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Family - Life :) - Maths teaching - Politics

Trying to make sense of it all

October 22, 2024 by 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 2024 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 by 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 by 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 by 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.

Family - Life :) - Politics

Time for one more

July 26, 2024 by 0 Comments

So on Tuesday my brother sent me my sister-in-law’s 12-week scan. You could make out its head (still an it at this stage, and thankfully not a them) but not a lot else. Everything is fine, apparently. I knew that she was pregnant with her second child several weeks ago. When my brother told me, I could think of was Oh no! The idea of bringing any humans kicking and screaming into the 2020s sounds terrifying, let alone two of them. And in the UK, bringing up a child properly is now horrendously expensive. I didn’t see it coming – my brother had made pretty clear noises about his son being a first and last, and my sister-in-law will be three months short of forty when the baby pops out in the winter. The biggest beneficiary of this extra human will be my nephew – I just look at all the kids I teach, and those who have a sibling are generally better adjusted than those who don’t. (Only children are very common in modern Romania.) I’m personally very glad that I have a brother. The first time around they wanted a surprise, but this time they want to know the sex of the baby – they’ll find that out when they get back from New Zealand in September.

Having children, or not, has been in the news of late. Trump’s VP pick, JD Vance, has said the US is run by “childless cat ladies” who are “miserable at their own lives”. He even brought Pete Buttigieg (who isn’t a “cat lady” as far as I’m aware) into the discussion. He said that people without children don’t have a direct stake in the future of the country. If you really believe that, JD, you’re a fucking idiot (as well as being an insulting prick, but we already knew that bit). In 2016, David Cameron quit immediately after the Brexit referendum. In short order the ensuing Conservative leadership contest had been narrowed down to just two: Andrea Leadsom and Theresa May. Leadsom said in a comment to a newspaper that she’d make the better prime minister because she had children and her rival didn’t. This stupid comment basically handed the job to Theresa May. Sadly in the US, that’s not how it works.

Life :) - Other sports - Politics

Better late than never

July 23, 2024 by 0 Comments

My hours are way down again. That means I can tackle my pretty lengthy non-work to-do list, but that also means making decisions about how and in what order and that in turn means increased stress. When I’m busier with work, my stress levels tend to go down if anything. Tomorrow I’m getting the car’s brakes looked at because they squeak when I brake for more than a few seconds and I’d rather not have dodgy brakes when I’ve got some long trips planned. It would have made sense to do that when I had the ITP done two weeks ago (that’s the equivalent of a WOF in New Zealand) but the chap at the ITP station wasn’t that easy to deal with. (The car passed its ITP without any trouble. I always got very excited when my car passed its WOF in NZ. That only happened three or four times in all the years I was there, and those inspections were six-monthly.)

Biden has pulled out. Far too late, but still, hooray! They must have read him the riot act because he seemed pretty sticky for a while there. I have nothing against Biden, but if he’d clung on, a Trump win (plus Republican control of all branches of government) was a virtual certainty. It may still turn out that way, but there’s some chance now of a non-terrifying outcome. Kamala Harris is just about nailed-on to replace Biden as the Democratic nominee.

Yesterday I watched the final round of the golf. I’ll be honest, I was hoping for mayhem. Howling gales, horizontal rain, scores drifting into the Firth of Clyde and sailing off the map entirely. That’s basically what did happen in rounds two and three. Guys with all their fancy laser tech being outdone by the elements. But what wind there was died down over the last round. It was chaotic over the first few holes because the sheer number of contenders made it hard to keep up, but around the turn they gradually whittled themselves down until one player – Xander Schauffele – pulled away. He shot a virtually error-free 65 and won by two shots over Billy Horschel and Justin Rose. I remember Rose’s incredible finish as an amateur at the 1998 Open, back when I watched it every year. He turned professional immediately and (famously) didn’t make the cut for absolutely ages, but since then he’s forged a successful career for himself, including a win at the US Open. Just like in ’98, they showed a close-up of the engraver about to etch the winner’s name on the trophy. With a name like Xander Schauffele, there were plenty of ways to mess up. I’m glad I watched the golf, even though the sport (like so much else) has entered the dark side recently. The third round in particular was pure theatre. I noted that the metric system has yet to make into the world of golf, in either Britain or America. I don’t mind a bit of good old imperial occasionally, but when a British commentator described the sea water as pretty chilly at only 54 degrees, that’s where I draw the line.

I can’t wait to get away. The UK trip is the one I’m looking forward to the most. No obligations, nowhere I have to go, no people I have to see.

Life :) - Other sports - Politics

Too much, too fast

July 19, 2024 by 0 Comments

Wednesday’s 90-minute Romanian lesson was curtailed when our teacher, based in Deva, lost power. We finished the session this morning at ten, so Dorothy and I met up at eight for a coffee. She’s in the last week of her sixties; her 70th birthday is next Thursday and she’s having a party of sorts two days later (my brother’s birthday, in fact) in Buzad. She sometimes intersperses Romanian words into her sentences, such as grătar, which means barbecue. (She plans to have one of those in Buzad.) At one point she said that something was grătarred. We pondered how this should be spelt. I said that it should definitely be with double r because grătar has final stress; she said she’d employ an apostrophe instead. Dorothy asked me how my mother was. She remembered Mum’s cancerous lump. I’d almost forgotten about that Tuesday until I reread the WhatsApp exchange I had with my brother. All the swearing and panic. Dorothy and I always have good chats. I often feel more comfortable with people of a very different age (up or down) from my own, or with people with different cultural backgrounds. They’re likely to think, oh he’s young, or he’s old, or he’s British, when in fact he’s just weird.

In the last week or two I’ve felt a sense of impending doom. This extended heat wave has left me confined to home in the daytime and starved of sleep. Other, richer, parts of the city (such as Dumbrăvița which is technically outside Timișoara) have suffered regular power outages. Up there they almost all have air con and many even have swimming pools and pumps. The grid can’t cope. It’s been a particularly weird heat wave; Europe has been split by two air masses – a cool one in the west that has pushed up and intensified our scorching one.

It’s not just the heat. It’s the darkness everywhere. Trump has picked Jance Dance Vance (or whatever he’s called) as his running mate. Someone who compared Trump to Hitler eight years ago. Trump is talking about God a lot. God kept Trump alive when he was shot. All those evangelical idiots are lapping it up. Unless Biden pulls out of the race toot-sweet (and maybe even if he does), things look very ugly indeed. I wish I could just ignore it all, like Formula One. I’m not interested in Formula One (even though I made a game for kids that is loosely based on it), so I can happily ignore any headlines or articles on the subject. But American politics profoundly affects us all. It doesn’t help that I’m out here on Ukraine’s doorstep. There was a wonderful feeling of relief following the UK election. Those experts, rather than yes-men, brought into government in a clean break from Tory incompetence and corruption. Sadly though, the UK is bucking the trend.

There have been IT outages all over the show today, caused by a software update by a firm called CrowdStrike. The name sounds bloody scary. My initial reaction was that if this pisses off a few tech bros for a few hours then good, a bit like last year when I saw scenes of orcas ramming luxury yachts. Good on ’em. But then I saw that public transport and even hospitals have been affected. Everything is growing too fast and is now, slowly but surely, coming apart at the seams. (WordPress, which this blog uses, is still running I think.)

It’s a shame that I don’t enjoy watching sport anything like I used to. It was once a biggish part of my life. Even in 2017 (which was a great year, looking back), I filled in Wimbledon draws and watched baseball. But everything growing too big, too fast, has turned me off. This week the Open golf is on – it’s being played at Troon in Scotland – and because golf happens at a slow pace I thought I’d dip in. Today they’re playing the second round of four. It’s worth watching for the views of the isle of Arran, which I visited in February 1997 (I became quite ill there – I wasn’t equipped for the extreme conditions), and the trains clattering by alongside the 11th hole. They have three commentators at the same time – one too many in any sport – and the ads are infuriating. I saw something from Accenture that talked about “Gen AI”, “unlocking insights” and “putting a digital trove of information into users’ hands”. I know golf is corporate and all, but I couldn’t be the only one shouting “Piss off!” at the screen. (Accenture are worth hundreds of billions of dollars and hardly anyone knows what they even do.)

Dorothy said I really should get away in between 14th August (when I get back from the UK) and 29th August (when we go to Vienna). I think I will.

Life :) - Other sports - Politics - Tennis

Two near misses (well, one was actually a near hit)

July 16, 2024 by 0 Comments

Firstly, the Trump shooting. I don’t feel sorry for him in the slightest. All he’s done for the last nine years is sow hatred and division. More guns, more violence. Then after being shot, he raised his fist – Fight! Fight! Fight! (against what exactly) – with the American flag as a backdrop, creating perhaps the most enduring image since 9/11. That I suppose is why he’s such a good campaigner – he knows what buttons to press. In America, those are the “playground bully” buttons. The cesspit of social media makes his strategy all the more effective. It’s now even more likely that Trump becomes president again (unless Biden gets out of the way I’d say it’s a racing certainty) and living on the doorstep of Ukraine I fear for what will happen next. After the last election I thought that Trump running again in 2024, or Biden for that matter, would be ridiculous. Common sense, in the shape of two new faces, would prevail. How naive I was.

When we were playing tennis on Saturday, a bird in a tree sounded as if it was being strangled. My partner identified it as a jay – gaiță in Romanian. He said that some people’s voices are said in Romanian to be like a gaiță, and I immediately thought of Elena (the 80-year-old lady who lives above me). She’s lovely, but her voice cuts through these thick walls. Yesterday morning I took her to the airport – she was flying to Toronto via Munich. She yapped and screeched the whole way in the car – all very distracting for me when it isn’t in my native language and I’m trying to drive – and I missed the turn to the airport. No problem; it was easy to turn back and we had plenty of time. We went to the brand spanking new Schengen-zone terminal which smelt of rotten fish. Her 10:50 flight wasn’t on the board, but a 9:40 one was. It seemed Elena had got the wrong time. When we got to the check-in desk at 9:03, it had officially closed three minutes earlier. (I was cursing my wrong turn.) The check-in lady made a phone call and eventually Elena and her suitcase were allowed on the plane. Phew. By this point Elena was hot and flustered and had trouble navigating the snaking security line. I’ve just had an email from her daughter to say she arrived safely in Toronto.

I saw a comment after the Euro final: “I’m beginning to think that football doesn’t want to come home. It seems to like it better elsewhere.” I liked the commenter’s A. A. Milne-style gentle humour. I wish there was more of that instead of the tedious memes, piss-takes and in-jokes. I watched the second half of England’s match with Spain – it was very watchable. Spain were clearly the better side and it would have been something of an injustice if England had won. It’s funny watching England games now – I hardly know any of the players, even if I’ve heard some of the names. When Cole Palmer equalised (great goal, by the way) I thought, ah yes, that’s the guy Luca said was his favourite player. (Luca is a 13-year-old boy I teach.)

I watched the men’s Wimbledon final, having not seen any of the men’s tournament prior to that. A fairly major wobble for Alcaraz when he served for the match, but in the end he beat Djokovic comprehensively. The sky’s the limit for Alcaraz. People are already talking about 20 grand slams. (He’s already 20% of the way there.) It’s very possible; the differences between the surfaces and the grand slams in general is much smaller than it used to be – the days of a Sampras who was imperious in two of the slams but always fell short at Roland Garros are over.

The Olympics start soon, apparently. I can’t be bothered with them.

This is the longest, deepest heat wave in Romanians’ living memory. I’m seeing 34s and 35s for the coming weekend – that will feel like some respite.

Politics - The UK - Travel: Europe

More UK politics thoughts and lack of motivation

July 7, 2024 by 0 Comments

I’ve just had a longish Skype chat with my cousin who lives in New York state (I stayed with him in 2015) but is currently in northern Italy. It’s always good to catch up with him.

We’re getting scorching weather again. We’re forecast to nudge 40 in the coming days. I’d planned another road trip, but I won’t even want to travel outside this air-conditioned room if it’s like that. I’m now thinking of making a trip to Slovenia in the next few weeks, then I’ll probably spend a few days in the UK in the second half of August before going to Vienna from 29th August to 2nd September.

Last night I played tennis with Florin. I wasn’t very good. I led 3-0 and 4-1 but yet again we found ourselves at 6-6. I came from 3-0 down to win the tie-break 7-5. He won more points in the set; tennis is very first-past-the-post-y. We played to the sounds of Festivalul Inimilor, the festival of traditional music from many nationalities that takes place in Parcul Rozelor every July. It’s completely free, and after the game I grabbed a beer from one of the stalls and watched some of it. In the good old days, the musicians would parade past my apartment block, Olympics-style, to mark the start of it all. They still do that but I no longer live there. I really miss those early days.

Lately I’ve been lacking motivation and the capacity to enjoy things. I met Dorothy yesterday at Prospero, the bakery close to where I used to live that also serves coffee. It was my suggestion to go there; they always did very good bread. The place was packed with intimidatingly sophisticated women with perfect hair and matching handbags and jackets even on such a hot day; there were separate queues that made the ordering process painful. (When I’m on my own I find a simple little bar or a vending machine. It’s cheaper and I beat all that stress.) Things were fine once we eventually sat down.

We talked a lot about the UK election. Unlike me, she stayed up half the night to watch it. I wanted to upload a graph showing the huge disparity between vote share and seat share and how ridiculous it is, but WordPress isn’t allowing me to upload any pictures at all for some reason that is well beyond my understanding.

Ed Davey’s novel strategy of falling off paddleboards and screaming “Vote Liberal Democrat!” mid-bungee jump paid off, in terms of seats at least. It got him out there, and he used his frivolous stunts to make a serious point about social care; he has a disabled son who has to be looked after day and night. Good on him.

Dorothy said the Lib Dems (12% of the vote) were too woke. Dad said Labour (34%) were too woke. The Greens got 6%, and they’re obviously very woke. By my calculations, that’s a majority who voted for these woke parties. What that means that is most people under 70 don’t give a damn about wokeness or unwokeness and have more pressing issues like heating their homes and feeding their kids and seeing a doctor when they need one. Dad said the state of Britain is hardly the Tories’ fault – they didn’t create Covid or start the war in Ukraine. I said, no, it bloody is their fault. Institutions in and around London have got richer while the poor have continued to get poorer. They’ve caused that. Dad agreed with me.

The Tories were rejected wholesale by the young and the not-so-young. It’s only when you get to properly old that their vote held up, saving the party from total oblivion. The baby boomers have had their own way politically for a very long time. This time they didn’t. That can only be a good thing.

Some more good news is that the incoming government is much more serious than the old one. This is a moment in history that calls for seriousness. Much of that is down to Labour ministers coming from far less privileged backgrounds than their predecessors. “Born to rule” is hopefully dead.

None of this will be easy. They aren’t even talking about the environment or mental health, both massive issues. And where’s the money? They’ve kept quiet about raising taxes but surely they will have to. Then there’s the business of getting people engaged in politics at all. People have had enough. My brother voted at 8pm, two hours before polls closed, and was shocked by how few ticks there were on the list as his name was checked off.

One last thing: I bought a bike on Thursday. It’s German and far more modern than my previous ones. I guess you’d call it a hybrid: half mountain bike, half road bike. It’s got a dizzying number of gears. Why I need more than four or five I have no idea. The brand is Steppenwolf, which I thought was just the name of a band. I’ve now got two old bikes I somehow need to offload.

I’ll try not to write again for a few days.

Politics

A very British spectacle

July 6, 2024 by 0 Comments

Visually, British general elections are a wonderful thing. On election day you see all the pictures of caravans and laundromats used as polling stations, usually accompanied by dogs. Nerve-shredding anticipation builds and builds through the evening until – bam! – the exit poll lands just as Big Ben strikes ten. Then there are the (nonsensical to me) scenes of ballot boxes relayed in military fashion as two constituencies in the North-East vie to be first in the country to declare. At about 3am, a trickle of results turns into a deluge. The TV broadcasts home in on certain high-profile counts; all the candidates line up either side of the returning officer (the person who reads out the results, who is normally dressed in some kind of regalia). There’s always at least one candidate with a silly name wearing a silly hat, representing a silly party. Only hours later, assuming one party has a majority, you get all the pomp of the prime minister (in the case of today, a brand new one in Keir Starmer) meeting the King at Buckingham Palace and giving an acceptance speech outside Number Ten. Though it all happens at a frenetic pace, it is for the most part very dignified and makes you proud to be British.

When I woke up on 2nd May 1997 I could practically taste the optimism as Tony Blair’s Labour won a massive landslide. This time around Labour have won a landslide of similar proportions, but that sense of positivity just isn’t there. The overwhelming feeling is one of relief – we’ve got rid of the bastards. What happens next is far from certain. For one thing, Labour’s big win came on just 34% of the vote and a historically pitiful turnout of 60%. Labour got 9.7 million votes this time; in 1997 they managed 13.5 million. The Tories took a historic hammering (yippee!), losing an incredible two-thirds of their seats, though they avoided being pummelled to the brink of extinction.

With an electoral system that’s totally wack, there’s always the chance of some very weird outcomes. The Liberal Democrats, with a brilliantly targeted get-out-the-vote operation and a leader who did crazy stunts throughout the campaign, won an unprecedented 71 seats (edit: 72) on 3.5 million votes; Nigel Farage’s Reform secured five seats with 4.1 million votes. (They won a fifth seat after multiple recounts.) Personally I’m very happy that the Lib Dems did so well. My brother, who always used to be Tory, said he voted Lib Dem this time. Good man, I said. They won the seat from the Tories. I’m also glad the Greens won all four of their target seats.

I certainly didn’t stay up all night to watch it all unfold – I had lessons with kids this morning and needed to be at least somewhat alert – but I managed to see the best bit. Liz Truss. Prime minister for seven weeks, famously outlasted by a lettuce. Her seat in Norfolk didn’t declare until 6:45 this morning UK time. She was defending an enormous majority, but the vote was split in all directions including an independent, and she lost out to the Labour candidate by just 630 votes. She took ages to appear on stage, prompting a slow handclap, then after the count she didn’t give the customary speech to congratulate the winner. Good riddance. Jacob Rees-Mogg’s defeat was pretty big, but no, Liz Truss’s loss was this election’s Portillo moment.