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Proper Christmas! Part 2 of 4

January 5, 2019 plutomanby 0 Comments

Saturday 22nd December

My last two lessons of 2018 were thankfully at home, and with students at vastly different levels. When they were over with, I took the bus to the airport. My plane was delayed by an hour, and it was quite pleasant to hang around in the terminal with the machines selling inexpensive coffee, snacks and even books. The click-clack of the big split-flap display board is pleasing, although the some of the letters get stuck and they’ll probably replace the board with some insipid screen in the not too distant future, if not the entire terminal. The trick with Timișoara airport, as elsewhere, is not to go through security until you have to. On the other side you’re no longer in Romania but in Airportworld, with all those bottles of scented water going for dozens of euros. In Airportworld, they don’t even use Romanian money. The flight to Luton was uneventful, and my parents met me at 10pm. It was lovely to see them, as it always is. The three of us stayed in a relatively cheap hotel near the airport. I heard on the news that Paddy Ashdown, leader of the Lib Dems throughout the nineties, had died. I reckon he would have made a good prime minister.


Sunday 23rd

Dad and I both had colds. For me it was my fourth in a couple of months, but Dad’s was worse. How would he cope with the drive down to Poole? Breakfast at the hotel was excellent, though the dining room was jam-packed with people. My parents had planned to drop in on some friends on the way to Poole, but they were suffering from colds too, so we gave them a miss. As we drove through Buckinghamshire, Berkshire and Hampshire, I thought, shit, I couldn’t come back here to live. Get off the M something at junction whatever for yet another soulless dormitory town. Milton Keynes with its endless roundabouts, coded H for horizontal and V for vertical. Too many bloody people. I could see why 17.4 million of them voted to escape this crap (even if their votes will probably just serve to make things even crappier). We wanted a hot drink so pulled into one of the services. At any service station in the UK, you either get Costa or (in this case) Starbucks. We went for the cheaper option, filter coffee, and it was pure poison. It didn’t help that they only had two young staff, who were rushed off their feet. Starbucks: never again. We reached my brother’s place in late afternoon. Their two-storey terraced house is modest, I suppose, but still beyond my wildest dreams. A lot of time and effort had gone into the interior, and it was all looking very Christmassy. They have a cat, named Major Tom but usually just Tom, and four hens that give them more eggs than they know what to do with.


Monday 24th

On Christmas Eve we visited Wimborne, a picturesque town nearby. It was bigger than I imagined, and full of lovely old buildings. We went to Primark after that, so my parents could buy me some clothes. I wish they wouldn’t. We watched the Snowman on TV – it never stops being a wonderful animation – and then it was time for church. Midnight mass was an option, but we attended the 5:30 pm service instead. It lasted 80 minutes, which would be very brisk by Romanian Orthodox standards, but Catholic services are usually shorter, even at Christmas, and people were getting decidedly antsy. We had an unusual reading where 42 generations – who begat whom, ending up at Jesus – were itemised. After church (I wonder when I’ll do that again next) it was time for more TV. Gogglebox. A TV programme about people’s reactions to watching TV. I’d forgotten the cultural importance of TV in Britain, especially around Christmas. And I’d totally forgotten how celeb-obsessed Britain is. One celebrity game show after another, where many of the categories used in the quizzes are celebrity-based themselves. Later that evening we chatted about the sister of an old friend of mine, who has become a semi-famous live artist, comedian, call her what you will. She defies categorisation. We watched her “Fanny Song” on YouTube and my sister-in-law in particular was in stitches.

Family - The UK

Proper Christmas! Part 1 of 4

January 5, 2019 plutomanby 0 Comments

My site got hacked (again!), and I’ve just this minute got it unhacked. This is the first part of what happened after that.


Wednesday 19th December

Timișoara was beautiful following the weekend’s snowfall, but the snow had frozen and the roads and pavements were treacherous. I only had a pair of two-hour lessons but getting to both of them was a mission. In the morning I slipped and fell on the ice during the 40-minute trudge to my appointment in the Soarelui area. The lesson wasn’t the easiest either, as my devoutly religious student tried to sniff out my beliefs. “But what does Christmas really mean to you?” In the early afternoon the plumber came over and fixed my hot water – snow had somehow got into the boiler from a duct. He fixed it impressively quickly but I still had no chance of catching the bus to Dumbrăvița for my 92nd lesson with Matei. Or so I thought. Traffic was gridlocked to the point where I managed to catch the bus up just by walking, and I clambered on two stops later. I called Matei’s grandmother to say I’d be pretty late, and that seemed to be fine. I gave him the full two hours. After the lesson I walked 2 km over the border into Timișoara, to the nearest bus stop where buses were still going to and from. I caught up with S in the café where we first met in September, and she wasn’t too bothered that I was seriously late. I gave her a box of biscuits as a Christmas present; she’d earlier given me the Romanian translation of The Little Prince.


Thursday 20th

A much easier day. My only lesson was at the university, a stone’s throw from my flat. My student teaches Romanian and linguistics there. Her surname is Pop, and we went on a whistle-stop tour of English phrasal verbs that feature her name. I’m just popping out to get some milk. A message just popped up on my screen. Pop round whenever you like. My grandmother even used to say, “when I pop off”. Pop is just such a fun word. It probably helped Kellogg’s sell many thousands of extra boxes of Rice Krispies. Just snapping and crackling would never have been enough. (When I think about it, there’s a lot going on there. A trio as in “snap, crackle and pop” is often deadly effective. Spelling “krispies” with a K, which of course is emblematic of Kellogg’s itself, also plays a pretty big role.) In future we’ll hopefully have two-hour sessions, half in English and half in Romanian. A Romanian teacher would be enormously helpful for me.


Friday 21st

After the monthly tram trip to pay my rent in non-Romanian cash, I had two lessons. One was with David, my 11-year-old student. He’s a nice kid, extremely polite, but he has a habit of responding to my questions with “I don’t know”, killing the conversation stone dead. In his room he has a collection of Harry Potter books, and even a photo of him holding one. “So, do you like Harry Potter?” I don’t know. David is an only child (one of many) and there is certainly pressure on him to achieve at school. He’s in the A-stream. Extra maths. Extra Romanian grammar. Lots of questions that have a definite, right and wrong answer. In our previous lesson I asked him what he’d be doing afterwards. “Santa,” I thought he said. What will Santa be doing? No, not Santa. Centre. Centre of excellence. In the Romanian language. All this means that when faced with open-ended questions, he seems afraid to give the wrong answer. He likes games though, and I ensure that those take up almost half of each session. I was getting a bit stressed at the prospect of flying out the next day, and trying to find last-minute Christmas presents in a god-awful shopping mall. That evening I went to the cafeteria in Auchan but when the woman behind the counter insisted on speaking to me in English even after I told her not to, I stormed off.

Life :) - The UK - Travel: Romania

The Big Day and trip report — Part 4

June 3, 2018 plutomanby 0 Comments

Sunday. The morning after the night (and day) before. No full English breakfast this time. A bunch of us, including my brother, his wife, and most of the New Zealand contingent, met up at a café in the Barbican. Then it was back to the Sergeant’s Mess, where about ten of us, blokes mostly, spent two hours dismantling and re-mantling everything. My uncle B felt honoured to be selected as a tidier-upper; he likes to boast of his “special relationship” with my brother. (As a kid, my brother liked to spend time on their West Coast farm whenever he came to New Zealand. They moved back to South Canterbury in 1996.) My brother kindly gave B and me a bottle of whisky each for our readings the day before. When all the white frothiness had been cleared away, the mess looked much like a century-old tennis club room. The usual inhabitants of the mess, many of whom were at the wedding, form a very close-knit community.

I had a lazy Sunday afternoon watching the opening day of the French Open in my parents’ room. In the evening we went to Wetherspoons, where I had a curry and an apple crumble, and then walked to the newlyweds’ hotel room on the seventh floor of the Crowne Plaza. We didn’t stay long there.

Plymouth is an interesting city, particularly along the beautiful coastline, but the city centre was bombed to pieces in World War Two, and the collosal hideous-looking blocks that sprung up in the next two decades wouldn’t have seemed out of place in Communist-era Romania. Plymouth also appears to have a serious obesity problem. On that note, I’ve lost about three kilos (or half a stone) since my trip to the UK in April.

On Monday morning I had a full English once more, and then it was time to say goodbye to all the Kiwis, with the exception of B and my aunt J, who were coming to Romania with me. This was the end of their marathon trip that took in the US (where their son lives), Canada, and Holland (for the flowers). We took a taxi to the train station (they had far too much luggage to make walking an option) and boarded the 12:05 train to Paddington. We sat at opposite ends of Coach C. The journey to Paddington seemed to whizz by. We hung around Paddington station for some time; our flight wasn’t scheduled to leave until 9:50. We snapped up six reduced-to-clear sandwiches for £1 each from Boots, but then paid through the nose for coffees and muffins: three each of those cost more than I receive for a lesson. I got a call from a frustrated Mum, who had been stuck at Kings Cross for an hour and a half on a driverless train with no air conditioning. Mum and Dad were very tired and were extremely glad to eventually get back to St Ives.

Having loads of time up our sleeve helped to reduce stress. B and J were a little out of their comfort zone on the underground. My offers to help B with his suitcase mostly fell on deaf ears. We negotiated the underground, took the train to Luton, and then hopped on the shuttle bus to the airport where we ate our sandwiches and whiled away two more hours before boarding the plane. I realised that travelling with other people can be less stressful than travelling alone. Boarding was slow, as always with Wizz Air, but we were up and down in under three hours. It was after 3am by the time we exited the terminal building, and taxis were thin on the ground at that time of night, so I had to call one. B and J were staying in an apartment in the building next to mine. We followed the owner’s instructions involving keys and lifts and PIN codes, which my aunt had meticulously copied down, and (in what felt like a miracle after such a long day of travel) they gained access to their spacious apartment. Welcome to Romania!

Life :) - The UK

The Big Day and trip report — Part 3 (the main event)

June 1, 2018 plutomanby 0 Comments

On Friday night I practised my poem. I’m not a natural public speaker. I was nervous that I might make a mess of it in front of a hundred people on my brother’s special day: speak too fast, get tongue-tied, miss out an entire line, or even panic and start babbling in incomprehensible Romanian.

I woke up very early the next morning. It was freezing in my room, and I resorted to using towels and clothes to complement my thin duvet. Breakfast wasn’t till 8:30, so I read To Kill a Mockingbird. When the clock finally rolled around, we all had a full English. Some of the others eschewed the baked beans, presumably to avoid potential embarrassment in church.

We then went for a walk along a waterfront steeped in history. At 10am the Lido opened for the summer; it seemed quite popular. We walked back to the B&B and changed in time to meet at noon at the Sergeant’s Mess. My brother wore his army uniform, displaying his medals from Northern Ireland, Iraq and Afghanistan. He was understandably a little antsy, and he called us all into the church very early before declaring a false alarm.

The service started at 1pm. To my surprise, the padre continued his comedy routine from the night before, but he never overstepped the mark. It’s a fine line. It was soon my turn to read the poem. I thought I negotiated it OK, and on my way back from the podium my brother gave me a friendly tap to say I’d done a good job. Phew. Straight after me, my uncle B gave his bible reading, as he’d done at least a thousand times before in church. Towards the end of the service, after the vows had been exchanged, my brother’s wife’s sister sang quite beautifully. I’d always been cynical about weddings, perhaps because I’d never been to a wedding of anybody particularly close to me, but this was really a wonderful occasion.

After the service it was photo time. My brother later said this was the most exhausting part of the day for him. Photos with X, Y and Z, photos with X and Y but not Z, and so on. Every possible combination. My brother had planned to give everyone a tour of the citadel but had to can it because of how long all the photography took. Both my brother and his wife go rowing, and the girls from my sister-in-law’s rowing club created an archway of oars for the newlyweds to walk through. More photos. I can’t remember what the car was – it was purely ornamental anyway – but in a nice touch it was decorated with both British and New Zealand flags. Many people complemented me on my delivery of the poem; I replied by saying I did my best. It was a very touching poem without being overly sentimental, and I think the kind words I received reflected that as much as anything.

At 3:30 it was back to the mess. By this stage I had quite severe sinus pain and was struggling. The food was good. A pear-based starter followed by mountains of serrano-ham-wrapped pork for our main course, finishing up with chocolate brownie for dessert. In between, my brother, the best man (his friend since childhood) and my sister-in-law’s father all gave speeches. My brother really put the wind up Dad by asking if he’d prepared his speech. My brother said he was nervous for his speech, but he didn’t show it. He spent some time thanking our parents, admitting that he wasn’t the easiest kid to bring up. My mum drew quite a bit of laughter when she interrupted the best man’s speech to say that Dad fainted at my brother’s birth.

By five my sinus pain had largely subsided, but soon the evening started to drag. I drank beer mainly because it gave me something to do. My brother drank far more than I did. Later, enormous piles of food appeared in the adjoining conservatory, only a quarter of which actually got eaten. The rest went to the homeless. My two UK cousins both complained about their absent mother and I could hardly blame them. I was glad when we finally wended our way back to the B&B at 11:45 or so, having survived what had admittedly been a fantastic day.

Life :) - The UK

The Big Day and trip report — Part 2

June 1, 2018 plutomanby 0 Comments

The railway station was on the way back to the airport from my accommodation. Just before 9am I put my ticket in the machine at the station and got a nasty surprise. I’d been sold a ticket that was only valid for the night before, even though there were no trains the night before. An impossible ticket. What a bugger. I traipsed back to the airport, thinking that would be my best chance of some kind of refund, but honestly expecting to have to fork out an extra 60-odd quid. The Polish lady I spoke to was very helpful, however, and back at the station I eventually got a reprinted ticket at no expense, once I’d figured out where the ticket office was. The guy at the office wanted to know who sold me that useless ticket at quarter to ten at night, but I didn’t want to incriminate him.

I took the train to St Pancras, then the underground to Paddington, a huge station that I’d somehow never been to before. All the trains from Paddington seemed to be going to cool places, like the one I was about to board, whose final destination was Penzance. My journey to Plymouth was painless, except at the beginning when the only way I could get a seat was to use the loo. A lady from Sweden said that in her home country you’re guaranteed a seat if you buy a full-price ticket, as you should be. My train stopped at Reading, Exeter and Newton Abbot, and passed the coastal towns of Exmouth and Teignmouth. The sea! I hadn’t seen it for almost two years. I arrived in Plymouth at 3:30pm. At this point I’ll give you a run-down of my mum’s siblings; this trip report will become too clumsy if I don’t. Mum had three older brothers, D, B and M. Sadly D died of cancer in 2010, as did M in 2014. B is still going strong at 76; he and his wife J would be joining me in Romania after my brother’s wedding. After the three boys came Mum’s sister K, then Mum, closely followed by her brother G. Finally, seven years after G, came her baby brother P, who (it’s hard to believe) has just turned sixty. All five surviving brothers and sisters were attending the wedding.

K and G met me at the train station. It was a novelty to see G on that side of the world. He’d never previously been further than Australia. There was no question of his wife ever making the trip; they’ve lived separate lives for decades. We were all amazed and delighted that he took the opportunity of my brother’s wedding to say “sod it”. I went back to the train station with Mum and B, to book my seat on the train back to London. It would be a bank holiday; on that day a seat is imperative. B had been in Plymouth four days and, much to Mum’s annoyance, thought he knew the place like the back of his hand.

After trekking across town, we were a few minutes late for the 6pm wedding rehearsal at the 17th-century Citadel Church. The padre, as he was called, was hilarious. His humour put everybody at ease, and personally made me feel privileged to be part of such a happy occasion. He’d previously had a long career as a dancer, and clearly enjoyed being on stage. At one point he told my brother that he didn’t have to make his wedding vows as if they were military orders: “Forbetterforworse! Forricherforpoorer!”

We didn’t attend the drinks session at the mess, and besides we were all hungry. We shared some so-called giganti pizzas that weren’t that big; I could have eaten twice as much, but of course I’d get plenty of opportunities for that the next day. G really amused Dad and me when he proudly proclaimed to a bemused waitress: “I’m from Palmerston North!” That doesn’t exactly cut much ice even in his own country.

Life :) - The UK

The Big Day and trip report — Part 1

June 1, 2018 plutomanby 0 Comments

On Thursday morning I found out that my odds of making it from Luton to Plymouth that evening had been cut from slim to nil, thanks to a sudden shift in UK train times. I found a relatively cheap place to say on Booking.com, some way from the airport. Having booked it, you can imagine my dismay when I received an email requesting a £15 cleaning fee on top of the £40 I was quoted. What a joke.

In the afternoon it was off to the airport. Timișoara airport is in two parts. Before you go through security you’re still in Romania, but beyond the checkpoint is Airportland, where everything is priced in sodding euros. My flight was with Wizz Air. I had to laugh the last time I flew with them, when a group of Romanian travellers commented that Wizz Air “wasn’t as good as Ryanair”, as if Ryanair was some kind of gold standard. This time my flight was delayed by an hour and 40 minutes, so any chance of getting to Plymouth would have been blown out of the water, no matter what the train times were. Wizz Air flights from Timișoara “board” about an hour before take-off, but then you’re kept in a sort of pen until you finally board for real. The experience isn’t very pleasant. I also had to put my hand luggage in the hold.

Two and a half hours after taking off, we touched down in Luton. I then waited at the luggage carousel. And waited. I got to know all the uncollected bags from the previous flight intimately. The carousel took two minutes and ten seconds to complete each circuit: 80 seconds inside and 50 outside. I was in the middle of estimating its speed when bags, including my tiny one, suddenly appeared. I then bought a return ticket to Plymouth from their “travel centre” for a rather ridiculous £112; luckily there was a man supervising the machines who advised me what sort of ticket I should buy. It’s 15 years since I last lived in the UK and I’m now totally clueless.

I then had to get to my accommodation. I’d printed out a Luton map (an anagram of my online name) which only really became useful once I’d exited the confines of the airport. The walk was about 2.5 km. I arrived just before eleven, barely in time to grab a tasty but meagre Chinese takeaway from across the road. The rooms were numbered G (ground floor), F (first floor), S (second floor) and T (third floor). I’d never seen such a system before, and it would have broken down if the building was any taller. I slept well in room S24, but I’ll still hammer them when I come to “rate my stay”, on account of the underhand way they imposed their cleaning fee.

Life :) - The UK

UK trip – Part 2 (and some goals)

April 17, 2018 plutomanby 0 Comments

As much as I’m enjoying the warm weather, my flat is approaching sauna territory, so I’m currently shirtless.

On Thursday I made my monthly trip to the out-of-hours doctor and the next day I picked up my drugs from the pharmacy, including (of course) the antidepressants. Going to the pharmacy here is always fun, because you get to see the tremendous array of over-the-counter medicines available. You can get the wonderfully-named Spazz, which comes in a yellow and black box, or better still, Codamin. Who knows what Codamin does, but judging by the box alone, I know I want some.

My life isn’t exactly terrible right now, but my time in the UK made me realise it could still be better. Here’s what I’m going to do:

1. Use the internet less. Way less. Of course sometimes I really do need it – it’s kind of important for my job – but not having it in the UK made me realise what a time-waster it can be. (My internet is currently down for some unknown reason, so I’m tapping this out in Word.)

2. Get up at seven, at the latest, every weekday (sometimes I have lessons which force me to get up earlier than that).

3. Lose some weight. Last month I stepped on a set of scales for the first time since I moved here. I pretty much dismissed the reading out of hand. I mean, the first digit was an eight! That couldn’t be right. Obviously. But then I tried to get into two pairs of trousers I’d left at my parents’ flat. I wriggled my way into one of them, just, but I had no chance with the other. Mainly I need to eat smaller lunches, as much as I love the salami and cheese and eggs I’ve become accustomed to, and far less bread in general.

4. Wear (and in some cases buy) clothes that I want to wear. Not what I think I should wear. Shit, I’m my own boss now. I’m the only person doing what I’m doing in this whole city. I can do what I like (and if I do, I’ll feel better for it).

5. Join a tennis club. For social reasons. Outside work, I’m not meeting enough people.

I was going to write about the rest of my UK trip, but not a lot happened. I did a fair bit of reading (by my standards), met up with my friends who came to Romania last autumn, bought a suit in Marks & Spencer’s in Cambridge for my brother’s wedding, watched Masters golf and snippets of the Commonwealth Games on TV (watching sport is a bit of a rarity for me these days), and got wet. Other than the day I spent in London, the weather ranged from iffy to atrocious. I found a new appreciation for St Ives – if you ignore the northern two-thirds of it where most of the people live, it’s very pleasant and at times bustling town that I was blasé about when I lived there. On my last day I got my brother’s old racing bike pumped up and took it for a pleasant ride around Houghton and the Hemingfords. It was locked away in a shed with a yellow “Danger of Death” sign on the door. He assured me it was safe and the sign was a deterrent only, but I admit I did get a second opinion from somebody else who lived in the complex.

Flying back from Luton was horrible. Flying from major airports is such a rigmarole now, and there are simply too many people in too little space for too long. This time we faced a 90-minute delay because our plane was late arriving from Tel Aviv. Probably 95% of the passengers were Romanian and when I got chatting with a family in their native language, I thought, you know what, I’m not doing too badly here. So that was something. But it was a low-stakes situation, and I need more of them. The in-the-air bit was fine, and as for arriving to the sounds and smells of Timișoara, well that bit was bloody fantastic. Even if it was after two o’clock in the morning. This place felt like home.

International travel - The UK

UK trip – Part 1

April 13, 2018 plutomanby 0 Comments

I’m back in Timișoara after a few days in the UK, and I’m happy to be here. The city is green all of a sudden, and temperatures have rocketed into the mid-20s.

Just before I left for the UK I made a trip to the Easter market. I bought some colourful wooden eggs and hand-painted fridge magnets showing the name of my home town, for my aunt’s benefit in particular. I also bought a plate of hot mămăligă with sausages and cheese. I asked for 300 grams but got (and paid for) a lot more, and had nothing but my bare hands to eat it with. With my bus to the airport imminent, this was a challenge.

My experience at Timișoara airport was quite stressful. I hadn’t printed my boarding pass, despite doing the online check-in business, because I couldn’t figure out how. The only way I could avoid a €42 charge was to bring up the boarding pass on my phone somehow. I got there in the end, after farting around with the WizzAir app. I thought I’d been careful to ensure I had no liquids over 100 ml, but that damn bottle of pumpkin seed oil, five times the limit, totally slipped my mind. When I told them it was oil they dropped it into a hole which I thought would lead to oblivion, but in fact it was some kind of scanner. My precious oil was given the all-clear. (At the UK airport I’m sure it would have gone straight in the bin.)

After an uneventful three-hour flight, I touched down in wet, miserable Luton. My plan had been to take a taxi the few miles to Hitchin and then catch a train to Cambridge. Getting a taxi wasn’t as simple as hopping in: I had to enter a black and yellow cabin or shed, and order from there. “Could you tell me the postcode?” I hadn’t a clue. They looked it up on their system. “That’ll be thirty-three pounds and…” What? They said the traffic was so bad that my ride would take an estimated 51 minutes. I could just about have walked it in that time. Instead I bought a National Express bus ticket from an extremely helpful woman, after attempting to buy one from an overly fussy machine that wouldn’t take my £20 notes because they weren’t smooth enough.

I arrived at my parents’ flat in St Ives just before ten in the evening and went almost straight to bed because I’d be meeting my university friend in London in a matter of hours. The next morning I got amazing customer service once more, this time from the bloke at the ticket desk at Cambridge railway station. (After 18 months in Romania, all British customer service suddenly seems bloody awesome.) By not catching the next available train I saved £16. My friend and I met at the British Museum, where we spent some time chatting while browsing the Chinese section and the exhibition of coins and medals. The British Museum is a remarkable trove and it costs absolutely nothing to visit. From the museum we meandered over to a nearby pub, where I found out my friend had been vegetarian for eight years. I had my first fish and chips since 2016 and it was wonderful. From there we made our way to Regent’s Park via a board game shop. He seemed impressed that I knew the difference between Ameritrash and Euro games. We chatted some more in Regent’s Park, grabbed something to eat (a Thai green curry in my case) and then it was time to go home. We were extremely lucky with the weather, but my “run” of blue skies was to end after just one day.

Politics - The UK

There’s hope

June 10, 2017 plutomanby 0 Comments

At midnight on Thursday I tuned in to Radio 5 Live for the exit poll. I’d expected a Conservative majority of 50 to 60, but as Big Ben struck ten and the bells of Catedrala Mitropolitană struck twelve, I thought, I bet it’s 100. The projection, that the Tories would fail to win a majority at all, took just about everybody by surprise. That can’t be right, can it? The initial handful of declarations in the North-East did cast some doubt on the predicted seat totals, but they ended up being pretty much bang on. The Tories finished on 318 seats, eight short of an overall majority, and they now have to rely on the DUP, a party from Northern Ireland. And just who are the DUP? The U stands for Unionist, so they want to remain part of the UK (the opposite of Sinn Féin, who don’t even take their seats in parliament). They have strong Protestant links, they’re anti-abortion, anti-gay-marriage, anti-climate-change, and seemingly anti the planet being more than 10,000 years old. Obviously they’re just what Britain needs right now.

But I must admit I was pretty happy with the results. I had high hopes for Theresa May when she became PM last July, but she’s turned out to be hopeless. She speaks only in soundbites, she’s wooden, she lacks warmth and a personality that people can relate to. All of those frailties became glaringly obvious during her awful campaign. May kept repeating her “strong and stable” mantra. Did she borrow that from John Key, I wonder? (Although he said “shtrong and stable”.) One journalist branded her “weak and wobbly” which was closer to the truth. She’s in the wrong job.

As usual in recent times, the Tories neglected the young, which in their eyes are anybody under about 45, but this time they managed to piss off older people too with their “dementia tax” and removal of winter fuel payments to pensioners. They also wanted to bring back fox hunting. Seriously? On the other side Jeremy Corbyn, who had been viewed as little more than a joke by people across the political spectrum, ran a good campaign. He looked comfortable in his own skin, he was approachable, he actually looked like he gave a shit about people. As a result, turnout among under-35s was up sharply, and they voted in large numbers for Labour.

May called the snap election because she thought the Tories would win a stonking great majority and they’d be able to ram through a hard Brexit and whatever else they wanted. Her arrogance backfired spectacularly; she has been greatly weakened. For all of us who dream of a fairer society in Britain and elsewhere, there’s still a long way to go – the Tories got 43% of the vote across Britain after all – but this is a good start.

Between them the Conservatives and Labour polled in the low eighties, so this really was a return to two-party politics which the awful first-past-the-post system encourages. It would be fantastic if some sort of PR could be introduced (New Zealand-style MMP would work well), but I’m not holding my breath. John Cleese tweeted that he wouldn’t vote at all because he lived in Kensington, a safe Tory seat. In the event Kensington was the very last seat to declare following multiple recounts, and Labour scored a major upset with a razor-thin 20-vote win. It goes to show you never can tell.

International travel - The UK

England: latest update

October 4, 2016 plutomanby 1 Comment

On Sunday I did a six-mile walk through Hemingford Grey, Hemingford Abbots, Houghton and St Ives. It’s so easy here to go on a longish walk, or bike ride, without having to worry about personal locator beacons or wear lycra. It’s all so much more accessible. You don’t even have to wear helmets on your bike here (I’m not saying that’s a good thing, but they are a hassle). I walked past our old house, my grandmother’s old house, the tennis club, the school I went to until I was eight, and the place where my playschool used to be (it has been replaced by a smarter building and only the old sign now remains). I saw the water mill in Houghton in operation and watched a narrow boat make its way through Houghton Lock; it was travelling upstream. As I watched the lock fill up an old lady remarked how wonderfully slow and calm the process was. Being early October the blackberries were out, and in enormous quantities (I might fill up a shopping bag and make a pie tonight, but I’ll only have two evenings to eat it). The stinging nettles were everywhere as they were as a kid. The thicket linking Houghton and St Ives, following the Ouse, that I must have walked and cycled through hundreds of times to see my grandmother, had that same distinct smell. This time I didn’t see a muntjac deer. When I was almost home a brass band was playing on the Quay.

On Saturday I met up with my university friend in London. He was with his girlfriend from Normandy who, after just two years of living in Birmingham, is fluent in English which she speaks with a Brummie accent. I was blown away. What’s the secret?

We met in Covent Garden and saw one of those street performers who unties himself. We walked along the Thames, got some food from an outdoor market, then spent a couple of hours at the Tate Modern (trying to figure out at least some of the exhibits) and a couple more at a pub before finishing up at a pizza place on Tottenham Court Road.

The highlight of London for me was the pub, because that gave us the chance to chat. We talked about Brexit quite extensively. My friend was amazed by the result; he’d expected something along the lines of a 60% Remain vote. I’d expected a close vote, and although I was bitterly disappointed by the Leave result, I wasn’t all that surprised (as anybody who for some bizarre reason read my blog in June would have seen). We agreed that Remain failed to make an emotional case for their position (peace in the region since WW2 being the obvious one to make); otherwise they probably would have won. Following Theresa May’s speech on Sunday it appears Britain will be out of the EU (but I’m still not sure what that really means) by March 2019. My friend and I for some reason ended up discussing my mum. He said that you don’t win by having the most shit when you die. Mum would do well to understand that.

Yesterday I went to Cambridge, which is a beautiful city, especially on a lovely sunny day like yesterday. I tried in vain to find a Romanian dictionary. Well, they were there, but in short supply and well beyond what I was prepared to pay. My best bet would be to wait till I get to Romania. I know there are all kinds of dictionaries and apps out there, but with a physical dictionary you get to see adjacent words and I think you learn more as a result. I went into some clothes shops, expecting to find the more interesting items that you’d never get in New Zealand, but I was sorely disappointed. Unlike what I saw the previous times I’ve come back here, everything was deeply drab. Maybe austerity under Cameron and Osborne is to blame. In Oxfam I found David Crystal’s Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language, a large tome that I bought for £2.50 and will remain at my parents’ place until I next come back here.

I see this is my 100th post.