Family

Family - Language teaching - Life :) - Maths teaching - Writing a book

Wouldn’t it be nice

May 29, 2024 plutomanby 0 Comments

Today was my aunt’s celebration, the last ever get-together at her house which is already on the market for half a million quid. I haven’t heard from my brother yet to see how it went; I expect he’ll have been part of a small contingent. I’m just so glad I was fortunate enough to see her a week before she passed away. Today would have been my grandmother’s 102nd birthday. I wrote about her 88th birthday here: how time flies.

This afternoon I had a lesson with the boy who wants to be a farmer. So refreshing when so many of them want to be YouTubers. Last week I taught him some irregular plurals, so today I gave him a worksheet on them, complete with pictures. Easy peasy, he said. Seconds later he’d written mouses and foots and sheeps and childs. Tonight I gave my new maths student (a 15-year-old girl) what I called a quick quiz. Target time two minutes, three max. After about twelve minutes she was still slaving away, so I put her out of her misery. She’d forgotten just about everything I’d taught her about prime and square numbers. I wasn’t annoyed by this in any way; maths is just tough and weird for a lot of people.

Before all of that the plumber came and put in the new pipe. I had to go to Dedeman with him to pick up some blocks to which the tiles will be attached in front of the bath. I’m getting used to being actively involved, even though it’s bloody annoying when I have lessons.

I forgot to mention that I got stung by a bee at Șag on Sunday. It was my left middle finger. As a kid I got stung quite often on my foot. I was barefoot most of the time in summer – my Kiwi mum encouraged that – and the bees would be in the clover. That was back when the UK still had bees. When I was in the car I thought, wouldn’t it be nice if my parents were with me, but my blog posts for June 2017 have given me second thoughts. That got pretty fraught. If my family friends from St Ives came over, that would be quite wonderful. Even when I wander around my little patch of a warm evening I think it would be lovely if they were here, doing simple things like wandering from one funny little bar to another. It’s sad that I never get the chance to do that.

Yesterday I had a lesson where my student (a manager at a big bank) read an article about giving feedback to low-performing employees. I said that a lot of this poor performance comes from low engagement which shouldn’t be a surprise. She said that the objectives and deadlines are all there in black and white, so there’s no excuse. I replied that frankly who cares if xyz has to be done by 31st May if xyz seems pointless. How do you get motivated, when most of what you do all day is meaningless crap? The answer to that of course is that people are motivated by money and status and power, or simply job security when they have family members who depend on their income, but the “pointless shit” aspect (which is more salient than ever before) can’t help.

The book meeting, which I had to reschedule two lessons to accommodate, has been postponed again to who knows when.

Family - Language teaching - Life :) - Politics

Not a moment too soon

May 24, 2024 plutomanby 0 Comments

I haven’t talked about politics much of late, but then yesterday British prime minister Rishi Sunak called a general election for 4th July. It was an absurd scene as he made the announcement, dripping wet in his suit, to the backdrop of D:Ream’s Things Can Only Get Better which was a number-one hit in 1994 and the theme tune to Labour’s landslide win in ’97. Why he called the election in six weeks’ time rather than waiting until the autumn is beyond me. I even thought he might wait until the latest possible date, which would have been January 2025. The British economy was looking a bit brighter, or at least a bit less dismal, and there was always the chance that something might happen. I honestly think Sunak was just over the whole business of being prime minister. Let’s slam the plane into the ground, and who cares about the hundreds of passengers I take with me.

I’m not sad about four months being lopped off the term of the parliament. The Tories have been in power for 14 years and have left the country in a much worse state than when they took over. Takes some doing, really. It’s long past time they vacated the stage. My fear is that Labour (if they win) won’t be nearly ambitious enough. At least I trust them to halt the slide though, and right now that’s something. I also look forward to a much greater working-class contingent among the governing party. Ever since Tony Blair’s government gained power in ’97, there’s been a deeply damaging Etonocracy (“born to rule”) – let’s knock that on the head for a start. I’d love it if the whole UK political system could be overhauled, but sadly I don’t see that happening any time soon because those in power benefit from it staying this way.

This morning I had a lesson with the priest who gave “relationship with God” as the main reason why women are having fewer children. He’s the eldest of six and wasn’t sure that the reduction was such a good thing. “A balance would be good. Some parents could have just one child, others four or five. And the statistics show that women live longer and suffer from fewer diseases when they have more children.” I gave him my opinion on the matter. I said that when he was born in 1963 there were 3.2 billion people on the planet (I looked that up); there are now two and a half times as many, and that’s been a complete disaster. A lower birth rate will cause short and medium-term pain but is one of the very few bases for long-term optimism.

I’n feeling much better now, despite an annoying number of cancellations this week. The lower workload has at least given me the chance to work on the novel. On Monday I spoke to my brother. At the weekend they had a barbecue and when it was still hot my nephew burnt his hand on the side of it. They rushed him off to A&E where he got bandaged up. He’s such an active boy all of a sudden, and these things happen in a split second. My brother said that when you have a child to look after, every day is the same with the exception of injuries and other mishaps, and you never have a moment to yourself. Sounds awful.

I’m enjoying the last few days of not-quite-summer. The smell of the lime trees is in the air, the strawberries and cherries are ripe, and the temperature is comfortable. On Tuesday night we had a downpour and a thunderstorm.

Family - Life :) - Other sports

Down time

May 5, 2024 plutomanby 0 Comments

Birmingham City have just been relegated to the third tier of English football, euphemistically known as League One. They put up a great fight against Norwich – and won! – but all the other teams down there were also victorious. They finished on 50 points, which is normally plenty, but this time was one point shy. You can thank Sheffield Wednesday’s manager for that – he performed miracles in dragging the team out of a seemingly impossible hole. Blues’ season on the other hand was a car crash of chaos, right from the appointment of Wayne Rooney in October. Then Tony Mowbray fell ill – that was extremely bad luck. The last time they were out of the top two divisions was in 1995. I do remember that 1994-95 season when they were managed by Barry Fry – a total headcase – and won the league amid the madness. A whole lot of fun for the fans. Hopefully the trips to Lincoln and Shrewsbury and Burton Albion will be as enjoyable this time around. So Plymouth Argyle (cool name) stay up in all their greenness, while Ipswich have made it to the Premier League after two barnstorming seasons. Good to see them back in the big time. It’s been fun to follow football for a short while, and I’ve realised that all the intrigue and excitement lies outside the Champions League and the top handful of teams. The Championship (the second English tier) is about as good as it gets.

Snooker. The corner pockets really are drum tight this year. Jak Jones, who has been unflappable throughout, now leads Stuart Bingham 13-10 with one session to play. Kyren Wilson and Dave Gilbert are now back for their final session; Wilson looks to be edging closer to the final. (Update: Wilson won 17-11 to book his place in the final.) On Thursday I watched a session on some site called Kick which had a chat facility off to the side. One of the viewers was Finnish, and people were talking about Karelian bear dogs. I didn’t know that Karelia was a region that straddles the current countries of Russia and Finland. Watching snooker is relaxing – I’ve struggled with that in recent weeks – but following any kind of sport is such a time sink. Not long now until it’s all over.

Mum was in a good mood last night. She’s had a decent run of late on the golf course. She’d been reading The Man Who Loved Only Numbers, a book about the famous Hungarian mathematician Paul Erdős – I bought it at university and she must have picked it off the shelf. He was a right nutter, she said. I didn’t expect her to read a book like that, and it’s given us something extra to talk about.

I had maths with Matei this morning. His first exam on Thursday seemed to go pretty well; I’ll see him again on Monday, the day before he tackles the second (longer) paper. His mother gave me a crème brûlée during today’s lesson; I sometimes get these unexpected freebies.

Yesterday I met Dorothy and Sanda for coffee in town. I hadn’t seen Sanda for months. We met at a place called Wise, very close to where I used to live. We talked about education systems and the Epoca de Aur, the last years of communism. Sanda mentioned her 82-year-old father’s pacemaker fitting which was done at the drop of a hat and took half an hour. Mindblowingly fast if you ask me. The walls were full of slogans in English; I normally avoid places like that because you know you’ll have to pay 50% more. I pointed out to Dorothy that there was a preposition error in one of the slogans – “bring her at Wise”, when it should have been “… to Wise”. It took an age for the staff to even notice us so we could pay our bill, despite vigorous arm waving and the fact that we were almost the only customers there. If you ever come to Romania, crappy or non-existent service is something you have to get used to. Sanda then told the (young) staff about the error on the sign; they were surprisingly good about it. (I wouldn’t have mentioned it myself, one because I don’t like to go there, and two because a slogan is just like wallpaper – it doesn’t provide information.)

I’m enjoying the quiet of the Orthodox Easter weekend (which has merged with the 1st May public holiday) and hearing the birds outside instead of the constant rumble of trucks. It reminds me of lockdown. On Wednesday I went down to the deserted riverside and bumped into the lady who lives opposite me. I enjoyed our chat on a day in which I’d been struggling. Tonight will be the Easter vigil with huge crowds, but I won’t be attending. Instead I’ll be going to the service tomorrow morning at Dorothy’s Baptist church.

Family - Life :) - Other sports

A sound decision

May 3, 2024 plutomanby 0 Comments

I’ve been teetering for the last two and half weeks. Yesterday I turned off my WhatsApp alerts because they’d become so bloody exhausting. I can’t concentrate on anything or appreciate anything or properly do anything while I’ve got my phone and laptop beeping and pinging away. I’m already feeling the benefits of pinglessness. It should also mean I’m less likely to drop my phone, although that horse has bolted.

I got the plumber in on Tuesday. To get at the leak he’ll have to smash the tilework in front of the bath, and also temporarily remove the sink. Luckily I have a stack of spare tiles left over (they’re in the small “junk” room next to my office, which needs clearing out), and I have a second bathroom, but what a pain. My package did arrive, but not as hoped. I was supposed to get some bedding, a second-hand backpack costing £30 or so, and a few items of clothing, but I somehow ended up with a cheap fleece instead of the backpack, and one of the other items was missing entirely. Because I live in an off-the-map country, I got everything delivered to France and then forwarded on to me. I’d done this before without too many problems, but it’s risky, mainly because you’re forced to say that everything is fine when the items are still 1000 miles from your doorstep. I’ve contacted the forwarder but I imagine there’s not a lot they can do.

I spoke to my brother last night. Whenever I speak to them, either he or his wife or their son has a cold. There are bugs going around all over the show, and people’s immunity levels are still shot to pieces after the Covid isolation. He tried to dissuade me from coming over again in July, though not in as many words. He said they’ll be too busy in the lead-up to their trip to New Zealand in early August. Why not come over at Christmas? No thanks. I might still go over anyway, even if I don’t see my brother, to get out of the searing Romanian heat.

Yesterday Matei had his first IGCSE maths paper. I got this message from Octavian who also sat the exam: I did excellent at maths, I even added bonus questions that I have solved because I was bored. You don’t need the present perfect there, mate, but much more importantly you’re nearly 17 and it might be time to ease back on the conceit dial just a tad.

I’ve made some socată – elderflower champagne – and it’s now fizzing away in three 3-litre jars which I bought from Dedeman in Lugoj last weekend. Heaven knows what it will end up like.

Snooker. The semis are Dave Gilbert against Kyren Wilson, and Stuart Bingham versus Jak Jones. Both matches are locked at 4-4 after the first of four sessions; the semis are the first to 17 frames, so we’re talking proper marathons here. (Update: Both matches are tied at 8-8 after two sessions. The 16th frame of Bingham and Jones was quite ludicrous. Update 2: Wilson now leads Gilbert 14-10 after their third session.) It’s a final four that nobody expected; no members of the much-vaunted class of ’92 (no Ronnie O’Sullivan in particular), no Judd Trump, and no Luca Brecel who won it last year. Three of the four (all except Wilson) were unseeded and had to qualify. The rather portly Bingham (champion in 2015) was on the verge of defeat in the qualifiers, but after making it has done brilliantly. He held his nerve to beat Jack Lisowski 13-11, then barely put a foot wrong in the last few frames against O’Sullivan as he won 13-10. I missed the match of the tournament so far, however – John Higgins’ 13-12 win over Mark Allen in round two. Higgins won a dramatic penultimate frame before completing a remarkable clearance in the decider. The double he took on to start the break, knowing that he’d be out if he missed it, was something else.

Football. Tomorrow is judgement day for Blues. Don’t win against Norwich and they’re gone. Do win and they might still be gone. I put their chances of staying up at between 25 and 30%. If they do survive, the most likely team to go down are Plymouth. My brother got married there. The Plymouth fans seem a nice bunch, and it benefits the Championship to have a team in that part of the country. If I hadn’t studied in Birmingham and seen Blues play a few times 25 years ago, I’d probably want Plymouth to stay up instead.

When the snooker finishes on Monday, it’ll be no more sport for me for a while. I expect I’ll dip into Romania’s matches in Euro 2024 but that’ll be it. Fantastic.

Family - Life :) - Maths teaching - Music - Other sports

Trying not to sweat the small stuff

April 30, 2024 plutomanby 0 Comments

I’m struggling a bit. Not at the level of last January or February, but struggling nonetheless. So many small things that add up to a big mess, with no resilience and nobody to share the load with. For instance, I made an online order and got a message to say it would be delivered today, but because I knew I’d be out for lessons I called their number and asked them to deliver it tomorrow instead. But now I’ve just had an email saying (in Romanian) “Great! Your package has been delivered! Mission completed! Give us a review.” So now what, apart from maybe zero stars? Perhaps I’ll still get it tomorrow (the last day before a public holiday) but who knows? Last night at eleven my doorbell rang. It was Domnul Pascu, the man of nearly 80 who lives directly below me. Water was leaking from my bathroom, through his ceiling, and in danger of electrocuting him. A plumber is coming tomorrow morning.

As I cycled to my maths lesson with Matei today I realised I hadn’t yet washed my car. There are car washes all over the city in beyond; they make me think of Sheryl Crow’s mid-nineties song about Santa Monica Boulevard and Bill or Billy or Mac or Buddy and a giant car wash where people scrub the best they can in skirts and suits during their lunch breaks. On this sunny afternoon I had five spare minutes so I dropped into Car Wash Point, one of many car washes on the same stroad, just to see how these things work. There was a wash bit and a hoover bit and a blacken-your-tyres bit. There seemed to be a central machine where you obtain and then charge a card which you insert at the various stations. Just the wash bit had six buttons: pre-wash (what does that involve, I wonder?), normal wash, extra foam, wax, something else, and STOP. I wish I could wash the damn thing myself like I used to, back when life was simpler.

Matei has his first of two IGCSE maths papers this Thursday; the second paper (which accounts for 130 of the 200 marks) is next Wednesday. He’s fine with anything that involves a tried and trusted method, but his problem solving (a hard skill to teach) isn’t quite there. I felt powerless today as the sands of our two-hour lesson ran out. We’ll have two more lessons between his two papers. The I of IGCSE stands for International, and interestingly there are three versions of each paper; you get a different one depending on your time zone, so those in later zones can’t gain knowledge of the exam a few hours beforehand.

Yesterday I visited Lugoj, a large town 70 km from here. The river Timiș, and small island between two branches of it, makes for a picturesque setting. In the island there was, as always, an abandoned swimming pool. I could make a niche YouTube channel in which I travel around Romania showing nothing but abandoned swimming pools. The temperature was in the high 20s, hotter than forecast. Had it been 1984 I would have had a dip in that pool. My car heated up spectacularly and I was glad to get home. I should mention that I recently got my old winter tyres replaced with all-season ones. The old ones were nine years old and cracked, and only good for the gunoi (rubbish) according to the mechanic.

Yesterday morning I had my first chat for ages with my cousin in Wellington. Though I spoke to her after her cancer diagnosis and operation, I hadn’t seen her like this with her drooped jaw. Her bilabial plosives – Bs and Ps – became Vs and Fs respectively. As expected, there was no mention of her health. She doesn’t even broach the subject with her three younger sisters. I wasn’t sure how much she really wanted the chat, and we were done in twenty minutes. It was good to see her youngest boy who wants to be a policeman. Then I had a long chat with her husband who was far more, well, chatty than her. We talked about his business plans (the bottom has dropped out of the manuka honey market, he said) and driving in Romania.

On Saturday I watched the relegation battle between Huddersfield and Birmingham. Not a whole ton of quality, but Blues took the lead on the stroke of half-time through Koji Miyoshi. I don’t know what the Huddersfield team talk was during the break, but it worked. They equalised immediately and for a few minutes were rampant. Blues weathered the storm though, and the game rather petered out. One apiece. The draw sent Huddersfield down, while Blues themselves are in the mire. Realistically they now must beat Norwich in the last game of a zany season, and hope that either Plymouth fail to win, or one of Sheffield Wednesday and Blackburn actually lose. There’s all kinds of football vocab now that didn’t exist when I followed the sport more closely. In the nineties, wild goal celebrations in the crowd with arms and legs flailing weren’t known as limbs, and teams with nothing to play for weren’t on the beach. I saw that UB40’s Food for Thought (heck of a song, with the saxophone) is now a Birmingham City anthem of sorts. The song is supposedly about the genocide in Cambodia. In a similar vein, the Cranberries’ brilliant Zombie, which references IRA violence in Northern Ireland, was a favourite of Irish supporters during the last rugby World Cup.

When the football was on, I had one eye on the snooker. The corner pockets are noticeably tighter than last year, and century breaks have been at a premium. I particularly enjoyed the match between Jak Jones and Si Jiahui, which the Welshman won 13-9. Every other frame went down to the wire. In a week’s time both the football and the snooker will be over, and I won’t mind that one bit.

Family - Life :) - Other sports

Dreary and weary

April 19, 2024 plutomanby 0 Comments

I watched my brother’s graduation ceremony this lunchtime – they had a live stream from Lincoln Cathedral, an incredible setting for it. After they got through many dozens of postgraduates who almost all originated in Africa, finally it was his turn. A huge achievement, and not something I could have done. I mean, business management, c’mon. I would have lasted ten minutes on that course. Where his motivation came from is beyond me.

My brother is now staying in St Ives and he asked me what I did with the parking permit. Sorry, what? The parking permit I gave to you and asked to leave in the flat after picking you up from Luton. I had zero recollection of that until he mentioned it, and even then my memory of it was pretty vague. I’m talking a level of memory loss I often had at work. I really should have made a note; without notes my life would be an unholy mess of forgettory. Sure enough I’ve found the permit, right here in my flat in Timișoara. So I guess that means he can’t park there legally and I’m in the shit. Looking back, that trip was a real struggle for me. It was too short and I had nowhere near enough time to myself.

It hasn’t been a great few days because I also managed to drop my phone while on my bike and crack the glass. I often wondered how people ended up with spider-web-looking cracked screens, and now I know. I went into the shop to ask if they could swap out the glass without an expensive replacement of the whole display – it’s still fully functional – but I got a pretty firm “no can do”.

A combination of all this and the weather – now dull and dismal, or mohorât as they say here – means I now feel a million miles from where I did four weeks ago when I drove to Recaș on that beautiful day and just sat in the park.

Last year I watched the final qualifiers of the world snooker, and all the drama that involved, but this year my work schedule has made that impossible and I’m not sure I’d have bothered anyway. I hope I can watch some of the real tournament because it’s a nice relaxing thing to do. There’s also the football. Can Blues stay up? They have three games left. First up is a trip to Rotherham, the worst team in the division by some distance, on Saturday. A win would be massive, but it’s far from guaranteed – Blues’ away record is atrocious.

I feel tired. I can’t wait for the Orthodox Easter weekend, now two weeks away, and a general lack of having to see or communicate with people. The curse of instant messaging means those blissful spells are fewer and farther between.

Family - Language teaching - Maths teaching - Other sports - Tennis

Lucky to have him

April 14, 2024 plutomanby 0 Comments

I’ve now heard that my aunt won’t be having a proper funeral service. Instead they’ll have an informal celebration at her house in Earith in the coming weeks before the place is sold. Her ashes will be scattered in the river in Wales, where my uncle’s also were after he died in 2002.

With family members popping off around him, Dad feels like the last man standing. After what he’s been through health-wise, we’re lucky to have him. We nearly lost him in 2005 – he was only 55 – when his heart valve operation in the UK went awry. Then five years ago he got bowel cancer. He’s just had a check-up on his heart – he was supposed to have them annually but because his operation took place in the UK he slipped through the NZ net. A sleeve was placed over his aortic valve to stop it expanding, but a section was left sleeveless (why?) and that’s a potential problem. He said it’ll be OK for now but he’ll get it looked at every year until he’s 85 (they stop caring at that point) and maybe at some stage he’ll need an operation.

When I spoke to my parents yesterday they’d just been to Ashburton. They dropped in on Mum’s mother’s cousin (aged 106) in the home. Imagine that, three whole decades on top of what my aunt managed. Amazingly, she isn’t even the oldest resident of Ashburton. Her childhood friend, three months older, is also still alive. The two of them, still kicking around today, at odds of zillions to one. Mum had been to a performance of The Vicar of Dibley in Geraldine, which just happens to be the vicar’s name. Very well received, even if Alice was too fat. I suggested that Father Ted, which is bloody hilarious, would also go down well there.

Two big stories came out of America last week. One, the total solar eclipse. A student of mine mentioned the 2000 eclipse which was visible all over Europe and at its most extreme (perigee? apogee?) in Romania. I said that in fact it was in 1999, then he “corrected” me by saying that it must have been 2000 because they came out with a commemorative 2000-lei note. I then pointed out that not even crazy Romanians would have produced a 1999-lei note. The most striking aspect of that eclipse, which took place in August, was the plummeting temperature. The other headline was that OJ Simpson died. Like my aunt, he was 76 (trombones). His car chase in 1994 was one of the most-watched events in American TV history, then for the next year he was never out of the news until he was finally acquitted of double murder. I remember the school cricket team instituted an “OJ award” for getting away with murder.

This June-like weather – high 20s most days, 31 forecast tomorrow – will soon end. It’s been a heck of a run. Romanians are used to weather being predictable, and if it’s out of kilter with the time of year – even if that means bluer skies and beautiful sunshine – they don’t like it. As for me, I was brought up in the UK and spent 5½ years in Wellington, so I take what I can get. Yesterday I had only five hours of lessons, all in Dumbrăvița. First up was maths. Circle theorems – not my favourite topic. I learn them, then forget them. And I’m supposed to teach them. If I have time tomorrow I’ll spend an hour on them before I see Matei again in the evening. After that I saw Octavian’s sister who is coming on in leaps and bounds, then Octavian himself. My lessons with him always frustrate me; he’s doing an IGCSE which forces him to study literary devices, when improving his pronunciation and intonation (still nowhere near good enough) would be far more useful.

After teaching I played tennis with Florin. Whether it was a panic attack or a kind of derealisation I wasn’t too sure, but I felt shaky out there in our 90-minute session. In the first set I led 4-1, but felt unsteady in the next game in which I opened with a double fault and dropped my serve to love. Leading 5-3 on his serve, I had two set points at 15-40, then another two, but couldn’t break him down. He was zoned in. After a torturous rally in which I finished second best, I let out an Andy Murray-like screech, to my slight embarrassment. In the following game I was lucky; he had a point for 5-5 and I clipped the tape to keep myself in the game, then closed out the set on my sixth opportunity. I got that same wobbly sensation in the second set, especially on serve, but I won it 6-3. The whole time I was battling the heat and my inadequate-sized water bottle. Florin hardly broke sweat. In a little while I’m meeting him and some of his friends down by the river.

Football. I watched Blues’ home game with Cardiff on Wednesday night. They weren’t terrible but they were uninspiring and lacked creativity. When Cardiff scored midway through the second half, I was done watching it. There were no further goals, and Blues were plunged deeper into the mire. On to yesterday’s game at home to Coventry, a local rival still fighting for promotion and with an FA Cup semi-final against Manchester United in the pipeline. To everyone’s surprise a hungry Blues gobbled up Coventry 3-0 in front of 27,000 fans – a huge result as they try to dodge the drop in one of the weirdest seasons ever. There were fireworks before the game – what relegation battle? If they do stay up, the future is very bright for the club; the new owners have near boundless ambition.

Driving - Family - Travel: Romania

Sad news about my aunt

April 11, 2024 plutomanby 0 Comments

My aunt passed away on Monday at the age of 76, just a week after I’d visited her in the home. My brother had brought his son along only a few days before that. We had no inkling that we would lose her so soon. Her oxygen levels were very low, as a result of her cancer, and she couldn’t be kept alive. That’s probably why I had such a job waking her when I saw her.

It is some consolation that my brother and I saw her, and had good conversations with her, during her final days. The other consolation is that she was very well looked after and she didn’t really suffer. Considering she was bedbound and spent her days staring at the ceiling, she was strangely at peace; perhaps that was the morphine. Since I heard the news I’ve been thinking of all the happy memories I have of her: the times when she made me smile and laugh. She had quite a knack for that. One time that springs to mind was when I joined her and my grandmother in southern Spain in January 2000. She had an interesting way, shall I say, of transporting her mother in a wheelchair. At a restaurant that served breadsticks, she started shoving them up her ears and nose and other orifices besides.

I don’t know yet when or where the funeral will be, or whether I’ll go over for it. (British funerals are sometimes weeks after a person’s death.) Dad won’t be travelling from New Zealand; he did his bit in the autumn when he visited her almost daily for a month.

Understandably, Dad’s mood has been low. He’s been struck by the realisation that, on his side of the family, it’s only him left of his generation. His cousins have gone too.

I went back to Recaș today with the plan to get a barbecue lunch which they serve there on Wednesdays. I called my parents from there. I thought that the blue sky in the background might lift Dad’s mood – we’ve had glorious whether here since, and even before, I got back. I showed Mum my car – she didn’t believe that my bright blue Peugeot had POM on its number plate. I didn’t have lunch there after all because I got a splitting sinus headache and just wanted to get home and take some Advil and have a banana sandwich which was all I could manage. On the way back I turned onto the motorway by mistake, so I got a surprise first taste of Romanian motorway driving. The road was mostly empty; the speed limit here is 130 km/h, more than I’m used to. Thankfully the Advil did the trick.

On Sunday I went on a much longer trip, first to Lipova by the Mureș River, then east, then south, then west, then north and finally back home. Over 300 km in all. I went on all manner of back roads, passing through villages with roads flanked by donkeys, goats, and old ladies whose reaction made me think that a real person passing through in a real car was quite an event.

The route I took on Sunday

A stork’s nest – a common sight – in Mașloc

Not much risk of flooding in the Mureș at Lipova with the weather we’re having

Today I took delivery of a 2009-edition road atlas of Romania. The scale is 1:300,000 or nearly five miles to an inch. It didn’t realise it would be such a vast tome; it also contains smaller-scale maps of the rest of Europe. I’ll buy a GPS gizmo too, though a physical map allows me to plan better and is just a nice object to have.

Family - The UK

Easter trip report — Part 2 of 3

April 7, 2024 plutomanby 0 Comments

It isn’t that far from Poole to St Ives – in the bottom half of the UK, nothing is that far – but I had to change coaches twice, at Victoria Station and Stansted, so the whole thing took an age. It was a typically British grey day; not a bad day for such a journey. The trip had its moments, such as at the beginning when a mother and daughter, who were both mad in a good way, were making their way to London to see a show. The daughter lived in Aberdeen, while her mum was a serious jam maker. She marketed her produce as the pleasingly alliterative Jurassic Jam after the Jurassic Coast on which she lives. She talked about the logo, which obviously involved a dinosaur, and the cloth top on the jars which was designed for maximum tweeness. Victoria Station looked very tired; the loos had a level of cleanliness I’m more accustomed to in Romania. We went past the great sights: the Albert Hall, Westminster Abbey, Big Ben and the Tower of London. Luckily we arrived in Cambridge five minutes early, so I could jump straight on the bus to St Ives. After getting into the flat at close to 6pm, I grabbed a takeaway lamb satay and didn’t do much in the evening.

I’d earmarked Easter Monday for seeing my aunt in her home in Cottenham. In the past, there was a bumper market on these bank holidays, but we now live in the age of Ali Express and Temu – or at least some of us do – so now we just get the normal Monday market. I took Dad’s old bike and cycled along by the busway. That seemed the easiest way. It was a ten-mile ride each way; I turned left at a village called Westwick which I hadn’t even heard of, and it was another 2½ miles from there. At the home I was shown to my aunt’s room; she was in a deep sleep and she only stirred when I prodded her. She rarely gets out of bed. I gave her some Easter chocolates and we had a good chat – better than when everything was soaked in alcohol and she didn’t talk to you but through you. I stayed for 50 minutes and then went back the same way to St Ives where I bought some focaccia bread from the market.

Passing Fen Drayton Lakes as I cycled down the busway

This busway graffiti – on a commuter route – says “Work, eat, sleep, repeat”. I prefer the one that says “Gary Numan’s Busway Army”.

Later in the afternoon I met some family friends – the ones who came to Romania in 2017. I always enjoy spending time at their place with their vegetable garden and assorted knick-knacks and rather groovy wall patterns. They were overrun with forget-me-nots which they put outside the front gate for sale. After a chat, we went to Wetherspoons for dinner. Wetherspoons gets a bad rap, partly because of their chairman Tim Martin who’s a raving Brexit supporter, but if like me you just want to be fed and watered – cheaply if possible – you can’t go wrong there. They also tend to set themselves up in architecturally nice buildings. I had a steak and kidney pie, and tried to convince them to come back to Romania now that I have a car. Covid and his severe illness, which he has bounced back from remarkably well, have made that sort of travel harder, psychologically as much as anything. Blues won 1-0 at home to Preston that day – it was a lucky goal – and though that win (their first in ages) is huge, they’re far from safe. That game didn’t feature a single corner; that’s an exceedingly rare event. They held a UB40 concert after the game.

My friends’ bathroom at quarter to thirteen on Bendsday

On Tuesday I had another early start. My bus into Cambridge left at half-six; my train to Birmingham left at eight. I’d bought what they call a split ticket and imagined I’d have to change at Melton Mowbray but no, I could stay on the same train. (I had visions of buying a pork pie there; Melton Mowbray is where they originate.) I met my friend at New Street and we wandered along the canal, stopping for a coffee in the quite extensive Jewellery Quarter. Along the way there was a park where you could play table tennis for free, so we rallied for a few minutes. We walked through the lovely St Paul’s Square where my friend introduced me to a birdsong app – basically it’s Shazam for birds. We then meandered through the Gun Quarter and stopped in a pub where we met his girlfriend. She is still recovering from cancer which she got at only 33. She was in good spirits; her life is gradually getting back to normal after being extremely compromised. I had bangers and mash – when in Rome – and we mostly just chatted before going to their flat in the centre of town which they had recently renovated. Visitors gradually dribbled in; they were playing a Lord of the Rings board game that evening. I left just before the game got under way. I stepped out into the rain, looked around the centre for a bit, then boarded my train. I got back to the St Ives flat at 11:20.

This small place near Ely, with a railway station, is pronounced MAY-nee. I went there once when I was eleven. In Romanian it’s a type of music that people love to hate.

A Banksy in Birmingham. It would have passed me by if my friend hadn’t pointed it out.

In Birmingham’s Jewellery Quarter


Family - The UK

Easter trip report — Part 1 of 3

April 6, 2024 plutomanby 0 Comments

I’m back. Long story short, it was great to see my brother and his family, but next time I’ll want another couple of days.

On Thursday the 28th I got up at stupid o’clock – this became a recurring theme – and got a taxi to the airport. The flight to Luton was fine. It got in just after 7am; my brother picked me up at 8:30 or so – he’d driven all the way from St Ives. After last October’s fire in the multi-storey car park which damaged 1500-odd cars, the pick-up and drop-off bit is now acres of tarmac a half-mile or more from the terminal. My nephew was very active in the back of the car; St Ives had sent his sleep patterns way out of whack. The trip down to Poole didn’t take long despite the a woefully wet and windy weather. In the afternoon the four of us went to Wetherspoons in Wimborne. (The Ws kept coming.) They put me up in a room that looked out over the river and a wooded area, with the twittering of birds a pleasant feature. I just wished it wasn’t so bloody freezing (and I’m someone who likes to be a degree or two cooler than the national average).

At around 3:30 that night, my nephew woke up and bawled his eyes out. I was instructed to leave him alone, despite my urge to do something. On the morning of Good Friday the four of us went to Pamphill where they have a popular farmhouse and dairy shop. They hoped the little chappy would wear himself out. We grabbed some coffee and scones, and I think my brother also had an ice cream on a cool March day; eating out for families of young children is now expected, which it certainly wasn’t four decades ago. I think the expected level of consumption (among other factors) would make it very hard for me to bring up a family in 2024. So much of it is a massive WTF to me. Right, so how many bottles of liquid do we need for the bathroom? Shampoo, shower gel (they’re the same thing anyway), deodorant, after shave, and you might like some perfume and some moisturiser. Maybe some mouthwash and some hair stuff, and that should do it. So how many bottles is that? Eight? Ten? Judging by the average modern bathroom, they need at least sixty. My sister-in-law told me the crippling cost of their son’s nursery before moving him into a cheaper one a couple of months ago. It was roughly double what I spend on everything. Just mind-blowing.

A grey old day at Pamphill Dairy

Later on Friday, my brother and I went to the nearby pub where we both had cider. Meanwhile, the nearby river had burst its banks and was rising at a near-visible pace, much faster than the Ouse at St Ives did (or does). I saw that Blues lost 2-1 at QPR despite taking the lead in the second half. The decisive goal was another last-minute sucker punch, leaving them deep in the relegation mire. That evening we had curry and I figured I could somehow control their digital radio from my phone. It was called “kitchen control” or something of that sort. At this point I’m no longer a participant in modern tech, or indeed modern life; I’m just a bystander. By this stage my nephew was getting his sleep patterns back on track. He’s a lovely boy (definitely not a baby but a boy) and he makes very little trouble for anyone, beyond the usual peeing and pooing and not sleeping. He’s constantly curious and is expanding his horizons (and his vocabulary) every day. When I was there, he picked up the word “bottle”. He’s lucky to have such good parents who devote a lot of time to him. This was helped somewhat by my brother’s knee operation last year which prevented him from going very far. (He still isn’t 100% recovered, even now.) The knee business didn’t do his degree prospects any harm, either.

Every Saturday… but not this one

It’s running fast

We’d planned to go to the car boot sale on Saturday, but the flood put paid to that, so we had coffee in Wimborne instead. It turned into a sunny day, and in the afternoon we met a friend of my brother’s in a pub and had three pints apiece in the beer garden; I can’t remember when I last drank that much. We didn’t realise that the Boat Race, which Cambridge won, was happening at that time. When we got back we saw the final of Gladiators. The original programme in the nineties was Mum’s favourite; exhausted from a week of teaching, she’d blob out on the sofa for two hours and watch Gladiators followed by Blind Date. That night my brother showed me his ultra-precision short-wave military radio. A piece of kit dating from the eighties, it boasts an eight-foot antenna. We played around with it, picking up distant stations including a rather creepy Russian one which was sending out coded signals.

The clocks went forward on Saturday night, and on Easter Sunday morning it was time to say goodbye as I had a long old bus (or, as they say, coach) journey in store.