So the Strait of Hormuz is open, maybe, for an indeterminate time, and my parents are coming to Europe next month, maybe, by an indeterminate route. I spoke to them this morning. We discussed the possibility that they get stranded in Europe. Perhaps aviation fuel in Europe will have all run out within a month and the only way I’ll get to see them is if I drive to the UK. A three-day trip.They booked their flights a week or two before war in Iran broke out; there’s no way they’d have booked after.
“I think it’s very, very important for the Pope to be careful when he talks about matters of theology.” So says JD Vance, referring to the very first American pope. On one level that’s bloody hilarious. On another level, WTF? I must say I find the way Trump and his gang invoke God to justify thousands of innocent people to be utterly disgusting.
I did get to see a fair bit of those final eight snooker qualifiers on Wednesday. In some ways they were disappointing; six of the matches failed to stretch beyond the 15th frame. Five of them featured Chinese players. Four of them made it, but what drama there was in the match between the fifth Chinese – Xu Si – and Gary Wilson from the north-east of England. Wilson was miles in front at 7-2 and 8-4, but went behind 9-8. At that point he’d basically had it. But he scraped himself up off the floor to win a very tense 50-minute penultimate frame that hinged on an absorbing safety battle on the blue, and then rattled in a century in the decider. The tournament proper starts tomorrow. In the first round, my favourite Mark Williams (who gave me so much excitement last year on his run to the final) plays Antoni Kowalski who I just couldn’t warm to in his interview after he’d qualified.
Scrabble. I’ve finished all my 14 league games, winning half of them but with a negative points differential. Other players are still to finish, and it’s still on a knife-edge as to whether I survive in the division.
We’re having beautiful weather right now. I should be able to make the most of it this weekend, with only one lesson tomorrow. Yesterday I had a super full-on day of lessons, but other than that it’s been pretty light as people are still coming back from Easter.
I’ve got a cold so I’m sluggish today, though still positively lithe compared to basically the whole of March. On Monday I went over to Sanda’s place where we had some traditional Easter food including painted eggs and cold meats. Her parents, whom I hadn’t met since Christmas 2018, were there. It was great to meet them. Her mother is the same age as my mum, while her father is in his mid-eighties. Sanda’s uncle, with whom I went to Vienna in 2024, was also there. They’re planning a trip to Belgrade in early June. If we go, it will be the same four of us (Dorothy, Sanda, Sanda’s uncle, and me). But it’s likely to coincide with my parents’ stay in Romania, assuming they make it. Sanda has no flexibility around the date, so it makes things awkward. The other three could go without me, but I’m the only one with a car.
Yesterday I benefited from my relative lack of work by watching a few hours of the last qualifying round of the snooker. There were eight first-to-ten-frame matches, played simultaneously, with the winners making it to the Crucible. There’s something soothing about watching snooker even when the stakes are high, as they certainly were yesterday. Some highlights were Hossein Vafaei of Iran who rattled off nine straight frames from 4-1 down to book his place (there may be some jokes if he draws Judd Trump in the first round) and 19-year-old Yorkshireman Stan Moody who beat one of the many Chinese players in a deciding frame. In that final frame, his opponent spent an age over a yellow which he missed, then slammed the table in frustration. That gave Moody all the encouragement he needed as he cleared up with a very impressive century. Matthew Stevens (who missed out dramatically last year) beat Stuart Bingham 10-7. Shame they couldn’t both make it. Another close match was 22-year-old Antoni Kowalski’s 10-8 win over Jamie Jones to become the first-ever Polish player to make it through. But when Kowalski was interviewed by the brilliant Rob Walker after his win, I couldn’t warm to him at all. He struck me as Very Online and very Gen Z (which I’m sure he’d pronounce as zee). Spare a thought for Martin O’Donnell who led 8-2, then 9-4 and 69-0 in the penultimate round of qualifying, only to lose 10-9 to Anthony McGill. There are eight more final qualifiers today, including the one involving comeback king McGill, but I don’t know how much I’ll watch of them. I think I’d rather read, and anyway I’ve got some lessons later.
In some excellent news, a long-term deal has been struck which will keep the World Championships at Sheffield’s Crucible until 2045. The venue will be revamped and 500 seats added. I imagined that in a few years it would be off to China or (even worse) Saudi Arabia, so I was very glad to hear that snooker didn’t decide to sell its soul after all. I’ve wondered whether it might be worth getting tickets one year, to either the qualifiers (which this year are just twelve quid; amazing value) or the main event.
Scrabble. This time I’m battling relegation. It doesn’t feel like I should be, seeing as I’ll most likely finish with seven wins and seven losses, but the promotion and relegation zones are enormous and my relatively poor spread (which acts as a tie-breaker) might sink me. It’ll be close.
The sun is shining, the temperature is perfect for me, there’s less traffic than usual (so I can hear the birds for a change) and most of my flat is no longer a pigsty. And Viktor Orbán got booted out. So there are reasons to be positive.
Finally! After five weeks, I now feel close to normal. I’m no longer ravaged by headaches and mentally and physically exhausted. What a relief. But let’s see how long I stay like this.
Speaking of relief, I went to bed last night not knowing if World War Three might have broken out by the morning. Last night I wondered, are you able to wager on such an outcome? Sure enough, I found a site called simply ww3.bet that allows you to bet on whether or not WW3 will start by the end of April. The site looks legit, but there are a couple of practical problems with a bet like that. Last night the implied chances of armageddon were around one in six. Crazy, but hardly orders of magnitude from reality. This morning, following the ceasefire, they were one in twenty.
Trump’s TACO Tuesday makes it more likely that I’ll see Mum and Dad in the early summer. Had the US followed through on “wiping out a whole civilisation”, the Gulf states would have likely been obliterated too, and no commercial planes would have gone anywhere in the region for some time. I spoke to Mum and Dad this morning. Dad thought that the alliance between Europe and the US was still worth holding onto, while Mum didn’t. I agreed with Mum. While the orange turd is in charge (and quite possibly for some years afterwards), America is enemy territory as far as I’m concerned. The other news I saw this morning (reinforcing my view) showed JD Vance just over the border from me in Hungary, cosying up to Viktor Orbán, trying to sway this weekend’s parliamentary election. Orbán is currently down in the polls. Whether that will translate to the election I have no idea, but let’s hope he gets a shellacking.
Mum and Dad will celebrate their golden wedding anniversary on Friday. A few months ago my brother suggested that we all meet up in the UK and have a big celebration there. When I told him that yeah, that’s a nice idea, but it just wouldn’t fly for several reasons (the biggest of which is that there just aren’t the people in the UK anymore to celebrate with), he thought I was being overly negative. Just this morning, Dad joked that they’ll struggle to handle the sheer number of people at their party. (They did think of taking the TranzAlpine train to the West Coast and back, but found it was ludicrously expensive.)
On Monday my brother called me. He was very upbeat about his new job, as well he might be. He said there were six positions available, and he probably just barely snagged the last of them. His very good degree gave him a shot. (His wife didn’t think the degree would be worth it. Hmmm.) He’ll be working for BAE, which I called “British Aerospace” in my last post. It hasn’t been called that since 2000, so that shows how out of touch I am. His job should pay well and provide excellent job security, which is a rare commodity these days. This is a real boom period for the defence industry. I’m really happy for him.
My bike is now fixed, for the moment at least. This afternoon I had a maths lesson in Aradului with an eleven-year-old girl. I’m facing the same battle with her as with almost all my maths students. I’m coming up against an education system that so emphasises methods and procedures – can you remember how to do this trick which will be almost useless in real life? – when their real problems are (1) an inability to do basic calculations quickly and accurately, and (2) a general inability to problem solve.
The next round of the Scrabble league starts tomorrow. The common word “coating” already has a valid anagram: “cotinga”, which is a bird found in Central and South America. Maybe “tacoing” will have made it in by the next update.
I feel a bit better now, but it’s like I’m travelling through an energy desert, both mentally and physically. Friday, for instance, was close to being a write-off. At one stage I was trying to gee myself up for a lesson when my student messaged me with 18 minutes to go. I’m really tired. Can we have the session on Sunday? What about me? And I prefer to keep Sundays free. But as I’d already scheduled a Sunday afternoon maths session with someone else, I agreed to see him at 9am.
On Saturday I had nine hours of lessons (six sessions: three English and three maths). I dragged myself out of bed for an 8:30 start in Dumbrăvița, wondering how I might cope. I stayed almost headache-free, and I survived, even if began to flag during my final maths lesson. I’ve done a lot of teaching by now, and even when I’m below my best I have my own systems and processes (and experience) to fall back on. The highlight of the day was a maths lesson with a girl who had taken a test on volumes and surface areas the day before. Formulas were still clearly visible on her arm. Did they help you in the test? No, it turns out they were wrong.
Sunday. Not Easter Sunday under the Orthodox calendar, but Palm Sunday. My 9am student failed to show up. Ugh. Dorothy had invited me to church (a 10:30 start) and although I’ve become increasingly anti-religion, I reluctantly accepted. Her church is mostly harmless and even benefits people in the community, especially recent arrivals from African countries. There was a huge congregation including a lot of children. The sermon went on, as expected. After the service a young woman of 18 or so was baptised, which at this church meant getting fully (and dramatically) dunked in a swimming pool. Then there was food. Tons of it. Dorothy is heavily involved and was in her element. I wasn’t. We all had to queue up and I found myself in that dreadful situation where someone in front of you talks to someone behind you and you’re stuck. In general there were too many people and I desperately wanted out. At one point someone sang Happy Birthday for one of the kids. “Wow, it’s someone’s birthday,” I heard someone say. With so many people it would have pretty weird if it hadn’t been anyone’s birthday. I’d mentally budgeted to be home by 1:30. I got home ten minutes after that, relieved that I’d be church free for another eight months. Then Mum and Dad called. I kept it very brief. My maths session was coming up and I couldn’t handle conversation with anybody. I had a nap before my lesson which went fine.
Some news from my brother. It looks like he’s got a job at British Aerospace in Portsmouth. Doing what exactly, I don’t know. Getting that degree must have made a huge difference. (These days you’ve got to have the piece of paper.) I expect I’ll talk to him this week and find out more.
I watched the Artemis II launch on Wednesday night. I happened to be awake at 1am, so I got out my laptop and watched it in bed on YouTube. At that point it was still in doubt. It had an eerie feel about it because all I had was the audio from mission control and I kept looking at that rocket, with four astronauts inside, and thinking, this is horrendously complicated. There are many ways that this could go horribly wrong. So far it’s been a success though, and last night they entered the moon’s gravitational sphere of influence, if I’ve got that right. It’s just a real shame that the four occupants of the spacecraft couldn’t have been Trump, Vance, Hegseth and Rubio, on a one-way trip.
I did speak to Mum and Dad properly this morning. We still have no idea whether they’ll make it to Europe. After “Open the fuckin’ strait”, all bets are off. I reminded Dad of a conversation we had immediately after 9/11. Dad talked about how terrible Bush was. No diplomacy, he said. “Smoke ’em out”? How did he ever become president with language like that. Now when they’re bombing a girl’s school to pieces with God on their side, that all seems so tame. There was no social media back then.
Scrabble. Amazingly I didn’t just get promoted in the latest round of the league, I actually won the division. I had ten wins and three losses; the four players behind me all had nine wins. I drew pretty well, it must be said. That result will put me in division three, starting Thursday. To say I’ve exceeded my expectations would be a massive understatement. I’m now going to be facing even more world-class players who know words that I couldn’t even dream of. I’ll have my hands full for sure.
I’ve just looked up “chronic fatigue syndrome”. I fit an awful lot of the criteria. The Wikipedia article mentions four levels, as classified by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) in the UK. This is how the least severe category is described: “People with mild ME/CFS can usually still work and care for themselves, but they will need their free time to recover from these activities rather than engage in social and leisure activities.” That sounds like me right now. Working and caring for myself is possible but a struggle, and everything else just about flies out the window. When you reach the second category you can forget about work, and as for levels three and four, they’re terrifying. There’s a paragraph entitled “unrefreshing sleep”: Even a full night’s sleep is typically non-restorative. That’s absolutely the case for me. What I don’t get is the link between what I’m facing now and the headaches. I’ve been headache-free since late Sunday afternoon. If I stay like that for another 48 hours will I bounce back a bit? And what if I don’t?
On Sunday I saw that film with Dorothy. I felt a bit better then, and walked into town. That took me 35 minutes, the same as normal. Before the film we ate dinner at Berăria 700. Dorothy told me about her packed Sunday, full of social activities which were mostly related to the church. “I don’t think you’d have enjoyed all of that,” she said. I wouldn’t have enjoyed it even if I’d been feeling normal, I said, let alone right now. Then we wandered to Studio to see the film. We saw Primavara, an Italian film set in the early 18th century at an orphanage in Venice. It follows the life of young Cecilia, a talented violinist who just happens to have Vivaldi as her teacher. The real attraction of the film is the music, and because we sat in the second row, we had no trouble hearing it. These revamped cinemas – there are now four of them dotted around the city – have been a real boon. Tickets are inexpensive, the website is fantastic, the cinemas themselves are very well looked after, and most importantly you no longer have to go to a mall to see a movie. Last week though an eleven-year-old boy told me of his bad experience at one of those cinemas. You couldn’t get popcorn! I don’t think you’re the target market. Yesterday Dad told me about the old cinema in St Ives and how he saw Tron there. Tron? I thought it had already closed by then. I found out (from someone’s blog) that the Regal Cinema closed in 1985.
When I got back from the cinema, I called my brother. He mentioned the possibility of fuel rationing in the UK, as happened there in 1973. Power cuts, kids skiving off school to see football matches on weekday afternoons (because obviously they couldn’t play under lights). Maybe people will be told to work from home, Covid-style, my brother said. I also spoke to my sister-in-law who seems better now, after going back to work. It’s always hard talking to her because she’s too far away from my brother’s device to hear her well. After our call, I thought about how Mum must have felt coming off the boat in Southampton in ’73, having come from a land of plenty, and being plunged into that.
Yesterday Dad and I talked about the upcoming Artemis II launch. It took just 66 years to get from the first manned flight of any sort to putting men on the moon, with the aid of computers far less powerful than the ones in everyone’s pockets today. Almost as long has passed since then, and look at us! We agreed that if and when a human walks on Mars, it won’t be the Americans who make it happen. Most likely it’ll be the Chinese. Dad also mentioned Rocket Lab, New Zealand’s space company. It’s pretty incredible that NZ even has one (though I think it’s partly American-owned). Rocket Lab launches off Mahia Peninsula, that little triangular-ish bit that sticks out between Gisborne and Napier.
Mum and Dad seem a lot better now. Having one really good eye all of a sudden has helped Mum immensely. With the ever-changing global situation, nobody knows whether they’ll make it over in May, and that’s OK.
In a lesson last week I had another young woman who, despite being highly intelligent, didn’t know about 9/11. She was born in 2000. I showed her the pictures of that fateful day when she was a baby. Romania wasn’t in the EU at that point, and few people would have had the internet. It didn’t have anything like the impact here that it did in the UK and much of the west. She grew up in a railway house at Cicir (pronounced chee-CHEER: it even sounds like a train’s whistle) just outside Arad. We’ve had a lot of productive sessions since she started in November, but she’s just got a new job. Great for her, but that will make it much harder for us to meet.
I need to stop watching YouTube. I’ve been watching a lot of late, mainly because I’ve had less energy to do anything physical, but it doesn’t help me mentally. Two recent videos I watched were about an ill-advised water slide in Kansas that cost a ten-year-old boy his life in 2016, and Balloonfest, the release of 1.4 million balloons in Cleveland in 1986 that (depending on who you listen to) led to unforeseen circumstances. At the very least, I need to stop watching videos about America.
In a post on 3rd November 2024, just before the last US election, I said how crazy it was that the votes of a few thousand poorly-informed people in Pennsylvania will have a massive impact on billions of us throughout the world. We’re seeing that play out now in devastating fashion.
Scrabble: I’ve drawn well in the latest round of matches and am sitting on four wins and one loss. That defeat was by just four points; I’m still incapable of nutting out an endgame properly. I managed to beat that Romanian guy at my third attempt. I picked both blanks and found a bingo each time. He stormed back with a bingo scoring in the 80s, the board got blocked, and I didn’t particularly fancy my chances until I got down VAPOURS (hooking the A onto the front of JAR) for 97. In the end I won 476-387. There’s a chance I could win promotion but it’s still too early to say.
Today I’ve got a bit more energy. I’m even responding to messages. (I’d just about gone incommunicado for a while.) The trick is to get up at my normal time, even if I don’t have lessons. The lessons themselves, assuming I don’t have a splitting headache, are to my benefit too. I got 18 litres of water from the well today; that certainly felt a lot easier than the last time I did it.
Late last month I tried to pay my rates bill at the post office – you can do that there – but they had the wrong address for me. I was sent to the city hall. There I had to fill in various forms and make a small payment, then I needed to wait days or weeks for an email confirmation. That email came two weeks ago. Yesterday morning I went back to the post office. I was feeling like crap and couldn’t handle the length of the queue so I gave up. In the afternoon I returned – almost no queue – and they still had the wrong address. You’ll need to go back to the city hall.
This morning I did just that. When I got to the end of the short take-a-number queue, the lady told me I needed to visit the Direcția Fiscală which, according to a poster she pointed out to me, moved to Iulius Town in early 2023. Oh god, you’re telling me I have to go back there?! Iulius Town is the same dystopia I found myself in last week. Elevated fakeness, surrounded by soulless tower blocks, none of which existed when I moved to this city. Though it is no more than a few years old, I feel I’m in eighties Bedford or Milton Keynes. On one side you look down on abandoned factories and silos that really are from the eighties. So it was back on my bike to Iulius Town. I had no trouble locating the Direcția Fiscală where people were queuing out the door. There was somebody all securitied up who kept whizzing by on a kind of Segway, as well a policeman controlling the entrance and smoking, just like half the people in the queue. It took me a while to get inside, then it was take-a-number time again. I was 18th in line. The woman told me to make a written declaration (Can you do this in Romanian?), then commentated on my surname which was the same as someone famous-ish 35 years ago. Only I was born with it, he wasn’t quite. She said my address would be updated within 45 days. That means that when I come to pay my rates I’ll face a (very small) fine or interest payment.
Getting that done (assuming it is actually “done”) was encouraging. A few days ago, or even yesterday, I couldn’t have handled it. Physically and (in recent days) mentally, this month has been a right mess. I haven’t had a bad headache since last Thursday. I hope that on Friday, as long as I stay largely headache-free, I’ll be able to tackle the cleaning. Last night I went back to the doctor’s surgery and got my blood pressure checked again. It had gone down: it was 140/80.
Earlier this morning I had a lesson with the English teacher in Slobozia. She told me the latest chapter in her life with her 15-year-old son, who has turned into a monster. “He bit me,” she said. Sorry, what, he isn’t a cat. Oh, beat. Romanians fail to make the distinction between those two vowel sounds, short and long. Live and leave, fill and feel, to say nothing of pairs that involve beach and sheet. “But in the past he has bitten me too.” I gave her a quick test at the start of the lesson. I showed her Trump’s latest all-caps social media post where he talks (lies, probably) about recent conversations with the Iranians. Can you spot the mistakes in lines one and nine? She could. I remember as a very little boy our teacher telling us the difference between the witch that flies on a broomstick and “which one”. The fact that he can’t spell basic words or use caps lock properly is the least of our worries, but once again, how did we get here? (That post on Truth Social, if that’s where it was, was likely just to manipulate the markets. Trump doesn’t understand a whole lot, but he does understand financial markets.) When I asked my student if she’d been following the war, she asked “What war?”
I read something funny at the weekend about “Strait-of-Hormuz guy”, the sort of guy you meet at the pub who, a month ago, wouldn’t have known how to spell or pronounce Hormuz or locate it on any map, but now knows its every nook and cranny and knows about all the ramifications of West Texas crude hitting one-fifty a barrel.
On BBC News yesterday I saw an ad for the Burj Azizi tower in Dubai, which when completed will be only a little shorter than the Burj Khalifa. Oh yes. The second-tallest building in the world. Can’t wait to visit once it’s topped out.
Yesterday I bumped into Lili (who lives on the first floor) as I was collecting a package from one of those Easybox things nearby. The package contained eye shades which I’d ordered online. Lili asked me if my nephew and niece will ever come to visit. I’m sure they’d like to play with your cat, she said.
I met Dorothy at Scârț on Sunday. We sat outside and played Scrabble in Romanian. I won 354-234 after putting down SCAPATE for 92 and DOBOS for 54. (Doboș is a very delicious cake that comes from Hungary but is also popular here, just over the border.) Mainly it was just nice to be outside.
Doboș
I took the picture above by the Bega yesterday. This is recent abandonment. When I arrived in Timișoara it was full of purple bikes which you could unhook (with a card and PIN code) and rehook at another station when you’d finished with them. Now it’s just for pigeons and their poo.
I managed to get Kitty mid-yawn this morning. I know how she feels.
It might not look like one, but this is certainly a restaurant. It has opened in Iulius Town. And they called it that?!
Update: This evening I had a lesson with a man in his mid-thirties and his 16-year-old niece. He’d had his teeth professionally whitened. “Bleach 4”, apparently. They were very white. And as for her, she wanted to know how to spell “which”.
I’m writing this after two full days without a headache to speak of. I’m still tired, but I slept well last night and got up this morning feeling something in the vague vicinity of normal. I had a long chat with Mum and Dad earlier, and last night I spoke to my brother on WhatsApp for the first time in a while. He commented that it seemed unusually dark where I was, and I told him that my headaches have made me want to cut the lights. I even have the contrast turned down on this laptop. Here I am in Romania, turning into a vampire. I’ve kept my phone on silent for several days too.
On Wednesday, when I wrote my last post on here, I had another splitting headache. The pain began to intensify at around 6pm while I was in the middle of a maths lesson in another part of the city. When I got home I had another maths lesson which I muddled through somehow. Luckily she only stayed for an hour; normally our lessons are an hour and a half, sometimes even two hours. Then the pain, like a screwdriver being rammed up my right nostril and into my eye, became unbearable. The only saving grace was that it was night-time, so relatively little light got in. The pain subsided just after eleven. I got to bed at 12:30.
The next morning I had a Romanian lesson at eight with Dorothy and our teacher, who didn’t show up. (I probably shouldn’t have shown up either. I was so tired.) I talked to Dorothy for over half an hour, then mooched around until my lessons started in the afternoon. Just three of them. Then it was Wizard of Oz time. Dorothy was back. In almost ten years in Timișoara, I’d never been inside the Opera House. What a beautiful building on the inside. I’d have preferred to have been on my own, perusing the interior, rather than being among a load of schoolkids and parents. I managed to get in without anything resembling a ticket. What other performances at the Opera House might I be able to gatecrash? As for the performance itself, I’d give it maybe two and a half stars. Dorothy herself was fine. The lion – a girl – didn’t look anything like a lion; this detracted from the experience somewhat. Neither was the scarecrow scarecrowy enough. The tin man, on the other hand, had made his costume himself and was very convincing. I had to keep reminding myself that, even though these teenagers go to a (really expensive) British school and have their lessons in English, they were still performing in a non-native language. Their command of spoken English varied wildly. Another thing – the set was far too sparse. Most of the time they cheated by projecting a backdrop onto the back wall. Seeing “TheatreBackdrop.com” in big letters in the corner of the wall didn’t do much for me. A lot of the time I wished I was watching the excellent original (colour!) Wizard of Oz movie from the 1930s – a superb film – instead. My general negativity probably came from another intense headache (but not as bad as the one the previous night) which started halfway through the play. I just wanted to get home.
On Friday morning my parents called me from Hampden. They’d just had fish and chips. As usual, the line was dodgy. When I got off the phone I felt beyond washed out. I felt gone. I knew at some point that day I’d have to force myself to do a big shop at the supermarket because I was starting to run out of things. When I finally made myself do, it, what an effort it was. Where did I put the trolley? It would need to be a big shop because who knew when I’d get to go back there. It reminded me of the shop I did at the start of Covid after coming back from an ill-advised trip to the mountains. Even the business of carrying it all in from the car wasn’t much fun. I only just had time to put it all away before my lesson started. My lessons have remained possible, but only because I’ve done so many of them by now and even if I mess up badly, it’s not like anyone can sack me.
I had four lessons yesterday, all in Dumbrăvița, from 8:30 till 4:30. Two English and two maths. Between my last two lessons I had a break which I spent in the park. That was nice and relaxing. Feeling I could really do with the exercise, I cycled rather than drove. Just like in March 2020, in those early days of Covid, we’ve had some beautiful spring weather.
When I spoke to my parents this morning, we (inevitably) discussed whether or not they’d be able to make it over in May. None of us has a clue. Donald Trump – what an irredeemable piece of shit – certainly doesn’t. His latest tweet (bleat? excrete?) followed the death of Robert Mueller who investigated Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election. “Robert Mueller just died. Good, I’m glad he’s dead. He can no longer hurt innocent people!” Now Mueller was a good man and a highly decorated war veteran. Where do you even start with this? It’s worth watching this too: the glee on Trump’s face when he announces that a congressman (a Republican congressman!) would be dead in three months following a terminal diagnosis.
Scrabble. It’s taken a back seat in my mind, even though I’m still studying words. In the latest round of the league I survived with a decent record of eight wins and six losses, despite my spread – points scored minus points conceded – being negative. (I lost one game by a whopping 300.) So, starting on Thursday, I’ll get another crack at division four. I think I’ll get to battle that Romanian player again.
The Opera HouseI was surprised to see her using her bedAn extra digit: fancy diesel was well over 10 lei per litre yesterday; normal diesel was only just under.
As I recovered from Monday’s excruciatingly painful headache, I felt a sense of déjà vu. It was late winter (or early spring), I was (or had been) in a lot of pain, a terrifying war had just broken out, and all I felt like doing was reading a book and not a lot else. It was a basically a repeat of four years ago when I had the kidney stones. On Wednesday, around the time I wrote my last post, I felt things were getting back to normal, but I had a lot of lower-level head pain late in the week and my energy stores have been through the floor. I’ve been able to get through my lessons, just about, but cleaning and life admin have gone by the board. This flat is an unholy mess. My students – those who don’t pay cash at least – could be behind half a dozen payments and I wouldn’t have a clue right now.
Yesterday I was really flagging by my fourth and final lesson. My student, a 17-year-old girl, could certainly tell. This afternoon I went down by the river where I read a few chapters of Colony. Even walking there took 50% longer than normal. There were some interesting people down there, including a large group of gypsies in the park, and a couple in their sixties (the woman short and fat, wearing a Red Hot Chili Peppers T-shirt, the man tall and slim with white hair) who kept walking past me with their five small dogs as I sat on a bench. People were attracted by the warmer weather – we were in the high teens – and the (misplaced?) optimism that blossom and colour brings.
Mum didn’t have the easiest of weeks either. She had a urinary tract infection and on Tuesday was in a lot of pain. I had a good chat with her on Wednesday when the antibiotics were already kicking in. Unusually, Dad wasn’t around. We talked a lot about the war in Iran. She said she doesn’t even want to talk to her Trump-supporting brother now. I know what it’s like to have my son on the front line. Iraq was terrible, Afghanistan even worse.
I tried to watch Pete Hegseth’s speech at the Pentagon but had to switch him off after about three minutes. “Death and destruction from the sky all day long.” What a nasty, and unhinged, piece of shit. And as for Trump’s message to Starmer – We don’t need people that join Wars after we’ve already won! – where do you even start? Stop the world, I want to get off.
This morning I spoke to both Mum and Dad. We discussed the very real possibility (yet again!) that they don’t make it over. I was pretty sure they’d booked their trip with Singapore Airlines, but at the last minute they switched to Emirates because it was cheaper. It’s anyone’s guess whether planes will be flying in and out of Dubai, or anywhere else in the region, in mid-May.
Scrabble. Guess what, I got another promotion. After winning both those last two games, I finished third in the league. That means I’ll be in the fourth division out of (probably) twelve. I’m fully aware that I’m punching well above my weight here, and they’ve even introduced a statistic that shows how lucky or unlucky you’ve been. According to that new metric, I have indeed been lucky. I’ll be delighted if I can avoid relegation next time – I’ll have my hands full, that’s for sure.
This morning was just horrendous for me. I had what I used to think of as a “sinus headache” but I’m pretty sure was actually a migraine. I don’t get these too often, and the severe pain normally subsides within two hours when I do. But this morning I suffered at least four hours of excruciating pain. Light and sound became unbearable – I blocked them out as best I could, and had no choice but to shut Kitty away in the living room. For some time I writhed around on my bed, then decided I was better off pacing around and bumping into the door jambs while trying to let as little light into my eyes as possible. I was fortunate not to have any lessons until later in the day. Otherwise I don’t know how I would have coped. I had a simple late lunch of banana sandwiches and yoghurt (rich food would have made me sick), then managed to walk to the supermarket. Even though the pain had eased and survived my lessons, I was (and still am) on a major go-slow. This episode reminded me of my father; when I was a boy, he got migraines of terrifying intensity, duration and frequency. One work day in five was pretty much wrecked by them. Like I do now, he had no boss, so he could get by. (In his twenties, before I was born, he did have a boss. I’m sure his migraines were very bad then too. Heaven knows how he managed.) Though he still gets headaches, they aren’t anything like as severe as they used to be.
When I spoke to Dad yesterday, he wondered why Trump has been able to make a mockery of America’s famous “checks and balances”. It must just be his popularity, Dad said. Well no, Trump isn’t that popular. He never has been. He’s got an extremely vociferous base, that’s certainly true, but that’s not the same thing as popularity. For each of his fans, there’s more than one person who hates his guts. Really Trump’s success in breaking those norms is down to him wanting to be a dictator and having zero respect for the job of president. None of his predecessors – not even George W. Bush who was hopeless – were anything like that. And then there’s social media. I can’t imagine a Trump presidency would have been vaguely possible without it.
I didn’t play squash with Mark yesterday after all. He messaged me first thing to tell me he’d had too much Guinness the night before, so I had to call up the sports centre and cancel. There’s something typically British about getting rip-roaring drunk in your mid-fifties. (Personally I think any Guinness is too much Guinness.) Though I have a beer fairly often, it’s usually just the one, and three would be my absolute limit. The hangover isn’t worth it, and any social event that involves a lot of drinking isn’t one I’m likely to enjoy anyway.
After getting through Walter Mitty I’ve started a new book: The Colony by Annika Norlin, published last year. It’s based in Sweden and translated from Swedish into English. The author is a pop star (I didn’t know that when I bought the book) and to my surprise she was born in 1977; I guessed she was several years younger. I’m thoroughly enjoying it so far. Anything that involves chucking iPhones into lakes gets my vote.
Scrabble. In the latest round of the league I’ve had seven wins and four losses, with two games still outstanding and in the balance. If I win both of those, I’ll very likely get promoted. Even one win could be enough depending on other results. Being in this position is a surprise; two days ago my sights were set on avoiding relegation, but then an opponent missed an out play, enabling me to win by twelve, when I’d given that game up for dead.
I start at 9:30 tomorrow morning. I’m pleased it’s not too early. I need some sleep.
It’s the last day of February and the last day of winter, and we’ve had beautiful sunshine all day. I’ve just been up to see Elena (the lady who lives above me) and give her a mărțișor, which is a kind of small good-luck charm on a șnur – a red-and-white string. Romanians traditionally give mărțișoare to women to mark the beginning of spring. It’s one of my favourite traditional Romanian traditions, mainly because it costs very little: you can buy these trinkets – some of which are handmade – for just a few lei apiece. The one I gave to Elena was in the form of a black cat.
Unusually for a Saturday, I only had one lesson today, first thing this morning. After my lesson on food with Noah in Dumbrăvița, I decided to drive to Jimbolia. On the way there I listened to Bogdan Puriș’s music programme. He played songs by Bruce Hornsby, including the new Indigo Park as well as The Way It Is which, according to Puriș, came out in 1986. That date checks out because when I was a kid the BBC used the song as background music when they showed the football tables on a Saturday. Then my phone made that six-beep alert when something seismic has just happened and when I got to Jimbolia I found out that Trump and Israel had just bombed Iran. I’m as far from an expert on Middle East geopolitics as you can get, but to me this is absolutely terrifying. And for the love of God, Britain must not get involved in it. I didn’t do a lot in Jimbolia. I was just trying to take advantage of the warmer, brighter weather. I wandered around for a bit and then sat near the railway station and read a couple of stories from The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. I suggested to Elena that we go out for a drive sometime.
I spoke to Mum last night; she’d just had the operation done on her second eye. It seems to have gone well, though we don’t really know yet. Before that I spoke to Dad. We discussed his own mother’s unsteadiness in later years, such as in 2000 when they were living in Cairns and she and I came to visit, and suddenly she couldn’t go up and down escalators. Heck, Mum is only a year and a bit younger than she was. When put in those terms, Mum is doing very well. Dad too. (His own father died at almost exactly the age Dad is now, after a decade of living with Alzheimer’s.)
On Thursday night there was a UK by-election – in a part of Manchester – which the Greens won surprisingly comfortably. Reform came second while Labour, who had won the seat by a huge margin in 2024, were consigned to third place. The woman who won the seat for the Greens is – well, was – a plumber. Her victory speech, while strangely lacking in actual green stuff, was mighty impressive. “If you work hard, you deserve a nice life. And if you aren’t able to work, you still deserve a nice life.” Uncomplicated but effective. This result, plus everything else, might force the very disappointing Keir Starmer out of his position as prime minister.
Scrabble. Two wins and two losses so far from my completed league games. This time around there will be 13 games in total instead of the usual 14. A few days ago on ISC (the other site I play on), I was unfortunate enough to concede a 185-point triple-triple (SHERWANI, a word I didn’t know), and despite playing three bingos I lost 527-460. My opponent also found three bingos. That’s the highest total score in any game I’ve played.
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