Other sports

Keeping out of the outside world

July 14, 2024

by plutoman 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 plutoman 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 plutoman 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 plutoman 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.

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.

Life :) - Other sports - Photos - Travel: Romania

Church, flowers and balls

May 6, 2024

by plutoman 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.

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 plutoman 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.

Family - Life :) - Other sports

A sound decision

May 3, 2024

by plutoman 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 plutoman 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 plutoman 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 plutoman 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.