We go for something to drink to a small shop/café in the town. The sun beats down, the streets are deserted. Inside a Rom and his little daughter are about to be served when we enter. The shopkeeper immediately says something to the Roma and the two of them step aside. There is something so ‘natural’ in the behaviour that makes its collusive implications doubly shocking and it is in stark contrast to our own reception a short time later in the Roma district of the village of Maglizh. We stop on the edge of it to ask the way. I find another record fragment for my collection at the side of the road. B has brought some children’s clothes that her own offspring no longer need and our hosts, the family we met on their way home from rose picking, quickly and efficiently organise the distribution of different items amongst various families.

By that time word has spread and everyone who was present at the rose picking turns up to get a copy of the photograph L made and which we have had duplicated. There is so much going on here in the little courtyard in front of the house, so many comments flying about, boisterous behaviour amongst the youth, conversations amongst the women, that I feel the lack of a common language strongly.

Sitting at the table B translates as well as she can and they tell us about the fact that the main road, which can be seen not more than 50 yards from where we are sitting, is increasingly busy with vehicles travelling faster and faster and that the lack of a barrier between it and the settlement led to the death of a six-year-old boy who wandered too close to the edge. Although the village council has been promising to do something for years nothing has come of that promise. As for work, it is very difficult, though in season there is some work picking mulberries and lavender – which follows rose-picking and brings 10 cents a kilo.