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Family - Films - Headaches - Language teaching - Life :) - Politics - Scrabble

Everything else has flown out the window

March 31, 2026

by plutoman 0 Comments

I’ve just looked up “chronic fatigue syndrome”. I fit an awful lot of the criteria. The Wikipedia article mentions four levels, as classified by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) in the UK. This is how the least severe category is described: “People with mild ME/CFS can usually still work and care for themselves, but they will need their free time to recover from these activities rather than engage in social and leisure activities.” That sounds like me right now. Working and caring for myself is possible but a struggle, and everything else just about flies out the window. When you reach the second category you can forget about work, and as for levels three and four, they’re terrifying. There’s a paragraph entitled “unrefreshing sleep”: Even a full night’s sleep is typically non-restorative. That’s absolutely the case for me. What I don’t get is the link between what I’m facing now and the headaches. I’ve been headache-free since late Sunday afternoon. If I stay like that for another 48 hours will I bounce back a bit? And what if I don’t?

On Sunday I saw that film with Dorothy. I felt a bit better then, and walked into town. That took me 35 minutes, the same as normal. Before the film we ate dinner at Berăria 700. Dorothy told me about her packed Sunday, full of social activities which were mostly related to the church. “I don’t think you’d have enjoyed all of that,” she said. I wouldn’t have enjoyed it even if I’d been feeling normal, I said, let alone right now. Then we wandered to Studio to see the film. We saw Primavara, an Italian film set in the early 18th century at an orphanage in Venice. It follows the life of young Cecilia, a talented violinist who just happens to have Vivaldi as her teacher. The real attraction of the film is the music, and because we sat in the second row, we had no trouble hearing it. These revamped cinemas – there are now four of them dotted around the city – have been a real boon. Tickets are inexpensive, the website is fantastic, the cinemas themselves are very well looked after, and most importantly you no longer have to go to a mall to see a movie. Last week though an eleven-year-old boy told me of his bad experience at one of those cinemas. You couldn’t get popcorn! I don’t think you’re the target market. Yesterday Dad told me about the old cinema in St Ives and how he saw Tron there. Tron? I thought it had already closed by then. I found out (from someone’s blog) that the Regal Cinema closed in 1985.

When I got back from the cinema, I called my brother. He mentioned the possibility of fuel rationing in the UK, as happened there in 1973. Power cuts, kids skiving off school to see football matches on weekday afternoons (because obviously they couldn’t play under lights). Maybe people will be told to work from home, Covid-style, my brother said. I also spoke to my sister-in-law who seems better now, after going back to work. It’s always hard talking to her because she’s too far away from my brother’s device to hear her well. After our call, I thought about how Mum must have felt coming off the boat in Southampton in ’73, having come from a land of plenty, and being plunged into that.

Yesterday Dad and I talked about the upcoming Artemis II launch. It took just 66 years to get from the first manned flight of any sort to putting men on the moon, with the aid of computers far less powerful than the ones in everyone’s pockets today. Almost as long has passed since then, and look at us! We agreed that if and when a human walks on Mars, it won’t be the Americans who make it happen. Most likely it’ll be the Chinese. Dad also mentioned Rocket Lab, New Zealand’s space company. It’s pretty incredible that NZ even has one (though I think it’s partly American-owned). Rocket Lab launches off Mahia Peninsula, that little triangular-ish bit that sticks out between Gisborne and Napier.

Mum and Dad seem a lot better now. Having one really good eye all of a sudden has helped Mum immensely. With the ever-changing global situation, nobody knows whether they’ll make it over in May, and that’s OK.

In a lesson last week I had another young woman who, despite being highly intelligent, didn’t know about 9/11. She was born in 2000. I showed her the pictures of that fateful day when she was a baby. Romania wasn’t in the EU at that point, and few people would have had the internet. It didn’t have anything like the impact here that it did in the UK and much of the west. She grew up in a railway house at Cicir (pronounced chee-CHEER: it even sounds like a train’s whistle) just outside Arad. We’ve had a lot of productive sessions since she started in November, but she’s just got a new job. Great for her, but that will make it much harder for us to meet.

I need to stop watching YouTube. I’ve been watching a lot of late, mainly because I’ve had less energy to do anything physical, but it doesn’t help me mentally. Two recent videos I watched were about an ill-advised water slide in Kansas that cost a ten-year-old boy his life in 2016, and Balloonfest, the release of 1.4 million balloons in Cleveland in 1986 that (depending on who you listen to) led to unforeseen circumstances. At the very least, I need to stop watching videos about America.

In a post on 3rd November 2024, just before the last US election, I said how crazy it was that the votes of a few thousand poorly-informed people in Pennsylvania will have a massive impact on billions of us throughout the world. We’re seeing that play out now in devastating fashion.

Scrabble: I’ve drawn well in the latest round of matches and am sitting on four wins and one loss. That defeat was by just four points; I’m still incapable of nutting out an endgame properly. I managed to beat that Romanian guy at my third attempt. I picked both blanks and found a bingo each time. He stormed back with a bingo scoring in the 80s, the board got blocked, and I didn’t particularly fancy my chances until I got down VAPOURS (hooking the A onto the front of JAR) for 97. In the end I won 476-387. There’s a chance I could win promotion but it’s still too early to say.

Cat - Life :) - Photos - Politics - Scrabble

Entering the world of the possible again

March 25, 2026

by plutoman 0 Comments

Today I’ve got a bit more energy. I’m even responding to messages. (I’d just about gone incommunicado for a while.) The trick is to get up at my normal time, even if I don’t have lessons. The lessons themselves, assuming I don’t have a splitting headache, are to my benefit too. I got 18 litres of water from the well today; that certainly felt a lot easier than the last time I did it.

Late last month I tried to pay my rates bill at the post office – you can do that there – but they had the wrong address for me. I was sent to the city hall. There I had to fill in various forms and make a small payment, then I needed to wait days or weeks for an email confirmation. That email came two weeks ago. Yesterday morning I went back to the post office. I was feeling like crap and couldn’t handle the length of the queue so I gave up. In the afternoon I returned – almost no queue – and they still had the wrong address. You’ll need to go back to the city hall.

This morning I did just that. When I got to the end of the short take-a-number queue, the lady told me I needed to visit the Direcția Fiscală which, according to a poster she pointed out to me, moved to Iulius Town in early 2023. Oh god, you’re telling me I have to go back there?! Iulius Town is the same dystopia I found myself in last week. Elevated fakeness, surrounded by soulless tower blocks, none of which existed when I moved to this city. Though it is no more than a few years old, I feel I’m in eighties Bedford or Milton Keynes. On one side you look down on abandoned factories and silos that really are from the eighties. So it was back on my bike to Iulius Town. I had no trouble locating the Direcția Fiscală where people were queuing out the door. There was somebody all securitied up who kept whizzing by on a kind of Segway, as well a policeman controlling the entrance and smoking, just like half the people in the queue. It took me a while to get inside, then it was take-a-number time again. I was 18th in line. The woman told me to make a written declaration (Can you do this in Romanian?), then commentated on my surname which was the same as someone famous-ish 35 years ago. Only I was born with it, he wasn’t quite. She said my address would be updated within 45 days. That means that when I come to pay my rates I’ll face a (very small) fine or interest payment.

Getting that done (assuming it is actually “done”) was encouraging. A few days ago, or even yesterday, I couldn’t have handled it. Physically and (in recent days) mentally, this month has been a right mess. I haven’t had a bad headache since last Thursday. I hope that on Friday, as long as I stay largely headache-free, I’ll be able to tackle the cleaning. Last night I went back to the doctor’s surgery and got my blood pressure checked again. It had gone down: it was 140/80.

Earlier this morning I had a lesson with the English teacher in Slobozia. She told me the latest chapter in her life with her 15-year-old son, who has turned into a monster. “He bit me,” she said. Sorry, what, he isn’t a cat. Oh, beat. Romanians fail to make the distinction between those two vowel sounds, short and long. Live and leave, fill and feel, to say nothing of pairs that involve beach and sheet. “But in the past he has bitten me too.” I gave her a quick test at the start of the lesson. I showed her Trump’s latest all-caps social media post where he talks (lies, probably) about recent conversations with the Iranians. Can you spot the mistakes in lines one and nine? She could. I remember as a very little boy our teacher telling us the difference between the witch that flies on a broomstick and “which one”. The fact that he can’t spell basic words or use caps lock properly is the least of our worries, but once again, how did we get here? (That post on Truth Social, if that’s where it was, was likely just to manipulate the markets. Trump doesn’t understand a whole lot, but he does understand financial markets.) When I asked my student if she’d been following the war, she asked “What war?”

I read something funny at the weekend about “Strait-of-Hormuz guy”, the sort of guy you meet at the pub who, a month ago, wouldn’t have known how to spell or pronounce Hormuz or locate it on any map, but now knows its every nook and cranny and knows about all the ramifications of West Texas crude hitting one-fifty a barrel.

On BBC News yesterday I saw an ad for the Burj Azizi tower in Dubai, which when completed will be only a little shorter than the Burj Khalifa. Oh yes. The second-tallest building in the world. Can’t wait to visit once it’s topped out.

Yesterday I bumped into Lili (who lives on the first floor) as I was collecting a package from one of those Easybox things nearby. The package contained eye shades which I’d ordered online. Lili asked me if my nephew and niece will ever come to visit. I’m sure they’d like to play with your cat, she said.

I met Dorothy at Scârț on Sunday. We sat outside and played Scrabble in Romanian. I won 354-234 after putting down SCAPATE for 92 and DOBOS for 54. (Doboș is a very delicious cake that comes from Hungary but is also popular here, just over the border.) Mainly it was just nice to be outside.

I took the picture above by the Bega yesterday. This is recent abandonment. When I arrived in Timișoara it was full of purple bikes which you could unhook (with a card and PIN code) and rehook at another station when you’d finished with them. Now it’s just for pigeons and their poo.

I managed to get Kitty mid-yawn this morning. I know how she feels.

It might not look like one, but this is certainly a restaurant. It has opened in Iulius Town. And they called it that?!

Update: This evening I had a lesson with a man in his mid-thirties and his 16-year-old niece. He’d had his teeth professionally whitened. “Bleach 4”, apparently. They were very white. And as for her, she wanted to know how to spell “which”.

Cat - Headaches - Life :) - Photos - Politics

Challenging times

March 16, 2026

by plutoman 0 Comments

It’s been a pretty challenging two weeks now. We’ve had beautiful spring weather but the headaches haven’t stopped (sometimes the pain is on one side of my head, sometimes the other) and the perpetual fatigue has made me want to curl up into a ball. Just when I’m beginning to recover, or sometimes well before that, I’m crippled by another bad headache, so as well as having to deal with the pain I feel permanently exhausted. It’s like chronic fatigue syndrome or what they used to call ME. Maybe it’s what long Covid would feel like. Yesterday morning I managed to walk to Karlsruhe Park (named after one of the places that Timișoara is twinned with). When I got there it was already quarter to twelve. I read my book for a bit in the sunshine, then dawdled home via the supermarket. When I got to my shamefully untidy home I was exhausted. Kitty, who has been lovely of late, was all meeaa-eeeaa-yyeeeoww and in my face. Seriously, just piss off, would you? She then scratched me on my hand there was blood everywhere. Great.

I need to stop watching YouTube. It isn’t helping. I saw a podcast at the weekend in which two youngish anti-Trump Americans mentioned Trump’s message to Keir Starmer. We don’t need your help because we’ve already won. One of the podcast hosts said, “If I’m Starmer, I’m like, fuck you man.” Too right. And then a few days later Trump sent a message urging several countries including the UK (and China!) to send warships to free up the Strait of Hormuz. Not enough has been made of Trump’s tweet (or whatever it was) saying that they might bomb an Iranian island again “just for fun”. Dear God.

When I last filled up with diesel, the price was somewhere in the upper sevens (lei per litre). At the weekend, diesel prices nudged over nine. Fancy high-octane diesel (if that’s a thing) has reached the mid-nines, so some of the stations are now getting pretty close to running out of digits.

Family - Headaches - Life :) - Politics - Scrabble

Battery just about flat

March 9, 2026

by plutoman 0 Comments

As I recovered from Monday’s excruciatingly painful headache, I felt a sense of déjà vu. It was late winter (or early spring), I was (or had been) in a lot of pain, a terrifying war had just broken out, and all I felt like doing was reading a book and not a lot else. It was a basically a repeat of four years ago when I had the kidney stones. On Wednesday, around the time I wrote my last post, I felt things were getting back to normal, but I had a lot of lower-level head pain late in the week and my energy stores have been through the floor. I’ve been able to get through my lessons, just about, but cleaning and life admin have gone by the board. This flat is an unholy mess. My students – those who don’t pay cash at least – could be behind half a dozen payments and I wouldn’t have a clue right now.

Yesterday I was really flagging by my fourth and final lesson. My student, a 17-year-old girl, could certainly tell. This afternoon I went down by the river where I read a few chapters of Colony. Even walking there took 50% longer than normal. There were some interesting people down there, including a large group of gypsies in the park, and a couple in their sixties (the woman short and fat, wearing a Red Hot Chili Peppers T-shirt, the man tall and slim with white hair) who kept walking past me with their five small dogs as I sat on a bench. People were attracted by the warmer weather – we were in the high teens – and the (misplaced?) optimism that blossom and colour brings.

Mum didn’t have the easiest of weeks either. She had a urinary tract infection and on Tuesday was in a lot of pain. I had a good chat with her on Wednesday when the antibiotics were already kicking in. Unusually, Dad wasn’t around. We talked a lot about the war in Iran. She said she doesn’t even want to talk to her Trump-supporting brother now. I know what it’s like to have my son on the front line. Iraq was terrible, Afghanistan even worse.

I tried to watch Pete Hegseth’s speech at the Pentagon but had to switch him off after about three minutes. “Death and destruction from the sky all day long.” What a nasty, and unhinged, piece of shit. And as for Trump’s message to Starmer – We don’t need people that join Wars after we’ve already won! – where do you even start? Stop the world, I want to get off.

This morning I spoke to both Mum and Dad. We discussed the very real possibility (yet again!) that they don’t make it over. I was pretty sure they’d booked their trip with Singapore Airlines, but at the last minute they switched to Emirates because it was cheaper. It’s anyone’s guess whether planes will be flying in and out of Dubai, or anywhere else in the region, in mid-May.

Scrabble. Guess what, I got another promotion. After winning both those last two games, I finished third in the league. That means I’ll be in the fourth division out of (probably) twelve. I’m fully aware that I’m punching well above my weight here, and they’ve even introduced a statistic that shows how lucky or unlucky you’ve been. According to that new metric, I have indeed been lucky. I’ll be delighted if I can avoid relegation next time – I’ll have my hands full, that’s for sure.

Books - Headaches - Life :) - Politics - Scrabble

A brutal morning

March 3, 2026

by plutoman 0 Comments

This morning was just horrendous for me. I had what I used to think of as a “sinus headache” but I’m pretty sure was actually a migraine. I don’t get these too often, and the severe pain normally subsides within two hours when I do. But this morning I suffered at least four hours of excruciating pain. Light and sound became unbearable – I blocked them out as best I could, and had no choice but to shut Kitty away in the living room. For some time I writhed around on my bed, then decided I was better off pacing around and bumping into the door jambs while trying to let as little light into my eyes as possible. I was fortunate not to have any lessons until later in the day. Otherwise I don’t know how I would have coped. I had a simple late lunch of banana sandwiches and yoghurt (rich food would have made me sick), then managed to walk to the supermarket. Even though the pain had eased and survived my lessons, I was (and still am) on a major go-slow. This episode reminded me of my father; when I was a boy, he got migraines of terrifying intensity, duration and frequency. One work day in five was pretty much wrecked by them. Like I do now, he had no boss, so he could get by. (In his twenties, before I was born, he did have a boss. I’m sure his migraines were very bad then too. Heaven knows how he managed.) Though he still gets headaches, they aren’t anything like as severe as they used to be.

When I spoke to Dad yesterday, he wondered why Trump has been able to make a mockery of America’s famous “checks and balances”. It must just be his popularity, Dad said. Well no, Trump isn’t that popular. He never has been. He’s got an extremely vociferous base, that’s certainly true, but that’s not the same thing as popularity. For each of his fans, there’s more than one person who hates his guts. Really Trump’s success in breaking those norms is down to him wanting to be a dictator and having zero respect for the job of president. None of his predecessors – not even George W. Bush who was hopeless – were anything like that. And then there’s social media. I can’t imagine a Trump presidency would have been vaguely possible without it.

I didn’t play squash with Mark yesterday after all. He messaged me first thing to tell me he’d had too much Guinness the night before, so I had to call up the sports centre and cancel. There’s something typically British about getting rip-roaring drunk in your mid-fifties. (Personally I think any Guinness is too much Guinness.) Though I have a beer fairly often, it’s usually just the one, and three would be my absolute limit. The hangover isn’t worth it, and any social event that involves a lot of drinking isn’t one I’m likely to enjoy anyway.

After getting through Walter Mitty I’ve started a new book: The Colony by Annika Norlin, published last year. It’s based in Sweden and translated from Swedish into English. The author is a pop star (I didn’t know that when I bought the book) and to my surprise she was born in 1977; I guessed she was several years younger. I’m thoroughly enjoying it so far. Anything that involves chucking iPhones into lakes gets my vote.

Scrabble. In the latest round of the league I’ve had seven wins and four losses, with two games still outstanding and in the balance. If I win both of those, I’ll very likely get promoted. Even one win could be enough depending on other results. Being in this position is a surprise; two days ago my sights were set on avoiding relegation, but then an opponent missed an out play, enabling me to win by twelve, when I’d given that game up for dead.

I start at 9:30 tomorrow morning. I’m pleased it’s not too early. I need some sleep.

Family - Life :) - Music - Politics - Scrabble

A happy tradition in a scary world

March 1, 2026

by plutoman 0 Comments

It’s the last day of February and the last day of winter, and we’ve had beautiful sunshine all day. I’ve just been up to see Elena (the lady who lives above me) and give her a mărțișor, which is a kind of small good-luck charm on a șnur – a red-and-white string. Romanians traditionally give mărțișoare to women to mark the beginning of spring. It’s one of my favourite traditional Romanian traditions, mainly because it costs very little: you can buy these trinkets – some of which are handmade – for just a few lei apiece. The one I gave to Elena was in the form of a black cat.

Unusually for a Saturday, I only had one lesson today, first thing this morning. After my lesson on food with Noah in Dumbrăvița, I decided to drive to Jimbolia. On the way there I listened to Bogdan Puriș’s music programme. He played songs by Bruce Hornsby, including the new Indigo Park as well as The Way It Is which, according to Puriș, came out in 1986. That date checks out because when I was a kid the BBC used the song as background music when they showed the football tables on a Saturday. Then my phone made that six-beep alert when something seismic has just happened and when I got to Jimbolia I found out that Trump and Israel had just bombed Iran. I’m as far from an expert on Middle East geopolitics as you can get, but to me this is absolutely terrifying. And for the love of God, Britain must not get involved in it. I didn’t do a lot in Jimbolia. I was just trying to take advantage of the warmer, brighter weather. I wandered around for a bit and then sat near the railway station and read a couple of stories from The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. I suggested to Elena that we go out for a drive sometime.

I spoke to Mum last night; she’d just had the operation done on her second eye. It seems to have gone well, though we don’t really know yet. Before that I spoke to Dad. We discussed his own mother’s unsteadiness in later years, such as in 2000 when they were living in Cairns and she and I came to visit, and suddenly she couldn’t go up and down escalators. Heck, Mum is only a year and a bit younger than she was. When put in those terms, Mum is doing very well. Dad too. (His own father died at almost exactly the age Dad is now, after a decade of living with Alzheimer’s.)

On Thursday night there was a UK by-election – in a part of Manchester – which the Greens won surprisingly comfortably. Reform came second while Labour, who had won the seat by a huge margin in 2024, were consigned to third place. The woman who won the seat for the Greens is – well, was – a plumber. Her victory speech, while strangely lacking in actual green stuff, was mighty impressive. “If you work hard, you deserve a nice life. And if you aren’t able to work, you still deserve a nice life.” Uncomplicated but effective. This result, plus everything else, might force the very disappointing Keir Starmer out of his position as prime minister.

Scrabble. Two wins and two losses so far from my completed league games. This time around there will be 13 games in total instead of the usual 14. A few days ago on ISC (the other site I play on), I was unfortunate enough to concede a 185-point triple-triple (SHERWANI, a word I didn’t know), and despite playing three bingos I lost 527-460. My opponent also found three bingos. That’s the highest total score in any game I’ve played.

Tomorrow I’m playing squash with Mark.

Family - Language teaching - Music - Politics

Taking pride

November 6, 2025

by plutoman 0 Comments

I spoke to my brother last night, just after I’d had a session with a 35-year-old guy who had never heard of Nelson Mandela. This happens quite often in lessons: a huge cultural figure or event that I assumed was universally known (such as 9/11) doesn’t figure at all in my student’s consciousness. Sometimes the reverse happens, too. My brother didn’t say a lot. It sounded like it was just the usual tiring business of looking after two small children. When I mentioned a potential Danube Delta trip with Mum and Dad next spring, he gave me a stark warning: Don’t do it. You’ll almost certainly fall out with Mum on a trip like that. Ugh, he’s probably right, but I’d like to give my parents the chance to see more of the world. And I’d quite like to visit the delta too. He even joked that the damage from the fall-out could be irreparable to the point where she writes me out of the will. (I haven’t watched Joanna Lumley’s Danube series yet, but it’s had some negative reviews, largely because huge swathes of territory – including Serbia – were inexplicably left out.)

Then this morning, after going to the local produce market, I spoke to Mum and Dad. It seems my brother had left quite a bit out when I spoke to him. My sister-in-law isn’t coping that well with the two kids. She relies quite heavily on her own parents, who often visit. She might well be suffering from depression. If so, at least she goes back to work soon. That so often helps.

Back in April I was extremely fortunate to find one of the immigration officers on a good day. This young official allowed me to bypass the inscrutable online system and get my ten-year residence permit processed manually. In May I had the new permit in my hands. Dorothy hasn’t been so lucky. She’s been forced to navigate the online process, which takes months and is truly awful. One problem is that her passport wasn’t stamped when she flew back from the UK in September. I might well end up taking her over the border into Serbia in the car, just so that she can have her passport stamped. It isn’t that far.

Last week during my chat with Dad when Mum had gone off to golf, I asked him what Mum really thought of me. She’s very proud of my brother, and why shouldn’t she be? I’m very proud of my brother. But what exactly does she think of me? No family, no big house, no illustrious career, no first-class degree. A cat and that’s about it. And that’s after all the promise I showed as a kid. Does she think I’m a failure? I was quite moved by what Dad then said, which is that Mum in fact thinks very highly of me and is extremely proud of how I took the bull by the horns and made a drastic – positive – change to my life. He said she often mentions me to her church friends in glowing terms. He said she’s very proud of both of us. That was lovely to hear.

Some excellent US election results overnight. Hopefully it’s the start of something. The soon-to-be New York mayor Zohran Mamdani’s line was pretty effective: “So, Donald Trump, since I know you’re watching, I have four words for you: Turn the volume up!”

Talking of elections, Dad mentioned that yesterday he wanted to use the loo in (I think) Mitre 10, when someone told him: “Don’t go in there. Someone’s just crapped in the sink.” Lovely. Guess what, I said, the bloke who crapped in the sink also gets to vote in elections.

After getting that gamelan LP, I’ve been thinking how great it would be to visit Indonesia again, if perhaps not Bali. I wonder if it would be possible on the way to or from New Zealand, assuming I make a trip out there next year.

Taylor Swift’s Fate of Ophelia came on the radio on Monday. I hadn’t heard it before. I’m very far from a Swiftie, but this was particularly good.

This was from yesterday’s final session. I didn’t even notice until this morning that he was somewhat confused as to the past tense of the verb to like. You can see the bottom half of Kitty here too:

Dreams - Language teaching - Music - Politics

14/10/15

October 14, 2025

by plutoman 0 Comments

It’s ten years since I started this blog. If I hadn’t decided to radically change my life at that point, I might not even have made it this far.

Last night I had another strange dream. Mum had to see a lawyer – a rich and powerful woman – in connection with one of the flats in St Ives. The only snag: this lawyer didn’t speak a word of English, only Irish. Her son Sam did the job of interpreting. After the meeting Mum described the lawyer as “the most horrible woman I’ve ever met”.

Dreams are so often a summary of the previous day. I’d had a late online session with a new guy who knew very little English so the whole lesson was conducted in Romanian. In an earlier session we discussed phrasal verbs and I gave an example of someone collecting their son from school. Sam was his name, of course. I explained that you can pick Sam up or you can pick up Sam, but when you use a pronoun instead of the name, things change. You can pick him up but you can’t pick up him.

I’m slowly getting over this cold, but I’m still low on energy. Outside my lessons but inside my life, not a lot is happening. I meant to say that the Moldovan parliamentary elections took place at the end of September. Maia Sandu’s pro-EU party won handily. That was a relief. In other news, Jane Goodall, the eminent primatologist and a thoroughly good person, died two weeks ago at the age of 91. Her love for primates was sparked a young age when she was given a stuffed toy chimpanzee.

Dad recently sent me this video of a Tiny Desk concert featuring the band Big Thief. It dates back to the early days of this blog, when Obama was still president. It’s excellent. My favourite Big Thief song (that I’ve heard so far) is Double Infinity, although Grandmother gives it a good run for its money.

Books - Cat - Family - Language learning - Other sports - Politics

The too-hard basket

July 20, 2025

by plutoman 0 Comments

I just took Kitty out for a drive. She spent one hour in a large cardboard box, 70 by 50 by 30 cm, with holes cut out of it (obviously) and an absorbent blanket at the bottom. (Lately I’ve put her food in the box to get her used to it.) She clearly didn’t love the experience, but she wasn’t traumatised by it either, so I’ll try it again in a few days. When I was little, our cat would be let loose in the Allegro or the Mazda on our five-hour-plus trips to and from Wales. With Kitty, that would be beyond dangerous.

Three weeks since I left my brother’s place, I’ve still got the cold I picked up from (probably) my nephew. He picks up a bug from nursery, infects his mum and dad and anyone else he comes into contact within, then three days later he’s as happy as Larry while everyone else is suffering for weeks. Mum and Dad have still got it too. Mum didn’t look great at all when I saw her on WhatsApp yesterday. They leave in only five days. I hope their trip back goes smoothly, or as smoothly as something like that ever can. At least this time they’ll break up their journey with a stopover in Singapore. I never want them to go direct again. Despite none of us being 100%, we had a really nice chat which made me feel good. Mum had been to meet up a few of the teachers from her school in St Ives, for the first time in about a decade. She was struck by how hard they had found the Covid period. We were pretty lucky in NZ, weren’t we? No Matt Hancock, who really should be behind bars. I was lucky too. Romania was at times riddled with virus, but my personal circumstances allowed me to dodge the worst of it.

The night before last I slept terribly. Yesterday I just had one lesson – maths in Dumbrăvița in the morning – and when I came back I lay on the sofa, washed out, where I finished Ella Minnow Pea (a fun read) and watched round three of the Open golf. My yearly golf watching. I like the Open visually: the dunes, the crags, the ever-changing skies, the squalls that come out of nowhere. I enjoy seeing top golfers battle near-horizontal rain and brutal rough. I particularly enjoy it when there’s a packed leaderboard on the final day and half a dozen potential winners as they turn for home, and a previously unheralded player keeps it together through all the mayhem to win – to make history – with a score of maybe three under par. This year’s tournament is taking place at Royal Portrush in Northern Ireland. Barring the heavy shower I saw on day two which added to the drama, the conditions have mostly been benign. Scottie Scheffler – number one in the world and a brilliant player – has taken a four-shot lead going into the last round, which might be a procession. A shame if so. World number ones haven’t won many Opens in recent times. Tiger Woods was the last to do it, I think. Rory McIlroy is six shots off the lead. He’s from Northern Ireland and a huge star in the game, so it’s no surprise that the crowd went nuts throughout his round of 66 yesterday.

Since the bit I wrote last time about council tax, I’ve been thinking about how hard it is to get these kinds of things right. Coming up with a fair and workable system is oh so complicated. Countries like New Zealand benefit here from being small, with relatively few working parts. What you don’t do though is hold your hands up and say it’s too hard. That’s exactly what the UK government is doing. We know this is unfair and absurd, but we’ll keep it the same (which in reality means making it worse: it will only become more unfair and absurd over time) because it’s too politically hard to change anything. And that’s just one aspect of tax policy. It’s the same thing with immigration, healthcare, housing, energy, infrastructure, the lot. Education isn’t too bad in the UK and they’ve made some progress on the environment. But everything else is going backwards because of a lack of political will to do anything. It’s the same all over the western world. The only people who do have the balls to change anything are those who aren’t interested in a fairer world and just want to make their mark. So they make things more shit. As I keep saying, how did we get here? When I was over in the UK recently, I watched an episode of Newsnight. They had ex-policitians (with opposing views) on the programme to discuss Labour’s climbdown on benefits. Adults, talking about a serious topic in a civil manner. This would no longer happen in America, I kept thinking. For the UK at least, there is still hope.

Next week’s challenge: for seven days, everything I read or listen to must be in Romanian where at all possible. I will also write something in Romanian every day. My Romanian has stalled and I can’t not do anything about it because it’s too hard.

Books - Films - Politics - Travel: Europe

As I go away, Mad Max is upon us

June 24, 2025

by plutoman 0 Comments

I’ll be off very early in the morning – I’ll call a taxi to the airport at four. From Luton I’ll take a coach to Cambridge, then a local bus to St Ives which will only cost £2. I should get to Mum and Dad’s flat around midday. As well as St Ives, I’ve got my brother and his family to look forward down in Poole, then a day trip to Birmingham. After the debacle of last August, I decided I couldn’t face another night at Luton airport, so I’m flying from Stansted to Budapest instead. My long-distance bus to Timișoara is due to get in at 1:30 in the morning. Not ideal, but anything beats a sleepless night at Luton.

I’d hoped to avoid family discussion of politics because it’s always so negative. (I yearn for the days when politics just “did its thing” in the background and we didn’t have the toxicity of social media.) But after the Iran strikes, it’ll be hard to dodge entirely. Dad and I had discussed the prospect just hours before it happened. No, Trump wouldn’t do that. He’s too cowardly and joining a war is altogether too much like hard work for him. But then he damn well did it, using bombs called MOP which could hardly sound more innocuous. His motivation is pretty thin and probably doesn’t run much deeper than, no-one’s given me a goddamn Nobel peace prize yet so fuck it, I’m gonna bomb the shit out of Iran. He just craves the attention, the fame, never being out of the news for one moment. The actual threat posed by Iran (or lack of one – who really knows) doesn’t come into it. I’d be shocked if any good comes out of this. What I do know is that international law is basically dead, the UN might as well be dead, American law is meaningless for someone like Trump, and democracy is teetering on the edge everywhere. I recently watched the 1979 Aussie cult film Mad Max for the first time to see what all the fuss was about; we really are rapidly descending into a Mad Max world. It’s all so scary. I just dearly hope that at least the UK and Keir Starmer stay well out of the war in the Middle East. Memories of the Iraq war are still fresh, even after 22 years.

Last night I saw a film with Dorothy at Studio cinema, one of the old theatres that has recently been reopened. We saw Kontinental ’25, a Romanian film set in Cluj very recently as the title suggests. The smart city, the city of the future, the city with a certain animosity between Romanians and Hungarians, they couldn’t have chosen a better place in the country for this sort of film. It was a damn good film, hilarious in parts, dark in others, and very thought-provoking. Unusually, the camera would often focus on somewhere in the city, perhaps an apartment block, for ten seconds or more. This was quite striking. Afterwards we went to Berăria 700 where we both had bulz. They’ve now opened three of Timișoara’s old cinemas, with two more on the way. One of those two is Dacia – see below for what it looked like last Friday.

I finished Wessex Tales on Saturday. It’s all set close to where my brother lives. The biggest town, Casterbridge, is in fact Dorchester where my niece was born. The name Dorchester sounds quite posh, doesn’t it? (My nephew was born in Poole.) I used to think Wessex itself was a made-up name. Come to think of it, I thought the name Transylvania was made up, too. Many people think Timbuktu and Kalamazoo are invented, but they’re real as well. (Timbuktu is in Mali; Kalamazoo is in Michigan.)

I’ve shown Elena what to do with Kitty. My biggest concern is remembering not to enter auto-pilot and lock my front door at the bottom. Locking it at the bottom would lead to an enormous mess that doesn’t bear thinking about.

This week, 15-year-old Romanians have their evaluare națională, a pair of pressure-packed exams (in Romanian and maths) that will determine where they spend their final years of school.

I hadn’t been to the communist-block-heavy Dacia area for ages. Shots like this featured heavily in that film last night. There are three “jocuri de noroc” (basically pokie machine) places in this picture.