Autism - Family - Language teaching - Maths teaching - Scrabble

Nine going on five, and autism, the latest culture war

October 13, 2026 by 0 Comments

Earlier today I had a proper headache. It wasn’t as bad as the ones I had in the spring, but it slowed me down nonetheless. While I was in pain, I was also yawning. Luckily it only lasted three hours or so.

I’ve just finished a lesson with a nine-year-old girl. A waste of time, basically, but her mother insists. She didn’t want to be there, and that’s hardly her fault. On Saturday I had my third lesson with the other nine-year-old girl, the one who speaks good English but is only semi-literate. I talked to Mum about her yesterday. She gave me some advice: to focus on three-letter CVC words, then move on to consonant blends. It can be handy having an ex-primary school teacher as a parent, and she’s absolutely right. The problem is that she gets homework designed for age nine, not five, and her parents expect me to help her with that, which actively gets in the way of her learning. Then there’s maths. She’s years behind there too. In the recent test in which she literally got no marks at all, her teacher wrote nothing on the paper except a scrawled “0/15”. When I asked her if I could take a picture, she agreed.

This was the first question on the test:


Unlike most of the other questions where she at least wrote (or drew!) something, she made no attempt at this one. And I’m not surprised. There are three tasks you have to fulfil here. First, read and understand the question. I doubt she could have done that. Second, realise that you need to put the 1 first, then the 3, and so on, to make the smallest possible five-digit number that uses all the digits. Third, you have to put that number in words. That means knowing how we express that kind of number as well as being able to write thirteen and hundred and thousand and stuff like that. Two of those three tasks aren’t even maths, they’re English! She would have had no hope. Then you add in the fact that she doesn’t like maths and (so far) lacks the maturity to understand that you sometimes have to do things you don’t like, and the overall picture isn’t pretty.

After Saturday’s lessons I picked up Dorothy and we drove to Buzad which is just over an hour away, so she could bring a load of apples and pears back to Timișoara. When she asked me (in a message) if I could do this, I cursed. After my lessons I just wanted to get home and not have to see anyone. But actually it was nice chatting in the car – the time went by quickly – and the palette of autumn colours (and some trees hadn’t turned yet) was beautiful. Plus it was good to go back to the village. I hadn’t enjoyed the previous two times – once it was far too hot, while the other time I felt like crap. When we were back in Timișoara we got pizzas from the place next door. They had Italian music playing and even – slightly weirdly – told us in Italian how much we needed to pay. Ottanta.

This morning I read something about overdiagnosis of autism and ADHD. There was a lot to unpack. I totally agree that children are being overmedicated for these conditions to a dangerous level, especially in the US. I also agree that if one in five kids (or whatever the latest figure is) in the UK now has an official diagnosis of autism, ADHD or some other learning or behavioural difficulty that entitles them to a learning assistant at school and/or some form of disability benefit, that’s financially unsustainable. Parents are increasingly keen for their children to get a diagnosis just so they can receive these benefits. But on the flip side (and I can only really talk about autism here – I certainly don’t have ADHD), being even mildly autistic makes so many aspects of life so much harder that having some form of support is pretty damn useful. Labels are largely unnecessary, and there don’t need to be cash handouts except in severe cases, but a support group or someone to bounce ideas off is extremely valuable. Apart from a little bit in Auckland and Wellington when I was already 30-plus, I missed out on all of that – I’ve never had a diagnosis – so I’ve had to navigate life on my own. Very much on my own. My coping mechanism has so often been to retreat from people, to avoid embarrassment or exhaustion, and I’ve failed to form relationships as a result. Wouldn’t it have been nice to have had someone to help me find an alternative? In the face of overdiagnosis and overmedication, a new culture war has emerged. In the eyes of many, if you’re autistic, deal with it. No excuses. Can’t manage job interviews. Tough. That’s your own fault. Let’s all go back to 1976. Or better, 1876. The Victorians had it right. One thing that really hasn’t helped is the removal of Asperger’s as a condition when the fifth edition of the DSM – an American publication – came out in 2013. The distinction between autistic people who can’t feed or clothe themselves (unlike me) and those who struggle with open-plan offices (like me) was very helpful. What I don’t understand is why the rest of the Western world had to follow what the Americans did. As is the case so often, fuck ’em. Seriously.

In other news, the sale of my parents’ flat in St Ives still hasn’t gone through. There’s some hold-up involving the buyers’ solicitors. Dad said in an email that he still fears the nightmare scenario of the sale falling through entirely, almost a year after their tenants said they wanted to buy.

Scrabble. I rejoined the league last Thursday. They put me in the sixth division out of 14. According to the analysis I’ve been playing well. Whether that will be good enough to save me from relegation remains to be seen.

Books - Language teaching - Romania

7/10/16

October 7, 2026 by 0 Comments

Today is the tenth anniversary of my arrival in Romania. It felt amazing, looking back. I’d taken five trains over two days, plunging ever deeper into Europe – from the UK to France, then on to Germany, Austria, Hungary, and eventually Romania. After taking the taxi from Timișoara’s main railway station to the guest house, I’d finally made it.

My first full day in the country didn’t give me the best impression. The first thing I saw in the morning was the old abattoir. Then I was followed around a supermarket by security guards who aggressively rifled through my bag before I was allowed to leave. I didn’t go back to that shop for another four months. I visited an outdoor market in which a man hanged himself (as I heard on the news) a few hours later. The following day was great though, as were most days. After a trip around some of Romania’s main cities I came back to Timișoara and looked for a place to live. And some work. Autumn turned to winter. The national day parade on 1st December kicked off the Christmas market which was magical. It was like being in a wonderland. It helped that everything was so cheap then. Between Christmas and New Year I moved into my flat, slap-bang in the middle of this beautiful city. I had to pinch myself. I was unfazed by the harshness of my first winter. That winter there were the anti-corruption protests, the likes of which I’d never seen before, with people marching past my flat in their tens of thousands, on several bitterly cold nights in a row.

Then there was the teaching. Everything about that was very exciting. A complete departure from all that corporate crap. It didn’t take me long to realise that yes, this was what I wanted to do. I put up a number of ads and got a lot of responses, mostly on the phone. This presented quite a challenge at the beginning because my Romanian was shaky at best. Slowly but surely, I got more work, and by early 2018 I was struggling to keep up with demand. I was literally the only person in the city giving private lessons as a native speaker. The excitement of being in Timișoara and the sounds and smells continued until the summer of 2018, but it wore off quickly after that. The Covid period brought some of that back, strangely enough, because the sights and sounds were different. After ten years, I still like Timișoara very much, even if things have become a bit samey. I don’t know how many more anniversaries I’ll have. Summers are messing me up and I’m already dreading the next one.

Swimming. Would you believe it, the pool is closing on the 30th of this month. I don’t know why. It’s something to do with the city council. The receptionist told me she’s looking for a new job. On Monday I signed a petition – I was the 92nd signature and by today there had been many more. A great shame – I’ve only really just started. Maybe the pool will reopen under different management, but who knows? This is Romania. This city has other pools of course, but they’ll be further away and probably have strings attached.

A stat I saw in an article last weekend: in 2024, 48% of Brits didn’t fly at all. This was presented as a high figure. Look, lots of people get by without flying. You probably could too. But what surprised me was that the percentage of non-flyers was so low. A small majority did fly. That would have been very far from the case 30 years ago. I saw a similar thing earlier this week about YouTube views. “Only 4%” of YouTube videos get at least 10,000 views. I was surprised it was anything like that high.

I don’t think the author of a book has ever died while I’ve been reading it. Until this week. I’m still getting through Jeffrey Archer’s book – it’s very well written but political ambition isn’t a subject that enthuses me – and on Monday he died at the age of 86. He lived in Grantchester, a village near Cambridge, so just down the road from where I grew up. He (and his wife) were always in the news – in 2001 he went to prison for lying in court.

Update: I’m back from my lessons. With a nine-year-old girl I did an exercise I’ve done with a few kids now: I wrote the names of several objects in the room on Post-It notes and asked her to stick them to the right things. One of them was the ceiling which I had to help her with. It always reminds me of when I did that myself in the kitchen at home. I couldn’t have been any more than four. We didn’t have Post-It notes (Wikipedia tells me they came out in the US in 1977; perhaps by 1984 they still hadn’t made their way to the UK) so I had to use paper, sellotape and scissors. That was how I learnt (from Mum) how to spell ceiling. She also corrected my spelling of droors for “drawers”. I thought it should logically be spelt like “doors”.

In Piața Operei on the way back there was a protest, only 30-strong, of people chanting “Călin Georgescu is president”. In Romanian, obviously. Georgescu was the guy who won the first round of presidential election in December 2024, before it was declared null and void. Romanian politics is typically dysfunctional at the moment. I can’t begin to understand it all.

In the changing room this morning I heard someone say that the outside temperature would be the same as in the pool. That was pretty accurate. We reached an unseasonable 27 degrees today. Tomorrow it’s forecast to be one degree warmer. Then it should drop to something approaching normal.

Family - Language teaching - Maths teaching - Scrabble

The three Rs

October 5, 2026 by 0 Comments

Pretty light on the news front. Yesterday I had four lessons, all in Dumbrăvița. Since then I’ve been thinking what the heck I should do with that nine-year-old girl from Thailand. Her Thai mum met a German guy in … I can’t remember where, and a year ago they moved to Romania for his work. He must earn pretty well because she goes to the super-expensive British school. They’re away from the sprawling estate of Dumbrăvița and they have a good section, with apple and plum trees and three chickens. They used to have a rooster too, but they got rid of it after the neighbours complained at the noise. Anyway, this girl. She speaks perfectly decent English, but she’s only semi-literate at best. And semi-numerate too. She got zero out of 15 in a recent maths test and didn’t even understand that she’d got zero. I think her parents would like me to attack her maths too. She clearly getting very little help from her teacher despite the vast expense.

Today I drove to Buziaș. It’s nice and relaxing there. It might have been better if I’d gone in a couple of weeks – the leaves will be falling off the trees then – though I could always go back. My brother called me while I was there. I turned the camera around and showed him the fountain and bandstand and covered walkway, but he seemed unimpressed. He wanted to know where the people were. I said that it was Sunday morning and a lot of them would have been at church, but really it would have been quiet no matter the time of day or week. A few people walking their dogs and the occasional squirrel. That’s why if I left Romania I’d have a hard time going back to England. It’s so hard to escape people there. My brother showed me both the kids. My niece is changing rapidly. My brother tested his son’s maths. What’s two plus two? Four, he proudly said. I then asked my nephew what four plus four was. He didn’t know, but he did know five plus five. He’s getting pretty good with his science now, my brother said.

I played four games of Scrabble today. I won the first three, extending my winning streak to six, thanks to some really lucky draws. But in the last game things just didn’t happen for me. I can have no complaints. I might rejoin the league again this week after a six-week absence.

Back to the swimming pool tomorrow.

Family - Language teaching - Music - Politics

There isn’t much of her

October 3, 2026 by 0 Comments

As I’m about to reach the ten-year mark in Romania, I thought it would be an idea to write a series of posts about how things work (and sometimes don’t) in the country I’ve called home for the last decade. So that’s coming up.

Last night I called Mum and Dad. (New Zealand’s recent move to summer time has made calling them that little bit easier.) They’re already thinking about a potential trip to Europe next year. I told them to consider Turkish Airlines. There’s now a flight from Istanbul to Timișoara that didn’t exist when I flew Turkish three years ago. Mum, as usual, made a trip to the loo in the middle of our conversation. Things aren’t too flash down there. Then this morning I called my aunt and uncle. My uncle, who celebrated his 85th birthday last weekend, doesn’t say a lot these days. My aunt seemed concerned about Mum. “There isn’t much of her.” She thinks Mum has lost even more weight.

Andy Burnham made a rousing speech at the Labour conference on Tuesday. When I heard about it I decided to watch the recording in its entirety. Yes, it was excellent. A total departure from the “our party is great, our opponents are crap” stuff you normally get. For once, someone has recognised that the country has been on the wrong track for bloody ages and things need to change. His desire to reform the UK electoral system (wouldn’t that be great?) and totally overhaul the disastrous care home “system” (which currently takes away old people’s home and savings) stood out for me. Whether the government can actually achieve any of this, even with a big majority, is another matter – Britain’s politicians have a lot less agency over what happens to the country than they used to.

I’ve just been for my fourth swim of the week. The guy with the Ironman Tallinn backpack wasn’t there today. (He does the four strokes including butterfly – the full medley – at almost twice the speed I go at.) It hasn’t been a bad week for exercise. On Wednesday, for instance, I made several bike trips – to my lessons, to the produce market, and to the pool.

I recently discovered a YouTube channel called Past Tense of Banana. Not a bad name. It’s run by a man in his sixties from the north-east of England. This guy has a ton of subscribers. His thing is correcting videos (often on TikTok, which I’ve never used) made my English teachers. This is wrong, that is wrong, the next thing is wrong. That’s fine in principle, especially as there’s a lot of shady stuff out there, but I simply don’t agree with quite a few of his overconfident “corrections” and explanations. In one instance he says you have to say “there is a large number of stars in the sky” rather than “there are a large number…” because the verb has to agree with the (singular) noun “number”. Sorry mate, but that just isn’t how language works.

Kitty has turned into a proper furry friend. I look back at what she was like at the start. Unused to me and this flat, she verged on being positively evil. She has completely changed. It’s rather lovely to have her sitting on my lap as I watch a TV show. Lately that has meant episodes of Black Mirror. My favourite episode, called Loch Henry, was set on a remote Scottish island. It included this great song by Melanie Safka, who was known at the time (1971) as just Melanie. She died in 2024.

Family - Films - Language teaching - Life :) - Other sports - Scrabble - Tennis

Statins

September 27, 2026 by 0 Comments

So I saw my doctor on Tuesday. He went through my blood test results. Everything was fine until he came to the dreaded cholesterol. “This isn’t your fault,” he said to me, in English, as if he really wanted to get the point across. It’s simple genetics, he said. He told me to eat less dairy (I do eat too much of the stuff, I know), no more than three eggs a week (I’ve been averaging close to one a day), and pork no more than once a week. But at the end of the day, he said, I could eat a perfect diet and my cholesterol would still be too high. So as I rather suspected, there was only one thing for it. Statins. These can have knock-on effects on your liver function, so I’ve also started taking something for my liver too. That’s likely to be my future: taking some drug, then another drug to counteract the effect of that drug, and so on, to the point where I’ll no longer know what’s what. I’ll get my cholesterol tested again in six months’ time, to see if the statins are doing what they should.

I’ve just been catching up with the family. I had a good chat with my cousin in Wellington – we hadn’t been in touch for a while – then called Mum and Dad. They had Mum’s younger brother (who lives in Palmerston North) staying. He was down for my older uncle’s 85th birthday party. It was the first proper family get-together for several years. Everyone seemed to have a really nice time. They’ve had an unusually late dumping of snow there; the skiers will be making the most of it.

I had another new student (or pupil I suppose) yesterday, a nine-year-old girl who goes to the British school. She was born in Thailand. Though she speaks good English, she’s two or three years behind with her reading and writing. She also finds it hard to follow instructions. She does know the alphabet which is a help, but on the evidence of yesterday I’ll have my work cut out.

I’ve watched two more old Wimbledon matches, both involving Pete Sampras. And both involving Pete Sampras losing, which he did very little of at Wimbledon. I was never a fan of his. He was extraordinarily effective, to the point of monotony. In fact, some of the big matches involving Sampras bordered on sleep-inducing, especially if his opponent was another big server like Goran Ivanisevic. Their final in 1994 was almost unwatchable. Sampras’s match with Federer in 2001 though was an absolute classic grass-court battle that was in the balance right until the end. It wasn’t a massive shock that Federer won – by this stage everyone knew that he was the real deal. It brought back happy memories for me, because Mum and I went to see the men’s semi-finals a few days later. The other match was from the following year: Sampras’s five-set loss to George Bastl, whom nobody had heard of. This was a shock. It was played on the old Court Two, which was traditionally a graveyard of the top seeds. Sampras sat in his chair for several minutes afterwards, perhaps realising that he’d never play at Wimbledon again. And he didn’t. But wouldn’t you know it, a couple of months later he went and won the US Open, beating Andre Agassi in the final. I think that was his last competitive match.

These days, the top end of English football is disgusting and I can’t bring myself to follow it. But Man City. Damn. Throw the book at them. No pointless fine (well, you can do that too if you want), but relegate the bastards several divisions and take their trophies off them. Harsh on their fans from decades back, when they were a real club rather than the fake Abu Dhabi-owned pile of plastic they’ve become, but that’s life.

Last night I watched an episode of Black Mirror entitled Demon 79. It was set in northern England in (as the title suggests) 1979. For the first half of the episode I thought, this is a bit silly but not quite bad enough to stop watching, especially as I got to listen to all that great music from ’79 and see all the old cars and so on. But then it really picked up and I couldn’t tell which way the ending would go. Well worth watching.

I realise I haven’t mentioned Scrabble for a while. I gave up the league play over a month ago. The league, and the damn chat that you couldn’t turn off, were dominated by strong regular tournament players. Even though I generally gave a good account of myself, there was little to encourage outsiders like me. I felt I didn’t belong. I might jump back in soon for one round and see how it goes. I’ve still been playing on ISC, the much older site. Last night I played six games, winning four. In one game I exchanged tiles on both my first two moves, and once again later in the game. Suffice to say I didn’t win that one. In my other loss, my final rack was RRAEIU plus a blank. There was an open L on the board. A bingo would have won me the game. Unusually for me, I had plenty of time on my clock. I was mostly looking at the -IER ending as that looked the most promising, but I just couldn’t see anything. It turned out I had five valid winning plays: RURALIsE, RURALIzE, RURALItE, REbURIAL and gLAURIER. So there was an -IER word after all, but I didn’t know it. I’m still battling with the short words. Learning the fours – there are 5662 of them – is a monumental task for me. I’m a lot better now than when I started my assault on the fours in early June, but despite my best efforts (I test myself every day) a lot of them are still a giant mush in my brain. The problem is that they are so similar to each other and also very similar to thousands of plausible non-words.

Books - Language teaching - Life :) - Tennis

A surprise visit

September 22, 2026 by 0 Comments

On Friday I got a surprise message from my university friend. He said his girlfriend’s parents, who stayed with me two years ago, were coming vaguely my way; they were in the middle of yet another epic trek across Europe. He had no more details than that. This threw me a bit. What if they want to stay with me? This place is an absolute pigsty. On Saturday evening I managed to get in touch with them. They said they wanted to meet up somewhere convenient in town the following lunchtime, specifically so they could eat papanași, that (usually) fried traditional Romanian doughnut-like dessert. Yesterday was a scorcher for the time of year; we must have got close to 30. After picking a few kilos of fully ripe plums in Mehala, I met them at Berăria 700, which I’ve now been to countless times. They were a little late; they didn’t realise that we were an hour ahead of Serbia where they’d just come from. Unlike last time when they travelled in a campervan, this time they were going by a single 1200 cc motorbike and camping. We mostly spoke English, though sometimes I switched to French, their native language. I wasn’t that bad considering how rusty I was (and also my experience of speaking a different Romance language gets in the way). They said how much they liked Timișoara and had been keen to visit again. Having visitors who compliment the city makes me less blasé about living here. We were at the restaurant a long time; the good weather meant it was fairly busy and service is rarely swift at the best of times. Eventually we parted company – they hadn’t actually planned where they were going next, apart from to Decathlon (the sports shop) to buy a new airbed.

Decathlon is where I’ve just been myself. To get swimming trunks. On Friday I got pulled up by (I guess) one of the staff who said I was wearing inadequate swimming attire. My boardshorts, which were all I had, apparently fell foul of some regulation or other. Whether it was hygiene (I could have worn the shorts elsewhere beforehand I suppose) or just aesthetics I have no idea. What I’ve just bought aren’t quite Speedos, though they head in that direction. I went four times again last week. After all of that I was pretty knackered.

My work volumes are still relatively low considering that the kids are now back at school. That’s mainly down to the difficulty in scheduling everyone. The schools are so unprepared that people don’t know what they’re doing when, and that has a knock-on effect on me. It looks like my hours will go up this week, and probably again next week, so I should be fine. The most pleasing thing is that I’m actively trying to increase my hours – a few weeks ago I felt so crappy that I wondered if I’d ever do a full week of teaching again. Tomorrow I’ve got a maths lesson with the A-star girl. These lessons now take place in the back office of a petrol station. Her parents own either that station or a whole chain, quite possibly the latter. We were supposed to meet last Thursday but she was off to see Céline Dion in Paris. As you do when you’ve got loads of money.

I recently finished Flesh, which I found extremely readable if short of amazing. The fact that the protagonist was Hungarian was a plus for me; it felt literally pretty close to home. I’ve just started First Among Equals. It’s my first attempt at reading a Jeffrey Archer novel. This one came out in 1984 and Dorothy lent it to me. Will I be able to get through this? That was my initial thought. It’s all about political ambition. I find certain aspects of politics interesting, certainly. The way elections work for one, but also the psychology of how people vote and the way political outcomes can shape our lives. But the inner workings of the political machine rather leaves me cold. I saw Dorothy today – she’s leaving for the UK very early on Wednesday morning – and she very kindly (!) lent me another political novel, this one written by Douglas Hurd in the seventies. I remember Hurd as a senior Conservative politician when I was a kid. He ran for the Tory leadership in 1990 after Margaret Thatcher resigned. Our local MP John Major beat out Hurd as well as Michael Heseltine to become prime minister. Both Hurd (96) and Heseltine (93) are still alive. I’m sure the Hurd book is very good, but can I really face more politics?

Last week I found myself watching a Wimbledon semi-final match from 1975. The last three sets of Arthur Ashe’s close five-set victory over Tony Roche were on YouTube. What a breath of fresh air it was to watch. They rattled off the points incredibly quickly, taking less time between rallies than I would. Though you could see the players tiring, particularly Roche, the tennis had little of the physicality – bordering on brutality – that you see in the modern game. Instead it was all about net play (which has become virtually suicidal in modern singles) and crafting points. The fourth set was decided on a tie-break, but this was played at 8-8 rather than 6-6. (They did that at Wimbledon from 1971 to 1978.) Roche played a superb tie-break to extend the match, but dropped his serve in the opening game of the fifth set. Still, Ashe played a tight game as he served out the match and could easily have let Roche back in. What impressed me the most was Ashe’s interview after the match. So few clichés. This is a highly intelligent man talking here. He talked about Jimmy Connors trying to sue him for $5 million. Ashe went on to beat Connors in the final and become champion. Sadly he suffered from various health problems. He had a heart attack and underwent major heart surgery. Some years later he contracted Aids. He died in 1993 aged just 49.

Talking of Aids, I mentioned to my brother the alarming cholesterol reading I’d got from my blood test. It could have been worse, he said. He knew someone who had a routine blood test and it came back with him being HIV positive. This was a married bloke with kids. Um, what?!? Just imagine. He found out six weeks later that there had been some stuff-up and something that was supposed to be reset before the test hadn’t been. Mistakes happen, but this sort of thing can cause people to take their own lives. My brother is right; it could have been a lot worse. Tomorrow I’ll see my doctor and will ask him what I should do.

Family - Language teaching - Life :)

Clogging up as I write…

September 14, 2026 by 0 Comments

On Thursday I got my blood test results back, and apparently I’ve got cholesterol out the wazoo. My LDL level in particular is scarily high. It should ideally be under 100. According to the piece of paper, levels above that are divided into gradations of badness – up to 130, then 160, then 190. Anything above that is deemed very high risk. My LDL is 202. My total cholesterol is 275. In New Zealand and the UK they use a different scale, and my reading is equivalent to 7.1. When I worked in life insurance, we got blood tests thrown in. Cholesterol was what got everyone’s attention. In 2005 my figure of 5.5 (I still remember it) was the second-highest in the office and raised some eyebrows. The only person with a higher reading was the guy I sat next to – he was roughly the age I am now – who farted all the time. My latest figure blows that number out of the water. So what do I do now? It’s tough, because I eat a pretty healthy diet. Plenty of fruit and vegetables. Extremely little of what they now call ultra-processed foods. Not a lot of sugar. I do however eat a fair bit of dairy, so should I cut that out entirely? Naturally I’ve been searching for information and watching YouTube videos, such as this one that explains that not all LDL is created equal and I really need a more comprehensive test which I may or may not be able to get in Romania. I also played around with a UK site where you plug in your personal data and your risk of heart disease pops out. It said that because I’m not overweight, I don’t smoke and my blood pressure is normal, my risk is only just above the national average.

I got the blood test if there was something causing all the fatigue, and instead I found something else. A big something else. I’ve actually been feeling better of late. There’s still the weird back pain, but things have been normal apart from that. Having enough energy to go swimming four times last week means I can’t be that bad. Because it’s a properly laned competition-style pool, I’m forced to do lengths, when it would be nice to just sort of paddle around. On Friday the guy in the lane next to me was probably going at twice my speed. He used the stopwatch on his smart watch and even keyed numbers into the calculator on his phone which he left at the side of the pool. I’m not much better than the dog I saw swimming in the Bega today as I sat by the river and read my book. It’s very pleasant all of a sudden to do that, now that the temperature has dropped. It feels great to want to be in the sun.

I still have the odd night of badly interrupted sleep. Thursday night was pretty dreadful. I made it to the pool the next morning, but things were a struggle. I was glad to have a long break between lessons. A big gap until 5:30. But then a message appeared on my phone. You’re coming at 4:30, right? Oh god, it’s the mother of that new boy I’d agreed to teach. I’d completely forgotten, probably because when I said yes I was feeling terrible. Damn damn damn. The lesson would take one hour, but I wouldn’t be able to get to my other lessons (with the brother and sister) on time. I contacted their mother and was apologetic. She said it would be OK to start a bit later. The new boy’s place was practically impossible to find. His mum had said number 5 of such-and-such street, and I’d envisaged a detached house. Instead there were endless modern tower blocks with either no numbers or multiple numbers and names. I didn’t have a clue. I called the mother. Where are you? How do I even explain? I’m next to a cream-and-red block and just opposite a brown-and-white one, on the corner of a bigger road and a smaller one. There’s also something called “The Ring”. In English. There’s no other information. “Imagine actually living here,” I then blurted out. I wasn’t joking. Even though I live in a block myself, living something like that would be a mental-health disaster for me. Luckily, because she lived on the eighth (top) floor, she spotted me even though I was nowhere near her block. She said the whole area – estate I suppose – was completed in 2018. So when I moved to Timișoara it didn’t exist, or maybe it was a building site. (I read recently that the first wave of communist blocks in Russia each took just twelve days to build.) It was clinically modern inside the flat, with the obligatory Nespresso machine. (My book has just mentioned Nespresso machines. I remember when I lived in Wellington, there was a Nespresso store on my drive home from work. One time we got stuck in traffic outside it. We could see all the coloured pods or capsules or whatever inside. My carpool mate and I agreed that it was vile.) The lesson was fine. The boy seemed really nice, as did his mother. He was a big football fan. I gave him an “About Me” sheet where he had to write about (or draw) the things he liked and give very basic information about himself. In the “age” box, he wrote 8:30. Half-past eight. It had a certain logic to it, I suppose.

Mum and Dad have just got back from Moeraki – it was their first trip down there since early May. I told them about my cholesterol. We also discussed my potential return to New Zealand. Last weekend my brother said I should consider going back to the UK instead. “It’s not all bad,” he said. I never said it was. I just don’t think I could handle the sheer volume of people anymore. With Google Maps you can home in on places pretty much at random, and a few days ago the little peg man happened to alight on Tobermory on the Isle of Mull. Looks idyllic. A kids’ TV programme was filmed there in the noughties, taking advantage of all the colourful buildings on the seafront. Hmmm, how much would a house be? I’d be pretty damn isolated somewhere like that, but if I ever did go back to the UK to live (extremely unlikely – I hardly know anyone there now) it would need to be well outside the M25.

Language teaching - Life :) - Other sports

No longer out of my depth

September 9, 2026 by 0 Comments

Things are back to normal, for now at least, apart from that weird back pain that feels as if something is stuck there. I was supposed to have my blood test on Friday but I got turned away because I’d eaten in the previous ten hours. So I got it done yesterday instead and I’m now awaiting the results.

I’ve now been swimming three times. As I thought, it’s a 50-metre pool, roped off into eight lanes. There’s no shallow end or deep end; it’s a competition pool which has a constant depth of 1.5 metres. So there’s no diving board. And, oddly, no lifeguard either. Getting set up in the first place was a bit of a hassle. I remember how this membership stuff used to work. You’d give your name and address to the lady at the desk who would then write your name on a card for you to present whenever you wanted to swim. Now it’s all apps and passwords and links and options. Always so many options. And I’m not convinced they’ve improved our lives in any way. I’m hoping that regular trips to the pool, and just being in the water, will be beneficial to me.

Schools went back yesterday, so my hours are increasing again and I’ve got kids’ parents who won’t leave me alone. There’s one annoying mother in particular. In a short while I’ll be having a lesson on a subject I haven’t taught up until now. My student in her late thirties wants to learn how to swear in English. Yesterday I had my first lesson with the maths A-star girl since she did her exam. She’s now doing International Baccalaureate.

On Sunday I watched a football match for the first time in well over a year, if you don’t count a few minutes of that awful World Cup final. Birmingham City were playing Wolverhampton Wanderers in the Championship – the second tier. It was a damn good game that finished in a 2-2 draw. All the goals came in the first half including a comedy own goal that gave Blues their second equaliser. Blues had really been outplayed by Wolves in the first half and were lucky to be level, but unexpectedly they dominated the second half. Blues now have one win and four draws from their opening five games.

Also on Sunday I had a great chat with my brother. I was slightly cheesed off with him the previous time we spoke, but when I think about it I was feeling terrible and didn’t especially want to talk to anybody.

Family - Life :)

Where I’m at right now

September 4, 2026 by 0 Comments

Things are still pretty crappy. Burning sensation in the right side of my back. Numbness in my limbs. And tiredness. So much fatigue. I find myself exhaling deeply when I do even moderate exercise. And then there’s the brain fog. Everything becomes a huge effort. It goes in cycles though, from close to normal all the way down to getting by at only the most basic level, and back again.

I saw the after-hours doctor earlier this evening and told him my symptoms. He did the usual checks and everything was fine. I asked him, so what about some blood tests? He agreed that I should have some, and I’ve got an appointment tomorrow morning. Good that I was able to get one so soon. I said to him that I have no idea how I’ll cope with full weeks of lessons again – schools go back on Monday – and he said that of course I’ll cope. Well, I haven’t bloody been coping up until now, have I? My teaching hours this year will end up being way down on each of the previous three.

Yesterday I went to the 50-metre swimming pool a ten-minute bike ride from here. I was feeling a bit better then. A session would cost me 60 lei, or alternatively I could buy a month’s membership for 200, which would allow me to go any weekday before 4pm (and I think at some specific times at weekends too). I wasn’t allowed to swim there and then though, because I didn’t have a hat. I remember swimming at school when I was about eight and we were made to wear hats – I hated wearing one. I did buy a hat yesterday as well as stationery and a thick roll of duct (or is it duck?) tape so I can deal with Kitty’s fur a bit more easily.

The sale of my parents’ flat in St Ives is just about there. They’re now grappling with a load of online forms for capital gains tax. They haven’t made much on the property so I imagine they’ll pay negligible CGT, but it adds a layer of life admin that they could do without.

Books - Family - Life :) - Scrabble

Not much respite (and he doesn’t give a damn)

August 31, 2026 by 0 Comments

So I got a brief respite – a day and a bit – from this thing, then yesterday it came back with a vengeance. Everything was suddenly back to being a gigantic struggle. Talking to my brother didn’t help, even if I got to see his kids. (My niece is well out of the baby stage now.) His level of self-confidence grated on me. Plus he couldn’t have given a damn about anything I do here – the only thing he cared about were Russian drone incursions. Since I moved over her, he never has given a damn. If he had, he might have made the effort to see me in all this time. (Yes, there was Covid, but that still leaves eight years of never even entertaining the idea of coming over.) It would be nice if one time he could at least ask me something simple like how my cat is. I have huge admiration for my brother, but often wonder what the hell he thinks of me.

On Saturday, while I was beached on that island of normality, I went to Parcul Rozelor to see a production of the musical My Fair Lady. It was free. How all the cast and period costumes and everything were financed I don’t know. EU money? Dorothy came too – she had something else on but it got cancelled. The performance started at 8pm and went on (and on) until 11:30, with two intervals. It didn’t drag, in spite of the length. It was a tough one to carry off in Romanian, as so much depended on accent and pronunciation. There isn’t exactly a Romanian equivalent of Cockney. I thought they did a good job there, but what do I really know? I didn’t realise how many very well-known songs come from the musical. Dorothy saw the film version when it came out in 1964. I must have seen it on TV over Christmas when I was a kid; I’d like to see it again if I can find it.

Yesterday I gave up on reading One Hundred Years of Solitude, about 40% of the way through. Right now, something that complex and unrooted in reality is beyond me. It started off great, but soon I no longer knew who was who or what was what. I’ve started reading Flesh by the Hungarian author David Szalay instead. I haven’t had much luck with books lately. Dad gave me Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell, saying it was brilliant. That novel is effectively six books sandwiched into one; they are very different from one another and (at best) loosely connected. You got the first halves of books 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 in order, then all of book 6, then the second halves of 5, 4, 3, 2 and 1. By the time you get near the finish, it ends up being a test of memory. When you have significant brain fog, that’s a problem. It was a very clever book and I got the impression that the author damn well knew it. I got through it, but I wasn’t exactly in the mood for clever. Then before that I read Patrick Hennessey’s army officer book – very readable but his writing style did my head in.

I was thinking more about my latest trip. You forget things. Like the funeral procession I met on the way – everyone dressed in black. Or how good the shower was, in a room where things were otherwise falling apart. Or what Elena said when I got back about her trips to Russia, buying and selling goods. I was even thinking about the fire salamander that I saw (and the Dutch couple identified) on my earlier trip.

On Saturday, before seeing the musical, they showed a live Scrabble game on YouTube between Mark Nyman and (if I’ve got his name right) David Shenkin. It was the first round of a major tournament in Derbyshire in England. I remembered Nyman because he was in Dictionary Corner on Countdown back in the day. A young man then, he had bags under his eyes 30 years later. (He’s about to turn 60.) His opponent, incredibly, was 91. Just as amazingly, after the game swung this way and that, it finished in a draw.

I’ve got an online lesson very soon. I feel underprepared for it. Today, officially the last day of summer, we’re forecast to reach 36 degrees.

Update: My lesson was with a ten-year-old boy. He spent almost half the 90 minutes reading from one of Enid Blyton’s Famous Five books. I needed to follow his reading, so I found a PDF version online. However, he was reading from a bowdlerised version while the PDF was (I think) the original. It was funny to hear things like “a spanking” changed to “a good talking-to”.