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The big cancel

April 28, 2026 by 0 Comments

Right now I’m shot to shit, mentally and physically. Life has slowed to a crawl. I have just about all the symptoms of chronic fatigue syndrome or ME. Or long Covid, for that matter, not that I’ve ever knowingly had even short Covid. Terrible sleep, energy levels through the floor, and feeling generally discombobulated (great word) when faced with, well, just about anything. I have found pages online linking migraine attacks and chronic fatigue, but you’ll find pages linking anything to anything if you look hard enough. My hope is that given time I’ll get back to normal, as I did for ten days or so in the early part of this month.

So I’ve been cancelling lessons left, right and centre. I stumbled through my two-hour maths lesson this morning, then had a Zoom call with my uni friend (my brain fog meant that even arranging that meeting felt like a big deal). And that was it for the day. I’d let the three Ms (Matei, Mihaela and Martin) know that I wouldn’t be seeing them. Tomorrow I’m cancelling three sessions out of five. Even doing that is hard, because I can’t immediately think of their names to cancel them, and I feel embarrassed doing it. Paying bills online and shit – jeez. It’s all a massive effort, which is exactly why I’m cancelling all lessons beyond the few I need to give me some human contact and a sense of purpose. I’ve been thinking of those films where someone (usually on their own, but with a cat) ends up living in squalor with piles of unopened red bills and how easy it would be to get like that.

So I watched the snooker this afternoon. John Higgins beat Ronnie O’Sullivan 13-12. A fantastic match and all so improbable: Ronnie made all the early running and led 9-4 and had chances in subsequent frames. At the same time Wu Yize (who was my pick for the tournament before it started) edged past Mark Selby 13-11. My man Mark Williams bowed out. He lost 13-9 to Barry Hawkins. A shame, but Barry is a thoroughly likeable chap, just like most Barrys I’ve met. And gosh, there were some crazy frames in that match, like the one where they spent 15 minutes on just the green, then Williams fluked the pink to win it. They’re just about to start the last session of the second round. Tomorrow the quarter-finals (played over just two days) begin.

Last month O’Sullivan made a 153 break – the highest ever. Bigger than the “maximum” 147. A super-max. Of course it would be him to do it. It takes some very unlikely circumstances to make such a feat even possible. You need a free ball before any reds have been potted – that means being snookered on all 15 reds after your opponent has committed a foul themselves, which is pretty damn rare.

Talking of records, someone – in fact two people – did a sub-two-hour marathon in London yesterday. That milestone was always the big one to go. And now it’s gone.

Scrabble. This time around the league has been a pain in the arse. I feel like I can’t be bothered with it, like everything else. Saying that, I managed to post a 606-295 win in a game just finished, going out with my fifth bingo. It’s only the second time I’ve scored 600 or more. The problem is I’m losing the close games. One of them was against a very experienced Aussie lady who beat me in a high-scoring encounter, 472-454. I haven’t studied any words for a while now, but I will need to get back to that if I have any intention of playing real-life games.

The maths girl came in Louis Vuitton shoes this morning. Yikes. Maybe they’re fake; I wouldn’t be able to tell. Last week it was Hermès, which I said was pronounced air-mess but is actually air-mez. Those ès-ending French words and names are unpredictable in how (or if) the final s is pronounced. Many have a silent s, like après and succès, but others have the s pronounced as either s or z.

Edit: The evening session at the snooker is about to start. You get some crappy walk-on music sometimes, but some great stuff too like the Automatic’s Monster which Chris Wakelin just came on to. In gaps between frames on Romanian TV there’s an ad for Magnum ice cream which (surprisingly) uses Courtney Barnett’s Pedestrian at Best. I’ve always liked her; she’s a unique artist. Some other interesting songs I’ve heard lately are Pic Pic by Romanian band Voltaj and REM’s Supernatural Superserious.

Update: Getting out of bed has become like inching into cold sea water. Once out of bed this morning, I watched bits of the news and struggled to take it in. I didn’t quite get why there was such shock that the shooting suspect at the Trump event was a mechanical engineer with a master’s degree. An intelligent guy would want to do that?

Oh, and the other Trump lost to Iran last night. Hossein Vafaei beat Judd Trump in a deciding 25th frame. I had to switch it off at 11-all. That was a bit of a shock.

Family - Life :) - Maths teaching - Other sports - Scrabble

What a drag

April 24, 2026 by 0 Comments

Since Saturday I’ve been dragging myself out of bed, or around the supermarket, or off to lessons. It’s all felt like a huge effort. Just like in March, even fairly light physical activity has made me deeply exhale, as if I’m letting off steam. Monday was horrifically bad. Because it was my birthday, more people than usual wanted to communicate with me. I’m not talking a whole lot here, because I just don’t have that many contacts, but it was still far more than I could handle. I was not in a good place mentally that day, or the day after when all the new road works in two different parts of the city totally threw me. I don’t feel I should be driving at all right now. This feels dangerous. And the lessons of course. I’ve kept up a full week of teaching, including maths every day with the girl who has her IGCSE exams next week and the week after. I’m confident that she’ll get at least an A. Maybe even an A-star. She’s bright enough, and her determination is admirable, but it shows you what money can do. On Monday she brought me a box of biscuits for my birthday which was nice. That day, or was it the day after, she was wearing a pair of trainers. Normally she takes off her shoes when she comes in but this time she didn’t. I caught the brand: Hermès. Just imagine. I had half a mind to ask her if she knew how to pronounce it. It’s air-mess, by the way.

Seeing Mark for lunch on Wednesday gave me a slight boost, but it’s still a big struggle. I’m constantly fatigued. To make matters worse, I’ve just about lost my voice. Next week I’m going to cancel a bunch of lessons because that’s the only way I feel I can recover. I’ve never done that before, and when you work for yourself you feel a certain pressure to work whenever you can, but the way I am at the moment that’s a false economy.

Snooker. The second-round matches started yesterday and go through to Monday. The first round was slightly disappointing, though it had its moments. It looked for a while that the second round might be utterly (and depressingly) devoid of qualifiers, but Hossein Vafaei of Iran dismantled Si Jiahui 10-3 in the penultimate first-round match to finish. Just as he did in his last qualifying match, he won the last nine frames. So Iran versus Trump is still on. Vafaei is a colourful character and it certainly makes things more interesting that he’s still there in a sea of British and Chinese players. The most dramatic match I saw was Stan Moody against 2024 champion Kyren Wilson. Moody (born 14/9/06) was playing brilliantly and stood on the verge of an 8-3 lead, but lost seven straight frames, some of them in highly improbable fashion. Mark Williams (born 21/3/75) got through his first match comfortably, 10-4, and his next match starts 90 minutes from now. He plays Barry Hawkins (23/4/79) over the best of 25 frames – three sessions. That’s what’s so great about the snooker. These long, engrossing matches practically warp time and allow you to forget about everything else.

Scrabble. I did avoid relegation, just barely, in the last round. The latest suite of games started yesterday. There are so many Aussies in my division this time. In fact all the divisions have their fair share – I had no idea competitive Scrabble was so big there.

Update: My brother, having been offered that job, has since had to go through various security clearances. The process has been pretty onerous. Mum has even been involved because she has various info relating to his New Zealand citizenship. When I last spoke to Mum, she was really worried. What if the job falls through for him now? Mum looked like she had the weight of the world on her shoulders, her already small frame all shrunken up. It would have been really upsetting for us all if he’d missed out after all of this. But I’ve just spoken to her again and it seems everything will be fine.

It’s a bright sunny day here. I’ve just been to get a new watch strap and a block of sheep’s cheese – even doing that is an effort. That stallholder near the dairy market was blasting out Depeche Mode as usual. And now I’m about to sit down and watch Mark Williams until my first lesson starts.

Family - Headaches - Life :) - Other sports

Just when I thought I was over it…

April 19, 2026 by 0 Comments

I only had one lesson yesterday (from 9 till 10:30 in the morning, with the 25-year-old woman) as the British School kids are still on holiday. And that was just as well: within half an hour of my lesson finishing I had a horrific headache. Pacing, eye shades, lying on the bed, the sofa, ice from the freezer, anything I could do to ease the pain. It didn’t go quickly. At 3pm it eased just a fraction and I tried to eat a bowl of cereal but could only finish half of it. I finally re-entered the world of the living just after four. Conveniently, Mark Williams’ first-round match with Antoni Kowalski started at 4:30. It wasn’t on TV – they had cycling on instead – but I could watch it online. I kept the cycling on (with the sound down) in the background because of the picturesque views of Pontevedra in north-west Spain. The snooker was good. Williams was fortunate to win a protacted second frame and his 6-3 lead at the end of the session flattered him somewhat. They finish their match tonight.

Since then I’ve just been trying to recover and to build up some strength again. This morning – my last morning of being 45 – I sat in the nearby park and read my book. So many dogs. And pigeons. Just two cats. After that I had a Teams call with my aunt and uncle in Geraldine. My uncle, now 84, didn’t talk much, though I had a good chat with my aunt.

Other sports - Politics - Scrabble

Up in the air

April 18, 2026 by 0 Comments

So the Strait of Hormuz is open, maybe, for an indeterminate time, and my parents are coming to Europe next month, maybe, by an indeterminate route. I spoke to them this morning. We discussed the possibility that they get stranded in Europe. Perhaps aviation fuel in Europe will have all run out within a month and the only way I’ll get to see them is if I drive to the UK. A three-day trip.They booked their flights a week or two before war in Iran broke out; there’s no way they’d have booked after.

“I think it’s very, very important for the Pope to be careful when he talks about matters of theology.” So says JD Vance, referring to the very first American pope. On one level that’s bloody hilarious. On another level, WTF? I must say I find the way Trump and his gang invoke God to justify thousands of innocent people to be utterly disgusting.

I did get to see a fair bit of those final eight snooker qualifiers on Wednesday. In some ways they were disappointing; six of the matches failed to stretch beyond the 15th frame. Five of them featured Chinese players. Four of them made it, but what drama there was in the match between the fifth Chinese – Xu Si – and Gary Wilson from the north-east of England. Wilson was miles in front at 7-2 and 8-4, but went behind 9-8. At that point he’d basically had it. But he scraped himself up off the floor to win a very tense 50-minute penultimate frame that hinged on an absorbing safety battle on the blue, and then rattled in a century in the decider. The tournament proper starts tomorrow. In the first round, my favourite Mark Williams (who gave me so much excitement last year on his run to the final) plays Antoni Kowalski who I just couldn’t warm to in his interview after he’d qualified.

Scrabble. I’ve finished all my 14 league games, winning half of them but with a negative points differential. Other players are still to finish, and it’s still on a knife-edge as to whether I survive in the division.

We’re having beautiful weather right now. I should be able to make the most of it this weekend, with only one lesson tomorrow. Yesterday I had a super full-on day of lessons, but other than that it’s been pretty light as people are still coming back from Easter.

Life :) - Other sports - Scrabble

Brightening up (and it’s snooker time again)

April 15, 2026 by 0 Comments

I’ve got a cold so I’m sluggish today, though still positively lithe compared to basically the whole of March. On Monday I went over to Sanda’s place where we had some traditional Easter food including painted eggs and cold meats. Her parents, whom I hadn’t met since Christmas 2018, were there. It was great to meet them. Her mother is the same age as my mum, while her father is in his mid-eighties. Sanda’s uncle, with whom I went to Vienna in 2024, was also there. They’re planning a trip to Belgrade in early June. If we go, it will be the same four of us (Dorothy, Sanda, Sanda’s uncle, and me). But it’s likely to coincide with my parents’ stay in Romania, assuming they make it. Sanda has no flexibility around the date, so it makes things awkward. The other three could go without me, but I’m the only one with a car.

Yesterday I benefited from my relative lack of work by watching a few hours of the last qualifying round of the snooker. There were eight first-to-ten-frame matches, played simultaneously, with the winners making it to the Crucible. There’s something soothing about watching snooker even when the stakes are high, as they certainly were yesterday. Some highlights were Hossein Vafaei of Iran who rattled off nine straight frames from 4-1 down to book his place (there may be some jokes if he draws Judd Trump in the first round) and 19-year-old Yorkshireman Stan Moody who beat one of the many Chinese players in a deciding frame. In that final frame, his opponent spent an age over a yellow which he missed, then slammed the table in frustration. That gave Moody all the encouragement he needed as he cleared up with a very impressive century. Matthew Stevens (who missed out dramatically last year) beat Stuart Bingham 10-7. Shame they couldn’t both make it. Another close match was 22-year-old Antoni Kowalski’s 10-8 win over Jamie Jones to become the first-ever Polish player to make it through. But when Kowalski was interviewed by the brilliant Rob Walker after his win, I couldn’t warm to him at all. He struck me as Very Online and very Gen Z (which I’m sure he’d pronounce as zee). Spare a thought for Martin O’Donnell who led 8-2, then 9-4 and 69-0 in the penultimate round of qualifying, only to lose 10-9 to Anthony McGill. There are eight more final qualifiers today, including the one involving comeback king McGill, but I don’t know how much I’ll watch of them. I think I’d rather read, and anyway I’ve got some lessons later.

In some excellent news, a long-term deal has been struck which will keep the World Championships at Sheffield’s Crucible until 2045. The venue will be revamped and 500 seats added. I imagined that in a few years it would be off to China or (even worse) Saudi Arabia, so I was very glad to hear that snooker didn’t decide to sell its soul after all. I’ve wondered whether it might be worth getting tickets one year, to either the qualifiers (which this year are just twelve quid; amazing value) or the main event.

Scrabble. This time I’m battling relegation. It doesn’t feel like I should be, seeing as I’ll most likely finish with seven wins and seven losses, but the promotion and relegation zones are enormous and my relatively poor spread (which acts as a tie-breaker) might sink me. It’ll be close.

The sun is shining, the temperature is perfect for me, there’s less traffic than usual (so I can hear the birds for a change) and most of my flat is no longer a pigsty. And Viktor Orbán got booted out. So there are reasons to be positive.

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The year has started all white

January 5, 2026 by 0 Comments

I had a tough start to the day with some pretty bad sinus pain. I’m fine now, but on the odd occasions when I get that (thankfully less often than I used to), I’m tired for many hours after the pain has subsided.

We’ve got proper winter here now. It’s snowed all day, pretty much, and all around is blanketed in white. Great for the kids who have bemoaned the lack of snow in recent years. The temperatures are forecast to plummet into the double-figure negatives late in the coming week.

Yesterday I called Mum and Dad, but I got a lot more than just them. My aunt and uncle (the ones who live close to my parents) were there, and so was my Wellington-based cousin – who has come through a gruelling two years of treatment for cancer in her jaw – and her mother. It was good to catch up with them all. Apart from lack of snow, their weather hasn’t been much better than mine. I did mention that I hope to get over to see them in August.

I watched the darts final last light. Luke Littler, still a teenager but the undisputed king of darts, basically thrashed Gian van Veen, the rather more cerebral Dutchman who at 23 is still very young. The match started out with great excitement. There were big out shots from both players at the beginning, then a tense and nervy deciding leg of the first set which van Veen won. Then Dutchman then went 2-0 up in the second set. Game on, as they say. But from there it was one-way traffic. Van Veen averaged 100, which is pretty damn impressive, but Littler averaged a whopping 106 and was always a step or two ahead. The highlight for me was probably the appearance of a wasp (not for the first time) that took some of the sting out of Littler just momentarily. The end came quickly, before I’d even finished grinding all the coffee beans; Littler’s 147 finish was the final flourish in a 7-1 win. By the way, the G in Gian van Veen’s first name is that guttural sound similar to a Spanish J. I knew a Gerrit and a Margriet – Dutch students from my time in France – and their Gs were pronounced the same.

Since my last post, Kitty has been great. She’s calmly sat on my lap without wanting to wriggle away at any opportunity. Let’s hope she carries on like this.

I can’t even begin to know what to think of Trump’s attack on Venezuela and capture of Maduro. It’s all beyond me.

My break from all those students is coming to an end. I’ll have lessons in dribs and drabs for the next two or three days, then bam!, it’ll be back to normal again.

Update: I’ve just spoken to my brother. It’s hard work looking after the kids. My niece has had a virus; my nephew is full-on whenever he’s not asleep. I think Christmas was probably tough for my brother – he spent a week with the in-laws, whom he gets on well with, but it’s just hard not being in your own home and having to look after the kids. Talking to him puts any issues I have with Kitty into perspective.

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The Year of the Cat

January 1, 2026 by 0 Comments

It’s properly cold now. We’ve had flurries of snow both yesterday and today. When I went off to my lesson with an eleven-year-old boy – my 862nd and final lesson of the year if my records are correct – it was minus six. I drove, when normally I’d cycle. I took a detour after the session, and stopped for sandwiches at Bobda, a place I went to four years ago to the day, that time on my bike. It had just gone 1pm – midnight in New Zealand – so I called Mum on WhatsApp, thinking she may have already gone to bed in which case she just wouldn’t answer, but no, my parents were still up and about. They’d just seen the Sky Tower fireworks on TV. Sometimes they’d go down to Caroline Bay, but not this time.

This extraordinary Catholic church in Bobda hasn’t been divinum or nobiscum for quite some time

I got Kitty at the start of the year. She hasn’t totally wrecked my life as my parents predicted. She’s certainly much more comfortable here than in those first couple of months – the biting-and-scratching-and-cowering phase. But last night I thought, there’s still something off about you, Kitty, isn’t there? Your body is so damn tense all the time. Why can’t you just relax? Sometimes she’ll sit on my lap or I’ll hold her in my arms, but never for more than a minute or two. As I said, her body isn’t relaxed and she wants to wriggle away all the time. That makes it hard to build up much of a rapport with her, which is a shame. I’m trying to play with her more and may even get a harness so she can go outside. I hope that she calms down a bit as she gets older. Here’s Al Stewart’s Year of the Cat.

Kitty on Christmas Day

There are still seven hours of 2025 left where I am. I don’t think I can face going into town for the New Year celebrations where it’ll be rammed as Brits say, and any sort of party is out of the question. Spending less time with people over the festive season has been wonderful, and I don’t want that to stop for another few days at least. As for 2026, it feels like a very hard to predict year. There are so many imponderables both on a worldwide level and for my family. The business with their flat in St Ives, their health (which is often hard to ascertain), whether they’ll make it to Europe, so much is up in the air. On Christmas Day I mentioned to Mum that I’ll need to get round to booking some flights. She asked where to. When I said New Zealand, she seemed surprised. It was almost as case of “Why would you want to do that?” Wouldn’t it be really cool if she said, “That would be absolutely lovely.”

I finished the latest Scrabble league with a record of eight wins and six losses. That means I’ll be back in the same division for the third time running. I was pleased with how I played overall. The lady from Palmerston North was one of two weaker players in the division; they will both be relegated. The next round starts tomorrow. I thought if I’m ever going to play a real-life Scrabble tournament (against the clock and with challenges) I should at the very least try an online version, so yesterday I tried my hand at one that was run by someone in Sri Lanka, scheduled for eight games each. It turned out to be a shitshow. It was due to start at 11:30 am my time (3pm for the organiser; India and Sri Lanka are on a half-hour time zone, just like the central third of Australia and a few other places). But most of the entrants didn’t even show up. Blame the ridiculous registration process for that; one click and you were committed, with no way of backing out. The organiser delayed the start for half an hour in a vain hope that more people might present themselves, but they never did. Eventually I played a game. A good game it was too. My opponent drew fantastically and I lost by 50-odd – no shame in that – even though I successfully challenged off his play of DOUG which as I suspected is just a bloke’s name. In the second game my opponent played ANECDOTA. I’d never seen that word before so I challenged, but it was valid. A little while later he said he had an emergency. Could I cancel the game? OK then. Five minutes later the game restarted from the beginning. Emergency over, he said. What the heck is this?! He wasn’t a good player, he was quite possibly cheating, and he definitely seemed to be a complete dick. Thankfully I was able to beat him. In game three I played someone better than me but was fortunate in my draws and ran up a big lead; despite my best efforts to blow it, I hung on to win. Then the organiser mercifully called a halt to proceedings. If real-life competitive Scrabble is anything like that, you can count me out.

Yesterday I watched some of the darts. I hadn’t watched any of this year’s tournament prior to that. One of the matches featured Krzyzstof Ratajski of Poland. I guess Polish Scrabble might be quite interesting. Another match involved a debutant called Justin Hood who remarkably hit all of his first eleven attempts at a double. His twelfth was match dart which he missed, but he completed a 4-0 whitewash over the much higher ranked Josh Rock all the same.

Family - Films - Other sports - Scrabble

Is this really happening again?

November 24, 2025 by 0 Comments

I managed to completely fall out with Mum last night, for the dozenth time this year. It ended up with her shouting “YOU HATE ME! YOU HATE ME!” (it was definitely all-caps) and leaving me no choice but to end the call. Is this really happening again? After that I slept abysmally.

This all came about because Dad hasn’t been well. Last week he noticed his pulse was fast and irregular, and he’ll be seeing the doctor in the coming days. He told me this on Saturday night, just after I’d got back from the cinema. It was Sunday morning for them, so Mum was at church. Mum had told Dad not to tell me, but he told me anyway. This is obviously a big worry; quite possibly it’s come about from all the stress with the apartment sale in St Ives. I called Mum last night just before I went to bed. The first thing she said was, “Dad’s not well but don’t tell your brother.” I replied, “I will tell him. He needs to know. Why do you have to keep hiding these things?” She said he’s got a lot on his plate with the kids so it’s better he remains ignorant. And it all escalated from there. Mum isn’t exactly 100% herself. She’s practically blind right now, though she’s still driving, and on Saturday Dad told me her bowel issue is far from resolved; she sometimes has to change her clothes after what you might indelicately call a shart.

It’s impossible to disagree with Mum. You just can’t do so while maintaining a polite conversation. The moment you show any kind of dissent, a shouting match ensues. The only way to avoid this is to meekly agree. Mum knows best. And that’s exactly what Dad does. He agrees, just to make life easier in the short term, even if the agreement involves something like buying a house that he knows is unsuitable. In fact I can’t remember the last time I had an in-depth conversation with Mum about anything.

Probably Mum’s second-biggest driver of stress lately, just behind the apartment sale, has been the church roster. Seriously, the church roster. It consumes hours of her time. Days even. She says she has to put it into a PDF and it’s disappeared from the screen and so on and so forth and if I don’t get it out on time I’ll be shunned by all members of the congregation or something ridiculous. Maybe she even thinks she’ll be banished to the burning flames of hell. So last week she bought herself a new laptop, which at the moment she doesn’t know how to use, just to do the church roster. That’s a small clue as to Mum’s level of rationality.

I seriously have to think about what to do next year. I’d love to make a trip to New Zealand, but spending that length of time with Mum might be too risky. It nearly went horribly wrong last time around.

Yesterday was my niece’s christening. It was a double christening; my niece’s cousin (a six-month-old girl) was also baptised. Mum, Dad and I were able to hook up to the service on Teams. The minister who made it all happen was the same one who did my brother’s wedding and my nephew’s christening; he certainly has the capacity to entertain. My nephew spent practically the whole hour-plus event running.

The movie I saw was All the President’s Men, a 1976 film all about how the Watergate saga was covered by the Washington Post. It starred Robert Redford, who died recently, and Dustin Hoffman. I saw it with Dorothy at Cinema Timiș on a cold, wet Saturday evening. (Dorothy also saw it when it came out.) The star of the show was really Ben Bradlee, the newspaper’s chief editor. It made me realise that democracy, in the US and elsewhere, is indeed slowly dying. A modern Watergate would be met with a collective shrug. Of course Trump did instigate something worse than Watergate, and the only consequences for him have been to sue the BBC for a billion dollars.

Birmingham City’s new stadium was revealed last week after much anticipation. It’s going to have chimneys – twelve of them – and be visible for many miles. They plan to have it ready for the 2030-31 season. It’ll be part of a multi-billion-pound “sports quarter”. Something like this, if they have a top-class footballing side to go with it, really could revitalise a flagging city. Aston Villa have been easily the city’s best club over the years, and they have a fancy-sounding name. They don’t carry the name of the city though – the city of industry with all those chimneys – and that counts for something. Maybe Birmingham will be known as the Chimney Boys or something. (I’m not very good at this.)

The latest report from the UK Covid inquiry is out. Quoting verbatim, the chair of the inquiry said that while government was presented with unenviable choices under extreme pressure, “all four governments failed to appreciate the scale of the threat or the urgency of response it demanded in the early part of 2020.” Yes, absolutely. It was shockingly slow, and thousands died unnecessarily as a result. A common point of view is that it was going to be bad no matter what, and no government could have done anything about it. I disagree entirely with that.

I played six games of Scrabble yesterday, losing five. Not my best day, but I also drew poorly. That happens. Sharted is valid, and off the top of my head it has six anagrams: hardest, hardset, hatreds, threads, dearths and trashed.

A big week of lessons in store. I’ve got 36½ hours scheduled. They may not all happen – I usually get at least a couple of cancellations – but I don’t expect to have much free time.

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

Mum’s good idea

August 9, 2025 by 0 Comments

Mum has always just wanted the best for me, even if she sometimes hasn’t known what “the best” is, which isn’t entirely her fault. Last week she said, wouldn’t it be nice if you were earning a bit more, and couldn’t you do that by giving online maths lessons? To Brits and the like, and be getting three times what you’re making now? That’s actually a very good idea, Mum. One of your best, in fact. Now, implementing it is a whole different matter. Drawing graphs, drawing shapes, writing equations – so much of maths is outside the realm of simple text, making online teaching quite challenging. I’d need a bunch of equipment, such as a stylus pad and a camera that focuses on my desk. That could get expensive. I’d also have the job of rigging up and dismantling all those gizmos as I switch from online maths to face-to-face English or whatever I happen to be doing next. Then there’s getting the students in the first place, and if I do, finding time in my schedule for them. I can envisage some late nights. Finally, if I go down this route, the stakes increase. I’ll probably have to set up my own company. I mentioned this to a student of mine (an accountant) on Wednesday; she said there were two ways of doing this that each come with their pros and cons. It would be fantastic to be earning enough to bomb around Europe for a month every year without feeling guilty about it, but although I’m often busy with work and don’t take much time off, my work life in Romania has so far been pleasantly low-octane, and online maths teaching would certainly change that. The idea is worth considering, all the same.

On Thursday I had a new student of English, my first for a while. He’s 16 and wants to do the B2 Cambridge exam in November. He was a nice enough guy, though I couldn’t help look at his tattoos. He had two Roman numeral dates (day, month and year in full), inked conspicuously just below his knees. They were dates in the seventies I think, so I’m guessing they were his parents’ birthdates. I have no idea why you’d want to do that, but each to his own I suppose.

This morning I picked some plums from the trees in Mehala. I picked a fair few from outside the cemetery, because they clearly didn’t belong to anybody. (Last year one lady complained that I was stealing them.) As well as the usual purple plums, there was also a greengage-type variety. They’ll mostly go into a crumble. I also went to the market there for the first time in ages – it was like stepping back in time in a nice way – then bought some eggs from a vending machine on the way home. I won’t be going anywhere for the rest of the day. It’ll simply be too hot. As for tomorrow, forget it.

The football is back up and running again. Birmingham and Ipswich were two divisions apart last season, but last night they faced off in the opening Championship fixture. I didn’t see the game, but Ipswich scored from a last-minute penalty to eke out a 1-1 draw after Blues had dominated. I don’t know much about footballers these days; I often just go by their names. Blues looked likely to sign a striker, currently at Ajax, called Chuba Akpom, which I thought was a great name (it even has pom in it), then Ipswich looked like they would get him instead. Maybe they still will. (That’s one reason why last night’s game was fairly high-profile.) Blues did ending up getting someone called Marvin Ducksch, which is a pretty fun name too, if hard to type. I doubt I’ll be watching much football this season. It’s too much of a time sink. And then next summer there will be the World Cup, now bloated to the max. It’ll never stop.

Last night I played Scrabble online for the first time in ages. I was strangely nervous; there were some crazy people on there the last time I tried. I just played one game and won by 130 points. I put down one bingo: SLATERS, another name for woodlice. (I just looked it up. It says the word “slater” is only used in that sense in Scotland, Australia and New Zealand. All that time in NZ made me think it was a universal name for the little bug.)

I’ve had a good few weeks on the weight-loss front. I’m down to 72.5 kg, or eleven stone six. I’ve dropped twelve pounds since March.

On Thursday there was a national day of mourning after Ion Iliescu, the controversial first post-revolutionary president of Romania, died at 95.

Family - Life :) - Other sports - Romania

Roll on September

July 24, 2025 by 0 Comments

Last week I was having a discussion with the 11-year-old girl in Germany when she asked me what my favourite month was. When I said September, she thought I was crazy. End of holidays. Back to school. Homework. Tests. Getting up far too early. That’s what September means to her. But for me it means no more infernal heat for nine months. And yes, back to (hopefully) a full suite of lessons, without which life can feel purposeless.

Last summer messed me up mentally. The heat was relentless. So far (touch wood) this summer has been more manageable. Yes, we’ll be well into the 30s every day until Saturday, but then we’ll get a break. That’s just as well, because I’ve been feeling a bit down ever since my parents came over. Lots of talk about their properties and plans, lots too about my brother (his kids, his house, his career plans, his master’s degree), and then there’s me, stuck out here on my own, my life rather meaningless in comparison. Then there’s the sudden realisation that Mum and Dad are properly old and I’ll have to play a more active role in their lives. Having Kitty is certainly a positive amid all of this.

On Monday I saw a survey in which the majority of Romanians thought that Ceaușescu was a good president and would prefer to return to communism. Anybody under 40 has no memory of that time so wouldn’t know first-hand how awful things got, especially in the final years. He’s become something of a cult figure on social media. A cartoon character. I was shocked to see Ceaușescu fridge magnets for sale when I visited those monasteries four years ago. Older people fondly recall being young and pretty, with lives largely free of hard decisions. It’s still striking to see a poll like that though. People have frighteningly short memories. And we got pretty damn close to going back there in May’s presidential election.

Ozzy Osbourne has died at the age of 76. A legend. And like so many other icons of heavy metal, a Brummie. He held a farewell concert at Villa Park just two and a half weeks before his death. He had a horrific quad bike accident in 2003 that almost did for him. (Those things are bloody lethal. The following year I came off a quad bike on my cousin’s farm on the Coromandel. Not far from Thames. I got my leg trapped underneath it. I wasn’t hurt but it was certainly scary.)

Last week Felix Baumgartner died in a paragliding accident; he probably had a heart attack while he was still in the air. He’s the daredevil who jumped from the edge of space in 2012. I remember that well. There was Chuck Yeager with his “Attaboy” just before Baumgartner leapt into the void. Obama was about to be re-elected. We’d just had the London Olympics. The Queen’s diamond jubilee. Gangnam Style. I felt pretty crap about my own life, but at least the world still made some kind of sense. But within a year, social media had swallowed the lot and spat it out, and here we are. Because of his Romanian girlfriend, Baumgartner’s death has received a lot of attention where I am.

The golf. Scottie Scheffler, easily the best player right now, won the Open easily too. There was just the one slight bunker-based brain fart which resulted in a double bogey, but he soon put that behind him. But for that mishap, he didn’t have any single bogeys in the entire weekend. Best name of the tournament went to Chris Gotterup (‘e’s got ‘er up onto the green); he finished third. Runner-up was Harris English. I kept thinking his first name was Johnny. There were so many vying for second place that if it hadn’t been for Scheffler it would have been an absorbing afternoon and evening. Never mind.

Mum and Dad are off in just 48 hours. I still haven’t worked out where (or even if) I’m going between now and September.