Batakliev's Bloc

Miss was our first teacher of English. We were thirteen. She was twenty three. We called her Miss even when we addressed her in Bulgarian as she was different from all the other teachers. She was of one of us yet she was outstanding. Miss represented a brand-new world of coolness to which we instinctively aspired to belong. We liked Milli Vanilli . She liked The Grateful Dead , Jethro Tull and Carlos Castaneda . She anointed us with stories about hippies and punks, wild university parties, grand exhibitions, crazy trips. Those stories always had substance to them, a substance that ignited our imagination. We looked up to her and felt privileged to be a part of the Sublime World signified by Miss. She exuded a perfect mixture of awe, style and humanity. When she came on a mountain holiday with us one summer, we felt ecstatic to have a patron and a guru. Miss was all-rounded, intelligent and cutting-edge. Like the bulk of the 13-year-old Bulgarian students at the time, we ate sunflower...

The BBC World Service was scrambled for years in communist Bulgaria. A valid reason to listen to it religiously. Every Monday my 14-old self would crouch over my red Sanyo cassette recorder, a pen and paper in my hand. Waiting for the UK Top 40 chart to fill the ether. I had to tilt the red box up and down continuously in order to get the signal right. And then my hand would start transcribing the scrambled sounds laboriously. "This week's highest climbers are...". I remember my fascination with the expression "highest climber". It sounded so British! And then...quicksticks...write it all down before the signal vanishes again: EMF Unbelievable , Crystal Waters Gypsy woman , Maria McKee Show me heaven ... At the end of the show my neatly-written list would be resting on my bed next to me as a solemn proof. The next day my friend Plamen and I would bring our lists to school and double check them. Spelling was not always my forté. Was it Unchanged or Unchaine...