Author: plutoman

plutoman

I'm an English teacher in mad-as-a-box of-frogs Romania. Hope you like my blog! ✌️

Family - Films - Music - Politics - Writing a book

Freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength

May 31, 2024 plutomanby 0 Comments

My brother said that about fifteen people turned up for our aunt’s celebration on Tuesday. Apart from food and chat and sharing of photos, not a lot happened. He’d hoped someone might say a few words about her life, but that never happened.

It’s the last day of May and the sweet smell of tei – lime trees – is filling the air as it always does at this time of year. Before this morning’s lesson in the fifth-floor flat, my parents called me from Hampden. They were about to get fish and chips from the Tavern. They’ve had a relaxing time in Moeraki even if they’ve seen little of the late-autumn sun. We discussed Trump’s guilty verdict, announced hours earlier. Being a convicted criminal may improve his chances in November. Even being banged up – precisely what he deserves – wouldn’t bar him from becoming president. Because that’s the world we now live in, where black is white and war is peace. How did we end up here?

After my lesson I had some time to kill before getting my hair cut for the summer. I sat for a bit in the so-called Botanic Park, then cycled to my appointment in Dorothy’s neck of the woods. I happened to bump into her. She was incredulous that I was about to spend 50 lei. It actually set me back 65. The hairdresser – a woman of 40-odd – recognised me from last time. She did a good job, and I won’t need another chop for months, but I’ll go elsewhere next time because it’s got too pricey. It’s a pity the place opposite me closed down.

Last night I watched the first episode of Eric, a British series on Netflix starring Benedict Cumberbatch whom I hadn’t seen for years. I enjoyed it and plan to watch the remaining five episodes. It was set in gritty, grimy eighties New York, which I liked, and they used one of the late Sixto Rodriguez’s songs at the end of the episode. Talking of music, Dad sent me a clip of this song by British band alt-J. It’s called Deadcrush and is supposedly about crushes that the band members have on Elizabeth “Lee” Miller (an American photographer before and during World War Two) and Anne Boleyn, second wife of Henry VIII. The lyrics are mostly indecipherable, but the song (and video) is a fascinating piece of art nonetheless. I’d heard of alt-J but was unaware of this song (the song of theirs I know best talks about licking someone like the inside of a crisp packet); I wonder how Dad came across it.

I recently watched a video where Kwasi Kwarteng, who served as Chancellor under Liz Truss’s infamous lettuce leadership, gave a long interview. He went to Eton, just like David Cameron, George Osborne and the rest. He’s got a massive IQ but frankly so what. He and Truss crashed the economy and though he knew he messed up, didn’t show much contrition. It’s all a game to him. He’s a damn sight better than Truss herself though; she’s never shown an ounce of self-awareness at any point.

Latest news on the English book. We’ve now got a meeting at 2:30 on Sunday afternoon. I’ll prepare some bits and pieces and see what happens.

Family - Language teaching - Life :) - Maths teaching - Writing a book

Wouldn’t it be nice

May 29, 2024 plutomanby 0 Comments

Today was my aunt’s celebration, the last ever get-together at her house which is already on the market for half a million quid. I haven’t heard from my brother yet to see how it went; I expect he’ll have been part of a small contingent. I’m just so glad I was fortunate enough to see her a week before she passed away. Today would have been my grandmother’s 102nd birthday. I wrote about her 88th birthday here: how time flies.

This afternoon I had a lesson with the boy who wants to be a farmer. So refreshing when so many of them want to be YouTubers. Last week I taught him some irregular plurals, so today I gave him a worksheet on them, complete with pictures. Easy peasy, he said. Seconds later he’d written mouses and foots and sheeps and childs. Tonight I gave my new maths student (a 15-year-old girl) what I called a quick quiz. Target time two minutes, three max. After about twelve minutes she was still slaving away, so I put her out of her misery. She’d forgotten just about everything I’d taught her about prime and square numbers. I wasn’t annoyed by this in any way; maths is just tough and weird for a lot of people.

Before all of that the plumber came and put in the new pipe. I had to go to Dedeman with him to pick up some blocks to which the tiles will be attached in front of the bath. I’m getting used to being actively involved, even though it’s bloody annoying when I have lessons.

I forgot to mention that I got stung by a bee at Șag on Sunday. It was my left middle finger. As a kid I got stung quite often on my foot. I was barefoot most of the time in summer – my Kiwi mum encouraged that – and the bees would be in the clover. That was back when the UK still had bees. When I was in the car I thought, wouldn’t it be nice if my parents were with me, but my blog posts for June 2017 have given me second thoughts. That got pretty fraught. If my family friends from St Ives came over, that would be quite wonderful. Even when I wander around my little patch of a warm evening I think it would be lovely if they were here, doing simple things like wandering from one funny little bar to another. It’s sad that I never get the chance to do that.

Yesterday I had a lesson where my student (a manager at a big bank) read an article about giving feedback to low-performing employees. I said that a lot of this poor performance comes from low engagement which shouldn’t be a surprise. She said that the objectives and deadlines are all there in black and white, so there’s no excuse. I replied that frankly who cares if xyz has to be done by 31st May if xyz seems pointless. How do you get motivated, when most of what you do all day is meaningless crap? The answer to that of course is that people are motivated by money and status and power, or simply job security when they have family members who depend on their income, but the “pointless shit” aspect (which is more salient than ever before) can’t help.

The book meeting, which I had to reschedule two lessons to accommodate, has been postponed again to who knows when.

Language teaching - Life :) - Politics - Travel: Romania - Writing a book

Get rid of them please, and an important day beckons

May 28, 2024 plutomanby 0 Comments

First of all, Wednesday could be a very important day because I’ve got the meeting about the English book with the publishing house.

A follow-up on the UK election. My view of it lacks nuance I’m afraid. It’s simply get the buggers out by any legal means possible. If I lived in a swing seat, I’d vote for whichever party (probably the only party) able to beat the Tories. First-past-the-post makes tactical voting a must. If I lived in a safe seat where my vote didn’t matter, I’d probably vote Green. My ideal scenario would to the see Tories obliterated to the point where they aren’t even the official opposition anymore, because that’s what they deserve. They’ll mop up enough blue-rinse votes to make the final outcome far from that I’m sure. You can but dream. Dad said in an email that he still has misgivings about Labour because of the way they were controlled by the unions in the seventies, and even mentioned links to Russian spies. Wow. How much time needs to pass for you to finally let it go? And didn’t you actually vote Labour in ’97? I’m no great fan of the current Labour party – they should be far more ambitious – but anything has to be better than the current lot.

The Conservatives have announced plans for national service if re-elected. They’re trying anything now. As I read on a forum yesterday, “put down your books, pick up a gun, you’re gonna have a whole lot of fun”. Here’s Country Joe McDonald singing that Vietnam protest song at Woodstock.

Today I had the plumber back in. He removed the sink and smashed half the bricks and tiling to get at the bath, then found the pipe to the bath had a hole in it. A relief; I worried that the eighties cast-iron bath itself might be leaking. Tomorrow he’ll put the sink back in place and then I’ll need a plasterer to fix up the bricks and tiles. (I still have leftover tiles from the original work 18 months ago.)

This morning I had my weekly Romanian lesson. Lately Dorothy and I have compared notes. She has much greater fluency than me and better intonation. (She has been here longer and gets more opportunities to speak Romanian than I do, but she might just be better.) Even though my pronunciation of individual words is mostly fine, I rise and fall too much and overemphasise syllables. It’s hard to get out of the habit. I wrote on here 8½ years ago that Romanian, like French, is syllable-timed, while English is stress-timed. Romanianising my intonation is especially hard for me, I’ve realised, because I’m actually pretty expressive when I speak English. (When I accidentally recorded part of a video lesson, I couldn’t believe how much head-shifting and arm-waving was going on. Plus being a teacher incentivises me to be more animated and emphatic.)

Yesterday I went out in the car. I didn’t go very far; I stopped at Șag (pronounced “shag”) on the bank of the Timiș. It was a popular place for picnics and barbecues. My parents Skyped me when I was there. I spent the rest of the time either walking, eating lunch, picking mulberries, or listening to music on the radio. This great (if slightly depressing) song came on, telling me that death doesn’t have a phone number. It reminded me a bit of the French singer Renaud, and I imagined it was from the eighties, but then I heard “roaming” in the lyrics and found out it was from 2007.

Family - Language teaching - Life :) - Politics

Not a moment too soon

May 24, 2024 plutomanby 0 Comments

I haven’t talked about politics much of late, but then yesterday British prime minister Rishi Sunak called a general election for 4th July. It was an absurd scene as he made the announcement, dripping wet in his suit, to the backdrop of D:Ream’s Things Can Only Get Better which was a number-one hit in 1994 and the theme tune to Labour’s landslide win in ’97. Why he called the election in six weeks’ time rather than waiting until the autumn is beyond me. I even thought he might wait until the latest possible date, which would have been January 2025. The British economy was looking a bit brighter, or at least a bit less dismal, and there was always the chance that something might happen. I honestly think Sunak was just over the whole business of being prime minister. Let’s slam the plane into the ground, and who cares about the hundreds of passengers I take with me.

I’m not sad about four months being lopped off the term of the parliament. The Tories have been in power for 14 years and have left the country in a much worse state than when they took over. Takes some doing, really. It’s long past time they vacated the stage. My fear is that Labour (if they win) won’t be nearly ambitious enough. At least I trust them to halt the slide though, and right now that’s something. I also look forward to a much greater working-class contingent among the governing party. Ever since Tony Blair’s government gained power in ’97, there’s been a deeply damaging Etonocracy (“born to rule”) – let’s knock that on the head for a start. I’d love it if the whole UK political system could be overhauled, but sadly I don’t see that happening any time soon because those in power benefit from it staying this way.

This morning I had a lesson with the priest who gave “relationship with God” as the main reason why women are having fewer children. He’s the eldest of six and wasn’t sure that the reduction was such a good thing. “A balance would be good. Some parents could have just one child, others four or five. And the statistics show that women live longer and suffer from fewer diseases when they have more children.” I gave him my opinion on the matter. I said that when he was born in 1963 there were 3.2 billion people on the planet (I looked that up); there are now two and a half times as many, and that’s been a complete disaster. A lower birth rate will cause short and medium-term pain but is one of the very few bases for long-term optimism.

I’n feeling much better now, despite an annoying number of cancellations this week. The lower workload has at least given me the chance to work on the novel. On Monday I spoke to my brother. At the weekend they had a barbecue and when it was still hot my nephew burnt his hand on the side of it. They rushed him off to A&E where he got bandaged up. He’s such an active boy all of a sudden, and these things happen in a split second. My brother said that when you have a child to look after, every day is the same with the exception of injuries and other mishaps, and you never have a moment to yourself. Sounds awful.

I’m enjoying the last few days of not-quite-summer. The smell of the lime trees is in the air, the strawberries and cherries are ripe, and the temperature is comfortable. On Tuesday night we had a downpour and a thunderstorm.

Language teaching - Life :) - Photos - Travel: Romania

Keeping those tourist numbers down

May 20, 2024 plutomanby 0 Comments

Things are certainly much better – and calmer – than a week ago. Not fantastically wonderful or anything, but I no longer feel hopelessly overwhelmed. My hours are down a bit, so I’ve been able to spend some time on my novel, though I’m constantly having to rework sections so that it meshes together properly, and even then I have doubts. Is this bit simply too boring? Then I’ve got the meeting for the other book, which was supposed to be last Tuesday but I’m glad got put back because things were still pretty messy then.

The last few days have been nondescript, which is no bad thing. My most interesting lesson was probably on Thursday, when my student of 22 or 23 showed me her CV. I’d put her at a 5 on my 0-to-10 scale. Her CV began with three introductory paragraphs where she blew her own trumpet and the rest of the brass section along with it. In included such phrases as “I wield automation tools”, “technical prowess”, “foster strong team collaboration” and “peak performance and user delight”. I asked her what “wield”, “prowess” and “foster” meant; predictably she hadn’t a clue. Then I told her to stop using AI to write her CV. Anybody with half a brain could tell that those weren’t her words.

I’ve had the usual chats with my parents. Lately Dad has spent a lot of time talking about UK immigration, which to be fair is a massively important topic, but sometimes I want a break from all the negativity associated with it. Yesterday he sent me a 35-minute YouTube video of a speech on UK immigration by someone from a right-wing think tank. Oh no, I have to watch this. The speaker made some perfectly valid points and some which I saw as invalid.

Yesterday I played tennis with Florin, as usual on a Saturday. We were surrounded by six beach volleyball courts; a noisy competition was in full flow. When things had calmed down half an hour into our session, we started a game. I was up 6-3, 1-1 when we finished. The most pleasing thing was that I didn’t suffer from the wobbly feeling on my service games.

Today I visited the dendrological park (that fancy word means “trees”) at Bazoșu Nou, a short trip from here. I parked next to a man of about thirty; he was with his small son who rode the sort of bike that didn’t exist when I was little, and clearly enjoyed the interaction with him. (I always feel a tinge of sadness when I see that; being 50% older than many fathers doesn’t exactly make that feeling go away.) To my surprise there was a man at the gate collecting a 10 lei entrance fee. Not far from the entrance were a pair of wordy information boards, one in Romanian and one in French, plus a map with no scale that showed vaguely what you might see. An American zone with sequoias. A giant oak tree. But from there, information was nonexistent. Is the oak tree two minutes away or half an hour? Is this oak tree the giant one or not? Nothing was labelled. The park was pretty and a relaxing place to stroll in, but some sense of what and where wouldn’t have gone amiss. I’d been in the park an hour, sometimes using my birdsong recognition app and wishing I had an app for trees too, when I thought, how do I get out of here now? Luckily I guessed right – all you could do in that rather large, mazy park was guess – and I was spared the Blair Witch stuff. Romania gets few tourists and they’re doing a good job of keeping it that way.

A useful map of cycle tracks outside the park

After the park I ended up in Recaș for the second time in four days – I had my lunch there on Wednesday – then got pulled over by the police. Ugh. “Do you want to know what rule you’ve broken?” I guess so. I expected to get done for speeding; I often don’t quite know what the speed limits are. The rule I’d broken was “headlights on at all times” rule. Only my sidelights were on. Apparently this is quite a new law (and crazy if you ask me, unless you ride a motorbike). He asked me to open the boot to make sure I had a full emergency kit (I did), then I was free to go, with no fine or anything. He was pleasant enough. I then stopped for lunch in a village called Brestovăț followed by a smaller village called Teș where the roads were unsealed and none of them seemed to go through the village despite my 2009 map which said otherwise.

Brestovăț

Teș

I braved the car wash today. It worked by rechargeable card. You had to put at least 10 lei on the card, so I charged it up with the minimum. A 2½-minute blast with a high-pressure hose was supposed to eat up 5 lei, but when that was done the other 5 lei had mysteriously vanished too. I might try another one next time. I must say I’m enjoying the car. It’s my favourite of the five I’ve had so far. I know it’s a diesel, but I’m still blown away by the low fuel consumption. It gets roughly 50 miles to the gallon; my 1984 Nissan Bluebird got barely half that.

I zeroed the trip meter the last time I filled up. 969 km hardly seems possible.
Dreams - Life :) - Tennis

Bull in a china shop, but am I coming out of it?

May 14, 2024 plutomanby 0 Comments

On Saturday evening I played tennis with Florin. The way I was feeling I didn’t expect to play well, but to my surprise I raced to 6-0, 4-0, with three break points in the following game. He was far from his best, but I had vast amounts of pent-up energy, and that meant I played more aggressively than usual. He improved while I hit the speed wobbles, especially on serve where I was creaking. There were worlds in which I might even have lost the second set, but I eked it out 6-3 and led 4-3 in the third when we finished.

Soon after writing my last post I met Mark by the river. He’s now a married man – again – after an eight-minute wedding in Scotland. You have to reside in England to marry there, but Scotland has so such rule, so they got married in Gretna which is just over the border. Nearby Gretna Green was where elopers from England would marry 200-odd years ago; back then if you were under 21 you couldn’t marry in England without permission from your parents, but that rule didn’t apply in Scotland. Timotion was in full swing in town – that’s basically like Round the Bays which I sometimes did in Auckland or Wellington, but without the bays; there was also a half-marathon option. I couldn’t think of anything worse than being among a crowd of people emblazoned with company logos.

After seeing Mark I got in the car and stopped in the village of Dragșina. I got out because I wanted to take a photo of a stork nesting atop a lamp-post to show somebody, but I couldn’t do that because my phone had died. Fuzzy coloured lines jumped about on the screen. I’d planned to go further but my dead phone stopped me in my tracks, so I then went home via one of the several Kauflands dotted around the city. I felt disoriented in that supermarket, which I’d never been to before. It was simply too big. Then I managed to tip the trolley over in the car park, which isn’t an easy thing to do, giving myself a great big bruise on my shin. I was like a bull in a china shop there, with no control whatsoever. Luckily I hadn’t bought eggs or anything else that might break. I drove home, relieved to make it back before doing serious damage to me or anyone else.

I had to buy a new phone, and quick. I mean, I hate phones, but they’re a necessity of modern life. In the evening I cycled to Altex in the north of the city (the shop is open until 9pm, even on a Sunday) where I got another Samsung. Whether that was wise I don’t know. It cost 825 lei (roughly NZ$300 or £140). Today I’ll get a screen protector and a better charger. I was constantly plugging and unplugging my old phone – that can’t have done it much good – and charging it at all became an increasing struggle. Dropping it didn’t help either, of course. I lost a load of recent WhatsApp messages, but nothing important, and luckily I’d only just transferred a batch of photos to my laptop.

I’ve had two recent chats with my brother. All is well there. My nephew is coming on in giant leaps now. We discussed the northern lights that had been visible down to unusually low latitudes, though neither of us actually saw them. We also talked about WhatsApp groups and how they’re sucking the life out of us all. He said most of the other students on his university course where part of groups but he steered clear, and probably benefited as a result. Yesterday I spoke to my parents who had just had the carpet fitted in their living room at a cost of $4000. Everything there has become mindblowingly expensive.

Yesterday I had my Romanian lesson. I felt frustrated that I’m not improving. If anything I might be regressing. Then I had four English lessons of varying meaningfulness. After all that I put on the lovely Ommadawn, Mike Oldfield’s album, and for the first time in a month I was able to just be, albeit for half an hour. I’m about to have another lesson, after which I’ll go into town and hopefully pay my rates – I never receive a bill for that, so I don’t know how much it will be, nor what would happen if I didn’t pay at all.

I had a strange dream last night where I was with Dad in a seedy theme park. The rides were age-restricted; I was only just inside the upper age limit. There was some sort of key that we needed to exit the park, but ours didn’t work. What do we do now? Then I woke up.

Books - Life :) - Writing a book

Been here before, but what’s the way out this time?

May 12, 2024 plutomanby 0 Comments

Things have got pretty crappy, let’s be frank. It’s not like I haven’t been here before. I can’t enjoy things, can’t maintain interest in things, can’t take in new information, can’t concentrate, can’t prioritise (everything has become an obligation; a chore), my working memory is shot to shit, I’m clumsier, I’ve got 27 tabs open on my laptop, I can physically feel each instant message as if it’s a hammer blow to my brain (What the hell is it this time?) even though turning off sounds has helped, and so it goes on. What makes this particular episode worrying is that the reduction in meaningful lessons and increase in pointless ones means I don’t have my teaching to fall back on like I used to. The maths has been the only real plus (ha ha) of late.

The bath “fix” didn’t fix a damn thing – last night I had my first shower since the “repair” and there was soon a lake on the floor. He is going to have to smash the tiling and temporarily remove the basin after all. Apart from the cost, that means I’ll have to be here all the time, making it harder for me to visit the market or do any other life admin tasks that require going outside.

Some potential good news. (That depression survey question. Do you continue to feel down even when good things happen? Yes.) Dorothy has made contact with a Timișoara publisher, and there’s a chance that my English “tips, tricks and traps” dictionary (that could be a good name for it, come to think of it) could find its way into print. Dorothy and I might be meeting the publisher on Tuesday.

I’ve just bought some more ink cartridges (why are they so expensive?) and ordered five books in English: White Fang by Jack London (it is extremely popular in Romania under the title Colț Alb, so I thought my younger students would like to see the English version); Charlotte’s Web, another popular children’s book; and both Winnie-the-Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner by A.A. Milne, together with Christopher Robin Milne’s autobiography. Those last ones are really for my benefit; I loved the Pooh books when I was a kid, as well as Milne’s poems, and I thought they might cheer me up. I doubt I’ll get the books for several weeks, though, and who knows what state I’ll be in by then.

As for my Vinted purchases, I’m pretty sure that one of the sellers scammed me. I buy a £30 item, the seller sees that I’m using a forwarder, he/she knows that I have to OK the item before I even see it, so they send me a £5 item and pocket the rest. Caveat emptor and all that. Getting anything delivered to Romania from outside its borders is fraught with difficulty and risk.

Soon I’m meeting Mark in town – I won’t drink anything – then I’ll go for a drive.

Life :) - Maths teaching - Other sports - Travel: Romania

Positive plumbing and my latest trip

May 9, 2024 plutomanby 0 Comments

Good plumbing news. It turned out that the previous guy did a botched job of the seal around the bath, so we won’t need to smash the tilework after all. Or at least I don’t think so. The plumber put some silicon around the edge which the other guy didn’t bother with. I also got him to fix the loo in the small bathroom. I went with him to Dedeman in my car; we picked up a cistern and some other bits and pieces. He told me to go a completely different way there to what I would have done – he clearly knew better than me. He should finish the job tomorrow.

I had my first maths lesson last night with a 15-year-old girl who goes to British School. She’s struggling a bit with the subject; her almost nonexistent mental arithmetic isn’t doing her any favours. But I found her very personable and that makes her very teachable. I’m glad to suddenly have her as a student, right when my proportion of pointless lessons (which don’t help my mood) is at an all-time high. Teaching her will be far from pointless, and quite a challenge.

Monday was a warm one. I went for another long drive – about 250 km, skirting the borders of both Hungary and Serbia. My first stop was Periam, a town (or large village) of about 4000 people; a lot of our local stone fruit comes from there. Being a public holiday, it was extremely quiet there. I called my parents from a café: though it was closed I could still sit at one of the tables in the shady outside area. I then made a short stop at Sânnicolau Mare, a bigger town, before going back to Dumbrăvița via Jimbolia which is a fun name to say. At 4:30 I had maths with Matei on the eve of his final maths exam; we went through a bastard of a past paper from 2021.

The snooker is over. After a tournament in which the big guns didn’t really show up, Kyren Wilson is the champion, beating Jak Jones 18-14 in the final. He made a blistering start, going 7-0 up, but in the end he flopped over the line. Wilson won a drama-packed frame on a respotted black to put him one away, but Jones – the pressure off him – started reeling off frames. Jones was having fun and the crowd warmed to him, while for Wilson it wasn’t far off becoming his worst nightmare. Finally he got there. His reaction to winning was worth watching in itself, as was the very cute bit when his two sons joined him on the stage.

Forty years ago, snooker was massively popular in Britain and had a serious following elsewhere. Steve Davis, Alex Higgins, Dennis Taylor, a young Jimmy White – they were all household names. British football was in the doldrums – attending matches in crumbling stadiums was dangerous, the government of the day treated fans as animals, and very few games were televised. Snooker filled the gap. It was perfect for colour television – still pretty new – and back then there were only four channels, with few of the endless entertainment options we have now, not to mention social media which is a disaster zone. If snooker was on the telly, with its colourful characters, there’s a good chance you’d watch it and get hooked in. Nobody cared if a match took several hours; what was the rush? How the world has changed. Football is now a global gazillion-pound machine, while snooker is down to just one and a half household names in Ronnie O’Sullivan and maybe Judd Trump. Both sports are in grave danger of being Saudified.

Trains still stop at Periam

The Orthodox church in Periam…
…and the Catholic church

Romanian trees are often dați cu var, or whitewashed with lime, to prevent their trunks from cracking as a result of the extreme temperature variations between summer and winter.

Plenty of Serbian in Sânpetru Mare
Miloje Polić
Life :) - Other sports - Photos - Travel: Romania

Church, flowers and balls

May 6, 2024 plutomanby 0 Comments

This morning I went to Dorothy’s church, a 25-minute bike ride from here. Church has the potential for all sorts of awkwardness. Just like the Orthodox adherents, Romanian Baptists say Hristos a înviat, or “Christ has risen”, in place of “Hello”. Any reply from me, even the “correct” one, would instantly mark me as an outsider. I was surprised that they also celebrate Easter according to the Orthodox calendar. The service lasted two hours – even longer than the Christmas one – and was capped off by an extremely wordy sermon. In between were hymns accompanied by a guitar, a violin, and drums. All the way through were churchy Romanian words I didn’t know and have already forgotten – it’s not like I could look them up or note them down very easily. The congregation was half the size of the one at Christmas, but included kids who were all called on to read the odd verse or two. Communion, which I didn’t partake in, consisted of normal red wine and scraps of pita bread, not the special communion wine and wafers that we got at the Catholic church many moons ago when I did church. We had coffee and biscuits outside – once again I met that bubbly Australian woman who had sung vigorously.

When I got home the lady above me gave me some Easter food: drob (usually this contains lamb offal, but the one I got has chicken instead; it tastes good), sarmale (filled cabbage rolls), several slices of cozonac (a traditional bready cake), and another cake whose name I don’t know. She might have actually made all of that herself, so I have no reasonable way of returning the favour. Then I got in the car and went north to Fibiș (which is on the way to Lipova), then west to Orțișoara where I stopped for just a few minutes – there was a lovely hailstorm – before returning home.

Snooker. Some long scrappy frames last night. Stuart Bingham seemed to mentally check out at the end, allowing Jak Jones to win 17-12 when a very long night had looked in store. In the 27th frame Bingham laid a fiendish snooker behind the green. Jones’s first escape attempt clattered into the pink, sending reds flying. The referee and his assistant spent several minutes replacing the balls. Remarkably Jones hit a red on his second try, sparing everybody a repeat. Bingham won that frame in the end, but that was his last hurrah against a dogged opponent. It’s not going quite to well for Jones in the final – he took a pummelling in the first session against Kyren Wilson; at least he won the final frame to trail “only” 7-1 in the first-to-18 match. (Update: I’ve just watched a brilliant second session of high quality. There was a dramatic twist in the last frame in which Wilson got the snooker that he needed on the yellow, and then won after a 15-shot back-and-forth on the black. Wilson now leads 11-6.)

Painstakingly putting the balls back. At least they have a top-down camera now.

Palm Sunday in town last weekend

By the river at 8pm yesterday. It now gets dark at 8:45.

Orțișoara: a not-that-old sign for a closed-down ABC, the equivalent of a dairy in NZ

A typical flower arrangement using old tyres

Orțișoara’s volunteer fire department, right next to those flower beds

The war memorial in Orțișoara. Almost all the names here are German; the town was settled by Germans in the late 18th century.
Family - Life :) - Other sports

Down time

May 5, 2024 plutomanby 0 Comments

Birmingham City have just been relegated to the third tier of English football, euphemistically known as League One. They put up a great fight against Norwich – and won! – but all the other teams down there were also victorious. They finished on 50 points, which is normally plenty, but this time was one point shy. You can thank Sheffield Wednesday’s manager for that – he performed miracles in dragging the team out of a seemingly impossible hole. Blues’ season on the other hand was a car crash of chaos, right from the appointment of Wayne Rooney in October. Then Tony Mowbray fell ill – that was extremely bad luck. The last time they were out of the top two divisions was in 1995. I do remember that 1994-95 season when they were managed by Barry Fry – a total headcase – and won the league amid the madness. A whole lot of fun for the fans. Hopefully the trips to Lincoln and Shrewsbury and Burton Albion will be as enjoyable this time around. So Plymouth Argyle (cool name) stay up in all their greenness, while Ipswich have made it to the Premier League after two barnstorming seasons. Good to see them back in the big time. It’s been fun to follow football for a short while, and I’ve realised that all the intrigue and excitement lies outside the Champions League and the top handful of teams. The Championship (the second English tier) is about as good as it gets.

Snooker. The corner pockets really are drum tight this year. Jak Jones, who has been unflappable throughout, now leads Stuart Bingham 13-10 with one session to play. Kyren Wilson and Dave Gilbert are now back for their final session; Wilson looks to be edging closer to the final. (Update: Wilson won 17-11 to book his place in the final.) On Thursday I watched a session on some site called Kick which had a chat facility off to the side. One of the viewers was Finnish, and people were talking about Karelian bear dogs. I didn’t know that Karelia was a region that straddles the current countries of Russia and Finland. Watching snooker is relaxing – I’ve struggled with that in recent weeks – but following any kind of sport is such a time sink. Not long now until it’s all over.

Mum was in a good mood last night. She’s had a decent run of late on the golf course. She’d been reading The Man Who Loved Only Numbers, a book about the famous Hungarian mathematician Paul Erdős – I bought it at university and she must have picked it off the shelf. He was a right nutter, she said. I didn’t expect her to read a book like that, and it’s given us something extra to talk about.

I had maths with Matei this morning. His first exam on Thursday seemed to go pretty well; I’ll see him again on Monday, the day before he tackles the second (longer) paper. His mother gave me a crème brûlée during today’s lesson; I sometimes get these unexpected freebies.

Yesterday I met Dorothy and Sanda for coffee in town. I hadn’t seen Sanda for months. We met at a place called Wise, very close to where I used to live. We talked about education systems and the Epoca de Aur, the last years of communism. Sanda mentioned her 82-year-old father’s pacemaker fitting which was done at the drop of a hat and took half an hour. Mindblowingly fast if you ask me. The walls were full of slogans in English; I normally avoid places like that because you know you’ll have to pay 50% more. I pointed out to Dorothy that there was a preposition error in one of the slogans – “bring her at Wise”, when it should have been “… to Wise”. It took an age for the staff to even notice us so we could pay our bill, despite vigorous arm waving and the fact that we were almost the only customers there. If you ever come to Romania, crappy or non-existent service is something you have to get used to. Sanda then told the (young) staff about the error on the sign; they were surprisingly good about it. (I wouldn’t have mentioned it myself, one because I don’t like to go there, and two because a slogan is just like wallpaper – it doesn’t provide information.)

I’m enjoying the quiet of the Orthodox Easter weekend (which has merged with the 1st May public holiday) and hearing the birds outside instead of the constant rumble of trucks. It reminds me of lockdown. On Wednesday I went down to the deserted riverside and bumped into the lady who lives opposite me. I enjoyed our chat on a day in which I’d been struggling. Tonight will be the Easter vigil with huge crowds, but I won’t be attending. Instead I’ll be going to the service tomorrow morning at Dorothy’s Baptist church.