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Family - Language teaching - Maths teaching - Scrabble

Bingo!

October 20, 2026 by 0 Comments

I’ve had a cold for the last few days, and though I’m still struggling, I made it to the swimming pool this morning.

Yesterday I called Mum and Dad from Buziaș, among the rich autumn colours. So they’re coming to the UK in 2027. They’ve already booked their tickets. They’ll be staying for absolutely ages, from sometime in May until mid-August. That’s even longer than this year, which they said was too long. Maybe they feel it’ll be their last trip over. I’d planned to go to New Zealand in August, to get out of the heat for one thing, but I can nix that idea now, unless I go in late August and into September (after school starts, which will mean missing out on work). It would have been cool if they (or Mum, let’s be honest) had run it past me first before committing, but hey, Mum would have booked the cheapest option regardless of how it affected anyone else. They’re flying direct to the UK – a silly idea – although at least they’re having a stopover on the way back. Whatever happens, there’s no way I’ll be staying in Timișoara all of next summer. The heat just messes me up too much.

Update: As I write this, two cars have collided in the car park.

There’s no further news about the sale of Mum and Dad’s flat in St Ives. There are still legal hurdles to be overcome that I don’t understand. My brother told them that he doesn’t want to hear about the flat anymore. They “drone on about it for half an hour”, as he put it. As I don’t have kids, I suppose I have more “bandwidth” for this stuff than he does, and more sympathy. Nobody should be dealing with this in their late 70s. It keeps them up at night.

I’ve had a bit more success with the nine-year-old girl from Thailand. It’s no wonder she’s struggling. She’s had no continuity whatsoever. She moved to India at age five, then to Romania at eight. Though her spoken English is good, her go-to language is Thai. Then at school her classmates will mostly be speaking Romanian. When I saw her on Friday she cut up rough as soon as I arrived. But then she calmed down and she did far better than I expected when it came to adding numbers. As for English, her teacher seems to have figured out that comprehension exercises are beyond her. Her latest worksheet just tested sh- and ch- words. One of the words was ship. I asked her what it meant, just to be sure. Something you find on a farm. I see. I’ve got another session with her later today. She’ll be the last of three young girls, one after the other.

Good luck with number 3

On the way to Buziaș yesterday I stopped briefly at the village of Chevereșu Mare. There was a woolly ram, stock-still, next to someone’s fence whose colour it matched perfectly. This thing wasn’t moving and I seriously thought for a minute that it was a new sculpture. Then it budged.

At the weekend I watched a rather depressing, but very well made, 2009 documentary from Canada about serious bingo players. I wonder how it was recommended to me. Years ago I made a variety of bingo games which I still play with my students to improve their vocabulary (they have pictures rather than numbers), and “bingo” is a term in Scrabble for when you use all seven tiles in one turn, so maybe the algorithm picked up somehow that the word “bingo” features quite prominently in my life. I didn’t even know serious bingo was a thing, but it absolutely is. I was shocked by how joyless the experience was for these people. For a start it’s different from British-style bingo that you might get at slightly seedy seaside resorts where the numbers go from 1 to 90, many of which have special “calls” like “two fat ladies” for 88 or “unlucky for some” for 13. In this version the numbers only went up to 75 and any vestige of comedy was gone. There was so much denial, as expected, from these gamblers about how much they were losing. Saddest of all was the lady of about 90 who won $700 one time, and happily proclaimed that she’d spend it on bingo.

I finished the Scrabble league with seven wins and seven losses. That surpassed my expectations; I didn’t draw fantastically and I faced some strong opponents. I’ve signed up for the next round, where I’ll be in the same division.

Autism - Family - Language teaching - Maths teaching - Scrabble

Nine going on five, and autism, the latest culture war

October 13, 2026 by 0 Comments

Earlier today I had a proper headache. It wasn’t as bad as the ones I had in the spring, but it slowed me down nonetheless. While I was in pain, I was also yawning. Luckily it only lasted three hours or so.

I’ve just finished a lesson with a nine-year-old girl. A waste of time, basically, but her mother insists. She didn’t want to be there, and that’s hardly her fault. On Saturday I had my third lesson with the other nine-year-old girl, the one who speaks good English but is only semi-literate. I talked to Mum about her yesterday. She gave me some advice: to focus on three-letter CVC words, then move on to consonant blends. It can be handy having an ex-primary school teacher as a parent, and she’s absolutely right. The problem is that she gets homework designed for age nine, not five, and her parents expect me to help her with that, which actively gets in the way of her learning. Then there’s maths. She’s years behind there too. In the recent test in which she literally got no marks at all, her teacher wrote nothing on the paper except a scrawled “0/15”. When I asked her if I could take a picture, she agreed.

This was the first question on the test:


Unlike most of the other questions where she at least wrote (or drew!) something, she made no attempt at this one. And I’m not surprised. There are three tasks you have to fulfil here. First, read and understand the question. I doubt she could have done that. Second, realise that you need to put the 1 first, then the 3, and so on, to make the smallest possible five-digit number that uses all the digits. Third, you have to put that number in words. That means knowing how we express that kind of number as well as being able to write thirteen and hundred and thousand and stuff like that. Two of those three tasks aren’t even maths, they’re English! She would have had no hope. Then you add in the fact that she doesn’t like maths and (so far) lacks the maturity to understand that you sometimes have to do things you don’t like, and the overall picture isn’t pretty.

After Saturday’s lessons I picked up Dorothy and we drove to Buzad which is just over an hour away, so she could bring a load of apples and pears back to Timișoara. When she asked me (in a message) if I could do this, I cursed. After my lessons I just wanted to get home and not have to see anyone. But actually it was nice chatting in the car – the time went by quickly – and the palette of autumn colours (and some trees hadn’t turned yet) was beautiful. Plus it was good to go back to the village. I hadn’t enjoyed the previous two times – once it was far too hot, while the other time I felt like crap. When we were back in Timișoara we got pizzas from the place next door. They had Italian music playing and even – slightly weirdly – told us in Italian how much we needed to pay. Ottanta.

This morning I read something about overdiagnosis of autism and ADHD. There was a lot to unpack. I totally agree that children are being overmedicated for these conditions to a dangerous level, especially in the US. I also agree that if one in five kids (or whatever the latest figure is) in the UK now has an official diagnosis of autism, ADHD or some other learning or behavioural difficulty that entitles them to a learning assistant at school and/or some form of disability benefit, that’s financially unsustainable. Parents are increasingly keen for their children to get a diagnosis just so they can receive these benefits. But on the flip side (and I can only really talk about autism here – I certainly don’t have ADHD), being even mildly autistic makes so many aspects of life so much harder that having some form of support is pretty damn useful. Labels are largely unnecessary, and there don’t need to be cash handouts except in severe cases, but a support group or someone to bounce ideas off is extremely valuable. Apart from a little bit in Auckland and Wellington when I was already 30-plus, I missed out on all of that – I’ve never had a diagnosis – so I’ve had to navigate life on my own. Very much on my own. My coping mechanism has so often been to retreat from people, to avoid embarrassment or exhaustion, and I’ve failed to form relationships as a result. Wouldn’t it have been nice to have had someone to help me find an alternative? In the face of overdiagnosis and overmedication, a new culture war has emerged. In the eyes of many, if you’re autistic, deal with it. No excuses. Can’t manage job interviews. Tough. That’s your own fault. Let’s all go back to 1976. Or better, 1876. The Victorians had it right. One thing that really hasn’t helped is the removal of Asperger’s as a condition when the fifth edition of the DSM – an American publication – came out in 2013. The distinction between autistic people who can’t feed or clothe themselves (unlike me) and those who struggle with open-plan offices (like me) was very helpful. What I don’t understand is why the rest of the Western world had to follow what the Americans did. As is the case so often, fuck ’em. Seriously.

In other news, the sale of my parents’ flat in St Ives still hasn’t gone through. There’s some hold-up involving the buyers’ solicitors. Dad said in an email that he still fears the nightmare scenario of the sale falling through entirely, almost a year after their tenants said they wanted to buy.

Scrabble. I rejoined the league last Thursday. They put me in the sixth division out of 14. According to the analysis I’ve been playing well. Whether that will be good enough to save me from relegation remains to be seen.

Family - Language teaching - Maths teaching - Scrabble

The three Rs

October 5, 2026 by 0 Comments

Pretty light on the news front. Yesterday I had four lessons, all in Dumbrăvița. Since then I’ve been thinking what the heck I should do with that nine-year-old girl from Thailand. Her Thai mum met a German guy in … I can’t remember where, and a year ago they moved to Romania for his work. He must earn pretty well because she goes to the super-expensive British school. They’re away from the sprawling estate of Dumbrăvița and they have a good section, with apple and plum trees and three chickens. They used to have a rooster too, but they got rid of it after the neighbours complained at the noise. Anyway, this girl. She speaks perfectly decent English, but she’s only semi-literate at best. And semi-numerate too. She got zero out of 15 in a recent maths test and didn’t even understand that she’d got zero. I think her parents would like me to attack her maths too. She clearly getting very little help from her teacher despite the vast expense.

Today I drove to Buziaș. It’s nice and relaxing there. It might have been better if I’d gone in a couple of weeks – the leaves will be falling off the trees then – though I could always go back. My brother called me while I was there. I turned the camera around and showed him the fountain and bandstand and covered walkway, but he seemed unimpressed. He wanted to know where the people were. I said that it was Sunday morning and a lot of them would have been at church, but really it would have been quiet no matter the time of day or week. A few people walking their dogs and the occasional squirrel. That’s why if I left Romania I’d have a hard time going back to England. It’s so hard to escape people there. My brother showed me both the kids. My niece is changing rapidly. My brother tested his son’s maths. What’s two plus two? Four, he proudly said. I then asked my nephew what four plus four was. He didn’t know, but he did know five plus five. He’s getting pretty good with his science now, my brother said.

I played four games of Scrabble today. I won the first three, extending my winning streak to six, thanks to some really lucky draws. But in the last game things just didn’t happen for me. I can have no complaints. I might rejoin the league again this week after a six-week absence.

Back to the swimming pool tomorrow.

Family - Language teaching - Music - Politics

There isn’t much of her

October 3, 2026 by 0 Comments

As I’m about to reach the ten-year mark in Romania, I thought it would be an idea to write a series of posts about how things work (and sometimes don’t) in the country I’ve called home for the last decade. So that’s coming up.

Last night I called Mum and Dad. (New Zealand’s recent move to summer time has made calling them that little bit easier.) They’re already thinking about a potential trip to Europe next year. I told them to consider Turkish Airlines. There’s now a flight from Istanbul to Timișoara that didn’t exist when I flew Turkish three years ago. Mum, as usual, made a trip to the loo in the middle of our conversation. Things aren’t too flash down there. Then this morning I called my aunt and uncle. My uncle, who celebrated his 85th birthday last weekend, doesn’t say a lot these days. My aunt seemed concerned about Mum. “There isn’t much of her.” She thinks Mum has lost even more weight.

Andy Burnham made a rousing speech at the Labour conference on Tuesday. When I heard about it I decided to watch the recording in its entirety. Yes, it was excellent. A total departure from the “our party is great, our opponents are crap” stuff you normally get. For once, someone has recognised that the country has been on the wrong track for bloody ages and things need to change. His desire to reform the UK electoral system (wouldn’t that be great?) and totally overhaul the disastrous care home “system” (which currently takes away old people’s home and savings) stood out for me. Whether the government can actually achieve any of this, even with a big majority, is another matter – Britain’s politicians have a lot less agency over what happens to the country than they used to.

I’ve just been for my fourth swim of the week. The guy with the Ironman Tallinn backpack wasn’t there today. (He does the four strokes including butterfly – the full medley – at almost twice the speed I go at.) It hasn’t been a bad week for exercise. On Wednesday, for instance, I made several bike trips – to my lessons, to the produce market, and to the pool.

I recently discovered a YouTube channel called Past Tense of Banana. Not a bad name. It’s run by a man in his sixties from the north-east of England. This guy has a ton of subscribers. His thing is correcting videos (often on TikTok, which I’ve never used) made my English teachers. This is wrong, that is wrong, the next thing is wrong. That’s fine in principle, especially as there’s a lot of shady stuff out there, but I simply don’t agree with quite a few of his overconfident “corrections” and explanations. In one instance he says you have to say “there is a large number of stars in the sky” rather than “there are a large number…” because the verb has to agree with the (singular) noun “number”. Sorry mate, but that just isn’t how language works.

Kitty has turned into a proper furry friend. I look back at what she was like at the start. Unused to me and this flat, she verged on being positively evil. She has completely changed. It’s rather lovely to have her sitting on my lap as I watch a TV show. Lately that has meant episodes of Black Mirror. My favourite episode, called Loch Henry, was set on a remote Scottish island. It included this great song by Melanie Safka, who was known at the time (1971) as just Melanie. She died in 2024.

Family - Films - Language teaching - Life :) - Other sports - Scrabble - Tennis

Statins

September 27, 2026 by 0 Comments

So I saw my doctor on Tuesday. He went through my blood test results. Everything was fine until he came to the dreaded cholesterol. “This isn’t your fault,” he said to me, in English, as if he really wanted to get the point across. It’s simple genetics, he said. He told me to eat less dairy (I do eat too much of the stuff, I know), no more than three eggs a week (I’ve been averaging close to one a day), and pork no more than once a week. But at the end of the day, he said, I could eat a perfect diet and my cholesterol would still be too high. So as I rather suspected, there was only one thing for it. Statins. These can have knock-on effects on your liver function, so I’ve also started taking something for my liver too. That’s likely to be my future: taking some drug, then another drug to counteract the effect of that drug, and so on, to the point where I’ll no longer know what’s what. I’ll get my cholesterol tested again in six months’ time, to see if the statins are doing what they should.

I’ve just been catching up with the family. I had a good chat with my cousin in Wellington – we hadn’t been in touch for a while – then called Mum and Dad. They had Mum’s younger brother (who lives in Palmerston North) staying. He was down for my older uncle’s 85th birthday party. It was the first proper family get-together for several years. Everyone seemed to have a really nice time. They’ve had an unusually late dumping of snow there; the skiers will be making the most of it.

I had another new student (or pupil I suppose) yesterday, a nine-year-old girl who goes to the British school. She was born in Thailand. Though she speaks good English, she’s two or three years behind with her reading and writing. She also finds it hard to follow instructions. She does know the alphabet which is a help, but on the evidence of yesterday I’ll have my work cut out.

I’ve watched two more old Wimbledon matches, both involving Pete Sampras. And both involving Pete Sampras losing, which he did very little of at Wimbledon. I was never a fan of his. He was extraordinarily effective, to the point of monotony. In fact, some of the big matches involving Sampras bordered on sleep-inducing, especially if his opponent was another big server like Goran Ivanisevic. Their final in 1994 was almost unwatchable. Sampras’s match with Federer in 2001 though was an absolute classic grass-court battle that was in the balance right until the end. It wasn’t a massive shock that Federer won – by this stage everyone knew that he was the real deal. It brought back happy memories for me, because Mum and I went to see the men’s semi-finals a few days later. The other match was from the following year: Sampras’s five-set loss to George Bastl, whom nobody had heard of. This was a shock. It was played on the old Court Two, which was traditionally a graveyard of the top seeds. Sampras sat in his chair for several minutes afterwards, perhaps realising that he’d never play at Wimbledon again. And he didn’t. But wouldn’t you know it, a couple of months later he went and won the US Open, beating Andre Agassi in the final. I think that was his last competitive match.

These days, the top end of English football is disgusting and I can’t bring myself to follow it. But Man City. Damn. Throw the book at them. No pointless fine (well, you can do that too if you want), but relegate the bastards several divisions and take their trophies off them. Harsh on their fans from decades back, when they were a real club rather than the fake Abu Dhabi-owned pile of plastic they’ve become, but that’s life.

Last night I watched an episode of Black Mirror entitled Demon 79. It was set in northern England in (as the title suggests) 1979. For the first half of the episode I thought, this is a bit silly but not quite bad enough to stop watching, especially as I got to listen to all that great music from ’79 and see all the old cars and so on. But then it really picked up and I couldn’t tell which way the ending would go. Well worth watching.

I realise I haven’t mentioned Scrabble for a while. I gave up the league play over a month ago. The league, and the damn chat that you couldn’t turn off, were dominated by strong regular tournament players. Even though I generally gave a good account of myself, there was little to encourage outsiders like me. I felt I didn’t belong. I might jump back in soon for one round and see how it goes. I’ve still been playing on ISC, the much older site. Last night I played six games, winning four. In one game I exchanged tiles on both my first two moves, and once again later in the game. Suffice to say I didn’t win that one. In my other loss, my final rack was RRAEIU plus a blank. There was an open L on the board. A bingo would have won me the game. Unusually for me, I had plenty of time on my clock. I was mostly looking at the -IER ending as that looked the most promising, but I just couldn’t see anything. It turned out I had five valid winning plays: RURALIsE, RURALIzE, RURALItE, REbURIAL and gLAURIER. So there was an -IER word after all, but I didn’t know it. I’m still battling with the short words. Learning the fours – there are 5662 of them – is a monumental task for me. I’m a lot better now than when I started my assault on the fours in early June, but despite my best efforts (I test myself every day) a lot of them are still a giant mush in my brain. The problem is that they are so similar to each other and also very similar to thousands of plausible non-words.

Family - Language teaching - Life :)

Clogging up as I write…

September 14, 2026 by 0 Comments

On Thursday I got my blood test results back, and apparently I’ve got cholesterol out the wazoo. My LDL level in particular is scarily high. It should ideally be under 100. According to the piece of paper, levels above that are divided into gradations of badness – up to 130, then 160, then 190. Anything above that is deemed very high risk. My LDL is 202. My total cholesterol is 275. In New Zealand and the UK they use a different scale, and my reading is equivalent to 7.1. When I worked in life insurance, we got blood tests thrown in. Cholesterol was what got everyone’s attention. In 2005 my figure of 5.5 (I still remember it) was the second-highest in the office and raised some eyebrows. The only person with a higher reading was the guy I sat next to – he was roughly the age I am now – who farted all the time. My latest figure blows that number out of the water. So what do I do now? It’s tough, because I eat a pretty healthy diet. Plenty of fruit and vegetables. Extremely little of what they now call ultra-processed foods. Not a lot of sugar. I do however eat a fair bit of dairy, so should I cut that out entirely? Naturally I’ve been searching for information and watching YouTube videos, such as this one that explains that not all LDL is created equal and I really need a more comprehensive test which I may or may not be able to get in Romania. I also played around with a UK site where you plug in your personal data and your risk of heart disease pops out. It said that because I’m not overweight, I don’t smoke and my blood pressure is normal, my risk is only just above the national average.

I got the blood test if there was something causing all the fatigue, and instead I found something else. A big something else. I’ve actually been feeling better of late. There’s still the weird back pain, but things have been normal apart from that. Having enough energy to go swimming four times last week means I can’t be that bad. Because it’s a properly laned competition-style pool, I’m forced to do lengths, when it would be nice to just sort of paddle around. On Friday the guy in the lane next to me was probably going at twice my speed. He used the stopwatch on his smart watch and even keyed numbers into the calculator on his phone which he left at the side of the pool. I’m not much better than the dog I saw swimming in the Bega today as I sat by the river and read my book. It’s very pleasant all of a sudden to do that, now that the temperature has dropped. It feels great to want to be in the sun.

I still have the odd night of badly interrupted sleep. Thursday night was pretty dreadful. I made it to the pool the next morning, but things were a struggle. I was glad to have a long break between lessons. A big gap until 5:30. But then a message appeared on my phone. You’re coming at 4:30, right? Oh god, it’s the mother of that new boy I’d agreed to teach. I’d completely forgotten, probably because when I said yes I was feeling terrible. Damn damn damn. The lesson would take one hour, but I wouldn’t be able to get to my other lessons (with the brother and sister) on time. I contacted their mother and was apologetic. She said it would be OK to start a bit later. The new boy’s place was practically impossible to find. His mum had said number 5 of such-and-such street, and I’d envisaged a detached house. Instead there were endless modern tower blocks with either no numbers or multiple numbers and names. I didn’t have a clue. I called the mother. Where are you? How do I even explain? I’m next to a cream-and-red block and just opposite a brown-and-white one, on the corner of a bigger road and a smaller one. There’s also something called “The Ring”. In English. There’s no other information. “Imagine actually living here,” I then blurted out. I wasn’t joking. Even though I live in a block myself, living something like that would be a mental-health disaster for me. Luckily, because she lived on the eighth (top) floor, she spotted me even though I was nowhere near her block. She said the whole area – estate I suppose – was completed in 2018. So when I moved to Timișoara it didn’t exist, or maybe it was a building site. (I read recently that the first wave of communist blocks in Russia each took just twelve days to build.) It was clinically modern inside the flat, with the obligatory Nespresso machine. (My book has just mentioned Nespresso machines. I remember when I lived in Wellington, there was a Nespresso store on my drive home from work. One time we got stuck in traffic outside it. We could see all the coloured pods or capsules or whatever inside. My carpool mate and I agreed that it was vile.) The lesson was fine. The boy seemed really nice, as did his mother. He was a big football fan. I gave him an “About Me” sheet where he had to write about (or draw) the things he liked and give very basic information about himself. In the “age” box, he wrote 8:30. Half-past eight. It had a certain logic to it, I suppose.

Mum and Dad have just got back from Moeraki – it was their first trip down there since early May. I told them about my cholesterol. We also discussed my potential return to New Zealand. Last weekend my brother said I should consider going back to the UK instead. “It’s not all bad,” he said. I never said it was. I just don’t think I could handle the sheer volume of people anymore. With Google Maps you can home in on places pretty much at random, and a few days ago the little peg man happened to alight on Tobermory on the Isle of Mull. Looks idyllic. A kids’ TV programme was filmed there in the noughties, taking advantage of all the colourful buildings on the seafront. Hmmm, how much would a house be? I’d be pretty damn isolated somewhere like that, but if I ever did go back to the UK to live (extremely unlikely – I hardly know anyone there now) it would need to be well outside the M25.

Family - Life :)

Where I’m at right now

September 4, 2026 by 0 Comments

Things are still pretty crappy. Burning sensation in the right side of my back. Numbness in my limbs. And tiredness. So much fatigue. I find myself exhaling deeply when I do even moderate exercise. And then there’s the brain fog. Everything becomes a huge effort. It goes in cycles though, from close to normal all the way down to getting by at only the most basic level, and back again.

I saw the after-hours doctor earlier this evening and told him my symptoms. He did the usual checks and everything was fine. I asked him, so what about some blood tests? He agreed that I should have some, and I’ve got an appointment tomorrow morning. Good that I was able to get one so soon. I said to him that I have no idea how I’ll cope with full weeks of lessons again – schools go back on Monday – and he said that of course I’ll cope. Well, I haven’t bloody been coping up until now, have I? My teaching hours this year will end up being way down on each of the previous three.

Yesterday I went to the 50-metre swimming pool a ten-minute bike ride from here. I was feeling a bit better then. A session would cost me 60 lei, or alternatively I could buy a month’s membership for 200, which would allow me to go any weekday before 4pm (and I think at some specific times at weekends too). I wasn’t allowed to swim there and then though, because I didn’t have a hat. I remember swimming at school when I was about eight and we were made to wear hats – I hated wearing one. I did buy a hat yesterday as well as stationery and a thick roll of duct (or is it duck?) tape so I can deal with Kitty’s fur a bit more easily.

The sale of my parents’ flat in St Ives is just about there. They’re now grappling with a load of online forms for capital gains tax. They haven’t made much on the property so I imagine they’ll pay negligible CGT, but it adds a layer of life admin that they could do without.

Books - Family - Life :) - Scrabble

Not much respite (and he doesn’t give a damn)

August 31, 2026 by 0 Comments

So I got a brief respite – a day and a bit – from this thing, then yesterday it came back with a vengeance. Everything was suddenly back to being a gigantic struggle. Talking to my brother didn’t help, even if I got to see his kids. (My niece is well out of the baby stage now.) His level of self-confidence grated on me. Plus he couldn’t have given a damn about anything I do here – the only thing he cared about were Russian drone incursions. Since I moved over her, he never has given a damn. If he had, he might have made the effort to see me in all this time. (Yes, there was Covid, but that still leaves eight years of never even entertaining the idea of coming over.) It would be nice if one time he could at least ask me something simple like how my cat is. I have huge admiration for my brother, but often wonder what the hell he thinks of me.

On Saturday, while I was beached on that island of normality, I went to Parcul Rozelor to see a production of the musical My Fair Lady. It was free. How all the cast and period costumes and everything were financed I don’t know. EU money? Dorothy came too – she had something else on but it got cancelled. The performance started at 8pm and went on (and on) until 11:30, with two intervals. It didn’t drag, in spite of the length. It was a tough one to carry off in Romanian, as so much depended on accent and pronunciation. There isn’t exactly a Romanian equivalent of Cockney. I thought they did a good job there, but what do I really know? I didn’t realise how many very well-known songs come from the musical. Dorothy saw the film version when it came out in 1964. I must have seen it on TV over Christmas when I was a kid; I’d like to see it again if I can find it.

Yesterday I gave up on reading One Hundred Years of Solitude, about 40% of the way through. Right now, something that complex and unrooted in reality is beyond me. It started off great, but soon I no longer knew who was who or what was what. I’ve started reading Flesh by the Hungarian author David Szalay instead. I haven’t had much luck with books lately. Dad gave me Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell, saying it was brilliant. That novel is effectively six books sandwiched into one; they are very different from one another and (at best) loosely connected. You got the first halves of books 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 in order, then all of book 6, then the second halves of 5, 4, 3, 2 and 1. By the time you get near the finish, it ends up being a test of memory. When you have significant brain fog, that’s a problem. It was a very clever book and I got the impression that the author damn well knew it. I got through it, but I wasn’t exactly in the mood for clever. Then before that I read Patrick Hennessey’s army officer book – very readable but his writing style did my head in.

I was thinking more about my latest trip. You forget things. Like the funeral procession I met on the way – everyone dressed in black. Or how good the shower was, in a room where things were otherwise falling apart. Or what Elena said when I got back about her trips to Russia, buying and selling goods. I was even thinking about the fire salamander that I saw (and the Dutch couple identified) on my earlier trip.

On Saturday, before seeing the musical, they showed a live Scrabble game on YouTube between Mark Nyman and (if I’ve got his name right) David Shenkin. It was the first round of a major tournament in Derbyshire in England. I remembered Nyman because he was in Dictionary Corner on Countdown back in the day. A young man then, he had bags under his eyes 30 years later. (He’s about to turn 60.) His opponent, incredibly, was 91. Just as amazingly, after the game swung this way and that, it finished in a draw.

I’ve got an online lesson very soon. I feel underprepared for it. Today, officially the last day of summer, we’re forecast to reach 36 degrees.

Update: My lesson was with a ten-year-old boy. He spent almost half the 90 minutes reading from one of Enid Blyton’s Famous Five books. I needed to follow his reading, so I found a PDF version online. However, he was reading from a bowdlerised version while the PDF was (I think) the original. It was funny to hear things like “a spanking” changed to “a good talking-to”.

Cat - Family - Hiking - Scrabble - Travel: Romania

Kitty concerns and trip pics

August 17, 2026 by 0 Comments

I took Kitty in to the see the vet on Friday. It was a regular check, but she’d noticeably lost weight. When I put her on their scales, she was down 150 grams, which doesn’t sound like much but is actually 5% of her weight. I’d love to lose 5% of my weight. I mentioned that she had less energy than before. The vet also remarked that her coat wasn’t as shiny as it could be. She gave me some vitamin “paste” to mix in with Kitty’s wet food, and recommended that I give her some better dry food rather than the supermarket own-brand stuff I’ve been buying until now. When I went to bed last night I let her roam around my flat, which I don’t normally do at night, and she was back to being pretty damn active. A good sign. I’ll have to watch things though. It might be the case that she was discombobulated somehow by the pet hotel. I’m thinking of going away again for a few days, in which case I don’t know what I’ll do with her. I don’t feel I can ask Elena (the lady who lives above me) again.

As for me, I’ve made something of a recovery from being in a crippling energy desert. I didn’t know when (or if) I’d bounce back. This is a huge relief, for now at least.

On Wednesday night I had a very brief chat with my brother who was in the garden watching the solar eclipse. His son demanded his attention almost immediately. Chat over. We didn’t get much eclipse here in Romania, by the way. That’s in contrast to the August 1999 eclipse, which Romania witnessed better than anywhere else. It wasn’t far off totality in Cambridgeshire in ’99; it was a pretty big deal at the time. It was the uni summer holidays so I was staying with my parents. My uncle and his girlfriend (who later became his third wife) had come from New Zealand to stay with us, but at the time of the eclipse they were doing a tour of Ireland. They’d forgotten all about the event and couldn’t understand why it had suddenly become so cold and dark on a summer’s day.

I had a proper chat with my brother last night, after the kids had gone to bed. He’s been in his new job (which has something to do with submarines) for two weeks and it’s going well. His colleagues are great, he said. That’s half the battle. You can ask them anything and they’ll help you. If only I could have had colleagues like that when I started in life insurance. He’s working almost exclusively from home. They’ve armed him with a fancy laptop and three screens. He’s put the third one in the attic, he said. I asked semi-seriously if I could have it. Unlike me, my brother is a heavy user of AI and text-to-speech.

Jason Arday ended his life on Friday. What a tragedy this has been, on so many levels. And it would have all been so different if it wasn’t for people on social media, let’s be honest, enjoying Arday’s downfall.

Scrabble. I got a reprieve from relegation after the last round. I finished with five wins, one more than I expected, and I survived because one or two people pulled out. My immediate reaction though was, wouldn’t I rather be relegated? The current round, in the same fourth division, has been a horror show. A steady stream of dross from the virtual bag. Please make it stop! I may end up with just a solitary win, albeit one by 200-odd points. The encouraging thing is that they keep a tally of mistakes each player makes (presumably AI is involved in this somehow), and mine has never been this low. I’ve played enough online poker to know not to be too results-oriented. Sometimes it just won’t happen for you no matter what. I still might want to take a break after this round because – like the poker was – it’s a bit time-consuming.

Visiting the waterfall on the first full day of my trip

Down into the cave on day two

With a storm brewing, I popped into this quite remarkable late-18th-century church on the way back from the cave

Visiting another waterfall on day three following two storms

Up to the Rusty Pit on the afternoon of day three
Family - Travel: Romania

The great escape

August 9, 2026 by 0 Comments

A few minutes ago the hostess knocked on my door to give me a stack of cheese plăcinte which she had made. These are pancake-like things, in this case in the shape of a quarter-circle. They’re still warm. I’ve eaten a couple, but will save the rest for the trip back to Timișoara tomorrow. I imagine I’ll make several stops on the way. I might get Dorothy a bottle of țuica. She seems to like the stuff, and she’s always giving me vegetables from her garden in the village.

I’ve had a very pleasant stay here. I’ve told my parents that maybe we could come here next year. That’s if they make the trip, which never gets any easier. The best thing about it has been feeling normal. Get some exercise, feel a bit tired as a result. Get some sleep, feel a bit more energetic. Capable of properly exercising. As it should be. Not feel various levels of shattered constantly, regardless of what I’ve done. This morning I even had a stretch when I woke up. For months on end it’s been only Kitty who does that. It’s also been great to escape the heat and to be amongst some more interesting terrain than pancake-flat Timișoara and its environs. The rolling hills and alpine feel to the buildings – there are ski resorts nearby – are very picturesque. Another bonus has been speaking a lot more Romanian. For ages I’ve either been speaking English or nothing at all.

Yesterday morning I visited the Scărișoara ice cave. It’s a half-hour drive from here, on steep, winding roads. I went in a group down a metal staircase to the cave, where you could see and touch the ice cliff. The temperature was just 3 degrees – rather nice at this time of year. On the way back I stopped at the village of Gârda de Sus to have lunch. Then the heavens opened and I had a treacherous drive back to the guest house. The rain was torrential, rocks had fallen, and it was hard to see. We had an electrical storm too. When I got back I fell asleep. When I woke up at four o’clock it took me a while to figure out which four o’clock it was (it was dark after all), or where I was.

This morning I made my way to Pătrăhăițești, which the hostess recommended. It’s just a short drive from here, but hard to spell or pronounce. She said there’s a museum there. Sure, I’ll check it out. The opening times listed on Google were … surprising: 7am to 10pm six days a week; 9am to 6pm Mondays. It turned out the museum was simply an old lady’s house. She weaves and makes bits and pieces out of wood. And makes țuică. Everything was for sale. She’d lived there for over 50 years, she said. Her husband, who died fairly recently (“but that’s life”), had lived his whole life there. I felt I had to buy something, so I bought two wooden eggcups and two tablecloths. That all came to 100 lei. A mile or so from her house was another waterfall which I wandered up to. It was more spectacular than the one on Thursday, probably because of the sheer amount of water following two heavy storms.

I came back, had lunch, then climbed up to Groapa Ruginoasă, or the Rusty Pit, which is a huge ravine in the middle of the mountain, created by erosion. The massive hole is full of layers in spectacular colours, each depending on what is deposited there. The altitude there is around 1400 metres. (On the way back I saw a “1000 metres” sign.) The trek was not without some stress, as a farmer told me I’d gone the wrong way. Or, more accurately, the long way. And there appeared to be another storm brewing. This could get ugly. I got up there eventually (the markers reappeared), but didn’t stay long, beautiful as the view was, because I was concerned about the weather. I went down the short way and the storm never came. On the way down there was a couple looking at some creature or other as they were coming up. It was a fire salamander, maybe six inches long, black with yellow spots. I’d never seen anything like that before. The couple were from the Netherlands – the only foreign tourists I’ve seen on this trip – and they identified the creature using Google.

My parents have called me every day. Slight overkill, but hey. Yesterday Dad sawed down an apricot tree that never produced any edible apricots. They’ve been updating me on the “battle of wills” between my aunt and her daughter.

I’ll pick Kitty up on Monday, which is when I’ll have my next lesson. Next time I’ll post some pictures.