Life :) - Maths teaching

The end of everything

August 24, 2026 by 0 Comments

I felt much better after going away, but this last week I’ve taken a giant leap backwards, to the point where today it’s felt like the end of everything. On Tuesday (or Wednesday, I can’t remember) I ate something that disagreed with me, then Thursday and Friday were so hot that I felt imprisoned in this damn room. I’ve been sleeping terribly. I’ve also had terrible dandruff. It’s been itching like mad. I suffer from seborrheic dermatitis which means it’s not just my scalp that gets it. This weekend I’ve had almost no energy and today I’ve wanted it all just to be over. I have however booked three nights (Tuesday to Friday) in Lupeni, in the Jiu Valley, to the south-east of here. It’s supposedly three-and-a-bit hours but I bet it’ll be more. One thing’s for sure, it’ll be cooler there. My neighbour Elena says she’ll check in on Kitty twice a day while I’m away. I didn’t feel I could leave Kitty at the pet hotel again.

So it’s all an enormous struggle. It’s been a hopelessly unproductive week. The most productive thing was probably on Friday when I got a new mufă for my phone. It cost me a fair bit: 265 lei or around NZ$100. A mufă is what I think we call a charging port in English.

I spoke to Mum and Dad this morning. After we talked about the All Blacks’ big win in Johannesburg (which was nice), we discussed my future in Romania. It does feel that I’m far closer to the end of my time here than the beginning. When I picked up some figs and other fruit from the market today I did think, I might not be doing this for much longer. A lot of it is the damn heat. Summers are a right mess for me. I’m seriously considering going back to New Zealand, but I’ll see how the next few months play out.

Dorothy said she’d like to meet up tomorrow but with three lessons and going away the next day and the time taken for me to do anything quadrupled when I’m like this, I don’t know if I can. There have been protests in town against the removal of Dominic Fritz as mayor. I went along on Wednesday – it does seem he’s been treated shockingly – but there wasn’t a huge crowd and you couldn’t hardly hear what the bloke with the megaphone was saying. A far cry from the demonstrations of ten winters ago.

During the week when it got very hot, I thought it would be nice to swim in a pool or a lake or something. Dotted along the Timiș there are things called beaches and I’ve always wondered exactly what they are. On Thursday I tried to go to one, about a half-hour drive from here. I found it despite the typically Romanian lack of signage, but the rusty gate was closed to vehicles. I parked near the gate and walked up to the entrance where there was a guy of my sort of age. He seemed nice, and told me to come back at the weekend. Which I did. Yesterday I tried again. The gate was open. I paid the bloke 15 lei. I wish I hadn’t bothered. You wouldn’t have dreamed of going in the river. Rat pee disease would have abounded, I’m sure. I lay on the grass under an umbrella-ish thing and read a chapter of my book. Or tried to. I couldn’t deal with the music. It was a killer. One dancified song morphed into the next. The rendition of Nik Kershaw’s The Riddle just about did for me. Every now and then it was interrupted to tell you, in English, that you were listening to Summer Vibes 2023. People kept arriving. None of them would have been born before the original version of The Riddle came out. One of the groups started a barbecue. The whole place was designed for younger people to be with other people. I stuck it out for an hour and a half, then gladly went home.

In some better news, my maths student – the one who came in Louis Vuitton and Hermès shoes – got an A-star in her IGCSE exam. I thought she’d either get an A or an A-star – it would be close – so that’s great. It massively helped that she could easily afford all those lessons with me, but she still worked extremely hard. I got a new English student last week. He’s 23 and what I’d call a high flyer.

This evening I made myself walk down to the Bega. It was a very pleasant temperature, but I felt absolutely awful.

Poor Smoc. It’s a rather well-produced poster, isn’t it? I suspect AI was involved. Motan is the Romanian word for a tom cat. Maybe in a few months there will be no more motan or mufă for me.

Cat - Family - Hiking - Scrabble - Travel: Romania

Kitty concerns and trip pics

August 17, 2026 by 0 Comments

I took Kitty in to the see the vet on Friday. It was a regular check, but she’d noticeably lost weight. When I put her on their scales, she was down 150 grams, which doesn’t sound like much but is actually 5% of her weight. I’d love to lose 5% of my weight. I mentioned that she had less energy than before. The vet also remarked that her coat wasn’t as shiny as it could be. She gave me some vitamin “paste” to mix in with Kitty’s wet food, and recommended that I give her some better dry food rather than the supermarket own-brand stuff I’ve been buying until now. When I went to bed last night I let her roam around my flat, which I don’t normally do at night, and she was back to being pretty damn active. A good sign. I’ll have to watch things though. It might be the case that she was discombobulated somehow by the pet hotel. I’m thinking of going away again for a few days, in which case I don’t know what I’ll do with her. I don’t feel I can ask Elena (the lady who lives above me) again.

As for me, I’ve made something of a recovery from being in a crippling energy desert. I didn’t know when (or if) I’d bounce back. This is a huge relief, for now at least.

On Wednesday night I had a very brief chat with my brother who was in the garden watching the solar eclipse. His son demanded his attention almost immediately. Chat over. We didn’t get much eclipse here in Romania, by the way. That’s in contrast to the August 1999 eclipse, which Romania witnessed better than anywhere else. It wasn’t far off totality in Cambridgeshire in ’99; it was a pretty big deal at the time. It was the uni summer holidays so I was staying with my parents. My uncle and his girlfriend (who later became his third wife) had come from New Zealand to stay with us, but at the time of the eclipse they were doing a tour of Ireland. They’d forgotten all about the event and couldn’t understand why it had suddenly become so cold and dark on a summer’s day.

I had a proper chat with my brother last night, after the kids had gone to bed. He’s been in his new job (which has something to do with submarines) for two weeks and it’s going well. His colleagues are great, he said. That’s half the battle. You can ask them anything and they’ll help you. If only I could have had colleagues like that when I started in life insurance. He’s working almost exclusively from home. They’ve armed him with a fancy laptop and three screens. He’s put the third one in the attic, he said. I asked semi-seriously if I could have it. Unlike me, my brother is a heavy user of AI and text-to-speech.

Jason Arday ended his life on Friday. What a tragedy this has been, on so many levels. And it would have all been so different if it wasn’t for people on social media, let’s be honest, enjoying Arday’s downfall.

Scrabble. I got a reprieve from relegation after the last round. I finished with five wins, one more than I expected, and I survived because one or two people pulled out. My immediate reaction though was, wouldn’t I rather be relegated? The current round, in the same fourth division, has been a horror show. A steady stream of dross from the virtual bag. Please make it stop! I may end up with just a solitary win, albeit one by 200-odd points. The encouraging thing is that they keep a tally of mistakes each player makes (presumably AI is involved in this somehow), and mine has never been this low. I’ve played enough online poker to know not to be too results-oriented. Sometimes it just won’t happen for you no matter what. I still might want to take a break after this round because – like the poker was – it’s a bit time-consuming.

Visiting the waterfall on the first full day of my trip

Down into the cave on day two

With a storm brewing, I popped into this quite remarkable late-18th-century church on the way back from the cave

Visiting another waterfall on day three following two storms

Up to the Rusty Pit on the afternoon of day three
Travel: Romania

Doing me good

August 12, 2026 by 0 Comments

I got back on Sunday afternoon. I was in no rush. I made a few stops, to take pictures of the view (while still up high) or to pick blackberries, or when down a bit lower, to wander around towns that were practically dead at midday on a Sunday. In Gurahonț, a small town of 5000 or so, the only sign of life emanated from the church in a minor key. It became much hotter all of a sudden, the AB and BH number plates turned into ARs and finally TMs (like mine), and then I was home. The heat. That’s the main reason why I got away. I’m very glad I did. It was beautiful up there. So quiet and unspoilt. And I got to speak a fair bit of Romanian – that’s become an increasing rarity. The great news is that I still feel normal now, despite the heat. It’s 37 degrees as I write this.

Yesterday morning I had a lesson with the seven-year-old boy in Dumbrăvița, then it was off to the pet hotel to pick up Kitty. She’s slept most of the time since I collected her. In the afternoon I met up with Dorothy at Berăria 700. We both had an ice coffee. She gave me a bag of vegetables from the village, while I gave her an apple and blackberry crumble. We ended up talking about the Jason Arday scandal, which has somehow travelled around the world, and then got on to the thorny topic of religion. For me it isn’t thorny at all, by the way. I don’t believe in any god, nor in the afterlife. I did allude to this when I maintained that the same thing that happened to her kitten last year, and will happen to Kitty hopefully many years in the future, will happen to her and to me. The idea that us humans are afforded special treatment is utterly preposterous to me. I think Dorothy was shocked. (I remember when my Sunday school teacher – well the classes were actually on Wednesday evenings – told us that we may go to heaven but our cats and dogs never do, and even at the age of seven I realised that was total baloney.) Probably because we’d got on to such a contentious topic, we accidentally forgot to pay. I didn’t even notice until Dorothy messaged me. I went back there this morning to pay and apologise.

I’d never even heard of Jason Arday until a few days ago, probably because I don’t live in the UK. The whole saga reminds me of Lance Armstrong. He’d survived cancer and raised millions for charity through his foundation, so he was obviously a good guy, right? His exploits – seven Tour de France wins – were beyond question. Until they weren’t. Something similar has happened with Arday. All that adversity. He was supposedly autistic, and even non-verbal until eleven, so you couldn’t really question him. And of course he’s black. What made him fabricate so much I don’t really get. The ultra-marathons, the football, his appearances on 7 Up which were clearly impossible given that he was born in 1985. Why do that? As well as depriving someone else of the place they deserved, he (and those who hired him and turned a blind eye) have done racial minorities a huge disservice. From now on, any successful black academic who has reached their position on merit will get certain people screaming DEI, which is a horrible American term. (It was always called positive discrimination in the UK, but everything now has to be Americanised with three snappy initials. I still can’t stand the term ATM for a cash machine.)

I wanted to include dozens of pictures, but it’s only letting me upload these two, from the day I arrived:

Family - Travel: Romania

The great escape

August 9, 2026 by 0 Comments

A few minutes ago the hostess knocked on my door to give me a stack of cheese plăcinte which she had made. These are pancake-like things, in this case in the shape of a quarter-circle. They’re still warm. I’ve eaten a couple, but will save the rest for the trip back to Timișoara tomorrow. I imagine I’ll make several stops on the way. I might get Dorothy a bottle of țuica. She seems to like the stuff, and she’s always giving me vegetables from her garden in the village.

I’ve had a very pleasant stay here. I’ve told my parents that maybe we could come here next year. That’s if they make the trip, which never gets any easier. The best thing about it has been feeling normal. Get some exercise, feel a bit tired as a result. Get some sleep, feel a bit more energetic. Capable of properly exercising. As it should be. Not feel various levels of shattered constantly, regardless of what I’ve done. This morning I even had a stretch when I woke up. For months on end it’s been only Kitty who does that. It’s also been great to escape the heat and to be amongst some more interesting terrain than pancake-flat Timișoara and its environs. The rolling hills and alpine feel to the buildings – there are ski resorts nearby – are very picturesque. Another bonus has been speaking a lot more Romanian. For ages I’ve either been speaking English or nothing at all.

Yesterday morning I visited the Scărișoara ice cave. It’s a half-hour drive from here, on steep, winding roads. I went in a group down a metal staircase to the cave, where you could see and touch the ice cliff. The temperature was just 3 degrees – rather nice at this time of year. On the way back I stopped at the village of Gârda de Sus to have lunch. Then the heavens opened and I had a treacherous drive back to the guest house. The rain was torrential, rocks had fallen, and it was hard to see. We had an electrical storm too. When I got back I fell asleep. When I woke up at four o’clock it took me a while to figure out which four o’clock it was (it was dark after all), or where I was.

This morning I made my way to Pătrăhăițești, which the hostess recommended. It’s just a short drive from here, but hard to spell or pronounce. She said there’s a museum there. Sure, I’ll check it out. The opening times listed on Google were … surprising: 7am to 10pm six days a week; 9am to 6pm Mondays. It turned out the museum was simply an old lady’s house. She weaves and makes bits and pieces out of wood. And makes țuică. Everything was for sale. She’d lived there for over 50 years, she said. Her husband, who died fairly recently (“but that’s life”), had lived his whole life there. I felt I had to buy something, so I bought two wooden eggcups and two tablecloths. That all came to 100 lei. A mile or so from her house was another waterfall which I wandered up to. It was more spectacular than the one on Thursday, probably because of the sheer amount of water following two heavy storms.

I came back, had lunch, then climbed up to Groapa Ruginoasă, or the Rusty Pit, which is a huge ravine in the middle of the mountain, created by erosion. The massive hole is full of layers in spectacular colours, each depending on what is deposited there. The altitude there is around 1400 metres. (On the way back I saw a “1000 metres” sign.) The trek was not without some stress, as a farmer told me I’d gone the wrong way. Or, more accurately, the long way. And there appeared to be another storm brewing. This could get ugly. I got up there eventually (the markers reappeared), but didn’t stay long, beautiful as the view was, because I was concerned about the weather. I went down the short way and the storm never came. On the way down there was a couple looking at some creature or other as they were coming up. It was a fire salamander, maybe six inches long, black with yellow spots. I’d never seen anything like that before. The couple were from the Netherlands – the only foreign tourists I’ve seen on this trip – and they identified the creature using Google.

My parents have called me every day. Slight overkill, but hey. Yesterday Dad sawed down an apricot tree that never produced any edible apricots. They’ve been updating me on the “battle of wills” between my aunt and her daughter.

I’ll pick Kitty up on Monday, which is when I’ll have my next lesson. Next time I’ll post some pictures.

Family - Travel: Romania

Away from the hot, festering room

August 6, 2026 by 0 Comments

They forecast an even chance of a storm this afternoon. The 50-50 shot certainly came in. As I write this from my room in Cabana Bianca in Izlaz, there’s thunder and lightning and torrential rain. The forecast influenced my plan for the day. When I got up it was bright sunshine. After a simple breakfast in the kitchen downstairs, I set off along the track to a picturesque waterfall – Cascada Vârciorog – which was supposed to be 5 km away but it didn’t feel that far. It wasn’t a steep track, though some people took either a Jeep or a horse and cart. The only real wildlife I saw were a huge number of lizards baking in the sun. At the top I read a chapter of my book which I’ll finish later today. The lack of a signal up there was fantastic, though as soon as I started my descent there were missed-call messages – Dad’s name with a damn 5 in brackets after it – then an actual call from Mum. Why couldn’t it be 1986 when if you had parents on the other side of the world you’d talk to them maybe three times a year? I waited till I got a bit further down, where there were tables and benches in the shade, to call Mum back. They’re feeling the effects of jet lag. (I said I’d been suffering from jet lag for months, without the jet bit.) Mum had just had another injection in her eye. Lovely. You’d need a steady hand to administer eye injections, wouldn’t you? My brother started his new job on Monday. After one day in the office in Portsmouth, he’s been working from home. Dad said he hadn’t a clue what his job entailed. When I’d got back down, I walked to the next village (Arieșeni, named after the Arieș river that snakes its way through this area) where I had a penne pollo (chicken pasta dish) and a beer. Thunder was already rumbling in the distance as I walked back to the guest house.

I got here yesterday afternoon. The trip was a bit longer than I said in my previous post – it would have been four hours if I hadn’t taken any breaks. First I had to drop Kitty off at the pet hotel. She vomited as soon as she got there. I suppose I shouldn’t have fed her. The drive was pleasant enough once I was out of the city. I can sort of be in my own little world then – the land of Pom. When I arrived I was met by a very welcoming not-that-young lady who apologised for not having done her hair for ages. She showed me to my room. It’s the cheapest, she said. It’s in a loft and it is pretty basic. It cost 170 lei (£30 or NZ$65) a night. There’s a Romanian scarf-like decoration on the wall, plus the usual terribly translated emergency notice you always get in these places, telling you to “keep your calm down” in a fire and “do not express the fear” in an earthquake. Most importantly, it’s much cooler here than in Timișoara. I don’t feel trapped in a dirty living room, hemmed in by apartment blocks all around me. And I even slept decently last night for the first time in ages, despite a dog that wouldn’t shut up. I’m here for three more nights.

Cat - Family - Scrabble - Travel: Romania

Scary times in Geraldine and a trip to the mountains

August 5, 2026 by 0 Comments

Mum and Dad are back home. They arrived early yesterday morning, my time. Their journey was about as good as you can expect when you’re not far off 80, you start at one of the hellishly busy London airports – Stansted in their case, and just part of your trip involves being squashed into a tube for 14 hours straight. My aunt and uncle picked them up in Christchurch and dropped them off at home in Geraldine, and that’s when things got really scary. My uncle (who turns 85 next month if I’m not mistaken) tried to lift one of their suitcases and he collapsed on the ground. There wasn’t much sign of life. Mum gave a few chest compressions and he sputtered back into life. I’m impressed that Mum had the presence of mind to do that. So many people would panic there, especially if they’re dog tired having flown halfway around the world. Mum has always been pretty good in that kind of emergency. My aunt called 111 immediately, the ambulance came, and he was rushed off to hospital. He’s now at home after spending just one night there. The words “heart attack” were never uttered; he has something called stenosis, which means narrowing of the arteries. (Useful in Scrabble, should I ever get three S’s and a bunch of other common letters. The plural stenoses is also valid.)

My aunt, who is eight years younger than my uncle and the same age as Mum, has a lot on her plate. Her husband’s memory is fading fast and he’s got various other complications including this heart problem. She’s also trying to partially write her daughter – a complete arsehole who couldn’t give a toss about her parents – out of the will. Her daughter got wind of this and is trying to contest it, so my aunt is in the process of getting fully lawyered up. Sounds like fun.

So tomorrow morning I’m off to the mountains, mainly to get out of this oppressive heat. I’ll be staying four nights in a village (or maybe hamlet) called Izlaz, in the foothills of the Apuseni mountains. It’s about a 3½-hour drive from here. I have no idea what I’ll do there – there’s a cave I’ll probably visit and I’m sure I’ll go for walks – but that’s not really the point. I just wanted to go somewhere peaceful and most importantly about ten degrees cooler than here. It hasn’t been much fun of late. I’ve been going to bed around 11:30 – there’s no point in turning in any earlier because I know I won’t sleep. Then I watch the red digits on my clock cycle round from the late 23s to the zeros and then the ones, and maybe I’ll try reading or even testing myself on some Scrabble words. I get to sleep eventually, then wake up at least twice during the night. Then I’m shattered for most of the day. Today I got some energy back again, so that’s something.

I’ve just spoken to Elena, the lady who lives above me. Rather than try and impose Kitty on her again, I’m taking my furry friend to the pet hotel just like I did last summer when I went to Poland. That time Kitty didn’t want to come home afterwards.

Yeah, Scrabble. The latest round of games has been really tough, and when I’ve been feeling crappy I haven’t wanted to play at all. My opponents have been too strong and my draws far too weak to give me a chance. I’ll be relegated for the second time running, probably with a record of four wins and ten losses, just like last time.

Family - Life :) - Scrabble

The latest scare

August 1, 2026 by 0 Comments

Mum and Dad fly back to New Zealand later today. It’s a 9pm flight, so they won’t have to rush. On Thursday I got a scary series of messages from Dad to say that he still felt terrible, the day after coming back from my brother’s place, and may not be able to take the flight. This was while I was teaching. When I got home I spoke to him. By this stage he was feeling a bit better. He’d managed to see the doctor who gave him the green light to make the long trip back. (The 14-hour leg from Dubai to Sydney would be an ordeal for anybody.) The doctor saw that his heartbeat was irregular – he knew that of course – but the warfarin, which he’s been taking since 2005, should keep it sufficiently in check. Mum and Dad will be glad to get home.

It’s so hot again now. You only have to look at the news for five minutes to see that Europe is burning. We could easily hit 40 by the middle of next week, and at night-time it remains in the 20s, meaning I sleep even less well than I do normally. Though I’m better than I was, I never feel fully rested and ready to tackle, well, anything of real significance. (As I write this, Kitty is zooming around like a mad thing. She makes me feel old.) At least I rarely have to go out for lessons at the moment. If I do, it’s best to go by bike, as long as I don’t have to stop.

I’ve been thinking of getting away for a few days, probably to the mountains, to escape the heat. But that takes a certain amount of planning – what do I do with Kitty? – so my best bet might be to hunker down (or bunker down) here. I’m still toying with the idea of going to Moldova (the country – Moldova is also a region of Romania) towards the end of August.

The Scrabble league is in full swing again. I started my games pretty well but yesterday I ran into some heavy weather and, despite my best efforts and learning a bunch of four-letter words, a second straight relegation my be on the cards (or the tiles, to be more accurate). I have to keep reminding myself that the standard of opposition has improved considerably since the early days of the league (last winter). These people literally jet around the world to play Scrabble. It’s mental, really.

Family - Life :) - Politics - Scrabble

Dad’s tumultuous journey

July 30, 2026 by 0 Comments

Dad called me last night but I had an online lesson so I couldn’t answer. I called Mum this morning on the off-chance she’d answer – I expected them to be on the train, making an early start, so I was alarmed to see her still in my brother’s living room. Our train is at 10:45. Damn. That means they’ll be travelling in the heat of the day and it’s forecast to break 30. Getting through the underground in London will be a nightmare. If there’s a delay they may even hit rush-hour traffic in Cambridge. “You’re going to have a shitty trip back,” I said to Mum. She didn’t seem to like that. I don’t think it’s because I’d used the S-word and my nephew might have heard; she just wanted to pretend (to nobody in particular) that it would be fine. She was still at my brother’s place, so her image was of prime importance. I can’t be seen to have problems. Then Dad came on the line and said he’d been up all night worrying about the trip. (They got a later train because it was much cheaper.)

Then a couple of hours ago I got a Teams call from Dad. He was shirtless. They’d just got back to the St Ives flat. Dad said he felt “very strange” during the underground bit and thought he might not make it. (I’ve just got an email from him saying that he was “very scared” and “I felt it would take very little for me to collapse on the floor and become a hospital case.”) The trains themselves were air-conditioned and not a problem, but it’s all a huge worry. And I’m not sure Mum cares all that much. For instance, when I told her about my tiredness and lack of energy, she may as well have had “NOT MY PROBLEM” spelt out in dazzling neon above her head. (A few days later, when she could see on the video calls that I wasn’t right, she was more sympathetic. Dad may well have said something in the meantime too.) Mum and Dad have two full days before they fly back to New Zealand. Mum is stressed because someone will be staying in the flat, maybe for months, soon after they leave.

As for me, there’s been an uptick in my energy levels. I’m no longer huffing and puffing just walking up (or even down) the stairs. That’s excellent news – I didn’t know when (or if) I’d ever come right. I just hope I don’t get messed up again by the searing heat we’ll face in the coming days. Today it reached “only” 33: the last day before the inferno.

Andy Burnham. He’s acting fast. As he must do. Labour have a majority of 160-plus and even the back-up of the Lib Dems (with over 70 seats) if absolutely necessary. In other words, Burnham’s got all the ammo he needs to effect real change. But under three years to do it. His big thing today was reform of the elderly care sector which is iniquitous as it currently stands. You go into a care home for any length of time and you’re bled dry of all your savings. (My grandmother was “lucky” that she didn’t last long there. Her intestinal problem came back and that was that.)

The next round of the Scrabble league starts tomorrow morning. I’ll be in division four. As ever, I’ll have my work cut out. The word KAT is valid. You can put an I either before or after KAT to make a valid four-letter word. TAKI and TIKA are the other two anagrams of that set. LIPA (as in the singer Dua Lipa) is valid. Its four anagrams all begin with P: PALI, PILA, PAIL, PIAL. B is the only letter you can put in front of LET to make a valid four. And so it goes on.

Books - Family - Life :) - Music - Scrabble

The big slowdown (so I don’t drown)

July 28, 2026 by 0 Comments

Dad called me this morning as I was sitting in the café by the market and the river. I’d finished my coffee (which now costs 8.50 lei; I remember when it was 3.50), so I wandered over to the river away from the TV noise. One of Whitney Houston’s music videos – I Wanna Dance With Somebody – had been playing. She was not much older than me and my brother when she died.

It’s my brother’s 45th birthday today. Dad handed his device to my brother so I could wish him a happy birthday and have a chat, but he was too preoccupied with the kids to manage more than 30 seconds. I did see both the kids, which was rather nice. My nephew knew how old his father was. I think the six of them will take the train to Swanage as they did last June (on Dad’s birthday) when I was over. That was a lovely day. I wonder if they’ll have cream teas this time.

I’m a bit better today, certainly. I still had that business when I woke up in the morning where my body felt leaden and it was an effort to extract myself from bed, but I could walk to the market at close to my normal speed, which I haven’t been able to do for some days. Apart from Dorothy’s thing on Saturday I’ve tried to do very little. After a slow start I’ve made some headway with Cloud Atlas which seems to be nine books in one.

I’ve also been trying to learn Scrabble words. The four-letter words will require a monumental effort for me to master. There are 5662 of them, many of which are highly obscure. Knowing the words isn’t enough; I have to ensure I’m not confusing them with non-words. (Some people find this easy. I have no idea how.) My memory isn’t very good so I try to recognise patterns. MANG, MENG, MING, MONG and MUNG are all valid. As are SNAB, SNEB, SNIB, SNOB and SNUB. KOR is a valid three-letter word, and you can plop any of the five vowels on the end to make a valid four (including KORU, the Maori design). The four valid anagrams of AIKM all have A as the second letter. But that only gets me so far, especially when I’ve been battling brain fog. I got relegated last time (four wins, ten losses) and nearly didn’t sign up for the next round because I didn’t think I could manage it, but I’ve now decided I will.

Oh yes, Dorothy’s birthday do in Buzad. That was tough. I made an apricot tart the night before, despite feeling very tired. The drive used to take an hour but because of the road works both at my end and on the way there, you can add an extra 15 minutes. At least they weren’t actually working on Saturday, or else who knows how long it might have taken. Although I felt like crap, the drive there was pleasurable in a way because there was no-one to bother me. On the radio they talked about an international maths competition (these are a big deal over here) in which several Romanians had done well, but nobody could now compete with AI. Erasure came on with Love to Hate You, reminding me of my bus trips to and from high school. They mentioned a large asteroid that they thought may actually be heading our way in 2029 but will in fact just miss us. What a shame, I thought. There was an old song about kids spending their summer holidays with their grandparents – common in Romania, and used to be even more common.

I got to her place at just after 1pm and I knew it would be hard. I was in no fit state to chat to people. And there were a lot of people. Apart from Dorothy, the first person I met was a young African woman called Queen. She was very nice. There were people I’d met before but whose names I couldn’t remember. Slightly awkwardly, our Romanian teacher was there. We’ve taken a break from lessons. I found I could hardly cobble together a semi-coherent sentence in Romanian. I’d have struggled enough in English. The food, part European, part African, part Asian, was amazing. The location too – it’s a beautiful spot. But I couldn’t appreciate any of it. At least people gobbled down the apricot tart, once they’d figured out the apricot halves weren’t actually egg yolks. (One lady had made an apple pie that looked rather like a large Yorkshire pudding or maybe a Lancashire hotpot.)

I left at 3:30. That was all I could handle. I drove back feeling quite sad, wondering what I might do with my life if I won’t have any energy or anyone to help me. I felt very alone. Lost in France by the recently departed Bonnie Tyler came on the radio. She recorded it before her voice changed. The host commented that being lost in France wouldn’t be a great idea right now with all the fires. My parents called me the next morning. I was in the park nearby. We hadn’t spoken for four days which by recent standards is a lot. I can’t have looked or sounded that great.

In the last few days I’ve watched some videos about ME. My best friend had it when he was twelve or so. I also had a female colleague in Auckland who was ambitious and played rugby. Her father had been the New Zealand snooker champion; that seemed to impress me more than her. Anyway, by 2009 she was taking regular time off for ME or, as they (unfortunately) called it at the time, chronic fatigue syndrome. I think she left the company about the same time as me. I wonder what she’s doing now. From the (mostly UK-based) videos I watched, it was apparent that many patients have been treated absolutely scandalously, and that what I’ve been experiencing could be many times worse.

It’s been much cooler of late – that was a real saving grace on Dorothy’s birthday – but I’m now nervously eyeing the forecast for later this week. We’re predicted to reach at least the mid-30s.

I’ve got a lesson coming up, my first in a few days. There seems to be a cat in heat in the car park.

Life :)

What it’s like right now

July 25, 2026 by 0 Comments

Life is exhausting. Mornings are damn near impossible and even though things improve during the day, I’m having to slow everything way down. Communication must be kept to a bare minimum – I find instant messaging a huge burden at the best of times. There’s certainly no point in trying to achieve anything, at least not anything that meets the 2020s definition of achieve. Today I spent most of the day in the park next to where I get the water once a week or so. It’s pleasant there. And quiet. And less crappy than sitting or lying on the sofa. I just wish there was a loo. Today’s weather was conducive to being outside. I’m thankful for the milder weather. The whole of yesterday morning was particularly terrible. I watched YouTube videos about climbing Everest, which had a certain irony given how I was feeling.

What I’m dealing with meets all the criteria for ME, with one exception which I hope will remain so: having it for at least six months. I read that three-quarters of people with ME aren’t able to work, which doesn’t surprise me. There’d be no way in hell I could hold down any sort of normal job at the moment. This afternoon I drove to the supermarket – usually I’d walk, but walking has become more of a shuffle, and anyway I needed to get heavy bags of litter for Kitty. I started off putting items in a basket as I’d normally do, forgetting that I’d need a trolley this time. I was able to exit the place without buying anything and start all over with a trolley. When I got to the checkout, the lady accidentally scanned the cat litter three times (I’d bought two bags). To resolve the problem, she had to communicate with someone using a kind of walkie-talkie, then that person (presumably) had to come and unlock something or other, then she pressed a metal security tag against some kind of reader, all while the queue was backing up. I thought, no, there’s absolutely no way I could do this job. Or almost any other job.

My actual job I can handle, but only just, because my hours are way down. Yesterday for instance I only had one 90-minute session with the boy in Mehala. I took the bike there and deeply exhaled the whole way. I needed some stationery and rather than go to the mall on the way there under impossible time pressure, I went on the way back. Malls are always, um, interesting, when I’m like this. I must have walked around the same two aisles half a dozen times before deciding that no, they really didn’t have the coloured card I wanted. There were various stationery items with “good vibes” written on them, and even a young woman browsing them with “summer vibes” on her top. Seriously, take your vibes and shove ’em. There was a L’Oréal ad featuring Nadia Comăneci. This stuff revitalises and nutrifies (or something) your hair for 100 hours. Because you’re worth it. A hundred hours. See you in a hundred hours. Does anyone really think of time like that? It’s like when Vodafone offered 500 “free” minutes on the HomePlus plan. A deliberately meaningless number. I did get some bits and pieces and paid for them at a self-service kiosk. I was pleased to manage that. As I was sorting that out, Gloria Gaynor’s seventies hit Never Can Say Goodbye was playing. On the way out I passed a morbidly obese man wearing a T-shirt that read “Football’s coming home” in large red, white and blue text. Not something I would have expected there and then.

It was a slow ride home. I went down streets I hadn’t been along in years, or in some cases at all. Which was quite nice. When I got home I had spaghetti with bacon, mushrooms and other vegetables. That was easily the highlight of the day.

Tomorrow Dorothy is celebrating her 72nd birthday at Buzad. She said there would be 30 to 40 people there. I don’t know whether to go. That’s a lot of people at any time. If I could go for a couple of hours and then leave, maybe. I called her last night to say I didn’t know for sure if I’d be going. I did that because I knew she would write me an instant message in Romanian and expect me to reply, and that would generate another message, and so on, and it would all be too tiring.

Mark had to bring his exit from Romania forward a few days because of the movers, so my catch-up with him last weekend sadly ended up being my last. Until (hopefully) I get to see him sometime in the north of England. Not having him around is going to be a real bugger, let’s be honest.

I spent a lot of yesterday catastrophising. If this goes on until September when the new academic year starts, I certainly won’t be able to carry out full days and weeks of work. My earnings will no longer cover my expenses. My mental health will be shot to pieces by then. It’s already teetering. And then what? Go back to New Zealand, where everything is so damn expensive now, and do what? Would I even be in a fit state to make the move? How would I go about selling or renting this place at that point? But then again, if someone had told me when I moved to Romania that I’d see a big improvement in my life until something happens in year ten which will bring it my time here to a close, I’d have bitten their hand off.

Lately I’ve been listening to The Rip by Portishead. It’s a beautiful song. The band took their name from the seaside town just down the road from Bristol.

Mum and Dad are now in Poole, as far as I know. They’ll be down at my brother’s place until (I’m guessing) Tuesday or Wednesday.