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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.

Other sports - Tennis - Travel: Europe - Travel: Romania

A Scottish summer in full swing (plus my travel plans)

July 21, 2024 by 0 Comments

Our two-week heat wave has come to an end, for now at least. Yesterday the temperature dropped ten degrees from the day before, and finally I could breathe again. First I dropped over a quarter of a ton of crap off at the tip – bags of hardened cement, big sheets of MDF from an old wardrobe, and one of those old-style TVs. That felt good – the small room next to my office, which had become a junk room, could be pretty useful. There’s still a horrible carpet in there that I need to get rid of. Then I cycled to Sânmihaiu Român and back – only the second trip I’ve made on the new bike since I bought it.

After that, I grabbed lunch and sat back and watched round three of the golf. Round two had been dramatic enough. The howling wind, even worse than on the first day which was bad enough, sent scores skyrocketing. Pity the poor Japanese guy who made two successive nines (on a par-four followed by a par-three). At the end of the second round, roughly half the field would be cut. I was strangely emotionally invested in what the cut line would be. Would it be five or six over par? It could have gone either way as the wind dropped for the last few players out on the course, but six it was, and that allowed ten or so more players to come back for the weekend. Nice. The more the merrier. Then on to yesterday. After some better weather in the morning, which helped a Korean player in a Hawaiian-esque shirt hit a hole-in-one, sheer madness followed as it sheeted down with rain. The wind, which is affected by the tide, also picked up. Spectators and players were like drowned rats out there. The temperature plunged. Commentators described hands as being prune-like. But it was all beautiful in its way too.

As this wonderful advert for a Scottish summer was playing out, it was time for me to play tennis. It seemed the weather system had moved south-eastwards in some style. Florin and I got there. We hit for 15 minutes when it started spitting, then after another 15 (following our best rally in which I finally got the ball past Florin at the net) the spits had become drips and drops and there was fork lightning in the near distance. Time to call it a day. When I got back, the golf was still on. Our shortened tennis session and the crazy weather in Scotland (which made everything take longer) meant I saw more of the closing holes than I otherwise would have. It’ll be one heck of a final round. Billy Horschel is on his own at four under par; six players are just one shot behind, including Dan Brown (not the Da Vinci Code guy) who was desperately unlucky on the final two holes. There are a further five players at even par or better; the winner is extremely likely to come from those dozen men. There could quite easily be a play-off, which would add even more excitement. I haven’t seen the weather forecast.

Travel plans. It looks like I’ll go up to Maramureș a week on Monday or Tuesday for five days or so. Then I’ve got my UK trip from 8th to 14th August. After that I’m thinking of four days in Maribor in Slovenia (19th to 23rd, or thereabouts), then there’s Vienna from 29th August to 2nd September.

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.

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

Keeping out of the outside world

July 14, 2024 by 0 Comments

I’ve just spoken to Mum and Dad. They asked me if I’d seen the news. What news? Oh, I see. Someone tried to assassinate Donald Trump. I’ve since caught up with the news and watched the scenes of blood and mayhem. Living on my own, big news can pass me by at weekends – for instance I didn’t find out about the Christchurch earthquake of 2010, which happened on a Saturday, until many hours later.

We’re in the middle of an infernal heat wave. Far from my first I’ve experienced in Romania, but this one is unremitting. The last week has reminded me of Covid. Stay at home during the daytime if at all possible. Outside is scary and dangerous, or at least very unpleasant, between 11am and 8pm. If I visit the market in the morning, I can’t mess around. Make a list and stick to it, just like in the Covid days. Last night I played tennis between 8 and 9; I was glad Florin was happy to just bat the ball around without getting tangled up in a set which would have been brutal. Cycling is a breeze, literally, until you have to stop at a red light.

Last week was a busy and challenging one on the work front. Online lessons with tech falling over everywhere. A maths lesson where I had a girl (who is being taught under the British system) and a boy (doing the bone-dry, difficult and hopelessly impractical Romanian curriculum) at the same time, and felt all at sea. Wanting to print coloured worksheets when I’ve run out of coloured ink. A mother who printed out sheets for her son in black and white where he had to draw arrows to a blue ball or a red shoe. And in between, some much easier sessions with a new lady whom I’d put at an 8 on my 0-to-10 scale. She’s keenly interested in the language, and because she already speaks it so well, these lessons are a piece of cake and fly by in no time.

Apart from shortish trips to England in 3½ weeks and Vienna at the end of August, I don’t know if I’ll be going anywhere. I had planned to visit Maramureș and maybe even Slovenia, but the sudden uptick in my hours and the ridiculously hot weather might make those plans overly ambitious.

Sport. The final of Euro 2024 takes place tonight. England have lucked their way into the final, while Spain have been the stand-out team of the tournament and logically should win. But football doesn’t work like that. England could easily win their first big tournament for nearly 60 years, and it would be huge if they managed it. My brother mentioned a possible public holiday if “we” win, and I realised that for me the whole concept of a “we” in sport feels very weird now. I’ve been out of the UK for practically half my life.

This year’s Wimbledon has hardly featured in my life. Yesterday, however, I watched the deciding set of the women’s final between Krejcikova and Paolini. I thought about how the women’s game has changed beyond belief since the nineties when I watched it far more keenly. The first few games of the final set flew by, then there was a key moment at 3-3 on Paolini’s serve with break point against her. Her first serve was called out. She challenged it but lost, so she had to serve a second ball with her rhythm disrupted. A big double fault and a crucial break. Then Krejcikova just about served out the match in a long final game where nerves clearly got to her. The men’s final between Djokovic and Alcaraz takes place this afternoon.

In some good news, I got rid of one of my old bikes. The guy who nicked it in 2021 did a good job of buggering it up, so I was pleased to get even 100 lei for it. My latest one, by the way, cost 800 lei (£140 or close to NZ$300).

Life :) - Music - Other sports - Tennis - Travel: Romania

Dunken disorderly

June 26, 2024 by 0 Comments

On Sunday I went to Dorothy’s Baptist church to see, well, a baptism. Just like the other times I went there, I felt out of place. Before the service I stood in a queue for the loo, staring at a boiler which showed warning messages in 16 European languages, none of which was English. I thought how exotic the Polish word for “warning” – uwaga – looked compared to the others. I could be Swahili or something. I did manage to relieve myself and then it all started. Two Baptist churches combined for the two-hour service which took place outside. (It was a few degrees cooler than on previous days. I would have stayed at home otherwise.) In the middle of the service a four-month-old boy named Abel was “dedicated”. This involved words only – no water. Then at the end, after the long sermon, came the main event. A tall woman of twentyish in a white dress was about to be properly baptised. She stood in an inflatable swimming pool. This also had warning messages on it – “no diving” – in several languages. My favourite was the Dutch – niet dunken. The young woman gave a short speech standing in the pool, then got fully dunken. (I took three pictures at various stages of dunkenness, but won’t put them on here.) When that was over we had a kind of smorgasbord for lunch, including a quiche that I’d made the previous day. I got talking to a young chap who had recently arrived from Benin. He knew neither English nor Romanian, so we spoke in French. My French is very rusty and I’m liable to mix French words with Romanian ones. I was glad to get home after all of that – more than enough crowds for one day.

On Saturday I played tennis with Florin. It was pretty warm, even at 8pm. Because the grip on my usual racket was in such poor shape, I brought an older one. Leading 5-2 but with game point to Florin, I popped a string. This can happen on a racket that has been unused for a while. Luckily Florin had a spare – a Donnay that was made in Belgium in (he guessed) the late eighties. Romania would be playing Belgium shortly after we finished. I actually played better with his racket, and was up 6-3, 4-1 at the end.

I didn’t watch Romania’s 2-0 loss to Belgium. Tomorrow they play Slovakia in their final group game. A draw would guarantee both teams a place in the next round. The odds reflect this; you can only get 11/10 on a stalemate, where you normally see more than 2/1 on a draw between two evenly matched teams. If I had to pick a score, I’d go with 0-0.

At the weekend Touch of Grey by the Grateful Dead came on my car radio. I know shamefully little about the Grateful Dead, but I really like this song that was released in 1987, two decades after most of their stuff. I did the fill-in-the-gaps exercise with Hozier’s Too Sweet this morning; it went down well, I thought.

I’m now reading Christopher Robin Milne’s autobiography Enchanted Places. A fascinating read. I discussed it with my parents when I spoke to them yesterday. Mum started our chat by complaining about all the people who pronounce “route” as “rout”; that made me think she must be feeling OK.

On Thursday I’m going on my trip. I’m staying three nights in Prigor, close to the Nera River. There should be plenty to see there: a water mill, a monastery, multiple tracks for hiking and places in the river to swim afterwards. And not a lot of tourists. Sounds great.


Music - Other sports - Tennis - Travel: Romania - Writing a book

Three and easy

June 19, 2024 by 0 Comments

It’s getting hot and uncomfortable and soporific; we’re forecast to reach the mid-30s on each of the next four days.

Yesterday Romania’s match against neighbours Ukraine kicked off at four, just as my lesson did with the twins in their dark ground-floor flat near Piața Verde, one of the city’s many markets. We agreed to do English stuff with the game on mute in the background. We were discussing building materials when Nicolae Stanciu’s 29th-minute screamer went in. Romania scored twice more in double-quick time after the break. They were seriously impressive, surpassing all expectations. Most of the fans in Munich were decked out in the yellow of Romania. The match was still going on as I went past the bar at the market; old men sat there agog, probably reliving the golden age of Gheorghe Hagi. When I got home I met a young chap on the stairs. “Did you see the match? Trei-zero!” That was the final score. With 16 of the 24 teams qualifying for the next round (I’m not a fan of this format), Romania are already in prime position to do so. Then it’s a straight knockout and who knows.

I played tennis with Florin again on Saturday. I was up 7-6 (7-4), 4-0 when we finished. Once again I escaped after a frustratingly high unforced-error rate in the first set. In the middle of the set I felt I couldn’t execute anything.

Dad is knocking out some pictures to go in one of the potential books. (Doesn’t that sound weird?) Sometimes I have to nudge him in a different direction when, despite the artwork, it doesn’t quite get the language point across. One difficulty is getting the pictures to me without a loss of quality. So far he’s been sending me photos, but the lighting creates a grey background, sometimes verging on brown, that infiltrates the main colour of the picture too. I’m hoping he can scan them.

A song I’ve heard a lot over the last two months is Too Sweet by Hozier. It’s a rare modern mainstream hit that I actually like. I plan to use it for one of my fill-in-the-gaps-in-the-lyrics exercises. I usually resort to older songs for these, so it’s nice to have something contemporary for a change. A far less mainstream song that came on the radio yesterday was Lume, Lume by Vunk, one of my favourite Romanian bands. I was its 2014th Shazammer. I should also mention that today is Paul McCartney’s 82nd birthday.

Next Thursday I’m off to Prigor in Țara Almăjului, where I’ll spend three nights. The whole area is in an isolated valley of the River Nera; from the photos it looks beautiful. I’m looking forward to getting away. My shortish break will serve as a bit of a dry run for something more ambitious later.

Life :) - Maths teaching - Other sports - Travel: Romania

Positive plumbing and my latest trip

May 9, 2024 by 0 Comments

Good plumbing news. It turned out that the previous guy did a botched job of the seal around the bath, so we won’t need to smash the tilework after all. Or at least I don’t think so. The plumber put some silicon around the edge which the other guy didn’t bother with. I also got him to fix the loo in the small bathroom. I went with him to Dedeman in my car; we picked up a cistern and some other bits and pieces. He told me to go a completely different way there to what I would have done – he clearly knew better than me. He should finish the job tomorrow.

I had my first maths lesson last night with a 15-year-old girl who goes to British School. She’s struggling a bit with the subject; her almost nonexistent mental arithmetic isn’t doing her any favours. But I found her very personable and that makes her very teachable. I’m glad to suddenly have her as a student, right when my proportion of pointless lessons (which don’t help my mood) is at an all-time high. Teaching her will be far from pointless, and quite a challenge.

Monday was a warm one. I went for another long drive – about 250 km, skirting the borders of both Hungary and Serbia. My first stop was Periam, a town (or large village) of about 4000 people; a lot of our local stone fruit comes from there. Being a public holiday, it was extremely quiet there. I called my parents from a café: though it was closed I could still sit at one of the tables in the shady outside area. I then made a short stop at Sânnicolau Mare, a bigger town, before going back to Dumbrăvița via Jimbolia which is a fun name to say. At 4:30 I had maths with Matei on the eve of his final maths exam; we went through a bastard of a past paper from 2021.

The snooker is over. After a tournament in which the big guns didn’t really show up, Kyren Wilson is the champion, beating Jak Jones 18-14 in the final. He made a blistering start, going 7-0 up, but in the end he flopped over the line. Wilson won a drama-packed frame on a respotted black to put him one away, but Jones – the pressure off him – started reeling off frames. Jones was having fun and the crowd warmed to him, while for Wilson it wasn’t far off becoming his worst nightmare. Finally he got there. His reaction to winning was worth watching in itself, as was the very cute bit when his two sons joined him on the stage.

Forty years ago, snooker was massively popular in Britain and had a serious following elsewhere. Steve Davis, Alex Higgins, Dennis Taylor, a young Jimmy White – they were all household names. British football was in the doldrums – attending matches in crumbling stadiums was dangerous, the government of the day treated fans as animals, and very few games were televised. Snooker filled the gap. It was perfect for colour television – still pretty new – and back then there were only four channels, with few of the endless entertainment options we have now, not to mention social media which is a disaster zone. If snooker was on the telly, with its colourful characters, there’s a good chance you’d watch it and get hooked in. Nobody cared if a match took several hours; what was the rush? How the world has changed. Football is now a global gazillion-pound machine, while snooker is down to just one and a half household names in Ronnie O’Sullivan and maybe Judd Trump. Both sports are in grave danger of being Saudified.

Trains still stop at Periam

The Orthodox church in Periam…
…and the Catholic church

Romanian trees are often dați cu var, or whitewashed with lime, to prevent their trunks from cracking as a result of the extreme temperature variations between summer and winter.

Plenty of Serbian in Sânpetru Mare
Miloje Polić
Life :) - Other sports - Photos - Travel: Romania

Church, flowers and balls

May 6, 2024 by 0 Comments

This morning I went to Dorothy’s church, a 25-minute bike ride from here. Church has the potential for all sorts of awkwardness. Just like the Orthodox adherents, Romanian Baptists say Hristos a înviat, or “Christ has risen”, in place of “Hello”. Any reply from me, even the “correct” one, would instantly mark me as an outsider. I was surprised that they also celebrate Easter according to the Orthodox calendar. The service lasted two hours – even longer than the Christmas one – and was capped off by an extremely wordy sermon. In between were hymns accompanied by a guitar, a violin, and drums. All the way through were churchy Romanian words I didn’t know and have already forgotten – it’s not like I could look them up or note them down very easily. The congregation was half the size of the one at Christmas, but included kids who were all called on to read the odd verse or two. Communion, which I didn’t partake in, consisted of normal red wine and scraps of pita bread, not the special communion wine and wafers that we got at the Catholic church many moons ago when I did church. We had coffee and biscuits outside – once again I met that bubbly Australian woman who had sung vigorously.

When I got home the lady above me gave me some Easter food: drob (usually this contains lamb offal, but the one I got has chicken instead; it tastes good), sarmale (filled cabbage rolls), several slices of cozonac (a traditional bready cake), and another cake whose name I don’t know. She might have actually made all of that herself, so I have no reasonable way of returning the favour. Then I got in the car and went north to Fibiș (which is on the way to Lipova), then west to Orțișoara where I stopped for just a few minutes – there was a lovely hailstorm – before returning home.

Snooker. Some long scrappy frames last night. Stuart Bingham seemed to mentally check out at the end, allowing Jak Jones to win 17-12 when a very long night had looked in store. In the 27th frame Bingham laid a fiendish snooker behind the green. Jones’s first escape attempt clattered into the pink, sending reds flying. The referee and his assistant spent several minutes replacing the balls. Remarkably Jones hit a red on his second try, sparing everybody a repeat. Bingham won that frame in the end, but that was his last hurrah against a dogged opponent. It’s not going quite to well for Jones in the final – he took a pummelling in the first session against Kyren Wilson; at least he won the final frame to trail “only” 7-1 in the first-to-18 match. (Update: I’ve just watched a brilliant second session of high quality. There was a dramatic twist in the last frame in which Wilson got the snooker that he needed on the yellow, and then won after a 15-shot back-and-forth on the black. Wilson now leads 11-6.)

Painstakingly putting the balls back. At least they have a top-down camera now.

Palm Sunday in town last weekend

By the river at 8pm yesterday. It now gets dark at 8:45.

Orțișoara: a not-that-old sign for a closed-down ABC, the equivalent of a dairy in NZ

A typical flower arrangement using old tyres

Orțișoara’s volunteer fire department, right next to those flower beds

The war memorial in Orțișoara. Almost all the names here are German; the town was settled by Germans in the late 18th century.
Family - Life :) - Other sports

Down time

May 5, 2024 by 0 Comments

Birmingham City have just been relegated to the third tier of English football, euphemistically known as League One. They put up a great fight against Norwich – and won! – but all the other teams down there were also victorious. They finished on 50 points, which is normally plenty, but this time was one point shy. You can thank Sheffield Wednesday’s manager for that – he performed miracles in dragging the team out of a seemingly impossible hole. Blues’ season on the other hand was a car crash of chaos, right from the appointment of Wayne Rooney in October. Then Tony Mowbray fell ill – that was extremely bad luck. The last time they were out of the top two divisions was in 1995. I do remember that 1994-95 season when they were managed by Barry Fry – a total headcase – and won the league amid the madness. A whole lot of fun for the fans. Hopefully the trips to Lincoln and Shrewsbury and Burton Albion will be as enjoyable this time around. So Plymouth Argyle (cool name) stay up in all their greenness, while Ipswich have made it to the Premier League after two barnstorming seasons. Good to see them back in the big time. It’s been fun to follow football for a short while, and I’ve realised that all the intrigue and excitement lies outside the Champions League and the top handful of teams. The Championship (the second English tier) is about as good as it gets.

Snooker. The corner pockets really are drum tight this year. Jak Jones, who has been unflappable throughout, now leads Stuart Bingham 13-10 with one session to play. Kyren Wilson and Dave Gilbert are now back for their final session; Wilson looks to be edging closer to the final. (Update: Wilson won 17-11 to book his place in the final.) On Thursday I watched a session on some site called Kick which had a chat facility off to the side. One of the viewers was Finnish, and people were talking about Karelian bear dogs. I didn’t know that Karelia was a region that straddles the current countries of Russia and Finland. Watching snooker is relaxing – I’ve struggled with that in recent weeks – but following any kind of sport is such a time sink. Not long now until it’s all over.

Mum was in a good mood last night. She’s had a decent run of late on the golf course. She’d been reading The Man Who Loved Only Numbers, a book about the famous Hungarian mathematician Paul Erdős – I bought it at university and she must have picked it off the shelf. He was a right nutter, she said. I didn’t expect her to read a book like that, and it’s given us something extra to talk about.

I had maths with Matei this morning. His first exam on Thursday seemed to go pretty well; I’ll see him again on Monday, the day before he tackles the second (longer) paper. His mother gave me a crème brûlée during today’s lesson; I sometimes get these unexpected freebies.

Yesterday I met Dorothy and Sanda for coffee in town. I hadn’t seen Sanda for months. We met at a place called Wise, very close to where I used to live. We talked about education systems and the Epoca de Aur, the last years of communism. Sanda mentioned her 82-year-old father’s pacemaker fitting which was done at the drop of a hat and took half an hour. Mindblowingly fast if you ask me. The walls were full of slogans in English; I normally avoid places like that because you know you’ll have to pay 50% more. I pointed out to Dorothy that there was a preposition error in one of the slogans – “bring her at Wise”, when it should have been “… to Wise”. It took an age for the staff to even notice us so we could pay our bill, despite vigorous arm waving and the fact that we were almost the only customers there. If you ever come to Romania, crappy or non-existent service is something you have to get used to. Sanda then told the (young) staff about the error on the sign; they were surprisingly good about it. (I wouldn’t have mentioned it myself, one because I don’t like to go there, and two because a slogan is just like wallpaper – it doesn’t provide information.)

I’m enjoying the quiet of the Orthodox Easter weekend (which has merged with the 1st May public holiday) and hearing the birds outside instead of the constant rumble of trucks. It reminds me of lockdown. On Wednesday I went down to the deserted riverside and bumped into the lady who lives opposite me. I enjoyed our chat on a day in which I’d been struggling. Tonight will be the Easter vigil with huge crowds, but I won’t be attending. Instead I’ll be going to the service tomorrow morning at Dorothy’s Baptist church.