Family

Cat - Family - Films - Life :)

Tough to take

March 21, 2025 by 0 Comments

So when I spoke to Mum on Wednesday night I said that I’d fly over to New Zealand if they couldn’t make it over to Europe. She replied, “Are you sure? What about your work?” Well, you know, if I come it’ll be in the height of my summer when I’ll want to escape the heat and will have less work anyway. Plus I can still give online lessons if I want. It was only yesterday that it dawned on me. She couldn’t give a damn whether she sees me or not. Or my brother. Perhaps she’d even prefer not to see us. It took so long for me to figure it out because it didn’t seem possible. How can somebody not care about seeing her own children? Yesterday I sent her a message: “I really hope you can get your tummy troubles sorted and start making regular trips to the loo. Right now Kitty is sunning herself on the window ledge and she says she can’t wait to see you.” In her reply she just blanked the whole issue. As for Dad, he’s certainly better than Mum in this regard, but even he isn’t exactly champing at the bit to see his kids. Or grandchildren. This is tough to take. Last night I woke up at 2:18, checked in on Kitty, then spent the next three hours chewing all of this over in my head. I’m now putting the chances of Mum and Dad coming at 70% – down a bit, but still decent. But even if they come, it won’t be with any real enthusiasm.

On Wednesday morning I went to the bank to pay some money in. It’s a horrible branch, but it’s near the supermarket and I wouldn’t need to talk to anybody anyway. Just deposit the cash via the machine, then leave. The place stank and the machine’s screen seemed to be covered in a hazy brownish black muck. It was only when I tried to wipe it off that I realised the “muck” was on the inside. As usual, the machine rejected some of my notes and I had to repeat the process six or seven times. Finally I was done. Not the exact amount I’d planned to put in, but close enough. But then it swallowed my card. Um, did I just imagine that? I looked around just in case. No card. Jeez, what now? If you wanted to see anybody, there was a long queue. I spoke up. The machine has taken my card. The teller, a woman of 40-odd, told me to join the queue like everyone else. At this point I made a scene. This isn’t normal! Join the queue. The woman didn’t even look at me, or anybody else. I was braced for an hour in the queue followed by who knew what. A few minutes later I heard a young woman say, in English, “Is this your card?” The machine had spat my card out while she was using it. Amazing security they have there. I was relieved, but won’t dare visit that branch again for at least a year. Half an hour later, at the queue for the supermarket checkout, an older man was having difficulty with his Kaufland app. The cashier (a woman of 50 or so) really laid into him. You have to do this, then this, don’t you get it?! The man simply accepted this appalling treatment in a way I never would have. I love Romania, but the customer service here continues to be dire.

I’ve started watching a 2021 film called Nomadland. I’ve only seen the first 20 minutes, but I can tell it will be fascinating. It’s about Americans who have lost their jobs and survive by travelling around the country in RVs, getting odd jobs here and there. I was going to write more about America and its decline, but I don’t feel like writing much more today. I’ve teed up a video call with my cousin who lives in New York state.

My latest maths student is proving hard to teach. She can calculate, up to a point, but hasn’t yet learnt how to think. Teaching that isn’t an easy task at all.

Driving - Family - Language learning - Life :)

If we come over

March 19, 2025 by 0 Comments

Mum’s scan was all clear. A relief: it isn’t colon cancer. But what now? She’s already seen the doctor since then (great that it was so quick) and she’ll now have a colonoscopy. Dad has been more insistent of late – it won’t just magically go away if you ignore it – without bugging her to the point where she gets angry. On Monday Dad said “If we come over…”. If. Yikes. It’s seven weeks until they’re due to arrive. I told my brother that they’ll still probably make the trip – I said an 80% chance – but he thinks I’m being optimistic. If they do cancel, the first thing I’ll do is book a trip to New Zealand. For my brother, who can’t simply do that, it would be pretty devastating. (My parents know this, you would hope, which is why I’m saying 80%. Also, Mum’s pain hasn’t got any worse.)

Last week I got a reminder to renew my car insurance. Seriously? It’s been a year? I clearly remember the day I picked up the car. All that gubbins at the town hall in Sânandrei, then actually having to drive the thing. It was fine to begin with, but then I hit the city traffic and am I even going to survive?! It’s been seven years. When I finally parked it after a hair-raising 20-odd minutes, I was distinctly clammy. I remember my drive to Recaș the following week – on a sunny day – and how exciting it was to visit another town at the drop of a hat like that. Then there were those trips to the mall to get all the paperwork done. These state-controlled offices are always so forbidding, and the vehicle registration office was no exception. I did end up with a comedy number plate, so there was that, and it was worth paying for a broker to sort me out. Without her, I’d have been sent from pillar to post without having a clue what was happening. I’ve been really happy with the car and the added freedom it’s given me, but at times on my various trips last summer I thought, you know what, it would be quite nice now chugging along on a train and looking out the window or reading a book. As for driving in Romania itself, well that all seems pretty normal now, though roundabouts (there are so many of them) still feel kind of weird here, and I’m not the world’s best parallel parker. I suppose I very rarely park in the city, parallel or otherwise, so I don’t get much practice.

Last weekend there was a fire at a nightclub in North Macedonia which killed at least 59 people. It happened at a club called Pulse in the town of Kočani, which only has around 25,000 people. The fire was caused by a pyrotechnic display, but a raft of safety violations contributed to the terrible death toll. It’s all very reminiscent of the Colectiv fire in Bucharest, not long before I came to Romania, which killed 64. Just like the one in North Macedonia, Colectiv only had one exit. Of those 64 deaths, most of them didn’t occur at the club but later, in hospital. The hospitals had diluted disinfectant which was a dreadful scandal in itself. (When I was a student in Birmingham, there was a popular club called Pulse. I only went there once. That was enough for me.)

I had my weekly Romanian session on Monday morning. The truth is I’m not learning anything anymore. If anything I’m going backwards, and I’m at a loss to know what to do about that. (One-on-one sessions, which I had for a short time in the autumn, would certainly help. Dorothy is at a higher level than me, and her involvement doesn’t help.)

Cat - Family - Life :) - Photos - Politics - Travel: Romania

Spring, Mum, and Arad pictures

March 13, 2025 by 0 Comments

No more news from the publishers. I can’t even get through to them. I don’t think they’re malicious in any way (though I might be wrong); I just think they’re hopelessly disorganised, even by Romanian standards.

Mum and Dad just Skyped me from the hotspot in Hampden. (There will be no more Skyping after 5th May when Microsoft are pulling the plug on what has been an extremely handy – and simple – communication tool.) They seemed mostly fine, though Mum had low-level stomach pain. She had her colonography scan on Tuesday. It involved her taking a barium meal and being inflated via a tube stuck up her bum. She should get the results soon after they get home on Saturday. (They’re in Moeraki at the moment. They’re always more relaxed down there.)

On Tuesday I helped Dorothy take a bunch of old electronic bits and pieces to the tip. Her husband was something of a hoarder. One of the contraptions emitted UV rays, she said. The man at the tip was very helpful, as these sorts of people usually are. After visiting the tip, she came back to my place for a coffee and to meet Kitty. We talked about spring. I miss being in my old flat and seeing everything come alive outside my window at this time of year. The green and then the blossom. I could take in three parks and the river on a short walk. A slightly longer walk would take me over to Iosefin – where Dorothy lives – with its beautiful old buildings (albeit unrenovated) and tree-lined streets. I think back to the early days of Covid, this time five years ago. Weirdly it improved my mental health. The quiet, the total lack of expectations, the simplicity of it all. The Monday morning shopping. Mask, gloves, job done as fast as possible. No queues, unlike in the UK. I felt strangely calm then. Mum still talks positively of that time. Nobody cared what I looked like. I could just hide behind my mask.

When I talk to my parents now, 60% of our conversation is about politics and world events. How did we get here? One thing I don’t understand is why we haven’t heard a peep from the Obamas or the Clintons about this utterly destructive shitshow. Is their silence on the matter part of some grand scheme? It doesn’t make sense to me. It’s a rather different story north of the border. The Canadians have decided it’s gloves off, and rightly so. I’ve become quite a fan of Canada in the last few weeks. In fact I’ve always liked Canada, ever since I was lucky enough to visit in 1998. Yesterday I read this comment about Trump’s economic “strategy”, which sounded pretty accurate. It takes some talent to even write this:
I don’t see Trump as having even the remotest concept of economic and/or foreign policies. He rules by diktat tweeting out his edicts while taking a dump on his gold toilet with all the forethought, consistency and strategising of a squirrel cranked up on crystal meth. That’s what happens when big money buys the seat of power when it should be left to sober administrators who have a genuine sense of duty for the public good.
This week I’ve realised how little I know about tanks and fighter planes and aircraft carriers and warships and Britain’s (or anyone else’s) defence capabilities. They just aren’t things I think about on a daily (or even yearly) basis. Luckily I have a brother whose job is to know about this stuff, so I can always ask him.

Kitty. She’s changed in the last ten days or so. She’s become more comfortable with me around. I honestly think she was fearful of me. She’s now sleeping noticeably more too. The best thing is that she’s stopped biting me, unless I rub her tummy when biting is a reflex action for her. Due to the warmer weather (I presume), she’s now shedding a lot more hair than she did at the beginning.

Here are some pictures of Arad, where I went on Sunday. In some ways I like Arad more than Timișoara. It sits on a proper river, the Mureș, unlike the piddly Bega we have. Although they have a boat club, I didn’t see a single boat out on the river. Just imagine a river of this size in the UK on a lazy Sunday morning. Boats just aren’t part of the culture here, with the exception of canoes and rowing boats that are used for serious sport.

A plaque on the wall of the boat club showing where the River Mureș got to in 1970

The mishmash of languages in these places is always fascinating. Romanian became the dominant language in these parts pretty recently in the scheme of things. This inscription in Hungarian, from the gospel of Matthew, is hard to read. So the double letters in the first word are zeds, right? No, they can’t be, because that must be a double zed in the second word and these look different. So what are they? Gees? Jays? Does double J exist in Hungarian? Sure enough it does. This says Jöjjetek énhozzám which means “Come to me”. Yeah, I don’t think I’ll be learning Hungarian anytime soon.

Sunset over the Bega on Sunday

Kitty sleeping next to the giant mirror in my teaching room

Cat - Family - Life :) - Other sports - Writing a book

B is for bombshell

March 9, 2025 by 0 Comments

I’ve just had a WhatsApp video chat with my brother. He called me. His son, not so little anymore, was still up and about. My brother is very proud of him, and why shouldn’t he be? He’s been teaching him letters of the alphabet using wooden blocks. D is for daddy, O is for orange, X is for … he struggled a bit there. I showed him Kitty and asked him what he thought of his little sister. My brother and I got onto the weird subject of how many stillbirths Mum’s parents had in addition to the seven live births. We think that, from talking to other family members over the years, it’s between three and six inclusive, including a set of twins. Mum has never broached the subject.

Late last night Dorothy dropped a major bombshell on me. She said, you realise you’ll probably have to pay for the book publication? What? They’ve been talking about distribution and EU funds and all sorts. If Dorothy’s right, then I’m just about out. Get them to run off two dozen copies or so, pay them whatever that costs (not much, hopefully), pick them up in a box, and give them to my students. Then try and find another publisher who’s actually serious and draws up proper contracts and stuff. Self-publishing, or vanity publishing, does not interest me in the slightest, especially if the self-publishers are then going to sell on the copies that I’ve previously paid for! If she’s right, this “publisher” is even shittier than I thought. She also thinks this is somehow normal. She’s been in Romania too long.

That potential crappiness and subsequent lack of sleep made for a strange Saturday of work. Matei’s mother didn’t have enough cash to pay me after our maths lesson. Look, pay me next week, it’s fine. She insisted on going to the cash machine that obviously wasn’t just round the corner. This almost made me late for my next lesson and deprived me of the bite to eat that I would normally have. (I ended up eating during the lesson. My student didn’t seem to mind.) While I was waiting, I saw Matei’s mum had flowcharts from her job sitting on her desk, all full of pompous language that just about killed me. Their huge TV was tuned to an American version of the Living Channel. They were redesigning the interior of a house that looked perfectly fine to me as it was. Just before the lesson I’d given Matei’s mother a bouquet of nine roses. Even numbers are unlucky, for some reason. March 8th is International Women’s Day, which has really become a thing.

When I got home, the Six Nations rugby match between Ireland and France (being played in Dublin) was on TV. The last time I watched that, it still would have been the Five Nations. France led 8-6 at the interval. I saw the second half – a veritable barrage of tries, mostly by France who were (using a word that commentators like) rampant. They won 42-27. I thought, hmmm, this is actually pretty watchable. I found the TMO (video replay) confabs quite amusing – the Aussie referee said maaate a lot. When that was over, I saw what was left of Blues against Lincoln, with the commentary almost a minute behind the picture. On 70-odd minutes, with the score at 0-0, Blues were awarded a penalty. Up stepped Kieran Dowell (not Jay Stansfield who normally takes spot-kicks). Straight into the top-right corner. I half-expected the commentator a minute later to say that he’d missed, with all the nonsensical stuff about the book still going around my head. That was the only goal of the game. The football was a lot less interesting to watch than the rugby.

Tomorrow I’ll probably take the car to Arad. The last time I went there was in January 2024, which already feels a world away.

I now realise that when I feel shitty, it’s rather nice having Kitty.

Books - Cat - Family - Life :)

Bad memories

February 18, 2025 by 0 Comments

Kitty is currently perched in her favourite spot, atop the cupboard at the end of the living room, looking out the window at a wintry scene – we had light snow yesterday. I’m sure that young, active Kitty would prefer to be out there running and chasing than stuck inside with me. I still don’t know what she thinks of me, if anything. I get contradictory signals. Yesterday she was just lovely, purring away, licking and snuggling up to me, until the evening when she got the sudden urge to bite my hand over and over.

I’m just getting over a cold which I’ve had for five days. Dad had the lump taken out of his leg on Friday. As for Mum, she’s just had the results of her blood tests – they’re all fine. They had an ordeal at A&E in Timaru last week – they waited five hours for Mum not to be seen, then went home. She was due to see the doctor today; she still isn’t right.

In the middle of a maths lesson yesterday I got a message from Dad. But it’s four in the morning there. What’s going on? He couldn’t sleep, he said, because we was worrying about his digital devices that he didn’t understand, as well as one of their flats in St Ives whose annual management fee was due and they might face a fine for late payment. It’s well past time they sold those blasted flats.

I’ve just finished reading The Rules of Attraction by Bret Easton Ellis. It’s a sort of prequel to American Psycho which was made into a film that lots of young people seem to go on about. (I’ve got that book too.) The Rules of Attraction is set at Camden College, a made-up university somewhere in the north-east of the US, and is story of mostly well-heeled students drinking, taking drugs, and shagging. (Only it wasn’t called shagging. The term used was screwing or simply fucking.) The story is told in the first person, from the perspective of the various students: Paul would write from his point of view, then Lauren, then Sean, then back to Paul again, and so on. My main problem was all the characters were distinctly unlikeable, so I didn’t care what happened to any of them, and because the story was all about the characters (rather than some outside events), I found it hard to maintain interest. However, the book was written and set in the eighties and I enjoyed the constant references to the music of that time. Music was good back then, wasn’t it? It also gave me flashbacks to my first year of uni; I was like a fish out of water. I remember all the clubbing, which did less than nothing for me, and how everyone else except me instinctively knew what to do. Getting changed to go clubbing was serious business. If I remember rightly, all the guys got changed in the same double room. Fifteen minutes before the taxi was due to arrive, someone would put on dance music. This is it, this is game time. It happened like clockwork, always with 15 minutes to go, and it was instinctive. How did they know to do that?

In my recent session with the twins, the boy dragged out that Pelmanism game that I bought them in Geraldine. This’ll be fun! Um, yeah. It’s nice to look at all the Kiwi pictures, but that’s about it. That’s because, compared to them, I’m terrible at the game. It starts off with 72 cards in a non-grid-like arrangement. While I struggle even to remember what cards have come out when there are that many, both the twins can remember where they saw a particular card, even if it came out ten minutes earlier. To me, that’s a superpower. There’s so system or mnemonic, they can just remember. And how would a mnemonic even help? Say I turn over the pohutukawa card, sort of in the fourth row and seventh column. Position D7, if you will. Maybe I could remember that as December 7th, the day the pohutukawas come out. But that would be a heck of a stretch – there aren’t really rows and columns, and cards are disappearing all the time as people (not me!) form pairs. I just have to accept that I lack that superpower and that’s OK.

It looks like I’ve got a new maths pupil coming tomorrow – an 11-year-old girl. Her mum wants just half-hour sessions but three times a week, and that’s something my schedule can’t accommodate.

A couple more additions to the “brand names containing V and ending in A” list. There’s a great big modern apartment block not far from me called Vivalia. Then there’s Nivea, though I’ll let them off because the name has been around since 1906.

I took the car in yesterday. The guy told me it just needed a new thermostat, but I wasn’t entirely convinced. An older guy took my business card – he said his wife was interested in having English lessons. The car should be ready later today, but I’ll have a few questions. Hopefully they’ll guarantee it for three months like they did when I got the brakes sorted last summer.

The nearby park this morning

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

Mum is better, plus pictures of Novi Sad and Kitty

February 13, 2025 by 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 - Driving - Family - Maths teaching - Travel: Europe

Not this again

February 11, 2025 by 0 Comments

Mum isn’t well. She’s got stomach trouble and has been in pain for more than a week. She’s been given something for constipation, even though that isn’t the problem as far as I can see. She’s appallingly evasive though, so really I’m just guessing. Her next port of call might be A&E. She didn’t even tell my brother so I let him know last night. That wasn’t fun when he’d just had a tough day with the kids. He’ll probably now pretend that he doesn’t know.

I have no respect for her desire to keep her health problems secret. None whatsoever. All it does is cause unnecessary worry. And what, she’s coming 76. She’s an old lady. It would be weird if she didn’t have something wrong with her at that age. At this rate, they might not even make it to my part of the world in May. Dad, for his part, has a cancerous lump on his leg which isn’t the sort that spreads, and he’ll have that removed on Friday.

This is why you don’t embark on building renovations in your 70s. Actuarially, a couple at that age can only expect to have a handful of healthy years together. (It’s basic probability. If you’re both equally healthy, the chance that either one of you comes a cropper in the next x years is nearly twice the chance that just you do, as long as x is fairly small.) So it’s best not to blow half of those precious years on some pointless exercise which makes it much harder to see your family.

I started this year filled with optimism, at least at a personal level. Now with Mum being ill and the possibility of them cancelling their trip (again!), and the books maybe going up in smoke, the feeling that I was entering a new phase now seems a cruel mirage.

I drove to Novi Sad on Sunday. Fifty minutes to the border, then an hour and a half on the Serbian side. The border crossing at Foeni was very quiet. When I parked in Novi Sad I didn’t know where I was. I walked in what I guessed was towards the city centre. I had no Google maps – my phone had become a brick with a camera. I asked an oldish man. Centar? Stari grad? He pointed and rattled off a whole load of Serbian that included “take the bus” (the rest I didn’t understand) so I went back to the car where at least I had GPS. I parked roughly in the centre. Parking was free on a Sunday. The temperature hovered around zero and the wind whistled. I explored the main streets and squares. There was a makeshift shrine to the 15 people and one dog who lost their lives when the roof of the railway station collapsed in November. I had some dinars left over from my last trip to Serbia (pre-Covid) which came in handy. I ate at a Serbian restaurant which had traditional bits and bobs on the walls and played local music. I had a beef goulash and bread. Absolutely delicious bread and lots of it. You don’t imagine that something as simple as bread could be so tasty, but on this occasion it was. Novi Sad sits on the Danube, which is one of its big selling points. I crossed one of the three bridges and wandered around the fortress on the other side. It was all very nicely preserved. I didn’t do much else after that apart from grab a burek from a bakery near my car.

The drive back. Not fun. I went back a different way, to make things more interesting I suppose. Many miles from anywhere but a long way from the Romanian border, my engine overheaded. I had coolant, thankfully, otherwise I’d have been in a right mess. In it went, and I was back in business. Or so I thought. I’d got the temperature down, but the car started to judder at random intervals that became more and more frequent. I got home OK, if a bit later than planned, but it was far from the pleasant drive I’d hoped for. My brother, who knows more about cars than I do (that’s not saying much) gave me some ideas for why the car could stutter after overheating, but in all likelihood I’ll need to take it in, probably to the same people who sorted out my brakes last summer. I should also mention that my car got a full-on inspection at the border. It was the first time I’d endured that.

Matei’s dad got talking with the head of maths at British school. They’re interested in taking me on, either full-time or part-time. I’ve thought about it, and no. It would be a terrible move for me. The lifestyle that I now have suits me down to the ground. Throwing all of that away for a bit of extra money wouldn’t be worth it in the least. I can picture my first lesson now. Bogdan, would you mind getting off your phone. … Seriously mate, who do you think you are? Get off your fucking phone and listen to me. By all accounts, the environment at that school right now is chaotic, even toxic, and I certainly don’t want that. Also, because the fees are sky high, a lot of the kids who go there are spoilt and can’t be arsed with schoolwork – because their parents are so wealthy they don’t feel they have to be.

Kitty is almost back to normal now. She was easier to look after when she was hampered and she just lay in her bed in the small bathroom. Wonderfully hassle-free. Why can’t she have an operation every week? It’s been fascinating in a way to have a creature that’s so robust and lithe and can bounce back from anything. Nobody needed to tell her to do stretching exercises after surgery; she just knew.

Some pictures of Novi Sad next time. And maybe something about Birmingham’s heroic defeat at the hands of Newcastle.

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

Kitty and some pretty shitty publishers

February 8, 2025 by 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.

Cat - Family - Language learning - Language teaching - Other sports - Photos - The UK

Keeping it real

February 3, 2025 by 0 Comments

When I spoke to Dad on Friday he said he’d had headaches (or maybe just one long headache) for two weeks straight. I couldn’t tell from our Skype calls – he’s had 60-plus years of practice at hiding just how bad it is. It must take a terrible toll on him.

Also on Friday I took Kitty to the vet for a pre-spay check-up. She was fine. They swabbed her ears to see if she had mites but she was clear. I marvelled once again at how much vets enjoy their jobs. I never saw a fraction of that level of passion from an actuary. As long as I prevent Kitty from eating or drinking overnight, she’ll have her bits taken out on Wednesday morning. Then she’ll need to wear one of those plastic cone thingies over her head for twelve days so she doesn’t lick or bite the wound. Kitty has been great of late. Three weeks ago I despaired as she darted all over the place when I’d had almost no sleep; I wanted to take her batteries out. Now it seems she’s got used to me. She shows more affection and no longer attempts to escape. Maybe she’s lulling me into a false sense of security, though somehow I doubt cats think on that level.

A recurring theme of my last few posts has been a dislike of fakeness. I’m fine with things being rough around the edges as long as they’re real. I’m clearly not alone in this, and I think my manual teaching style with all my handmade cards appeals to certain people. I even like my experiences to be “real”; getting my car stuck last Sunday wasn’t exactly in the plan, but meeting those helpful locals almost made it worth it. In 2025 there’s more fakeness in our lives than ever before. I hear Keir Starmer and the UK Labour government banging on about AI and I get their concerns about GDP growth and not wanting to be left behind, but I’m not convinced that any of this stuff will make many people feel an improvement in their lives.

Seven months on from their UK election win, Labour have been a massive disappointment. After the pure callousless of the last lot (the Covid inquiry made me upset and angry), I really thought Labour would be much better. Yes, they’ve been dealt a rotten economic hand, but they’ve shown no will to damn well use the thumping majority afforded to them by the electoral system and build a society and an environment that works for British people. Reform the council tax system that is (wholly unfairly) based on 1991 property prices. Nationalise the railways. Stuff that’s eminently doable and would be popular. There’s still time, but if they don’t get their act together pretty sharpish we could be looking at Reform grabbing power next time – a terrifying prospect.

When I spoke to Dad, I suggested that I lack ambition. He said, oh no, quite the opposite. That was very nice of him, but I do sometimes feel I should be trying to achieve more. When I met Dorothy for lunch on Friday, I mentioned my master’s degree idea. She thought it was a good one in spite of the cost. People blow much more than that on a car which quickly depreciates, she said. Talking of degrees, my Wellington-based cousin’s eldest son has finished his degree at Canterbury and is now embarking on a PhD in Sydney. It’ll all be paid for. Not fair, honestly. My cousin is loaded and could pay for his PhD many times over, but she did a PhD herself and knows what buttons to press and what strings to pull.

Book news. There’s no news, which is a concern. I’ll get on to the publisher in the morning.

The highlight of my busy work day yesterday was my two-hour online lesson with the English teacher in Slobozia. I asked her to write an essay, which she agreed to do, but only if I also wrote one in Romanian. So I wrote 460 words about my grandmother. A useful exercise. I’ve still got big gaps which, try as I might, I’ve never been able to fill. Sentence structure, mainly. Though my nouns and verbs and adjectives are mostly perfectly fine, I often fail to make my sentences sound properly Romanian.

Conveniently, a break in yesterday’s schedule allowed me to watch some football. Birmingham overcame a slow start to beat Rotherham 2-1 at home. Blues are in a very strong position at the top of the table now. At the same time (following what I said a couple of posts ago) I followed Portsmouth’s home game against Burnley. The atmosphere was just like it was all those years ago. Absolutely mental. The game finished goalless, but it was packed with incident all the same.

Below is a picture from Karlsruhe Park, which is close to the guest house I stayed at when I arrived here in 2016. The German city of Karlsruhe is twinned with Timișoara. This city has many other “twins” including Nottingham in England, but not all of those twins are twinned with each other. That makes me think of equivalence relations that I studied in my first year of uni. Our lecturer called the tilde symbol, which represents an equivalence relation, “twiddles”. This amused me.

A back view of the old abattoir

Family - Life :)

Niece news

January 21, 2025 by 0 Comments

Yesterday morning – on the last day of Joe Biden’s presidency – my niece entered the world. She was eight pounds something, so bigger than my nephew. As far as I know both mother and baby are doing fine. A few hours after my brother sent me the picture with no accompanying text, he told me the name. No zeds, no exes, an eminently spellable and pronounceable name consisting of only four letters. That was a relief. My initial thought was to write a limerick using her name – “There was a young lady called…” – because her name lends itself rather well to that form, but I couldn’t get lines three and four to work.

But heck, they’ll have their hands full now. My brother has been truly incredible with his son, but I doubt he’ll be able to give his daughter the same kick-start in life. And I dunno, the world in 2025 just seems so devoid of meaning to me that I don’t think I’d want to bring any more humans into it. Personally I think I’d be a pretty rubbish dad anyway. A Kitty is about my limit.

Yesterday I caught up with Mark in town. It was his idea to eat at a place in the bastion, but when we got there it was totally dead. After almost coming a cropper on the icy tiling outside, we decided to check out Eat Like a Man just off Piața Unirii. We were intrigued by the name and bearded man logo. It’s basically a burger bar where you can order a normal-sized meal like we both had, or a totally abnormal-sized one. We polished off our burgers and chips in no time, while pondering whether this or that item on the menu was sufficiently manly. It’s quite a small place. The decor is bright yellow and black – Wellington colours – with none of that awful ambient music. So many places are all modern and insipid and hospitally and I can’t handle them.

Dad got an email from the people who manage their flat in St Ives to say that water had been leaking into two flats below. They had to get their friend to check it out. As it happened, there was no leak from their flat at all, but not before Mum and Dad had been sent into a mad panic over the potential cost. They still have their other St Ives flat too. At 75-odd, they shouldn’t be dealing with this. Dad told me recently about one of the model planes he flies, one that he’d designed and built himself a little while ago. (I tried to imagine doing that myself. Yep, I know what planes look like. I could probably draw out a plane and cut the bits out of balsa wood and glue them together. But would the thing fly? Not a chance. I wouldn’t even know what bits and bobs to put inside to make it fly.) This is the man who has made a living from his paintings for 45 years and put together 25 pictures for my small book. A man of many talents. He said he’d like to be in his shed designing and building model planes, but he can’t because of all the work that’s still required on the house. That made me feel sad.