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Family - Life :) - Other sports

A bad ad for rugby

October 29, 2023

by plutoman 0 Comments

Ugh. What a disappointment that was. Not just because the All Blacks were unfortunate enough to lose by a single point having played most of the match with 14 men, but because the game itself was almost unwatchable. Every other minute it was up to the TMO – a slightly creepy surveillance-style booth with about two dozen screens – destroying any semblance of flow to the game. If it was your first taste of rugby, as doubtless it was for some people, you wouldn’t be coming back for more.

I had a nice chat with Mum this morning – she seemed glad to have missed most of the game. She was part of a church congregation that was even tinier than usual, and got back in time to see the last four minutes. Mum was fine, but a little tired after spending many hours painting walls. While I was talking to her, there was a pungent whiff of peppers being roasted in one of the other flats.

I stumbled across this xkcd strip from 2017:

Look at Wellington in the top-left, um, blob. I talked about this just before I left the city in 2016. Complaining about Wellington’s weather was practically a national sport, but I found the lack of temperature extremes to be a big plus, even with all the wind and rain. Timișoara would be somewhere close to Boston and New York – it probably just misses out on being in the bottom-right blob because although we get scorching summers, it’s normally a dry heat.

Update: I’ve just spoken to my aunt on her birthday. She’s currently in a care home in Cottenham, a few miles from Cambridge. When I wished her a happy birthday, she said “Well, it’s not a happy one, is it?” although she appreciated my call. After that it I said it was a shock to learn of her diagnosis (though, in truth, it wasn’t) and we talked about her regular meetings with Dad. I then said I might manage a trip over for Christmas, and after six minutes that was it.

Books - Family - Language learning - Music - Other sports

Out of the dimness (and into the light?) as we enter winter time

October 29, 2023

by plutoman 0 Comments

It’s the last day before the clocks go back, and the last vestiges of not-winter.

I played singles tennis tonight with the “good” Florin. After this morning’s rain the court was slippery – dangerously so – and I didn’t enjoy it one bit. The wet patches made it worse than if it was fully wet. I started out at the greasier end. Florin made a fair few unforced errors and I led for large parts of the set, but we landed in a tie-break which I lost 7-3. When that was over I told Florin what I thought – that playing singles on a slippery court and risking a broken ankle is bloody stupid – but he didn’t seem bothered. After the changeover (we only switch sides after each set) I moved to the less horrible end, but still slid in the tramlines and almost fell twice. I won the second set 6-2 and led 2-1 in the third when our time ran out, but amazingly Florin moved around the court at the (to me) lethal end as if nothing was amiss, at one stage even retrieving a deep lob. I was handicapped down there. I asked him how he managed it (was it the shoes?), and he said the secret was being brought up in north-eastern Romania, close to the border with Ukraine. Harsh winters back then, so he soon learnt how to move in the snow and ice. I can see that two years ago I had the same problem.

I’ve been reading Wild Wales, George Borrow’s account of his trek on foot through Wales in the middle of the 19th century. Back then, Wales really was wild and outsiders rarely ventured there. Unusually, Borrow could speak Welsh at a decent level. He liked to show off his intellect (this grates after a while) in his conversations with the locals he met along the way, which were surely embellished. My grandmother had a cottage in mid-Wales which we often stayed in when I was a kid, and necessitated a long car journey which I’ve talked about previously on this blog. In my teens I viewed that part of the country as dull and grey and remote, but really it was beautiful. I haven’t been there since 2001, and I’d like to go back.

I’ve picked up a few words of Welsh while reading Borrow’s book. My grandmother’s cottage was in the small town of Rhayader, a semi-Anglicised version of rhaiadr, meaning waterfall, though in fact there hasn’t been a waterfall there for centuries. The word for “not” or “without” is dim, which has a certain logic to it. People in Borrow’s book are always saying “Dim Saesneg”, meaning “no English (language)”, the word Saesneg literally meaning Saxon. For a while I was dim dŵr poeth (without hot water) and dim arian (without money – arian is literally silver) from Barclays, but those dim days are hopefully over now. Last week I called the complaints team to accept the £200 compensation they offered me, derisory though it was. Getting it all over with has a value.

Dad’s sister has bounced back better than he or anyone else (including her) imagined. He’s been seeing her almost every day. Her children, realising she’ll hang on a while longer, have stopped bothering to see her. Of course, her prognosis is still poor. Tomorrow is her 76th birthday and I will make the effort to give her a call, difficult though that will be.

Yesterday Dad caught up with his friends (and mine too – they visited me in Romania six years ago). The couple are in their mid-70s, similar to my parents, and although he was at death’s door in early 2022 before staging a recovery, they’ve managed to cut out most of the stress from their lives while still travelling and pursuing interests. I wish my parents could do likewise.

The Rugby World Cup final is about to get under way between the All Blacks and South Africa, the historical heavyweights of the competition with three wins apiece. (Two wins for Australia and one for England, so the Southern Hemisphere is going to make it 90% whatever happens tonight.) I vividly remember the 1995 final between the two nations – one of the most famous rugby matches ever because of what the occasion meant. There have been some good matches in the knockout stages but I haven’t watched any of them. My mind has been elsewhere. Perhaps the biggest surprise for me was the Irish fans’ use of the immensely powerful Cranberries song Zombie as an unofficial anthem. Not long till kick-off, and I guess I might actually watch it.

Family - Life :) - Maths teaching - Tennis - The UK

Maths, newness, and unwanted grub

October 23, 2023

by plutoman 0 Comments

Yesterday I went to tennis but nobody showed up. As I was waiting in vain, Dad called me. He’d just come back from my brother’s place in Poole, and was tired after a seven-hour bus journey full of traffic jams. He said he wouldn’t want to live in the UK again. New Zealand is on a human scale, he said. I see what he means. I remember seeing a road sign around Wanaka: “Christchurch 424 km”. In Romania you see signs showing similar distances. But travelling through southern and central England, you rarely see much above 60 or 70 miles, or 100-odd kilometres. Everything is on top of each other – there are no gaps that allow you to breathe. Dad enjoyed seeing the family – he had nothing but positive words for his grandson – but his (and my brother’s) mental energy was taken up with sorting out his email and phone; he’s always got some tech issue. As soon as he got back, he saw his sister who was surprisingly chatty.

Yesterday I made a cottage pie (something British!) and quince crumble to give to Viorica and Petrică, the couple in their late sixties who live on the top floor. Viorica has been so helpful to me. Without her, I’d be having cold showers all through winter. This is too much, she told me, and spooned half of the food onto some plates, leaving me with the other half. A few minutes later my doorbell rang, and she handed me back almost all of the half that she’d originally taken. “I appreciate the gesture,” she said. But not the food, obviously. When I gave her the pie she asked me where the beef had come from. Kaufland, I said. Maybe she sees supermarket meat as poor quality or something. Older Romanians have these ideas, I’ve noticed. Oh well.

On Saturday I only had one lesson – two hours of maths with Matei. He’d just got an A grade in a test, which will allow him to take the extended GCSE maths paper. He only needed a C for that, so in other words he smashed it. That’s obviously great. I still think he can improve though. He’s good at following processes – move this over to the other side of the equation, now square both sides – but still lacks a good understanding of how numbers fit together. When I say numbers, I mean fractions, decimals, percentages, roots, powers, the lot. He reaches for the calculator at the first opportunity. Funnily enough, one thing that helped me with this when I was growing up was a crappy calculator with an eight-digit display, which my maths teacher called a “Noddy calculator”. Tap in 1 + 2 x 3 =, and it would tell you 9, not 7. So I’d learn about the order of operations, which at the time we called BODMAS. My Noddy calculator preferred SAMDOB. Divide 2 by 3 on that same calculator, and you’d get 0.6666666. Multiply that by 3 and it spat out 1.9999998. As the real answer is clearly exactly 2, that taught me something about the perils of rounding. A handy feature was being able to quickly repeat an operation over and over again by mashing the equals button. If you started at 1 and repeatedly multiplied by 2, you’d see that (a) the final digits cycle through 2, 4, 8 and 6, and (b) the numbers get very big very fast – just like the grains of rice on a chessboard – until they got too big for the screen. Dividing by zero was an immediate no-can-do. Why was that, I wondered? On fancier Noddy calculators with a square root button, you’d see that repeating square-rooting brought you closer and closer to 1. Now kids have better calculators – even the ones on their phones are way superior to Noddies – but the old Noddies gave you a better idea of how numbers fitted together. Plus you could tap in 5318008, turn your screen upside down, and have a giggle – this doesn’t work on your phone. After maths on Saturday, I really did play tennis. This was singles again with the other Florin. I lost two games out of the 23 we played.

I’ve now been in Romania for just over seven years. In my head, I split that time into four phases. Phase one was from the moment I arrived (October 2016) until the summer of 2018, when everything was new and exciting. The sights, the sounds, the smells. The regular trips back in time. That proper first winter. Living in the centre of such a beautiful city and trying to build my teaching business (all those phone calls, when I could hardly speak the language!) was like nothing I’d experienced before. I look back at that time with great fondness. Then came phase two. Timișoara and English teaching had become normal. Routine. The newness had gone. That lasted until the outbreak of Covid. Terribly scary, and horrific for many people, but (and this probably sounds awful) at least it was something new. I enjoyed the quiet of the lockdown. The parks in the springtime with the birds and the flowers. The focus on the simple things. That third phase lasted two years until we clambered out of all the lockdowns and restrictions into a world of having to achieve again, and in my case a move and feeling unable to cope. I’d really love phase four to be over. New Zealand – that feeling of newness, of something different – was wonderful, but it was just a temporary respite.

Family - Language teaching - Life :) - Politics

Another marvel

October 20, 2023

by plutoman 0 Comments

After the Barclays wonder of last Wednesday, this morning saw another miracle. My central heating and hot water got turned on. It’ll take some trial and error to figure out how the thermostat actually works, but I can say with some confidence that tonight I’ll have my first hot shower of October. (I certainly won’t need central heating for a few days. We’ve got 29 forecast today, and 28 tomorrow.) Over the weekend I’ll bake something to give to the couple upstairs, without whose help I’d have been even further up the creek than I’ve felt these last few months. I hope that getting over these hurdles will put a spring in my step because right now everything is an effort – I’m leaden-footed even on a short walk. (I’ve just been for a short walk. A lady in her sixties asked me if there were any pokie machines nearby.) I also hope I can now stem the flow of money from my pocket. Yesterday I got the stitches removed from my back following the cyst removal, and even that cost me what felt like an arm and a leg.

On Wednesday I had a bad lesson. They happen occasionally and that’s OK. This was an online session with the woman who lives near Birmingham. I had the electrician over and you can imagine what happened. As well as the switching on and off, meaning I had to use my phone instead of my laptop, the electrician asked me questions which further disrupted the lesson. My student was unhappy, but what could I have done other than cancel or postpone? I offered to give her the lesson for free, but that didn’t help matters much. Maybe she’ll be silly enough to give up on me completely. I say silly because a UK-based private tutor would cost her something like quadruple.

On Tuesday I had a lesson with the woman in Bucharest. She said that language death is a good thing as it enables people to communicate better. Taking this to its logical conclusion, I asked her if it would be good for the whole world to speak just one language. “Of course,” she said. Learners of English often use “of course” in that way, not realising that it verges on being rude. Her opinion, which she’s perfectly entitled to, is just that; by using “of course” she’s intimating that it’s a universal truth. Part of the problem is that learners want an alternative to “yes”, and “of course” is the alternative they know. I’ve written about this in my book that I would love one day to be published. (Crossing those hurdles might help me focus on things like that.)

Amid the unspeakable horrors in the Middle East, some good news came out of Poland last weekend. The ominous-sounding Law and Justice Party lost power to a much more moderate grouping led by Donald Tusk, whom I thought handled Brexit admirably when he was president of the European Council. In one simple vote, Poland have pulled themselves (and maybe Europe as a whole) back from the abyss. I also see that UK Labour won two by-elections overnight, overturning huge Tory majorities in both seats.

I spoke to Mum this morning. She suggested that only she, not Dad, might come to Europe in the spring. That’s probably because Dad had to make an extra trip and they want to save money. Gah. As I see it, they’ve got three options. One, they both come over. Two, they pay for my brother and his wife and son to fly to New Zealand. Or three, they can be selfish buggers. It’s up to them.

Family - Language teaching - Life :)

Mess and a miracle

October 12, 2023

by plutoman 0 Comments

I’m now into year eight of my time in Romania. Who would have thought? Since I last wrote, I’ve felt tired and overwhelmed. I’ve coped OK with work, which I’ve had plenty of, but otherwise it’s all been a mess. Literally, in the case of this flat. The living room is a pigsty, to use Mum’s usual term for the bedroom I shared with my brother until I was 13. The central heating saga drags on and on, and I’ve now gone two weeks without hot water. We’re still getting unseasonably warm weather, but the temperature will soon plummet. On Tuesday I simply lost it as my six lessons were punctured by messages and phone calls about gas meters and plug points and contacting this or that person.

Then yesterday something miraculous happened. The Barclays money turned up in my Romanian account – the one I set up last month that’s denominated in pounds. I checked it at around 3pm; it had gone in at 11 that morning. It was all so highly unlikely – Barclays hadn’t even told me that they’d made the payment – but there it was. I’ll now have to decide whether to accept their derisory £200 “compensation” offer or try for more. Fight for something like I feel I deserve (at least one more zero), or just get on with my life. It isn’t an easy decision.

Dad landed in the UK two days ago. Mum emailed me last night to say that he’d seen his sister. She’s in a bad way – if not quite as bad as we thought last week – and won’t be having chemo. I might still decide to go over there before Dad goes back to New Zealand in early November.

The horrific terrorist attack by Hamas and Israel’s subsequent retaliation have unsurprisingly dominated the news. I’ve been watching YouTube videos, trying to understand the complex history of the region. The more I see, the notion that there are good guys in the conflict becomes more ridiculous.

New Zealand’s election is a day and a bit away. From the opinion polls and the general sentiment I got when I was over there, I expect National to win, although there are a few wrinkles involving this weird party run by a guy with more than a few wrinkles himself. They just can’t get rid of him. In the short term, a change of government is probably for the best, but in the medium term I can’t see it making much difference. I can’t see National doing much to alleviate the housing crisis, for instance. They might even worsen it. After a period of calm on the election front, I can look forward to several in succession. In Romania, the presidential, parliamentary and local elections are out of sync, but next year the stars will align and we’ll be treated to all three. Then of course next November will be the biggie – the one that puts the future of democracy fully on the line.

Last weekend I only had one tennis session. Just as well – I was so tired. After my lessons on Saturday, I spent most of the two-hour session playing with three members of the same family who were all at a good level. During the points I managed surprisingly well, but in between them I had to drag myself around the court. On Sunday I met Mark in Dumbrăvița, and then Dorothy at Scârț, a bar which has a museum of communism downstairs. I really just wanted to be alone, not just on that day but for several more. No instant messages. No risk of having to communicate. Then I had a Skype chat with my cousin in New York state. He said that Joe Biden is doing a better job than most people realise, and that was my feeling too. We talked about our parents – his father had slowed down noticeably when I saw him recently.

I’m now off to the other side of town for a lesson with that very shallow 16-year-old I mentioned last time. Should be fun.

Family - Language teaching - Life :)

My aunt: not looking good

October 7, 2023

by plutoman 0 Comments

This morning my brother called me to say that our aunt now had a chest infection. He forwarded me an email from her consultant (third-hand by this point) who said among other things that getting her home is “looking increasingly unrealistic”. (I recently bemoaned people’s poor writing skills. This consultant’s writing, on such a delicate matter, was exemplary.) Dad arrives at Stansted on Tuesday afternoon. She might not even make it that far.

Last night I had a cyst (a double cyst, as it turned out) removed from my back. It had been there for around six months without causing any pain. My usual doctor assured me that it was benign back in July. The private clinic was state of the art, with signs everywhere written in Trajan, the all-caps font that has been used in hundreds of big-budget movie posters. Some of these signs were in a sort of English: “German rigurosity with Latin spirit”. The font almost fooled me into thinking that “rigurosity” was a real word. There were forms to fill in, as always. I didn’t know if my health insurance would cover me; I guessed not. The surgeon led me into his room. He had colossal biceps, one of which was tattooed. He clearly had a good command of English but we conducted the whole thing in Romanian. I lay down on my tummy, he gave me an anaesthetic, and then 10 or 15 minutes later it was gata – done, bits of cyst lying on a tray. The admin stuff that followed took longer to resolve than the excision. In a twist on the millennium bug, their system calculated my age as minus 57 years old, and correcting that absurdity took considerable faff. Everybody in Romania has an ID card with a long number that incorporates their date of birth as six digits – mine is 20 04 80. (Can you see where this is going?) The first digit of your ID number is 1 for male and 2 for female, if you were born in 19-something. Those born in 20-something get a 3 (male) or 4 (female) instead. But foreigners like me are classed as a different species so we get something else at the beginning; my number starts with a 7. It seems their system included a simple code – “ID number starts with 3 or above means you were born in 20-something, otherwise it’s 19-something”. As for my insurance, it paid for the consultation, but not the surgery (the bulk of the cost) or the painkillers. It total I had to pay just over 900 lei (NZ$325 or £160). I’ll have to go back in two weeks to get the stitches removed. Before that I’ve got an allergy test for my long-term sinus problem.

This morning I had another look at that bike in the barn in Dumbrăvița. I liked it and it seemed to ride well, but after last night I felt strapped for cash. The asking price was 1250 lei, I offered 1000, the guy wouldn’t budge one leu, and I rode away on my rather more rickety machine. My brother suggested I should, you know, get a bike from an actual shop and not some dodgy barn, and he’s probably right.

I had a bizarre online lesson yesterday with a girl about to turn 16. It was only our second session; last week I met her face-to-face in their very smart place in the north of the city. Her father is a doctor, her mother a dentist; by Romanian standards her family is swimming in money. When I asked her in our first meeting if she’d travelled much, she reeled off seven European cities. Marseille was dirty, Berlin was a bit boring, Barcelona was great. I assumed she meant she’d been to these places over a period of years, but she then clarified that she visited them all just this summer. Crikey. Zanzibar was last summer, and of course she’d been to Dubai. I spent some time going over the grammar rules of talking about travel experiences. Yesterday’s meeting was just weird. She’d just been to tennis training. She didn’t need to tell me where; it’s where all Timișoara’s haves go. Are you a good tennis player? “Yes, I am.” Right. I decided to ask her some discussion questions from my “teenagers” topic. That didn’t work well, because she shut the door on me at every turn. Look, this is like a game of tennis. If you don’t hit the ball back to me, we won’t get far. I actually said that. Next she made a series of arrogant statements with little to back them up – it was hard not to take the piss – then she revealed that she spends 500 lei per week at the mall and is currently pining for an iPhone 15, priced at around 4000. It isn’t your fault that you’re this shallow, I thought. Switching the topic to “Have you ever…?” was a good move on my part, because it then became all about her.

I might be making a trip to the UK before too long.

Family - Life :) - New Zealand

More from my aunt, and a rocky time in Geraldine

September 20, 2023

by plutoman 0 Comments

A beautiful autumn day here, though the forecast 28 degrees is in fact a degree less than Mum and Dad’s unseasonably warm Wednesday. This afternoon I’ve got my appointment with the ENT specialist. Maybe he can crack the problem of my sinuses – so far nobody else has. I must remember to bring all my scans and reports and what have you. I’m over my cold now, so that’s something. Last night I saw the doctor who told me who to see to get the cyst removed from my back.

A pretty hefty earthquake shook Geraldine this morning (NZ time). It was a long, rolling shake that measured 6.0. My parents didn’t feel a thing because they were in a car. It was funny to see Geraldine plastered all over the front page of Stuff.

My aunt is going to get a course of chemo that (in my cousin’s words) won’t be too invasive and might give her another few months. In hospital she’s been on morphine and antibiotics for her crippling pain caused by an infection. She’s also gone cold turkey on booze and cigarettes – that can’t have been much fun. So Dad has booked a trip over there, leaving on 9th October and coming back five weeks later. I might even make a visit. Thankfully his itinerary won’t be as onerous as mine – no clapped-out trains, and instead a 16-hour leg (!) on an Emirates A380. My fun and games in the mysterious depths of Hungary would just about kill him. My cousin has been very good to my aunt while she’s been in hospital, but she’s never had much time for him – her interest ended when he was shipped off to boarding school at the age of eight (!?).

Here’s an interesting YouTube video by a bloke called Noel Philips, who quit his IT job to travel and make videos about travelling, mostly on unusual routes and older planes. He even has a private pilot’s licence. In this video, he was daring enough to fly on an Indonesian airline with a one-star safety rating, out of a maximum of seven. Fascinating to watch – the airports reminded me of travelling through Indonesia as a kid.

I still don’t really know what’s happening with my central heating.

Update: I saw the ENT guy. When I entered his clinic, I saw my name hand-written in his big book, with the number 969 alongside it. He was happy to do everything in English. Normally I hate that, but when it’s my health I’m fine with it. His English was very good, apart from the time he pushed probes up both my nostrils and told me it wasn’t painy. Sorry, but it bloody is painy. He said that surgery won’t do me any good, then asked me to take an allergy test (the last time I got tested for allergies was in 2017) before taking a spray twice a day and a pill only in the evening. I’ll have to take these drugs for two months, then after seeing him again I might end up taking them for life. So that’s where I am with that.

Family

Sad news about my aunt

September 17, 2023

by plutoman 0 Comments

Dad’s sister had been in hospital for over a week, undergoing tests. There had been no news, mainly because her family is so dysfunctional. But last night my brother got in touch with our cousin, and he told me that they’d taken a bone marrow sample and the results had come back: she has leukaemia. Blood cancer. She’s in extreme pain and distress. They tried to move her to another (bigger) hospital, but she refused. A basic search tells me that the prognosis of somebody of her age with leukaemia is terrible. After a steady decline over the last few years, in which time she’s become a recluse, this looks like being the end of the line. She’ll be 76 at the end of October. It’s all so very sad. I spoke to Dad this morning; he can’t even face the prospect of making a trip over.

This morning I saw my nephew, bright as ever, on a WhatsApp call with my brother, his age no longer a nothing but a something. He’s got more and bigger and shinier toys than anything we ever had. His latest is an all-singing, all-dancing, garage-and-car-wash set.

Family - Life :)

Landed with a bump

September 16, 2023

by plutoman 0 Comments

On Tuesday, at about the time I met the English lady Dorothy in town, I realised I’d picked up something on the plane. Over 300 people crammed in a tube – it’s not that big a surprise. For the last three days I’ve had a mild fever, a sore throat, and very little energy. And it had all started so well, too. Early-morning visits to the market, meeting my neighbours upstairs, and resuming lessons with the twins who were bronzed after their beach holiday in Greece. It was all rather nice. (That’s the single pair of twins. I might not see the four twins again – their mother said she wants them to concentrate on Romanian and maths.)

This illness wouldn’t be so bad if (a) I didn’t have the constant sinus business too, and (b) I didn’t have life admin chucked at me. More Barclays stuff for a start. I’d given them my New Zealand account to pay the funds into, but the lady on the phone said that living in Romania (not NZ) had caused their system to spit the dummy and send me a cheque instead. I never received this cheque, and at any rate it’s five years since you could cash foreign cheques in Romania. On Wednesday I opened an account denominated in pounds at my Romanian bank so I could receive the funds here without getting hit for who knows what fees, then sent Barclays my latest payment instructions. With the way I was feeling, this was a major effort. Now I’ve got the central heating to deal with. First thing this morning, Viorica (who lives on the top floor) went with me to the energy provider, to help me set up a contract with them. She must sense my cluelessness (and lack of desire to get a clue) about Romania’s bureaucratic systems; she’s been very helpful. I told her I was operating on an even slower mode than usual. At least I figured out how to make the 8am appointment on their automated system. The office had red furniture and red notices everywhere, there were red digits to tell us our position in the queue (at the front, thankfully), and the young woman at the desk wore a red top and had her nails painted red. I got the contract set up, but there are several more hoops to jump through. The next step might be getting the meters or ceasuri (literally ‘clocks’) installed, but it could easily be something else.

Today is my nephew’s first birthday. Now that has gone by quickly. They’re putting on a party for him tomorrow. Let’s hope they give him a celebration he’ll never forget. I’ll call my brother tonight. As for my aunt, her one-night stay in hospital has turned into six or seven and nobody knows what’s going on.

Family - Life :) - New Zealand - Photos

New Zealand: I like what I see

September 6, 2023

by plutoman 0 Comments

Sadly it’s all coming to an abrupt end. Dad’s got his Google gadget gizmo playing sixties music (they’ve turned the TV off – will wonders never cease?), and appropriately the deceptively complex Here Comes the Sun is playing as I write this. Spring has sprung; I’m seeing the daffodils coming out for the second time this year. Today it hit 19 degrees here, and at 1pm one of the famous nor’westers whipped through. Now we’ve got the Beach Boys – Surfin’ USA.

My brother called us this evening, just after we’d finished our chicken and vegetable pie. My nephew – nine days shy of his first birthday – was in a happy mood, as he is pretty much always. He’s a lovely little boy, it must be said. I’ve hardly ever seen him cry. He’s benefited hugely from all the time his parents have spent with him. My sister-in-law goes back to work soon – she’d rather not have to.

This afternoon Mum took me over to my aunt and uncle in Woodbury. It looks like they might pull the plug on their rhododendron nursery. I’m amazed they’ve kept it going for so long. We were there for two hours, most of which were taken up by gossip about various local no-hopers (quoting verbatim here) getting handouts they obviously don’t deserve. Before that, I got some life admin done involving phone calls to RaboBank (I had a high three-figure amount in an account that they’d closed) and the IRD, while Mum and Dad were getting haircuts and doing the laundry in Temuka, and sorting out a new kitchen in Washdyke. I also watched an incredible women’s doubles match at the US Open. At the end of a topsy-turvy third set, the American pairing of Taylor Townsend and Leylah Fernandez raced to a 7-2 lead in the first-to-ten tie-break before Gaby Dabrowski and Erin Routliffe won 10-8. I didn’t know at the time that Routliffe played for New Zealand. I also saw Sorana Cîrstea’s quarter-final with Karolina Muchova. The Czech had too much for the Romanian, who had done extremely well to get that far. There was one crazy game in the middle of the first set – it went ten deuces, and Cîrstea had nine break points – which could have sent the match on a different path had it gone the Romanian’s way.

Yesterday both Mum and I visited the IRD in Timaru. She’d been faffing around for many angst-ridden hours on the IRD site using her four-inch phone, and I also had a problem to resolve with non-resident tax, so I persuaded her to actually visit the office which is located just off the main street of Timaru and open 5½ hours a day, three days a week. Nowhere near enough. We arrived before it opened and were first in the queue. The two women we dealt with at the desk were very pleasant, although Mum was still effing and blinding because she had to pay provisional tax.

When we got back from Timaru I had a sudden urge to clear the cobwebs. Too much sitting around, either in a car, or worse, in my parents’ living room. So I took Dad’s rather good bike out and went all the way to the huts at Milford, 24 km away, and obviously all the way back. I’d packed a flask of tea. On those last few kilometres I was saddle-sore and ravenous. Mum was visibly concerned by the time I got back.

After a month in this neck of the woods, I like what I’ve seen. Could I move back here to live? Probably, yes, if I could somehow keep teaching and find a suitable place. It would need to be out of curtain-twitching range. As beautiful as Waikouaiti is, I’d find it hard to hide there. Dunedin would suit me I think, but could I afford it? These are things to consider in the medium term.

It’ll be a sad moment tomorrow as my parents drop me off at the Jucy Snooze place next to the airport where I’ll doss down for a few hours before my 6am flight – an early start to a long ordeal. Saying goodbye to Mum is the hardest. With Dad he’s still sort of there on the end of an email or a video chat. Without being able to hug Mum and smell her perfume – the same one she’s worn since I was a kid, at least – it’s really not the same.