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Statins

September 27, 2026 by 0 Comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Language teaching - Life :) - Other sports

No longer out of my depth

September 9, 2026 by 0 Comments

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

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

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

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

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

Life :) - Other sports - Politics - Scrabble

Vital vitamins

July 21, 2026 by 0 Comments

I thought I was coming right, but today I’ve been dragging myself through life once again. This morning I walked to the market – with all the road works it’s like a maze – and a young woman powered past me on foot. Normally I’m a fairly fast walker, but today I was at a crawl. I barely outpaced an old lady with one of those Zimmer-trolley things. When that was done I walked to the well to fetch 20 litres of water. A bit later I sorted out my bike. This all felt like a huge physical effort.

Last Thursday was the most ridiculous day of all. The woman in Italy cancelled her online lesson because her laptop wasn’t working. I didn’t mind that because I felt terrible and I still had to plan the rest of the day’s lessons. Then Dad called me, as he has done a lot while he’s been in the UK. Maybe he’s just bored. At lunchtime I went to a restaurant just off Piața Unirii to meet Dorothy and the other woman who did the Vienna trip two years ago. I had no idea what this place would be like, but it was actually rather nice. It was all you could eat for 40 lei, something I’d never experienced before in Romania. (They had signs telling you not to take food you wouldn’t eat.) Under normal circumstances I’d have enjoyed it, but even though the food was great I wasn’t in the mood when I was feeling like crap and on such a hot day. This other lady is fairly in-your-face and I couldn’t cope with that at all. At one point she called someone who wanted English lessons for her daughter and then handed the phone to me. Oh jeez, not now, please. I was relieved to hear that any lessons wouldn’t be starting until September.

Dorothy and the other woman went off to Piața 700 while I decided I’d prefer a break before my lessons with the brother and sister in Mehala. Just as I got to that part of town, I got a puncture in my back tyre. Damn. I lay in the long grass under the plum trees for half an hour, then chained my unusable bike to a lamp-post near where I had my lessons. The kids’ mother greeted me. Where’s your bike? Don’t ask, I said. I did the lessons – a struggle – then their mother insisted that their boy fix my puncture. He’s really into bikes now. I know – we did half a session on bikes recently. My plan was simply to leave the bike there to be picked up the next morning in the car, and to walk the 5 km home. Even with my low energy and the heat I’d just have time to do that before my next lesson. The boy though insisted he would repair my puncture. The time it took me to persuade him not to bother in the searing heat meant I had even less time to walk home. I had to jog in places. I got home just in time, absolutely dripping in sweat. The bell went as I was in the middle of having a pee, as it so often does.

After the lesson I saw the after-hours doctor. I was in and out quickly. I asked him if I needed blood tests but he just wrote me a prescription for Astenor “energy and tonic”, vials of liquid that contain a bunch of stuff: arginine (a semi-essential amino acid), vitamin B6 (which helps with the immune system), biotin (which helps maintain normal hair skin), and magnesium (which has had a lot of attention recently: it helps with your bones and teeth but is also said to be beneficial to your sleep and general mood). He also put me on a double dose of vitamin D as well as vitamin K. Whether all of this will make any difference I have no idea, but I doubt it will do me any harm.

I only watched snippets of the World Cup final. There was something dystopian about what I saw. Donald Trump up there in his ivory tower, the word FIFA spelled out every five seconds, music blaring. I didn’t see the Super Bowl-style half-time show which had a load of famous people and the Muppets. The Muppets are too good for something like that. Half-time went on nearly twice as long as it normally does, which is really crappy for the players (as well as breaching the rules of the game). This tournament also had hydration breaks – fine if they’re actually about hydration, but of course they were all about advertising. Then you had the Argentinians – nasty shits who constantly disrupted the game. Incredibly, they didn’t even have a shot on goal until well into extra time. It was after midnight when I decided I couldn’t take any more and went to bed. I couldn’t sleep though. Hmmm, it must be over now. I wonder who won? I was very glad to wake up to find that Spain had beaten the bastards, and better still without needing penalties. I also missed those Argentine fists fly after the match. Any Americans tuning into that game to watch football for the first time will be sticking to baseball and basketball in future, thank you very much.

As for Ryan Fox, winner of the Open in spectacular fashion, I had no idea he was the son of Grant Fox, one of the greatest All Blacks of all time. Fox is a fairly common surname, after all. I think Grant Fox’s father may have played cricket for New Zealand too. Talk about sport being in the blood. One thing I neglected to mention last time was that I watched commentary of the golf in French. Canadian French, to be exact. Listening to the commentary and picking up on the differences in vowel quality and vocabulary between Québecois and French French was as fascinating as any of the actual golf.

Scrabble. I’m almost certainly getting relegated this time around. I’ve played decently enough but my opponents are just too strong and I haven’t drawn all that well. My most enjoyable game was with an American guy named Ben who regularly plays big tournaments, with some success. He’s also a moderator on the site and a really nice guy. He wound up beating me by just eleven points in a high-scoring game. In another game I played this guy who constantly talks trash in the chat, to the point where I blocked him. He seems a total arse, just like the sort of boy I’d have avoided at school. Well I beat him at my third attempt. It looked like the game was up for me, but I found EBONICS which is a decidedly racist term (combining ebony and phonics) meaning how Black Americans speak. Last week I saw a YouTube video from someone preparing for the American national championships which are taking place right now. He still studies words using physical cards rather than apps. (Maybe he uses apps too; I couldn’t tell.) He showed a fat stack of cards, pointing to the number 512. No, that wasn’t the 512th card, but the 512th stack of cards. Wowee. He mentioned that he had high-functioning autism, which I suppose checks out. He said the best he could hope for in the tournament was a small prize in the hundreds which would be dwarfed by travel and accommodation costs for him and his husband.

Andy Burnham has taken over as British prime minister. I like the guy. He’s got the cards stacked against him in so many ways, with an unstable world and a rabid media, but let’s see what he can do.

My parents are going down to see my brother on Friday. Next Monday will be his 45th birthday. Then they fly back to New Zealand on 1st August.

Cat - Life :) - Other sports

Fantastic Mr Fox

July 20, 2026 by 0 Comments

I watched the final round of the Open golf today. And guess what, a Kiwi won it for the first time since 1963. Ryan Fox. He held his nerve when so many around him didn’t. In fact he played the final holes spectacularly well. He didn’t look a likely winner when his chip shot spun back to where it started, somewhere around the turn – I can’t remember which hole. But there he was, on the final green, standing over a twelve-footer or so. He probably won’t get this… but he bloody well did. Good on him. I called Mum as soon as the putt dropped, because I knew she’d be happy to hear the news. What’s more, Fox shot a record-equalling 62 in the third round. I had to feel a little sorry for Cam Young who hit a superb final-round 64 and spent hours on the driving range and practice green in anticipation of a play-off – he could quite possibly have even won outright – only to get pipped at the last by Fox. And yes, Mum was pretty happy. She said her brother in Palmerston North would have been up all night watching it. (Bob Charles was the winner in ’63. When I lived there he was on TV all the time, selling his Bob Charles deer velvet capsules. He’s still alive at the age of 90.)

It’s been a good day all round, because I feel I’ve made a significant recovery from the last seven days which have been pure garbage, such has been my lack of energy. It’s been absolutely horrible. Thursday was the crappiest day of them all, but every day has been a contender. What really gave me a boost today was catching up with Mark – for the second-to-last time before he says goodbye to Romania – at Casa Bunicii in Dumbrăvița. He and his wife had just got back from their epic African adventure where they scaled Kilimanjaro and then went on safari. It was great to hear about it all, after so much negativity coming from all directions. Scaling the mountain was predictably tough. Brutal was the word Mark used. The ascent itself wasn’t all that challenging, but the altitude – nearly 6000 metres – made things pretty damn messy. They didn’t skimp on having properly paid porters, who they tipped as well. It was all a very well-run operation. The pictures of the safari were good too. The highlights were a woman having a picnic oblivious that there was a huge elephant behind her, and a vast herd of wildebeest crossing a river.

The World Cup final is about to start. Dad hasn’t stopped moaning about England’s loss to Argentina in the semi-final. They should have done this or that. Dad knows bugger all about football and never follows it at any other time. And he was still going on about it after England had won an utterly batshit mad ten-goal thriller against France. Yes it was a shame that England lost, but the sky hasn’t fallen in. It would be nice now though if Spain could thrash Argentina.

I’ll write more about my crappy week, and the supplements my doctor has given me, in my next post. As I write this, or try to, I’m being mauled by Kitty in one of her displays of affection. Like me, she’s been avoiding the heat in the last few days. We’ve been up into the mid-30s again.

Family - Other sports - Scrabble - Tennis

Loss of face

July 14, 2026 by 0 Comments

This morning I heard that brilliant New Zealand actor Sam Neill (of Jurassic Park fame, and much more) had died at 78. Those damn Aussies always liked to claim him. I read that his birth name was Nigel but at the age of twelve he started calling himself Sam. A smart move. Sam is a great name. Nigel Neill … isn’t.

Everyone is popping off at about the age of Mum and Dad. Just yesterday I said to Dad that I’m lucky to still have both parents. Not just alive, but in pretty good health. At my age, that must put me in the minority. Just anecdotally, I have a few students of a similar age to me and I think all of them only have one living parent. When I called Dad, Mum was at church. I wasn’t trying to avoid her or anything; I’d just forgotten that it was that time of day and week. That did give us an opportunity to talk about Mum, though. We said that so much of Mum’s stress comes down to loss of face, which a lot of the time isn’t real anyway. It would make sense for Mum and Dad to spend three days or so at my brother’s place (including his birthday on the 27th) just before they go back to NZ. Not much more than that; their previous stay was seriously unfun for both of them. Plus it might end up being far too hot again. But Mum is likely to insist they spend a whole week down there, for fear of upsetting my brother. It’s a similar story with their old friends and whoever else. She feels she has to do this and avoid talking about that so that this or that person won’t think X or Y or Z about her. I mentioned to Dad how refreshing it was to attend those autism groups back in the day, when all that crap went straight out the window. (It certainly flies out the window with Mum too when she isn’t with anyone except Dad or me. So it was a huge relief that my parents’ stay in Romania went as successfully as it did. Mum and I have been getting on well.)

Yesterday I was exhausted. I had very little energy. I couldn’t even make myself watch all of the men’s Wimbledon final. The women’s final though unexpectedly burst into life when Linda Noskova led Karolina Muchova 6-2 5-2 and had five match points in the following three games. Games eight and nine of the second set were pure drama. The set slipped through Noskova’s fingers. How does she come back from this? But she did. Noskova served brilliantly on the big points early in the third set, and this time she didn’t relinquish her lead. I was pleased that Noskova, still early in her career, was able to win. A loss in those circumstances may have haunted her for years otherwise. (The butterfly effect was on full display in the women’s tournament. Noskova had been one point from exiting the tournament in the third round. Muchova also faced match point in her semi with Coco Gauff.) The final brought to mind the 2005 US Open semi-final between Kim Clijsters and Maria Sharapova. Clijsters had five match points in the second set, all in a single game, and ended up losing the set. But she won it in three and won her first grand slam two days later. That was an excellent tournament on both the men’s and women’s sides.

Dad asked me if I’d stayed up to watch England in the “soccer”, as he calls it. (The whole soccer-is-American, football-is-British thing is actually pretty new. It’s a bit like the notion that -ize is purely American. Pick up any UK-published book from the eighties or earlier and it’ll likely be full of -ize spellings. Even a lot of modern UK-English books are, especially those published by Oxford.) Anyway, I certainly didn’t stay up to watch it. Kick-off was midnight my time. England though are just two matches from winning the whole thing, so who knows? (I really am clueless about it this time. I haven’t watched a single ball be kicked. Or headed or shinned or anything else.)

I’ve got a couple more days before the Scrabble league starts up again. Learning the words continues to be a painstaking effort. I’ve made some recent progress with the fours, and tomorrow I’ll add a few more sevens and eights. A few people have now been expelled from the league for cheating, and someone wondered why anyone would bother to cheat. This isn’t poker; there’s no money at stake. Then somebody else said it’s all about ego. They’re probably right. As someone with very little ego, ego-based decisions – which can sink companies or even whole countries and more – often baffle me.

This evening a new student will be coming. I never know what I might get.

Family - Music - Other sports - Scrabble

Georgia on my mind

July 9, 2026 by 0 Comments

It’s much cooler now than when I last wrote. Today it even felt autumnal – in early July – and honestly that’s fine by me. Cooler weather makes an enormous difference at night, although last night I slept terribly all the same. It’s warmer in western Europe – Mum and Dad weren’t particularly enjoying the heat in St Ives today. They’d been watching lots of Wimbledon. My brother called me a little earlier. Neither of us had a lot to say. We talked about Nigel Farage and Count Binface, who may be the only candidate to stand against Farage in the farcical Clacton by-election. It was great to see my brother in a much better mood. Finally he has some certainty over his future.

I’ve now got my new Lenovo laptop, which I’m happy with so far, though I still need to change one or two settings and remove even more annoying bloatware. As I type (still on my old machine), I’m in the process of copying all my documents and photos over to the new one using flash drives. I’m not a fan of the cloud. It isn’t taking quite as long as I feared.

Last week – from Wednesday to Sunday inclusive – they had the Festivalul Inimilor in Parcul Rozelor. I went the last three nights. It’s a festival of traditional music from Romania and elsewhere. Some of the performers are literally from just down the road, whereas others have come thousands of miles. When I lived at the old place, I’d see them all parading past my flat in their costumes; it was a great display of sound and colour. This time there were even country singers who had come from the US, which given that the festival coincided with the 250th anniversary celebrations kind of made sense. There were groups from Slovakia, Albania, and even Colombia. My favourite of all was the group from Georgia, which I saw on both Friday and Sunday. The music was just… different. I felt that I was listening to something from a faraway land. A bagpipe featured heavily, as it does in a lot of places (Romania has a type of bagpipe called a cimpoi) and there were instruments similar to a lute or mandolin. After to listening to the music I was thinking it would be interesting to visit Georgia, but then a quick look at the map tells me that it’s rather close to some places I’d prefer to avoid, so I’d have to do some more research. A big part of the festival is the food and drink available on the street. I had a very overpriced pottle of anchovies. I couldn’t complain too much though because watching all the singing and dancing didn’t cost a penny. I may post some pictures next time.

It was good to wake up yesterday morning and see that the US had been thumped 4-1 by Belgium following the overturned red card that stank of the sort of corruption that you expect from FIFA. That must have motivated the Belgians like you wouldn’t believe. Red cards do get overturned occasionally, but usually not after a phone call with the president of the country concerned. There are backhanders all over the show. Just look at the World Cups awarded to Russia and Qatar. This time around it’s all far too big and there’s far too much money involved and as good as the football has probably been, I can’t bring myself to watch any of it. My brother and I agreed that maybe we’ll watch the final if England make it. England haven’t been in the final for 60 years, so we’ll kind of have to in that case. (Like me, he hasn’t seen a single ball kicked so far either.)

I’m getting promoted in the Scrabble, back to the third division, with a record of nine wins and five losses with a healthy positive points spread. I may well finish second in the league. And that’s despite a pair of quite painful defeats by just two and five points. How was I to know that QUARK took an S in front of it (that was responsible for my five-point loss) or that BIRLINGS might be a word (my opponent in my two-point loss landed that on me at the end, after I’d had a huge lead late in the game)? I squeaked by that 16-year-old Australian guy by 25 points after I remembered from somewhere that PYIC was a word. In that game, I played a late bingo of ABETTORS, but apparently that was a huge error and I should have played IT instead (seriously, just IT) and I was lucky to get away with my play. All in all, I was pretty lucky to draw so many Xs and Zs which are simply great tiles and don’t require great skill or experience to make the most of. I will surely face relegation again soon; there are just too many good players. The big question is whether or not I should go over to the dark side and actually play a real-life tournament sometime.

Family - Life :) - Music - Other sports - Scrabble

Nagging doubts as Mum and Dad are about to arrive

June 6, 2026 by 0 Comments

Not long until Mum and Dad get here. Assuming they get here. There are nagging doubts over whether their check-in (which they can’t do until Sunday evening, 24 hours before their flight) will work. I spoke to them this morning. They were just about to have breakfast before checking out of their Paddington hotel. They managed to see two shows: Moulin Rouge, which they both thoroughly enjoyed, and Beetlejuice, which they didn’t. (Mum said it was “yuck”.) I saw the Moulin Rouge film at the cinema with my grandmother. It didn’t do a lot for me then (I was 21), but it sounds like I’d now enjoy a theatre performance of it.

On Tuesday they said on the radio that there were only nine days until the football World Cup. So there are now only six. And this time, just like last time, I really couldn’t give a damn. Even though New Zealand are in it. With 48 teams, it’s such a bloated competition. It’ll take 72 games just to eliminate a third of the teams. Seriously, sod that. Plus it’s in America and all that has come to mean, and matches will be taking place at all hours of the night for me.

On the radio – probably the same day that they talked about the World Cup – they played Videli noci (“I’ve seen the night”) by Moldovan band Zdob și Zdub, a song I hadn’t heard before. It was in Russian and I couldn’t make out any words except “tram” and “taxi”. I really liked it, and assumed it was a new song of theirs, but in fact it came out in 2001. Recently I played one of Paul Simon’s albums on my record player. (I’ve got a few of them.) One of the songs was My Little Town. Ugh, I don’t like this song, I thought as I was listening to it. I mean, it’s a very good song (it’s Paul Simon after all), but the lyrics – “Nothing but the dead and the dying in my little town” – are upsetting. Right at the other end of the spectrum from very good songs, Life by Des’Ree came on the radio when I was in the car. I’m afraid of a ghost, let’s have a piece of toast, doo-doo-da-doo, or however it goes. It was a pretty big hit when it came out in 1998, so who am I to judge?

I saw on the BBC this week that in 2024 only 9% of transactions in the UK were cash. That figure would be much higher in Romania, but it’s gradually coming down here too. I was wondering what kids do with money in a cashless world. How does pocket money work exactly? I was also thinking about display technology. When I was growing up, different types of information were displayed in their own distinct ways. Newsstands with handwritten headlines. The newspapers themselves. Thermometers. Billboards. Road signs with their extremely clear font. (In New Zealand the smaller road signs were often hand-painted, which I thought was cool.) Petrol prices. Departure boards at railway stations and airports. Clocks, in many different forms. The scoreboards at Wimbledon (dot-matrix on the two biggest courts, manually operated on all the others). And so on. And now practically everything is, rather depressingly, just a video screen. I thought about this as I was driving along and there were video billboards everywhere with the exception of one which had those mechanical triangular prism-shaped slats and showed three different adverts in a cycle.

Scrabble. It isn’t getting any easier in the latest round of the league and I’ll do well to survive. I did however make BACTERIUM in one game, putting down my seven letters on the front of UM which was already on the board. It’s pretty rare that I ever make a nine-letter word.

It’s proper summer here now: the smell of the lime trees, the first mosquito in my bedroom, and birds (jackdaws I think) waking me in the morning with their strangled-cat sound.

Driving - Family - Life :) - Other sports - Scrabble

Wu did it, but I’m glad it’s over

May 5, 2026 by 0 Comments

The snooker is over – yay! A pleasant escape, but what a time sink. With big breaks now in my rear-view mirror, my focus has shifted to the summer and making my parents’ visit to Romania as painless as possible, if indeed they get over here. We’ve even discussed them taking the train as I did nearly ten years ago – flying from Luton has become a pain in the arse. (Dad has just emailed me. Mum has been to the dentist, and they said she’s at risk of losing all her teeth! I don’t know any more details than that, but all the more reason for them to come to Romania, where dental bills are a fraction of what you’d pay in New Zealand.)

I’m still struggling with fatigue – the no-snooker thing should at least help there – and another migraine could totally wreck me. I had just over 20 hours of lessons last week, down from over 30 the week before – a number I simply couldn’t handle in the state I was in.

Yesterday I took the car in. The dashboard light is apparently caused by a faulty sensor. The noise I was getting from the front right is the result of a bearing that needs replaced. And they’re also going to clear out my misty headlights. It should all come to just under 1000 lei (£160-odd or nearly NZ$400). Though my car is 20 years old, I want to keep it running as long as possible. It’s kind of a fun car (it’s French!), it’s very economical, and it’s old enough not to have an on-board computer and ghastly (lethal) touch-screen controls.

Oh yes, the snooker. The semi-final between Wu Yize and Mark Allen had absolutely everything. The longest frame ever, massive breaks, and drama at every turn. I didn’t stay up for the last four frames because I had squash with a different Mark in the morning. When I got up, expecting Allen to have won, I couldn’t believe what I read (and then saw). Allen could easily have won 17-14. Then in frame 32 he had the match right there, a final black that he could practically pot in his sleep, for a 17-15 win and a place in the final. The referee even started taking off his gloves as Allen addressed the ball, ready to shake his hand and congratulate him. But he contrived to miss it. Pressure does extraordinary things. What’s more, in the deciding frame which followed, Allen amassed a 47-0 lead. He was four or five pots away from that missed black not mattering, to be able to laugh it off. But he was unlucky enough for two reds to be covering each other, then Wu got in, and that was that. Allen went up a lot in my estimation after I watched his interview. You could hardly be more graceful in defeat. That black reminded me of Jimmy White’s missed black in the 1994 final against Stephen Hendry (I really wanted Jimmy to win that) and Ken Doherty’s missed final black for a 147 against Matthew Stevens in the final of the Masters in 2000, back when a 147 was really something. He missed out a huge chunk of change and a luxury car, if memory serves.

And then came the final between Wu and Shaun Murphy who himself had only just squeaked through in the other semi. Two more days of it! The early going was actually pretty dire, but then it greatly improved. Wu’s long potting was phenomenal, and it gave Murphy huge headaches. How do you play safe when almost nothing is safe against this guy? Wu almost won it 18-16 but fluffed a black and Murphy (in his fifth final and trying to avoid a fourth straight loss in finals) cleared up imperiously. Another decider, the first in a final since 2002. Wu got in, made 80-something, and that was more than enough. It finished at about 12:30 last night, my time. Unlike Zhao Xintong, last year’s winner who was a bit older, 22-year-old Wu needed an interpreter. I have very happy memories of 2002. Peter Ebdon, probably my favourite player at the time, beat Hendry in the decider, on the eve of my final university exams. That gave me just the fillip I needed. (And that pink Ebdon knocked in against Stevens in the semi-final to keep him in it… just like Wu he won two deciders back-to-back.) Ebdon then moved to Dubai and became an anti-vaxer but the less said about that the better.

During the second half of the tournament I failed to find a stream so I was stuck with Romanian commentary on my TV in the kitchen. No big deal. I got used to the terminology. Buzunar (pocket, used in the normal sense of the word too), bilă (ball, a different word from say a tennis ball or football), mănunchi (the pack of reds; used for any bunch or bundle), mantă (cushion), tac (cue), sprijin (rest; also means “support” in all its senses), carambol (cannon, when two balls collide), and so on. The problem arose in the final, when the commentator (whom I thought had been pretty good) was joined by his mate and they kept yammering on about the most irrelevant stuff at the most crucial moments. Knowing when to shut up is a pretty useful skill to have. At times I had to mute them. When I did have the stream it was great. But sadly no John Virgo who died suddenly in February. A huge loss to the game.

The tournament started slowly, then really kicked into life with the Higgins–O’Sullivan match and grew from there. There were some bizarre moments such as a protest about the TV licence and someone who yelled “Don’t forget the Epstein files” or something like that. And all those phones that went off at just the wrong time. In the final, the referee had had enough and actually booted an offending audience member out. No more sport for me for a while. I don’t want the drama, I just want the quiet. As for the upcoming football World Cup in America, forget it.

Squash with Mark wasn’t bad. I started to flag by the end of it. We didn’t score points or anything. Later on Sunday I met up with a bunch of other people at Dorothy’s for the English conversation club. Domnul Mărgineanu, an older chap who hardly knew a word of English when I first met him, had improved beyond belief. We discussed a lot of topics, and unlike in most social situations I didn’t feel under pressure.

I survived again, just, in the Scrabble league. It’s becoming a trend. I won six and lost eight but my strong points differential was the deciding factor. I had some big wins, but lost four games by under ten. One of these days – perhaps very soon – I’m going to disappear through the trap-door. The next round starts on Thursday. I’ll get to play that Romanian guy again. He’s just been in Milton Keynes for a four-day (!) tournament; he won the second division, so I imagine he’s feeling pretty chuffed with himself.

Today it’s forecast to reach 28 degrees. It won’t be long before we get the strawberries, then the cherries, then the watermelons and the stone fruit…

Language teaching - Life :) - Maths teaching - Other sports

Just enough time to keep afloat

May 3, 2026 by 0 Comments

I’ve bounced back a little but the fatigue and brain fog is still a problem. Mum asked me what I’d done with all that “extra” time after cancelling those lessons, but that was the wrong question. I didn’t have extra time at all. I had just enough time to keep my head above water. And then I had two lessons last night and another three earlier today and I feel buggered again. This morning, before I set off for Dumbrăvița for my lessons that started at 8:30, I felt I was drowning. No, this isn’t all going to fit in that bag. Where’s my lunch? The felt-tip pens, have I got them? What about the sheet on integration? First thing this morning I played Crazy Rabbits (a board game I’d created ages ago) with the boy who’s about to turn seven. The farmer’s wife wants to make rabbit pie, go back to eight. We did Simon Says and Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes and talked about dinosaurs and planets. We both coloured in a dinosaur sheet. He decorated one dinosaur (a diplodocus?) in the colours of the Romanian flag.

Yesterday I had my last maths lesson with the 17-year-old girl. The Louis Vuitton girl. She’s got her second paper – the one that allows calculators – on Tuesday. In the middle of our session her calculator battery died so I bought her one for 2 lei from the kiosk near the tram stop, where they sell just about anything. After the lesson I turned on the snooker. Wu Yize, whose shotmaking the night before was extraordinary as he took a 6-2 lead against Mark Allen, had found it much more heavy going. Allen won five frames in a row, including a 145 break and a huge steal, to nudge into the lead. And then, that frame. People will remember it for decades. I didn’t catch the first 20 minutes or so, but what I saw was mad stuff. Eight reds surrounding the black over a corner pocket, Allen not wanting a re-rack because he had a lead, half an hour (or was it longer?) of back-and-forth in which nobody was close to sinking the black… Utter madness, all of it. The crowd played their part with slow handclaps and all the rest of it. Eventually (after far too long) the referee practically forced Allen to concede a foul by potting the black. Wu cleared enough balls to leave Allen needing two snookers but still it wasn’t over. Wu inexplicably knocked the black in and then Allen laid an incredible snooker that Wu somehow wriggled out of. After an hour and 40 minutes (a century of minutes!) Wu potted the pink and it was over, the longest frame ever at the Crucible. (I also saw the previous longest frame, 85 minutes, which took place four years ago.) Because it took so long and there was even another frame that took around an hour, that was it for the session, which concluded at 7-7. I missed their third session (damn – Wu amassed two 140-plus breaks), and they’re still tied up, now at 11-11. They play to a finish tonight. The first to 17 wins, so it could be a very late one. In the other semi it’s John Higgins leading Shaun Murphy 13-11 with their last session starting in 40 minutes or so.

Dorothy invited me to a barbecue yesterday at her church, which they organised to help new immigrants get to know each other. A very good thing to put on, but there’s no way I could have gone. It’s mass participation, it would have gone on for hours (longer than the snooker) on a day in which I also had lessons, and it had nothing to do with me. Going to something like that would have messed me up. I will however go to her place tomorrow night for the English conversation club. Tomorrow morning I’m playing squash with Mark. It’ll be a physical test for me. I hope I won’t stay up too late to watch the snooker.

Update: Shaun Murphy (champion 21 years ago) finished with a four-frame flourish to beat John Higgins 17-15 and make the final. The better man won for sure. Whether I can stay awake for the other match I have no idea.

Headaches - Life :) - Other sports

At a Romanian barber shop

April 29, 2026 by 0 Comments

Last night I didn’t bother with the snooker. Earlier to bed. A bit easier to get up in the morning. I spoke to Mum and Dad on Teams before they had dinner, or what we would have called tea.

Yesterday I finally got my hair cut. It had got pretty long and for the previous few weeks I’d had it tied back in a ponytail. The hairdresser, a woman of around sixty, asked me why I hadn’t been for a while. I told her about the headaches. How many doses of the Covid vaccine did you take? Um, three. Well that explains everything. I remarked that there were no other customers. Nobody has any money anymore. We’ve given it all to Ukraine. She then went on about how Romania has gone to the dogs in the last 35 years. So what was it like here in the eighties, I asked. Just wonderful. People had jobs. Look at all the factories we had! Food was so much better, not full of all those E-numbers like it is today. And we all went to the disco. It was fun. I decided to mostly let her talk; she had a weapon in her hand that I preferred her to use only for cutting my hair. Afterwards she showed me some jarred preserves she’d made. In particular, he was keen to show me a jar of bright green stuff. It cures haemorrhoids. I haven’t got haemorrhoids! We both laughed at this point, and she ensured me that it sorted out plenty of other ailments too. It felt pretty good to have rid myself of all that hair.

Yesterday I also went to ask about my car – the place is on the the way to the hairdresser’s – because the “anti-pollution fault” light has been showing on the dashboard for a while and I haven’t a clue what to do about it. I’ll take it in on Monday. I also put a new chain on my bike. That would have been so much easier if I’d had someone else to hold it. In so many ways, the world isn’t made for one.

Snooker. Since Mark Williams’ exit I’ve been sort of zoning in and out. There was a crazy (very long) frame yesterday between John Higgins and Neil Robertson where everything happened – off the table. First Robertson’s chair broke. Then there was a suspiciously loud ah-choo as one of the players was about to play his shot. Then there was a mystery beep. Not a phone. Where is it coming from? The female referee was perplexed. It was in fact someone in a wheelchair with breathing apparatus which beeped when he (she?) got low on oxygen. It couldn’t be turned off. The referee asked the players. Can you cope with the beep or shall we make them leave? The players were hardly going to agree to the latter. There were several protracted ball replacements after fouls. During one of them, the players used the opportunity to visit the loo.

My maths student had the first of her two exams today. She’s given me mixed messages about her performance. Fingers crossed she did OK.

Update: I managed to traumatise my eleven-year-old maths student today by giving her a so-called lightning quiz. Twenty quick mental arithmetic questions to do in five minutes. Her mother got involved and I think I was pretty close to being fired, so to speak. I will come back next week, but there’ll be no lightning quizzes for a while. I felt bad about the whole thing

Last year’s champion Zhao Xintong is out of the snooker, beaten 13-10 by Shaun Murphy in a bit of an upset. The Crucible curse, by which a first-time champion has never defended his title, is still alive and well. Zhao potted three reds in one shot (um, what just happened there?) during his loss to Murphy. Wu Yize is still going strong though. Tomorrow is the start of the semis, played over three days on a single table.