Politics

Books - Family - Life :) - Politics

And the band played on

November 18, 2024 plutomanby 0 Comments

Scârț, the place that has all the communist memorabilia and also houses the theatre I went to last December, reopened today, so I met Dorothy there for coffee this afternoon. They had records and books for sale, but I didn’t buy anything. Tracy Chapman’s first album would be amazing to have on vinyl, but I wasn’t going to fork out 160 lei for it. We sat inside – the renovation was still under way – and had tea and coffee. We met an Australian guy of sixty or so who had a long white beard and had that general bushman look about him. He also had his cat with him. He talked at length about his cat, including how he nibbled first his fingers this morning, then his dick. He said he lived a two-minute walk from Scârț. He settled in Timișoara ten years ago. In the meantime he tried to return to his native Sydney but couldn’t afford a place to live. Dorothy and I talked about all manner of things including Balinese first names.

Chats with Mum and Dad now revolve around two things. Their house (see later) and how irredeemably screwed we seem to be as a species. Things weren’t looking too rosy even a decade ago, but as I see it we’ve recently entered a new dark age, a cultural desert, devoid of meaning and substance and most of all, hope. Too few of us care because we’ve been conditioned not to care. We’ve all got six-inch rectangular shiny things in our hands that distract us from anything that really matters. And most of us are pretty busy working, in some cases just to make ends meet, but in other cases so we can afford pointless shiny shit that we’ve been conditioned to think we need. The biggest story of the weekend was a geriatric ex-champion boxer (who was massively famous when I was about eight) losing to some YouTuber who is supposedly massively famous now. Both trousered millions just for showing up. There’s also some conference going on in a petro-state where they won’t do anything to solve a climate crisis that many in power deny even exists. Bitcoin has hit US$90,000, a new record high, on the back of Trump’s re-election. How that’s supposed to be a good thing for anybody, apart from the bros who have bitcoin, I have no idea. Elon Musk has even named a new government department after a crypto coin. It feels more and more that as we go about our daily lives we’re like the band that played on as the Titanic sank, though worse, because the band didn’t actually make the ship sink faster.

The House. It feels worthy of a capital H now. On Wednesday I called Mum and Dad. After a few minutes with Mum, she went to an exercise class, so I got to talk to Dad alone, which meant a certain calmness and frankness. Their place is irretrievably bad, he said. “I’m embarrassed to have people round, especially if they ever saw our old place.” Yikes. He’s doing a whole load of DIY now, including doing up a big old shed, a process my brother called “polishing a turd”. Is all this work really worth it? Mum is in denial, he said. The only good news is that the house and renovation have set them back (so far!) around $900k, when I thought the figure was more like $1.1 million. It was confusing – there were so many quotes floating around before (and as) the work got started. Dad wants to be out of there in two years. Sounds like a good plan. They should be challenging their energies into finding a suitable next place, rather than, you know, polishing turds.

I’m reading a book that I picked up at Luton Airport in (I think) June 2023. It’s called Honey & Spice, by Bolu Babalola. I chose it mostly because of the enticing red-and-yellow cover and the author’s name. (The author is a woman.) The modern themes and language (words like mandem which looks kind of Portuguese to me; it’s actually multicultural London English or MLE) make me think I’m too old for this book. It’s like the opposite of a historical novel; I’m reading about a time after my own time. Wikipedia gives the author’s date of birth as 24/2/91, so yes, she’s quite a bit younger than me, but I would have guessed even younger. I’ve so far read just four chapters, and well chapter three was great, so even though the rest of it has left me cold I’ll persevere a little while longer.

Two months, give or take, until I have a niece. Apparently within two hours of my sister-in-law finding out she was having a girl, her mother had bought a whole load of new pink shit. Because that’s what we now do.

Environment - Politics

Time to wake up

November 11, 2024 plutomanby 0 Comments

Mum shares a birthday with Donald Trump. Dad shares a birthday with Elon Musk. I share a birthday with Adolf Hitler. When it was over without yet being officially over over, we three sharers of villainous birthdays chatted for a good half-hour about what how we got here, how we’ve been asleep at the wheel for so long, and what further horrors are around the corner.

Unlike 2020 when the map of voting shifts was a mishmash of red and blue arrows and was described as a Jackson Pollock painting, this time it was one-way traffic. Only two states out of fifty didn’t move in Trump’s direction. Trump gained among men and women, irrespective of age or race. In other words, Kamala Harris (who ran a good campaign, I thought) faced an impossible task. Biden should have got out much earlier. In fact he should have been a one-term president from the start and the Democrats could have picked Harris or whoever else through a proper primary process. I can’t see the Dems nominating another woman in a hurry. Two of the last three elections they’ve failed to elect one to the White House, and in between they nominated an old white guy. Who won.

I listened to one commentator who complained of a “failure of imagination” as to how bad things could get under Trump and his minions. Best case scenario is their egos and lack of organisation keep the level of damage to a minimum. This is hard to imagine, now that the traditional Republicans have left the scene. It’s full-on MAGA now. Worst case is the US ends up like Hungary, or even Russia. For us in Europe, you can forget about the best case. Ukraine is fucked. There will be some “solution” whereby the Donbas is ceded to Russia, and then what? And forget anything to help the environment. “Drill, baby, drill”, which sounds like something out of Don’t Look Up, will be the mantra for the foreseeable future. They’re likely to drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska. A third of the area of Romania, this refuge is home to polar bears and other large mammals. It has already seen its ice melt, making sea levels rise, causing more ice to melt due to the albedo effect and so on, so this will be one catastrophe piled on another.

I spoke to my cousin earlier today on Skype. He lives just out of Albany, New York. Good luck for the next four years, I said. Two, he shot back. The midterms. But how can you be so sure the Democrats will gain, even if Trump wrecks everything? Then he talked about good old checks and balances and all the guardrails holding firm. Which they do, until they don’t. I asked him eight years ago if he was going to stay up and watch the election coverage. No, there’s no way that idiot will win. But he did. You wouldn’t think a rapist, a felon and the instigator of a deadly insurrection could run for the presidency a second time, let alone get over 50% of the vote, because that’s obviously fucking ridiculous. But he has. My cousin has a PhD and is very switched on, but I came away from our chat thinking, I dunno man, you might be asleep at the wheel here too. His wife later came on the line. It was great to chat to her. She said she cried when the election results came through.

Yesterday I had maths with Matei. We discussed the election. He talked about all the TikTok memes, making fun of Harris’s laugh and her “working-class family”. And her lies. She’s such a liar, isn’t she? Heaven help us all. Trump lies practically every time he opens his mouth. And are you aware that he tried to violently overturn the 2020 election? He wasn’t. He was twelve at the time, so I suppose I’ll let him off, but it’s interesting that there was no TikTok about that. As I’ve said many times on here, social media is destroying us. Then we moved on to talking about bridges and cathedrals and maths.

Politics

Devastating

November 8, 2024 plutomanby 0 Comments

Unlike the previous two US elections, I didn’t get up at 2am to watch the results. But I couldn’t sleep. This will probably be seismically bad. Eventually I got up at 6:30, when it might reasonably have still been in electoral limbo. It wasn’t. I saw North Carolina had already been called for Trump, a bad sign, then flicked over to the New York Times needle. It showed Trump with a 90% chance of winning the election, but just by eyeballing the figures from the swing states, I could see this was a conservative (ha!) estimate and his chances were more like 97%.

Not a surprise – I was out by one state in that map I posted last weekend – but utterly devastating. I’ve had eleven lessons since the election was called, and I’m knackered. Tomorrow is a lighter day and I’ll probably post properly then. And get some damn exercise.

Photos - Politics - Travel: Romania

Buziaș again

November 4, 2024 plutomanby 0 Comments

I visited Buziaș this morning. It was my second time there – I went there with Mark last winter, before I bought the car. It was wonderful with the sun shining through the autumn colours and the leaves continuing to accumulate in a golden blanket. I didn’t do much but wander through the park – extensive for a small town – and the surroundings. Oh, and go inside a large abandoned building. Buziaș might be my favourite town within a half-hour drive of Timișoara.

The presidential race appears to be very close now. I woke up this morning to see a shock poll of Iowa from a highly respected pollster which gave Kamala Harris a three-point lead. Iowa is a state that should be firmly in Trump’s camp. But I’ve been here before with promising polls just before voting day. I remember big leads for Remain just before Leave won. I can’t believe that’s over eight years ago. There were also polls giving Biden huge leads in 2020, and he only just won. (Trump supporters were less likely to answer polls. This could happen again this time.)

Apart from the grave danger a Trump presidency poses to America and the whole world, I still find him utterly repugnant. Îmi repugnă, you can actually say in Romanian. His values are diametrically opposed to mine, those that were instilled into me from my parents, my grandmother, and my teachers at primary school.

I was a bit surprised to hear Dorothy voice support for the US abortion bans. I get it, you’re religious and that’s fine, but even if you’re anti-abortion (which you’re entitled to be), actually banning it is horrifically cruel. Iowa, by the way, has a terrifying six-week abortion ban. Last weekend I watched a documentary on the January 6th insurrection. A scary number of the participants invoked God.

Update: Maia Sandu has been re-elected president of Moldova. She won the second round by a solid margin. That’s a relief. Just a week ago Georgia decided to go pro-Moscow in their election.

This booth was phoneless

This sundial was a bit fast. It was 10:35.

To the toilet. It was brand new and clean, surprisingly.

A squirrel

The abandoned building

I wonder what happened in 1980

This hand-painted sign is very Romanian, particularly those Bs

The Romanian elections aren’t far away either

The Catholic church

There was once a “first class” restaurant at the bottom of this crumbling block

An old Romtelecom phone box near where I live. The phone no longer works.

Environment - Photos - Politics - Writing a book

Book plans and planning for the worst

November 3, 2024 plutomanby 0 Comments

A fairly productive Saturday. An online session (I hesitate to call it a lesson) with the priest, then two maths lessons in Dumbrăvița. After doing quadratic equations with Matei, we discussed the US election for the last 10 or 15 minutes. (It would have been helpful to have devoted the whole two hours to the election. So much maths there. The Electoral College, gerrymandering, and all the rest of it.) Matei brought up the site 270towin.com where you can plug in your own predictions.

After my lessons I met Dorothy to discuss the smaller of the books I (and Dad) have been working on. We wanted to meet at Scârț but it was closed for renovation. What kind of renovation, we wondered. Its messiness is kind of the whole point. I hope it’s for something structural rather than any kind of tarting up. The area surrounding Scârț, which has a park, cobbled streets, and architecture from the last days of the Austro-Hungarian empire, might be my favourite part of the city. We ended up having our tea and coffee a place called Viniloteca (as in vinyl records), which I’d previously misread as Vinoteca (as in wine). It was great, with all its proper music. I felt a certain pang when Tonight by David Bowie and Tina Turner came on. I’ll have to go there with Mark sometime. I didn’t buy any of the records or T-shirts on sale, but that wasn’t my focus. Dorothy and I looked at Dad’s 25 pictures, each one demonstrating a common error that Romanians make when they communicate in English. Seeing a whole body of Dad’s work really shows you what an extraordinary talent he has. (I know I’m biased.) On Monday I’ll try and arrange a meeting with the publishers to see what (if anything) will be the next step in getting the book into print. Will it cost me money? I say “if anything” because this is Romania, where nothing is guaranteed.

Yes, the election. I read an article that described it as bearing down on us all. “Bear down on” – an ominous three-word phrasal verb if ever there was one. Mum, Dad and I doomed for half an hour on Skype last night. What a Trump win would mean for Ukraine and the security of Europe as a whole. What it would mean for democracy. What it would mean for the environment which is deteriorating before our eyes. How the fuck the future of so much of Europe depends on a few thousand ill-informed voters in Cumberland County in Pennsylvania who don’t even care about foreign policy. (I know nothing about Cumberland County. It was a name I picked at random from the list of counties. I’m sure the people who live there are lovely. But that’s kind of the point.) The main thrust of our conversation was: how did we get here? When my parents were my age and I was a teenager, this sort of talk would have been unimaginable.

This was my guess on the 270towin website:

Of the seven swing states, I gave only Michigan to Harris. The most likely map is in fact all seven states falling to Trump. That’s because of how correlated the states are with each other. If there’s a polling error of a few points, it’ll likely be reflected across the board. In the last couple of days, things have looked marginally better for Harris, so I’m still hopeful. It’s certainly not a done deal, as Dad called it last night. But it’s best to mentally prepare for the worst, especially when there’s absolutely nothing you can do about it.

Talking of the environment, more than 200 people have so far died in Biblical-level flooding in Valencia.

Crysanthemums at the market yesterday. It was 1st November, the Day of the Dead.

The two pictures above were taken today.

Language teaching - Other sports - Politics - Tennis

Pretty vacant

October 26, 2024 plutomanby 0 Comments

Seven lessons yesterday. It’s rare to have that many. All that talking gets quite tiring, especially when it’s online. I’m hoping to keep Sunday free (unlike last weekend) and hop over the border to Szeged in Hungary. I’ve heard good things about the city. I may even make a detour on the way there or back to take in the beautiful autumn colours.

When I spoke to Dad this morning, I mentioned the difficulty I have in connecting with young women aged between 15 and 25 or thereabouts in my lessons. Dad said that’s to be expected on account of the age gap between us, but I disagreed. There’s a certain vacancy there. The lights are on, but nobody’s home. Eight hours a day on Instagram, with its laser focus on image, will do that to you. When my university friend came to stay we talked about this. He reckoned that 10% of young women will suffer long-term damage – they’ll be confined to a (permanent?) zombie state – as a result of their social media use. Yes, boys and young men have their own issues, mostly around gaming. They’re up half the night and can’t stay awake in class. But I get the feeling that it’s something they’ll grow out of. They also do normal stuff like go out on their bikes or play football. One teenage boy had just been to football practice before our lesson. I got him to do an exercise where he had to choose between two verb tenses. Sometimes he wanted to use a different one. “Sorry mate,” I said, “You’re offside!” I raised my arm as if I was a linesman. He thought that was funny. With most girls, that sort of interaction just isn’t possible.

Talking of sport, Mum was pleased that Team New Zealand had won the America’s Cup. I think of it as an obscene waste of money. In other sporting news (from probably two weeks ago now), Rafael Nadal announced his retirement. The extraordinary two-decade-long rivalry between three titans of the game is now over; only Djokovic still remains. I also saw that Wimbledon is doing away with line judges in favour of automated line calling. I’m surprised they didn’t do this back in 2021 for the first tournament after the Covid cancellation; the tech certainly existed then. I read an article by an ex-line judge at Wimbledon. It’s something I wouldn’t have minded doing. As for being a ballboy though, bugger that. I’d have been terrible anyway. As a kid, trying to coordinate myself with other kids just wasn’t going to happen.

I should also mention football for the second time in this post. Earlier this year I wrote regular updates on Birmingham City’s eventual tumble through the trap door into the third tier of English football. A lot had to go wrong for that team to be relegated. A lot did go wrong. In their first season in such a low league since 1995, Birmingham have so far played eleven games, losing one, drawing one, and winning all the rest. They spent big over the summer and getting sell-out crowds to watch some pretty exciting football. There’s a sense of optimism around the club not seen in more than a decade. It’s funny how things turn out.

Just eleven days until the US election, and I have a strong sense of impending doom. (I wonder if anything else but doom can be impending. I never hear anyone talk of an impending root canal, as frightening as it must be.) This morning I saw two polls, one showing a tie nationally, and another showing Harris with only a three-point lead in New Hampshire, a state outside the “swing zone” which Biden won by more than seven points in 2020. Just two polls, but there have been several now that depict a race inching slowly but surely in Trump’s direction. My gut feeling, and that’s all it is, is that Trump will win the seven swing states 6-1 or even 7-0, perhaps even taking a “non-swing” state in the process. He may even win the popular vote or at least come very close. In that case (or any other of the many scenarios that see Trump elected again) I’ll want to log off from global news for my own sanity, keeping just my Romanian news app. I don’t think I could bear to see that grotesque excuse for a man day after day. Dad said that Harris hasn’t been charismatic enough, and charisma is all that matters over there, but what would “acceptable charisma” in a woman even look like in the US? A very “charismatic” woman would be perceived as too boisterous or not feminine enough. No matter what she does, she’s facing an uphill battle in those swing states simply because she’s a woman.

Last Sunday an important pair of votes took place in Moldova, Romania’s baby sister, which I would like to visit one day. (My first introduction to Moldova came from reading Tony Hawks’ Playing the Moldovans at Tennis, a funny but thought-provoking read.) The first round of the presidential election saw pro-European incumbent Maia Sandu come top with 42%, but she now faces a second round in nine days’ time against Alexandr Stoianoglo who is pro-Russia. There’s no guarantee that Sandu will win. There was also a referendum on amending Moldova’s constitution to include a path towards EU membership. The vote passed, just: 50.4% voted in favour. If Sandu doesn’t remain president, I expect that will be knocked on the head.

Any way you look at it, we’re living in fragile, unpredictable times.

Family - Life :) - Maths teaching - Politics

Trying to make sense of it all

October 22, 2024 plutomanby 0 Comments

It’s been a tiring last few days. My students’ constant chopping and changing of lesson times, and all the associated messages, have been exhausting for me. More than the lessons themselves.

I had a funny lesson this morning with an 18-year-old guy whom I last saw in August 2023. He came armed with textbooks on something called “consumer math” from an American publication called Christian Light. There were maths problems, mostly of a practical nature, interspersed with readings from the Bible. He told me he’d so far done them with the help of ChatGPT. That became pretty clear when I asked him to work out a percentage. He’s homeschooled (that’s highly unusual in Romania) and wants to study in America. His English is excellent.

I spoke to Mum just before that lesson. She still hasn’t fully got over her cold, which she thinks might have been another bout of Covid. She was annoyed that she’d accidentally deleted a recording of a netball match. I said that all wasn’t lost – it’s 2004 and online stuff exists – and sure enough she found it on YouTube. My parents still think of TV (and they watch a lot of TV) as something that comes on at a specific time, and that’s it. A little while ago I told Dad an “old person” joke I’d seen – “What time does that programme start on Netflix?” – and he didn’t get it.

Our clocks go back this coming weekend. These are the dying embers of not-winter, in other words. It especially feels that way with the US election only two weeks away. I remember very clearly the lead-up to the 2020 election. We were in the midst of a horrendous second Covid wave. Ambulances sped past every couple of minutes. I was still in my old flat then – it was on the route to the hospital. The city was shrouded in thick fog that didn’t lift for days. And then the election. Surely he can’t win again. Just look at the polls. But just imagine if he does.

The polls were way off in several swing states, but he still lost. I actually enjoyed the drawn-out vote-tallying process, especially when it became clear Biden would get over the line. But now there’s a full-scale war practically on my doorstep and the guy who just said that Arnold Palmer was a real man because he had a ten-inch dick (or whatever), and is now arguably a favourite to become the most powerful man in the world, supports the guy who invaded a completely independent country. How can 75 million-odd Americans vote for this heap of shit, just because they’re angry that gas isn’t under $2 a gallon? It’s beyond fucked up.

Recently I’ve been watching YouTube videos on maths. There are a couple of popular channels I like: Stand-up Maths (run by Matt Parker) and Numberphile. A regular guest on Numberphile is Neil Sloane (now 85 years old) who was born in Wales and emigrated to Australia but has lived most of his life in the US. I particularly like his videos on sequences and their often crazy patterns. His voice and manner are quite soothing.

Language teaching - Life :) - Music - Politics

A day in monotone

October 17, 2024 plutomanby 0 Comments

It’s been a slow day today. In mid-morning I got an attack of sinus pain which I staved off with an Advil and several paracetamol. So I didn’t get the excruciating pain I suffer on rare occasions, but I became sensitive to light and sound, and energy drained from me. I lay on the sofa and dozed until 20 minutes before my first lesson (of four scheduled) started. This was an online session with an eight-year-old boy. He’s a nice boy. But because I was more sensitive to sounds than usual, the monotony of his reading voice got to me. What Does Jack Want To Do He Wants To Play With His Dog What Does Sam Like To Eat… All at one note – Ba Ba Ba Ba Ba – without any pauses between sentences, like a helium-fuelled robot. Native-speaker children are like this too when they learn to read, but Romanians take it to another level because their native language stays at a more constant pitch than English does.

Annoyingly I only got two of my four lessons. One of the two “real millennial” girls completely forgot, while the Bucharest-based guy in his forties cancelled with 50 minutes to go. (I told that young lady she’d need to pay me, then changed my mind because she’s still pretty new and it was her first “offence”.)

Tomorrow I’ve got seven sessions in my diary – that’s a lot – but the odds are against me actually having that many. One of them is with Alex, a boy of nearly 14. In a recent session he told me how his grandfather had just bought three of the latest Samsung phones (for himself, Alex’s mum and Alex) for €1100 apiece. (Well-off people talk in euros; poorer people talk in lei.) He wanted to know if it was true that black Air Forces had been banned in British schools. Black Air Forces? Are these shoes, or what? And how the hell would I bloody know?

Yesterday I got my hair cut. I went to a place at the other end of the (long) street where I lived for two months in a guest house. I was the only customer. The hairdresser was a lady of sixty or so. She went on about how bad things were in Romania compared to the “old days”, then she talked about all the people she knew who had become ill from the Covid vaccines. I asked her how she knew it was the vaccines. By this time she was in full flow, so much that she’d stopped actually cutting my hair. Mercifully she got off the subject and resumed my haircut.

Song of the week – Demons by the Welsh band Super Furry Animals. The song, which came out in 1997, makes an inauspicious start (I’d say), but then gets much better. The video is fantastic throughout. It features the Colombian capital Bogotá. It makes me really want to visit South America. Another Super Furry Animals song I like (in fact there are a few) is Y Gwyneb Iau, sung in Welsh.

Two posts ago I mentioned tetrahedral numbers. I neglected to mention that they came in handy for me in my online poker days. How many different seven badugis are there? That’ll be 20, the fourth tetrahedral number. What about eight badugis? That’s 35, the fifth tetrahedral number. And so on. If GG Poker ever get round to adding draw games and the like, I’ll probably give it a whirl, but otherwise I’m not going back there.

Kamala Harris is going on Fox News in a few hours. Great move, I reckon. More eyeballs on her, wherever they come from, are what she needs. And it makes her appear unfazed. It is risky of course, because she could completely bomb, but the upside outweighs the downside. No matter what, I still have a nasty feeling about 5th November.

Language teaching - Life :) - Politics

Leaky roof and keeping up with the kids

October 5, 2024 plutomanby 0 Comments

I suppose the big news from me is that the roof of this apartment block is leaking and needs a repair pretty urgently. We’ve had a quote for 65,000 lei, which (assuming it’s split evenly between the ten owners) means we each have to pay the equivalent of £1100 or NZ$2300. Now that I’ve left the world of money far behind me, that feels like a lot. It’s a lot of lessons, certainly. A lot of trying to explain to a ten-year-old boy the rule for adding an S to verb forms while a parrot is screeching his head off in the room next door. That actually happened yesterday.

I’m now teaching more kids than ever before. Fitting them all in is a major headache. At some point I may have to switch to group sessions. Tomorrow I’ve got four sessions scheduled, running from 7:45 till 4:30. One adult – the priest – followed by a trip to Dumbrăvița for the three kids.

There’s just a month until the terrifying US election. So consequential, but nothing any of us can do about it. I suppose I should at least be grateful that Harris has a fighting chance. Biden was heading for a drubbing (by recent standards) until mercifully he pulled out. I heard that John Key, former prime minister of New Zealand, has come out in support of Trump. Remarkable, isn’t it? He was leader of one of the most peaceful and least corrupt countries on the planet for eight years, and now he’s backing that way-too-old hate-filled criminal. He’ll be better for the economy, Key said. Even if that’s true (and it’s a big if), that tells you all you need to know about Key. As prime minister he emphasised economy at the expense of society, and now he’s even prepared to dispense with global stability. (And yeah, his fingers are in a lot of pies, and it might well be better for his personal economy if Trump were to win.)

Family - Language teaching - Politics - Romania

The big bam!

September 16, 2024 plutomanby 0 Comments

I said last time that seasons in Romania change with a sudden bam!, and what a bam! this has been. Its real name is Cyclone Boris (yes, these things have names now) which has dumped months of rain on us in a few days. In the county of Galați in the east, flooding has claimed six lives. I wonder how many Romanians died from the heat waves that immediately preceded all of this. Climate change is real. On a personal note, I haven’t minded the deluge. I feel I’m built to handle it, in a way I’m simply not with the extreme heat. Yesterday I met Mark in town. I got there early. Piața Victoriei was almost deserted, lockdown-like, so I could take in the architecture without worrying about bumping into people. We ate at Berăria 700. Obviously we didn’t sit outside as we normally would. Inside means you’re in part of the old fortress, which has a real cosy feel about it.

In town yesterday afternoon

Work is getting back to normal, though it’s a different normal. So many kids now. They all want (or their parents want, let’s face it) lessons just after the school day finishes and it’s impossible to accommodate everybody.

Part of a lesson on Friday

Last week I heard some dreadful news. A 17-year-old student of mine (we started when he was just 11) has been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. His mother messaged me with the news. His English is excellent; he’s come on in giant leaps in the six years I’ve spent with him. He wanted to be a pilot. We often discussed planes, routes, accidents and incidents. Sometimes I’d talk about planes that I flew on as a kid, such as the three-engined DC-10. This diagnosis has surely scuppered his plans. For someone so young (and he had an old head on young shoulders) it’s so sad.

I saw snippets of last week’s presidential debate. Kamala Harris performed very well. She knew what buttons to press. The “rally size” button was particularly effective. She made Trump seem even more egotistical and unhinged than usual. Trump went on about Haitian immigrants stealing and eating cats and dogs. That was the clip played around the world. What didn’t get so much airtime was his admiration of Viktor Orbán, the prime minister of Hungary. I doubt many in the US would even have known who Orbán was. But it certainly got some attention here in Romania. The prospect of Trump getting back in again is scary as hell. Harris needs to get herself out there more. More rallies, more interviews. She’s shown she can perform. Just seven weeks to go now. (I’ve just seen that apparently there was another attempt on Trump’s life while he was playing golf, though it didn’t get nearly as far as in July.)

Yesterday I saw my nephew on a WhatsApp video call with my brother. It was his second birthday. There were balloons and streamers and all sorts. Mum and Dad are now serious about a trip to Europe, probably next May. So that’s good.