HGVs and Transylvania

Killing two birds with one stone, and because I have so far failed to mention HGVs as promised above, here's a photo taken last week, of Dan Dan the Truck Man thundering through the village in Transylvania. Dan now has two trucks, an old green thing and this rather newer white and blue number. Dan is the Man who fetches all the wood, sand, gravel, concrete bricks and assorted building materials from the main road all the way up five miles of potholed roads and hair pin bends, 500 metres up to the village, and up again over the hill to my house, along a track which had never seen a motor vehicle till I got Dan over there for the first time.

For more Transylvanian photos, and the latest from my Carpathian village, hit the Transylvania Adventures link opposite.

Kind hearts and coronets

This is the neighbour's gaff, just down the mountain from my des res. The most famous past resident was Vlad the Impaler, Voivode of Wallachia and template for Bram Stoker's romantic bloodsucker. The castle (genuine 14th century edifice) belonged to the Romanian royal family until the Communists kicked them out, but last year they got it back. The man who would have been king of Romania is, I gather, an architect in New York called Hugo (correct me if I'm wrong). So the neighbourhood's looking up – from a mere Count to an Almost King. And the other side of me, in the same county, Prince Charles now has a bijou pad – well, a rural building in a Carpathian village. So I'm hedged about with coronets.

Taking wing

Why Batland? Mostly because I'm a dreadful old bat, but also because I have a house in Transylvania, home to the most stylish bats in the business.

For the time being (and for the last 18 years) I live in Liverpool – the original, not one of the 15 or so around the world – and almost make a living as a publisher of gorgeous looking, life-enhancing non-fiction books under the imprints of Capsica and Garlic Press. Have a look at http://www.loveliverpoolbooks.com for some of them.

Garlic Press, incidentally, had nothing to do with the Transylvanian connection. I was taking drawing lessons, and we had to bring in a kitchen implement to sketch. I brought in a garlic press and it occurred to me that it would be a great name for a publishing house. At the time (1992) I was a business journalist and it hadn't occurred to me that it might be me doing the publishing. It's an odd world.

Gagging to know more about Transylvania, eh? It IS a real place and ISN'T full of vampires. Full of vampire-chasers, certainly - lots of foreign (ie not Transylvanian) nutters running around the mountains looking for Dracula. But although Vlad the Impaler's 14th century castle is in the valley below my house, and the village next to mine is named after a bat cave, and you can occasionally hear wolves howl from my back door, the place is idyllic ather than Gothic. Not dark and dangerous, but light and full of wildflower meadows. Much more of that later.

For now, the sun's out and it's Chinese New Year, and Liverpool has the oldest Chinese community in Europe, so I'm off out.

T'ra.