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Vital vitamins

July 21, 2026 by 0 Comments

I thought I was coming right, but today I’ve been dragging myself through life once again. This morning I walked to the market – with all the road works it’s like a maze – and a young woman powered past me on foot. Normally I’m a fairly fast walker, but today I was at a crawl. I barely outpaced an old lady with one of those Zimmer-trolley things. When that was done I walked to the well to fetch 20 litres of water. A bit later I sorted out my bike. This all felt like a huge physical effort.

Last Thursday was the most ridiculous day of all. The woman in Italy cancelled her online lesson because her laptop wasn’t working. I didn’t mind that because I felt terrible and I still had to plan the rest of the day’s lessons. Then Dad called me, as he has done a lot while he’s been in the UK. Maybe he’s just bored. At lunchtime I went to a restaurant just off Piața Unirii to meet Dorothy and the other woman who did the Vienna trip two years ago. I had no idea what this place would be like, but it was actually rather nice. It was all you could eat for 40 lei, something I’d never experienced before in Romania. (They had signs telling you not to take food you wouldn’t eat.) Under normal circumstances I’d have enjoyed it, but even though the food was great I wasn’t in the mood when I was feeling like crap and on such a hot day. This other lady is fairly in-your-face and I couldn’t cope with that at all. At one point she called someone who wanted English lessons for her daughter and then handed the phone to me. Oh jeez, not now, please. I was relieved to hear that any lessons wouldn’t be starting until September.

Dorothy and the other woman went off to Piața 700 while I decided I’d prefer a break before my lessons with the brother and sister in Mehala. Just as I got to that part of town, I got a puncture in my back tyre. Damn. I lay in the long grass under the plum trees for half an hour, then chained my unusable bike to a lamp-post near where I had my lessons. The kids’ mother greeted me. Where’s your bike? Don’t ask, I said. I did the lessons – a struggle – then their mother insisted that their boy fix my puncture. He’s really into bikes now. I know – we did half a session on bikes recently. My plan was simply to leave the bike there to be picked up the next morning in the car, and to walk the 5 km home. Even with my low energy and the heat I’d just have time to do that before my next lesson. The boy though insisted he would repair my puncture. The time it took me to persuade him not to bother in the searing heat meant I had even less time to walk home. I had to jog in places. I got home just in time, absolutely dripping in sweat. The bell went as I was in the middle of having a pee, as it so often does.

After the lesson I saw the after-hours doctor. I was in and out quickly. I asked him if I needed blood tests but he just wrote me a prescription for Astenor “energy and tonic”, vials of liquid that contain a bunch of stuff: arginine (a semi-essential amino acid), vitamin B6 (which helps with the immune system), biotin (which helps maintain normal hair skin), and magnesium (which has had a lot of attention recently: it helps with your bones and teeth but is also said to be beneficial to your sleep and general mood). He also put me on a double dose of vitamin D as well as vitamin K. Whether all of this will make any difference I have no idea, but I doubt it will do me any harm.

I only watched snippets of the World Cup final. There was something dystopian about what I saw. Donald Trump up there in his ivory tower, the word FIFA spelled out every five seconds, music blaring. I didn’t see the Super Bowl-style half-time show which had a load of famous people and the Muppets. The Muppets are too good for something like that. Half-time went on nearly twice as long as it normally does, which is really crappy for the players (as well as breaching the rules of the game). This tournament also had hydration breaks – fine if they’re actually about hydration, but of course they were all about advertising. Then you had the Argentinians – nasty shits who constantly disrupted the game. Incredibly, they didn’t even have a shot on goal until well into extra time. It was after midnight when I decided I couldn’t take any more and went to bed. I couldn’t sleep though. Hmmm, it must be over now. I wonder who won? I was very glad to wake up to find that Spain had beaten the bastards, and better still without needing penalties. I also missed those Argentine fists fly after the match. Any Americans tuning into that game to watch football for the first time will be sticking to baseball and basketball in future, thank you very much.

As for Ryan Fox, winner of the Open in spectacular fashion, I had no idea he was the son of Grant Fox, one of the greatest All Blacks of all time. Fox is a fairly common surname, after all. I think Grant Fox’s father may have played cricket for New Zealand too. Talk about sport being in the blood. One thing I neglected to mention last time was that I watched commentary of the golf in French. Canadian French, to be exact. Listening to the commentary and picking up on the differences in vowel quality and vocabulary between Québecois and French French was as fascinating as any of the actual golf.

Scrabble. I’m almost certainly getting relegated this time around. I’ve played decently enough but my opponents are just too strong and I haven’t drawn all that well. My most enjoyable game was with an American guy named Ben who regularly plays big tournaments, with some success. He’s also a moderator on the site and a really nice guy. He wound up beating me by just eleven points in a high-scoring game. In another game I played this guy who constantly talks trash in the chat, to the point where I blocked him. He seems a total arse, just like the sort of boy I’d have avoided at school. Well I beat him at my third attempt. It looked like the game was up for me, but I found EBONICS which is a decidedly racist term (combining ebony and phonics) meaning how Black Americans speak. Last week I saw a YouTube video from someone preparing for the American national championships which are taking place right now. He still studies words using physical cards rather than apps. (Maybe he uses apps too; I couldn’t tell.) He showed a fat stack of cards, pointing to the number 512. No, that wasn’t the 512th card, but the 512th stack of cards. Wowee. He mentioned that he had high-functioning autism, which I suppose checks out. He said the best he could hope for in the tournament was a small prize in the hundreds which would be dwarfed by travel and accommodation costs for him and his husband.

Andy Burnham has taken over as British prime minister. I like the guy. He’s got the cards stacked against him in so many ways, with an unstable world and a rabid media, but let’s see what he can do.

My parents are going down to see my brother on Friday. Next Monday will be his 45th birthday. Then they fly back to New Zealand on 1st August.

Family - Other sports - Scrabble - Tennis

Loss of face

July 14, 2026 by 0 Comments

This morning I heard that brilliant New Zealand actor Sam Neill (of Jurassic Park fame, and much more) had died at 78. Those damn Aussies always liked to claim him. I read that his birth name was Nigel but at the age of twelve he started calling himself Sam. A smart move. Sam is a great name. Nigel Neill … isn’t.

Everyone is popping off at about the age of Mum and Dad. Just yesterday I said to Dad that I’m lucky to still have both parents. Not just alive, but in pretty good health. At my age, that must put me in the minority. Just anecdotally, I have a few students of a similar age to me and I think all of them only have one living parent. When I called Dad, Mum was at church. I wasn’t trying to avoid her or anything; I’d just forgotten that it was that time of day and week. That did give us an opportunity to talk about Mum, though. We said that so much of Mum’s stress comes down to loss of face, which a lot of the time isn’t real anyway. It would make sense for Mum and Dad to spend three days or so at my brother’s place (including his birthday on the 27th) just before they go back to NZ. Not much more than that; their previous stay was seriously unfun for both of them. Plus it might end up being far too hot again. But Mum is likely to insist they spend a whole week down there, for fear of upsetting my brother. It’s a similar story with their old friends and whoever else. She feels she has to do this and avoid talking about that so that this or that person won’t think X or Y or Z about her. I mentioned to Dad how refreshing it was to attend those autism groups back in the day, when all that crap went straight out the window. (It certainly flies out the window with Mum too when she isn’t with anyone except Dad or me. So it was a huge relief that my parents’ stay in Romania went as successfully as it did. Mum and I have been getting on well.)

Yesterday I was exhausted. I had very little energy. I couldn’t even make myself watch all of the men’s Wimbledon final. The women’s final though unexpectedly burst into life when Linda Noskova led Karolina Muchova 6-2 5-2 and had five match points in the following three games. Games eight and nine of the second set were pure drama. The set slipped through Noskova’s fingers. How does she come back from this? But she did. Noskova served brilliantly on the big points early in the third set, and this time she didn’t relinquish her lead. I was pleased that Noskova, still early in her career, was able to win. A loss in those circumstances may have haunted her for years otherwise. (The butterfly effect was on full display in the women’s tournament. Noskova had been one point from exiting the tournament in the third round. Muchova also faced match point in her semi with Coco Gauff.) The final brought to mind the 2005 US Open semi-final between Kim Clijsters and Maria Sharapova. Clijsters had five match points in the second set, all in a single game, and ended up losing the set. But she won it in three and won her first grand slam two days later. That was an excellent tournament on both the men’s and women’s sides.

Dad asked me if I’d stayed up to watch England in the “soccer”, as he calls it. (The whole soccer-is-American, football-is-British thing is actually pretty new. It’s a bit like the notion that -ize is purely American. Pick up any UK-published book from the eighties or earlier and it’ll likely be full of -ize spellings. Even a lot of modern UK-English books are, especially those published by Oxford.) Anyway, I certainly didn’t stay up to watch it. Kick-off was midnight my time. England though are just two matches from winning the whole thing, so who knows? (I really am clueless about it this time. I haven’t watched a single ball be kicked. Or headed or shinned or anything else.)

I’ve got a couple more days before the Scrabble league starts up again. Learning the words continues to be a painstaking effort. I’ve made some recent progress with the fours, and tomorrow I’ll add a few more sevens and eights. A few people have now been expelled from the league for cheating, and someone wondered why anyone would bother to cheat. This isn’t poker; there’s no money at stake. Then somebody else said it’s all about ego. They’re probably right. As someone with very little ego, ego-based decisions – which can sink companies or even whole countries and more – often baffle me.

This evening a new student will be coming. I never know what I might get.

Cat - Music - Photos - Scrabble - Tennis

Left to my own devices

July 11, 2026 by 0 Comments

I’m now writing this on the new laptop. I still need to install a bunch of stuff and there are endless settings that I need to monkey around with to stop it from driving me mad, but I get the feeling it’ll be decent. Unlike my phone. It’ll now only charge at a snail’s pace and I can no longer transfer photos or videos from it to my laptop – the hole which the charger goes into seems to be buggered, even though it looks fine.

Yesterday I went to Sânmihaiu Român, my first long bike trip for ages. When I was there I got a coffee and called Mum and Dad who had been watching a lot of Wimbledon. They’ve been telling me about thrilling matches and deciding tie-breaks, but it’s passed me by. I also started The Cloud Atlas, a rather complex-looking novel that Dad gave me while he was here. I did actually watch bits of the men’s semi-finals after I got back. Even though Djokovic was well beaten by Jannik Sinner, it is pretty remarkable how he is still able to compete at such a high level at 39. The first match saw Alexander Zverev beat Arthur Fery, the Franco-British wildcard, also in straight sets. Fery collects £900,000 for getting so far.

In the last few days I’ve been listening to Shakespears Sister, a British duo who were pretty big in the early nineties. I remember our English teacher despairing at the spelling of the name – no apostrophe or final e – though Shakespeare himself was very inconsistent in how he spelt his name. Spelling wasn’t standardised back then. Stay was their biggest hit – it was number one in the charts for ages – and I also liked Hello (Turn Your Radio On), a song that mentions the pound “looking weak”. That was a hot topic back in the day.

Bonnie Tyler has passed away at the age of 75. Her rasping voice was instantly recognisable. Plus, she was Welsh. I used to think of her It’s a Heartache whenever I boiled an egg for too long.

I finished third in the end in the Scrabble league. A young woman by the name of Elise who travels around North America and the world to play Scrabble pipped me for second. We both got promoted.

Georgia at the Festivalul Inimilor

Kitty yesterday

At 10pm, during the heat wave

Family - Music - Other sports - Scrabble

Georgia on my mind

July 9, 2026 by 0 Comments

It’s much cooler now than when I last wrote. Today it even felt autumnal – in early July – and honestly that’s fine by me. Cooler weather makes an enormous difference at night, although last night I slept terribly all the same. It’s warmer in western Europe – Mum and Dad weren’t particularly enjoying the heat in St Ives today. They’d been watching lots of Wimbledon. My brother called me a little earlier. Neither of us had a lot to say. We talked about Nigel Farage and Count Binface, who may be the only candidate to stand against Farage in the farcical Clacton by-election. It was great to see my brother in a much better mood. Finally he has some certainty over his future.

I’ve now got my new Lenovo laptop, which I’m happy with so far, though I still need to change one or two settings and remove even more annoying bloatware. As I type (still on my old machine), I’m in the process of copying all my documents and photos over to the new one using flash drives. I’m not a fan of the cloud. It isn’t taking quite as long as I feared.

Last week – from Wednesday to Sunday inclusive – they had the Festivalul Inimilor in Parcul Rozelor. I went the last three nights. It’s a festival of traditional music from Romania and elsewhere. Some of the performers are literally from just down the road, whereas others have come thousands of miles. When I lived at the old place, I’d see them all parading past my flat in their costumes; it was a great display of sound and colour. This time there were even country singers who had come from the US, which given that the festival coincided with the 250th anniversary celebrations kind of made sense. There were groups from Slovakia, Albania, and even Colombia. My favourite of all was the group from Georgia, which I saw on both Friday and Sunday. The music was just… different. I felt that I was listening to something from a faraway land. A bagpipe featured heavily, as it does in a lot of places (Romania has a type of bagpipe called a cimpoi) and there were instruments similar to a lute or mandolin. After to listening to the music I was thinking it would be interesting to visit Georgia, but then a quick look at the map tells me that it’s rather close to some places I’d prefer to avoid, so I’d have to do some more research. A big part of the festival is the food and drink available on the street. I had a very overpriced pottle of anchovies. I couldn’t complain too much though because watching all the singing and dancing didn’t cost a penny. I may post some pictures next time.

It was good to wake up yesterday morning and see that the US had been thumped 4-1 by Belgium following the overturned red card that stank of the sort of corruption that you expect from FIFA. That must have motivated the Belgians like you wouldn’t believe. Red cards do get overturned occasionally, but usually not after a phone call with the president of the country concerned. There are backhanders all over the show. Just look at the World Cups awarded to Russia and Qatar. This time around it’s all far too big and there’s far too much money involved and as good as the football has probably been, I can’t bring myself to watch any of it. My brother and I agreed that maybe we’ll watch the final if England make it. England haven’t been in the final for 60 years, so we’ll kind of have to in that case. (Like me, he hasn’t seen a single ball kicked so far either.)

I’m getting promoted in the Scrabble, back to the third division, with a record of nine wins and five losses with a healthy positive points spread. I may well finish second in the league. And that’s despite a pair of quite painful defeats by just two and five points. How was I to know that QUARK took an S in front of it (that was responsible for my five-point loss) or that BIRLINGS might be a word (my opponent in my two-point loss landed that on me at the end, after I’d had a huge lead late in the game)? I squeaked by that 16-year-old Australian guy by 25 points after I remembered from somewhere that PYIC was a word. In that game, I played a late bingo of ABETTORS, but apparently that was a huge error and I should have played IT instead (seriously, just IT) and I was lucky to get away with my play. All in all, I was pretty lucky to draw so many Xs and Zs which are simply great tiles and don’t require great skill or experience to make the most of. I will surely face relegation again soon; there are just too many good players. The big question is whether or not I should go over to the dark side and actually play a real-life tournament sometime.

Books - Family - Life :) - Scrabble

Bully boy

July 1, 2026 by 0 Comments

It’s 39 degrees here as I write this. I’m pretty much confined to just the living room, which has air con. At one stage the air con was dripping like a tap but clearing the outlet pipe thankfully stopped that. Nights aren’t easy. The night before last I had Bic Runga’s Get Some Sleep in my head for some reason. She sang of being “stranded in June”. It still is June here. In this part of town the heat has meant that people are out and about pretty late. Even small children. The nearby park was a hive of activity at 10pm on Sunday.

On Saturday I went to Buzad and drove Dorothy and her friend back to Timișoara. It was such a hot day, not far off today’s temperatures, and when I got back home at nearly four I was basically gone for the day, I was so exhausted from the heat.

Mum and Dad are back in St Ives after their tough time down south. Mum has picked up a cold. The good news though is that my brother’s commanding officer has gone into bat for him and it looks like he’ll be able to leave the army – and start his new job in early August – after all. I spoke to him this morning and he certainly seemed a bit perkier. He said he’s been through a horrible three months, not knowing what the hell was going on. Our chat lasted 20 minutes – much longer than anything we’ve managed of late.

It’s not just the job stuff. His son is incredibly demanding. Probably similar to me and my brother combined when we were little. There’s just no downtime with him. He’s extremely bright, and that poses a problem. My brother is extremely proud of him, and why shouldn’t he be, but I think he’s a bit too proud, to the point where the sun shines out of his arse and he can do no wrong. In reality my nephew is a bully; he often hurts his little sister and enjoys it too. He receives no real discipline from either of his parents. There’s no wooden spoon like me and my brother got. I suppose you just can’t do that these days. In around 14 months my nephew will start school. He’ll be one of the oldest in his class, and inevitably one of the biggest. In contrast to all of this, my niece is lovely. I don’t know when I’ll next get to see them.

I did win that Scrabble game with the 16-year-old Australian, by just six points. I didn’t exactly navigate that endgame in optimal fashion, but I find endgames particularly difficult because I simply don’t know enough words. I finished second bottom of the league, he finished bottom, and we’ll do battle again in the division below, starting on Thursday.

I’ve ordered a new laptop. The mouse pad on this one is starting to hurt my hands after nearly five years of use, and it’s been compromised to some degree ever since Kitty spilled water on it, so really I had no choice. It’s coming on Thursday, which will be quite a busy day. I paid 4850 lei (£800 or around NZ$1900) for it. Far from the cheapest, but I really can’t skimp on a laptop which is vital for my job.

Andy Burnham can do human, which means that he’s halfway there. Whether he can do the other half (and be allowed to do it) remains to be seen, but I’m optimistic. I totally agreed with Dad when he said they should hammer the banks who are making huge, unjustified profits. Especially after my debacle with a UK bank in 2022-23.

I’m glad to got to the end of The Junior Officers’ Reading Club, whose title is about as misleading as it gets. It was hard to properly empathise with the author. He was born in 1982, just two years after me, but we’re poles apart in just about every way. He’s also very different from my brother, who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, just like he did.

Kitty is great, but the heat is even getting to her.

Books - Family - Life :) - Scrabble

A deep, dark, hot place

June 27, 2026 by 0 Comments

Mum and Dad called me yesterday. They’re still at my brother’s place, but he was out at the time. They told me what’s been happening with my brother who has entered a deep, dark place. Worse than when he had the business with his ex, I wondered. Yes, far worse, they said. And for the love of God, don’t come here later in the summer.

We all thought it was family-related. His wife, her family (who come over all the time), his son being particularly hard work, and so on. But no, it’s to do with his job. He was very excited to get that job with BAE back at the beginning of April; he’d be starting in early August. I was very happy for him too. But now the Army won’t release him in time, mainly (from what I can tell) because his boss’s boss is being a bastard. He’ll be forced to stay for an extra six months, doing very little of importance, so he’ll miss out on that bright future that he’d studied so hard for. The military is a very weird place, and my brother has no time for it anymore. It’s all so upsetting. Not just that it has happened to him, but that it’s affected him so profoundly. This is my brother, whose mental health has always been unimaginably good. Every disappointment like water off a duck’s back. And now this.

My parents said he is hardly talking to them. Or anyone else. It’s been a crappy week down south for them. The searing heat has left them practically imprisoned in a single room, and they haven’t been able to travel back to St Ives because it’s been dangerously hot for them (especially Dad) to do so. They did go to the cinema on Thursday and see Toy Story 5, a sad film about kids being glued to their screens and no longer playing with toys, but that’s then only “thing” they’ve done. (They took my nephew. It would have all been beyond him.) Tomorrow is Dad’s 76th birthday. The following day, with the temperatures down in the 20s, they’ll finally get away.

In the last few days my parents and I have compared notes, all of us becoming very heatist. Yes, it’s been hellishly hot all over Europe, including the UK, where they broke the 1976 record for June three days running. (Mum can’t stop talking about that freakishly long heat wave fifty summers ago. Even Mark mentioned it last weekend – he’d just started school. Damon Albarn referred to it in one of his songs. It’s certainly part of British lore.) This weekend we’ll hit at least 37; on Monday and Tuesday we could just about melt in 40 degrees. The worst thing about the heat isn’t the days but the nights. Broken sleep, leaving me exhausted. On Thursday afternoon I had my first lesson with the girl who was in the ballet. An hour and a half with her big brother, followed by an hour with her, and that got me a useful 200 lei. Their mum asked me if I wanted to do two sessions each next week, but I couldn’t face the idea of cycling to Mehala in the early part of the week. Maybe on Thursday (when it should be cooler) I’ll ask if we could meet on Friday too. (The 200 lei…) I gave the boy a test, which isn’t something I do very often. He took it super seriously and got 93% – very impressive. His little sister seemed to be excited at the prospect of having me as her teacher; that isn’t something I always see.

What else? I’ve seen the devastating pictures from the already devastated Venezuela following the two huge earthquakes there. You always see the amazing scenes of children being extricated from the rubble, but those are the all too rare exceptions. Tens of thousands are missing.

I’ve been reading Patrick Hennessey’s The Junior Officers’ Reading Club, which is all about the author’s time as an army officer, first training at Sandhurst, then serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. Gripping stuff, but a bit too close to home for me, and all the unnecessary pop culture references – look at me, how worldly I am – grate after a while, even if he writes extremely well.

Scrabble. I’m getting relegated again. I’m sure it won’t be the last time. My opponents are just too good. I’ve had four wins and nine losses, with one game still outstanding (and very close in the endgame) against a 16-year-old from Australia who will go down with me. In one game against a guy from Hungary I scoured the board looking for what he could do before playing my final move. Surely this will win it for me, won’t it? But then he stuck a D on the end of QUICHE on his last move to beat me by three points. Really? That’s a word now? I felt well and truly quiched. What’s more, earlier in the game I’d got 102 for BRATTISH and 92 for sATIRIC and I still couldn’t win. In the 14 games my opponents played 33 bingos. (By the way, heatist isn’t valid, but it has two anagrams that are: atheist and staithe, which is a kind of wharf.)

Family - Scrabble - Travel: Romania

Cluj trip report — Part 1 of 2

June 13, 2026 by 0 Comments

My trip across (and up a bit) to Cluj took a bit longer than expected; some major road works took out a section of motorway, adding an hour and a quarter to my journey. It was just as well I’d given myself plenty of time. I checked in to the same guest house as in 2016. I made sure to book a real place, with obvious signage and a manned front desk, to take the stress out of the whole thing. The Asian lady at the desk though didn’t speak Romanian and had only passable English. “You couldn’t have got us two rooms closer together?” “Okay.” My room was two floors above my parents’. After checking in, it was off to the airport to pick up Mum and Dad. I was surprised how quiet the place was, even at 9:30 pm. It’s always an amazing thing, meeting my parents at an airport, and indeed seeing other people’s reactions when they meet their friends and family.

The next morning we had a typical Romanian breakfast – cheese, ham, olives, tomatoes – then walked into town. Cluj had beautiful architecture just like I remembered it, but it was now on a whole different level of busyness and noisiness. Things are happening in Cluj, but I think I prefer Timișoara’s pedestrianised centre with its three squares. It was also quite hot in Cluj – just under 30 – and Dad really struggles in the heat. We walked up a hill to the Botanic Gardens which were beautiful and above all peaceful; while Mum and I happily wandered around, Dad found a bench in the shade. (If I’m honest, I started to flag a bit, too.) We then wandered slowly back to the guest house via an impressive market, as good as anything in Timișoara with all its meats, cheeses, fruit and vege. For dinner we had rather bland pizzas from a place attached to the train station.

On Wednesday we stayed mostly in the shade or inside, which was a result. First we visited the art museum, as I had done ten years earlier, though this time I had a critic alongside me. It was obvious even to me that the artwork, which included Nicolae Grigorescu’s, hadn’t exactly had a curator to take care of it. Over the years, most of the works had acquired a brownish-grey drabness, which was a shame. Grigorescu’s paintings in particular, where he captured rural Romanian life, were brilliant all the same. Our next stop was the Ethnographic Museum which was very well done and, as I always say, not entirely historical. We got back to our accommodation in mid-afternoon, which I didn’t mind at all. That evening we spent a long time walking up and down the main street looking for a place to eat, until I found a Chinese restaurant on Google Maps. We all had a damn good meal there.

First thing on Thursday I finally finished off my round of Scrabble games. My final tally of seven wins and seven losses was just enough to keep me in the third division. It was touch-and-go because my points differential was so poor: I won a number of close games but got thrashed in others. (I’m used to it being the other way round.)

And then we were off. Unlike when I drove from Timișoara by myself, we took the scenic route to go the other way. A very scenic route. We skirted the Apuseni National Park on a very bendy road which Mum didn’t particularly enjoy. Our first main stop was at Horea, a small town dominated by timber. As usual with Mum and Dad, we had a good look at the cemetery. At sometime around three or four we stopped at a town called Ștei, located near the Bears’ Cave which I visited all those years ago with my friends from St Ives. At one stage I handed the car keys to Dad. I didn’t choose the best time to do it. He almost careered off the side of the road as we rounded a sharp bend. As I took the keys back, we rose to 1200 metres amid low cloud which at one point cut my visibility to close to nil. We kept getting ear-splitting alerts warning of biblical-level floods on the way. “Do not travel” was the stark message.

Our final stop along the way was at Săvârșin for dinner. Above a small supermarket was a two-dollar-style shop and a restaurant where I had pasta, Dad had a schnitzel, and Mum had a salad. On the table next to ours were a couple of bikers (the motorised variety) from France.

Then came the torrent. We went back via the motorway and it absolutely sheeted down. We got home, relieved, shortly after nine. Kitty had been properly fed and watered.

I’ll put up some pictures in my next post. Mum’s 77th birthday is on Sunday. We’re going to try out the opera (a first time for me) on that day. Mum and Dad have now booked their return tickets to the UK; they’ll be flying to Luton early next Friday morning.

Family - Life :) - Music - Other sports - Scrabble

Nagging doubts as Mum and Dad are about to arrive

June 6, 2026 by 0 Comments

Not long until Mum and Dad get here. Assuming they get here. There are nagging doubts over whether their check-in (which they can’t do until Sunday evening, 24 hours before their flight) will work. I spoke to them this morning. They were just about to have breakfast before checking out of their Paddington hotel. They managed to see two shows: Moulin Rouge, which they both thoroughly enjoyed, and Beetlejuice, which they didn’t. (Mum said it was “yuck”.) I saw the Moulin Rouge film at the cinema with my grandmother. It didn’t do a lot for me then (I was 21), but it sounds like I’d now enjoy a theatre performance of it.

On Tuesday they said on the radio that there were only nine days until the football World Cup. So there are now only six. And this time, just like last time, I really couldn’t give a damn. Even though New Zealand are in it. With 48 teams, it’s such a bloated competition. It’ll take 72 games just to eliminate a third of the teams. Seriously, sod that. Plus it’s in America and all that has come to mean, and matches will be taking place at all hours of the night for me.

On the radio – probably the same day that they talked about the World Cup – they played Videli noci (“I’ve seen the night”) by Moldovan band Zdob și Zdub, a song I hadn’t heard before. It was in Russian and I couldn’t make out any words except “tram” and “taxi”. I really liked it, and assumed it was a new song of theirs, but in fact it came out in 2001. Recently I played one of Paul Simon’s albums on my record player. (I’ve got a few of them.) One of the songs was My Little Town. Ugh, I don’t like this song, I thought as I was listening to it. I mean, it’s a very good song (it’s Paul Simon after all), but the lyrics – “Nothing but the dead and the dying in my little town” – are upsetting. Right at the other end of the spectrum from very good songs, Life by Des’Ree came on the radio when I was in the car. I’m afraid of a ghost, let’s have a piece of toast, doo-doo-da-doo, or however it goes. It was a pretty big hit when it came out in 1998, so who am I to judge?

I saw on the BBC this week that in 2024 only 9% of transactions in the UK were cash. That figure would be much higher in Romania, but it’s gradually coming down here too. I was wondering what kids do with money in a cashless world. How does pocket money work exactly? I was also thinking about display technology. When I was growing up, different types of information were displayed in their own distinct ways. Newsstands with handwritten headlines. The newspapers themselves. Thermometers. Billboards. Road signs with their extremely clear font. (In New Zealand the smaller road signs were often hand-painted, which I thought was cool.) Petrol prices. Departure boards at railway stations and airports. Clocks, in many different forms. The scoreboards at Wimbledon (dot-matrix on the two biggest courts, manually operated on all the others). And so on. And now practically everything is, rather depressingly, just a video screen. I thought about this as I was driving along and there were video billboards everywhere with the exception of one which had those mechanical triangular prism-shaped slats and showed three different adverts in a cycle.

Scrabble. It isn’t getting any easier in the latest round of the league and I’ll do well to survive. I did however make BACTERIUM in one game, putting down my seven letters on the front of UM which was already on the board. It’s pretty rare that I ever make a nine-letter word.

It’s proper summer here now: the smell of the lime trees, the first mosquito in my bedroom, and birds (jackdaws I think) waking me in the morning with their strangled-cat sound.

Family - Scrabble

Living very separate lives

June 3, 2026 by 0 Comments

My teaching hours have fallen off a cliff. I don’t mind that – I’ve got things to sort out before my parents come on Monday – but it does feel a bit weird. Tomorrow I’ve got five lessons scheduled, so a full day, but that’s the exception at the moment.

I spoke to Mum and Dad last night. I expected them to be in St Ives, but no, they were in a hotel room in London. Paddington, to be more precise. Maybe half a star, Mum said. They plan to see a show there. Or two or three. We had a longish chat, despite the iffy connection. We talked a fair bit about my brother. He seems slightly put out that Mum and Dad are seeing me first, even though he gets that it’d be unpleasantly hot for them if they left it much later. He wants them to make two trips down to his place to somehow make up for seeing me first. I spoke to him recently and it was almost like we were on different planets. He mentioned the Russian drone incursion because he’s into that stuff – it goes with the territory of his job (and his next job) to be into that stuff – but he never asks me anything else about Romania or what my daily life might consist of. When I said that Mum and Dad were flying into Cluj, it would have been really cool if he’d asked me how to spell it or tried to locate it on a map or wondered what the architecture might be like there. But he obviously doesn’t care. I mean, we always get on well, and he’s happy for me that my life has improved since I moved to Romania, but he’s never been curious as to what that life may entail. I hoped he might come and see me here. That was probably never very likely, even if he hadn’t had kids or if Covid hadn’t happened, but it’s highly unlikely now. My sister-in-law wouldn’t be interested either – she likes cruises and theme parks – though I’m sure she’d like it here if she ever made the trip. Anyway, my parents said he’s never interested in what they’re up to in New Zealand either. I said that he at least has the excuse of already knowing New Zealand, unlike Romania which he has never set foot in.

The next round of the Scrabble league starts tomorrow. I’ll be in the third division after finishing bottom in the previous round. That’s still well above where I “should” be, and there are still very strong players working their way up the divisions, so if I suffer another relegation I will hardly be surprised. Last weekend there was a huge tournament in Bangkok, with about 450 competitors in five divisions, each playing 36 games over four days. The schedule – ten games on each of the first three days and a further six on the last day – sounded punishing. Did anyone even get to see any of Bangkok, after travelling all that way? The Australian lady who beat me in a close game asked me if I was making the trip. I’ll be wearing a green top with the Aussie flag and my name on it, she said. I’ve added in my profile that I’ve never played a Scrabble tournament in my life. People assume I’m a regular player. She competed in the third division, finishing in the middle of the pack. They streamed many of the games, and I watched a few of them. What really struck me was how often a four or five-letter word was the optimal play. My poor knowledge of obscure fours and fives is a big handicap, and I’m currently trying to learn them and make them stick in my mind. That’s no easy task.

I’m a bit nervous about my parents’ trip. Mum and I have pleasant phone conversations which lull me into a false sense of security, but then when we actually see each other I get my fingers burnt. In case my brain has filtered out previous episodes, I have my blog posts to remind me. I’m more emotionally prepared for seeing Mum than I’ve ever been, and let’s hope that helps. If we (and Dad) can have two largely stress-free weeks together, that would be the best thing to happen this year. By the way, Elena – the lady who lives above me – has agreed to look after Kitty while I’m away.

It’s great to feel normal once again. I thought I might never get back here. Fingers crossed I don’t suffer another terrible migraine.

Update: I’ve been teaching a guy in his mid-thirties for a while now; several months ago his 17-year-old niece joined him in the sessions. But three weeks ago tragedy struck for their family. Her 14-year-old brother was riding an electric scooter when he was hit by a car, and since then he has been in a coma. Those things are so dangerous. It goes without saying that we’re not having lessons at the moment.

This afternoon the twins told me about a 16-year-old boy who was killed by a car while walking in Dumbrăvița on Monday – Children’s Day. The boy was a very good footballer. He had no choice but to walk on the road because there was no pavement, as is the case on many streets in Dumbrăvița. The car was travelling far too fast – over 100 km/h. I read a news item about the accident in which the writer wondered how one of the richest suburbs in the country could have almost no pavements.

Environment - Family - Scrabble - Writing a book

Bad books but feeling much better

May 29, 2026 by 0 Comments

I’m feeling almost normal now. That feels like a miracle after the last three months. I haven’t been sleeping all that well, but that’s because I’ve had a lot of stuff circling around my head, like my parents’ stay in Romania and the books. Oh yes, those books that I’ve been trying to get published. They’ve come back. The publishers in town said they wanted to have another go at getting funding under the educational and cultural programme or whatever it is. Last year they didn’t get past the start line because of some technicality or other – the judges or assessors never looked at a single word of either book. So on Wednesday I had a meeting in town with the older woman and her daughter. The old woman never shuts up. After a long yap, she asked me how much I wanted to contribute, assuming the books get accepted. What sort of question is this? What would I even be getting for my money? You’ll get the books. Five hundred copies of each book. Do you want the books published or not? Well, that depends. I started getting pretty stressed, and I suppose combative, because I felt pressure being put on me. It reminded me of the time I was asked to sign the contract to buy my apartment. But but but, what am I even signing? On Wednesday night I spoke to Dad. For heaven’s sake, don’t go through with it, he said. I was up half the night thinking about what to do. Then yesterday common sense prevailed. I messaged the older woman about distribution channels, and it became clear that they simply didn’t exist. I’d be saddled with something like two-thirds of a ton of books that I’d never get rid of. I decided to pull the plug on the whole thing. There is another woman in the publishing world whom I’ve been in touch with, but she seems to have disappeared off the face of the earth. Her profile picture on WhatsApp is a mountain overlain by the phrase “Every day in every way I am becoming more and more prosperous”. Next to “About” she has written: “The ones who know it’s not possible are kindly asked to get out of the way of those who are ALREADY DOING IT!” That sort of self-aggrandising shit is an immediate red flag. Do not trust this person.

It’s been hot. Really hot. In Romania and all over Europe. Records have been tumbling all over the place. We got to 33 on Wednesday, and I think in London they got a degree or two on top of that – an all-time high for May, or at least a high going back three centuries or so. I saw Bordeaux hit 37 on Tuesday. That’s just nuts. For a while I’ve been thinking that on 1st August 2056, when it’s 45 degrees in Glasgow and people are dropping like flies, people will be wondering how we had our eye off the ball so egregiously, preoccupied by gender-neutral toilets and such like.

Last Sunday I met up with Mark at the beer factory, though with the hot weather, the place was heaving. We had no chance of getting a table without a booking. So we cycled into the centre of town and sat outside at Berăria 700. It was quite lovely there. We had a great chat. We talked a lot about our childhoods, which were remarkably similar despite him being nearly ten years older than me. We even strayed for a while into politics and the possibility of Andy Burnham becoming UK prime minister. I realised how much I’ll miss him once he’s gone. In four weeks he’ll set off with his wife on a mission, to scale Mount Kilimanjaro. It’s almost 6000 metres; I hope you know what you’re doing. They’re doing it properly (as you should), with a real sherpa or whatever it is they call it in Africa, so it won’t be cheap. Mark and his two older brothers were actually born in Tanzania, so I think that’s part of it. After their big adventure they’ll come back to Romania for a few days before returning to the UK to live. His wife has got herself a job at a private school in Preston. I’m sure I’ll see him over there at some point. I suggested we could even meet up in Manchester, which I’ve never even been to. He went to uni there in the late eighties and early nineties. What a time to be there, I said, at the height of the Madchester scene. You’re twistin’ my melon, man. But he said it largely passed him by.

It’s only ten days until Mum and Dad come over. (They were confused about the dates and thought they were flying out this coming Monday.) They’re enjoying their time in the UK, although they’re hardly loving the heat. They’ve been on their bikes a lot, going out early in the morning when it’s cooler. I’ve been very impressed. (Waking up early was a symptom of their jet lag, and they’ve kept to that schedule.) I’ve still got a lot of cleaning and tidying to do before they arrive, and I haven’t even thought about what we’ll do in Cluj.

Scrabble. I’ve finished the latest round with four wins and ten losses, and will almost certainly finish dead last of the second division when the remaining games are done and dusted. I played fine, with the exception of one moment where I completely missed an out play and lost the game by eight points, 529-521. I’d never played a game before with a four-figure aggregate score – that was totally crazy. I played four bingos and still lost. I still would have been relegated even if I’d won. My opponents have just been too good. I’m not disappointed at all because: (a) the outcome was in line with my expectations, (b) I’m amazed I ever got into division two in the first place, and (c) all the stats point to a decent performance on my part that I can take a lot from. Oh, and I shouldn’t be too disappointed if I suffer another relegation in the next round.