We have a coffee in the grounds of the Ethnological Museum and the spoons are small, pressed metal implements like inflated but flattened coke spoons fashionable in films from the eighties. The one I have bears the crest of the company. M says that they have been producing more or less the same spoons for generations – that there was a cheaper aluminium version (the one in my hand is stainless steel) and also special gold and silver versions. Just down the street I notice a plastic bottle, obviously intended for children, with a modern drink-on-the-move nozzle, in the shape of a hand grenade which rhymes with lemonade, in English at least…

After leaving Burgas by the same bridge we came in on, we turn south, picking up the coast road to Sozopol. This turns out to fall under the heading seaside town with all the funfair implications, including the stands selling souvenirs, plastic snakes, balloons, T-shirts and the rest.

It also has a row of photographer’s stands which, with their opportunity to put on costumes for a semi-serious ‘formal’ portrait, probably act more like a monitoring device of attitudes to past history and present concerns than any five books of socio-historical analysis. This complex brew is also reflected in the architecture of the town – Roman ruins, traditional wooden houses (which became traditional, a quick-rebuild solution, after numerous sieges, fires and wars over the centuries) and a modern port. It was a submarine base and training school (part of the Naval Academy at Varna) and thus a heavily restricted area. Houses undergoing renovation shaded by camouflage nets seem to echo the area’s past priorities.