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Family - Life :) - Other sports

A sound decision

May 3, 2024 by 0 Comments

I’ve been teetering for the last two and half weeks. Yesterday I turned off my WhatsApp alerts because they’d become so bloody exhausting. I can’t concentrate on anything or appreciate anything or properly do anything while I’ve got my phone and laptop beeping and pinging away. I’m already feeling the benefits of pinglessness. It should also mean I’m less likely to drop my phone, although that horse has bolted.

I got the plumber in on Tuesday. To get at the leak he’ll have to smash the tilework in front of the bath, and also temporarily remove the sink. Luckily I have a stack of spare tiles left over (they’re in the small “junk” room next to my office, which needs clearing out), and I have a second bathroom, but what a pain. My package did arrive, but not as hoped. I was supposed to get some bedding, a second-hand backpack costing £30 or so, and a few items of clothing, but I somehow ended up with a cheap fleece instead of the backpack, and one of the other items was missing entirely. Because I live in an off-the-map country, I got everything delivered to France and then forwarded on to me. I’d done this before without too many problems, but it’s risky, mainly because you’re forced to say that everything is fine when the items are still 1000 miles from your doorstep. I’ve contacted the forwarder but I imagine there’s not a lot they can do.

I spoke to my brother last night. Whenever I speak to them, either he or his wife or their son has a cold. There are bugs going around all over the show, and people’s immunity levels are still shot to pieces after the Covid isolation. He tried to dissuade me from coming over again in July, though not in as many words. He said they’ll be too busy in the lead-up to their trip to New Zealand in early August. Why not come over at Christmas? No thanks. I might still go over anyway, even if I don’t see my brother, to get out of the searing Romanian heat.

Yesterday Matei had his first IGCSE maths paper. I got this message from Octavian who also sat the exam: I did excellent at maths, I even added bonus questions that I have solved because I was bored. You don’t need the present perfect there, mate, but much more importantly you’re nearly 17 and it might be time to ease back on the conceit dial just a tad.

I’ve made some socată – elderflower champagne – and it’s now fizzing away in three 3-litre jars which I bought from Dedeman in Lugoj last weekend. Heaven knows what it will end up like.

Snooker. The semis are Dave Gilbert against Kyren Wilson, and Stuart Bingham versus Jak Jones. Both matches are locked at 4-4 after the first of four sessions; the semis are the first to 17 frames, so we’re talking proper marathons here. (Update: Both matches are tied at 8-8 after two sessions. The 16th frame of Bingham and Jones was quite ludicrous. Update 2: Wilson now leads Gilbert 14-10 after their third session.) It’s a final four that nobody expected; no members of the much-vaunted class of ’92 (no Ronnie O’Sullivan in particular), no Judd Trump, and no Luca Brecel who won it last year. Three of the four (all except Wilson) were unseeded and had to qualify. The rather portly Bingham (champion in 2015) was on the verge of defeat in the qualifiers, but after making it has done brilliantly. He held his nerve to beat Jack Lisowski 13-11, then barely put a foot wrong in the last few frames against O’Sullivan as he won 13-10. I missed the match of the tournament so far, however – John Higgins’ 13-12 win over Mark Allen in round two. Higgins won a dramatic penultimate frame before completing a remarkable clearance in the decider. The double he took on to start the break, knowing that he’d be out if he missed it, was something else.

Football. Tomorrow is judgement day for Blues. Don’t win against Norwich and they’re gone. Do win and they might still be gone. I put their chances of staying up at between 25 and 30%. If they do survive, the most likely team to go down are Plymouth. My brother got married there. The Plymouth fans seem a nice bunch, and it benefits the Championship to have a team in that part of the country. If I hadn’t studied in Birmingham and seen Blues play a few times 25 years ago, I’d probably want Plymouth to stay up instead.

When the snooker finishes on Monday, it’ll be no more sport for me for a while. I expect I’ll dip into Romania’s matches in Euro 2024 but that’ll be it. Fantastic.

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

Trying not to sweat the small stuff

April 30, 2024 by 0 Comments

I’m struggling a bit. Not at the level of last January or February, but struggling nonetheless. So many small things that add up to a big mess, with no resilience and nobody to share the load with. For instance, I made an online order and got a message to say it would be delivered today, but because I knew I’d be out for lessons I called their number and asked them to deliver it tomorrow instead. But now I’ve just had an email saying (in Romanian) “Great! Your package has been delivered! Mission completed! Give us a review.” So now what, apart from maybe zero stars? Perhaps I’ll still get it tomorrow (the last day before a public holiday) but who knows? Last night at eleven my doorbell rang. It was Domnul Pascu, the man of nearly 80 who lives directly below me. Water was leaking from my bathroom, through his ceiling, and in danger of electrocuting him. A plumber is coming tomorrow morning.

As I cycled to my maths lesson with Matei today I realised I hadn’t yet washed my car. There are car washes all over the city in beyond; they make me think of Sheryl Crow’s mid-nineties song about Santa Monica Boulevard and Bill or Billy or Mac or Buddy and a giant car wash where people scrub the best they can in skirts and suits during their lunch breaks. On this sunny afternoon I had five spare minutes so I dropped into Car Wash Point, one of many car washes on the same stroad, just to see how these things work. There was a wash bit and a hoover bit and a blacken-your-tyres bit. There seemed to be a central machine where you obtain and then charge a card which you insert at the various stations. Just the wash bit had six buttons: pre-wash (what does that involve, I wonder?), normal wash, extra foam, wax, something else, and STOP. I wish I could wash the damn thing myself like I used to, back when life was simpler.

Matei has his first of two IGCSE maths papers this Thursday; the second paper (which accounts for 130 of the 200 marks) is next Wednesday. He’s fine with anything that involves a tried and trusted method, but his problem solving (a hard skill to teach) isn’t quite there. I felt powerless today as the sands of our two-hour lesson ran out. We’ll have two more lessons between his two papers. The I of IGCSE stands for International, and interestingly there are three versions of each paper; you get a different one depending on your time zone, so those in later zones can’t gain knowledge of the exam a few hours beforehand.

Yesterday I visited Lugoj, a large town 70 km from here. The river Timiș, and small island between two branches of it, makes for a picturesque setting. In the island there was, as always, an abandoned swimming pool. I could make a niche YouTube channel in which I travel around Romania showing nothing but abandoned swimming pools. The temperature was in the high 20s, hotter than forecast. Had it been 1984 I would have had a dip in that pool. My car heated up spectacularly and I was glad to get home. I should mention that I recently got my old winter tyres replaced with all-season ones. The old ones were nine years old and cracked, and only good for the gunoi (rubbish) according to the mechanic.

Yesterday morning I had my first chat for ages with my cousin in Wellington. Though I spoke to her after her cancer diagnosis and operation, I hadn’t seen her like this with her drooped jaw. Her bilabial plosives – Bs and Ps – became Vs and Fs respectively. As expected, there was no mention of her health. She doesn’t even broach the subject with her three younger sisters. I wasn’t sure how much she really wanted the chat, and we were done in twenty minutes. It was good to see her youngest boy who wants to be a policeman. Then I had a long chat with her husband who was far more, well, chatty than her. We talked about his business plans (the bottom has dropped out of the manuka honey market, he said) and driving in Romania.

On Saturday I watched the relegation battle between Huddersfield and Birmingham. Not a whole ton of quality, but Blues took the lead on the stroke of half-time through Koji Miyoshi. I don’t know what the Huddersfield team talk was during the break, but it worked. They equalised immediately and for a few minutes were rampant. Blues weathered the storm though, and the game rather petered out. One apiece. The draw sent Huddersfield down, while Blues themselves are in the mire. Realistically they now must beat Norwich in the last game of a zany season, and hope that either Plymouth fail to win, or one of Sheffield Wednesday and Blackburn actually lose. There’s all kinds of football vocab now that didn’t exist when I followed the sport more closely. In the nineties, wild goal celebrations in the crowd with arms and legs flailing weren’t known as limbs, and teams with nothing to play for weren’t on the beach. I saw that UB40’s Food for Thought (heck of a song, with the saxophone) is now a Birmingham City anthem of sorts. The song is supposedly about the genocide in Cambodia. In a similar vein, the Cranberries’ brilliant Zombie, which references IRA violence in Northern Ireland, was a favourite of Irish supporters during the last rugby World Cup.

When the football was on, I had one eye on the snooker. The corner pockets are noticeably tighter than last year, and century breaks have been at a premium. I particularly enjoyed the match between Jak Jones and Si Jiahui, which the Welshman won 13-9. Every other frame went down to the wire. In a week’s time both the football and the snooker will be over, and I won’t mind that one bit.

Music - Other sports - Travel: Romania

Back to Buzad

April 26, 2024 by 0 Comments

After last weekend I went back to Buzad today, this time with Dorothy to visit her place there. My driving issues were: (a) the ignition key not turning, sending me into a panic until waggling the steering wheel sorted it out; (b) getting lost in the maze of Dumbrăvița’s back streets; and (c) the one-way system near Dorothy’s flat in Timișoara. The rural part of the journey was much more relaxing, even accounting for the potholes that had been scraped out and not yet repaired, as well as the trucks transporting material from the quarry in Lipova.

Dorothy’s house in Buzad is bigger than I imagined, and sits on a biggish plot of land with dozens of fruit trees: apples, pears, quince, plums, peaches, and even a large fig tree whose fruit already look big and tasty. They got a treehouse built in their colossal walnut tree. She and her husband had plans to use the place for a kid’s summer camp, and did run one in 2019, but then Covid came along and her husband got cancer and died in 2021. At the end of my stay there, I picked some elderflower to make cordial from, as well as some fennel and the heavenly-smelling rosemary.

Music. Dad sent me a link to Fisherman’s Blues, a beautiful song – what a fiddle – from the Waterboys, a British folk band. It came out in 1988, three years after their bigger hit (but not in the same league for me) Whole of the Moon. Several weeks ago I bought David Bowie’s Aladdin Sane on vinyl. The first track is the theatrical-sounding Time, which is deep and weird and complex to the point that it should be more famous. Maybe the lyrics about recreational drugs and “wanking to the floor” cost it some airplay back in the day.

Football. Blues travel to Huddersfield on Saturday for their penultimate game of the season. Lose and they’re done for, or close to it. Avoid defeat and they’ve got a fighting chance of staying up. By my calculations, win both their last games (the final game is at home to Norwich) and they have a 99% chance of avoiding relegation. Win one and draw one and they’re at almost 80%. However, Blues’ away record is notably shite, so those stats (which rely on ifs) may be hopelessly irrelevant.

Snooker. So far the pattern has been: tune in at 9pm, watch one player look dominant and poised to win, hit the hay, then wake up the next morning only to find the other guy has somehow won. Earlier today I saw Rob Milkins, nicknamed the Milkman but whose walk-on song is I Am a Cider Drinker. There’s a lot to like about the snooker. For now that is, until it packs up and goes to Saudi Arabia, when that’ll be that. Yet another sport ruined.

Here are some photos from Buzad:

Films - Other sports - Romania - Tennis

A land of confusion and a bunch of pics

April 22, 2024 by 0 Comments

Yesterday was my birthday, after which I felt more clueless than ever. It started off normally, with Matei – his maths exams imminent – tapping away furiously on his Casio to solve the diabolical enigma of ten divided by four. It carried on in pretty standard fashion too as I had 3½ hours of English with the brother-and-sister partnership. Then I cycled to Parcul Rozelor where I sat for a while before playing tennis with Florin. I didn’t play well, with the exception of my defence which kept me in it. Once again I had the wobbles, especially on serve. I won the first set 6-3, a score that flattered me. In the ninth game I led 0-40 and eventually won it on my third attempt following the longest rally of the day – a point I was well out of at one stage. I was 3-2 up in the second set when time ran out.

Then it was off to the riverside bar with Florin who talked to me (or at me) for the duration of the walk. A drink or two and a bite to eat, then home. That’s what I’d gathered would happen and what I’d mentally budgeted for. There were rather more friends and friends-of-friends than usual, and we sat inside rather than outside, but that was no cause for alarm. Someone – I can’t remember who – gave me a bottle of wine for my birthday, the second I’d received that day. Then small bottles of homemade țuică (plum brandy) and cognac and vișinată (cherry liqueur) started appearing, and out came shot glasses. Always good to try this stuff. Apart from the shots I had a single beer, and sarmale and mămăligă to eat. With my batteries just about dead and half the people already gone (some had started while we were playing tennis), I decided to head home. Right, can I pay? After some confusion over who and how to pay, a figure of 300 was mentioned. Sorry, what?! That happened to be exactly what I’d earned from my lessons that day. I ended up paying just 70 lei. Then Florin spent several minutes explaining there had been some cultural misunderstanding, as he put it, and when I said that all I’d expected was a beer and some basic food, he said “that isn’t how it works in Romania”. Well last weekend it was, so what do I know?

Baffled, I cycled home. I watched some snooker – last year’s champion Luca Brecel lost 10-9 to David Gilbert after being 9-6 up and twice having the table at his mercy. I didn’t sleep much with all that “business” going around in my head. Plus I had a hangover, my first in several years. I’d planned to go on a road trip today, and eventually did in the afternoon. I visited Charlottenburg, a village settled by Germans (as the name would suggest) in the 18th century. The dwellings are all in a circle, making the place more striking from the air than the ground. From there it was a short hop to Buzad where Dorothy has her house. I can see why – it’s extremely beautiful. That patch is hillier than most of the surrounding area, making it more picturesque. Sadly it has seen a huge drop-off in population like so much of rural Romania; cats, dogs and domestic birds must outnumber humans there in 2024. Driving on those potholed roads was rather taxing given the fug that I was in, though negotiating the city and its sneaky one-way system was far worse.

I was in contact with Florin’s wife today. I said I’d pop over and give her some money to make up for the “misunderstanding”. She then said it had nothing to do with money, so I don’t even understand what it is I don’t understand. Times like these make me think I must be autistic. She was lovely though, and put the blame for whatever it was squarely on Domnul Sfâra, the 89-year-old man (!) whom I used to play tennis with. “It was all his idea, and he didn’t explain anything.” I didn’t feel comfortable blaming him – if by some miracle I make it to more than twice my current age, I very much doubt I’ll even have ideas, let alone be able to articulate them.

Our Romanian teacher sent us a long film showcasing “legends” that arose during the so-called Epoca de Aur, or golden age, meaning the final years of communism. (It was anything but golden.) It was a good watch. I was particularly amused by the story of Ceaușescu’s picture in a major newspaper in which he appeared alongside the (taller) French president. The photo of Ceaușescu was edited at the last minute, putting a hat on his head to give him some extra inches and make him look more statesmanlike. Unfortunately the editor forgot about the hat in his hand.

A word on my brother’s graduation. Hats off (!) to the announcer who read out a hundred or more multi-barrelled African names with hardly a stumble, before alighting on my brother’s group. He must have practised. It reminded me of a radio ad from 2000 where someone had to say the names of the Samoan rugby team. Have a break, have a Kit-Kat. Fifteen Samoan names would have been a breeze compared to what this guy had to contend with.

Birmingham drew 0-0 at basement-dwelling Rotherham yesterday in a match that was interrupted for half an hour by a medical emergency in the stands. Because Sheffield Wednesday won during my road trip today, Blues are now in a precarious position, back in the bottom three with only two games left to play.

13/4/24: Domnul Sfâra, Florin, and a plate of sprat
A flashback to the 70s for those who remember them

Charlottenburg

Spot the cat

A totem-pole-like “have a safe trip” sign on leaving Buzad, and my Peugeot with its pommy plate.

Family - Life :) - Other sports

Dreary and weary

April 19, 2024 by 0 Comments

I watched my brother’s graduation ceremony this lunchtime – they had a live stream from Lincoln Cathedral, an incredible setting for it. After they got through many dozens of postgraduates who almost all originated in Africa, finally it was his turn. A huge achievement, and not something I could have done. I mean, business management, c’mon. I would have lasted ten minutes on that course. Where his motivation came from is beyond me.

My brother is now staying in St Ives and he asked me what I did with the parking permit. Sorry, what? The parking permit I gave to you and asked to leave in the flat after picking you up from Luton. I had zero recollection of that until he mentioned it, and even then my memory of it was pretty vague. I’m talking a level of memory loss I often had at work. I really should have made a note; without notes my life would be an unholy mess of forgettory. Sure enough I’ve found the permit, right here in my flat in Timișoara. So I guess that means he can’t park there legally and I’m in the shit. Looking back, that trip was a real struggle for me. It was too short and I had nowhere near enough time to myself.

It hasn’t been a great few days because I also managed to drop my phone while on my bike and crack the glass. I often wondered how people ended up with spider-web-looking cracked screens, and now I know. I went into the shop to ask if they could swap out the glass without an expensive replacement of the whole display – it’s still fully functional – but I got a pretty firm “no can do”.

A combination of all this and the weather – now dull and dismal, or mohorât as they say here – means I now feel a million miles from where I did four weeks ago when I drove to Recaș on that beautiful day and just sat in the park.

Last year I watched the final qualifiers of the world snooker, and all the drama that involved, but this year my work schedule has made that impossible and I’m not sure I’d have bothered anyway. I hope I can watch some of the real tournament because it’s a nice relaxing thing to do. There’s also the football. Can Blues stay up? They have three games left. First up is a trip to Rotherham, the worst team in the division by some distance, on Saturday. A win would be massive, but it’s far from guaranteed – Blues’ away record is atrocious.

I feel tired. I can’t wait for the Orthodox Easter weekend, now two weeks away, and a general lack of having to see or communicate with people. The curse of instant messaging means those blissful spells are fewer and farther between.

Family - Language teaching - Maths teaching - Other sports - Tennis

Lucky to have him

April 14, 2024 by 0 Comments

I’ve now heard that my aunt won’t be having a proper funeral service. Instead they’ll have an informal celebration at her house in Earith in the coming weeks before the place is sold. Her ashes will be scattered in the river in Wales, where my uncle’s also were after he died in 2002.

With family members popping off around him, Dad feels like the last man standing. After what he’s been through health-wise, we’re lucky to have him. We nearly lost him in 2005 – he was only 55 – when his heart valve operation in the UK went awry. Then five years ago he got bowel cancer. He’s just had a check-up on his heart – he was supposed to have them annually but because his operation took place in the UK he slipped through the NZ net. A sleeve was placed over his aortic valve to stop it expanding, but a section was left sleeveless (why?) and that’s a potential problem. He said it’ll be OK for now but he’ll get it looked at every year until he’s 85 (they stop caring at that point) and maybe at some stage he’ll need an operation.

When I spoke to my parents yesterday they’d just been to Ashburton. They dropped in on Mum’s mother’s cousin (aged 106) in the home. Imagine that, three whole decades on top of what my aunt managed. Amazingly, she isn’t even the oldest resident of Ashburton. Her childhood friend, three months older, is also still alive. The two of them, still kicking around today, at odds of zillions to one. Mum had been to a performance of The Vicar of Dibley in Geraldine, which just happens to be the vicar’s name. Very well received, even if Alice was too fat. I suggested that Father Ted, which is bloody hilarious, would also go down well there.

Two big stories came out of America last week. One, the total solar eclipse. A student of mine mentioned the 2000 eclipse which was visible all over Europe and at its most extreme (perigee? apogee?) in Romania. I said that in fact it was in 1999, then he “corrected” me by saying that it must have been 2000 because they came out with a commemorative 2000-lei note. I then pointed out that not even crazy Romanians would have produced a 1999-lei note. The most striking aspect of that eclipse, which took place in August, was the plummeting temperature. The other headline was that OJ Simpson died. Like my aunt, he was 76 (trombones). His car chase in 1994 was one of the most-watched events in American TV history, then for the next year he was never out of the news until he was finally acquitted of double murder. I remember the school cricket team instituted an “OJ award” for getting away with murder.

This June-like weather – high 20s most days, 31 forecast tomorrow – will soon end. It’s been a heck of a run. Romanians are used to weather being predictable, and if it’s out of kilter with the time of year – even if that means bluer skies and beautiful sunshine – they don’t like it. As for me, I was brought up in the UK and spent 5½ years in Wellington, so I take what I can get. Yesterday I had only five hours of lessons, all in Dumbrăvița. First up was maths. Circle theorems – not my favourite topic. I learn them, then forget them. And I’m supposed to teach them. If I have time tomorrow I’ll spend an hour on them before I see Matei again in the evening. After that I saw Octavian’s sister who is coming on in leaps and bounds, then Octavian himself. My lessons with him always frustrate me; he’s doing an IGCSE which forces him to study literary devices, when improving his pronunciation and intonation (still nowhere near good enough) would be far more useful.

After teaching I played tennis with Florin. Whether it was a panic attack or a kind of derealisation I wasn’t too sure, but I felt shaky out there in our 90-minute session. In the first set I led 4-1, but felt unsteady in the next game in which I opened with a double fault and dropped my serve to love. Leading 5-3 on his serve, I had two set points at 15-40, then another two, but couldn’t break him down. He was zoned in. After a torturous rally in which I finished second best, I let out an Andy Murray-like screech, to my slight embarrassment. In the following game I was lucky; he had a point for 5-5 and I clipped the tape to keep myself in the game, then closed out the set on my sixth opportunity. I got that same wobbly sensation in the second set, especially on serve, but I won it 6-3. The whole time I was battling the heat and my inadequate-sized water bottle. Florin hardly broke sweat. In a little while I’m meeting him and some of his friends down by the river.

Football. I watched Blues’ home game with Cardiff on Wednesday night. They weren’t terrible but they were uninspiring and lacked creativity. When Cardiff scored midway through the second half, I was done watching it. There were no further goals, and Blues were plunged deeper into the mire. On to yesterday’s game at home to Coventry, a local rival still fighting for promotion and with an FA Cup semi-final against Manchester United in the pipeline. To everyone’s surprise a hungry Blues gobbled up Coventry 3-0 in front of 27,000 fans – a huge result as they try to dodge the drop in one of the weirdest seasons ever. There were fireworks before the game – what relegation battle? If they do stay up, the future is very bright for the club; the new owners have near boundless ambition.

Language teaching - Other sports - The UK

Easter trip report — Part 3 of 3

April 7, 2024 by 0 Comments

I slept well on Tuesday night, but on Wednesday I was shattered. I met my friends again, and we went back to Wetherspoons where this time I had fish and chips and cider. Extremely good value. But really I wanted to crawl into a hole and not see anybody. My batteries were almost flat. I had a short nap, then packed up and got on the bus to Cambridge. During that time I got a message from National Express saying that my bus to Luton would be replaced by a taxi. I called their number – is this true? – and after a long wait I was assured that yes, a taxi would show up at the same time and same place, which it did. There were just two passengers. Our twilight taxi ride through South Cambridgeshire – I liked the name Bassingbourn cum Kneesworth – was very pleasant. I got to the airport at 8:45 and hunkered down on a bench, trying to position myself vaguely comfortably amidst the armrests. (I didn’t book into a hotel. I didn’t feel I could justify the eighty quid.) Later I moved to the floor near the check-in desks which are now dominated by the pinkness of Wizz Air.

I didn’t sleep much. At 4:45 I got myself a coffee from Pret A Manger and accidentally tried to pay with a Romanian coin which the Romanian cashier immediately spotted. We struck up a conversation; she was from Iași and had lived in the UK for 22 years. She asked me if I could speak Romanian but a combination of tiredness and surprise meant the words wouldn’t come out. Feeling embarrassed, I lied that I’d only been living in Romania for three years. I then called my parents from the café. Finally it was time to board. No problems with the flight, though half-way through there was an announcement that the lucky seven millionth Wizz Air passenger to Timișoara was on board and would win a bunch of free flights and have a photo shoot on the tarmac. The winner sat four rows behind me. I was mostly relieved; I must have looked terrible and really I just wanted to get home. Frustratingly I had a 70-minute wait for my bus, but I was home at last, back to the sunshine and the warmth. That felt good, I must say.

The trip was worth it for the time I spent with my brother and his family. Seeing my nephew grow up is a wonderful thing, make no mistake. Also, there was something special about seeing my aunt – I thought I’d never get the chance again. But I needed an extra two days of not going anywhere or seeing anybody or even having to communicate. Without that, it’s not really a holiday for me. I might well go back in the summer, and hopefully I’ll factor that in.

Since I got back I’ve given my car a spin (another trip to Recaș) and am planning a longer, cobweb-busting trip tomorrow. Today was a busy day of lessons. In between them I managed to fit in a one-hour tennis session. I was relieved not to experience a panic attack this time; only rallying rather than playing a set helped there I’m sure. A weird thing happened in a two-hour English lesson. My 16-year-old student told me to stop shaking my leg. God, I am shaking my leg and I wasn’t even aware of it. “You’ve been doing it for the past month!” Yeesh, really? I know it is a nervous tic of mine, but it’s alarming that I do it without even realising. In this evening’s two-hour maths lesson I was watching my legs like a hawk.

Blues lost 2-1 at Leicester today after conceding yet another late goal. No disgrace in losing narrowly away to one of the best teams in the league, but other results went against them, and with five games remaining they’re now inside the bottom three.

Driving - Other sports - Tennis

Four wheels good, and a rare chat with Dad

March 20, 2024 by 0 Comments

My neighbour has just given me a chunk of sheep’s cheese. I’ve got very used to sheep’s cheese, with its rich farmy flavour, in my years of living here. I’ve also just had a message from a student who mixed up Tuesday and Thursday. Hmm, are you sure you mean Thursday? I’d better check. I even get people who hedge their bets with the delightful Thuesday. So far two students have actually shown up on the wrong day as a result of this misunderstanding, which isn’t that bad considering how widespread the confusion is.

I called my parents on Sunday night. Five minutes later she was off to Mayfield to play golf, meaning I got the chance (which I get two or three times a year on average) to talk to just Dad. As always on these rare occasions, he talked about Mum’s manufactured stress that profoundly impacts both of their lives without her even being aware of it. When I was over there I didn’t want to be in the same room as her a third of the time. She’d be fine one minute, then the next I’d hear that deep sigh, and that was the only cue I needed. A storm was brewing and I’d have to strap myself in for a bumpy ride. Dad told me about her wish to sell the place in Moeraki – it’s more than doubled in value since they bought it nine years ago. We agreed that selling it would be crazy because she invariably feels calmer when they go there, but then she has close to zero awareness of mental health, including her own. We talked about how sad it is that Mum – one of life’s great winners – can never be content. We discussed other topics like the unstoppable and terrifying freight train that is AI, and what sort of future their grandson will have. When I talk to him I realise how lucky I am to have him; above all he’s a great friend. I’m lucky to have Mum too of course, but I can’t help but be upset at how big a dent she puts in her and Dad’s enjoyment of their later years.

In more Dad news, he should soon get the confirmed results of his heart check-up. In 2005 he had a replacement aortic valve fitted in the UK – the procedure damn near killed him – and was supposed to have regular check-ups in New Zealand but somehow slipped through a bureaucratic net all this time. The initial check looked fine, but it’ll be good to get the final confirmation.

The car. So far I like it. Yes, it was terrifying last Wednesday when I picked it up and had to negotiate a busy city when my brain hadn’t dealt with anything like that for years, but I’ve taken it out for a couple more short trips and slowly but surely I’m getting used to driving again. It’s a 1.6 – right at the top end of what I wanted engine-wise, though smaller than any of the four cars I had in New Zealand. When I tell my female students that I’ve bought a car, the first thing they want to know is what colour it is. I must say I like the blue – anything to get away from the insipid greyness I see everywhere. The registration process is quite a rigmarole here and I went to the mall this morning to kick all that off. Romanians pronounce Peugeot as /peˈʒo/, as if it were written with an é instead of eu.

Tennis is back, much pricier than before. I had two hour-long sessions with Florin over the weekend. The first time we just rallied – I’m a fan of that – but the second time we played a game. I came from 3-1, 30-0 down to win the first set 6-3, then I struggled in the remainder – I missed a shocking number of returns and had trouble with my ball toss – but got to 4-4 when our time ran out. After Saturday’s first session we went to the bar by the river where we met some others for some drinks and mici. That was nice to begin with, but soon I was starving and desperate to get home and eat something more substantial than bloody mici. At least that meant I missed Blues’ football match – despite playing much better this time at home to Watford, they lost 1-0 for the third straight match. It’s a miracle they’re still outside the relegation zone, albeit only barely on goal difference. Today I’ve heard that Tony Mowbray isn’t in a good way at all, poor chap, and they’re bringing in Gary Rowett (he’s managed Blues before) to maybe shore things up for the final eight games.

Recently some students have told me that I’m funny. Comedy funny, not strange funny, though I’m sure I’m that too. I’m taking that as a complement. Last night I had a lesson with the 16-year-old who wants to become a pilot. His head is very firmly screwed on, and he’d rather not spend (waste?) four years at university, as his dad would like him to do, before starting his pilot training.

Under nine days till I fly to the UK. I still haven’t properly thought about it.

Driving - Other sports

Wheely scary

March 14, 2024 by 0 Comments

Yesterday I had a look at the bright blue 2006 Peugeot 307. A diesel, which I’ve never had before. Diesels get a terrible press from all the ghastly shite they pump into the atmosphere. The guy I met outside the cash-and-carry was young. It was registered in his mum’s name – she was born in 1973. It only had 133,000 km on the clock – I hope that’s genuine – and both the car and its vendor were the least dodgy I’ve come across so far. It had air con, an absolute must here, plus a load of fancy computery stuff that looked beyond me even though I’m sure it’s already old hat – every car I’ve ever owned before was built last century. Its warrant (or ITP as they call it here) runs out in July. So today I bit the bullet. It was going for €2250, I offered €2000, he bumped that up by €100 and we had a deal.

This morning I met him back at the cash-and-carry, armed with the 21 green euro notes I’d just withdrawn from the bank. (He said he’d accept either euros or lei; I had €2800 in my euro account – that I rarely use – after buying this flat and receiving the odd payment for lessons with the German girl.) On the way I met the mother of the 12-year-old boy I’d be seeing this afternoon. I was early and nervous as anything. I popped into the store to use the loo. Near the entrance were a variety of football tables for sale. I think my parents still have the one I had as a kid. I wondered why table football always uses a 2-5-3 formation. Then he turned up and we drove to the village hall in Sânandrei where I met his mother – they made copies of my residence permit and I had paperwork to sign – and blow me down (as my mother would say) I saw the mother of my 12-year-old student again. What on earth are you doing here? The business at the village hall was only the start of all the bewildering bureaucracy I’ll have to contend with now that I’ve bought a car. This took nearly an hour, then I was free to go.

But my god, It had been seven years since I last properly drove, and I was in a completely new car. The Sânandrei bit wasn’t too bad – take it nice and slowly, no rush – then I hit the city. Roundabouts and lane changes and bugger me, can I even do this again? I got hooted at just once. I wish I had an L-plate on the back (here it’s an exclamation mark) or a great big neon poo to tell everyone just how out of practice and shit-scared I was. For some of the way I was behind a car whose number plate was TM 13 DIE. When I finally parked just round the corner from my block, I breathed one hell of a sigh of relief.

In theory this will be good, and I’ve always been a fan of French cars after living in France in 2000-01 and seeing all manner of shapely jalopies on the roads, but driving again will take some getting used to and I’ve just injected another layer of life admin which I could do without. I won’t get the chance to drive again until Sunday because I’ve got a packed schedule of lessons until then. And no I won’t drive to lessons in the city. Not yet anyway, that’s for sure.

Last night I watched bits of Blues’ home game against Middlesbrough. In a far cry from their win over Sunderland last month in front of a full house, the crowd – sparser this time – sounded nervous. Panic had set in; the spectre of relegation with a capital R was hanging over the place. Middlesbrough scored the only goal – a very good one – in the 16th minute, while Blues were dire from what I saw. Since Tony Mowbray’s serious illness forced him to step down, the stuffing has been knocked out of the team. Keep playing like they did last night, or the two games before that, and they will be relegated.

Family - Language learning - Language teaching - Music - Other sports - Tennis

Panic stations

March 12, 2024 by 0 Comments

I didn’t sleep well last night and got up at 7:30, half an hour after I meant to. After breakfast I reviewed some Romanian words – there’s a few I can never bloody remember – before our lesson that started at nine. It was an enjoyable lesson – probably the highlight of the day. Then I called Mum and Dad. During the pandemic (it’s now four years since everything went mad) we became closer, but now our lives and experiences have drifted apart again. I have to feign interest in their building project, while the novelty of their son teaching English in Romania has long since worn off. During our chat, they said they might come to Europe in 2025. Might. Jeez.

After the chat with my parents I felt on edge. Can I face another online lesson with that damn woman? Following a surprisingly normal chat, she read screeds of corporate shite from Harvard Business Review. Doubling down on robust penetration capability to achieve superior resilience in a crowded landscape. The more I stare at that sentence the more lewd it gets. She read at 100 miles an hour – her typical Romanian monotone (and the subject matter) made it seem even faster. Slow the eff down. Please. Then it was the 17-year-old girl. We talked about music festivals. I’ve never been to one; she’s already been to three. Have I missed out? Yes, she said. I’m not convinced.

Then it was off to the twins. A quick turnaround. They wanted to talk about their diarrhoea travel experiences and Adolf Hitler. Then a third of the way through our 90-minute session it happened. A panic attack, just like I had regularly in 2001. Or at least that’s what I think it was. A sudden jolt, my heart seemingly skipping a beat, and I felt as if my lower body was giving way from under me. The twins wondered what was happening. Shaken, I recovered and made it through to the end, then did some breathing exercises on my bike trip back. My final lesson of the day was with the extremely pleasant guy in his late forties. He read from Michelle Obama’s autobiography – a fascinating window into her early life, with no end of words and expressions to challenge even an accomplished English speaker such as my student. At one point she mentioned the Muppets. I asked him if they got the Muppets here in Romania. Yes, he said, but only right here because being close to the border meant they could access Serbian TV. He was lucky to live in Muppetland, he said.

Last week I felt terribly demotivated. Heck, I’ve got to do something. Two things. Sort out a car for myself and write that damn book. I had 32 hours of lessons despite a number of cancellations. I doubt I’ll ever get the money from Marco, the bugger. Two and a half hours, then I don’t hear from him. The smoking in bed and his unwavering religious devotion rang alarm bells, though this is Romania, a country of many false alarms. On Saturday I had the most incredible lesson with the girl who has just turned seven. Two hours. How will I cope? Or more to the point, how will she cope? She managed phenomenally well. Several worksheets and colouring exercises on clothes, then a bingo game (she knows her numbers up to 60 upside down and backwards), then I read her a few tactile books before we played a 20-minute game of Kiwi-style Last Card which incredibly we didn’t even finish. She sat there the whole time in rapt attention.

Yesterday I met Mark at Scârț, the place where they have the museum of communism. It was packed there because there was a vinyl sale that I wasn’t even aware of. Then I found both Creedence Clearwater Revival’s Cosmo’s Factory and David Bowie’s Aladdin Sane, both of which I’d been looking at online just an hour earlier. At 220 lei between them, they weren’t cheap, but I snapped them up. As Mark said, you’ve got to have a hobby. I’ve now got 18 records, most of them older than me. The texture of the sleeves, the artwork, the smells, it’s all pure happiness and that’s before I even start playing them. Mark and I had a good chat as always, though 14 lei for a lukewarm coffee was a rip-off. I love that area of town so I then hung around in the park on Romulus and Remus Streets with all the blossom out and hardly anyone else around. My next trick was carrying the records home on my bike (I was unprepared, obviously) without falling off it again. Then in the evening I met Dorothy in Piața Unirii. She’d just got back from a trip to the UK where she slept in six different beds and then got bumped off her flight home but got put up in Luton and received $400 in compensation.

Football. Following any kind of sport can be a heck of a time sink. After work on Saturday I watched Birmingham’s game at Millwall, direct rivals in the battle to avoid relegation. It wasn’t easy on the eye. Blues were shocking in the first half but improved somewhat in the second. The game was petering out to a goalless draw, but then Millwall scored from a corner in the 90th minute – a real sucker punch – and that was that. With ten games to go Blues are teetering, there’s no doubt about it. Since their manager was forced to take a back seat, they’ve taken just one point in four games and sit a single point above the drop zone. The good news is that five of Blues’ next seven matches are at home, including tomorrow night’s catch-up game with Middlesbrough. Straight after that run, they travel to Rotherham who were long ago cut adrift at the bottom of the table. If they can garner four wins in those eight matches, they’ll very likely stay up. Even three with the odd draw would give them a good chance. Less than that though and they’re in deep doo-doo.

Dorothy and I even talked briefly about football last night. Mostly we discussed the evocative names of the clubs. Um, OK, not Birmingham City, but rather those named after a girl or a weekday or the Far East or three successive letters of the alphabet. We didn’t talk about the names of the grounds, but those can be quite lovely too. I used to love Burnden Park and Upton Park and Roker Park and the Baseball Ground, none of which exist today. I remember a game from the 1995-96 season in which West Bromwich Albion drew 4-4 with Watford having been way out in front. West Brom’s ground was, and still is, called the Hawthorns. As Watford equalised, a reporter said “it’s four-four at the Hawthorns!” and I remember thinking how poetic that sounded.

In tennis news, Simona Halep’s doping ban has been greatly reduced and she’ll be back on the court later this month. Great news. It’ll be interesting to see how well she does after such a long time away. And this morning on TV they showed the most extraordinary rally between 37-year-old Gaël Monfils and eighth-ranked Hubert Hurkacz. Monfils won the point, and eventually the match. As for my tennis, our season is about to resume but the cost has risen from 40 lei an hour to 70 – why such a huge increase I don’t know – so my court time is bound to come down. That’s a real shame.

Tomorrow morning I’ll have a look at a blue Peugeot 307. I’ve got to get this sorted, as scary as driving again might be.

That was a very long one, I’m sorry.