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Cambridgeshire commentary and plenty of pics

August 12, 2024

by plutoman 0 Comments

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

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

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

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

Merryland. Great name for a street.

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

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

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

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

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

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

I only took limited photos of the manor house

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

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

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

The western end of Mill Road

Romanian produce in one of the shops in the western end

The eastern end of Mill Road

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

Dreams - Life :) - Photos - Politics

Make politics boring again (and some photos)

June 11, 2024

by plutoman 0 Comments

Life is really just a case of lurching from one mini problem to another, hoping all the while to dodge the big ones. The plumber fixed the leaking pipe in the bathroom but now it reeks of sewage in there, just like in the guest houses I stayed at when I arrived in Romania. And now my bank app has stopped working so there are bills I physically can’t pay. (I booked some accommodation for a couple of weeks’ time but had to cancel the booking because I couldn’t make the payment.) I made two trips to the bank yesterday but they couldn’t sort it out. I’ll go back there later today. All stupidly time-consuming.
Update: On my third visit to the bank, a younger cashier got involved and it looks like it’s now working. However I’ve just had a no-show from one of my younger students. She only has lessons with me at all because her mother has the money to pay for them; she really couldn’t give a damn. One of my goals for the coming months (before the schools go back in September) is to get rid of all these time-wasters.

I’ve mentioned dreams before on here. Last night I had a dream in which I was hopelessly physically weak. Then a week or two ago I got the results of some general knowledge test that had vital implications – exactly what I don’t know. I went with some friends to receive the news. While they mostly got scores well into the 30s (the max was unclear), I got 25 which was bang on the pass mark. I was relieved but embarrassed and tried to hide my score from my friends. Yep, I passed, no worries. My paper was returned to me covered in red ink. I was branded as “incurious” and in one instance a “dumbass”, then at the end the examiner scrawled “I can’t prove it, but you know and I know that you cheated.” Do other people have to endure dreams like this? Inadequacy and embarrassment are running themes. Is my self-esteem that bad? The only positive from this dream was that I seemed to have a few friends.

Tests, exams, education. On Thursday my student in Slobozia – an English teacher – was rather upset with me when I criticised the Romanian education system and its knock-on effects. I explained that I certainly wasn’t critical of her. (Why a teacher should be so keen to defend the system is beyond me.) I felt bad, but right on cue the next day a viral video emerged from Ineu, a town around two hours’ drive to the north of me. A girl by the name of Iulia who had just finished her final year with the best grades in her school (in New Zealand she’d be the dux) gave a damning acceptance speech. The system has stripped me of my personality and taught me how to lie. It has taught me how to be a shallow hypocrite rather than to develop ethically and morally. Ouch!

Last week Nigel Farage entered the fray in the UK election campaign. He talks some sense on immigration but I wish he would stop there. When he criticised Rishi Sunak’s D-day desertion, he said “he doesn’t care about our culture,” implying that Sunak (who is of Indian descent) is from a different culture. Something other. In fact Sunak, who was born in Southampton, is about as British as they come. Then there’s Farage overt support for Donald Trump. His Reform party may well pick up 15% or so, though under the ridiculous first-past-the-post system they may only get one or two seats. The party I’m most impressed with right now are the Liberal Democrats. Their leader Ed Davey doesn’t take himself too seriously (so far in the campaign he’s been falling off paddleboards) and he has a compelling life story that shows him to be greatly empathetic. Yesterday they talked about pumping money into the care sector, and so far they’re the only party who are even daring to mention Brexit – the elephant in the room.

When I spoke to my brother he said he wished to go back to politics being boring again. Apart from maybe in the days just before or after an election, the subject never came up around the kitchen table when we were growing up. He mentioned the Monica Lewinsky scandal and what a big deal that was at the time. Now something twice as big happens every week it seems. Back to boring would be nice. After what happened in the European elections at the weekend, we might be waiting a while. Here in Timișoara the current mayor Dominic Fritz has been re-elected – he beat Nicolae Robu who was mayor from 2012 to 2020.

On Sunday I met Dorothy at Scârț, the place where they have the theatre and the museum of communism. I ordered a lemonade in Romanian, then the young lady asked me if I was from Birmingham or somewhere in that area. Well, I studied there, I said. Nobody had ever “accused” me of having a Brummie accent before, and as far as I’m aware I definitely don’t have one. (I think I have a hard-to-pin-down standard British accent that has been “contaminated” a little by all that time in New Zealand.) When you move around as I’ve done, bits and pieces are bound to rub off on you, so who knows?

My trip into the wilderness on Sunday: I was pleased to get a shot of the bounding deer

Lugoj last Thursday. An abandoned swimming pool and restaurant.

The cemetery at Toager near the Serbian border on Saturday 1st June

Language teaching - Life :) - Photos - Travel: Romania

Keeping those tourist numbers down

May 20, 2024

by plutoman 0 Comments

Things are certainly much better – and calmer – than a week ago. Not fantastically wonderful or anything, but I no longer feel hopelessly overwhelmed. My hours are down a bit, so I’ve been able to spend some time on my novel, though I’m constantly having to rework sections so that it meshes together properly, and even then I have doubts. Is this bit simply too boring? Then I’ve got the meeting for the other book, which was supposed to be last Tuesday but I’m glad got put back because things were still pretty messy then.

The last few days have been nondescript, which is no bad thing. My most interesting lesson was probably on Thursday, when my student of 22 or 23 showed me her CV. I’d put her at a 5 on my 0-to-10 scale. Her CV began with three introductory paragraphs where she blew her own trumpet and the rest of the brass section along with it. In included such phrases as “I wield automation tools”, “technical prowess”, “foster strong team collaboration” and “peak performance and user delight”. I asked her what “wield”, “prowess” and “foster” meant; predictably she hadn’t a clue. Then I told her to stop using AI to write her CV. Anybody with half a brain could tell that those weren’t her words.

I’ve had the usual chats with my parents. Lately Dad has spent a lot of time talking about UK immigration, which to be fair is a massively important topic, but sometimes I want a break from all the negativity associated with it. Yesterday he sent me a 35-minute YouTube video of a speech on UK immigration by someone from a right-wing think tank. Oh no, I have to watch this. The speaker made some perfectly valid points and some which I saw as invalid.

Yesterday I played tennis with Florin, as usual on a Saturday. We were surrounded by six beach volleyball courts; a noisy competition was in full flow. When things had calmed down half an hour into our session, we started a game. I was up 6-3, 1-1 when we finished. The most pleasing thing was that I didn’t suffer from the wobbly feeling on my service games.

Today I visited the dendrological park (that fancy word means “trees”) at Bazoșu Nou, a short trip from here. I parked next to a man of about thirty; he was with his small son who rode the sort of bike that didn’t exist when I was little, and clearly enjoyed the interaction with him. (I always feel a tinge of sadness when I see that; being 50% older than many fathers doesn’t exactly make that feeling go away.) To my surprise there was a man at the gate collecting a 10 lei entrance fee. Not far from the entrance were a pair of wordy information boards, one in Romanian and one in French, plus a map with no scale that showed vaguely what you might see. An American zone with sequoias. A giant oak tree. But from there, information was nonexistent. Is the oak tree two minutes away or half an hour? Is this oak tree the giant one or not? Nothing was labelled. The park was pretty and a relaxing place to stroll in, but some sense of what and where wouldn’t have gone amiss. I’d been in the park an hour, sometimes using my birdsong recognition app and wishing I had an app for trees too, when I thought, how do I get out of here now? Luckily I guessed right – all you could do in that rather large, mazy park was guess – and I was spared the Blair Witch stuff. Romania gets few tourists and they’re doing a good job of keeping it that way.

A useful map of cycle tracks *outside* the park

After the park I ended up in Recaș for the second time in four days – I had my lunch there on Wednesday – then got pulled over by the police. Ugh. “Do you want to know what rule you’ve broken?” I guess so. I expected to get done for speeding; I often don’t quite know what the speed limits are. The rule I’d broken was “headlights on at all times” rule. Only my sidelights were on. Apparently this is quite a new law (and crazy if you ask me, unless you ride a motorbike). He asked me to open the boot to make sure I had a full emergency kit (I did), then I was free to go, with no fine or anything. He was pleasant enough. I then stopped for lunch in a village called Brestovăț followed by a smaller village called Teș where the roads were unsealed and none of them seemed to go through the village despite my 2009 map which said otherwise.

I braved the car wash today. It worked by rechargeable card. You had to put at least 10 lei on the card, so I charged it up with the minimum. A 2½-minute blast with a high-pressure hose was supposed to eat up 5 lei, but when that was done the other 5 lei had mysteriously vanished too. I might try another one next time. I must say I’m enjoying the car. It’s my favourite of the five I’ve had so far. I know it’s a diesel, but I’m still blown away by the low fuel consumption. It gets roughly 50 miles to the gallon; my 1984 Nissan Bluebird got barely half that.

I zeroed the trip meter the last time I filled up. 969 km hardly seems possible.

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

Church, flowers and balls

May 6, 2024

by plutoman 0 Comments

This morning I went to Dorothy’s church, a 25-minute bike ride from here. Church has the potential for all sorts of awkwardness. Just like the Orthodox adherents, Romanian Baptists say Hristos a înviat, or “Christ has risen”, in place of “Hello”. Any reply from me, even the “correct” one, would instantly mark me as an outsider. I was surprised that they also celebrate Easter according to the Orthodox calendar. The service lasted two hours – even longer than the Christmas one – and was capped off by an extremely wordy sermon. In between were hymns accompanied by a guitar, a violin, and drums. All the way through were churchy Romanian words I didn’t know and have already forgotten – it’s not like I could look them up or note them down very easily. The congregation was half the size of the one at Christmas, but included kids who were all called on to read the odd verse or two. Communion, which I didn’t partake in, consisted of normal red wine and scraps of pita bread, not the special communion wine and wafers that we got at the Catholic church many moons ago when I did church. We had coffee and biscuits outside – once again I met that bubbly Australian woman who had sung vigorously.

When I got home the lady above me gave me some Easter food: drob (usually this contains lamb offal, but the one I got has chicken instead; it tastes good), sarmale (filled cabbage rolls), several slices of cozonac (a traditional bready cake), and another cake whose name I don’t know. She might have actually made all of that herself, so I have no reasonable way of returning the favour. Then I got in the car and went north to Fibiș (which is on the way to Lipova), then west to Orțișoara where I stopped for just a few minutes – there was a lovely hailstorm – before returning home.

Snooker. Some long scrappy frames last night. Stuart Bingham seemed to mentally check out at the end, allowing Jak Jones to win 17-12 when a very long night had looked in store. In the 27th frame Bingham laid a fiendish snooker behind the green. Jones’s first escape attempt clattered into the pink, sending reds flying. The referee and his assistant spent several minutes replacing the balls. Remarkably Jones hit a red on his second try, sparing everybody a repeat. Bingham won that frame in the end, but that was his last hurrah against a dogged opponent. It’s not going quite to well for Jones in the final – he took a pummelling in the first session against Kyren Wilson; at least he won the final frame to trail “only” 7-1 in the first-to-18 match. (Update: I’ve just watched a brilliant second session of high quality. There was a dramatic twist in the last frame in which Wilson got the snooker that he needed on the yellow, and then won after a 15-shot back-and-forth on the black. Wilson now leads 11-6.)

Painstakingly putting the balls back. At least they have a top-down camera now.

By the river at 8pm yesterday. It now gets dark at 8:45.

Orțișoara: a not-that-old sign for a closed-down ABC, the equivalent of a dairy in NZ

A typical flower arrangement using old tyres

Orțișoara’s volunteer fire department, right next to those flower beds

The war memorial in Orțișoara. Almost all the names here are German; the town was settled by Germans in the late 18th century.

Driving - Family - Music - Photos

About to shoot off, but I think I’ll be here a while

March 28, 2024

by plutoman 0 Comments

It’s my last day before my Easter break – one of the windiest days I can remember in Romania – and it’s going by in slow motion. I say Easter break, but in fact it’s the first of two Easters I’ll celebrate this year. Due to the vagaries of moon phases and an obsolete calendar, the gap between this year’s “normal” Easter and Orthodox Easter is five weeks – usually it’s just one week, and sometimes they even fall on the same day. My second Easter, when I won’t have to see anybody or do a whole lot, will feel like more of a break than the first.

To get my driving confidence up, I need a window of a few hours so I can get the hell out of the city. A trip around the block won’t do it. This isn’t Geraldine; around the block involves the main road right outside my block of flats (turning left onto it is horrible, I’ve realised) with 18-wheelers bearing down on me. After this afternoon’s trip I got straight into the white wine I bought from Recaș last week. Getting out on the open road though is a whole heap of fun. At this point it seems my car is going to be pretty economical, as French cars often are. (Last night a student told me there’s a saying in Romania that you should avoid the letter F when it comes to cars. That means Ford, Fiat, or French.)

I met Dorothy in town yesterday. We talked about Timișoara and how it suits us both down to the ground. There’s so much to like here: the architecture, the parks, the river, the markets, the funny hole-in-the-wall shops, all the imperfections that make you feel more alive. Add in the welcoming people and the fact that it’s safer than almost any city in the UK. (If you don’t feel safe in a city, everything else falls away.) Plus all the signs being in an exotic language is massively cool. Having everything in my native English would now seem humdrum and tame. Returning to live in the country of my birth is a complete non-starter; New Zealand is an option but unless things ramp up horribly a few hundred miles east, I’ll be in Romania for a while yet.

Dad sent me a video of The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down, an extraordinary piece of music by The Band. I was more familiar with Joan Baez’s rendition of the song, but The Band’s original version is really quite something. In fact The Band have produced amazing stuff all round; I’ll probably end up adding one of their albums to my collection. Last night Dad told me about a programme he’d been listening to on the radio, all about accents, or more specifically what causes people to keep them or change them when they move. Mum certainly softened out the edges of her Kiwi accent when she moved to the UK; attracting the nickname Iggy based on how she pronounced “egg” might have given her the impetus to do that. Being a teacher must have been a driver too. (My brother’s name contains the same vowel as “egg”; Mum made a conscious effort to say it in the English way so it didn’t sound like a certain pulse that is sometimes preceded by “Mr.”)

I’ll be up at four tomorrow to get a taxi to the airport. Today my brother has taken the little one over to see his great-aunt in the home. My cousin was concerned that if he had a sniffle and his mum were to catch a cold, that would likely be the end of her. I’m planning to cycle over to her place on Monday.

Here are some snaps I took yesterday – a slice of Holland in the middle of Timișoara.

Driving - Music - Photos

A quick trip

March 21, 2024

by plutoman 0 Comments

Earlier starts are good for me. This morning I had a one-hour lesson from eight, then cycled to the local produce market where I bought a sack of potatoes, cheese (cow’s this time), some spinach and some spring onions. I heard a stallholder say “crumpir”, a regional word for “potato”: it comes from the Serbian “krompir”. As usual at this time of year there were bags of stinging nettles for sale; I should probably try cooking with them at some stage.

After I got back from the market I took my car for a spin because I was free of lessons until 2:30. What’s great about Timișoara (among many other things) is that when you’re out of the city, you’re properly out of it, so I drove to Recaș, 25 minutes down the road. Famous for its winery, it’s easy to get to from my side of the city. When I arrived at eleven, I found a town brimming with life and bathed in sunshine. It was lovely just to sit for a few minutes on a bench in the small central park where the trees were in pink blossom and the birds were chirruping away. There was a small indoor market and a popular outdoor stall selling mici and chips. Most of the folk were older; a fair few of them were gypsies. I’d only been to Recaș once before, back in 2017, to pick up wine with one of my students. After a quick look round the place I went to the winery outlet (in a more modern building now) and got five litres of medium dry white wine from the tap for NZ$18 or just under £9, then came home. On the way back I saw a Wizz Air plane come in to land – probably the one I’ll be coming in on two weeks tomorrow. Though it was a chilly start to the day and the temperature barely made it into the teens, there’s hardly been a cloud in the sky.

In recent weeks I’ve felt a lot of anxiety. I’m not sure why. It’s probably a combination of pessimism about the modern world as a whole (I keep wanting to escape it by putting on 50-year-old records) and recognising that I’m getting older and need to change aspects of my life but don’t know what or how. It’s also the being on my own thing. It’s been so long that I hardly remember anything else, but it’s not supposed to be like this, is it? You’re supposed to have a rock, a safety net, someone to share your experiences and problems and foreign-language life admin with. Without that, life can get precarious, overwhelming, and expensive. (Single people are screwed over financially all round. Politically, we are second-class citizens, not in the same league as hard-working families that David Cameron and his ilk liked to woo.) During my chat with Dad, he wondered how on earth he would manage his banking should anything happen to Mum. He doesn’t even have an operational cell phone.

My records. I’ve now got 18 albums. What are my favourites so far? My top three would probably be Leonard Cohen’s 1975 greatest hits album (one of the first batch of records I bought), Paul and Linda McCartney’s Ram, and Mike Oldfield’s Ommadawn. All brilliant. Ram showcases Paul in his raw state, shortly after the Beatles broke up and before he got all sugary. Some honourable mentions too, such as ELO’s double album Out of the Blue, and Paul Simon’s Graceland which doesn’t really count because I’d played it hundreds of times on CD so its brilliance wasn’t exactly a shock. I mean, the first track Boy in the Bubble, good God. And if you’re talking individual tracks, Ramble Tamble – track one of Cosmo’s Factory by CCR – that’s mindblowingly cool.

I’ll be off to the UK next Thursday, coming back the following Thursday. After staying in St Ives, my brother will kindly pick me up from the airport and take me to Poole; I’ll probably stay there until Easter Sunday. Then I plan to get the bus to Cambridge and stay in St Ives. On the Monday I’ll try and see my aunt in the home – that will likely involve a long bike ride, then the next day I might see my friend in Birmingham. On Wednesday I’ll have to make my way to Luton and stay there overnight. I think I’ll just stay the night in the airport, as tiring as that might be.

I was apprehensive about getting a car but after today’s excursion I’m glad I’ve done it. It will open up all kinds of possibilities to see this beautiful country. And rather than being a cause of stress, it might have the opposite effect on me – outside the city, at least – just like it did in New Zealand.

Family - Language teaching - Life :) - Other sports - Photos

The warmest everything ever, everywhere

March 8, 2024

by plutoman 0 Comments

After a six-week winter we had the warmest February on record (warmest X on record is something we’ve been hearing a lot lately, right?), and now spring has well and truly sprung. Saying that, it’s tipped it down all day today.

A funny week of lessons, and it’s far from over. On Monday I had the 17-year-old mall rat again, though this time she seemed actually human. We had something approaching a chat, mostly about the Ukraine war. After two years, people here have become dangerously blasé about it all, but she was rightly concerned. One oddity was that she’d never heard of the September 11th attacks. I say oddity – for me it’s the where-were-you moment when the world changed at a stroke – but in Romania it had a much smaller impact on the collective psyche than in the English-speaking world or western Europe. And of course she wasn’t even born then. On the same day I had an online session with the senior manager (a 35-year-old woman) who lives somewhere near Bucharest. Saying these sessions are like talking to a brick wall would do a disservice to the responsiveness of masonry. Just an utter waste of time. The good news is that pointless work makes up just 20% of my hours; 15 years ago it was up near 90%.

A student from 18 months ago has also rejoined the fray. He goes by Italian-sounding name of Marco. I don’t know how you get that out of Dumitru, his real name. I’ve had three online “lessons” with him already this week. One of them he spent lying in bed; during another he smoked the whole time. (I recently had a guy vape during a face-to-face session at home; things suddenly got very strawberry-ish.) The sessions with Marco aren’t pointless exactly, but he’s on a different frequency to me somehow, and I struggle to pick up a signal.

It was 10pm when I finished with Marco on Tuesday. With no lessons the next morning, I put on the game between Hull and Birmingham. Hull, predictably, took the lead just after I tuned in – a goal that should have been disallowed for handball. Hull were dominant and it had all the makings of a stonking win for them, but Blues clung on and in the 82nd minute conjured up an equaliser as Lukas Jutkiewicz who had just come on as a substitute headed the ball home. A good point for Blues but they’re still very much in a relegation scrap. (Today I saw a simulation model that gave Blues a 15% chance of being relegated. Having seen a few of their performances, that feels low, even if they do still have a game in hand. They go to Millwall on Saturday, a huge game for them.) When the Blues game was over, I switched over to Ipswich – the Tractor Boys, as they’re affectionately known – at home to Bristol City. It was 2-2 with ten minutes left and the place was rocking. Ipswich were awarded a penalty, and a shocking kick was easily saved, but not to matter. They scored the winner a couple of minutes later, and it’s a wonder they didn’t add to their tally in stoppage time. That was fun to watch.

Not much other news. In my next post I’ll give a run-down of all the vinyl I bought recently. In the meantime, here’s a video from CityNerd on the world’s top ten music cities (by the metric he uses). Very interesting.

I’m extremely proud of my brother for getting his first-class degree. His graduation takes place on 18th April, a couple of weeks after I go to the UK. It’s a shame he won’t have family there for it. My graduation ceremony in 2002, which my parents and grandmother attended, was quite lovely really.

Family - Photos - Travel: Romania

Trip to Buziaș

February 5, 2024

by plutoman 0 Comments

My student has cancelled her pointless lesson with me two-and-a-bit minutes before we were due to start, giving me the chance to write this.

Yesterday I went with Mark to visit Buziaș, a town of 7000 people, less than half an hour away. I was just about to head out on a 10 km bike ride to his place when he offered to pick me up (Calea Buziașului – the road to Buziaș – is quite close to me). A little while later I got a message from him – “Drop us a pin.” Sorry, what? Was that meant for me at all? Oh, you want me to share my location. I rarely get messages from native English speakers, so “drop us a pin” (with us meaning me) really threw me.

The main focal point of Buziaș is the park, substantial for a town of its size. It features a large covered walkway – wooden and quite ornate – that goes all the way around. That and all the trees, and the fact that it’s well maintained, make it a pleasant place to take a stroll in. But apart from that, there was endless abandonment like you see in so many Romanian towns. The ștrand – a swimming pool with sunbeds and a bar and a general beach vibe, but in this case abandoned decades ago – was an extraordinary sight. It’s now a decaying shell, overgrown with reeds. You could still see the slide, the changing rooms, and where they would have put the mici on the barbecue. Mark said that a Romanian of his age (he’s 53) would surely find the whole thing upsetting, for 40 years ago it would have been a fully functioning hive of activity.

Just before we left, we saw a painting of the brightly painted bandstand with the locals prancing around in traditional dress. The bandstand is still there, but the bright colours have gone. It’s been left to go like so much else. As we started our walk around the park, I pointed out something that looked like the tail fin of a plane. We didn’t pay that much attention, because obviously there wouldn’t be any aircraft there. After we’d nearly done a lap of the park, the tail fin came back into view, together with the rest of the plane. And a few other planes too. All old Soviet aircraft – Antonov, probably. It was part restaurant, part theme park. It’s functional, but only in the summer. Even though it was “closed”, we could still roam around and hop inside one of the planes, where it was all decked out for kids.

In the park was a large shiny white touch-screen device that looked only months old – and completely out of place. It had clearly been bought with EU funds. The big front screen was all in English. I pressed Start. Up popped the Buziaș council webpage, all in Romanian, with links labelled “Rubbish collection” or “Pay your rates” that didn’t even work. Great. If I go back in a couple of years the machine itself will likely be just a sculpture.

Party Land. Buziaș, where your heart is always healthy. Great use of Jokerman font.

The water from this well can cure just about anything, apparently

No entry, and not much room on the sign either

I sent Dad the Luton video, which he watched. He said, well it’s all the immigrants, isn’t it? Luton does have a very high immigrant population, but there are also post-industrial towns all over the country which have very few immigrants and are just as crap. The picture is complicated, and grim all round.

On Saturday I called my brother and had a good chat with my sister-in-law. They were watching Gladiators – the very popular nineties series that has been brought back. Thirty-odd years ago, that was Mum’s Saturday night. Gladiators followed by Blind Date – two hours of trash TV. Fair enough after such a tiring week. My sister-in-law talked about the potential difficulty of getting three weeks off work to go to New Zealand and completing the trip before my nephew’s second birthday in mid-September when the cost would shoot up. We also touched on Mum’s trip with us two tiny boys in 1982, and the state of the house that she left Dad to deal with over that dreadful winter. Their penchant for buying completely inappropriate houses didn’t exactly end there.

Language teaching - Maths teaching - Photos - Travel: Romania

A busy winter’s day and a trip to Arad

January 14, 2024

by plutoman 0 Comments

I’ve had a busy Saturday, chock-full of lessons. Two maths sessions – two hours apiece – and three English ones. Everything from a creative writing piece about a murder and tactile Little Mermaid books to construction of perpendicular bisectors and probability tree diagrams. Marginally preferable to yesterday though, when I took five paracetamol for my sinus pain.

It’s been cold. Actual proper winter, like my first one in Timișoara, not the half-arsed stuff we’ve had of late. On Monday it snowed all day, making for a pretty sight, but getting around the city for lessons was quite a challenge. Today was the first time since then that the mercury – ever so briefly – touched freezing point. We’d been at (minus) sixes and sevens all week.

Last Sunday – just before the wintry blast hit us – I met Mark in Dumbrăvița and from there we went to Arad in his car. I hadn’t been there for six years. Arad is a fine city, with beautiful architecture much like we have in Timișoara. (Just like my home, it was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire for half a century until the First World War.) After a good wander, be both agreed that in some ways we preferred Arad to its bigger cousin. (Timișoara is roughly twice the size.) There were all kinds of photo opportunities. We managed to go inside the Palace of Culture, which reminded me of the larger one in Iași; the lobby and the concert hall were both superb. The Mureș, a much more substantial river than Timișoara’s Bega, runs through the city. The Christmas market was still running, but rather than grab overpriced food from there, we had a major feed at one of a clump of kebab shops at one end of the main drag. Kebab Alley, we called it. Unlike Timișoara with its three main squares, Arad has one long, broad main street where everything happens, though some of the side streets were impressive too. After our kebabs, we decided to go back home. Mark had parked in an area of town not far from the centre called Boul Roșu – the Red Ox – but despite seeing a sign depicting a red ox, it took us a while to find the car. Coming home from that very enjoyable trip felt like the absolute end of any kind of holiday-related downtime.

My record player – turntable, if you like – arrived yesterday. It’s still in its box. Getting that going will be tomorrow’s “thing”.

Here are some photos from Arad, and of the snow.

Above is one of those Roman numerals date word puzzle thingies that I mentioned on this blog some years ago. But did they have to make it so complicated? Someone must have really pissed off whoever made this in 1779 (if I haven’t gone wrong somewhere – I may well have).

Arad *does* have a square, and it’s in the process of being revitalised

On the left is the old water tower which I visited in 2016

Family - Other sports - Photos

Avoiding stress in the last week of the year (with some photos)

December 29, 2023

by plutoman 0 Comments

After giving an online lesson between eight and nine this morning, I cycled to Sânmihaiu Român where I grabbed a coffee and Skyped my parents. They were amazed to see the cloudless blue sky in the background, a far cry from what they’ve been experiencing of late. They didn’t have much news and nor did I. They’ve been cracking on with painting, taking advantage of the poor weather. Then I pedalled back home.

Yesterday afternoon was also sunny, so I went for a walk beyond the lock at the end of the canalised Bega to the wilder non-man-made part that for some reason I hadn’t visited before. I’ll go back there again in the next few days. It’s nice to have a break from lessons and to have very little risk of needing to interact with people.

The darts. The post-Christmas phase started yesterday with a match between Scott Williams of England and Martin Schindler of Germany. Schindler looked like he would win with something to spare, but his finishing let him down badly towards the end, and Williams squeaked it out on a deciding tie-break. In his post-match interview, Williams said “two World Wars and one World Cup” which suggests that he may be lacking something between the ears. I mean, yeesh, I thought we were past that. The female presenter then apologised for any offence caused. I often find myself supporting the non-English players.