Tennis

Tennis

Watching Wimbledon

July 16, 2017 by 0 Comments

This sinus pain is slowing me down so much that I must make another appointment, and this time I won’t be fobbed off with a few pills that give me at best a two-week respite.

The women’s final started brilliantly but in the end was something of a damp squib. How different it might have been had Venus taken (or been handed) one of those set points, but all credit to Muguruza, particularly on the first set point which was the longest rally of the match.

After the women’s final I continued to watch almost as much tennis as I could (heck, it’s 14 years since I was last able to watch Wimbledon during waking hours). First I saw the end of the men’s wheelchair doubles final, an interesting event to watch and on this occasion a close-fought win for a British pair, then I settled down to watch the able-bodied equivalent. Or kind of. I don’t really like men’s doubles, not proper crash-bang-wallop men’s doubles anyway. Breaks of serve are rare, and on grass they’re like gold dust, with sets comprising twelve games of utter futility and an inevitable tie-break. Why am I watching this? This isn’t like the old days of McEnroe and Stich or Philippoussis and Rafter or the Woodies or anybody I recognise. Only there were breaks of serve, seemingly out of nowhere, and in the fourth set there were a totally ridiculous three in a row. The match entered the fifth set and it was a cliffhanger. So much suspense, a bit like the singles match between Muller and Nadal. Break points and match points were saved, desperation half-volleys were dug out, and net cords were struck on vital points (which, of course, in an extended fifth set, are virtually every point). At 11-all they had to close the roof, and the match only lasted nine points on the resumption, but it had been a thriller. I didn’t really intend to watch the women’s final which started at 11:30pm, but I couldn’t sleep and there was a Romanian in action. Try as they might, Monica Niculescu and her Taiwanese partner were overpowered by the Russians, and they were dispatched without winning a game. They took their defeat extremely well.

I almost don’t want to watch the men’s final between Federer and Cilic, but I guess I’ll have to.

Life :) - Other sports - Tennis

Win, lose … or draw

July 10, 2017 by 0 Comments

Last month a team which, for marketing purposes, has “New Zealand” in its name, won some weird hybrid sailing–cycling event in Bermuda (!), part of which is called the Louis Vuitton (!) Cup. Undoubtedly millions of Kiwis took the marketing bait and got right into it, unable to take their eyes off every tack and gybe and pedal, even though very few of them could spell or pronounce Louis Vuitton.

Yesterday the Lions tour concluded. I didn’t watch that either but it seemed altogether more wholesome than the Battle of the Bermuda Triangle. Nobody deserved to lose and nobody did lose. How fantastic is that? I find it a little odd that so many people can’t accept draws in sport. In a timed sport, a draw is always a possibility, and I don’t see the problem with that. Why is it so vital to crown a winner by any means possible? Of course there are exceptions: in a knockout competition somebody has to be knocked out, and some sports are structured so that a draw is impossible, such as…

Ah yes, tennis. Isn’t it great to be watching Wimbledon again in the daytime and in summer? And filling in a drawsheet with all the winners and losers and (partial) scores. The men’s draw has been intriguing, the women’s fascinating, and while the commentary on Eurosport has been lightweight at best and simply awful at worst, it’s been great to see all these new players in action.

Dad had an exhibition last week; he’s had shows at that gallery since the mid-eighties, only the gallery is no longer in St Ives but somewhere out in the wops. He sold three paintings (out of thirty) on the night and has sold a fourth since then. I remember when there’d be three paintings unsold on the night. It ain’t like the old days. Dad was lucky to be born when he was. Without the opportunity to pursue his passion, I dread to think what might have become of him.

For me, work is frustratingly sporadic right now. In the height of summer, people’s minds are elsewhere.

Life :) - Romania - Tennis

They’re coming to stay

June 10, 2017 by 0 Comments

I’ve just spoken to Dad – he FaceTimed me from the library in St Ives. They’re due to arrive in Timișoara at 11pm tonight. I’ll get the bus out to the airport and meet them there. We’ll probably stick around the city until Wednesday and then hire a car. Nothing is planned but I think we’ll go south of here to Herculane and Orșova by the Danube, on the border with Serbia. I’m really looking forward to seeing both my parents and a slice of Romania.

Now that it’s well and truly summer, the city is buzzing. Yesterday the sights and sounds and smells of Piața Badea Cârțan – a large market – were almost too much to take in. I hope my parents enjoy it. Maybe we could even go to the theatre, or something similar that requires money that I don’t have but Mum and Dad do.

Simona Halep has – somehow – reached the final of the French Open. Obviously that’s quite a big deal here. She was almost dead and buried in her quarter-final with Svitolina where she made an improbable comeback from 3-6, 1-5, and saved a match point in the tie-break without even knowing it was match point. She didn’t exactly have it all her own way in her semi-final either, but she was the more consistent player. Ostapenko, who hits the ball as hard as the men or so I’ve heard, will be no pushover. I’d quite like to see the final but my TV has packed in (it’s always something). Hopefully I can find a bar that’s showing it.

Update:
Simona didn’t win, and she’ll probably never get a better chance. She led 6-4, 3-0, with a point for 4-0, but the scoreboard was the only place she was dominating. I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone play such a high-power, high-risk game as her opponent did today. Ostapenko finished the vast majority of points, either with a winner or an unforced error. Perhaps Simona needed to mix things up a bit as Hingis might have done; I really don’t know.

Photos - Tennis

Some tennis and some pics

June 6, 2017 by 0 Comments

Last night I played tennis with the language school guy who in actual fact no longer works for the language school. Instead he teaches privately as I do, while also working at Radio Timișoara as a sports news reader and commentator. On the bus I found him a bit rude and aggressive; he kept going on about what a shithole Timișoara is and how much he wants to leave the city, and perhaps even the country. We were being battered by a torrential storm, and I don’t think that helped. As we made our way from the bus stop to the indoor court we got soaked to the bone. Last time I beat him comfortably on the same (rather cramped) court, but this time I only scraped a draw, 3-6 7-5 from my perspective. In the early stages I struggled massively with my serve, and is often the case, the rest of my game unravelled. My return of serve is normally one of the strongest parts of my game, but I couldn’t believe how many returns I was ballooning over the baseline. At 3-6 0-2 I at last found some sort of form. I led 5-3 in the second set and I breathed a sigh of relief when I did eventually close the set out. A draw wasn’t great, but it felt so much better than a loss would have done. My opponent was much more consistent this time around, so perhaps I shouldn’t be too hard on myself. Among all the double faults I did manage three aces. Afterwards we had mici and a beer at Berăria 700 – there was live music even though the place was almost empty.

On Sunday night I spoke to my brother. He had some quite forthright comments to make about the latest in a line of terrorist attacks to hit the UK. He was in a good mood other than that; he’d just passed his test for an HGV licence. The UK election is coming up later this week. I’m fully expecting a handy Tory majority, but some way short of landslide territory. I get on pretty well with my brother, and it’s great that we’re now keeping in regular contact, but if he was standing for election in my electorate, I couldn’t vote for him. No bloody way.

Here are a whole bunch of recent-ish photos:

Matei’s £2000 question: Is it a marathon or a Matei?
Padel tennis: it’s a cross between tennis and squash
Mici and hamsii (anchovies)
Glued to their phones!
It’s quite a sight (and smell) to wander through the flower section of any large market in Romania.

Tennis

Weird end to the week (part 2)

May 30, 2017 by 0 Comments

I can breathe again. And for now, through both nostrils.

My tennis on Saturday was an event that the guy I met at the language school all those months ago got me involved in. It was run by the local branch of the Lions Club. I just wanted to hit a few tennis balls and maybe have a drink afterwards; I had no idea what I was getting myself into with this event and I was extremely nervous. It was in Dumbrăvița, not that far from where I teach that kid, but still far enough for me to be fairly clueless about the location. The language school guy and I caught the same bus, but when we got off, it was apparent that he didn’t know how to get to the courts from the bus stop any more than I did. He called some friends and we got there eventually after walking through paddocks with seemingly unowned dogs yapping away. He lent me a racket that he wanted to sell to me for 180 lei. I assumed he’d be my partner in what was a doubles competition between five teams, but for some reason I had a different partner, someone who was six-three, built like a rugby player, and (as it turned out) rather good at tennis. I hated every minute of it. I was double-faulting all over the place and could hardly keep the ball in play, while my partner walloped unreturnable serves and swatted away volleys. He was really tactile, high-fiving and who knows what else after practically every point, and man I hate that stuff. The combination of banter and competitiveness made me uncomfortable, and my dreadful play wasn’t helping. I really didn’t want to be there. Part of the problem is that unlike in Wellington, you have to be quite wealthy to play tennis here, and being wealthy in Romania seems to require a certain level of aggression which is certainly beyond mine.

The five teams played one-set matches against each other in a round-robin format. My partner was good enough to cover for my terrible play, and the first set was close throughout. Our opponents served for the set at 6-5 and had two set points; on the second of them they hit a ball from my partner on the full that would certainly have cleared the baseline. After that reprieve we reached a tie-break which we won 7-5. My play didn’t improve in the second set, but thanks to my partner we still won it, 6-3. At that point my partner decided to bugger off, and I just hung around, albeit on a beautiful sunny day, while the others played all the remaining matches that didn’t involve him (or me). He was gone for 80 minutes and I found it extraordinary that nobody had a problem with that. When he returned we won our third match 6-3. My language school friend then pointed out that the competition winners each received a racket, and suddenly the result of our fourth and final match mattered. I played a little better in that match which we won 6-0. We had some mici and schnitzel and castraveți and bread and beer, and then they presented the prizes. I found myself in possession of a brand new Babolat Power Drive racket. I hope I’ve got that name right. My partner’s wife was there; she also plays tennis and quite fancied having an identical racket to her husband. She offered to buy the racket off me. We looked online and saw it sold for around US$200. Crikey. I had absolutely no need for a racket that good. We agreed a price of 800 lei. She fished four 200-lei notes out of her car (is it normal here for people to carry that kind of money in their cars?) and handed them to me. Are these genuine? They seemed to be. I then gave my friend 180 lei for his racket. The event cost me 75 lei, so I profited to the tune of a second-hand racket and 545 lei. It was like I’d won Lotto. I plan to buy a bike with my unexpected windfall. Regardless of that outcome it was quite a nice day really and hope that if I’m still here for next year’s event I’ll be a lot more relaxed.

I’ve been putting flyers in people’s letterboxes all over the city. About a thousand so far. It’s quite a tiring job, but it looks like I do have one more student.

Yesterday would have been my grandmother’s (Dad’s mum’s) 95th birthday.

Language teaching - Life :) - Romania - Tennis

Hell’s bells

April 24, 2017 by 0 Comments

Today I watched the second day of Romania’s controversial Fed Cup encounter with Britain that was played on clay (a surface that favoured Romania) in Constanța. It was controversial because of Ilie Năstase’s stupid remarks that saw him expelled from the competition. The first day’s two singles matches had been split, so whoever won two of today’s three matches would win. Simona Halep easily beat Johanna Konta (whose service action is nearly as weird as mine) but then came a much more competitive match between Irina Begu and Heather Watson. Begu won 6-4 7-5 after an enthralling second set that must have taken 70 minutes. The doubles therefore didn’t matter, and because it didn’t matter it was decided on a super tie-break with the British pair winning. Romania’s overall win was the result I wanted, even though they were playing the country of my birth. Weird, isn’t it?

I’m looking forward to this week. I’ll be teaching the boy again. Friday’s back-to-back lessons reminded me of how much I enjoy my new job. After this I couldn’t possibly go back to jobs where I was so unstimulated and unmotivated that I’d end up pissing about on the internet and then feel terrible about that. I just need more of this. On Wednesday I had a lesson with the cycling enthusiast – we study a song every second lesson (well, study is going a bit far) and this time I chose Penny Lane, the second Beatles song I’ve chosen so far. Quite reasonably he wondered whether Penny Lane was a street, a person or perhaps a shop. I explained to him what a mac was, then I had to explain what a poppy was. Poppy just happens to be mac in Romanian. That was funny. As for “a four of fish and finger pies”, I couldn’t really help him. He astutely guessed that “a four of fish” and “finger pies” were two separate items.

If I can get enough work, and it’s a big if, I have no reason to leave Timișoara. (If I can’t, I guess I’ll eventually have no choice.) I’ve got used to the 396 daily strikes of the cathedral bells, the pigeons sitting (and shitting) on my window sills, the whiff of hot bread from the bakery down below, and the old men playing chess and cards (those cards with wheels and cups and things, not the ones I’m used to) in Central Park. Just in case you’re wondering why it’s 396, you get one dong at quarter past, two at half-past, three at quarter to, and four on the hour. Every hour, day and night. So that’s ten dongs an hour or 240 per day. Then on the hour you get one additional dong per hour (from a different bell to the one that strikes every 15 minutes), e.g. eight dongs at 8 o’clock. All the numbers from 1 to 12 add up to 78, and we need to double that for AM and PM, so that gets us to 156 additional hourly dongs. Add that to 240 and we have 396. But that’s not all! There are several services every day, each marked by a vigorous peal of bells. The first of these is at 7am.

In about an hour and a half we’ll get preliminary results from the first round of the very intriguing French election.

Language teaching - Romania - Tennis

Delayed delivery

January 24, 2017 by 0 Comments

I wrote this on Saturday morning but didn’t have any way of posting it. I’m now back in business internet-wise, and not before time: I’ve got a Skype lesson later this evening. Losing my internet access, and potentially my ability to work, put a damper on my weekend.

Good news: I’ve got some more students, including a woman currently living in Austria who wants six hours of Skype lessons per week. Bad news: I no longer have an internet connection in my apartment, so those Skype lessons will be a bit tricky to arrange.

I gave my first Skype lesson on Friday, scheduled for two hours. We covered grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation, and she wasn’t at all shy when it came to asking questions. It was intense, it was fun. Or at least it was until my computer crashed ten minutes before our scheduled end.

One of my students is some sort of IT guru and he managed to get my wi-fi connected on Wednesday night. It took him about 15 minutes of fiddling around with the DOS screen and who knows what else – it was all far beyond me. I offered to give him the lesson for free but he declined. Having wi-fi meant I was able to FaceTime my parents and my brother. But I think some settings changed when my computer crashed on Friday, and although I still had a connection for a few hours afterwards, now I can’t even connect with the cable. I don’t think having Windows 10 is helping. I’m only guessing though. I spent hours yesterday searching on my phone for some kind of solution and playing around with settings, not knowing what any of them really meant. And of course I turned various devices on and off again many, many times. Why can’t these concepts be explained in a way that mere mortals like me can understand?

I think the root of the problem is this laptop which was a cast-off from my parents and is too weak and flimsy to handle intensive processes like Skype. It takes several minutes just to start it up. If I’m serious about teaching, I can’t be making do with second-rate technology. My phone works fine and has been immensely helpful, but its screen is too small and its runs on a version of iOS that’s too old for many apps. The next time I’m back in the UK, I might spend some of the money I have over there. It’s not much use anywhere else.

Thankfully I can run Words with Friends on my phone, albeit the old version that doesn’t tell you handy stuff like how many of each tile is left in the bag. I’m now leading my cousin 12-7. In our latest game, she raced into a huge lead with FROZE which scored 115, the highest score in any of our games so far. She maintained a three-figure lead for most of the game as I drew badly, but at the end I found SiLLIEST, a 101-point bingo (it’s not often a word like that will play at such a late stage) to put a dent in her winning margin. In the end I lost 453-420, scoring 400 in a losing cause for the second time. In a recent game on a frustratingly closed board I held a large lead, but my cousin could have bingoed out for over 100 with OXIDISE, if only there was somewhere to play it.

I have the equivalent of Sky on my TV, and it’s remarkably cheap. Years ago I would have been glued to the Australian Open. I’ve watched a bit of it certainly, but tennis, or any sport really, isn’t as important to me as it once was. The tournament has certainly had its moments, mainly on the men’s side with Djokovic’s shock defeat to Denis Istomin, Kyrgios’s meltdown, and that extremely long fifth set involving Karlovic. (Advantage final sets are dying, with both the Olympics and Davis Cup now using tie-breaks in the final set. How much longer before scores of 8-6, 9-7 and beyond are sadly killed off for good?) The best part about watching the tennis for me is the Romanian commentary.

I think my time in Romania will be a marathon, not a sprint, and I don’t feel I’ve even crossed the start line yet.

Romania - Tennis

This really is my new home

December 22, 2016 by 1 Comment

I’ve finally found a place to live. What a relief. It’s on the corner of Piața Victoriei, right next to the city hall and with a close-up view of the Orthodox Cathedral, probably Timișoara’s most recognisable landmark. It’s a dream location, perfect for teaching and, well, everything. The apartment is on the third floor of a massive eight-storey block; it measures 50 square metres. I’ve been given a six-month contract (which is perfect at this stage) starting on 1st January. Finding a student who happened to work for a real estate agency was an enormous stroke of luck for me, and she only contacted me for lessons because one of her friends had posted a picture of my Donald Trump ad on Facebook. Yesterday I visited the agency to sign the contract and pay one month’s rent as a deposit, plus a commission of 60% of the monthly rent plus 20% VAT. I had to hand over seemingly acres of lei – the equivalent of 516 euros or about NZ$800. The landlord was there, well not the landlord actually because he’s in Israel but his go-between, and she seemed very approachable. Every month I’ll need to physically give her the rent in euros. W-wha-huh? Poftim? You won’t accept Romanian currency? This is like being in the UK and insisting on rent payments in US dollars. Are there any cash machines in Timișoara that spit out euros? The agent said that there are indeed one or two, but I’ll probably need to change lei at a bank or any of the possibly dodgy kiosks you see on just about every street corner. And yes, I will lose money every time I do this. She talked as if it was the most natural thing ever, just like Americans talk about their electoral system, or Brits talk about carpeting their bathrooms. I think it’s bloody stupid.

This morning, having at last found an apartment after a frustrating two or three weeks, I went to the immigration office expecting no end of complications. The office was staffed by a man, probably in his late forties, who could hardly speak a word of English. (Isn’t that wonderful? When you order a kebab, you’re bombarded with bloody English, because getting the spicy sauce instead of the sweet sauce would be a calamity.) The young woman in front of me was from Turkey which is outside the EU; she could speak English but not Romanian, and she was struggling to communicate with the man in the window. An English speaker was eventually located. Both he and the bloke in the window were being rather dickish to this young lady, and I wondered what sort of person sets him or herself the daily goal of being as much of an arsehole as possible, because there seem to be a lot of that sort of person all over the world. Then it came to my turn. I was told to get copies of my various documents made, which I did. I went back to the office with the photocopies, the window man took my photo, he said gata (“ready”), and I should be able to collect my registration certificate at 9am tomorrow. Great! I got treated very differently from the Turkish lady simply because I’m an EU citizen. What a difference Brexit will make.

My New Zealand credit card statements now get sent to my parents. Mum phoned me last night to inform me of a surprise whopping $580 charge. It had escaped my notice. I usually don’t notice until I pay the bill, automatically in full at the end of each month, and anyway I’ve hardly used my card since I moved to Romania. The bill was for the renewed hosting of this website and another one I have. It renewed automatically at a vastly increased price from the original (the bastards). I should be able to recover most of that money by cancelling the service but I don’t want Plutoman to be exterminated in the process.

I played tennis (singles) on Sunday on the same hard indoor court that I played on two weeks earlier. I won easily, 6-2 6-0 6-1. I hit a purple patch in the middle of the match where I made very few unforced errors. But for winning a very long game (seven deuces?) at 1-1 in the first set, things might have turned out differently. The court doubles as a basketball court and the hoops are in the way of where you’d normally serve in singles. You had no choice but to take a wider stance.

On Saturday I went to a flea market which was off a main street, many of the signs for which used the old, pre-nineties spelling. It was lined with pre-nineties apartment blocks. The temperature was minus something at midday. I got a coffee from a bar, because it could see it had a toilet. Most people in the bar were drinking something stronger. For only NZ$20 I could have had my stomach pumped. The market was full of second-hand clothes, including ski jackets of every crazy colour combination imaginable that I really, really wanted as a kid because I thought they were so cool. The market and that whole area of town was a time warp.

I love it here in Timișoara. I’ll love it more when it warms up again. I love the rawness of it all. I love that it’s given me the opportunity to be myself and completely change my life. I love that not everybody loves it, or even knows about it. I love that I’ll be able to travel. I love that I can play tennis on clay (maybe I’ll master the slide one day). And I love that I’ll be here until the middle of next year at least.

Life :) - Romania - Tennis

Back on court (and it’s clay this time!)

December 5, 2016 by 0 Comments

I’ve just heard about John Key’s shock resignation. I didn’t see that coming. For a third-term prime minister he was (is?) extremely popular. Throughout his eight years as PM he has benefited enormously from a weak opposition and a succession of uninspiring opposition leaders. They’ve enabled him to get away with being, at times, fairly weak himself. The Auckland housing crisis, the hundreds of thousands of children in poverty and an aging population are all major issues that he and his government have failed to tackle head-on. He could have handled the Christchurch earthquakes better and the Pike River disaster much better. It frustrated me how many people were taken in by his “common man” persona when in reality he was anything but. Some people on the left of politics really can’t stand the man but I wouldn’t put myself in that category. He’s presided over a prosperous country, largely safe and free of corruption (more on that in a minute). Good on him for making the move. I wonder how his exit will shape the political landscape in 2017. The global political environment being as it is, it’s hard to imagine Winston Peters not making significant gains. And who will take over as PM? Perhaps Bill English, who I’ve always had time for. If it’s Judith Collins I’m definitely staying in Romania.

I had a reasonably active weekend. I managed to play 6½ sets of tennis, all involving the guy from the language school who I seem to have made a connection with. On Saturday I played on clay for the very first time. The Romanian word for clay is zgură, one of those amazing words they have that begin with ‘z’ followed immediately by a consonant. The courts were in an indoor centre in the east of the city. The surface took some getting used to, but I think I liked the clay. We started a game. He struggled a bit with his serve in practice so when he won the toss he put me into bat. I lost the first point and as I called out the score, zero cinșpe, I thought, wow, I’m calling out the score in Romanian, this is awesome. My serve had been fine in the warm-up but eluded me in actual play and I served two double faults to drop the first game. I broke back but in my next service game I double-faulted three times. Un coșmar, a nightmare, I said. (I knew coșmar because it’s a word they’ve pinched from French: cauchemar.) Despite being massively handicapped by my serve I clambered out of a 15-40 hole to win that game, and grew in confidence from there. My serve improved, my defensive game was solid, and I took out the first set 6-1. I then won the second by the same score. I was ready to go home but, unbeknown to me, we’d booked the courts for two hours. I was getting tired. I fell behind 3-0 in the third set (sensing my tiredness he played some judicious drop shots), I drew level at 3-3, and then the clock ran out on us.

Yesterday it was time for doubles, this time on a hard indoor court in some university complex. The court was cramped to say the least: only about seven feet separated the baseline and the wall, there was a similar distance between the sideline and the wall, and even the ceiling made a high lob an impossible shot. I played with the language school guy. From what I could tell, our opponents worked for Radio Timișoara, or at least one of them did. My partner was quite competitive. He would never shut up, and it was hard to know what he was saying, in Romanian or English, in such an echoic building. He loved high-fives and other tactile gestures, all the stuff that drives me mad. We played four sets in all, losing three to one, 6-3, 7-6 (7-1), 4-6, 6-2. In the fourth set we appeared to have some momentum as we led 2-0 with a point for 3-0, but we just ran out of steam.

The score of the matches was, frankly, the least important part. The real purpose for me was meeting people and speaking some Romanian. All those hours I spent thirty-odd years ago hitting against a wall or playing in the (very cramped) back yard with my parents are still paying dividends now. After the doubles match three of us went for some beers in a nearby bar (outside, where it was about 4 degrees). Our remaining opponent had taken his car. I mentioned Romania’s zero-tolerance drink-drive policy. My partner said, yes, but he’s got connections in the police. I wanted to say corupția ucide or corruption kills, but thought better of it. I think if our opponent had drunk a lot rather than just two beers he still might have been in trouble with the law but who knows? Corruption is rife in Romania, no question, and when incompetent people are given positions of responsibility because of who they know, and when backhanders allow people to jump the medical queue ahead of more deserving people, then yes, it does kill. My only question is whether the situation in America, where they’ve elected a totally incompetent billionaire to be president, is any better.

I really need to find an apartment and a few more students.

Language teaching - Life :) - Romania - Tennis

A great opportunity

November 21, 2016 by 0 Comments

In Romania, anything UK or English language-related is incomplete without a picture of Big Ben. My Romanian–English dictionary has one. My packet of Earl Grey tea has one. Any self-respecting English teaching advert clearly needs to incorporate one. So I found a picture of Big Ben, showing one o’clock as it happens, and added the slogan “Now’s the Time” at the top. Then I wrote some blurb in English that sort of implied that I’ve been teaching for ages. I said I was after intermediate and advanced students (not that I have anything against beginner students; it’s just that they’d probably be better off with a Romanian teacher until I can get my Romanian up to speed). I found a cheap photocopy shop, printed off forty copies with those tear-off strips of paper at the bottom, and started sellotaping them to bits of Timișoara. This morning I was in the middle of putting up an ad (the 25th? 30th?) when my phone rang. It was an older bloke. I asked him what his current level of English was. He said he didn’t speak any English at all. And he wants a lesson tomorrow at 11am. Oh shit! I really will have to wing it tomorrow, won’t I? Actually I’m not thinking ‘oh shit’ at all. I’m thinking this is a wonderful opportunity. A dream come true almost. But yes, teaching somebody English from scratch will be a challenge. It’ll help me improve my Romanian if nothing else. (I know, technically Big Ben is the large bell, not the tower or any of the four clocks.) One concern I do have is about security. Putting ads up everywhere screaming that I’m from the UK does make me a bit of a target. I’m not in Wellington. I’m not in St Ives. I’ll have to be careful.

When I got off the phone this morning I thought, how cool is this? This is fun, this is exciting, and if I could get a few more takers… Man, this is what I dream about. Being my own boss, helping people, roaming around town, getting my lunch from market stalls, and at weekends taking a train to Belgrade or Budapest or Békéscsaba or wherever takes my fancy. Freedom, dammit! Freedom from having to play a role, which is always so exhausting for me. I’m a long way from achieving that freedom, but I might yet manage it. There aren’t many native English speakers in Timișoara, and for the most part they aren’t as crazy as me: they had jobs to go to when they came here. So I might not have a whole lot of competition. One thing’s for sure: I love this city and have no intention of leaving any time soon. I still have some things to sort out with immigration to ensure I don’t have to.

I see that New Zealand has its own version of Donald Trump. He goes by the name of Brian Tamaki. Two years ago he was the subject of an argument I had with my flatmate, who said he was an upstanding citizen who does a lot of good in the community, or something to that effect. I said he should be in jail.

I’ve had one eye on the final of the tennis from London. Andy Murray has just beaten Novak Djokovic in two sets, a well-deserved victory in what was a shoot-out for the year-end number one spot. Yesterday Murray played a remarkable match against Milos Raonic, winning 11-9 in the third-set tie-break. He’s had a fantastic second half of the season, winning Wimbledon and Olympic gold. Murray always impresses me in his interviews with his appreciation for the game and his recall of matches. In a way that shouldn’t impress me – tennis is, like, his job – but some players are pretty hazy when it comes to the finer points. I was supposed to be playing tennis today, not just watching it, but that might have to wait.

A train crash in India has killed 120 people. I read that almost 15,000 people die in Indian train accidents each year.