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.

Life :) - Other sports - Politics - Scrabble

Vital vitamins

July 21, 2026 by 0 Comments

I thought I was coming right, but today I’ve been dragging myself through life once again. This morning I walked to the market – with all the road works it’s like a maze – and a young woman powered past me on foot. Normally I’m a fairly fast walker, but today I was at a crawl. I barely outpaced an old lady with one of those Zimmer-trolley things. When that was done I walked to the well to fetch 20 litres of water. A bit later I sorted out my bike. This all felt like a huge physical effort.

Last Thursday was the most ridiculous day of all. The woman in Italy cancelled her online lesson because her laptop wasn’t working. I didn’t mind that because I felt terrible and I still had to plan the rest of the day’s lessons. Then Dad called me, as he has done a lot while he’s been in the UK. Maybe he’s just bored. At lunchtime I went to a restaurant just off Piața Unirii to meet Dorothy and the other woman who did the Vienna trip two years ago. I had no idea what this place would be like, but it was actually rather nice. It was all you could eat for 40 lei, something I’d never experienced before in Romania. (They had signs telling you not to take food you wouldn’t eat.) Under normal circumstances I’d have enjoyed it, but even though the food was great I wasn’t in the mood when I was feeling like crap and on such a hot day. This other lady is fairly in-your-face and I couldn’t cope with that at all. At one point she called someone who wanted English lessons for her daughter and then handed the phone to me. Oh jeez, not now, please. I was relieved to hear that any lessons wouldn’t be starting until September.

Dorothy and the other woman went off to Piața 700 while I decided I’d prefer a break before my lessons with the brother and sister in Mehala. Just as I got to that part of town, I got a puncture in my back tyre. Damn. I lay in the long grass under the plum trees for half an hour, then chained my unusable bike to a lamp-post near where I had my lessons. The kids’ mother greeted me. Where’s your bike? Don’t ask, I said. I did the lessons – a struggle – then their mother insisted that their boy fix my puncture. He’s really into bikes now. I know – we did half a session on bikes recently. My plan was simply to leave the bike there to be picked up the next morning in the car, and to walk the 5 km home. Even with my low energy and the heat I’d just have time to do that before my next lesson. The boy though insisted he would repair my puncture. The time it took me to persuade him not to bother in the searing heat meant I had even less time to walk home. I had to jog in places. I got home just in time, absolutely dripping in sweat. The bell went as I was in the middle of having a pee, as it so often does.

After the lesson I saw the after-hours doctor. I was in and out quickly. I asked him if I needed blood tests but he just wrote me a prescription for Astenor “energy and tonic”, vials of liquid that contain a bunch of stuff: arginine (a semi-essential amino acid), vitamin B6 (which helps with the immune system), biotin (which helps maintain normal hair skin), and magnesium (which has had a lot of attention recently: it helps with your bones and teeth but is also said to be beneficial to your sleep and general mood). He also put me on a double dose of vitamin D as well as vitamin K. Whether all of this will make any difference I have no idea, but I doubt it will do me any harm.

I only watched snippets of the World Cup final. There was something dystopian about what I saw. Donald Trump up there in his ivory tower, the word FIFA spelled out every five seconds, music blaring. I didn’t see the Super Bowl-style half-time show which had a load of famous people and the Muppets. The Muppets are too good for something like that. Half-time went on nearly twice as long as it normally does, which is really crappy for the players (as well as breaching the rules of the game). This tournament also had hydration breaks – fine if they’re actually about hydration, but of course they were all about advertising. Then you had the Argentinians – nasty shits who constantly disrupted the game. Incredibly, they didn’t even have a shot on goal until well into extra time. It was after midnight when I decided I couldn’t take any more and went to bed. I couldn’t sleep though. Hmmm, it must be over now. I wonder who won? I was very glad to wake up to find that Spain had beaten the bastards, and better still without needing penalties. I also missed those Argentine fists fly after the match. Any Americans tuning into that game to watch football for the first time will be sticking to baseball and basketball in future, thank you very much.

As for Ryan Fox, winner of the Open in spectacular fashion, I had no idea he was the son of Grant Fox, one of the greatest All Blacks of all time. Fox is a fairly common surname, after all. I think Grant Fox’s father may have played cricket for New Zealand too. Talk about sport being in the blood. One thing I neglected to mention last time was that I watched commentary of the golf in French. Canadian French, to be exact. Listening to the commentary and picking up on the differences in vowel quality and vocabulary between Québecois and French French was as fascinating as any of the actual golf.

Scrabble. I’m almost certainly getting relegated this time around. I’ve played decently enough but my opponents are just too strong and I haven’t drawn all that well. My most enjoyable game was with an American guy named Ben who regularly plays big tournaments, with some success. He’s also a moderator on the site and a really nice guy. He wound up beating me by just eleven points in a high-scoring game. In another game I played this guy who constantly talks trash in the chat, to the point where I blocked him. He seems a total arse, just like the sort of boy I’d have avoided at school. Well I beat him at my third attempt. It looked like the game was up for me, but I found EBONICS which is a decidedly racist term (combining ebony and phonics) meaning how Black Americans speak. Last week I saw a YouTube video from someone preparing for the American national championships which are taking place right now. He still studies words using physical cards rather than apps. (Maybe he uses apps too; I couldn’t tell.) He showed a fat stack of cards, pointing to the number 512. No, that wasn’t the 512th card, but the 512th stack of cards. Wowee. He mentioned that he had high-functioning autism, which I suppose checks out. He said the best he could hope for in the tournament was a small prize in the hundreds which would be dwarfed by travel and accommodation costs for him and his husband.

Andy Burnham has taken over as British prime minister. I like the guy. He’s got the cards stacked against him in so many ways, with an unstable world and a rabid media, but let’s see what he can do.

My parents are going down to see my brother on Friday. Next Monday will be his 45th birthday. Then they fly back to New Zealand on 1st August.

Cat - Life :) - Other sports

Fantastic Mr Fox

July 20, 2026 by 0 Comments

I watched the final round of the Open golf today. And guess what, a Kiwi won it for the first time since 1963. Ryan Fox. He held his nerve when so many around him didn’t. In fact he played the final holes spectacularly well. He didn’t look a likely winner when his chip shot spun back to where it started, somewhere around the turn – I can’t remember which hole. But there he was, on the final green, standing over a twelve-footer or so. He probably won’t get this… but he bloody well did. Good on him. I called Mum as soon as the putt dropped, because I knew she’d be happy to hear the news. What’s more, Fox shot a record-equalling 62 in the third round. I had to feel a little sorry for Cam Young who hit a superb final-round 64 and spent hours on the driving range and practice green in anticipation of a play-off – he could quite possibly have even won outright – only to get pipped at the last by Fox. And yes, Mum was pretty happy. She said her brother in Palmerston North would have been up all night watching it. (Bob Charles was the winner in ’63. When I lived there he was on TV all the time, selling his Bob Charles deer velvet capsules. He’s still alive at the age of 90.)

It’s been a good day all round, because I feel I’ve made a significant recovery from the last seven days which have been pure garbage, such has been my lack of energy. It’s been absolutely horrible. Thursday was the crappiest day of them all, but every day has been a contender. What really gave me a boost today was catching up with Mark – for the second-to-last time before he says goodbye to Romania – at Casa Bunicii in Dumbrăvița. He and his wife had just got back from their epic African adventure where they scaled Kilimanjaro and then went on safari. It was great to hear about it all, after so much negativity coming from all directions. Scaling the mountain was predictably tough. Brutal was the word Mark used. The ascent itself wasn’t all that challenging, but the altitude – nearly 6000 metres – made things pretty damn messy. They didn’t skimp on having properly paid porters, who they tipped as well. It was all a very well-run operation. The pictures of the safari were good too. The highlights were a woman having a picnic oblivious that there was a huge elephant behind her, and a vast herd of wildebeest crossing a river.

The World Cup final is about to start. Dad hasn’t stopped moaning about England’s loss to Argentina in the semi-final. They should have done this or that. Dad knows bugger all about football and never follows it at any other time. And he was still going on about it after England had won an utterly batshit mad ten-goal thriller against France. Yes it was a shame that England lost, but the sky hasn’t fallen in. It would be nice now though if Spain could thrash Argentina.

I’ll write more about my crappy week, and the supplements my doctor has given me, in my next post. As I write this, or try to, I’m being mauled by Kitty in one of her displays of affection. Like me, she’s been avoiding the heat in the last few days. We’ve been up into the mid-30s again.

Family - Other sports - Scrabble - Tennis

Loss of face

July 14, 2026 by 0 Comments

This morning I heard that brilliant New Zealand actor Sam Neill (of Jurassic Park fame, and much more) had died at 78. Those damn Aussies always liked to claim him. I read that his birth name was Nigel but at the age of twelve he started calling himself Sam. A smart move. Sam is a great name. Nigel Neill … isn’t.

Everyone is popping off at about the age of Mum and Dad. Just yesterday I said to Dad that I’m lucky to still have both parents. Not just alive, but in pretty good health. At my age, that must put me in the minority. Just anecdotally, I have a few students of a similar age to me and I think all of them only have one living parent. When I called Dad, Mum was at church. I wasn’t trying to avoid her or anything; I’d just forgotten that it was that time of day and week. That did give us an opportunity to talk about Mum, though. We said that so much of Mum’s stress comes down to loss of face, which a lot of the time isn’t real anyway. It would make sense for Mum and Dad to spend three days or so at my brother’s place (including his birthday on the 27th) just before they go back to NZ. Not much more than that; their previous stay was seriously unfun for both of them. Plus it might end up being far too hot again. But Mum is likely to insist they spend a whole week down there, for fear of upsetting my brother. It’s a similar story with their old friends and whoever else. She feels she has to do this and avoid talking about that so that this or that person won’t think X or Y or Z about her. I mentioned to Dad how refreshing it was to attend those autism groups back in the day, when all that crap went straight out the window. (It certainly flies out the window with Mum too when she isn’t with anyone except Dad or me. So it was a huge relief that my parents’ stay in Romania went as successfully as it did. Mum and I have been getting on well.)

Yesterday I was exhausted. I had very little energy. I couldn’t even make myself watch all of the men’s Wimbledon final. The women’s final though unexpectedly burst into life when Linda Noskova led Karolina Muchova 6-2 5-2 and had five match points in the following three games. Games eight and nine of the second set were pure drama. The set slipped through Noskova’s fingers. How does she come back from this? But she did. Noskova served brilliantly on the big points early in the third set, and this time she didn’t relinquish her lead. I was pleased that Noskova, still early in her career, was able to win. A loss in those circumstances may have haunted her for years otherwise. (The butterfly effect was on full display in the women’s tournament. Noskova had been one point from exiting the tournament in the third round. Muchova also faced match point in her semi with Coco Gauff.) The final brought to mind the 2005 US Open semi-final between Kim Clijsters and Maria Sharapova. Clijsters had five match points in the second set, all in a single game, and ended up losing the set. But she won it in three and won her first grand slam two days later. That was an excellent tournament on both the men’s and women’s sides.

Dad asked me if I’d stayed up to watch England in the “soccer”, as he calls it. (The whole soccer-is-American, football-is-British thing is actually pretty new. It’s a bit like the notion that -ize is purely American. Pick up any UK-published book from the eighties or earlier and it’ll likely be full of -ize spellings. Even a lot of modern UK-English books are, especially those published by Oxford.) Anyway, I certainly didn’t stay up to watch it. Kick-off was midnight my time. England though are just two matches from winning the whole thing, so who knows? (I really am clueless about it this time. I haven’t watched a single ball be kicked. Or headed or shinned or anything else.)

I’ve got a couple more days before the Scrabble league starts up again. Learning the words continues to be a painstaking effort. I’ve made some recent progress with the fours, and tomorrow I’ll add a few more sevens and eights. A few people have now been expelled from the league for cheating, and someone wondered why anyone would bother to cheat. This isn’t poker; there’s no money at stake. Then somebody else said it’s all about ego. They’re probably right. As someone with very little ego, ego-based decisions – which can sink companies or even whole countries and more – often baffle me.

This evening a new student will be coming. I never know what I might get.