellini Tiger GTi.
If anyone buys an SUV because it is 'sporty' then I have to advise them that they are delusional. In the olden days they used to be called estate cars or station wagons because that's what they are. Nobody in their right mind would put an SUV in a motor race and so they're not sporty; the actual net utility of one those things is less than it otherwise would be because the boot opening is higher from the ground and there is usually more space taken up by the intrusion of the suspension towers into the cargo space. Having eliminated both S and U, all that leaves is V but that's just a statement of the obvious.
The hatchback that we've been given is the same as the regular Bellini Tiger except that they've managed to extract another hundred horsepower out of the engine. 251 horses in a front wheel drive hatchback is more than adequate.
As we drive east out of Plovdiv, you will note the rows and rows of abandoned factories and then the small houses. There is a Kentucky Fried Chicken coming up on the right-hand side of the road with its bucket sign slowly rotating and a BP coming up on the left with the old shield. I do not understand why companies feel like the need to wildly rebrand themselves. Coca-Cola have played with their logo a lot and even they have returned to the simplicity of the logo that everyone knows, which is simply the script of their name.
Houses give way to small farms and then just fields with miles of barbed wire and post fencing, occasional parliaments of cows and sheep standing around in those fields and then the further east we go, miles upon miles of scrub.
Some say that this part of the world is as flat as a pancake but if you were to actually measure all of the divots and craters on a pancake, you might be surprised to learn that a pancake is ridiculously hilly compared with this.
Those little foxtail weeds that line the sides of the blacktop, spring up in an instant after the rains and then as they suck up all of the moisture they grow, turn brown, die, and their seeds are spread further along the road by cars like us who venture out here. Farmers don't really graze their cattle out here because the native weeds are thorny things and the cows hate it.
It doesn't take very long before we start to see fields of some nondescript crop. It is obvious that I have no idea about what they are; all I know is that whatever it is, it is a kind of golden grey and there are acres of blankets of the stuff.
I find that the further out that we go from the cities, the worse the radio reception. Digital radio gives up, FM radio gets full of hiss; which leaves the only stations that you can pick up out here, those from the ABC. If you are really far away from the city, then the sounds of the ABC or a retransmission of the BBC or DW, is both strange and ephemeral. It is possible on this side of the world, to hear The Shipping Forecast from the BBC which is broadcast on Radio 4 and the World Service at 0048 hours Greenwich Mean Time. If you can imagine hearing it at 0948 and in the desert, instead of being tucked up in your nice warm bed, then the cultural disconnect is amazing.
Yet there is something still amazing about listening to The Shipping Forecast or the Football Results from England as you pelt down a two-lane road at a triple digit speed, eating up the miles and leaving a rooster tail of dust in your wake. A disembodied voice from what once was the centre of empire, or from what is being described as a rainy city where footy players are sloshing about in the mud, when outside is scrub which is no higher than your knees and which extend in all directions into infinity, is a reminder that humanity is out there... somewhere.
As the miles spin past and the odometer slowly winds on tens, hundreds and eventually thousands, it can feel a bit like you are the only person in the world. Functionally, the further you get out of a city, the truer that is.
Philosophically the centre of the universe is actually the point from which it is being observed. On average, that is 24mm from the front of your cornea; which means to say that as far as you are concerned, you are the centre of the universe. Our problem as social creatures, is that we need others to share in the observation and continue on the journey.
It might be a good idea, since we’re not going to be doing much else for a while, to give someone a phone call while the reception is still good. There will come a time, when that is not the case.
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