Romania

A profound sadness and some pictures of Lipova

January 27, 2026

by plutoman 0 Comments

So yesterday I spoke to my brother – only for five minutes, because he had to put his daughter to bed. Before that he gave his son a mug of something greenish-yellow to drink; my nephew asked if it was wee-wee. My brother had been talking to Dad: a rare conversation with only Dad – a rare encounter with the truth, in other words. “It’s depressing over there, isn’t it?” my brother said. Dad is worried about the sale of the flat. Worried about Mum’s health. Worried that his later years have been irreparably wrecked. My brother and I both expressed quite a profound sadness at it all. In the next week or two I’ll hopefully book some flights to New Zealand. It’s highly unlikely that Mum and Dad will make it to Europe in 2026 – perhaps they never will – and I know Dad would like to see me over there, even if Mum is probably indifferent to the idea. At least I can make the trip. For my brother it’s much harder. And he’s going through a tough time himself because my sister-in-law is struggling to cope with the kids and may (reading between the lines) be suffering from depression.

Yesterday I took the car to Lipova which is about 70 minutes away. I hadn’t had a decent drive for a while, but the snow and ice had pretty much melted, and even though it was an overcast day I thought, why not? It’s a pleasant, typical provincial Romanian town that sits on the substantial River Mureș. Not a lot was going on there on a Sunday morning. The architecture was nice, even if (as it so often the case) it was in need of some TLC. Because it’s provincial and time moves more slowly there, a lot of the eighties signage has still survived. I think you can eat there quite cheaply.

Today I achieved something quite remarkable: I managed to track down some NBT (normal bloody tea). Earl Grey in fact. Lidl only had three boxes of the stuff and I bought them all. Sixty tea bags, or a fortnight’s worth. A couple of weeks ago I saw Profi had just one box of NBT left. I didn’t buy it – it didn’t seem right to take the last box. A few days later that same box was still there – I could tell it was the same box because it had a dent in it – and I bought it. Early last week, with my supplies running low, I went back there to find an “out of stock” sign. On Friday I ran out completely. I even tried in Lipova, but no luck. I had the same problem when I arrived in Romania – after a month I finally found a packet of NBT which had a picture of Big Ben on the front.

I finished watching The Queen’s Gambit. The ending was a bit predictable, and in the end I found Beth Harmon a little hard to root for, but the series as a whole was a good watch all the same. I noticed that Harmon’s name appeared as XAPMOH in Cyrillic during her Moscow tournament. Hmm, that looks familiar. Oh yes, it’s an anagram of that Poxham name I came up with in my dream.

Talking of anagramming, yesterday I got accused of cheating in a game on the old site. Really that amounted to abuse; I may give up playing on there entirely and play exclusively on Woogles, the new site where the leagues are.

The Mureș at Lipova, with a handsome building looking out onto it

Umbrellas like in Timișoara, only they don’t take them down in winter, and patriotic park benches

Orthodox Church on the left (service in full swing), Catholic on the right, and an ex-market in the middle

I liked the hand-painted road signs. I remember when New Zealand used to have them.

The church at Zăbrani on the way back. Surprisingly, the clock was working.

Family - New Zealand - Romania - Scrabble

It may all fall through

January 23, 2026

by plutoman 0 Comments

I’ve just spoken to Mum and Dad. There’s now the very real possibility that the St Ives flat sale will fall through. The prospective buyers haven’t been answering their phone. The system in England (but not Scotland) allows a buyer to pull out of a purchase right up until the moment you have the keys in your hand, and it doesn’t cost them a penny. In 2026 that’s simply nuts. This has caused my parents months of stress already, and who knows how many more months (or years) they will face. If the sale doesn’t happen, they’ll probably rent it out again. I can see them being stuck with the place until they’re 85.

Mum got her eye done on Tuesday. It’s clearly made a big difference, but she might never have 100% sight in that eye. There’s a buy-one-get-one-free offer over there, but under that scheme she’d need to wait till May to have the second eye done. She’s decided (to my surprise) to pony up the extra $5000 and get the other eye done next month. That now means there’s some chance that they’ll make a trip to Europe in spring or summer. I’d put it at 30%. Whether they do or don’t, I’m going to book a trip to New Zealand during my long, oppressive summer. Hopefully I can find a less roundabout route this time.

They’re had terrible weather in NZ, especially up north. I’ve seen the pictures of a landslide above a campsite; two people were killed and several more are missing.

Much closer to (my current) home, a murder took place on Monday in the village of Cenei, right next door to Bobda which is where I went on New Year’s Eve. A 15-year-old boy was killed by two other teenagers who then buried him in a garden. He may have been stabbed to death; the details are still murky. This murder has come up a lot in my lessons this week; the locals are understandably shocked by it.

Scrabble. I finished my latest round of matches with eight wins and six losses, yet again. I’m assuming here that my opponent in my last game logs in sometime before tomorrow afternoon (when his time bank is due to run out) to finish me off. This player is an International Master. I’m far from au fait with these accolades, but that clearly means he’s played at a very high level for several years. I thought I would beat him actually, but his final rack was much more flexible than mine and he was able to set himself up to play a sneaky word that I didn’t even know. This should mean that I’ll play in the same (sixth) division for a fifth straight round.

There have been some developments with the book which I’ll talk about next time.

Family - Language teaching - Music - Photos - Romania - Scrabble

December in Timișoara and being out of my league

December 8, 2025

by plutoman 0 Comments

A lot of stuff happens in Romania in December. The first of the month is the national day with all the parades of military and emergency vehicles. I wasn’t able to see the parade this time, but in the early evening I saw the bit where they march through the city carrying torches and stop every few minutes to sing the national anthem. A few days later there’s St Nicholas’ Day where all the kids get goody bags which always include a stick. Then on the 16th and for a few days afterwards there are commemorations of those who died in the 1989 revolution – that gets particular attention in Timișoara because it all kicked off here. Not long after that it’s Christmas, which is huge, though thankfully still not quite at the level of the UK. After a few blissful days it’s New Year’s Eve which is massive. As the clock ticks towards midnight, it’s practically impossible to move in town for people, as I found out nine years ago. (That was only my second night in my old flat.) Through it all and into January there’s the Christmas market which was very exciting to be among that first time with all the lights and smells. Though it seems far less exciting now – it all just feels normal – it’s actually got bigger.

On Saturday I met Mark in town, in the thick of Christmas market action. There were jazz Christmas songs booming from the stage. Things had all been rejigged to accommodate the extra stuff. We decided to get away from the chaos and go to Piața Unirii where the Museum of Banat was looking quite spectacular with all its Christmas lights. We tried a new restaurant. Predictably, it wasn’t worth it. It rarely is. One young waiter seemed to understand neither Romanian nor English. We sat there for over two hours and all I had was a burger and chips and two beers. Mark also had a dessert – some sort of pancake topped with a meringue which was supposedly some Banat speciality, though I’d never seen it before. I didn’t order a dessert and hoped Mark wouldn’t either because I knew it would mean sitting there for almost another hour.

I went to Ciacova yesterday – one of my favourite small towns around here – but the weather was pretty atrocious and I quickly came home. Other than that there’s not much news. Mum and Dad are currently in Moeraki. I’m glad about that because they manage to relax down there in a way they can’t at home.

Last week I had a session with a 25-year-old woman who said that making a lot of money is important to her. I told her that I gave up on that some time ago, and in fact I earned more at her age than I do now, 20 years later. She wants to move on from her job, not just in the pursuit of wealth but because she currently does shift work and the schedule is horrendous.

I had a difficult moment last week with a 17-year-old girl who in her last session with me made it clear that she didn’t believe in evolution. I find that hard, because to me evolution isn’t something you believe in any more than the result of two plus two is something you believe in. Anyway, on Wednesday night at close to eleven when I was halfway into bed, she sent me a message needing urgent help with an online test. At that time of night. Ugh. Reluctantly I agreed to help her. It was a 15-minute reading comprehension test that was part of the application process for an exchange programme in America. The problem is, her English level is well below what they require. She read the text and the possible answers to me but I struggled to understand what she was saying. If I’d had the text in front of me it would have been easy. In the end we ran out of time. I felt bad for her, but what could I do?

I recently joined an online Scrabble league. They split the participants up into eight divisions of 15 players each. I was put in the sixth division. It has a correspondence format in which you have to play the other 14 players in your division in 14 days. You get ten hours per move. Exceed that and you dip into a three-day time bank. If that runs out too, you lose the game. So there isn’t much time pressure. There is however significant pressure from my opponents who are mostly better than me, even in my lower division. You click on their profiles and they’ve played national and world championships, often with great success. So it’s a real uphill struggle for me. I’m currently on three wins and six losses, with five games still outstanding. Because this league is pretty new, they have an aggressive promotion and relegation system – five up, five down – so that people sort themselves quickly into the right divisions. It’s possible I can still sneak into tenth place and avoid the drop, but I may well end up being relegated. Though my play is sound strategically (I think), my word knowledge is my biggest handicap. As luck would have it, a Romanian player – one of the top-ranked English-language players in the country and a participant of two world championships – is in my division. We chatted in Romanian during our game. At one point he played cAEOmAS. Yes, using both blanks, as if he needed that advantage on top of all his others. I have no idea what that word means or how to pronounce it. I ended up getting stuck with the Q and he beat me by “just” 46. One of my other losses was by five points. My last play was MAN, and then my opponent went out with yet another word I didn’t know. I then remembered that NAM was also a word, and I could have played that instead. That would have given me four extra points, so fortunately it didn’t cost me the game.

On Saturday, the Beatles’ I’ll Follow the Sun came on the radio. Such a beautiful song, and all in a minute and 48 seconds. When I hear something like that (this song is from 1964), I always wonder how older people possibly manage in the modern world.

I’m trying to decide whether I can be bothered to get a Christmas tree. Here are some pictures of Timișoara in December:

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

Delta plans?

November 3, 2025

by plutoman 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 - Life :) - Other sports - Romania

Roll on September

July 24, 2025

by plutoman 0 Comments

Last week I was having a discussion with the 11-year-old girl in Germany when she asked me what my favourite month was. When I said September, she thought I was crazy. End of holidays. Back to school. Homework. Tests. Getting up far too early. That’s what September means to her. But for me it means no more infernal heat for nine months. And yes, back to (hopefully) a full suite of lessons, without which life can feel purposeless.

Last summer messed me up mentally. The heat was relentless. So far (touch wood) this summer has been more manageable. Yes, we’ll be well into the 30s every day until Saturday, but then we’ll get a break. That’s just as well, because I’ve been feeling a bit down ever since my parents came over. Lots of talk about their properties and plans, lots too about my brother (his kids, his house, his career plans, his master’s degree), and then there’s me, stuck out here on my own, my life rather meaningless in comparison. Then there’s the sudden realisation that Mum and Dad are properly old and I’ll have to play a more active role in their lives. Having Kitty is certainly a positive amid all of this.

On Monday I saw a survey in which the majority of Romanians thought that Ceaușescu was a good president and would prefer to return to communism. Anybody under 40 has no memory of that time so wouldn’t know first-hand how awful things got, especially in the final years. He’s become something of a cult figure on social media. A cartoon character. I was shocked to see Ceaușescu fridge magnets for sale when I visited those monasteries four years ago. Older people fondly recall being young and pretty, with lives largely free of hard decisions. It’s still striking to see a poll like that though. People have frighteningly short memories. And we got pretty damn close to going back there in May’s presidential election.

Ozzy Osbourne has died at the age of 76. A legend. And like so many other icons of heavy metal, a Brummie. He held a farewell concert at Villa Park just two and a half weeks before his death. He had a horrific quad bike accident in 2003 that almost did for him. (Those things are bloody lethal. The following year I came off a quad bike on my cousin’s farm on the Coromandel. Not far from Thames. I got my leg trapped underneath it. I wasn’t hurt but it was certainly scary.)

Last week Felix Baumgartner died in a paragliding accident; he probably had a heart attack while he was still in the air. He’s the daredevil who jumped from the edge of space in 2012. I remember that well. There was Chuck Yeager with his “Attaboy” just before Baumgartner leapt into the void. Obama was about to be re-elected. We’d just had the London Olympics. The Queen’s diamond jubilee. Gangnam Style. I felt pretty crap about my own life, but at least the world still made some kind of sense. But within a year, social media had swallowed the lot and spat it out, and here we are. Because of his Romanian girlfriend, Baumgartner’s death has received a lot of attention where I am.

The golf. Scottie Scheffler, easily the best player right now, won the Open easily too. There was just the one slight bunker-based brain fart which resulted in a double bogey, but he soon put that behind him. But for that mishap, he didn’t have any single bogeys in the entire weekend. Best name of the tournament went to Chris Gotterup (‘e’s got ‘er up onto the green); he finished third. Runner-up was Harris English. I kept thinking his first name was Johnny. There were so many vying for second place that if it hadn’t been for Scheffler it would have been an absorbing afternoon and evening. Never mind.

Mum and Dad are off in just 48 hours. I still haven’t worked out where (or even if) I’m going between now and September.

Family - Life :) - Romania

Keeping my arms to myself

May 28, 2025

by plutoman 0 Comments

A lighter day today, which is just what I need. Having my parents here was quite stressful honestly, and since then I’ve loads of lessons plus all the book stuff. (I’ve now sent off the cover for the dictionary. That should be it.) Probably the most stressful thing about Mum and Dad being here (well, Mum, lets be frank) apart from the two really shitty bits, was all the washing and cleaning. In theory it should have been a plus having Mum around to help, because normally I have to do it all myself, but while she was here the chores went from being a gentle drum beat that accompanies my life to crashing cymbals constantly in my ear.

On Friday I asked Dorothy if I do have a problem with arm-waving when I get stressed or annoyed. She said yes, she remembered a time when the older woman at the publishing house gushed forth with confusing information, as is her wont, and I waved my arms furiously in frustration, something Dorothy called “concerning behaviour”. She emphasised that it happened just the once. So it’s something I’m going to watch out for and will try to curb. (Mum walking out of the pub because I waved my arms is clearly quite ludicrous, though.) One time I accidentally recorded part of a lesson and I was taken aback by how much I waved my arms and tilted my head, even when I wasn’t frustrated at all. Maybe it’s just a nervous tic. (There’s also the leg-shaking which a younger student pulled me up on.)

My most enjoyable hour and a half since my parents left (so far) has been meeting Mark in town on Sunday. We went to Berăria 700 and had two beers each and plenty of conversation. I liked the simplicity of that.

Yesterday I booked a trip to the UK. I’m taking the early flight from Timișoara to Luton on 24th June, then coming back on 3rd July a different way: I’ll fly from Stansted to Budapest in the afternoon and then catch a train to Timișoara. My sleep-free experience at Luton Airport last summer is something I hope never to repeat.

On Monday I took possession of something pretty important: my permanent residence permit, as they call it, which doesn’t run out until April 2035. That piece of plastic is made even more valuable by Romania’s presidential election result. By the way, Nicușor Dan still needs to pick a prime minister and cobble together a government. He was sworn in on Monday amid a torrential downpour. I’ve been careful not to mention the election to my students unless they do so first, or unless it’s come up before in conversation.

Some other things I didn’t mention from Mum and Dad’s stay, probably because I’d forgotten them. One was all the dogs on the roadside during the stop-start drive from Brașov to Râmnicu Vâlcea. They were mostly old, scraggy things. Until fairly recently, when there was a drastic cull, Romania had a big problem with stray dogs in cities. Another thing that comes to mind is Romanians’ priorities when it comes to accommodation. This was of some frustration to Mum. She wanted a place with an electric kettle (I agree, for us that’s a basic requirement) but instead these places on booking.com all boasted that they had slippers. “Fuck the slippers!” Mum said. Highly amusing, I must say. Last weekend I saw a YouTube video by the excellent RobWords which delved into the most loved and hated words in the English language and gave the results of a poll. “Ethereal” topped the survey of best words (it’s OK, but it wouldn’t feature in my top ten), while “phlegm” was the most hated. I get why; it doesn’t sound too bad, but it looks disgusting and describes something pretty nasty too. In the Black Church in Brașov, Mum noticed the word “pewage” repeatedly on signs next to the pews: “This pewage is not in use.” Neither of us had seen the word before. That’s got to be up there with “phlegm” if you ask me.

I’m now making a concerted effort to contact Mum more via email. Normally I email Dad, but I think the more I communicate with Mum the better the relationship between us will be. That’s my hope anyway.

Next time I’ll post some pictures from the trip.

Family - Politics - Romania - Travel: Romania

Stress test: my parents’ stay

May 26, 2025

by plutoman 0 Comments

The weather has been cooler and wetter than normal for this time of year. The pungent whiff of lime trees all over the city has therefore been delayed. If it could stay like this all through the summer I’d be most happy, but it most certainly won’t.

Nicușor Dan will be sworn in as president later today. When I spoke to Matei’s parents on Saturday, they talked of their plans to leave the country in the event of a Simion victory. Like many others with good jobs in the main cities, they weren’t joking. A win for Simion would have meant another brain drain out of Romania. On Thursday, however, I had a lesson with a 14-year-old boy who said the election results were fake because just look at how many followers Simion has on TikTok! He said he expected “chaos” in Romania now and lamented the fact that Romania couldn’t have a “real man” as president. Ugh. If he is at all typical of his generation, Romania’s long-term future is bleak.

I’ve been exhausted ever since Mum and Dad left early on Thursday morning. I’ve had some very busy days of lessons, plus on Friday I had a meeting about the books. Plural now, because the publishers have decided to wrap both books into one “project” that still needs to be approved by an organisation called the AFCN (Administrația Fondului Cultural Național) which provides funding for cultural projects like books. The older lady went through all of this in great detail while I struggled to stay awake, even though I knew it was important. I was just that tired. (Also, in the morning, Dorothy got me to deliver a table from her friend’s house to hers. The table was an inch too wide to fit in my car, so it needed to be taken apart. Her friend didn’t have enough screwdrivers and spanners – I’d have brought some if I’d known – so she had to borrow some off her neighbour who luckily was in. I could have done without all that.) After nine hours of lessons on Saturday, I spent most of yesterday getting bits and pieces together for the AFCN, including CVs for both me and my father, a “justification” for the project, excerpts and so on. I still haven’t got the title finalised for the large book.

So I set the alarm for 3:50 on Thursday morning which, as it turned out, was far earlier than I needed to. I let Mum cuddle Kitty one last time (how much she liked the cat was a revelation after all the negativity when I got her), then took Mum and Dad to the airport where they checked in, and that was that. Their flight and trip from Luton to St Ives were painless. When they got to the flat, Mum sent me a lovely email to say how much she appreciated my help in Romania and also how helpful the staff at the airport bus station were. On Friday my brother came to the flat, then on Saturday he drove Mum and Dad down to Poole. They’ve now seen their granddaughter for the first time. Mum was busy playing with her grandson in the background and everything looked very jolly.

She wasn’t quite like that with me. Just like when I visited New Zealand in 2023, she would switch from being lovely to being someone I didn’t want to be within a mile of, at the drop of a hat. With all the talk of her digestive problems, which still need to be properly looked at, her stress levels are a much bigger issue. That’s why that trip we did was badly planned on my part – all that booking accommodation and driving was just begging for her to turn shitty. I mean, I even don’t like to move that often. And she now lacks that sense of adventure that she once had.

Last Tuesday I had lessons until 7:30. We went to the beer factory afterwards – a pretty late dinner by our standards. That didn’t help. Mum wasn’t in a great mood – maybe she was nervous for the trip to the UK – and she loses interest in food if it’s not at her normal time. Unlike the other time we ate there, the tables were free of paper menus and instead had QR codes to scan. I’m not at all a fan of QR code menus, but Mum really couldn’t face the idea of ordering dinner in that way. I suggested we eat outside; maybe there’d be paper menus there. Indeed I could see some, but when I asked the waiter for one, he told us – in aggressive fashion – to scan the damn QR code. The paper menus aren’t in English, he said. Look, I can read Romanian. I then got a bit animated, I suppose. Then Mum decided she couldn’t handle me waving my arms like that and stormed out. Great. Dad and I ordered a beer each. Dad told me how hard it is to live with Mum and how he’ll often go to his studio even if he has nothing to paint, just for the peace and quiet. He said he’s resigned to living the rest of his life under constant stress; his remaining years will not be happy ones. It’s all so very sad. A man who would normally float calmly through life, almost like my favourite snooker player Mark Williams, having to live like that. And it’s sad for Mum too – as well as being my mother, she’s fundamentally a very good person who wants the best for people. To see her under so much stress when she’s one of life’s great winners, someone who has everything she could possibly want, is so upsetting. Fifteen minutes later Mum came back, still very angry. We ordered food. Mum’s mood lifted just a little – there were two people who must have been identical twins on the table opposite that looked just like someone she knew in Geraldine. We got home, I put some music on, and we went to bed.

I had no lessons on Wednesday morning, so I took Mum and Dad to Ciacova, a place south of here that I’d only previously been to on a Sunday. In midweek it was much more interesting. Ciacova was a bustling little town, complete with its huge cobbled square, old men on bikes that were almost as old, meeting up for a coffee or (even at that time of day) a beer. As my parents said, it would have made a good film set; it could have been 1950s France. And the surrounding architecture is quite something. They really enjoyed Ciacova and (earlier) Buziaș; going to those places was stress-free – they were good decisions on my part. I know now that the trick is to keep stress to an absolute minimum.

Dad isn’t immune to stress either. So much of it is caused by modern tech. Both my parents struggle with that. I do to, if I’m honest, or rather I make a concerted effort to pick and choose the tech that I can handle. The very idea of a smart watch that can receive messages makes me break out into a cold sweat, so I’ll never get one. Neither will I get one of those “hey Google” thingies that sit on your desk. Dad would also benefit from deleting the damn Daily Mail app from his tablet. So often I’d see him engrossed in it. Come on Dad, you’re better than that. It gets him worked up about LGBTQ stuff which I see as mostly an irrelevance. It’s not even the political position of the paper that bothers me (though it is firmly on the right, while I’ve always thought of Dad as being squarely in the middle); it’s the bile and hatred that it – and the people who comment on it – spit out. Reading it will make you bitter and angry.

I plan to spend nine days in the UK from 24th June – I’ll meet up with the whole family over there – though I haven’t yet decided what to do with Kitty. Later in the summer I’m planning to visit Poland. Stay in the same place for five nights. Don’t move. Life is easier that way.

I’ve got more to say, but this has already been a long one. I’ll put up some photos next time.

Family - Politics - Romania - Tennis

Dan the man (what a relief)

May 19, 2025

by plutoman 0 Comments

Frankly I’m shocked. Romanians used their collective brainpower to not elect George Simion, a thug, a bully, an ex-football hooligan, an isolationist (which you can’t sensibly be in Romania), a Trump fan and a Russian sympathiser. Instead they gave a five-year presidential term to Nicușor Dan, mayor of Bucharest, who is pro-Europe and pro-brain. Dan got 53.6%. At the beginning the result was in doubt. At 9pm a pair of exit polls showed Dan in the 54-55% range, but the diaspora (who made up about 14% of the overall vote and for some bizarre reason favoured Simion) weren’t included in those estimates. The polls only had to be off by three points or so and Simion could have won. Both Dan and Simion claimed victory initially, but Dan and his supporters were clearly in a chirpier mood while Simion was dripping with aggression – there was a man in a red MAGA hat alongside him which told you all you needed to know. (Simion had called his opponent “autistic” and had refused to debate with him.) The results came through impressively quickly and by 10:30 there was no realistic path to victory for Simion. With the diaspora factored in, the exit polls were pretty much bang on. (By the way, of the 301 New Zealand-based Romanians who voted, only 37 cast their votes for Simion.)

It was interesting watching the coverage with Mum and Dad. I was able to translate the speeches and commentary. The election is hugely consequential for Romania and for Europe, even if it’s had limited press around the world. It really looked like Romania would be the latest domino to fall. After all, Simion won the first round by a huge margin; Dan only just made it into the final round. Yesterday I was encouraged by high turnout in obvious Dan-friendly areas like Cluj and lower numbers where Simion would be strongest – turnout figures were reported throughout the day – but didn’t dare to believe. I’d been there before with Brexit, Trump and heaven knows what else. But it was clear that there was a heavy mobilisation of people in the second round against Simion. Two million more people turned out compared to the first round – turnout was almost 65% which in Romania is very high. Dan will now set about forming a government made up of pro-European parties.

In some ways I get the appeal of someone like Simion. Capitalism and globalisation are no longer working. Societies are breaking down. The invasion of tech is becoming more sinister and taking away people’s jobs. The environment is deteriorating as I type. Something needs to change. But certainly not in the simplistic, belligerent way Simion wanted. For the moment we’ve dodged a bullet. I should be able to live and work in Romania in peace, to see more of the country, to at least try and improve my command of the language. I still have a future here, and that’s a blessed relief.

Mum and Dad have gone for a walk into town. That’s a blessed relief too after Mum’s endless cleaning and tidying and rearranging. Earlier this morning Dad helped me move a disintegrating chaise longue into the car; I then took it to the tip. That was a good job done.

Yesterday I took Mum and Dad to Scârț where we met Dorothy. After our coffee we looked at all the weird and wonderful Ceaușescu-era artifacts downstairs. I was on edge all day yesterday; mostly I was dreading the results of the election. When we got back I had a two-hour maths lesson. After that we watched the men’s tennis final from Rome (on clay courts next to the Tiber River) between Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner. I hadn’t thought of watching tennis for some time, but Mum still follows it. Sinner had two set points in a long opening set, but Alcaraz won it on a tie-break before racing through the second 6-1. Dad was surprised they didn’t play best of five sets. They once did play five sets in these big finals; Rome had two absolute classics in 2005 and 2006.

Driving - Life :) - Other sports - Romania - Tennis

Coming unstuck

January 29, 2025

by plutoman 0 Comments

The last few days we’ve had incredible weather. Today it was blue sky all day and we got to 18. I don’t think they’re getting much more than that in Geraldine.

On Sunday I managed to get myself into a slight pickle. I was in Blajova, a small village a half-hour drive from me, when I somehow backed my car out over a culvert, leaving my front wheel hanging in the air. A woman opposite heard me revving the engine (to no avail; I was stuck) and came out. Could you or somebody else help me? No. OK, thanks, have a great day. This is fantastic, I thought. I’m in the middle of nowhere here. I had a weak signal and called some tow truck people. They didn’t even know where Blajova was until I sent them my location. Right, we can come in 45 minutes. It’ll be 500 lei. Ugh, that’s a bit much. More than I earned all day yesterday. Surely someone here can get me out of this. The car isn’t damaged, I’m hardly in the bottom of a ditch or anything, it just needs some manpower. I wandered around and as luck would have it there was a guy in an orange hi-viz vest, the kind that David Cameron used to wear, and he was willing to help. He got his two mates and the three of them pushed but it wouldn’t budge. I’ll get my Jeep then. Within two minutes he’d got his Jeep and attached the rope, and I was free. I tried giving them 100 lei but they wouldn’t take it. In this place we help each other. We’ll help anybody.

These villages are full of farmers and practical people who tow stuff on a daily basis. Before I got stuck, I was walking along the road in the village when an older gentleman wound down the window of his car. He wanted to know how an unknown person could possibly be wandering through his village on a Sunday morning. Being defensive, I said I was a tourist from England. I’ve been to Romania a few times before, that’s how I can speak a bit. He was very pleasant and asked if I was going to the church service which was about to start. When I told him that I thought his village was beautiful, he added, “but poor”.

I was in Blajova because it was close to a nature reserve called Lunca Pogănișului and I wanted to go for a walk through it. After getting stuck I nearly went back home, then remembered the men’s final in Melbourne was going on. I saw that Jannik Sinner had taken the first set against Sasha Zverev and the second was close. If Zverev gets the set I’ll go home because there’ll still be plenty of tennis to watch. If not and Sinner goes 2-0 up, I’ll go for my walk. Sinner won the second set on a tie-break. Walk it is then. But the track down to the Lunca was so hopelessly muddy that I soon went home anyway. By the time I got home, Sinner had completed a comprehensive win. It’s a shame I couldn’t see the women’s final which saw Madison Keys pick up her first grand slam in a brilliant match with Aryna Sabalenka. I was happy that the American won, as was Mum when I spoke to her. Keys came through a bunch of three-setters on the way. Madison Keys, by the way, sounds like some somewhere just off Cape Cod where you’d moor your luxury yacht and that no mere mortals could afford to live in. (It’s getting on for ten years since I visited Cape Cod. That was a good day.)

In my last post about the FA Cup, I meant to mention the match I saw in January 2000 between Aston Villa and Leeds United in the fifth round. I didn’t (and don’t) support Villa, but that game was one heck of a spectacle. Villa twice came from behind to win 3-2, Benito Carbone scoring a hat-trick. We saw four of the goals down our end. (I went with some other uni students.) I remember Paul Merson being an absolute beast in that game. For some reason I also remember Carbone’s blue boots which I thought looked pretty damn cool. Villa Park was rocking towards the end of that game. The Cup was already on the wane even by then, but 25 years ago it still meant a lot. (Villa made the final that year, losing to Chelsea in the last FA Cup final at the old Wembley.)

When I spoke to my parents this morning, Dad talked about the destructive potential of AI. I don’t use AI myself (I keep meaning to for curiosity’s sake, but I can’t be bothered) and am scared of what it might unleash, outside the realm of medicine where it seems to be beneficial. Dad said that at least he won’t see the destruction in his lifetime. It’s all happening to fast though that I wouldn’t be so sure.

Before I finish, some sad news concerning Romania. A band of thieves blew up the entrance to a small museum in the Netherlands and stole some extremely valuable (and extremely old) Romanian artifacts that had been on show there. It was the last day of the exhibition. One of the artifacts was a 2500-year-old gold helmet which I suppose the thieves planned to melt down, though the value of the helmet far exceeds that of the gold.

I’ve been sleeping better and have had more energy as a result. Not Kitty-level energy or anything crazy like that, but a normal level, which is definitely something.

Family - Photos - Politics - Romania - Writing a book

Good news about the books, an un-election, and some pictures

December 8, 2024

by plutoman 0 Comments

I see I somehow neglected to mention my meeting with the publishers, so here goes. It was a weird meeting with the mother and daughter that lasted all of two hours. The mother likes to talk. She’s a French teacher, and sometimes she even switched from Romanian to French. Like I said, weird. At the beginning I was presented with a print-out of both the picture book and the A-B section of the dictionary. I started to comment on the picture book – for the love of God, don’t stretch or squoosh Dad’s illustrations as you’ve done here – before zooming out to the big picture. Before we start talking fonts and formats and stuff, can you assure me that this book, I mean these books, are actually going to see the light of day? The answer was yes, which was by far the most encouraging thing in the whole meeting. I was worried that everything Dad and I had done to this point might be in vain. It seemed EU funding will pay for a large chunk of it. (Of course, this is Romania, so until I actually see the books in print I can’t be 100% sure of anything.) Sometimes I struggled to articulate – in Romanian – what I wanted to say, but we managed to flesh out some important details. Surprisingly, I’m in charge of the layout, not them, and I agreed to a deadline of 15th January to get the small book sorted. This won’t be an easy task because the pictures won’t all be the same size, they’ll need varying amounts of explanatory text, and so on. We agreed that both books would be in B5 format, roughly 7 inches by 10, though the picture book will be landscape and the dictionary portrait. I have no plans for Christmas, which means I’ll have time to spend on the books.

Yes, Romania, where you can’t guarantee anything. Even whether elections actually happen. On Friday they (Romania’s supreme court, I think) invalidated the first round of the presidential election, less than two days before the second round was due to take place. (In fact, overseas voting for the second round had already begun.) This was a major shock. A couple of days earlier, documents were made available that showed that Putin supporter Călin Georgescu had been hugely promoted, probably by Russia, through algorithms (and money) on TikTok, which is Chinese-owned. The re-run of the election probably won’t happen until March, and it’s unclear if Georgescu will be allowed to run again. Last weekend’s parliamentary elections are still valid as far as I know, so presumably Klaus Iohannis (the current president) will stay in place, with the new parliament, until March. But really, all bets are off.

I spoke to my parents this morning. Mum had her shiny new crown. She described the space-age process of X-rays followed by scans from every angle that enabled the crown to be 3D-printed. None of this business of having to bite into a mould; it’s all cutting-edge stuff. The price is cutting-edge too. I could see a lovely painting of Dad’s which they’d hung in the kitchen; it was of the fruit and vegetable market in Cambridge. We discussed my brother, who has been pulling out every imaginable stop to complete his latest assignment for his master’s. Master’s. Where on earth has this motivation come from? He called me during the week for help with a spreadsheet. Luckily I spent quite a few years dealing with spreadsheets in a previous life. Only six weeks until I’ll be getting a niece.

I had four lessons yesterday – two English, two maths. Matei wanted to talk about the killing of Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, a gargantuan American health insurer. Delay, deny, defend: that’s apparently what was written on the shell casings. Matei said that his death was being celebrated all over TikTok. I suggested that celebrating the brutal killing of someone with a wife and family who was just doing his job isn’t really OK, even if the company is as parasitic as the one he headed. But at least this has shed a light on the unforgivable state of US healthcare and insurance. Unfortunately I suspect it will all just blow over like everything else in America. It’s headline news for a week or two, but ultimately nothing happens. Just think of George Floyd. Or the numerous school shootings. Or the 2008 financial crisis where the big banks got bailed out as people lost their homes, and people shrugged their shoulders. They just put Trump back in, after all.

Last Sunday I went out for a spin, visiting Peciu Nou, Cebza, Petroman (which isn’t far off my online name) and finally the decent-sized town of Ciacova which its cobbled streets and square. My brother called me while was in Ciacova, so I gave him a bit of a tour. I still hope one day he will visit me in Romania. After getting off the phone, a dog bit my leg, completely out of the blue. He or she (I didn’t pay attention to that) didn’t draw blood, otherwise I’d have seen the doctor.

On Sunday evening I went into town and saw the parade of army men with torches, for the national day celebration.

I sent this picture of Peciu Nou to Dad, who wants to turn it into a painting. He wanted to see the other side of the street, so it looks like I’ll be making another trip there.