Books - Family - Life :) - Scrabble

A deep, dark, hot place

June 27, 2026 by 0 Comments

Mum and Dad called me yesterday. They’re still at my brother’s place, but he was out at the time. They told me what’s been happening with my brother who has entered a deep, dark place. Worse than when he had the business with his ex, I wondered. Yes, far worse, they said. And for the love of God, don’t come here later in the summer.

We all thought it was family-related. His wife, her family (who come over all the time), his son being particularly hard work, and so on. But no, it’s to do with his job. He was very excited to get that job with BAE back at the beginning of April; he’d be starting in early August. I was very happy for him too. But now the Army won’t release him in time, mainly (from what I can tell) because his boss’s boss is being a bastard. He’ll be forced to stay for an extra six months, doing very little of importance, so he’ll miss out on that bright future that he’d studied so hard for. The military is a very weird place, and my brother has no time for it anymore. It’s all so upsetting. Not just that it has happened to him, but that it’s affected him so profoundly. This is my brother, whose mental health has always been unimaginably good. Every disappointment like water off a duck’s back. And now this.

My parents said he is hardly talking to them. Or anyone else. It’s been a crappy week down south for them. The searing heat has left them practically imprisoned in a single room, and they haven’t been able to travel back to St Ives because it’s been dangerously hot for them (especially Dad) to do so. They did go to the cinema on Thursday and see Toy Story 5, a sad film about kids being glued to their screens and no longer playing with toys, but that’s then only “thing” they’ve done. (They took my nephew. It would have all been beyond him.) Tomorrow is Dad’s 76th birthday. The following day, with the temperatures down in the 20s, they’ll finally get away.

In the last few days my parents and I have compared notes, all of us becoming very heatist. Yes, it’s been hellishly hot all over Europe, including the UK, where they broke the 1976 record for June three days running. (Mum can’t stop talking about that freakishly long heat wave fifty summers ago. Even Mark mentioned it last weekend – he’d just started school. Damon Albarn referred to it in one of his songs. It’s certainly part of British lore.) This weekend we’ll hit at least 37; on Monday and Tuesday we could just about melt in 40 degrees. The worst thing about the heat isn’t the days but the nights. Broken sleep, leaving me exhausted. On Thursday afternoon I had my first lesson with the girl who was in the ballet. An hour and a half with her big brother, followed by an hour with her, and that got me a useful 200 lei. Their mum asked me if I wanted to do two sessions each next week, but I couldn’t face the idea of cycling to Mehala in the early part of the week. Maybe on Thursday (when it should be cooler) I’ll ask if we could meet on Friday too. (The 200 lei…) I gave the boy a test, which isn’t something I do very often. He took it super seriously and got 93% – very impressive. His little sister seemed to be excited at the prospect of having me as her teacher; that isn’t something I always see.

What else? I’ve seen the devastating pictures from the already devastated Venezuela following the two huge earthquakes there. You always see the amazing scenes of children being extricated from the rubble, but those are the all too rare exceptions. Tens of thousands are missing.

I’ve been reading Patrick Hennessey’s The Junior Officers’ Reading Club, which is all about the author’s time as an army officer, first training at Sandhurst, then serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. Gripping stuff, but a bit too close to home for me, and all the unnecessary pop culture references – look at me, how worldly I am – grate after a while, even if he writes extremely well.

Scrabble. I’m getting relegated again. I’m sure it won’t be the last time. My opponents are just too good. I’ve had four wins and nine losses, with one game still outstanding (and very close in the endgame) against a 16-year-old from Australia who will go down with me. In one game against a guy from Hungary I scoured the board looking for what he could do before playing my final move. Surely this will win it for me, won’t it? But then he stuck a D on the end of QUICHE on his last move to beat me by three points. Really? That’s a word now? I felt well and truly quiched. What’s more, earlier in the game I’d got 102 for BRATTISH and 92 for sATIRIC and I still couldn’t win. In the 14 games my opponents played 33 bingos. (By the way, heatist isn’t valid, but it has two anagrams that are: atheist and staithe, which is a kind of wharf.)

Life :) - Photos - Politics - Travel: Romania

23/6/16 (plus photos)

June 23, 2026 by 0 Comments

Ten years ago today, the Brexit vote happened. I’d expected it to be close, as you can see from my blog posts in the days before the referendum. (My uni mate, who is far more intelligent than me but lived in a kind of bubble, said that Remain would get 60% or more.) I was at work, on a Friday in Wellington, when the results came through. The first two declarations in the north-east were earth-shatteringly bad for Remain. Oh shit. When the next ten or so councils had announced their figures, it was basically all over. (The numbers were very close at that point, but if you had any idea at all of how voting in Britain plays out – rural areas declare later – you’d have known the writing was on the wall. And I’d been through it all a few dozen Fridays before when David Cameron won an unexpected majority, initiating the referendum in the first place.) My boss had scheduled us all to give sodding talks that afternoon, and I had to do mine and half-listen to everyone else’s, when my mind was well and truly elsewhere. I was halfway round the world and very few of my colleagues gave a damn, while there was me wanting to move to an EU country a few months later.

The arguments by both sides in the lead-up to the vote were facile. From the Leave side, it was all emotion, take back control, big unproven numbers on the side of a red bus. The Remain camp demonstrably failed to make an emotional case for staying in. (And it was easy to make! Peace was all they needed to say.) Instead you had remainers talking about falling house prices if they left the EU. I dunno, if I was a 23-year-old with little prospect of ever buying a property I’d have thought, sounds good to me. And then there were the remainers who called leavers stupid. But the whole campaign was just awful from start to finish. It whipped people up into a frenzy, creating divisions that hadn’t previously existed. EU membership just wasn’t that big a deal beforehand.

Then there was the aftermath. It was like an earthquake that nobody had prepared for, and nobody was there to clean up the mess. Cameron announced his resignation within hours of the result. Since then, Britain has gone through a slew of prime ministers including the laughable Liz Truss. They’re about to get another one who I happen to really like, but dammit he’s facing a tough task. Dangerous enemies to the west and east, the enshittification of everything thanks to toxic social media and AI slop, a stagnating economy, and still very much out of the EU where Britain has, guess what, some actual friends.

Ten years later, the Brexit vote is still a common topic of conversation. It came up with my parents when they were here. To my mind, where Brexit has done the most damage to Britain isn’t actually that they’ve left the EU, it’s the way is was done and how divided it has made the country. It was all so terribly unnecessary. And now, many of those who voted to leave are angry that it isn’t working and want an even more extreme option in Farage.

I spoke to Dad yesterday. He was struggling, as he so often does, with the heat. My brother has a conservatory which turns the whole place into a heat trap. He would love to replace it – it makes summer uncomfortable for him too – but doing so would be horrendously expensive. I saw my niece and my nephew who were both nonplussed. That’s your uncle, look at him! My nephew is still an extremely live wire.

As great as Mum and Dad’s visit was, it’s good to have my own space again. Washing and cleaning have gone from being front and centre, as Mum made them, to a gentle drum beat once more. I also no longer have to worry about putting things on shelves that Mum can’t reach (which was quite easy to accidentally do). They said that if there’s a next time they’ll try and come earlier and go straight to Timișoara as they did last year. Coming later though meant that they benefited from all the fruit that they really enjoyed, and even the sweet scent of the lime trees, so there are always pros and cons. When we were in Cluj I said, wouldn’t it be nice if we had a swimming pool? I haven’t swum in a pool for absolutely ages. I might try and go to the ștrand (basically a pool) in the coming days. I just hope I can cope with the music they play.

I just hope I don’t get any more bad headaches for a while. Dad wondered why they’re becoming such a feature of my life at my stage of the game.

The Opera House

Timișoara at dusk

Lipova

The war memorial: the Romanians, Serbs, Germans and Hungarians are on separate sides

A couple of cat pictures

Family - Headaches - Life :) - Travel: Romania

A night at the opera, and more

June 22, 2026 by 0 Comments

It’s the longest day here – the shortest in the southern hemisphere – and it’s been an eventful one weather-wise. In late afternoon we’ve had a thunderstorm and driving rain that have sent the temperature tumbling 15 degrees from a high of 34. It’s sheeting down as I write this.

Mum and Dad took the WizzAir flight from Timișoara to Luton very early on Friday morning. Later that day my brother arrived in St Ives, and then the next day Mum and Dad were whisked off to Poole. Great that my brother picked them up, saving them either a bus or a train journey, but they might have preferred a couple of days to recuperate.

Yes, I was really happy with my parents’ stay. I was far better prepared than last time. Fewer lessons certainly helped. After we’d got back from Cluj – I’ll remember that epic journey for a while – I tried to give them interesting things to do and places to go. There was Ciacova last Saturday, with those huge pastries from the bakery, then the following day (Mum’s birthday) we had a meal at Berăria 700 before settling down to a night at the opera. My parents had been before a long time ago, but it was a totally new experience for me. We saw Adriana Lecouvreur, not exactly a well-known opera and probably not the best for a first-timer to see. When I read what it was about before I went, it said that I would be utterly baffled by the plot. Which indeed I was, even though it subtitled in both Romanian and a particularly flowery (though correct) version of English above the stage. Adriana was a real French actress 300 years ago, but her story in the opera was entirely made up. To be honest though, the plot was secondary to the talented singers, all extremely colourfully clad, and just being there in such a beautiful building. The performance was made up of four acts, with intervals after acts two and three, and took just over three hours. The sheer scale of the production was impressive. We sat at the bottom, but I think I’d have preferred being higher up so I could have seen the orchestra pit. The first half dragged a bit, but the dancing brought the show to life in act three. Tickets were 70 lei (£12 or NZ$27) each – extraordinary value.

When we got back from the opera, Mum was keen to go back there the next day to see a ballet gala. We booked online, grabbing some of the last available tickets, to sit two floors above the stage. They were just 20 lei each. Before the ballet, I decided to take Mum and Dad out for an excursion. We left at 10:30 and made a stop in Buzad where Dorothy has her house. We did a lap of the village on foot. As always, my parents had a good look at the houses. They marvelled at the sheer number of plum trees everywhere. From there we went to Lipova, which I last went to during the winter. It was slow going with all the road works and potholes. Lipova is a lovely town. We had coffee at the old Turkish bazaar which had furniture made out of old farm machinery. Dad and I wanted to get pastries from the bakery, but Mum vetoed that idea. I thought of going to the fortress at Șoimoș, just outside Lipova, but we didn’t have time. The journey back was long, with constant stoppages. We got back at 4:30; the ballet would start at seven. Inexplicably, Mum then flipped her lid because she’d planned to cook up a chicken for dinner and we might not have time for that. She told Dad and me, “You expect me to produce a meal for you,” when in fact we had no expectations at all, then said, “Most women wouldn’t put up with this.” Yikes. Her behaviour was beyond irrational. Thankfully it all blew over, the chicken did in fact get cooked, and we took the tram into town in plenty of time for the ballet. (Mum got agitated on a number of occasions while she was here, but that was as close as she got to crossing the line. Last time she crossed it twice, and from my perspective that made a mess of my parents’ whole stay.) The gala was basically two and a half hours of girls of all ages doing ballet at all levels. They all went to ballet school in Mehala. One of the girls was the little sister of a boy I teach; soon I’ll be teaching her too.

On Tuesday Mum and Dad went into town by themselves. They came back saying how wonderful Timișoara is now, and I thought, yes, you’re right. So many buildings have been renovated and now look really smart. Because I live here, I get blasé about it all. On Wednesday I’d planned to take Mum and Dad to Recaș – they have a big barbecue there on Wednesdays and Saturdays, as well as the winery – but at around 11:30 I got struck down suddenly by a horrific headache that lasted about four hours. Having my parents here made it harder to deal with. Being in the middle of a bright sunny day didn’t help either; darkness is my friend when I have a bad headache. By the evening I’d recovered sufficiently for us to go out for another meal at Berăria 700. The highlight of that meal were the desserts. We had to wait ages for them. I got papanași which are dumplings with sour cream and a kind of jam, Dad had a stack of pancakes topped off with a kind of meringue (a speciality of the Banat region), while Mum had cremeș which is a puff pastry dessert. They were delicious. And enormous. We took some of it all back in a doggy bag for the next day. On Thursday morning I did take Mum and Dad to Recaș. No barbecue but they still had a good look round the park and the churches, and we got a two-litre bottle of white wine (for just 21 lei) from the tap in the winery.

On Wednesday Dad got an email about roof repairs being needed on one of their places in St Ives – the one on which the sale was agreed ages ago – and that really set things off. If the sale ends up not going through after all – that remains a possibility – I have no idea how my parents will handle that. One thing’s for sure, I don’t want to be dealing with that sort of crap when I’m heading for 80.

Mum struggled a lot with her tummy business; she seems to be perpetually constipated. Because she is rarely keen to visit the doctor, I don’t know how her situation improves.

Mum kept reiterating how appreciative she was of the effort I’d put in to make her and Dad’s stay as comfortable as possible. Mum is a good person and she loves me dearly. I’m very happy with how things panned out with her. And by the way, she seemed to really love Kitty. I shouldn’t have been surprised – she was fond of the cat we had when I was little – but both she and Dad were very anti me ever getting one.

After Andy Burnham winning that by-election by a mile, he’s highly likely to become the UK’s next prime minister. Personally speaking, he’s the most likeable PM (or potential PM) in a very long time. And there have been a lot. He’s not slick, he’s not an amazing orator, he doesn’t have airs and graces, he just talks frankly, which is what you want. Or what I would want, at any rate. If he does become PM, he faces a monumental task. He’s battling a hostile media, endless cynicism around politics, and a highly unstable world over which he has little control. I wish him all the best.

This morning, having slept dreadfully, I met Mark in Dumbrăvița where we played squash for the last time, then had beers outside at the restaurant nearby. He and his wife will be off on their big Africa trip this coming Friday. He’s now done with teaching definitively, and is applying for a cheese-making job (quite a departure) just outside Preston.

Family - Headaches - Life :)

A successful stay

June 19, 2026 by 0 Comments

Mum and Dad are off to the UK very early tomorrow morning. We’ll have to be up at around four. They’re choosing a good time to leave as the temperature is rapidly rising beyond Dad’s comfort zone. Their stay here has been a success and the highlight of the year so far for me. Since I last wrote we’ve been to the opera and the ballet, had meals out, and been on various road trips. Oh, and I’ve had another terrible headache. That was yesterday. More details next time. And Mum seems to really like Kitty. Whether I see my parents in the UK before they return to New Zealand in six weeks’ time I really don’t know at this stage.

In the last couple of days an Iran peace deal has been signed; all reputable news sources have reported the deal using loads of inverted commas. And tonight Andy Burnham might win that by-election in Manchester. If he does, he may well become the UK’s next prime minister.

Family - Photos - Travel: Romania

Cluj trip report — Part 2 of 2 (and other stuff)

June 14, 2026 by 0 Comments

Today is Mum’s birthday – she’s exactly three years younger than the orange man – and tonight we’ll be going to the opera. The performance will last three hours and I’d be very surprised if any of us has the foggiest idea of what’s happening. But the novelty factor and just being inside the beautiful building will surely be worth it.

Yesterday (after my two lessons) we went to Ciacova, that fascinating small town with the big square in the middle and the 14th-century fortress. You’re stepping back in time there. We had enormous pastries from a bakery on the square – these little places still all have proper bakeries – and then had coffee at a bar two or three doors down. Three cappuccinos. But these weren’t normal cappuccinos. I could smell the Tia Maria, or whatever it was, a mile off. They were very nice (we sat on barstools that were far too high for the table), but when I asked the bartender what she’d put in, she dodged the issue. With Romania’s nil alcohol limit for driving, I was a bit concerned. Mum paid for our coffees by card – not all places even let you do that – and was surprised to check her bank app and see they had come to NZ$6. You wouldn’t get a single coffee for that in New Zealand. In the evening we had a longish walk along some of the pleasant tree-lined streets near me (including Strada Inocențiu Micu Klein which I always find interesting) and down to the river. The sweet pungent aroma of the lime trees was combined with the smell of mici being barbecued. Mum and Dad commented on the power lines going straight through the trees and all the foliage. That wouldn’t exactly fly in New Zealand, but OSH hasn’t yet made it to Romania. You’re living in Cowboyland, Dad said to me. I suppose I’ve got used to it.

Cluj (or Cluj-Napoca to give it its full name) has a similar population to Timișoara, but it’s got a whole lot of stuff that my home city doesn’t have. Concerts, music festivals, and big swanky football stadium which sits right next to a modern events centre. It’s way better for young people than Timișoara; it has a far bigger student culture, even though Timișoara has a large student population in its two universities. Then after you’ve studied at Cluj, you can stay there and get a well-paid job in IT (you can become an ITist, as the Romanians say), though the market may be getting saturated now. Cluj is also very tourist-friendly – even signs like “Centru” and “Aeroport”, which needed no translation, were translated into English. Car parks were FULL, not OCUPAT or PLIN as you might have expected. It’s a better maintained city than Timișoara and the streets are impressively leafy. The two downsides of Cluj are: (1) it’s expensive by Romanian standards, and (2) all the traffic in the centre of town gets to you after a while.

My parents called my brother when we were in Cluj. He looked like he had the weight of the world on his shoulders. We didn’t know whether it was his wife expecting too much of him, or her parents being there far too often, or Mum and Dad not having visited him yet, or some combination, or just feeling low for no real reason. He’d been like that the last few times I’d spoken to him; it reminded me of all the business with his fiancée all those years ago. It certainly put a bit of a damper on things. At least this morning he looked more alive as he called Mum for her birthday.

The drive back from Cluj was fascinating in many ways exhausting. I really felt it the next day. There was all the congestion on the way out of Cluj, then the winding roads that seemed to go on for ever, then the potholed surface after we had our meal, and finally the deluge.

I haven’t fallen out with Mum (yet!) which is great. She does get stressed, but unlike last year we haven’t reached that tipping point. If anything I’m more worried that I might fall out with Dad. I really wish he’d delete that damn Daily Mail app.

Above are some assorted pictures of Cluj, from the airport to the city centre (the church where everything inside was a mosaic was quite striking) and the Botanic Gardens which were a great place to relax in on a hot day.

They still have old display technology at the train station in Cluj. These boards are now thin on the ground. Timișoara airport got rid of its flappy boards a couple of years ago.

Cluj on day two

The trip back. I don’t know how that Antonov plane ever got up there. The last picture is one of the many poles with stork nests atop them. There were four storks in this one.

Family - Scrabble - Travel: Romania

Cluj trip report — Part 1 of 2

June 13, 2026 by 0 Comments

My trip across (and up a bit) to Cluj took a bit longer than expected; some major road works took out a section of motorway, adding an hour and a quarter to my journey. It was just as well I’d given myself plenty of time. I checked in to the same guest house as in 2016. I made sure to book a real place, with obvious signage and a manned front desk, to take the stress out of the whole thing. The Asian lady at the desk though didn’t speak Romanian and had only passable English. “You couldn’t have got us two rooms closer together?” “Okay.” My room was two floors above my parents’. After checking in, it was off to the airport to pick up Mum and Dad. I was surprised how quiet the place was, even at 9:30 pm. It’s always an amazing thing, meeting my parents at an airport, and indeed seeing other people’s reactions when they meet their friends and family.

The next morning we had a typical Romanian breakfast – cheese, ham, olives, tomatoes – then walked into town. Cluj had beautiful architecture just like I remembered it, but it was now on a whole different level of busyness and noisiness. Things are happening in Cluj, but I think I prefer Timișoara’s pedestrianised centre with its three squares. It was also quite hot in Cluj – just under 30 – and Dad really struggles in the heat. We walked up a hill to the Botanic Gardens which were beautiful and above all peaceful; while Mum and I happily wandered around, Dad found a bench in the shade. (If I’m honest, I started to flag a bit, too.) We then wandered slowly back to the guest house via an impressive market, as good as anything in Timișoara with all its meats, cheeses, fruit and vege. For dinner we had rather bland pizzas from a place attached to the train station.

On Wednesday we stayed mostly in the shade or inside, which was a result. First we visited the art museum, as I had done ten years earlier, though this time I had a critic alongside me. It was obvious even to me that the artwork, which included Nicolae Grigorescu’s, hadn’t exactly had a curator to take care of it. Over the years, most of the works had acquired a brownish-grey drabness, which was a shame. Grigorescu’s paintings in particular, where he captured rural Romanian life, were brilliant all the same. Our next stop was the Ethnographic Museum which was very well done and, as I always say, not entirely historical. We got back to our accommodation in mid-afternoon, which I didn’t mind at all. That evening we spent a long time walking up and down the main street looking for a place to eat, until I found a Chinese restaurant on Google Maps. We all had a damn good meal there.

First thing on Thursday I finally finished off my round of Scrabble games. My final tally of seven wins and seven losses was just enough to keep me in the third division. It was touch-and-go because my points differential was so poor: I won a number of close games but got thrashed in others. (I’m used to it being the other way round.)

And then we were off. Unlike when I drove from Timișoara by myself, we took the scenic route to go the other way. A very scenic route. We skirted the Apuseni National Park on a very bendy road which Mum didn’t particularly enjoy. Our first main stop was at Horea, a small town dominated by timber. As usual with Mum and Dad, we had a good look at the cemetery. At sometime around three or four we stopped at a town called Ștei, located near the Bears’ Cave which I visited all those years ago with my friends from St Ives. At one stage I handed the car keys to Dad. I didn’t choose the best time to do it. He almost careered off the side of the road as we rounded a sharp bend. As I took the keys back, we rose to 1200 metres amid low cloud which at one point cut my visibility to close to nil. We kept getting ear-splitting alerts warning of biblical-level floods on the way. “Do not travel” was the stark message.

Our final stop along the way was at Săvârșin for dinner. Above a small supermarket was a two-dollar-style shop and a restaurant where I had pasta, Dad had a schnitzel, and Mum had a salad. On the table next to ours were a couple of bikers (the motorised variety) from France.

Then came the torrent. We went back via the motorway and it absolutely sheeted down. We got home, relieved, shortly after nine. Kitty had been properly fed and watered.

I’ll put up some pictures in my next post. Mum’s 77th birthday is on Sunday. We’re going to try out the opera (a first time for me) on that day. Mum and Dad have now booked their return tickets to the UK; they’ll be flying to Luton early next Friday morning.

Family - Life :)

About to shoot off to Cluj

June 8, 2026 by 0 Comments

I’ll be off to Cluj in an hour and a bit. It’s roughly a four-hour drive. I talked a lot with my parents over the weekend. As well as seeing those two shows in London, they visited the National Portrait Gallery and the Natural History Museum – after more than a century of visitors being greeted by Dippy the Diplodocus, they now get a whale instead. I went there a few times as a kid.

We had fun and games yesterday as Mum and Dad attempted to check in. We were hooked up to WhatsApp for 50 minutes as they found the right boxes to tick in the Ryanair app and then tried to scan Mum’s passport. (She only has a NZ one, not a British one, so had to go through this extra step.) I’ve made up a lot of role-plays for my students. Being stuck in the lift, between floors, with your boss and someone else who has bad BO. Going to the doctor for constipation, only to be prescribed horse pills. An interview for a job as a dog-food tester (the applicant didn’t know that it was dog food beforehand). A ride in a taxi with a driver on his first day in the city with no knowledge of the area and no GPS. An argument between messy flatmates. Parents’ evening – the parent is incredulous that their “perfect” child is getting F grades. Two kids, one who wants to watch the 1998 World Cup match between Romania and England, the other who’s a big fan of Star Trek and wants to watch that instead on a different channel. (It’s 1998, so there’s no streaming or anything.) And a dialogue between a teenager and his (or her) tech-clueless grandparent who has just bought a new Samsung Galaxy phone and doesn’t know the first thing about it. The teenager becomes increasingly exasperated and calls his/her granny or grandad a stupid boomer. Even though I’m far from tech-savvy, I felt a bit like the teenager yesterday. Look Dad, the camera lens needs to be able to take a picture of the photo page. No no, it’s no good putting it there, look where the camera is. You use cameras all the time. Your job has relied on you using a goddamn camera. Then Mum would try and it was no better. With anything involving phones or screens or apps, Dad’s hackles go up and he doesn’t want to know. Mum just gets stressed. The passport remained unscanned, so Mum will have to get manually checked in at the airport. Dad said that if Mum isn’t able to fly, he and I will have a lads’ session in Cluj. Getting hammered, I said. As if.

More concerning that any of that was Mum’s stomach. She was in pain. That didn’t make the check-in process any easier. I hope she’ll manage when she’s here. In the end, I booked the same place I stayed in almost ten years ago. Unsurprisingly, prices of accommodation have shot up. In the past decade Cluj has risen up to be the most expensive city in Romania.

Yesterday I met Mark for lunch in Dumbrăvița. He and his wife will go to Africa in two and a half weeks.

I read this morning that Tate & Lyle, the British sugar company, has been taken over by an American firm called Ingredion. One, what a shame for yet another proud British company to be bought out, and two, what an awful name Ingredion is.

I’m a bit nervous for my parents’ stay. I really hope it all goes well.

Family - Life :) - Music - Other sports - Scrabble

Nagging doubts as Mum and Dad are about to arrive

June 6, 2026 by 0 Comments

Not long until Mum and Dad get here. Assuming they get here. There are nagging doubts over whether their check-in (which they can’t do until Sunday evening, 24 hours before their flight) will work. I spoke to them this morning. They were just about to have breakfast before checking out of their Paddington hotel. They managed to see two shows: Moulin Rouge, which they both thoroughly enjoyed, and Beetlejuice, which they didn’t. (Mum said it was “yuck”.) I saw the Moulin Rouge film at the cinema with my grandmother. It didn’t do a lot for me then (I was 21), but it sounds like I’d now enjoy a theatre performance of it.

On Tuesday they said on the radio that there were only nine days until the football World Cup. So there are now only six. And this time, just like last time, I really couldn’t give a damn. Even though New Zealand are in it. With 48 teams, it’s such a bloated competition. It’ll take 72 games just to eliminate a third of the teams. Seriously, sod that. Plus it’s in America and all that has come to mean, and matches will be taking place at all hours of the night for me.

On the radio – probably the same day that they talked about the World Cup – they played Videli noci (“I’ve seen the night”) by Moldovan band Zdob și Zdub, a song I hadn’t heard before. It was in Russian and I couldn’t make out any words except “tram” and “taxi”. I really liked it, and assumed it was a new song of theirs, but in fact it came out in 2001. Recently I played one of Paul Simon’s albums on my record player. (I’ve got a few of them.) One of the songs was My Little Town. Ugh, I don’t like this song, I thought as I was listening to it. I mean, it’s a very good song (it’s Paul Simon after all), but the lyrics – “Nothing but the dead and the dying in my little town” – are upsetting. Right at the other end of the spectrum from very good songs, Life by Des’Ree came on the radio when I was in the car. I’m afraid of a ghost, let’s have a piece of toast, doo-doo-da-doo, or however it goes. It was a pretty big hit when it came out in 1998, so who am I to judge?

I saw on the BBC this week that in 2024 only 9% of transactions in the UK were cash. That figure would be much higher in Romania, but it’s gradually coming down here too. I was wondering what kids do with money in a cashless world. How does pocket money work exactly? I was also thinking about display technology. When I was growing up, different types of information were displayed in their own distinct ways. Newsstands with handwritten headlines. The newspapers themselves. Thermometers. Billboards. Road signs with their extremely clear font. (In New Zealand the smaller road signs were often hand-painted, which I thought was cool.) Petrol prices. Departure boards at railway stations and airports. Clocks, in many different forms. The scoreboards at Wimbledon (dot-matrix on the two biggest courts, manually operated on all the others). And so on. And now practically everything is, rather depressingly, just a video screen. I thought about this as I was driving along and there were video billboards everywhere with the exception of one which had those mechanical triangular prism-shaped slats and showed three different adverts in a cycle.

Scrabble. It isn’t getting any easier in the latest round of the league and I’ll do well to survive. I did however make BACTERIUM in one game, putting down my seven letters on the front of UM which was already on the board. It’s pretty rare that I ever make a nine-letter word.

It’s proper summer here now: the smell of the lime trees, the first mosquito in my bedroom, and birds (jackdaws I think) waking me in the morning with their strangled-cat sound.

Family - Scrabble

Living very separate lives

June 3, 2026 by 0 Comments

My teaching hours have fallen off a cliff. I don’t mind that – I’ve got things to sort out before my parents come on Monday – but it does feel a bit weird. Tomorrow I’ve got five lessons scheduled, so a full day, but that’s the exception at the moment.

I spoke to Mum and Dad last night. I expected them to be in St Ives, but no, they were in a hotel room in London. Paddington, to be more precise. Maybe half a star, Mum said. They plan to see a show there. Or two or three. We had a longish chat, despite the iffy connection. We talked a fair bit about my brother. He seems slightly put out that Mum and Dad are seeing me first, even though he gets that it’d be unpleasantly hot for them if they left it much later. He wants them to make two trips down to his place to somehow make up for seeing me first. I spoke to him recently and it was almost like we were on different planets. He mentioned the Russian drone incursion because he’s into that stuff – it goes with the territory of his job (and his next job) to be into that stuff – but he never asks me anything else about Romania or what my daily life might consist of. When I said that Mum and Dad were flying into Cluj, it would have been really cool if he’d asked me how to spell it or tried to locate it on a map or wondered what the architecture might be like there. But he obviously doesn’t care. I mean, we always get on well, and he’s happy for me that my life has improved since I moved to Romania, but he’s never been curious as to what that life may entail. I hoped he might come and see me here. That was probably never very likely, even if he hadn’t had kids or if Covid hadn’t happened, but it’s highly unlikely now. My sister-in-law wouldn’t be interested either – she likes cruises and theme parks – though I’m sure she’d like it here if she ever made the trip. Anyway, my parents said he’s never interested in what they’re up to in New Zealand either. I said that he at least has the excuse of already knowing New Zealand, unlike Romania which he has never set foot in.

The next round of the Scrabble league starts tomorrow. I’ll be in the third division after finishing bottom in the previous round. That’s still well above where I “should” be, and there are still very strong players working their way up the divisions, so if I suffer another relegation I will hardly be surprised. Last weekend there was a huge tournament in Bangkok, with about 450 competitors in five divisions, each playing 36 games over four days. The schedule – ten games on each of the first three days and a further six on the last day – sounded punishing. Did anyone even get to see any of Bangkok, after travelling all that way? The Australian lady who beat me in a close game asked me if I was making the trip. I’ll be wearing a green top with the Aussie flag and my name on it, she said. I’ve added in my profile that I’ve never played a Scrabble tournament in my life. People assume I’m a regular player. She competed in the third division, finishing in the middle of the pack. They streamed many of the games, and I watched a few of them. What really struck me was how often a four or five-letter word was the optimal play. My poor knowledge of obscure fours and fives is a big handicap, and I’m currently trying to learn them and make them stick in my mind. That’s no easy task.

I’m a bit nervous about my parents’ trip. Mum and I have pleasant phone conversations which lull me into a false sense of security, but then when we actually see each other I get my fingers burnt. In case my brain has filtered out previous episodes, I have my blog posts to remind me. I’m more emotionally prepared for seeing Mum than I’ve ever been, and let’s hope that helps. If we (and Dad) can have two largely stress-free weeks together, that would be the best thing to happen this year. By the way, Elena – the lady who lives above me – has agreed to look after Kitty while I’m away.

It’s great to feel normal once again. I thought I might never get back here. Fingers crossed I don’t suffer another terrible migraine.

Update: I’ve been teaching a guy in his mid-thirties for a while now; several months ago his 17-year-old niece joined him in the sessions. But three weeks ago tragedy struck for their family. Her 14-year-old brother was riding an electric scooter when he was hit by a car, and since then he has been in a coma. Those things are so dangerous. It goes without saying that we’re not having lessons at the moment.

This afternoon the twins told me about a 16-year-old boy who was killed by a car while walking in Dumbrăvița on Monday – Children’s Day. The boy was a very good footballer. He had no choice but to walk on the road because there was no pavement, as is the case on many streets in Dumbrăvița. The car was travelling far too fast – over 100 km/h. I read a news item about the accident in which the writer wondered how one of the richest suburbs in the country could have almost no pavements.

Environment - Family - Scrabble - Writing a book

Bad books but feeling much better

May 29, 2026 by 0 Comments

I’m feeling almost normal now. That feels like a miracle after the last three months. I haven’t been sleeping all that well, but that’s because I’ve had a lot of stuff circling around my head, like my parents’ stay in Romania and the books. Oh yes, those books that I’ve been trying to get published. They’ve come back. The publishers in town said they wanted to have another go at getting funding under the educational and cultural programme or whatever it is. Last year they didn’t get past the start line because of some technicality or other – the judges or assessors never looked at a single word of either book. So on Wednesday I had a meeting in town with the older woman and her daughter. The old woman never shuts up. After a long yap, she asked me how much I wanted to contribute, assuming the books get accepted. What sort of question is this? What would I even be getting for my money? You’ll get the books. Five hundred copies of each book. Do you want the books published or not? Well, that depends. I started getting pretty stressed, and I suppose combative, because I felt pressure being put on me. It reminded me of the time I was asked to sign the contract to buy my apartment. But but but, what am I even signing? On Wednesday night I spoke to Dad. For heaven’s sake, don’t go through with it, he said. I was up half the night thinking about what to do. Then yesterday common sense prevailed. I messaged the older woman about distribution channels, and it became clear that they simply didn’t exist. I’d be saddled with something like two-thirds of a ton of books that I’d never get rid of. I decided to pull the plug on the whole thing. There is another woman in the publishing world whom I’ve been in touch with, but she seems to have disappeared off the face of the earth. Her profile picture on WhatsApp is a mountain overlain by the phrase “Every day in every way I am becoming more and more prosperous”. Next to “About” she has written: “The ones who know it’s not possible are kindly asked to get out of the way of those who are ALREADY DOING IT!” That sort of self-aggrandising shit is an immediate red flag. Do not trust this person.

It’s been hot. Really hot. In Romania and all over Europe. Records have been tumbling all over the place. We got to 33 on Wednesday, and I think in London they got a degree or two on top of that – an all-time high for May, or at least a high going back three centuries or so. I saw Bordeaux hit 37 on Tuesday. That’s just nuts. For a while I’ve been thinking that on 1st August 2056, when it’s 45 degrees in Glasgow and people are dropping like flies, people will be wondering how we had our eye off the ball so egregiously, preoccupied by gender-neutral toilets and such like.

Last Sunday I met up with Mark at the beer factory, though with the hot weather, the place was heaving. We had no chance of getting a table without a booking. So we cycled into the centre of town and sat outside at Berăria 700. It was quite lovely there. We had a great chat. We talked a lot about our childhoods, which were remarkably similar despite him being nearly ten years older than me. We even strayed for a while into politics and the possibility of Andy Burnham becoming UK prime minister. I realised how much I’ll miss him once he’s gone. In four weeks he’ll set off with his wife on a mission, to scale Mount Kilimanjaro. It’s almost 6000 metres; I hope you know what you’re doing. They’re doing it properly (as you should), with a real sherpa or whatever it is they call it in Africa, so it won’t be cheap. Mark and his two older brothers were actually born in Tanzania, so I think that’s part of it. After their big adventure they’ll come back to Romania for a few days before returning to the UK to live. His wife has got herself a job at a private school in Preston. I’m sure I’ll see him over there at some point. I suggested we could even meet up in Manchester, which I’ve never even been to. He went to uni there in the late eighties and early nineties. What a time to be there, I said, at the height of the Madchester scene. You’re twistin’ my melon, man. But he said it largely passed him by.

It’s only ten days until Mum and Dad come over. (They were confused about the dates and thought they were flying out this coming Monday.) They’re enjoying their time in the UK, although they’re hardly loving the heat. They’ve been on their bikes a lot, going out early in the morning when it’s cooler. I’ve been very impressed. (Waking up early was a symptom of their jet lag, and they’ve kept to that schedule.) I’ve still got a lot of cleaning and tidying to do before they arrive, and I haven’t even thought about what we’ll do in Cluj.

Scrabble. I’ve finished the latest round with four wins and ten losses, and will almost certainly finish dead last of the second division when the remaining games are done and dusted. I played fine, with the exception of one moment where I completely missed an out play and lost the game by eight points, 529-521. I’d never played a game before with a four-figure aggregate score – that was totally crazy. I played four bingos and still lost. I still would have been relegated even if I’d won. My opponents have just been too good. I’m not disappointed at all because: (a) the outcome was in line with my expectations, (b) I’m amazed I ever got into division two in the first place, and (c) all the stats point to a decent performance on my part that I can take a lot from. Oh, and I shouldn’t be too disappointed if I suffer another relegation in the next round.