When the Covid-19 pandemic took off in 2020, I had only recently retired. The restrictions went so far that people like me were only allowed to shop from 8 to 10 in the morning and from 4 to 6 in the afternoon. In the remaining hours only those younger than us could shop. On the first day of this new rule I went shopping at the nearby Fantastico.
At 9 o'clock a group of us oldies were coming out. A young woman headed straight for me and asked me to buy her a banitsa from inside, because she was very hungry and they hadn't let her in, being under 60. She hadn't known about the new hour and age restrictions. The fact that she had picked me out of everyone coming out didn't surprise me in the slightest. I had established long ago that it was as if something along the lines of “Ask and it shall be given unto you” were written on my forehead.
Ever since I was little I would often take in some drunk from the pub next door who had fallen asleep in the middle of our yard. Who hadn't I lent a hat or gloves to in winter, or given a cigarette, a bread ring or a lev to in summer? I had got used to it and had accepted it as my personal karma or mission. Naturally, I agreed to help the woman. When I came out and handed her the warm banitsa, she was talking to other people who, just like her, hadn't known about the new rule. They too immediately spotted the writing on my forehead, and within an hour I had obliged another 5. Their orders were more varied – cigarettes, cabbage, toilet paper, bread and salami, and even sanitary towels.
As I was handing over the shopping and the change to the last one, I remembered I'd forgotten to buy parsley. It was already 10 o'clock and there was no way I could go back in. Besides, that big lump inside, tasked with not letting in anyone from another age group, seemed to have suspected what I was up to. He was glaring at me murderously and could barely stop himself from throwing me out.
I didn't fancy coming back between 4 and 6 for the sake of some parsley, so I asked a few youngsters who were about to go in to buy me just one little bunch of parsley, but they pretended not to notice me.
The bitter thought crossed my mind that lately, when passing younger people, I felt invisible. They always looked far ahead, as if into the future. If one of them was looking for a street, a block of flats or a shop in our neighbourhood and saw no one nearby but me, they'd look at me as if to say:
“This old fossil may hear me, he may not! And if he does hear me, he may understand, he may not! Oh well, let's give it a try!” To their surprise I coped, and I even walked them to the place they were looking for so they wouldn't get lost. It was always that sort of thing they were interested in. In my opinion, they definitely underestimated my encyclopaedic knowledge in quite a few fields of science and life, as well as my skill at giving wise advice that is remembered for a lifetime. As our people say: “Nobody gives us old folk the time of day any more.”
By 10:30 I was home, gripped by mixed feelings. To top it off, right then my wife, who had gone to work, rang me just to tell me that in the morning they hadn't let her into the shop, however much she swore to them that she was over 60. Her voice wasn't indignant, but rather cheerful. Give me strength!
I say give me strength because whenever she and I ran into old acquaintances of ours, they'd immediately exclaim: “Goodness, Rosi, you haven't changed a bit!” Apparently her youthful looks had now been confirmed by the big supermarket chains too. Slightly annoyed, I thought that nothing stopped her from showing them her ID card instead of telling me all this, but I kept quiet. I've always been like that – I spare others my unpleasant observations, unlike them. Clearly, people thought I was the only one who'd changed – or come a bit unhinged. Seized by sarcasm, I even thought: no wonder if soon, when I go out on the street arm in arm with my wife, some people there take me for a paedophile.
I began to sum up my day so far. After all, I had helped some human beings in need, i.e. I had been useful to them, which hadn't happened to me in a long time. Yes, but afterwards they hadn't helped me. My thoughts ran off somewhere again – just try stopping them. Into my head came a line of titles by our classic writers, along the lines of “Upside-Down World”, “I Don't Feel Like Singing, I Don't Feel Like Laughing”, “To My Mother” and so on. Give a Bulgarian poet a sad idea and then watch what happens. Yes, but I was neither a poet nor a pessimist, and I strained myself so that vigour and optimism would flow through my sinews again. By the way, why is it that according to science blood flows through our veins, but according to poets through our sinews? I have plenty of other ticklish questions too, but let's not get sidetracked.
Under the pressure of the optimism now flowing through my sinews, I remembered the wise saying that the pessimist sees a risk in every opportunity, while the optimist sees an opportunity in every risk. I made myself a coffee and began to think more globally. Some people got rich out of a war, and in my view Covid-19 was a war.
People had already gone mad from the news showering us about the advance of the disease. Almost everyone who died lately was being counted as a Covid patient. It was expected that they'd ban us from walking in the parks, going into shopping centres, going to football matches, the theatre and the opera, and that schoolchildren would study remotely. We went around in masks, washed our hands every 15 minutes and sprayed ourselves with disinfectant as if we were insects. Crazy business, really.
So Rockefeller supposedly got rich from an apple he washed and then sold. Blah-blah. Bill Gates and Onassis caught the crest of the wave. Now was the moment for me too to wise up in time and get some benefit out of it – and not only for others, as I had done until now, but for my family too.
My wife was right when she said that since I'd retired, I had become superfluous in a certain sense, if you don't count the cleaning, the shopping and the washing-up. I hadn't contributed substantially to our family budget. I'd been lolling about on that one cushion – my measly pension, which only stretched to the heating, hot water, electricity, property tax and bin charges. When she'd said that, I'd murmured modestly that pensions in our Homeland are just like that. I had refrained from pointing out to her, in typical female fashion, that if we were going to talk pensions, hers was 17 leva smaller. She had also retired recently, but carried on working.
I really do wonder how, with those youthful looks of hers, they had let her into the National Social Security Institute at all. She was the main reason we managed not only our running costs but could also afford a few extras, like a week's holiday at the seaside and another one in the village.
Carried away on the wings of my thoughts, I summed up: when one door closes in front of you, try to see whether another one has opened. The restrictions were definitely discriminating against us by age and hours. I smelled business, and my head swelled right up as if I'd swallowed baking powder, and I started daydreaming. The following cracking business idea came to me: now is the moment to “open” a company. I spontaneously named it “Covid Shopping Unlimited”, “CSU”, i.e. unlimited shopping, at any time, despite Covid, aimed at people buying whatever they want when they need it, not when they're told to.
Don't we all eat, take medicines, drink alcohol, and need toilet paper, washing powder, fruit, medicines and so on? Naturally, I'll do this for a commission. A few details also took shape. VAT is at 20%, and as soon as they hear of a commission like that, by association, customers would be put off. The 19.99% trick was far too basic and I decided: no, our company's commission will be just 17%! The second detail was simple. My brother was a former software developer and quickly knocked together a trial website. He also gave me administrator rights.
I uploaded a photo to the website showing a young man and a somewhat elderly woman in masks shopping at the same time. I also specified which area our company accepts deliveries from /for now/. Completely drained, I went to bed only after 10 p.m., something unheard of for me in years.
In the morning there were about 20 delivery requests on the website for the area I'd specified – Sofia, Druzhba 2 housing estate. I should have been pleased, but doubts set upon me. I had noticed that, for me, the sayings “The early bird catches the worm” and “The morning is wiser than the evening” had never worked.
I only became an optimist late in the evening, while in the morning, despite /or perhaps because of/ the bright sunshine, I saw things in darker colours. It's one thing to hatch plans in the evening and then go to bed, and quite another in the morning, when you'll actually have to carry them out. Y. Radichkov put it best: “It's one thing to want, another to be able, and a third and a fourth thing to actually do it.”
There were still two hours to go until 8. I looked at the first request, which was: “A kilo of tomatoes, but firm ones and up to 3.50 leva. Half a kilo of white cheese – firm, matured and under 8 leva a kilo, and one roll of toilet paper, one of the cheaper ones.” The address was nearby. From this request I'd earn about 1.60 and spend about 15 minutes, plus who knows how long while the old dear squeezed my tomatoes and cheese and possibly approved them.
The second was: “Please come to my address first, pick up my health insurance prescription booklet and buy me the corresponding medicines. I'll give you a tip too.” The address was further away, and the total time there and back, together with the long wait at the pharmacy, would take at least 50 minutes. After the two requests, in a minimum of 70 minutes I'd have earned a maximum of 5 leva. It became painfully clear to me that once again I had drawn up the wrong business plan. For a measly 7–8 leva for two hours I'd be waiting hand and foot on people who yesterday had at least thanked me, and today would look at me sideways.
I had spoiled others very badly – being obliging and selfless. As the saying goes: “It's too late, my love, for flowers.” I took stock of my business projects to date:
I once had a successful business, the income from which was, naturally, in leva. Unlike people who, as soon as they had a spare lev, ran to change it into dollars, I made monthly deposits in leva, tempted by the high interest rate of the Bulgarian National Bank. In just a few days my leva lost their value at breakneck speed, but I didn't despair. I still had some spare and decided to change them, albeit late, into dollars and pounds. A friend of mine had bragged to me that in London he “played” the stock market and made good money. I gave him 4000 pounds in cash and he took them to England. In the third year he brought me back 4200 pounds and said it was getting risky now.
I thanked him for being punctual, but soon found out that the pound /pound sterling/ was currently at 2.2 to the dollar. And when I had given them to him, it had been 2.7. I changed them into the newly arrived EURO currency and put them into the stable German investment fund Allianz. In the global financial crash that followed, by the time I realised I should pull them out, 70% of them had sunk.
I decided to withdraw my last pride and joy – my six thousand dollars. But two heavies had followed me from the bank and robbed me in broad daylight. They too, like all the others, had asked and it had been given to them. In the end I told myself straight to my face: no, I no longer have any trust in myself in financial matters! At least from this business I must get out without getting my feet wet, and in time!
