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Getting away — part 4 of 5

August 13, 2022 by 0 Comments

On Wednesday the 3rd I left Birmingham after my 48-hour stay there. The bus went through Leicester, which seemed massive and full of monstrous architecture. We wended our way along streets dotted with shops called “Polski Sklep” and “Bunătăți Românești”. After several hours I arrived in Cambridge on a sunny evening; the bus dropped me off at Parkside, beside a park (!) where a cricket game was in progress. The local buses had changed since my last visit in the Mesozoic, and I was frantically trying to determine where my bus to St Ives went from – it wasn’t Drummer Street as usual – only finding out when it whizzed by. That meant another half-hour wait. It was a nice feeling to arrive at my parents’ flat in St Ives again. I liked the homely smell that it has.

In St Ives

The next morning, after a particularly good sleep, I read something online about taramasalata. I’d never eaten it before – its lurid pinkness and complete overkill of a name turned me off – so I decided to buy a tub of the stuff from Waitrose. That sort of food doesn’t last long when you open it, and anyway I’d be leaving in three days, so I ended up having lashings of bright pink paste with everything. I’m not sure I’ll have it again. I then met up with some old friends over coffee. These were the couple who came to visit me in Romania five years ago. He was very ill earlier in the year, and is in the middle of a long recovery. In the afternoon I took Mum’s bike out for a ride down the thicket and through the Hemingfords and Houghton, and then I went back to my friends’ place for dinner, which was almost all homegrown produce. She had earlier given me a tour of their extensive fruit and vegetable patch (not that “patch” does it justice).

This tomb, at the Parish Church in St Ives, is dated 1657

Then came Friday. The big day. The day I’d maybe see my aunt. My brother had warned me that she’d be almost unrecognisable from the time I last saw her in December 2018. I’d tried calling her the day before but got no reply, so I hopped on Mum’s bike for a six-mile ride over to my aunt’s place in Earith, passing through Needingworth and Bluntisham, knowing my trip might be in vain. Handily, they have a bike track all the way to Earith. I arrived at her four-centuries-old house which has two numbers and a name, and knocked on her cobwebby door. No answer. Then I phoned her. To my surprise, she answered. “I’m right outside your door,” I said. She got dressed, then let me in via the back gate. She had aged, a lot, and had put on several pounds. Her back greatly reduces her mobility, but she refuses to have surgery on it, saying it’s too risky. No, it isn’t. Without surgery, you face the certainty of being housebound very soon. But there was no point in saying that. To be honest, I was pleasantly surprised. At 9:30 in the morning, I half-expected her to offer me a glass of wine, but she seems to have cut back on that. Her house and garden looked in good nick. (Admittedly she has a helper.) We chatted for over an hour in her garden, when normally she doesn’t want to talk to anyone. It was all very pleasant. After I left, she offered to take me to the station on the day of my flight, and although it was easier for me to simply get the bus from St Ives, I appreciated that.

That afternoon I met my friends again. She and I walked through the meadow to the Hemingfords, and there I got a taste of how the other half really live. He met us at the end, the Three Jolly Butchers pub, in his car, because he can’t walk that sort of distance. In the middle, we had a pint in the beer garden at the Axe & Compass in Hemingford Abbots, which is just across the road from my old kindergarten, or “playschool” as we called it. At the Jolly Butchers we all ate something different. I had fish and chips again, and a cider – about twenty quid’s worth.

St James Church, by the river in Hemingford Grey

The next day I took the bus into Cambridge. I didn’t do a lot there. I wandered over to Midsummer Common where they have a big fair every June where loads of people get stoned, or at least used to. That day, instead of a fair they had “Our Place in Space”, a kind of exhibit of the Solar System. This was the start of the tour, and the four inner planets were all a short stroll from the sun. Walk across the common to the Cam and several miles beyond (it was all at scale), you could reach the outer planets, including (yes!) Pluto, but that would have taken me all day, so I abandoned that idea and instead grabbed an enormous coffee in a two-handled cup from Costa. I then bought some books from Fopp, which was always one of my favourite shops in the city, and more from Oxfam, though I knew most of them wouldn’t go in my luggage.

The inner planets
St Ives

I finished a second book, then saw my friends one last time, then saw I had a message from Ryanair telling me to be at the airport three hours before my flight. Flying is deceptively time-consuming. I had a quick chat to my parents until the data ran out on my phone – blame Brexit for that – and after a broken sleep I was off to Stansted.

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Getting away — part 3 of 5

August 12, 2022 by 0 Comments

On Monday morning (1st August), it was time to say goodbye to my brother and sister-in-law, and their very scenic part of England. My brother dropped me off at Bournemouth bus station, or should I say coach station, from where I had five-hour-plus journey to Birmingham. (This was the only bus I could find that cut out even more hours by avoiding London.) At the front of the bus was a young man who was completely mad, but in a good way. There were mad people in Dorset too; I was pleased that the UK still has room for them. We stopped for 45 minutes at a service station just before Oxford; this was probably some health-and-safety thing. At Oxford itself the madman got off. At 2pm I arrived in Birmingham; my friend met me at the station, and we walked to the apartment where he and his French girlfriend live. It’s a biggish flat in a large block in the centre of town. Their building is in the middle of having all its cladding replaced as a response to the Grenfell disaster. A depressingly familiar tale to me. Endless board meetings. All that time and energy. And the propect of eye-popping bills. At least he can afford them.

His girlfriend had a busy day working from home, so my friend (who had some time off) showed me around the city centre which was humming because of the Commonwealth Games and the sunny weather. The giant bull from the opening ceremony had been plonked in Victoria Square. We walked down one of Birmingham’s many canals; this is always a pleasure. In the evening we visited three eating and drinking establishments – places where locals go to – and for some reason I found this massively enjoyable. In one of the pubs we played the Romanian-made rummy game that I’d bought them. They play a lot of board games so I thought they might appreciate that. They seemed to. I like his girlfriend who has a great sense of humour and is a big fan of languages. Her English is mindblowingly good. She’s even picked up a Brummie accent.

Birmingham Library


I slept well on their sofa bed, and the next morning it was off to the Games. It was a much greyer day. When we got to the venue, which just happened to be our old university campus, the marshals and even the police were on happy mode. They’d been instructed to be as nice to the public as possible – surely they weren’t like that in real life – and the tactic worked. We saw two women’s hockey matches – that’s without ice in case you’re wondering. First up was Australia against New Zealand. Australia scored early via a penalty stroke, and they kept their slender lead until the final whistle. (Damn!) The second match was far less close, Canada smashing Ghana 8-1, but if anything it was more enjoyable. The Ghanaian men’s team were in the stands, and they burst into song and dance to encourage the beleaguered women. The biggest celebration of the morning was when Ghana scored. I liked that many of the announcers clearly came from in and around Birmingham, and other little touches like playing ELO’s wonderful Mr Blue Sky injected a local flavour. After that, we grabbed lunch in Selly Oak and wandered around the campus. Twenty years after graduating, this felt slightly weird to me. The maths block, complete with the “bridge” where people their assignments at the last minute, still stood, as did the twelve-storey Muirhead Tower which was an ongoing joke when we were there. Inexplicably, the grand old library building had recently been torn down.

New Street Station, looking rather different to how I remember it
Australia v NZ
The Ghanaian men
My old campus, including the famous Old Joe clock tower

My friend left me to my own devices so I could see the squash that started at 4pm. I liked not having to engage with anyone for a few hours. Squash. What would that be like? Intriguingly I sat facing the front wall of the glass court, so all the balls were being hit towards me. (That’s why I was keen to go. Visually I had no idea what to expect.) Above the court was a video screen that provided a more traditional view, and my eyes kept flitting between the screen and the court.

I saw four matches: the semi-finals of both the men’s and women’s. It was gladiatorial stuff. Play was punctuated by lets and video appeals and ball warming after stoppages in play. On several occasions there was “court service” which meant vigorous moppage to wipe potentially dangerous sweat patches from the surface of the court. There were set points, or rather game balls, that came and went, and rallies that left both players gasping for air. One of the women’s matches ended on a tie-break. This was all something I could relate to from my travails on the tennis court.

A dramatic fourth-game tie-break

On the way back to my friend’s place I had a job finding a place to eat because, since Covid, so many places had gone cashless and cash was all I had. I managed in the end. When I got back, the three of us chatted and soon I was off to bed. The next morning my friend and I hung around town, and there was a shared sense of disappointment in how much was closed (for renovation or some other reason) given the big sporting event in town and rare opportunity to showcase the city. The central library normally affords a spectacular view from the top floor, but that day it was out of bounds. The museum and art gallery, impressive as you go in, only provided a skeleton service. As we had coffee in the beautiful Edwardian tearoom, we pondered how Birmingham can better promote itself. Right now it does a shitty job. We decided that a heavy metal museum – the World Heavy Metal Museum – would be a good start.

Ozzy Osbourne and Black Sabbath

After lunch it was back on the bus, er, coach. I’d enjoyed my time in Birmingham, twelve years after my previous visit, and I was extremely lucky to be there for the Commonwealth Games. I was in New Zealand for the 1990 Auckland Games which were a huge success. I can still remember Goldie the kiwi and the official song, This Is the Moment. The Commonwealth games have become something of an anachronism since then, but I must say I liked what I saw in Birmingham.

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Getting away — part 2 of 5

August 12, 2022 by 0 Comments

My brother’s place – a four-bedroom house with an actual garden in a semi-rural part of Dorset – is something I could only dream of owning. (Or, more likely, the upkeep would be a total nightmare for me. I wouldn’t mind having their cat, though.) I got there in time to see the tail end of the opening ceremony of the Commonwealth Games on TV, with a mechanical bull and Duran Duran. A few days later I’d be seeing the action live.

I slept well, and my first full day in the UK went by quickly. My brother took delivery of a new bike, we went to the pub, my brother had a long chat with his neighbour and again at the local butcher’s where he got meat for the evening’s barbecue. He chatted away freely and I felt slightly jealous. After the barbecue, my sister-in-law offered me Eton mess. I had to admit that I didn’t know what Eton mess was. It’s one of those things I’d heard of and knew you could eat, but that was the extent of my knowledge. Just like Prosecco, which you can’t move for now, it wasn’t a thing when I last lived there almost two decades ago. (Eton mess is a dessert containing meringue, whipped cream, and various berries.) Then we sat down to watch the last ever episode of Neighbours.

Car boot sale

On Saturday morning I went to a car boot sale with my brother. These open-air household goods markets soared in popularity in the early nineties (“they’re better attended than church!”) and are obviously still very popular today. This one was big. For a combined fiver, I bought two games for my younger students. If I lived there, I’d be going all the time. My brother then showed me his record player and stereo system, which I quite fancied. (I don’t think he bought it for a fiver at a car boot sale.) The clear highlight of the day came in the evening when we ate fish and chips and mushy peas on Bournemouth Beach. Judging by the price, fish and chips have become something of a delicacy during my time away. Growing up, they were the treat to end all treats. The smell, the wait, the unwrapping, the proper greasy chunky chips. When my brother and I were little, there were abandoned sheds at the bottom of our garden and we pretended to run a fish and chip shop from one of the sheds. When we got home we saw a documentary on Kate Bush. I really enjoyed that. I think she’s amazing and really cool, and I’d definitely like to have some of her stuff when I get my record player.

Durdle Door

On Sunday we visited Durdle Door, which is a limestone arch on the renowned Jurassic Coast. It’s also a fun name to say. It was pretty busy there, but it would have been heaving, or rammed as Brits tend to say these days, if the weather hadn’t been overcast. We speculated as to how much money it would take for us to jump from the top of the arch. A million pounds? Ten million? We quickly settled on infinity. For me personally, the question becomes far more interesting if you leave the world of money. Would I jump if it meant I could have a family and all that normal stuff? Probably not – just watch this – but for sure it gets closer then. We also speculated on when the arch will collapse. It will one day. On the way back we stopped at Wareham, which lies on the River Frome, and had an ice cream. It was a typically British setting that doesn’t even begin to exist in Romania. Then we had a pint at a nearby pub and watched the second half of the women’s Euro football final between England and Germany. We only had one eye on the game. With ten minutes to go, Germany duly made it 1-1 and the match entered extra time. “They’ve fucked it up now, as usual,” my brother said. But no, the Lionesses scored in the added period and lifted the trophy. During the match my sister-in-law was cooking. “Hey Google, twenty minutes,” she said to her tablet. Ms Google confirmed, and the countdown commenced. I got strong Black Mirror vibes from that. My non-voice-activated phone timer gets plenty of use in my lessons, but when I’m cooking I think, it’s about quarter to now so that’ll be five-past-ish, and if I forget and it all burns to a crisp, no-one will see my calamity anyway. Such is life when you live alone.

Wareham


It was great spending time with them. They’re lovely people, both of them. Five years ago I said that if you didn’t know my brother, you might think he was a dick from some of the overconfident black-and-white stuff he came out with. But since then his sharp edges have been rounded off. He’s contemplating life outside the army, he’s doing a correspondence university course to helpfully aid him in that, and he’s a few weeks from becoming a father. As for my sister-in-law, she’s as nice as ever.

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Getting away — part 1 of 5

August 11, 2022 by 0 Comments

It’s been a while, but after two weeks away, I’m back.

On the Sunday before I left, I felt a sense of foreboding about my trip that I can’t remember feeling before. Things were bound to go horribly wrong. I played tennis that evening – singles once again – and finished (from my perspective) at 6-3, 6-3, 2-4. In the first set I led 5-0 with a set point in the next game, then my opponent started to play. At 5-3, 15-15 (shit! I’m going to lose this set now, after being up five-love), Domnul Sfâra arrived, and that perhaps knocked my opponent off his stride just enough for me. Tiredness, that near-permanent fatigue I’d been feeling, really hit me towards the end of our session. Monday was a busy day of lessons and goodbyes and finding some gender-neutral shoes for the new addition. I wasn’t able to get the made-in-Romania shoes delivered in time, so I bought some Reebok trainers with a friendly face drawn on the tongue; the woman at the checkout asked me if they were for a cat. And then I was off.

I had tons of time for my flight, but needed it all. When your previous flight was in a different epoch, expect the unexpected. I wore a mask to be on the safe side, mainly because of my heavily pregnant sister-in-law. At the airport I met a Frenchman in his seventies who had arrived too early and was in a state of anxiety and confusion. I empathised with him; the airport was full of information that was out of date or misleading or only partially correct. Signs abounded pointing to destinations that you could fly to from Timișoara ten years ago, which might as well have been the Eocene. Timișoara still has one of those delightful split-flap displays which are a dying breed. Whenever a flight takes off or lands, everything has to move up a row, and there’s something poetic about watching all those letters and digits flickety-flack into place every few minutes. If nothing else, the flick-flack noise attracts one’s attention like no video board ever could, unless it is designed to mimic the sound. (In Milan I saw a video board that did just that.) Anyway, I tried to help the Frenchman, apologising for my broken French. Once through security (and yes, I’m almost guaranteed a pat-down of some sort) we all had to stand on the staircase for what seemed like hours. I realised I’d become almost allergic to crowds.

We were delayed by an hour or so, but the flight itself was uneventful, and soon I was in the afternoon heat of Bergamo. I eventually gave up on finding a bus to my B&B on the outskirts of the city, and took an expensive (by my standards) taxi instead. I spoke some simple Italian with the taxi driver, making four languages for the day. (There was no point speaking Italian with virtually anyone else. In that part of northern Italy, it seemed anyone under fifty had more than a decent command of English.) The woman at the B&B was very pleasant. The place was like a farmhouse on the edge of the countryside, and it was popular with cyclists. I slept well but still felt tired the next morning. I had a hearty breakfast (I always appreciate that second B), called my parents, sent my brother a birthday message for his 41st, then made it up the hill to the very picturesque old town. I walked up the famous bell tower, eschewing the lift, making sure I’d reach the top just before the half-hour bell tolled. However, on reaching the top I’d forgotten all about that (this wasn’t the last time on my trip that I felt my age) and I got quite a shock two minutes later. Bonngg!! For a couple of hours I wandered around the old town, or high town as it was otherwise known, grabbing the odd coffee and gelato. I was grateful that it wasn’t so hot. I walked into the new town but found surprisingly little of interest there, so then I trekked back to the B&B.


The next morning after another breakfast where I had the works, I checked out of my relaxing accommodation and got a free bus ride to the city centre because I couldn’t figure out how to pay. I read my book – Anxious People by Fredrik Backman – by the fountains near the railway station until the dot of twelve when sprinklers for the plants suddenly came on and got me soaked. I soon dried off, and I was back on the bus to the airport. Bergamo Airport is modern and surprisingly big, considering the small size of the city. Evidently they’ve turned Bergamo into a hub of sorts. There were automated Covid-hangover toilets that barred you from entering at a certain level of occupancy. I thought I had ages before boarding, but I had an unexpectedly long hike to reach my gate. Two hours later I landed at Stansted, where my brother and sister-in-law picked me up in her almost-new Mazda, which must be a work car. (I panicked initially because we couldn’t find each other and every minute was precious. The parking fee – already exorbitant – became stratospheric after 15 minutes.) It was a real pleasure to see them again, and in three hours on the M-something and the A-something I was at their new house just outside Poole. My brother had changed – mellowed – since I saw him previously. I gave them the trainers which they put in the baby room next to the cot and pram and car seat and who knows what else.

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The records keep tumbling

July 21, 2022 by 0 Comments

First, my brother got Covid last week. When I spoke to him on Saturday he was still getting a faint second line on his test, and his wife – seven months pregnant – was giving him a wide berth. He’s since had the all clear.

So the records – which in the UK go back a really long time – tumbled yesterday. An infernal 40 degrees, with firefighters in London dealing with their busiest day since the word firefighter came into existence. I still use fireman with my students, because I’m not woke enough. (The real reason is that it’s easier for them.) Then today I heard one of the stallholders talk about our upcoming heatwave. “Forty-three on Saturday,” she kept repeating in disbelief, “and you can add two more on to that. Vai de capul nostru.” That last phrase is almost untranslatable: it means something like “have mercy on us”, or perhaps in this case “holy shit”. Presumably she’ll have to work in those temperatures, which presumably will be a new record. We already broke the June record last month. Obligatory Google screenshot:

New Zealand is currently facing one deluge of rain after another, as Australia did recently. This climate change lark is so much fun, isn’t it?

Last night I made my monthly trip to see the after-hours doctor. I mentioned my ongoing runny nose (left nostril only) and sinus pain, and he gave me a spray that will last a month. It should help (I’ve used it before), and when I get back from my trip I’ll look for a more permanent solution. The worst part of it all is fatigue; I’m always tired to some degree. He also told me that I need to wear a mask when I travel, so I’ve just ordered a set of proper FFP2 masks rather than those crappy cloth ones. Last night was a warm one, and at 10:45 there were still people milling around Piața Traian where the ramshackle non-stop shop was doing good business. When I got home I had a fly in my bedroom and the smell of fly spray reminded me happily of summer 2020 when my old place was host to flies and various other insects. I was more relaxed then, despite the more pressing threat of Covid and everything that might have meant.

Only six days till I go away. I’ve been organising my trip, trying to get all my ducks in a row. (Do people still say that?) A few years ago Mum gave me a blue folder full of plastic wallets, where I can put every piece of paper in the order that I’ll need them. It’s extremely handy. When I get to St Ives, I hope to see my friends who came to Romania in 2017. They’ve both been quite ill lately.

The Tories in the UK are about to get down to the final two. It has been a perversely fascinating contest. Much has been made of the diversity of candidates in terms of gender and race. The opposition should be glad that Kemi Badenoch has been eliminated. She clearly meant business, and unlike the three survivors in the race, would have been hard to attack. I dearly hope that whoever wins (maybe Rishi Sunak with his net worth of £750 million, but likely Liz Truss) gets booted out at the next election.

My new student is gradually improving. We’re currently having lessons every weekday. Recently he mentioned a possible reintroduction of Covid restrictions, using the word “mafia”. I nearly asked him which vaccine he got, but thought better of it. He then said that “nobody loves the current president”. That might not be far off the truth, and it’s no bad thing. When people love political leaders, that’s when things go horribly wrong.

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Games, trip plans, and some pictures

July 14, 2022 by 0 Comments

I’m getting plenty of work in the run-up to my trip away. Six lessons yesterday, four today. I finished off the New York version of my skyscraper board game with both the teenage boys today. Both games finished with identical 21-15 scores (a loss and a win for me). They were both a bit more clear-cut than the time we played the Chicago version. The different buildings – some bigger and harder to build than others – appear in a random order in the game, and in both these latest games the big guns like the One World Trade Center and Central Park Tower came out towards the end, when it would have more fun if they’d come out at the start when you have more time to complete them.

Not long now until my holiday, which could still be marred by the latest Covid wave, a record heat wave, and a veritable tsunami of flight delays and cancellations. My brother and sister-in-law said they’d be happy to meet me off the plane at Stansted on Thursday the 28th, then they’ll take me down to their newish place in Poole. I expect I’ll spend the weekend with them. After that I’d like to see my friend in Birmingham where the Commonwealth Games will be in full swing – since I was in New Zealand for the successful Auckland games of 1990, this event has become a bit of an anachronism, but it’s probably the only chance I’ll get to see (for instance) live weightlifting. Or we might end up meeting in London instead if getting to Birmingham from my brother’s place all gets too hard or too expensive or both. Then I plan to spend the rest of my British break at my parents’ flat in St Ives. I’m pretty excited about the Italy bit before and after my stay in the UK.

A maddeningly common sight, near where I get my water. I still have my old mattress.
The roof of umbrellas on Strada Alba Iulia today. And as if by magic, the US dollar and euro exchange rates have essentially converged.
The Chicago edition of my board game…
… and here’s the New York edition.

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Struck down

June 26, 2022 by 0 Comments

I’ve had a bit of a crappy time of it the last few days. On Wednesday night I had a piercing sinus headache on my right side – one of those “screwdriver rammed up my nose” ones – and although it eased at around four in the morning, it destroyed my sleep and my energy for the next day. Yesterday was an improvement, but the pain returned last night and I’ve reverted to go-slow mode today. I was grateful for the storm that put paid to this evening’s tennis.

The first half of the week wasn’t too bad. I got good feedback from the two teenage boys about my new skyscraper-building board game. The first one said something like “isn’t it amazing that you’ve actually made this?” which was nice to hear. I was on solid ground with them; after a combined 400-odd lessons, they probably weren’t going to say they hated my stupid game and didn’t want to see me again. (Someone basically did tell me that once, though it wasn’t a game I’d created.) The timing was good because they’d just had their high-pressure exams in Romanian and maths that will determine where they go for their final four years of school, so there was a good chance they’d be receptive to some kind of game.

Lots of politics this week. The US Supreme Court have made abortion illegal in something like half the states. Even if you are anti-abortion, actually banning it is monumentally stupid and evil. Thousands of women will die because of this ruling that has been handed down by half a dozen ultra-extreme religious loons whose concern about a child’s life seems to evaporate once it is born, if their attitude to guns is anything to go by. And where will they stop? Will abortion soon be outlawed nationwide? Homosexuality too? Who was it who said that America shouldn’t fear Islam, but fundamental so-called Christianity instead? They’ve been proven right. This latest ruling will have repercussions that go beyond America’s borders; I could see abortion laws being tightened in religious countries like Romania. The whole political system in the US so utterly messed up. It would be good it could burn to the ground.

In happier news across the pond, the Conservatives lost both the by-elections they were contesting on Thursday, the sixth anniversary of the Brexit referendum. In the next general election, voters absolutely all-capital-letters MUST vote tactically for whatever party is most likely to beat the Tories. Labour, Lib Dem, SNP, Plaid Cymru, it doesn’t matter. If Labour don’t win a majority, that doesn’t matter either. In fact it’s better if nobody wins a majority. The more chance there would then be of the terrible electoral system (albeit not nearly as egregious as the American one) changing.

I called my sister-in-law last night. I knew she and my brother had gone up to St Ives, but was very surprised to see her in the church by the river. She said she was at a “Booze in the Pews” event. After the news from the US yesterday, I was glad to hear that so few people in the UK now use churches for their original purpose that they hold drinking sessions there. My sister-in-law, six months pregnant, wasn’t partaking.

I plan to travel to the UK in a month’s time, but I’ve been unable to book a flight because I still haven’t got a replacement debit card after I nearly got scammed two weeks ago. I’m getting just enough cash payments to tide me over from week to week. What a pain.

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A mix of old and new (including pictures)

June 7, 2022 by 0 Comments

I’ve just had a phone call. It was a woman from the mattress company. She spoke so damn fast at the beginning that I almost blacked out. After all this time, Romanian on the phone can still be a real challenge for me.

Right now I’m living in a near-permanent state of fatigue. I don’t know if it’s the heat, the stress related to the move, the regular bike rides, or some combination. I don’t feel refreshed even after a full night’s sleep. Maybe I really need this new mattress.

I had a chat with my brother on Sunday. They still had the bunting out for the jubilee. It’s obvious that he’s had enough of life in the army. All the early starts and pointless trips are getting to him. Amazingly he’s started a correspondence university course in – I think – business management. He says he’ll finish it in 18 months. My sister-in-law, who is expanding, was more upbeat. Mum keeps referring to her future grandson as Herbie, which was the name of a guinea pig we used to have. (We don’t even know what it’ll be yet. It’s still an it.)

After being booed at the jubilee, Boris Johnson survived his confidence vote last night, but a whopping 41% of his Tory colleagues voted against him. His supporters – a bunch of overgrown schoolboys – banged their desks in unison on learning the result. A good result for the country, Boris said. In the medium and long term, I hope he’s right. A divided party with a lame-duck leader that staggers on to the next election, then gets well and truly stuffed. The UK ends up with a coalition of Labour, the Lib Dems, and the SNP. They introduce proportional representation. That would be good for the country.

Shortly before the jubilee celebrations, the British government announced that pounds and ounces and other imperial measurements could be making a comeback, not that they’ve totally gone away. I’ve always quite liked imperial measurements because they’re batshit mad and much more fun to say than the metric versions. I recently got one of my students to read a simplified version of Alice in Wonderland in which Alice’s heights had been converted into metres and centimetres, and it felt like we’d been transported to a lab. I still remember Dad (“you can’t even see those silly millimetres”) ordering sheets of glass for his paintings in inches, one by one, over the phone. “Twenty-four and five-eighths by seventeen and three-quarters.” The person on the other end would repeat the dimensions back to him, and the whole thing took on a poetic quality, a bit like the BBC shipping forecast. But, after being taught in metric and living all those years in New Zealand, and now Romania where non-metric is almost unheard of, it’s obvious that metric is far superior for doing actual calculations and when you’ve got to, you know, do business internationally. Going back to imperial would quite clearly be crazy.

The shipping forecast, read four times a day on Radio 4, has a place in British culture. It follows a strict format that hasn’t changed in decades, running through the evocative names of the shipping areas – 31 in all – always going round the British Isles clockwise in the same order: Viking, North Utsire, South Utsire, Forties, Cromarty, Forth, Tyne, Dogger, Fisher, German Bight, and so on. I liked listening to it as a kid, and I still remember the warnings of “hurricane force 12” in the storm of October 1987. It’s still popular today, even if it’s far less in demand, thanks to the internet. It reminds you that you’re part of something far bigger, that there are people out there exposed to the high seas, not in air-conditioned offices. Regular listeners get to know the announcers. I tuned in over the weekend and listened to a forecast read by Neil Nunes, who has quite a wonderful deep voice. He comes from Jamaica and started at the BBC in 2006. Apparently some rather bigoted listeners complained at the time that his voice wasn’t British enough. The late-night forecast is preceded by Sailing By, a beautiful song. (YouTube comments are nearly always awful, but the ones for Sailing By are delightful.) Other maritime countries, like New Zealand, have shipping forecasts too, but they don’t have the cultural signficance of the British one. The shipping areas are rattled off in a great 1994 song by Blur called This is a Low. Damon Albarn, whom I’ve seen live, likes referencing the sea in his songs.

After Saturday’s washout, I played tennis on Sunday. It was a hot one, and I was relieved to be playing doubles and not singles. They had some kind of party on the beach volleyball courts next door, with music that I found almost unbearable. I partnered a 14-year-old girl against two men, and we played a heck of a set lasting roughly an hour. Following numerous deuce games, we got to 6-6 but then fell 6-1 behind in the tie-break. We saved four set points but my error on the fifth was the last shot of the set. We had to call it a day at 2-2 in the second set. After that we picked sour cherries from the laden tree next to the courts. It’s a great time for fruit right now.

As promised last time, here are some pictures.

I took this picture on Saturday night. Magda, on her 58th birthday, with Domnul Sfâra, 87.
A last picture of Piața Victoriei on the day I left for good.
A game of backgammon at Piața Lipovei. You can also see the egg and coffee machines.
A law firm. The two names are identical, just that one (Kovacs) is written in the original Hungarian way while the other (Covaci) has been Romanianised.
An old, and small, Pegas bicycle at the supermarket yesterday. This dates from communist times when these were virtually the only bikes around. In the last few years, modern Pegas bikes have come on the market, though they’re no longer made in Romania.
Buying property - Life :) - Tennis - The UK

Finding my bearings

June 5, 2022 by 0 Comments

I’m still at the disorientation – “Where does this go?” – stage of living in my new flat, and with none of the bells or clattering trams to fix me in either time or space. Instead of the early-morning trams shuttling workers to their six-till-two shifts in factories that make car headlamps or foam products, I now hear trucks that could be carrying anything anywhere. On the plus side, I hear more birds, and the location honestly isn’t bad. There are tram lines just out of earshot, the river is close by, and the big market, nestled among the old Austro-Hungarian buildings, is only a five-minute bike ride from here. Inside, it’s a mishmash of eighties bathrooms with old-style cisterns and chains, seemingly endless Ikea-like wardrobe space, and modern appliances that won’t stop beeping at me. Yes, OK, OK, give me a minute. This apartment block is one of half a dozen in what you might call a pod; in the centre of the pod is a car park which, as well as functioning cars, contains walnut trees, two abandoned souped-up VW Beetles, and a farm vehicle long out of commission. My particular block was built in around 1980 and comprises ten flats. My deeds, or whatever you call them here, tell me that I own 12.78% of the block, so more than my fair share, and as I potter about the place I get regular reminders that I have much more space than I need, especially now when all my lessons are either online or at my students’ places. It isn’t as bad on that score as my flat in Wellington; when I returned from my trip to America on a wintry September day in 2015, I almost burst into tears at how empty and lifeless it seemed. The good news is that I’m less exposed financially than when I bought my Wellington apartment, so even the worst-case scenario won’t kill me, assuming no Russian bombs descend on this city. On Friday I bought some home and contents insurance (with a war exclusion, of course) and ordered a mattress made here in Timișoara.

Yesterday my tennis was called off for the third time running. I’d only just left on my bike when it started to bucket it down. I stood under a tree for a while and then went to my neighbours’ (Florin and Magda’s) place back at the old block. I caught the end of Iga Świątek’s crushing win over Coco Gauff in the final of Roland Garros on their TV, and then we went to the restaurant by the river. It was a balmy evening and the rain had stopped. Not until people started turning up out of nowhere did I realise that the get-together was to celebrate Magda’s birthday. People chatted, and sometimes I was fully involved in the conversation while at other times I was trying desperately to tune in. (That’s not far off what happens, at best, in my own language.) I had some traditional Romanian food – that means meat – and three beers, which is a lot for me these days. I got home at about 10:30.

Jubilee celebrations are still going on in the UK, and that’s mostly what my parents wanted to talk about this morning. Mum said that 70 years on the throne is an incredible achievement. (As all it involves is not dying when you have the best healthcare imaginable, I’m unconvinced.) My brother’s house is apparently decked out in bunting. Although I’m no royalist (I’m agnostic – I really don’t care), I can hardly blame people for wanting a party (whatever the reason) after two years of lockdowns and not being able to get vital surgery or see their sick relatives. I emailed my friend in Birmingham (no royalist either) to ask how his long jubilee weekend was going, and I got a pretty clear meh in reply. Little sign of bunting around his way. I’m detecting a pretty strong north–south (or east–west) divide.

The French Open has been great from a tennis point of view, but the organisation has been lacking at times. I don’t like the way they’ve tried to make it more like the Australian and US Opens with night sessions starting ridiculously late. Some of the play has been sublime, but even when I was watching Nadal come up with an extraordinary passing shot at set point down against Sascha Zverev, I found myself pining for those women’s finals in the nineties, when people were smoking in the stands and you could tell that it was the French Open. Now it could be almost anywhere. I expected Djokovic to beat Nadal in their quarter-final, which at times threatened to outdo their famous Australian Open final. Zverev’s ankle injury in his match with Nadal was excruciating even to watch. Nadal got out of jail twice there (first by robbing Zverev of the opening set, and then being saved from a six-hour-plus match); he’s a huge favourite in the final against Casper Ruud.

Next time: some pictures.

Buying property - Other sports - The UK

A new box, perhaps

April 28, 2022 by 0 Comments

It looks like I might have bought a flat. On Tuesday I met up with the owner, a very bronzed lady in her forties, and asked her about the heating and why there are massive mirrors, covering entire walls, in what will hopefully be my teaching room. She said she used to run gym classes in there. I offered her €110,000, just €3k more than my previous offer, and later that afternoon the agent came back to me to say she’d accepted. (The original price was €120k, which she then lowered to €115k.) I now have about eight more questions I wish I’d asked her. With this property lark, there are monsters everywhere, as I know full well. The process shouldn’t take too long – this isn’t the UK, with such horrors as chains and gazumping – but what do I know about buying in Romania, really? I’m using a solicitor who has decided to take the whole week off after Orthodox Easter. Then there’s the question of getting the money across from New Zealand. Obviously the property stuff will be front and centre in my life for the next little while.

I’ve just read this long article about public phone boxes in the UK. The old red ones are a symbol of Britishness; I imagine one next to a parish council notice board or a village green, near a cylindrical post box of the same colour. I don’t know what it is about that shade of red, which was also the colour of the old Routemaster double-decker buses. When I was growing up, our front door was that colour too, and I remember my brother and I being disappointed when Dad decided to paint it green. Some of them have been converted to mini libraries, or now house defibrillators; many more have been removed. I remember them stinking of pee and cigarettes. I last used one as recently as 2016 when I washed up in the UK with no way of making a call on my mobile. I tried calling my aunt but each time I got her answer phone which was useless to me.

Snooker. I stayed up far too late last night to watch John Higgins edge over the line in a deciding 25th frame against Jack Lisowski. These evening sessions can run and run, and I’m two hours ahead of Sheffield where it all takes place. Today the semi-finals start. These are three-day matches, played over a gruelling best of 33 frames. Ronnie O’Sullivan will play John Higgins, while Mark Williams takes on the delightfully (!) named Judd Trump. It’s a heavyweight line-up, all right. O’Sullivan, Higgins, and Williams all turned professional way back in 1992 and have all won multiple titles. It seemed they’d been around for ages even when I stopped watching 19 years ago. Trump won in 2019 and is supremely talented too. O’Sullivan will surely be the crowd favourite. I’ll watch a frame or two – but no more than that – tonight.

It’s a drizzly, grey old day today, reminiscent of the Land of Red Boxes.