Tennis

Cat - Family - Other sports - Tennis - Travel: Europe

Mum is better, plus pictures of Novi Sad and Kitty

February 13, 2025 plutomanby 0 Comments

When I went for a walk around the block today, two of the houses had traditional music coming from them. The second of the songs was beautiful and I tried to Shazam it but (just as expected) I didn’t get a reading.

The best thing I did today was say no to the head of maths at British school. My mental health is always fragile and such a massive change might well tip me over the edge. It wouldn’t be worth it at all. The fact that I know people who work there would only make it worse.

I spoke to Mum last night. She was miles better. Not perfect – she hasn’t been properly well since my brother and his family visited six months ago – but good enough to play golf tomorrow. She still needs to get her upset stomach thoroughly investigated, but as this is Mum I’m talking about, I doubt she will. Dad was out; it made a nice change to speak to Mum by herself. Dad gets his lump taken out on Friday; let’s hope the biopsy gives him the all clear. It sounds similar to the lump Mum had a year ago.

I could only watch the second half of Blues’ FA Cup match with Newcastle. What a half I missed. Blues scored in the first minute, Newcastle equalised midway through the half (controversially – did it cross the line?) and went ahead a few minutes later, then Tomoki Iwata’s spectacular strike made it 2-2 just before half-time. The half I saw was far more stop-start from all the fouls and injuries. Newcastle’s spell of pressure eventually told, and they wound up 3-2 winners. No shame in that from a Blues perspective. Last night they battered Cambridge (one of my local teams I suppose; I was born there after all) 4-0 and they now sit firmly atop the league table. Blues have also made the last four of the EFL Trophy, a competition for teams in the third and fourth tiers. A lot of supporters treat that as a joke, but if you make the final you get a day out at Wembley. Blues will achieve that if they beat Bradford next week. They would then face either Peterborough (another local team of mine) or Wrexham (with all the Hollywood connections) in the final in April.

Simona Halep. After losing her first-round match at the Transylvania Open, she hung up her racket for good at the age of 33. I very much enjoyed following a top Romanian player when I knew I’d be coming to Romania and after I arrived. The disappointments, the victories from the jaws of defeat (and vice-versa), the near misses, and the triumphs. She played four grand slam finals after I arrived here. To see her finally get over the line against Sloane Stephens was quite special. Then there was the Serena final at Wimbledon, which Simona won 6-2 6-2 in 56 minutes. She was practically flawless that day. Her doping ban was a massive shame and though it was (basically) overturned, she’d tumbled way down the rankings having hardly played. But while it lasted, having a Romanian (and a throughly good person, from what I could tell) doing so well in my favourite sport while living in Romania was pretty damn cool.

A few pictures from my trip to Novi Sad (and a couple of Kitty):

House for sale (NOT beware of the dog)
Abandoned 80s Yugo
Guild of Craftsmen: five languages including Romanian

Name of Mary Church

Remembering those who died in the railway station roof collapse

The name of this restaurant means Old Song

Danube Park, close to the river

The river and fortress

Cat - Family - Other sports - Tennis - Writing a book

Kitty and some pretty shitty publishers

February 8, 2025 plutomanby 0 Comments

Kitty is recovering from Wednesday’s ordeal. She vomited twice at the vet’s; anaesthetic even does that to humans. When I picked her up that evening, the vet said she’d been “talkative” (no surprises there), then gave me a list of dos and don’ts. Don’t remove her collar for 12 to 14 days was the big one. Fine, I won’t. I got her home, then locked her in the small bathroom while I gave an online lesson. For the first few minutes I could hear her yowling, then she stopped. When I went back in there, she’d ripped her collar right off. She must have been pretty determined. I tried to put it back on, but she got so angry that I gave up. I’ll have to risk it. Since then she’s been very subdued and has hardly eaten anything. She hasn’t licked or bitten the wound, thankfully. This morning I had a scary moment when, after locking her in the bathroom, she seemed to have disappeared when I went back in there. She was nowhere to be seen. How? I heard a squeak but couldn’t tell where it was coming from. Then I saw her little head poking out of a hole in the tiling in the side of the bath. I didn’t even realise there was a cat-sized hole there. Are you stuck? Will I have to smash the tiles? She came out, eventually. Phew.

Monday was a crappy day. What’s going on with the book? I contacted the older woman from the so-called publishers – the only person from there I can contact. We had a three-minute phone call. No, we can’t arrange a meeting, she said, because of X, Y and Z. It’s all about you, isn’t it? I’m not sure she’d even looked at the text of the book that I’d sent her. In fact I’m pretty sure she hadn’t. At the end of the call she said how nice it would be to meet up with Dorothy and have a glass of wine. You can take your glass of wine and shove it, was what I wanted to say. Everything about the publishers (and they’re really just printers, if that) stinks of unprofessionalism. At this stage I’d say it’s 70-30 that the book will see the light of day. In other words there’s a fair chance that it won’t. And of that 70%, a large chunk involves shitty production quality and next to no distribution. I’ve got a long list of things to do with the second book, but I’m not touching that again until I’m sure that the first one will actually happen.

I spoke to my parents yesterday. They talked a lot about my brother. It’s easy to forget that he was just about incommunicado with my parents for years. He had no time for them, honestly. They mentioned how upset they felt in 2007 when they watched TV and saw the British troops reunited with their families after being in Afghanistan, and they didn’t even know he’d got back. My brother felt, and still feels, a certain bitterness about them emigrating to New Zealand in 2003. That wasn’t helped by them spending the year 2000 in Australia as well. (I never felt that way. We’re grown men. If they want to move to where Mum was born, that’s up to them. In fact I was glad they moved because Mum would have been particularly unhappy if she’d stayed in the UK and carried on teaching. Of course I made the move myself.) Mum and Dad could easily have broken all ties with my brother, but they didn’t, and now they’re in contact with him about twice a week. There’s a lesson there.

This week I’ve watched a Romanian film called The Death of Domnul Lăzărescu, which came out in 2005. It’s an excellent film, both funny and very sad, which highlights the problems in Romanian healthcare (and wider society) that existed back then and haven’t exactly gone away. Look at Colectiv, or the two fires that took place during Covid. Domnul Lăzărescu, the patient who was dragged from pillar to post through various Bucharest hospitals, died in real life only two years later. Mioara, the paramedic, died three years ago. I really wanted to punch the doctors who verbally abused Mioara in one of the hospitals towards the end of the film. Annoyingly, the film had un-turn-off-able English subtitles – I covered them up with a piece of paper.

Birmingham play Newcastle at home in the FA Cup tomorrow. The two teams have had some real FA Cup battles in the not so distant past. In 2007, they drew 2-2 in Birmingham before Blues pulled off a shock 5-1 away win in the replay. That won’t happen this time – replays have been axed – and I fully expect Newcastle to win comfortably. They’re in the upper echelons of the Premier League, and the gulf between that and even the top of the third tier is immense. I doubt I’ll see much of the game because I’ve got a big day of lessons scheduled – eight to nine hours. Then on Sunday I’m planning a trip over the border into Serbia to take a look at Novi Sad, the country’s second city. It’s been in the news lately. Three months ago a roof collapsed at the train station, killing 15 people, and protests have since erupted.

Before I go, I should mention something about Simona Halep’s retirement. A great ambassador for Romanian tennis who, it seems, is calling it a day. I’ll write more about that next time.

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

Coming unstuck

January 29, 2025 plutomanby 0 Comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Language teaching - Other sports - Politics - Tennis

Pretty vacant

October 26, 2024 plutomanby 0 Comments

Seven lessons yesterday. It’s rare to have that many. All that talking gets quite tiring, especially when it’s online. I’m hoping to keep Sunday free (unlike last weekend) and hop over the border to Szeged in Hungary. I’ve heard good things about the city. I may even make a detour on the way there or back to take in the beautiful autumn colours.

When I spoke to Dad this morning, I mentioned the difficulty I have in connecting with young women aged between 15 and 25 or thereabouts in my lessons. Dad said that’s to be expected on account of the age gap between us, but I disagreed. There’s a certain vacancy there. The lights are on, but nobody’s home. Eight hours a day on Instagram, with its laser focus on image, will do that to you. When my university friend came to stay we talked about this. He reckoned that 10% of young women will suffer long-term damage – they’ll be confined to a (permanent?) zombie state – as a result of their social media use. Yes, boys and young men have their own issues, mostly around gaming. They’re up half the night and can’t stay awake in class. But I get the feeling that it’s something they’ll grow out of. They also do normal stuff like go out on their bikes or play football. One teenage boy had just been to football practice before our lesson. I got him to do an exercise where he had to choose between two verb tenses. Sometimes he wanted to use a different one. “Sorry mate,” I said, “You’re offside!” I raised my arm as if I was a linesman. He thought that was funny. With most girls, that sort of interaction just isn’t possible.

Talking of sport, Mum was pleased that Team New Zealand had won the America’s Cup. I think of it as an obscene waste of money. In other sporting news (from probably two weeks ago now), Rafael Nadal announced his retirement. The extraordinary two-decade-long rivalry between three titans of the game is now over; only Djokovic still remains. I also saw that Wimbledon is doing away with line judges in favour of automated line calling. I’m surprised they didn’t do this back in 2021 for the first tournament after the Covid cancellation; the tech certainly existed then. I read an article by an ex-line judge at Wimbledon. It’s something I wouldn’t have minded doing. As for being a ballboy though, bugger that. I’d have been terrible anyway. As a kid, trying to coordinate myself with other kids just wasn’t going to happen.

I should also mention football for the second time in this post. Earlier this year I wrote regular updates on Birmingham City’s eventual tumble through the trap door into the third tier of English football. A lot had to go wrong for that team to be relegated. A lot did go wrong. In their first season in such a low league since 1995, Birmingham have so far played eleven games, losing one, drawing one, and winning all the rest. They spent big over the summer and getting sell-out crowds to watch some pretty exciting football. There’s a sense of optimism around the club not seen in more than a decade. It’s funny how things turn out.

Just eleven days until the US election, and I have a strong sense of impending doom. (I wonder if anything else but doom can be impending. I never hear anyone talk of an impending root canal, as frightening as it must be.) This morning I saw two polls, one showing a tie nationally, and another showing Harris with only a three-point lead in New Hampshire, a state outside the “swing zone” which Biden won by more than seven points in 2020. Just two polls, but there have been several now that depict a race inching slowly but surely in Trump’s direction. My gut feeling, and that’s all it is, is that Trump will win the seven swing states 6-1 or even 7-0, perhaps even taking a “non-swing” state in the process. He may even win the popular vote or at least come very close. In that case (or any other of the many scenarios that see Trump elected again) I’ll want to log off from global news for my own sanity, keeping just my Romanian news app. I don’t think I could bear to see that grotesque excuse for a man day after day. Dad said that Harris hasn’t been charismatic enough, and charisma is all that matters over there, but what would “acceptable charisma” in a woman even look like in the US? A very “charismatic” woman would be perceived as too boisterous or not feminine enough. No matter what she does, she’s facing an uphill battle in those swing states simply because she’s a woman.

Last Sunday an important pair of votes took place in Moldova, Romania’s baby sister, which I would like to visit one day. (My first introduction to Moldova came from reading Tony Hawks’ Playing the Moldovans at Tennis, a funny but thought-provoking read.) The first round of the presidential election saw pro-European incumbent Maia Sandu come top with 42%, but she now faces a second round in nine days’ time against Alexandr Stoianoglo who is pro-Russia. There’s no guarantee that Sandu will win. There was also a referendum on amending Moldova’s constitution to include a path towards EU membership. The vote passed, just: 50.4% voted in favour. If Sandu doesn’t remain president, I expect that will be knocked on the head.

Any way you look at it, we’re living in fragile, unpredictable times.

Family - Life :) - Romania - Tennis

On the right track (maybe)

August 28, 2024 plutomanby 0 Comments

A bit more positivity from New Zealand this morning. I got to see my nephew who is a very bright little boy indeed. He loves playing with toy cars, especially old British ones like Morgans, apparently. Then Dad said, “We’d better get onto booking our trip as soon as they’re gone,” meaning a trip to Europe. If they’re serious about ever seeing their younger son and grandson again, they don’t have a lot of choice. Dad’s been ill for too long for it to be a virus, so he’s been put on antibiotics. Mum, who I’m sure is greatly enjoying spending time with her grandson despite the stress, seemed to like my pictures of Slovenia.

After our Skype chat, and before my four lessons, I met Dorothy in town. We talked about how Romania is, slowly but surely, heading in the right direction. Every week I see a building being renovated or a bike rack conveniently added or an intersection modified to make it that little bit safer. Romania’s economy has grown substantially in the time I’ve been here. People are earning more in real terms. Unlike some of its neighbours, Romania has become considerably more stable. It’s still very imperfect – those imperfections really came to the fore during Covid – and I worry that Romania’s urge to modernise will compromise its natural and man-made beauty, but there are reasons to be optimistic.

I’m off to Vienna in under 36 hours. I’ll have three passengers, one of whom I’ve never met in my life. I have no idea how this will all pan out. I’ll reveal all in my next post.

Update: One thing that hasn’t noticeably improved since 2016 is Romania’s level of customer service. This morning I waited 45 minutes to withdraw some euros from my bank account. The woman at the desk (when I finally got there) must have had some pretty rigorous training. Never look at the customer or change your facial expression in any way. If the customer asks a question, remain silent. If he or she repeats the question, respond in an exasperated tone but whatever you do, never fully answer it. Consult your phone five times per minute and your smart watch ten times per minute.

The US Open is under way. I read that Birmingham-born Dan Evans came through the longest match in tournament history in the first round, beating 23rd-seeded Karen Khachanov in 5 hours and 35 minutes. Incredibly he was 4-0 down in the fifth set, but then won six games on the spin. He’s now a 34-year-old veteran; I saw him in Auckland when he was still a teenager. At only five foot nine, he’s struck me as a cross between Lleyton Hewitt and a typical British lad who never stops being a lad. A few years back he got a one-year ban for taking cocaine.

I’m now packing for Vienna.

Other sports - Tennis - Travel: Europe - Travel: Romania

A Scottish summer in full swing (plus my travel plans)

July 21, 2024 plutomanby 0 Comments

Our two-week heat wave has come to an end, for now at least. Yesterday the temperature dropped ten degrees from the day before, and finally I could breathe again. First I dropped over a quarter of a ton of crap off at the tip – bags of hardened cement, big sheets of MDF from an old wardrobe, and one of those old-style TVs. That felt good – the small room next to my office, which had become a junk room, could be pretty useful. There’s still a horrible carpet in there that I need to get rid of. Then I cycled to Sânmihaiu Român and back – only the second trip I’ve made on the new bike since I bought it.

After that, I grabbed lunch and sat back and watched round three of the golf. Round two had been dramatic enough. The howling wind, even worse than on the first day which was bad enough, sent scores skyrocketing. Pity the poor Japanese guy who made two successive nines (on a par-four followed by a par-three). At the end of the second round, roughly half the field would be cut. I was strangely emotionally invested in what the cut line would be. Would it be five or six under par? It could have gone either way as the wind dropped for the last few players out on the course, but six it was, and that allowed ten or so more players to come back for the weekend. Nice. The more the merrier. Then on to yesterday. After some better weather in the morning, which helped a Korean player in a Hawaiian-esque shirt hit a hole-in-one, sheer madness followed as it sheeted down with rain. The wind, which is affected by the tide, also picked up. Spectators and players were like drowned rats out there. The temperature plunged. Commentators described hands as being prune-like. But it was all beautiful in its way too.

As this wonderful advert for a Scottish summer was playing out, it was time for me to play tennis. It seemed the weather system had moved south-eastwards in some style. Florin and I got there. We hit for 15 minutes when it started spitting, then after another 15 (following our best rally in which I finally got the ball past Florin at the net) the spits had become drips and drops and there was fork lightning in the near distance. Time to call it a day. When I got back, the golf was still on. Our shortened tennis session and the crazy weather in Scotland (which made everything take longer) meant I saw more of the closing holes than I otherwise would have. It’ll be one heck of a final round. Billy Horschel is on his own at four under par; six players are just one shot behind, including Dan Brown (not the Da Vinci Code guy) who was desperately unlucky on the final two holes. There are a further five players at even par or better; the winner is extremely likely to come from those dozen men. There could quite easily be a play-off, which would add even more excitement. I haven’t seen the weather forecast.

Travel plans. It looks like I’ll go up to Maramureș a week on Monday or Tuesday for five days or so. Then I’ve got my UK trip from 8th to 14th August. After that I’m thinking of four days in Maribor in Slovenia (19th to 23rd, or thereabouts), then there’s Vienna from 29th August to 2nd September.

Life :) - Other sports - Politics - Tennis

Two near misses (well, one was actually a near hit)

July 16, 2024 plutomanby 0 Comments

Firstly, the Trump shooting. I don’t feel sorry for him in the slightest. All he’s done for the last nine years is sow hatred and division. More guns, more violence. Then after being shot, he raised his fist – Fight! Fight! Fight! (against what exactly) – with the American flag as a backdrop, creating perhaps the most enduring image since 9/11. That I suppose is why he’s such a good campaigner – he knows what buttons to press. In America, those are the “playground bully” buttons. The cesspit of social media makes his strategy all the more effective. It’s now even more likely that Trump becomes president again (unless Biden gets out of the way I’d say it’s a racing certainty) and living on the doorstep of Ukraine I fear for what will happen next. After the last election I thought that Trump running again in 2024, or Biden for that matter, would be ridiculous. Common sense, in the shape of two new faces, would prevail. How naive I was.

When we were playing tennis on Saturday, a bird in a tree sounded as if it was being strangled. My partner identified it as a jay – gaiță in Romanian. He said that some people’s voices are said in Romanian to be like a gaiță, and I immediately thought of Elena (the 80-year-old lady who lives above me). She’s lovely, but her voice cuts through these thick walls. Yesterday morning I took her to the airport – she was flying to Toronto via Munich. She yapped and screeched the whole way in the car – all very distracting for me when it isn’t in my native language and I’m trying to drive – and I missed the turn to the airport. No problem; it was easy to turn back and we had plenty of time. We went to the brand spanking new Schengen-zone terminal which smelt of rotten fish. Her 10:50 flight wasn’t on the board, but a 9:40 one was. It seemed Elena had got the wrong time. When we got to the check-in desk at 9:03, it had officially closed three minutes earlier. (I was cursing my wrong turn.) The check-in lady made a phone call and eventually Elena and her suitcase were allowed on the plane. Phew. By this point Elena was hot and flustered and had trouble navigating the snaking security line. I’ve just had an email from her daughter to say she arrived safely in Toronto.

I saw a comment after the Euro final: “I’m beginning to think that football doesn’t want to come home. It seems to like it better elsewhere.” I liked the commenter’s A. A. Milne-style gentle humour. I wish there was more of that instead of the tedious memes, piss-takes and in-jokes. I watched the second half of England’s match with Spain – it was very watchable. Spain were clearly the better side and it would have been something of an injustice if England had won. It’s funny watching England games now – I hardly know any of the players, even if I’ve heard some of the names. When Cole Palmer equalised (great goal, by the way) I thought, ah yes, that’s the guy Luca said was his favourite player. (Luca is a 13-year-old boy I teach.)

I watched the men’s Wimbledon final, having not seen any of the men’s tournament prior to that. A fairly major wobble for Alcaraz when he served for the match, but in the end he beat Djokovic comprehensively. The sky’s the limit for Alcaraz. People are already talking about 20 grand slams. (He’s already 20% of the way there.) It’s very possible; the differences between the surfaces and the grand slams in general is much smaller than it used to be – the days of a Sampras who was imperious in two of the slams but always fell short at Roland Garros are over.

The Olympics start soon, apparently. I can’t be bothered with them.

This is the longest, deepest heat wave in Romanians’ living memory. I’m seeing 34s and 35s for the coming weekend – that will feel like some respite.

Language teaching - Life :) - Maths teaching - Other sports - Tennis

Keeping out of the outside world

July 14, 2024 plutomanby 0 Comments

I’ve just spoken to Mum and Dad. They asked me if I’d seen the news. What news? Oh, I see. Someone tried to assassinate Donald Trump. I’ve since caught up with the news and watched the scenes of blood and mayhem. Living on my own, big news can pass me by at weekends – for instance I didn’t find out about the Christchurch earthquake of 2010, which happened on a Saturday, until many hours later.

We’re in the middle of an infernal heat wave. Far from my first I’ve experienced in Romania, but this one is unremitting. The last week has reminded me of Covid. Stay at home during the daytime if at all possible. Outside is scary and dangerous, or at least very unpleasant, between 11am and 8pm. If I visit the market in the morning, I can’t mess around. Make a list and stick to it, just like in the Covid days. Last night I played tennis between 8 and 9; I was glad Florin was happy to just bat the ball around without getting tangled up in a set which would have been brutal. Cycling is a breeze, literally, until you have to stop at a red light.

Last week was a busy and challenging one on the work front. Online lessons with tech falling over everywhere. A maths lesson where I had a girl (who is being taught under the British system) and a boy (doing the bone-dry, difficult and hopelessly impractical Romanian curriculum) at the same time, and felt all at sea. Wanting to print coloured worksheets when I’ve run out of coloured ink. A mother who printed out sheets for her son in black and white where he had to draw arrows to a blue ball or a red shoe. And in between, some much easier sessions with a new lady whom I’d put at an 8 on my 0-to-10 scale. She’s keenly interested in the language, and because she already speaks it so well, these lessons are a piece of cake and fly by in no time.

Apart from shortish trips to England in 3½ weeks and Vienna at the end of August, I don’t know if I’ll be going anywhere. I had planned to visit Maramureș and maybe even Slovenia, but the sudden uptick in my hours and the ridiculously hot weather might make those plans overly ambitious.

Sport. The final of Euro 2024 takes place tonight. England have lucked their way into the final, while Spain have been the stand-out team of the tournament and logically should win. But football doesn’t work like that. England could easily win their first big tournament for nearly 60 years, and it would be huge if they managed it. My brother mentioned a possible public holiday if “we” win, and I realised that for me the whole concept of a “we” in sport feels very weird now. I’ve been out of the UK for practically half my life.

This year’s Wimbledon has hardly featured in my life. Yesterday, however, I watched the deciding set of the women’s final between Krejcikova and Paolini. I thought about how the women’s game has changed beyond belief since the nineties when I watched it far more keenly. The first few games of the final set flew by, then there was a key moment at 3-3 on Paolini’s serve with break point against her. Her first serve was called out. She challenged it but lost, so she had to serve a second ball with her rhythm disrupted. A big double fault and a crucial break. Then Krejcikova just about served out the match in a long final game where nerves clearly got to her. The men’s final between Djokovic and Alcaraz takes place this afternoon.

In some good news, I got rid of one of my old bikes. The guy who nicked it in 2021 did a good job of buggering it up, so I was pleased to get even 100 lei for it. My latest one, by the way, cost 800 lei (£140 or close to NZ$300).

Life :) - Music - Other sports - Tennis - Travel: Romania

Dunken disorderly

June 26, 2024 plutomanby 0 Comments

On Sunday I went to Dorothy’s Baptist church to see, well, a baptism. Just like the other times I went there, I felt out of place. Before the service I stood in a queue for the loo, staring at a boiler which showed warning messages in 16 European languages, none of which was English. I thought how exotic the Polish word for “warning” – uwaga – looked compared to the others. I could be Swahili or something. I did manage to relieve myself and then it all started. Two Baptist churches combined for the two-hour service which took place outside. (It was a few degrees cooler than on previous days. I would have stayed at home otherwise.) In the middle of the service a four-month-old boy named Abel was “dedicated”. This involved words only – no water. Then at the end, after the long sermon, came the main event. A tall woman of twentyish in a white dress was about to be properly baptised. She stood in an inflatable swimming pool. This also had warning messages on it – “no diving” – in several languages. My favourite was the Dutch – niet dunken. The young woman gave a short speech standing in the pool, then got fully dunken. (I took three pictures at various stages of dunkenness, but won’t put them on here.) When that was over we had a kind of smorgasbord for lunch, including a quiche that I’d made the previous day. I got talking to a young chap who had recently arrived from Benin. He knew neither English nor Romanian, so we spoke in French. My French is very rusty and I’m liable to mix French words with Romanian ones. I was glad to get home after all of that – more than enough crowds for one day.

On Saturday I played tennis with Florin. It was pretty warm, even at 8pm. Because the grip on my usual racket was in such poor shape, I brought an older one. Leading 5-2 but with game point to Florin, I popped a string. This can happen on a racket that has been unused for a while. Luckily Florin had a spare – a Donnay that was made in Belgium in (he guessed) the late eighties. Romania would be playing Belgium shortly after we finished. I actually played better with his racket, and was up 6-3, 4-1 at the end.

I didn’t watch Romania’s 2-0 loss to Belgium. Tomorrow they play Slovakia in their final group game. A draw would guarantee both teams a place in the next round. The odds reflect this; you can only get 11/10 on a stalemate, where you normally see more than 2/1 on a draw between two evenly matched teams. If I had to pick a score, I’d go with 0-0.

At the weekend Touch of Grey by the Grateful Dead came on my car radio. I know shamefully little about the Grateful Dead, but I really like this song that was released in 1987, two decades after most of their stuff. I did the fill-in-the-gaps exercise with Hozier’s Too Sweet this morning; it went down well, I thought.

I’m now reading Christopher Robin Milne’s autobiography Enchanted Places. A fascinating read. I discussed it with my parents when I spoke to them yesterday. Mum started our chat by complaining about all the people who pronounce “route” as “rout”; that made me think she must be feeling OK.

On Thursday I’m going on my trip. I’m staying three nights in Prigor, close to the Nera River. There should be plenty to see there: a water mill, a monastery, multiple tracks for hiking and places in the river to swim afterwards. And not a lot of tourists. Sounds great.


Music - Other sports - Tennis - Travel: Romania - Writing a book

Three and easy

June 19, 2024 plutomanby 0 Comments

It’s getting hot and uncomfortable and soporific; we’re forecast to reach the mid-30s on each of the next four days.

Yesterday Romania’s match against neighbours Ukraine kicked off at four, just as my lesson did with the twins in their dark ground-floor flat near Piața Verde, one of the city’s many markets. We agreed to do English stuff with the game on mute in the background. We were discussing building materials when Nicolae Stanciu’s 29th-minute screamer went in. Romania scored twice more in double-quick time after the break. They were seriously impressive, surpassing all expectations. Most of the fans in Munich were decked out in the yellow of Romania. The match was still going on as I went past the bar at the market; old men sat there agog, probably reliving the golden age of Gheorghe Hagi. When I got home I met a young chap on the stairs. “Did you see the match? Trei-zero!” That was the final score. With 16 of the 24 teams qualifying for the next round (I’m not a fan of this format), Romania are already in prime position to do so. Then it’s a straight knockout and who knows.

I played tennis with Florin again on Saturday. I was up 7-6 (7-4), 4-0 when we finished. Once again I escaped after a frustratingly high unforced-error rate in the first set. In the middle of the set I felt I couldn’t execute anything.

Dad is knocking out some pictures to go in one of the potential books. (Doesn’t that sound weird?) Sometimes I have to nudge him in a different direction when, despite the artwork, it doesn’t quite get the language point across. One difficulty is getting the pictures to me without a loss of quality. So far he’s been sending me photos, but the lighting creates a grey background, sometimes verging on brown, that infiltrates the main colour of the picture too. I’m hoping he can scan them.

A song I’ve heard a lot over the last two months is Too Sweet by Hozier. It’s a rare modern mainstream hit that I actually like. I plan to use it for one of my fill-in-the-gaps-in-the-lyrics exercises. I usually resort to older songs for these, so it’s nice to have something contemporary for a change. A far less mainstream song that came on the radio yesterday was Lume, Lume by Vunk, one of my favourite Romanian bands. I was its 2014th Shazammer. I should also mention that today is Paul McCartney’s 82nd birthday.

Next Thursday I’m off to Prigor in Țara Almăjului, where I’ll spend three nights. The whole area is in an isolated valley of the River Nera; from the photos it looks beautiful. I’m looking forward to getting away. My shortish break will serve as a bit of a dry run for something more ambitious later.