The UK

Family - Language teaching - Maths teaching - The UK

Relieving my parents’ burden, I hope

November 14, 2025 by 0 Comments

I’ll start with some very good news. The people currently renting one of Mum and Dad’s St Ives flats want to buy it. In fact my parents have already accepted their offer. A flat £250,000. Outright, so none of those god-awful chains you get over there that break at a moment’s notice and send you back to square one. I wonder how the renters are suddenly in a position to buy. There’s still legal stuff to get done, and it looks like they’ll get a bill for a couple of thousand to fix the roof, but wow, if this goes through it would be huge. I’m very happy Mum and Dad immediately accepted rather than hanging out for an extra five or ten grand or whatever. This all kicked off when they got a call on their home phone at three in the morning from their property manager. Shit, what’s this? Oh really?

I’ve been pretty busy of late with lessons. I’m having a tough time fitting them all in, to be honest, and it’s been tiring. The biggest problem is that my “client base” has become increasingly kid-heavy, and most of them are only available between 3pm and 7pm or thereabouts. On Wednesday I had a lesson with the 15-year-old twins, boy and girl, who live in a ground-floor flat whose lack of daylight would mess me up entirely. They’d just had an English test. The girl (who now has a very good command of English) got the maximum grade of 10 while the boy got a 7, which is still certainly a pass. They both talked at length of their stress of homework and tests and exams, and that’s even though they’re in the ninth class which is supposed to be less stressful than the one they completed last June. (At the end of eighth class, they have two high-stakes exams in Romanian and maths. The scores they receive in those exams determine what school they go to for the final four years. The scores are decimal numbers out of ten like 7.8 or 8.3; the best schools require averages well into the nines.)

It was clear the boy was disappointed with his English grade, and sure enough the next morning I got a message from his mum. Quoting verbatim: “Please be more demanding with [boy’s name]. I’m disappointed in him. He doesn’t study, otherwise I don’t understand how, after so many years of English, he gets a 7 on the test. Please give him homework. He only learns when you do it with him. And I want him to be able to get his Cambridge. Thank you very much!!” His mum wrote this in English. In the past she’d make lots of mistakes in English, but this was perfect, so quite possibly she used AI. I wanted to write back: Leave the poor chap alone! He’s got so many other subjects; just give him a break. He also happens to be on one of the country’s best robotics teams. I did reply, saying that in future I’ll let the girl get on with her work, mostly from a textbook, while being a lot more hands-on with the boy. The fact that they’re at quite different levels does create a problem in our lessons; she’s liable to blurt out an answer before he’s even had time to understand the question. By the way, “get his Cambridge” refers to a Cambridge English test, which you can take at various levels. It doesn’t mean getting into Cambridge University, though his mum probably has that in mind too.

On Tuesday I had a new student, a woman in her mid-thirties who works as an ear-nose-and-throat specialist. I’ve seen a few of them over the years. We met online; she was smoking a cigarette as we started the session. She had plenty of make-up and jewellery and what I’m sure was a fake tan. At one point I asked her if she’d travelled much. Oh yes. Where have you been? Given what she looked like and the fact that she must be on good money, I knew what was coming. Italy, Greece, Turkey, and Dubai. Of course Dubai. She’s at a beginner level so the lessons won’t be easy at all, but I’m sure I’ll manage.

I saw a video pop up on my YouTube entitled “Why you shouldn’t trust confident people”. I don’t. People who appear very confident and don’t ever say maybe and use very few filler words have always set off alarm bells in me. I was thinking about this when I saw Michael Gove interviewed recently. He was minister of education in the UK from 2010 to 2015 and is partly responsible for the maths GCSE over there being a lot harder now than it was 30 years ago when I did it. When I heard him speak I thought, gosh, you’re using all these big words and speaking oh so authoritatively, but I don’t really think you have a clue. And as a result, you’re dangerous.

When I spoke to Mum recently, she interrupted our conversation twice to visit the loo. She’s still not right down there, is she?

Family - Life :) - Music - Romania - Scrabble - The UK

Delta plans?

November 3, 2025 by 0 Comments

It’s 23 degrees right now: very warm for early November. I’ve just got back from Buziaș, one of my favourite towns in the vicinity. There were a lot of families milling around, taking advantage of the weather and crunchy golden-brown blanket of fallen leaves. With the ornate covered walkway too, it was quite a lovely setting. I realise I went there exactly 52 weeks ago, just before the US election, when there was still hope that it wouldn’t go, well, how I expected it to. Although Buziaș is great, the initial section of the road that takes you there – a deeply depressing stroad – is anything but.

Before Buziaș I spoke to my parents. Dad had crashed his plane that morning – it was a total write-off. On Wednesday night I managed to get Dad on his own as Mum had gone off on a golf trip. (During my summer, when their 9am is my midnight, that opportunity basically never arises.) First, it’s great that Mum is back playing golf again. Her stomach problems – which still aren’t resolved – had pretty much forced her to stay away from the course. During our long chat, Dad and I inevitably talked about Mum. I asked him for strategies to avoid falling out with her the next time I see her. It’s a real concern. One thing I thought of is humour. Mum has a pretty good sense of humour, and in the past when Dad (or I) has cracked a simple joke, that’s helped to take the sting out of things. Mum has fallen out (again) with her brother over Trump. My uncle is a fan of his. He has little to occupy himself and his unhealthy diet of sport and Fox News combats his boredom. I would have fallen out with him too.

Mum and Dad have finished watching Joanna Lumley’s Danube, a series on TV. They thoroughly enjoyed it, unsurprisingly because Joanna Lumley is great. I could have seen it here too on BBC, but I didn’t know about it; I’ll see if I can find it online. The last couple of episodes were in Romania; the Danube skirts around the country, then forms a delta – a veritable wonderland – before going out into the Black Sea. Having watched the series, my parents are keen to do a boat trip through the delta (if and) when they come here next year. That would be fantastic but would require considerable planning because it’s a long way from me and it’s vital that stress is kept to a minimum. I did a lesson on the delta some time ago.

Last weekend I met Dorothy at Scârț where they had a market of sorts. I picked up a record – produced in 1974 – full of Balinese gamelan music. The record was made in Italy, has a price in Deutsche marks on the front, and has ended up in Romania. It’s been around a bit, in other words. It’s great to listen to; it brings back memories of my childhood trips to Bali, especially the first trip. All the wonderful smells come flooding back too. Visiting in ’74 though, that would have really been something.

My university friend – it was his birthday yesterday – is currently in Morocco, joining his girlfriend’s parents there. It’s his first time out of Europe. His photos are brilliant. Lately I’ve complained of the saminess of modern travel; there’s nothing samey about those pictures, that’s for sure.

My microwave, which was in the flat when I moved in, had packed in (I’d got used to doing my porridge in the pan), so on Friday I got a new one from down the road. It seems wasteful, doesn’t it? Shouldn’t these things be repaired? These days it’s hardly worth the effort. I found one with two simple dials and nothing digital, which is what I wanted. In fact there were two like that; I got the larger, more powerful one because the price difference between the two was small. (It cost me 410 lei, or roughly £70 or NZ$160.) The woman at the checkout insisted that I purchase an extended warranty but I stubbornly refused. I know those things are a waste of money. When I got it home I opened the box, as you do, then removed the polystyrene packaging, as you do, then oh shit, the glass turntable which was hidden inside one of the chunks of polystyrene crashed to the floor into a thousand pieces. Kitty, you stay away. Fortunately the glass plate from the old microwave slotted in perfectly. (Good job I got the bigger one then.) I probably should have been more careful, but don’t they play-test these things? Loosely packing a glass plate inside polystyrene seems beyond nuts.

I played four games of Scrabble on Thursday night and another four yesterday. Both times I won two and lost two. Gamelan is valid, and a useful high-probability word. It’s good to know because it doesn’t follow the expected patterns of a word containing those letters. Naturally I’d want to put ng or age or man together when anagramming those seven letters, but gamelan doesn’t do anything like that.

In news very local to where I grew up, there was a stabbing last night on a train near Huntingdon station, a train I’ve been on dozens of times. Eleven people were injured, two of whom are currently in a life-threatening condition. Two men have now been arrested. It’s eerie to see the pictures of the familiar station with police cordons.

A busy day in store tomorrow. I’ve got the Romanian lesson starting at 8am, then a trip to the supermarket, then I’ll try and contact the woman with publishing contacts from years ago (no harm in trying), then I’ve got five English lessons finishing at 9:30.

Family - Photos - The UK - Travel: Europe

Family trip report — Part 2 of 2 (plus photos)

July 8, 2025 by 0 Comments

Saturday the 28th was when Dad brought up three-quarters of a century. In the morning us four men, including the little man, went to the car boot sale. (The previous time I was down there it didn’t run because the field was flooded.) Then it was off on a steam train as a birthday treat of sorts for Dad, though it was really more of a treat for my nephew. He was clearly enjoying himself. The train ran from Norden to Swanage, which is by the sea, and made three other stops along the way. They run old diesel trains on that line too, but you know in advance when you book which type of train you’ll get. Our steam train didn’t have open carriages like the narrow-gauge mocăniță I took in Maramureș in 2021, and though it topped out at just 25 mph, that was very speedy compared to the one in Romania which also had a much longer line.

We got off at Swanage and headed to the beach where my nephew built sandcastles (tap it!) and we ate chips. A typical British seaside town, not down at heel like so many these days, not full of ghastly posh shops either, but simple and really quite lovely. It was a cloudy day, so it wasn’t busy. It brought back memories of the wonderful simplicity of the seaside when I was little. I can see the sea! Rock pools, shells, sea anemones, the cycle of tides, so much time. When my brother and I were small we sometimes camped at Sheringham in Norfolk. My brother would like to take his kids back there, or anywhere by the sea really, when they get a bit bigger, but his wife never went camping as a child so it might be a hard sell. On the train back we stopped at Corfe Castle for cream teas. Jam and cream oozing out of our scones. A delight. There were some wonderful family photos from that day: the ones on the train and of all seven of us at the beach. (I had actually been to Swanage once before, at the time of the Easter floods in 1998.)

Sunday was another “hot” day. My nephew had a meltdown and got stung by a bee. We had coffee at Wetherspoons. I had a depressing discussion of the Ukraine situation with my brother who understands it all much better than me. Then on Monday, after a fifth night on an airbed in the study, another episode of Nick Cope’s Popcast and my nephew’s latest tantrum (my brother is a brillant dad really, dealing with it all), I went back to St Ives with Mum and Dad. This was a tiring trip that involved being stuck at Cambridge North station for half an hour (one of the doors broke) and being in rush-hour traffic in Cambridge on the bus.

The next day I had my day trip to Birmingham. I left at 6:30 am and got back at nearly 10:30 pm. Given the extra time I spent at my brother’s, it was really one trip too many, no matter how much I like Brum and wanted to see my uni friend. What were the highlights? Well, one was having coffee on the top floor of the Cube building and the view from up there. Edgbaston, the Old Joe clock tower. So much green around where I went to uni, but the centre suffers from a lack of it. Another highlight was lunch my friend’s girlfriend had made for us and all her positive words about her recovery from cancer. I suppose the Jewellery Quarter was a highlight too, though I’d seen it before. Judging by the cars, there’s an awful lot of money in jewellery.

I was in St Ives for my last day. No obligations. I had coffee and a muffin with Mum and Dad at a newish place called the Ivo Lounge, then I met up with some family friends (the ones who came to Romania in 2017) and that was very enjoyable as always. We even talked about meeting up in Budapest which would be wonderful if it could ever happen. Later we ate at Wetherspoons (yes, Wetherspoons featured extensively) and watched bits of Wimbledon. The match between Taylor Fritz and Gabriel Diallo was of high quality and a pleasure to watch. Fritz won in five sets and barely three hours, reminding me of the good old days when games and sets flew by at Wimbledon.

I was up early the next morning for what would be a long day. I’d picked up a cold, ultimately from my nephew I think. As I just about had one foot out the door, I had another quite major run-in with Mum. It was all because of how horrible and unreasonable she was being to Dad who had only asked her a simple question. I just couldn’t let it go. She talked about wanting to die. Why does she do that? She had stomach pain which didn’t help, but bloody hell. See you whenever, she said. Whenever is likely a year away, maybe more. Dad walked with me to the bus stop.

I took the bus to Cambridge, then a train to Bishop’s Stortford because a broken rail had put paid to the one to Stansted, then I got a replacement bus (I was lucky to get that) to Stansted. A good job I’d given myself some time. After my flight to Budapest I took a bus and then the underground to the main bus station called Népliget. I had loads of time, and because it was so hot and I had a cold, I was glad to just mooch around the underground part of the station which was full of funny places to eat and drink, all designed for locals. A seven-finger signal from the barlady meant that a beer cost 700 forint. I didn’t really want a beer, but I did want the loo which would otherwise be a minimum of 300. The bus to the Normandia bus station (a 15-minute walk from my flat) took 4½ hours. I got back at nearly two in the morning. Kitty was happy to see me.

It’s good to be back, or at least it will be once I’ve stopped coughing up green gunge. I’ve talked to Mum. It’s as if the business just before I left never happened. We get on fine at a safe distance. I’m having to seriously think about what to do next year though, because things can become very unpleasant whenever I get within a mile of her.

They’re into the fourth round at Wimbledon. I haven’t seen much of it, though I did see the end of Cam Norrie’s admirable five-set win yesterday over Nicolas Jarry. Norrie had had a match point in the third-set tie-break and faced a barrage of huge serves from the other end. His own wide lefty serve was extremely effective though – it got him out of trouble in the final set.

We’ve had very hot weather. No surprises there. But we’ve just had one of those ear-splitting mass alerts informing us of a storm about to rip through, and one of my students has postponed a lesson to tomorrow.

Here are some non-family photos:

The river and meadow in St Ives, plus the, um, world peashooting competition

My brother’s cat

A stag beetle in my brother’s garden

Happy Bottom

The car boot sale

The Swanage steam train

The beach at Swanage

Where we stopped for our cream teas

Family - The UK

Family trip report — Part 1 of 2

July 6, 2025 by 0 Comments

It was supposed to be about my brother’s family but it ended up being all about Mum. As it so often is.

I got to my parents’ flat in St Ives at 11:45 on Tuesday morning (24th June). It was almost a ten-hour trip door-to-door, and within ten minutes of arriving I’d already had a low-level run-in with Mum. The problem was that I asked her a simple question. Don’t ask her questions. I should have known. Bloody hell, this could go really badly. The good news was that we’d be spending five nights (one more than originally planned) down at my brother’s, and Mum would of course be sweetness and light during that time.

Mum, Dad and I took the train down to Poole the next morning. Three trains, actually. From Cambridge to King’s Cross, then the underground to Waterloo, then down to Poole. My brother met us at the station. Soon I had my niece in my arms. She seemed positively lovely. But heck, the demands on my brother and his wife have ramped up beyond belief since I was last down there, now that they’ve had a second child and their first has become much more testing, as my brother put it. There’s no way I could do this, was what I kept thinking. Not with the expectations placed on parents these days and the sheer cost of attempting to meet them (which I know to me would be in vain). My nephew is already a very sharp cookie, but he has regular tantrums (pretty normal at his age I suppose – he’ll be three in September) and is jealous of his baby sister. He still thinks she might just disappear one day in a puff of smoke, but alas. He plays rough with her – I saw him pull her ear and press down hard on her chest and much more besides.

My brother’s place is on the edge of the New Forest; swallows fly over their garden which is teeming with insects. This is of great benefit to my nephew and niece. Insect populations have dropped off a cliff in Britain and kids aren’t spending nearly enough time in nature. Dad pointed out a butterfly called a fritillary, which I thought was to do with its scalloped wings but instead referred to the spotted pattern on them. On Thursday we went for a longish walk through a wood called Happy Bottom (of all things) and along part of a Roman road.

I got to see plenty of kids’ TV which is now very good indeed. My nephew’s favourite show was Nick Cope’s Popcast and it quickly became mine too. The other thing I watched a fair bit of was Glastonbury. I was very impressed with Biffy Clyro, a Scottish band that has been around a while. On Saturday night Neil Young appeared. Isn’t this great, I thought. He’s still doing this at just about 80. But the next day I heard that his performance was terrible. There’s no pleasing some people. I suppose if you’ve forked out £400 for a ticket, you want bang for your buck.

I always say that my brother lives in Poole, but his nearest town is actually Wimborne, an upmarket sort of place whose main draw is the minster. Wimborne is a half-hour walk from where they live, and requires you to negotiate Julian’s Bridge which crosses the River Stour and is nearly 400 years old. The bridge is too narrow for both traffic (there’s a lot of that) and pedestrians, so crossing it can be treacherous. I made several traverses during my time there. One time Mum had a cold so I walked in to Wimborne with Dad. We went to a café, drunk our lattes outside, and mostly talked about Mum. Another time I went in with my brother, we drank at Wetherspoons, and we mostly talked about Mum. (I say we drank but in fact only I did – my brother has all of a sudden given up alcohol. He said it “isn’t a good look” around the children.)

Friday was a “hot” day. The inverted commas are there because it almost got to 30, which where I live is blissfully mild. In the morning my brother and sister-in-law saw a financial advisor. (I spell advisor with an O. I find that way more logical than the, admittedly more common, E way.) It was something about their mortgage, I think. When my brother mentioned to the advisor that his parents were staying and they had all those properties, he invited Mum and Dad in for a session that afternoon, free of charge. Mum and Dad were clearly Heavy Hitters. Mum does “weaponise” her wealth with me at times, making me feel inferior. The last night before I left the UK I didn’t sleep well. I thought, won’t it be nice to come back to Romania and leave the world of Big Money behind. I’ve got, let me see, 645 lei in my wallet. I’ll get 90 lei from this lesson and 120 from that one. I’ll need to spend 100-odd at the market tomorrow and 130 on Kitty’s flea treatment on Monday. Being back in that world will be liberating.

On Friday evening we went to a brewery in Wimborne called Eight Arch, named for that treacherous old bridge that has eight arches. We all had burgers and chips and I had a pint of cider. I drank quite a bit of cider when I was over there. That and bitter. Stuff I enjoy but don’t normally drink in Romania. (I don’t drink a lot here full stop.) Eating with my nephew was fun. He always thought someone was stealing his food.

Saturday was a lovely day, the best of the whole trip, and I’ll save that (and some photos) for Part 2.

Cat - Family - Language learning - Language teaching - Other sports - Photos - The UK

Keeping it real

February 3, 2025 by 0 Comments

When I spoke to Dad on Friday he said he’d had headaches (or maybe just one long headache) for two weeks straight. I couldn’t tell from our Skype calls – he’s had 60-plus years of practice at hiding just how bad it is. It must take a terrible toll on him.

Also on Friday I took Kitty to the vet for a pre-spay check-up. She was fine. They swabbed her ears to see if she had mites but she was clear. I marvelled once again at how much vets enjoy their jobs. I never saw a fraction of that level of passion from an actuary. As long as I prevent Kitty from eating or drinking overnight, she’ll have her bits taken out on Wednesday morning. Then she’ll need to wear one of those plastic cone thingies over her head for twelve days so she doesn’t lick or bite the wound. Kitty has been great of late. Three weeks ago I despaired as she darted all over the place when I’d had almost no sleep; I wanted to take her batteries out. Now it seems she’s got used to me. She shows more affection and no longer attempts to escape. Maybe she’s lulling me into a false sense of security, though somehow I doubt cats think on that level.

A recurring theme of my last few posts has been a dislike of fakeness. I’m fine with things being rough around the edges as long as they’re real. I’m clearly not alone in this, and I think my manual teaching style with all my handmade cards appeals to certain people. I even like my experiences to be “real”; getting my car stuck last Sunday wasn’t exactly in the plan, but meeting those helpful locals almost made it worth it. In 2025 there’s more fakeness in our lives than ever before. I hear Keir Starmer and the UK Labour government banging on about AI and I get their concerns about GDP growth and not wanting to be left behind, but I’m not convinced that any of this stuff will make many people feel an improvement in their lives.

Seven months on from their UK election win, Labour have been a massive disappointment. After the pure callousless of the last lot (the Covid inquiry made me upset and angry), I really thought Labour would be much better. Yes, they’ve been dealt a rotten economic hand, but they’ve shown no will to damn well use the thumping majority afforded to them by the electoral system and build a society and an environment that works for British people. Reform the council tax system that is (wholly unfairly) based on 1991 property prices. Nationalise the railways. Stuff that’s eminently doable and would be popular. There’s still time, but if they don’t get their act together pretty sharpish we could be looking at Reform grabbing power next time – a terrifying prospect.

When I spoke to Dad, I suggested that I lack ambition. He said, oh no, quite the opposite. That was very nice of him, but I do sometimes feel I should be trying to achieve more. When I met Dorothy for lunch on Friday, I mentioned my master’s degree idea. She thought it was a good one in spite of the cost. People blow much more than that on a car which quickly depreciates, she said. Talking of degrees, my Wellington-based cousin’s eldest son has finished his degree at Canterbury and is now embarking on a PhD in Sydney. It’ll all be paid for. Not fair, honestly. My cousin is loaded and could pay for his PhD many times over, but she did a PhD herself and knows what buttons to press and what strings to pull.

Book news. There’s no news, which is a concern. I’ll get on to the publisher in the morning.

The highlight of my busy work day yesterday was my two-hour online lesson with the English teacher in Slobozia. I asked her to write an essay, which she agreed to do, but only if I also wrote one in Romanian. So I wrote 460 words about my grandmother. A useful exercise. I’ve still got big gaps which, try as I might, I’ve never been able to fill. Sentence structure, mainly. Though my nouns and verbs and adjectives are mostly perfectly fine, I often fail to make my sentences sound properly Romanian.

Conveniently, a break in yesterday’s schedule allowed me to watch some football. Birmingham overcame a slow start to beat Rotherham 2-1 at home. Blues are in a very strong position at the top of the table now. At the same time (following what I said a couple of posts ago) I followed Portsmouth’s home game against Burnley. The atmosphere was just like it was all those years ago. Absolutely mental. The game finished goalless, but it was packed with incident all the same.

Below is a picture from Karlsruhe Park, which is close to the guest house I stayed at when I arrived here in 2016. The German city of Karlsruhe is twinned with Timișoara. This city has many other “twins” including Nottingham in England, but not all of those twins are twinned with each other. That makes me think of equivalence relations that I studied in my first year of uni. Our lecturer called the tilde symbol, which represents an equivalence relation, “twiddles”. This amused me.

A back view of the old abattoir

Family - Films - The UK

One of each

September 8, 2024 by 0 Comments

I’ll be getting a niece to go with my nephew. When my brother told me, I was over the moon. I don’t really know why. I might just be that so much of the toxic crap we face these days is generated by men. The due date is 22nd January. Hey, isn’t that around the date of the presidential inauguration? How about a little Kamala, then, if she wins? Goes pretty well with our surname. Of course they wouldn’t dream of calling her anything like that, but it’s fun to think of slightly out-there names.

Last night I had my longest phone chat ever with my brother. He’s not one for talking on the phone, or even WhatsApp video (as it was), but we managed a whopping 50 minutes. There was a lot to get through. The baby gender reveal (should be “sex reveal”, really), the New Zealand trip, the flight back in which my nephew screamed and bawled for hours, and my parents’ house. He was horrified by how impractical it was. How did our eminently sensible Mum and Dad descend into such madness? Then when I told him how much the renovation cost (he didn’t know), his jaw dropped.

This summer is the first time I’ve ever been seriously mentally affected by weather. The floods in St Ives, the humidity of Auckland, the howling wind and horizontal rain of Wellington, my pretty brutal first winter in Timișoara, even some heat waves I’ve experienced here, none of it comes close to the summer of 2024. It’s been unremitting. I’ve almost put housework on hold, because after 15 minutes I’m dripping with sweat and need a cold shower. With the air con, the living room stays nice and cool, but that’s meant I’ve been confined to just this one room. The good news is that seasons don’t change gradually here; you shift abruptly – bam! – from one to the next. The forecast tells me that we’ll get the bam next week, and it can’t come soon enough. One ray of light has been my sinuses. At just about the moment I got back from NZ a year ago tomorrow, they stopped running. I’d had a constant stream for a year and a half, mostly from my left nostril. Then like magic, it stopped. How I have no idea. I still get pain sometimes, and end up taking paracetamol or occasionally something stronger, but the stream drying up has made a huge difference.

Yesterday I saw One Life at Cinema Timiș with Dorothy. Starring Anthony Hopkins, it told the story of Nicky Wilton who helped hundreds of mostly Jewish children escape from Nazi-controlled Czechoslovakia on trains to Britain, just before the start of WW2. The last train, with 250 children on board, never made it – it was aborted, tragically, when Germany invaded Poland. The film flitted back and forth between 1939 and the autumn of 1987, when Winton was an old man. (Winton died in 2015 at the extraordinary age of 106.) I clearly remember the autumn of ’87 when so much bad stuff happened. Mum’s mother was over from NZ at the time. She got bronchitis when she was with us, during which time world stock markets plunged, our garden was waist-deep in water (there are photos of my brother and I canoeing in the garden), an unforecast hurricane ripped through southern Britain giving us a day off school, and (the day before my grandma left the UK) a fire at King’s Cross underground station killed 31 people.

The inquiry into the Grenfell fire, which killed 72, came out last week. Damning stuff. So many players, all cutting corners, ignoring dire warnings about the cladding, putting their own profits above human lives, blaming each other. A good number of them need to be banged up. Owners of flats in the UK (600,000 people) are having to pay to have the cladding replaced. A lot of them simply can’t afford to. This is all a lot like the earthquake-prone building business in NZ which I was caught up in, only at least it’s getting some proper coverage.

Three new students, all women, at the end of last week. I really seemed to click with the last one; that’s always nice.

Family - The UK - Travel: Europe

Tales from the Land of Nod

August 16, 2024 by 0 Comments

In a first for me, I managed to fall asleep in a lesson yesterday. It wasn’t face-to-face – I’m not that hopeless – but an online session with an eleven-year-old boy. I got him to do a written exercise in the present continuous, then a couple of minutes later I heard my name. Repeatedly. How embarrassing. We finished the lesson, then I had a session with his little brother. Please just let this be over. I then set an alarm on my laptop so I’d wake up in time for an online lesson in the evening, in case I fell asleep, which I did. The alarm made me jump out of my skin; I thought I was still in St Ives.

Getting back home was brutal. My bus arrived at Luton Airport at three minutes to midnight. I hardly slept a wink there. At 5:30 I blew £4.50 on an extra-strong coffee, then I had to think about my flight which was due to leave at 8:05. At gate 21 there was a picture of Timișoara taken right where I used to live, along with an up-to-the-minute weather report for the destination. I could see the temperature climbing into the 30s. We were stuck on the ground and took off from runway 07 an hour late, meaning it would be even hotter when we arrived. I had a window seat on the very back row. I got a great view of Lake Balaton which is the largest lake in Central Europe and marginally larger than Lake Geneva. There’s something amazing about seeing a major geographical feature like that in its entirety. I was one of the first off the plane; as I stepped onto the tarmac it was like walking into an oven. I got the bus to Badea Cârțan and from there I walked home in the heat. That and the lack of sleep just buggered me. Next time I might try the Ryanair flight from Stansted to Budapest followed by the train; I won’t put myself through that again.

It was a pretty good trip in all. I saw a lot of my family friends. Plenty of walks and meals – either homemade ones, or pub ones that didn’t come with enough chips. On Sunday, after my trip to Cambridge, we had a three-course meal which involved vegetables from their garden and seemed to take for ever. Conversation sometimes strayed into politics, which is never a good idea. When I suggested that young people have it harder than the older generation, I got the usual spiel about 15% mortgage interest rates in the 1970s and 80s. At least I was spared any mention of the threat of nuclear war, which is the other one that usually comes up. On Monday we walked to Houghton where we met one of Dad’s old friends. He lives with his wife in a beautiful old house; he had a selection of anti-woke posters in the windows including “I (heart) JK Rowling” and “Keep men out of women’s sports”. They’ve both had varying health complications. On Tuesday we went to Wetherspoons for their happy hour which runs from two till five. I had fish, nowhere near enough chips, and mushy peas. Then I tidied up the flat (someone is staying there on Friday) and took the guided bus to Cambridge where I got some provisions for my trip home. I got two Scotch eggs; I was years since I’d last had one.

What did I think of Britain this time? (It always changes.) Maybe I’m biased because that’s where I come from, but the people all seemed great. Calm, considerate, happy to help. Everyone doing their best. The problems are systemic; people’s lives are dominated by unavoidable systems and processes that are failing to function. To that point, the bank I photographed in my previous post is closing down in January and St Ives, a town of 17,000 people, will soon be bankless.

In New Zealand, my brother and his family are suffering with a bug they picked up on the plane. Even Mum has come down with it.

Lloyds Bank in Cambridge on Tuesday night

Sunset in Timișoara on 24th July
Photos - The UK

Cambridgeshire commentary and plenty of pics

August 12, 2024 by 0 Comments

My brother is now a few hours from landing in Christchurch, but for a minute there it was doubtful they’d get to New Zealand at all. On Friday I spoke to my brother who was in a panic (I don’t blame him) because he’d just found out while trying to complete an online check-in that his wife (and probably the little one too) needed a sort of visa to enter NZ. It would take days – which they didn’t have – to come through. But somehow they got themselves sorted. I think if you’ve applied for the visa thingy you’re OK, even if you haven’t got it. These nasty surprises are common now in the no-travel-agent book-and-hope era.

I haven’t been that active since I arrived in St Ives; in other words, things have gone according to plan. On Friday I didn’t do a lot apart from look at the lots for sale at the auction (the bottom has clearly dropped out of the antiques market) and go for a bike ride around the Hemingfords and Houghton.

St Ives high street and its pleasant mix of three- and four-storey buildings

The only bank left in St Ives. Having the bankiness set in stone has probably helped it survive. It has the same beehive motif that we see, on a larger scale, on a bank building in Timișoara.

Merryland. Great name for a street.

Back in 2002, this sandwich bar on Merryland did a range of so-called “barmy sarnies”. I think (hope!) this flood was isolated.

This early-18th-century house is on the market for £895,000

Bugingham Palace is a cute name for this insect “house” in this wild area by the river, but the lack of another G has been bugging me ever since I saw it.

A three-wheeled Reliant Robin
This trunk was estimated to sell for just £50, max

Yesterday my family friend decided she fancied doing a tour of Houghton Mill, but when she saw it required an advance booking, she decided instead on a tour of Lucy Boston’s manor house by the river in Hemingford Grey. Would I like to come? Sure. We walked through the St Ives meadow and past a large house and colourful garden that was once the site of a waterside bar where my friend had a summer job in the sixties. She caught sight of the owner; they had a longish chat which involved much reminiscing on her part. Soon after that, we went past the manor house and saw they had a tour at 2:30; she made a booking for the two of us. We stopped at the Axe and Compass pub in Hemingford Abbots where we had a pint each and a shamefully tiny portion of chips that cost £4, or roughly 15p per chip.

Then it was time for the tour. Lucy Boston was the world-famous author of the Green Knowe series of children’s books. I never read them but I did see some of the TV adaptation. She died in 1990, aged 97. When I was at Hemingford School – this would have been in the spring of 1988, I’m guessing – our teacher (Mr Wright, my first male teacher) gave us all an outing. Half the class were lucky enough to go inside the house and meet the most famous resident of the village and perhaps the oldest too, while the other half (including me) got to draw cows by the river. Other than being the home of Lucy Boston, the house is renowned for supposedly being the oldest continuously inhabited residence in the country. It was built during the Norman period, almost 900 years ago. Diana Boston, Lucy’s daughter-in-law, lives in the house, and it was she (now in her mid-eighties) who gave us the tour. I loved how expressive she was as she showed us all the church-like windows and arched doorways and the changes that were made between the Norman and Tudor periods, and pointed out the features that gave Lucy the inspiration for her stories. In the early 18th century the whole frontage was replaced, and not very well it seems, but a fire at the end of that century did for that. Lucy’s patchwork quilts also became famous, so we got a good look at them as well. Surprisingly, Diana even gave us a tour of her own bedroom. At the end of the tour, we (there were about a dozen of us) sat in a fantastical-looking room which WW2 airmen used twice a week to listen to gramophone records. The colossal gramophone is still working; she has a collection of 150-odd boxes of records. She played us the airmen’s favourite, Abide With Me.

This barn next to Lucy Boston’s house wouldn’t be out of place in Romania

I only took limited photos of the manor house

The tour cost £12 per person; that wasn’t terrible value (unlike the chips). My friend and I then spent some time in the garden, which is itself impressive with its chess-piece topiary and bright colours. It is home to some of the world’s oldest roses. Then we walked back to St Ives. We discussed her daughters, my parents, and a potential trip to Romania.

Today I went to Cambridge. I spent a good chunk of my time on Mill Road; I was born at the maternity hospital there, just like Douglas Adams was. (The hospital closed in 1983.) I’d never explored Mill Road before, and I wish I had, because it’s absolutely fascinating. More than a mile long, it’s made up of two distinct parts, with a railway bridge separating them. The western end, where the hospital used to be, is in the suburb of Petersfield, while the eastern end is in Romsey. Mill Road is brimming with independent eateries, international food shops, bike shops, and community centres of one sort or another. I went into a couple of the food shops to see if there was anything Romanian in there, and sure enough there were tripe to make soup out of (no thanks), trays of mici, and even cans of Ursus and Timișoreana beer. Outside these shops were watermelons, costing about twice what I’m used to paying. It was 28 degrees, unusually warm for here, so I felt right at home. (Tomorrow it’s forecast to reach 33.)

The top one is going for £800k, the bottom one for £675k. Maybe there’s a Cambridge Road in Oxford.

The western end of Mill Road

Romanian produce in one of the shops in the western end

The eastern end of Mill Road

The new mosque at the eastern end

Update: I’ve just spoken to my brother. They all arrived safety after an uncomplicated journey which had a single stop in Singapore.

International travel - The UK

As I was going to St Ives…

August 9, 2024 by 0 Comments

Yesterday morning I was woken by a four o’clock alarm. The start of a long day. I got a taxi to the airport. Flights to Schengen destinations now leave from the fancy new terminal, leaving just a tiny number (like mine) to depart from the old one. The attention-grabbing split-flap departure board has finally succumbed – it was still there but totally blank. The whole place was eerily quiet. As always we were held in an inhuman pen-like room before it was time to board. The flight was uneventful; I even managed to doze a bit.

At the other end the e-gates weren’t working so we all had to be processed manually. I had a wait for my coach, so I got a £4.20 coffee from Caffè Nero. The lady asked me if I wanted chocolate sprinkled on it. I might as well, I said. (At that price you take whatever you can get.) Then I thought, how would I say “I might as well” in Romanian? I’d have come out with the equivalent of “Why not?” or even a simple yes. Even though I get by in Romanian, it’s like having one hand tied behind my back.

The bus station outside the airport terminal consists of 18 bays, with buses (or coaches, as they say) going in all directions. A short, stocky, bearded, heavily tattooed guy of about thirty seemed to be running the show. He wore an orange hi-viz vest. He could handle any question about any bus going anywhere, with handy gesticulations and the odd sympathetic “sorry, mate” thrown in. He had a ticket-issuing machine strapped to his waist, and also transmitted information to his colleagues (some hi-vizzed at the station, others in the terminal) via both a phone and a walkie-talkie. “Victor Zulu Foxtrot [referring to the bus’s number plate] has just pulled in.” I got the impression he’d been doing this since he left school. I thought, this bloke is worth his weight in gold. We’re still a very long way from AI replacing (properly) someone like him.

Our bus driver was cheerful; he introduced himself as Pat. Midway through the journey to Cambridge he had two problems at once – a door that didn’t shut properly and a road (the A602) that was closed by the police. Pat spent some time communicating with HQ about the door issue but fixed the problem and after taking a detour we arrived only half an hour late. The trip only cost £10. My subsequent bus to St Ives cost just £2. Very good value. Measures were put in place in 2022 to help with the cost of living; poorer people use buses disproportionately.

St Ives is quiet, a much nicer temperature than Timișoara, and generally an enjoyable place to spend a few days in the summer. I had a nap in the afternoon and woke up pretty discombobulated. Where exactly am I? I have internet access here in my parents’ apartment – I’ve managed to get the password from the people who live above. I don’t know how much longer Mum and Dad will keep this place. Having the internet meant I was able to give two online lessons in the evening. When they were over, I could hardly believe it was still the same day that it was when I set off.

I don’t plan to do much. I won’t be seeing my brother or my university friend. Sadly I don’t even have my aunt anymore. I’ll go for the odd bike ride, do some reading, catch up with my family friends (gently suggesting they come to Romania for a second time), and probably make a trip into Cambridge which will only cost £4. Not doing much is basically the whole point.

Thinking about the title I’ve given this blog post, I’m reminded of a maths test I was given at the age of six. The teacher, Mrs Stokes (who sadly died very young of cancer just a few years later), read out the ten questions. For one of the questions, we had to solve the riddle “How many were there going to St Ives?” I tried to calculate 7 × 7 × 7 × 7 by hand and missed the next few questions entirely.

Politics - The UK - Travel: Europe

More UK politics thoughts and lack of motivation

July 7, 2024 by 0 Comments

I’ve just had a longish Skype chat with my cousin who lives in New York state (I stayed with him in 2015) but is currently in northern Italy. It’s always good to catch up with him.

We’re getting scorching weather again. We’re forecast to nudge 40 in the coming days. I’d planned another road trip, but I won’t even want to travel outside this air-conditioned room if it’s like that. I’m now thinking of making a trip to Slovenia in the next few weeks, then I’ll probably spend a few days in the UK in the second half of August before going to Vienna from 29th August to 2nd September.

Last night I played tennis with Florin. I wasn’t very good. I led 3-0 and 4-1 but yet again we found ourselves at 6-6. I came from 3-0 down to win the tie-break 7-5. He won more points in the set; tennis is very first-past-the-post-y. We played to the sounds of Festivalul Inimilor, the festival of traditional music from many nationalities that takes place in Parcul Rozelor every July. It’s completely free, and after the game I grabbed a beer from one of the stalls and watched some of it. In the good old days, the musicians would parade past my apartment block, Olympics-style, to mark the start of it all. They still do that but I no longer live there. I really miss those early days.

Lately I’ve been lacking motivation and the capacity to enjoy things. I met Dorothy yesterday at Prospero, the bakery close to where I used to live that also serves coffee. It was my suggestion to go there; they always did very good bread. The place was packed with intimidatingly sophisticated women with perfect hair and matching handbags and jackets even on such a hot day; there were separate queues that made the ordering process painful. (When I’m on my own I find a simple little bar or a vending machine. It’s cheaper and I beat all that stress.) Things were fine once we eventually sat down.

We talked a lot about the UK election. Unlike me, she stayed up half the night to watch it. I wanted to upload a graph showing the huge disparity between vote share and seat share and how ridiculous it is, but WordPress isn’t allowing me to upload any pictures at all for some reason that is well beyond my understanding.

Ed Davey’s novel strategy of falling off paddleboards and screaming “Vote Liberal Democrat!” mid-bungee jump paid off, in terms of seats at least. It got him out there, and he used his frivolous stunts to make a serious point about social care; he has a disabled son who has to be looked after day and night. Good on him.

Dorothy said the Lib Dems (12% of the vote) were too woke. Dad said Labour (34%) were too woke. The Greens got 6%, and they’re obviously very woke. By my calculations, that’s a majority who voted for these woke parties. What that means that is most people under 70 don’t give a damn about wokeness or unwokeness and have more pressing issues like heating their homes and feeding their kids and seeing a doctor when they need one. Dad said the state of Britain is hardly the Tories’ fault – they didn’t create Covid or start the war in Ukraine. I said, no, it bloody is their fault. Institutions in and around London have got richer while the poor have continued to get poorer. They’ve caused that. Dad agreed with me.

The Tories were rejected wholesale by the young and the not-so-young. It’s only when you get to properly old that their vote held up, saving the party from total oblivion. The baby boomers have had their own way politically for a very long time. This time they didn’t. That can only be a good thing.

Some more good news is that the incoming government is much more serious than the old one. This is a moment in history that calls for seriousness. Much of that is down to Labour ministers coming from far less privileged backgrounds than their predecessors. “Born to rule” is hopefully dead.

None of this will be easy. They aren’t even talking about the environment or mental health, both massive issues. And where’s the money? They’ve kept quiet about raising taxes but surely they will have to. Then there’s the business of getting people engaged in politics at all. People have had enough. My brother voted at 8pm, two hours before polls closed, and was shocked by how few ticks there were on the list as his name was checked off.

One last thing: I bought a bike on Thursday. It’s German and far more modern than my previous ones. I guess you’d call it a hybrid: half mountain bike, half road bike. It’s got a dizzying number of gears. Why I need more than four or five I have no idea. The brand is Steppenwolf, which I thought was just the name of a band. I’ve now got two old bikes I somehow need to offload.

I’ll try not to write again for a few days.