New Zealand

Cat - Family - New Zealand - Scrabble

Now it looks like I’m not

February 13, 2026 by 0 Comments

Mum went back to the eye clinic in Timaru on Wednesday morning. The sight in her left eye hadn’t improved as much as she’d hoped following her cataract operation. It turns out that many of the central blood vessels in that eye have basically died; I think it’s a form of macular degeneration. This came as a bit of a shock. She’s been given some treatment to stop it from regressing further, but I don’t know if she’ll ever get her central vision back to anything like normal. She’s having the cataract operation in the other eye (which hopefully hasn’t suffered the same fate) in a couple of weeks. Before Mum had her eye looked at, my parents went to the travel agents to book their flights. They’re flying to the UK on 18th May and returning in the second half of July. They’re flying Singapore Airlines, as they usually do. I wonder, if they’d done the eye business and the flight booking business the other way round, maybe they wouldn’t have booked those flights at all. Anyway, it’s good (and somewhat surprising) that they’re making the trip.

After I talked about all of this with my parents yesterday, conversation turned to my trip to New Zealand later in the summer. I didn’t have to read too closely between the lines to figure that Mum would rather I didn’t bother. That’s despite anything Dad said to try to make me feel better. The expense, finding someone to look after Kitty, and the journey itself, it’s a lot when your mother can’t really be arsed whether she sees you (even if she only has one half-decent eye to see you with). It’s a shame because New Zealand is a beautiful country and I’d already psyched myself up to go there, but I think I’ll wait till next year when my parents may not come to Europe. (There is always the possibility that Mum and Dad end up cancelling their flights for whatever reason, like in 2019 and 2020 and nearly last year too, in which case I probably will make the trip, even if a later booking hits me in the back pocket.)

When I spoke to Dad on Monday, I said that Mum would score above average on an IQ test, the values that she lives by are admirable, she has a good sense of humour, and she’s always been extremely helpful on a practical level. But unfortunately her emotional intelligence is similar to Kitty’s. Dad didn’t disagree with me; in fact he just laughed. I also said that he should make more use of Mum’s good sense of humour to help defuse stressful situations. Since I said that, Kitty has been lovely; she’s shown more affection that I can remember. The only snag is that once she’s fed up with sitting on my lap and snuggling up to me, she then uses me as a launching pad. Her back legs are so strong that when she digs them into me to launch herself, it can hurt. That’s a small price to pay though.

The latest round of the Scrabble league started earlier today, with me now up a division. In one of the games, my opponent opened with ZED in the middle of the board. Any six-letter extension to the left (and there are lots of these when you consider all the -ized words) would hit the triple word square. A bit later, with the extension still unused and unblocked, I found CAPONIZED for 72. I think to caponize (or -ise) means to castrate maybe a goose or a turkey, but I’m not entirely sure. That game, along with all the others, is still ongoing.

Family - New Zealand - Romania - Scrabble

It may all fall through

January 23, 2026 by 0 Comments

I’ve just spoken to Mum and Dad. There’s now the very real possibility that the St Ives flat sale will fall through. The prospective buyers haven’t been answering their phone. The system in England (but not Scotland) allows a buyer to pull out of a purchase right up until the moment you have the keys in your hand, and it doesn’t cost them a penny. In 2026 that’s simply nuts. This has caused my parents months of stress already, and who knows how many more months (or years) they will face. If the sale doesn’t happen, they’ll probably rent it out again. I can see them being stuck with the place until they’re 85.

Mum got her eye done on Tuesday. It’s clearly made a big difference, but she might never have 100% sight in that eye. There’s a buy-one-get-one-free offer over there, but under that scheme she’d need to wait till May to have the second eye done. She’s decided (to my surprise) to pony up the extra $5000 and get the other eye done next month. That now means there’s some chance that they’ll make a trip to Europe in spring or summer. I’d put it at 30%. Whether they do or don’t, I’m going to book a trip to New Zealand during my long, oppressive summer. Hopefully I can find a less roundabout route this time.

They’re had terrible weather in NZ, especially up north. I’ve seen the pictures of a landslide above a campsite; two people were killed and several more are missing.

Much closer to (my current) home, a murder took place on Monday in the village of Cenei, right next door to Bobda which is where I went on New Year’s Eve. A 15-year-old boy was killed by two other teenagers who then buried him in a garden. He may have been stabbed to death; the details are still murky. This murder has come up a lot in my lessons this week; the locals are understandably shocked by it.

Scrabble. I finished my latest round of matches with eight wins and six losses, yet again. I’m assuming here that my opponent in my last game logs in sometime before tomorrow afternoon (when his time bank is due to run out) to finish me off. This player is an International Master. I’m far from au fait with these accolades, but that clearly means he’s played at a very high level for several years. I thought I would beat him actually, but his final rack was much more flexible than mine and he was able to set himself up to play a sneaky word that I didn’t even know. This should mean that I’ll play in the same (sixth) division for a fifth straight round.

There have been some developments with the book which I’ll talk about next time.

Cat - Family - Language teaching - New Zealand - Other sports - Photos - Scrabble

The Year of the Cat

January 1, 2026 by 0 Comments

It’s properly cold now. We’ve had flurries of snow both yesterday and today. When I went off to my lesson with an eleven-year-old boy – my 862nd and final lesson of the year if my records are correct – it was minus six. I drove, when normally I’d cycle. I took a detour after the session, and stopped for sandwiches at Bobda, a place I went to four years ago to the day, that time on my bike. It had just gone 1pm – midnight in New Zealand – so I called Mum on WhatsApp, thinking she may have already gone to bed in which case she just wouldn’t answer, but no, my parents were still up and about. They’d just seen the Sky Tower fireworks on TV. Sometimes they’d go down to Caroline Bay, but not this time.

This extraordinary Catholic church in Bobda hasn’t been divinum or nobiscum for quite some time

I got Kitty at the start of the year. She hasn’t totally wrecked my life as my parents predicted. She’s certainly much more comfortable here than in those first couple of months – the biting-and-scratching-and-cowering phase. But last night I thought, there’s still something off about you, Kitty, isn’t there? Your body is so damn tense all the time. Why can’t you just relax? Sometimes she’ll sit on my lap or I’ll hold her in my arms, but never for more than a minute or two. As I said, her body isn’t relaxed and she wants to wriggle away all the time. That makes it hard to build up much of a rapport with her, which is a shame. I’m trying to play with her more and may even get a harness so she can go outside. I hope that she calms down a bit as she gets older. Here’s Al Stewart’s Year of the Cat.

Kitty on Christmas Day

There are still seven hours of 2025 left where I am. I don’t think I can face going into town for the New Year celebrations where it’ll be rammed as Brits say, and any sort of party is out of the question. Spending less time with people over the festive season has been wonderful, and I don’t want that to stop for another few days at least. As for 2026, it feels like a very hard to predict year. There are so many imponderables both on a worldwide level and for my family. The business with their flat in St Ives, their health (which is often hard to ascertain), whether they’ll make it to Europe, so much is up in the air. On Christmas Day I mentioned to Mum that I’ll need to get round to booking some flights. She asked where to. When I said New Zealand, she seemed surprised. It was almost as case of “Why would you want to do that?” Wouldn’t it be really cool if she said, “That would be absolutely lovely.”

I finished the latest Scrabble league with a record of eight wins and six losses. That means I’ll be back in the same division for the third time running. I was pleased with how I played overall. The lady from Palmerston North was one of two weaker players in the division; they will both be relegated. The next round starts tomorrow. I thought if I’m ever going to play a real-life Scrabble tournament (against the clock and with challenges) I should at the very least try an online version, so yesterday I tried my hand at one that was run by someone in Sri Lanka, scheduled for eight games each. It turned out to be a shitshow. It was due to start at 11:30 am my time (3pm for the organiser; India and Sri Lanka are on a half-hour time zone, just like the central third of Australia and a few other places). But most of the entrants didn’t even show up. Blame the ridiculous registration process for that; one click and you were committed, with no way of backing out. The organiser delayed the start for half an hour in a vain hope that more people might present themselves, but they never did. Eventually I played a game. A good game it was too. My opponent drew fantastically and I lost by 50-odd – no shame in that – even though I successfully challenged off his play of DOUG which as I suspected is just a bloke’s name. In the second game my opponent played ANECDOTA. I’d never seen that word before so I challenged, but it was valid. A little while later he said he had an emergency. Could I cancel the game? OK then. Five minutes later the game restarted from the beginning. Emergency over, he said. What the heck is this?! He wasn’t a good player, he was quite possibly cheating, and he definitely seemed to be a complete dick. Thankfully I was able to beat him. In game three I played someone better than me but was fortunate in my draws and ran up a big lead; despite my best efforts to blow it, I hung on to win. Then the organiser mercifully called a halt to proceedings. If real-life competitive Scrabble is anything like that, you can count me out.

Yesterday I watched some of the darts. I hadn’t watched any of this year’s tournament prior to that. One of the matches featured Krzyzstof Ratajski of Poland. I guess Polish Scrabble might be quite interesting. Another match involved a debutant called Justin Hood who remarkably hit all of his first eleven attempts at a double. His twelfth was match dart which he missed, but he completed a 4-0 whitewash over the much higher ranked Josh Rock all the same.

Family - Maths teaching - New Zealand - Scrabble - Writing a book

AI: soon there’ll be nothing left

October 30, 2025 by 0 Comments

This will be a quick post. There just isn’t a lot of news. At this time of year, work tends to dominate. This morning I met up with Dorothy and another friend for coffee. Among other things we discussed the books. What happens how, if anything? Someone Dorothy knows said that AI might render books like mine obsolete. If that’s the case, maybe all books with an educational purpose are becoming obsolete. Or possibly even all books, full stop. And films and music and visual arts and the list goes on. Teachers too. Why am I even writing this now? It’s not like anyone ever read it even prior to ChatGPT. (Even before the AI boom, I endeavoured to make my teaching as manual as possible, with handwritten cards and pieces of paper glued together. People seem to like that. They appreciate the effort that goes into making it all. Obviously online sessions are a different story.)

Dad currently has an exhibition running in Geraldine. He sent me a wonderful photo of him and Mum in the gallery, with a number of his paintings in the background. Mum in particular looks great. I’ll have to print it out and put it in a frame along with the others in the living room. Last time I heard, nothing had sold. It’s partly sign of the times, and partly that the woman who runs the gallery has jacked up the prices to beyond what anyone apart from wealthy farmers can afford. And maybe that paintings are being made obsolete by AI.

Mum was telling me about the horrendous weather they’ve been having up and down the length of New Zealand. From what Mum said, the damage it’s done has been close to Jamaica levels. Here we’ve been doing much better; we sat outside for coffee this morning and were baked in sunshine. When I spoke to Mum this morning, she was about to watch New Zealand play Australia at netball.

I’m in a break between two maths lessons. The first was with that 17-year-old girl who has now got a pretty good handle on her maths. I fear though that in 10 or 15 years’ time she’ll be such an awful boss that many members of staff will quit as a result. That’s if jobs as we know them haven’t completely been replaced by AI by then.

Scrabble. I’m currently on a winning streak of ten games. I’m trying to keep abreast of the three-letter words while simultaneously learning sevens and eights as well as a few fives that contain high-value letters. Not an easy task for me.

Family - Music - New Zealand

Some ups and downs from NZ

October 1, 2025 by 0 Comments

When I spoke to Mum and Dad this morning, they both looked dreadful. Stress (or more like dispair) was etched on their faces. I wondered what had happened. Just the usual stuff. A mixture of tech going wrong (and getting beyond them) and all the business with their flats in St Ives. The toll this is taking on them is very heavy and I wish it didn’t have to be that way.

I spoke to my cousin in Wellington on Sunday. You could see from her face that she’d had a tough time of it, though she never discussed her cancer treatment. Mostly we talked about cats (they adopted a cat for a time; it got stuck and they had to dismantle the kitchen to extricate it), then moved on to her three sons. The eldest (23) is now in Sydney doing a PhD. The youngest (17) plans to become a policeman. And what about the middle one, aged 20? He’d been suffering badly with mental health problems – my cousin said he was almost admitted last year, having dropped out of university after one term – but now works as a paramedic for Wellington Free Ambulance. The new job has helped him immensely, as you might expect – that sort of job is high up the satisfaction scale. When I later spoke to my parents, they told me that they’d seen a picture of him with long pink hair and (according to my cousin’s younger sister who lives just outside Timaru) he may even transition to a woman. Mum said his mother wouldn’t let him do that. Mum, hello, he’s 20.

After that I spoke to my aunt and uncle who moved into their new place in Geraldine a few months ago. (Well, I mostly just spoke to my aunt. My uncle, who used to let his opinions be known on all manner of subjects, doesn’t say much these days.) The move has been a resounding success, even if it’s been disorienting at times for my uncle. We talked at length about my parents’ property mess and how they might ever escape from it.

I’m very glad to have the saga of my flat in Wellington behind me, but I feel sorry for other owners who are still caught up in the ludicrous earthquake-prone nightmare. Finally though some common sense has seen the light of day, and thousands of buildings are being removed from the list. I suspect that my place would have still been in the firing line: it was on six floors and in a prominent location, close to the war memorial. What will happen to those who have already spent a fortune on strengthening I have no idea. I don’t suppose they’ll get any compensation.

Another major fire on the news this morning. A hotel near Ploiești, about 40 km from the capital, was completely gutted. Two young female Nepalese workers were killed. Just two weeks ago the hotel had been closed by authorities for not having adequate fire protection, but reviews have appeared on booking.com since then. The hotel, which was six years old but looked much older to me, didn’t comply with any building regulations.

A couple of songs. First, Jet Airliner by Steve Miller Band. Everything about it is great, including the intro. (They also produced a radio-friendly version with no intro and “funky shit” replaced with “funky kicks”. Yeah, you’ll want to stick to the original.) It’s worth watching the video too, for all the pictures of Boeing 707s. Watching it make me think how confusing the modern world must be for someone like my father who grew up at the dawn of the jet age. All these exciting possibilities stretched out before us, and somehow we’ve ended up with this. The other song came on my car radio on Sunday. It’s Stand By Me by Oasis. I was never a huge fan of Oasis, but this one which came out in ’97 is rather nice.

Books - Cat - Language teaching - Maths teaching - New Zealand - Other sports

Back on the (smaller) court

March 17, 2025 by 0 Comments

This morning I played squash with Mark and his wife. It was my first time on the squash court since I left New Zealand. We took turns; I got more than my share of court time. It made a nice change to get some intense exercise. That dried up for me when the tennis did last summer. His wife asked me about Kitty. (Since this morning, she’s taken to biting me again.) When we left the sports centre, there was a black and white tom cat prowling around the entrance to the sports centre. It didn’t seem to belong to anyone. Mark’s wife seriously suggested I take it home to give Kitty a friend. Um, no thanks, one is plenty.

Last week I hit 30 hours of lessons for the first time this year. Bugs have been going around, my more well-to-do students have been on ski trips, and so on and so forth, all reducing my hours somewhat. I always think of 30 teaching hours as being a full week (there’s preparation on top of that), with 25 as an absolute minimum. Yesterday I started with Matei. He turns 17 next month; I’ve been teaching him for almost half his life. In my other maths lesson with the younger girl, I explained the importance of division in everyday life. Say you need to split a restaurant bill, for instance. “Won’t you just have a calculator?” I then told her that Romania’s new president is likely to ban calculators following the upcoming election. Even phones with calculator functions, like this one, will be outlawed. It’ll be chaos – utter mayhem – as people resort to the black market to obtain these devices. So you’d better learn to divide! The funny thing is, she believed me. I suppose this is a country where the president banned Scrabble just 40 years ago, so banning calculators might seem vaguely plausible. After my three lessons in Dumbrăvița, I got soaked to the skin coming back on my bike. I still had another lesson when I got home.

Recently I had one of the nicest comments yet from a ten-year-old boy. I’ve been teaching him English for six months. “English at school is boring. I’ve learnt more in a month with you than in three years at school.” I told him that I have a much easier job than his teacher at school.

A couple of weeks ago I weighed myself. I was 78 kilos. That’s more than I want to be. I’m targeting somewhere around 72 or 73; in other words, I’d like to lose two Kitties. (Yes, she’s little.) I’ve cut back massively on carbs and have reduced my portion sizes substantially. It’s already making a difference. A benefit of living by myself and having a limited social life is that it’s easier to make these sorts of lifestyle changes. On Friday I got my hair cut. The woman who did it was very nice. She commented that I had “hair for two people”. Well yes. It felt good to have a more manageable barnet once she’d finished with it, even if my big floppy mop is part of who I am.

I saw that Blues drew 1-1 at Northampton Town yesterday. Northampton are known as the Cobblers. The town has a proud history of shoemaking. All three of my pairs of Doc Martens were made there, I think. (I’ve just checked. They would have been made in Wollaston, five miles down the road from Northampton. Production moved to China and Thailand in 2003, but mine are all older than that.) The Cobblers are one of several trade-based nicknames of English football teams. There are also the Blades (Sheffield United), the Potters (Stoke City), the Railwaymen (Crewe Alexandra), the Hatters (Luton Town), the Saddlers (Walsall), just off the top of my head. I’m sure there are others. Ipswich Town are affectionately known as the Tractor Boys, which sort of counts too.

Today I read something about Sweden and Norway trying to encourage the use of cash for civil defence purposes as the world becomes a more volatile place. Scandinavia has become virtually cashless. For me, a private tutor in Romania, the story is rather different. Last night I realised I had around 50 (mostly low-value) banknotes in my wallet, with another 50-odd in an envelope ready to take to the bank tomorrow.

I’ve just started reading Nevil Shute’s A Town Like Alice. It’s good, but it won’t be a quick read, unlike Shute’s fantastic page-turner On the Beach which I read over Christmas. Whenever I see lots of past perfect – had travelled, had seen, had had – I know I’m in for something more challenging.

No news from Mum yet about her scan. My parents called me this morning, but I couldn’t talk for long because of my squash appointment. They talked about monarch butterflies hatching from chrysalises in their garden. The joys of actually having a garden. These very pretty butterflies are common in NZ but the species originated in North America. Dad described them as “much cleverer than your cabbage white”. The cabbage white was the one we always got in the UK.

No news at all regarding the book. I’m on the verge of giving up.

Books - Dreams - Family - Language teaching - Maths teaching - Music - New Zealand - Politics - Romania

Pulling teeth

November 22, 2024 by 0 Comments

A storm ripped through last night at 3am; for an hour and a half I couldn’t sleep. It’s still blowing a gale (or something at around a force 6 or 7 at least) now. And it’s raining hard. Either before or after the storm – I can’t remember – I had my first dream to feature Donald Trump. I was in a small town or village on a sunny day, having been on one of my excursions in the car, when he appeared. There was no rally or anything; he was just there, surrounded by a handful of people. It was all very civilised. He seemed to be at least six foot six. My instinct was to get away from him for fear of being shot. In the same dream, or perhaps the next one, my laptop caught fire.

Here’s a map of the weather warnings that were put out yesterday. The combination of high winds and (in higher terrain) blizzards has made for quite a complex picture. I’m in the orange zone:

Last night I had a chat with Mum. What’s happened to your tooth? A crown had fallen out. She’d already been to the new gleaming-white state-of-the-art dental practice in Geraldine; in ten days she’ll get a replacement crown at a cost of $1800. Dad then came on the line to say he’d just sold a painting for the same amount (I don’t know if that was net or gross). It took me three days to do that! As if three days was a long time. I immediately thought, just imagine being able to make $600 a day doing what I’m doing. I told Mum that if she could hang on for six months (!), she could get it done in Romania for a fraction of the cost. Coincidentally I’d just been reading David Walliams’ Demon Dentist with a very bright girl of almost eleven before this talk of dentistry with my parents. After the dental talk, conversation turned to the various haka and hikoi that have been going on lately in New Zealand.

In a lesson on Tuesday my student went through a long article about career choices. The author of the article likened career decisions to an octopus where each tentacle needs to be fed and accommodated. Tending to your “practical” tentacle too much can mean you neglect your “social” tentacle, and so on. It mentioned that as your salary increases, your expectations increase likewise. You’ll never be properly satisfied. Reading this sort of thing emphasises how atypical my own experiences have been. In January 2008 I went to Melbourne for eight days to attend the Australian Open. And to see Melbourne, which I liked a lot. Then when I got back to work everything got pretty crap pretty quickly. I’d muddled along for a few years as one of the young guys, but all of a sudden a bunch of actual young guys and girls joined the department and I was 28, supposedly a level above. The others at my level were suddenly doing life stuff like buying houses, getting married, having kids, and spending proper money on cars. They were progressing. It became obvious, within the space of a few weeks, that it wasn’t going to work for me. So I actually cut down on my spending, squirrelling away $500 a week for the rest of ’08 and the whole of ’09, until the end finally came in December. When I was in New Zealand last year, I stumbled upon some old payslips from 2007. Oh really, that much? That was the last year, in fact the only year, that I was at least somewhat into my corporate job. I was part of a team of just five. That all felt an awfully long time ago.

Tuesday was when some of the more notable lessons happened. In the morning I asked a 28-year-old what he thought the worst (or most destructive) invention in modern human history was. He quickly shot back: social media. There are several other contenders: leaded petrol, cigarettes, landmines, nuclear weapons (though they may have prevented destruction), and plastic. But all of them were invented even before my parents were born, in some cases centuries before. If you’re talking about the worst invention in the last 75 years, social media must be it. It’s destroying the fabric of our society like nothing else, and it’s horrifying to watch this destruction unfold in real time. That evening I had a 90-minute session with a 23-year-old woman. Teaching women of that age is invariably hard, but this session was excruciating. I got one-word answers from her, if that. Look, this isn’t working. I’m saying five words for every one of yours. (I was being generous.) I was getting a real Demon Dentist feel about the whole thing; it was like pulling teeth.

It’s been a slightly frustrating week, with an above average number of cancellations. I’ve tried to make the most of the annoying downtime by making new games and exercises, for both English and maths. I made a set of cards with the numbers 1 to 100, to help with understanding factors, multiples, primes, and all the rest of it. I’d planned just to go up to 40, but then thought I may as well go the whole hog. I’m happy with the system I came up with. Black for odd, red for even (like the suits of a normal pack of cards), a purple border if the number is prime, squares in the corners to denote a square number, and a small triangle on the right if the number is triangular. It was important not to make it too busy. On the back of each card I wrote the prime factorisation and all the factors of the number.

I’ve been playing my Primitive Man LP by Icehouse (an Aussie band who were big in the early eighties) a lot lately. Icehouse came on Radio Hauraki a lot back in 2007, that one year when my job was meaningful. It was usually Great Southern Land, or sometimes Hey Little Girl. But there are other very good songs on that record too, like Goodnight Mr Matthews. A lot of the tracks remind me of Split Enz who were big at around the same time.

I gave up on Honey & Spice in the middle of the fifth chapter. Whoever the target market is for the novel, I’m as sure as hell not it.

It’s an important time for Romania right now. Citizens (i.e. not me) go to the polls three weekends running. This Sunday is the first round of the presidential election. The parliamentary elections follow on 1st December, which happens to be Romania’s national day, with the second round of the presidential election taking place on the 8th. The far-right anti-everything-except-Trump-and-Putin party will surely increase their vote share. If they gain power, Romania could go the same way as Hungary. Let’s hope not.

I’ve got an important meeting this evening regarding the book(s) I’ve been writing with the help of Dad. More about that next time; it’s been a long post.

Family - New Zealand - Other sports

A degree in emotional detachment

January 18, 2024 by 0 Comments

The above is a quote from my brother. When I spoke to him on Monday, he said that’s what our parents have. Not a bad turn of phrase from someone who’s been doing a degree himself. (His results are imminent; I expect he’s done very well.) He was referring to their coming over to Europe. Or not. Yes, it’s a major undertaking, but you’d think there’d be some enthusiasm, some modicum of desire to want to see your own kids and your only grandson in their own world, that would trump all the reservations about the journey. The fact that this doesn’t exist has shocked both of us. We shouldn’t be too upset, we said to each other. Compared to a lot of families, we have it pretty good with all the Skyping and WhatsApping. My brother is now serious about making a trip to New Zealand, with his wife and son, during the southern winter. His aunts and uncles would love to see the little one, I’m sure.

Birmingham played their FA Cup replay against Hull last night. It wasn’t televised, so I listened to it on Radio WM, the local station. I thought it might have been geoblocked, but thankfully not. Listening to football on the radio was something I used to enjoy many moons ago, so this brought back good memories. The ground was three-quarters empty, it was bloody freezing, and the players came out to the rousing Feel It by The Tamperer, just like they did way back in ’99. Hull scored early and were the better side in the first half. Blues, still a goal down, made an extraordinary quintuple substitution after an hour. Changing basically half the team paid immediate dividends as Blues equalised straight away and bossed the rest of the game. They couldn’t find a second goal though, until right at the end – extra time was just moments away – when Blues found the winner via the Japanese player Koji Miyoshi. They now face Leicester away in the next round. A tough task. Tony Mowbray has injected a bumper dose of optimism into the club overnight; scoring last-minute goals in two straight games doesn’t do any harm either. When the game was over, the coverage switched to local rivals Wolves – they were in extra time. I was momentarily confused by the commentary – “Jensen passes to Mee”. That Abbott-and-Costello name reminded me of the Arthur Mee children’s encyclopedias.

I spoke to Mum and Dad this morning. Yes, we talk pretty often. They’d been to Wanaka to collect a painting, then to Moeraki where they stayed the night, then back via Kurow and Waimate (I think). A long drive. They were telling me about a Green MP who had been caught shoplifting (high-end jewellery) on multiple occasions. We were all puzzled as to just why? She came into the country as a refugee and found herself with the world at her feet. Is the buzz you get from the act so great that you’re willing to risk your career, your reputation, your freedom, pretty much everything? It’s hard to fathom.

Family - Language teaching - Maths teaching - New Zealand - Other sports - Writing a book

Grounds for optimism

January 1, 2024 by 0 Comments

It’s already 2024 in New Zealand. The last embers of the old year were still flickering when I called Mum and Dad. I thought I wouldn’t get them – they’d probably be at Caroline Bay for the fireworks and a spin or two of the chocolate wheel – but they’d had thunder and hailstorms and didn’t fancy it. The last time I visited Caroline Bay for New Year was with my brother eleven years ago. He was very subdued, having been through a nightmare few days. The next day we went to Methven – appropriately, it was completely dead – and saw a terrible Australian film at the cinema in Geraldine. Just like now, the darts was on TV. My parents had Mum’s old colleagues from Cairns staying with them; they really could have done without that. This morning Mum talked her elder brother’s daughter, who thinks the world revolves around her, and didn’t want anything to do with her elderly parents over Christmas. Having loving, caring parents hasn’t stopped her becoming a selfish arsehole.

This morning I went to the market in Mehala on the off-chance that there might be a cheap second-hand record player, but no such luck. There were quite a few records, though I didn’t buy any. It was nice to browse all the same, and take in the sights and smells on a sunny morning. The beer, the mici, the vehicles, the signage, the haggling. I had a particularly greasy langoș and then went home.

“You’ll find us on the street, between the langoși and the police station.”

A new footbridge being built over the Bega in the west of the city

No lessons today. Yesterday I had my 945th to 948th sessions of 2023, including my usual battle to get Matei to understand fractions. If you don’t know fractions, you’re screwed when it comes to calculating probability, and much else besides. Next weekend I’m going to spend the whole session on fractions. It’s what he needs. (His cluelessness about fractions is hardly his fault, as I’ve mentioned before here. He missed out under the Romanian system, and now he’s at the British school where they just assume he has all that knowledge.) After him I had the brother-and-sister combination. I normally spend two hours with him and one hour with her, but the boy said he had to meet some friends in town, so could they do 90 minutes each? She’s six. That’s an eternity with someone so young. Luckily I had a secret weapon: a rather tricky dinosaur maze (see below). I printed it off before our session, not realising how T-rex-like it actually was. Impressively to me, she persevered. (At her age, I think I’d have given up.) I tackled the start, she worked backwards from the end, and eventually we met in the middle. That ate up a good chunk of time. I had an online session with the guy in England when I got home.

The darts. There were three matches last night. First up was Brendan Dolan, the Northern Irishman who started as an underdog against Gary Anderson, winner of two world titles. Dolan, who uses Dropkick Murphys’ I’m Shipping Up to Boston as his walk-on song, raced into a big lead against Anderson who was misfiring at the start. Anderson then kicked into gear and went 3-2 up in the first-to-four-sets match. Dolan then made it 3-3 before hitting double three to pull off a dramatic and fully deserved victory, his third knife-edge win in a row. His wife’s face at various points throughout the deciding set was a picture. Next up was Raymond van Barneveld, an old hand who has been a top player since the nineties, against Luke Littler who is at the other end of the scale (though you wouldn’t think it by looking at him). Littler, who turns 17 next month, has been a sensation. The Dutchman played very well but Littler was unstoppable. The youngster won 4-1. I couldn’t stay up to watch the last match. Snooker, yes, but I draw the line at darts. A pity in a way, because it was one heck of a finish, with Luke Humphries beating Joe Cullen in a sudden-death leg, hitting the winning double at his tenth attempt. (Those outer slivers are pretty skinny, and even the best players miss them more often than they hit. All those misses ratchet up the tension.)

I managed to get the adminstrator to recalculate my catch-up water bill at the old rate, so this month’s bill ended up being a monster 983 lei instead of a gargantuan 1470.

I plan to see in the new year in town, where there will be fireworks and music. I’ve found 2023 to be quite stressful, with the exception of the period around Easter and (in grounds for optimism) the last couple of months. The early part of the year was bloody terrible. Simply put, I couldn’t cope. My “big thing” this year was spending a whole month in New Zealand. Stunning beauty around every corner. The stress my parents have been under became apparent when I was over there, and I’ve found it upsetting. I hope things become less fraught when their building work is done.

The word of the year for me is a depressing one: billionaire. I remember when billionaires were few and far enough between to be ignorable with the exception of Bill Gates and his Mr Clippy. Not any more. Every other article I read is about the antics of some mega-rich egomaniac fucking up the world for the rest of us just because he can. He, of course. Next year, with massively consequential elections taking place all over the world, their influence is unlikely to wane.

A couple of new year’s resolutions, both about writing. Firstly, this blog. I’d like to get back to more free-flowing writing such as I produced right at the beginning eight years ago. Hopefully being more relaxed will allow me to do that. Second, the book about my tennis-playing friend. I made progress last January, then things stalled badly. It needs to be a top priority again.

Language teaching - Life :) - New Zealand - Politics - Tennis - The UK

We should leave it at that

October 16, 2023 by 0 Comments

The rain is lashing down and I’m grateful for it – I’d have really struggled on the tennis court. I played two hours of singles with Florin yesterday; when time ran out I was up 6-1 6-2 4-6 5-0. That second set score was deceptive – the set was a real battle of attrition, full of long rallies and close games that I somehow won. My efforts left me bereft of energy for the third set, in contrast to the Energizer bunny almost two decades my senior down the other end. I then got a second wind from somewhere. Before tennis I had three lessons – one maths and two English. My 16-year-old English student reiterated what he’d said before, that if Russian forces hypothetically attacked Romania in a couple of years’ time, he’d do all he could to flee the country rather than defend it. He said, “What is there to defend?” Yeesh, where do I start?

So New Zealand has voted in a new National-led government. It was on the cards. I felt sorry for Chris Hipkins, who seemed to me a thoroughly good chap and a very hard worker, leading a dysfunctional party and in the end flailing around trying to make something happen to turn the tide that was rapidly going out on Labour. Because that’s really what that election was – a resounding vote against the incumbents rather than a positive endorsement of National. Indeed, National got a smaller share of the vote than they did in 2017 when they lost power to Jacinda Ardern’s Labour. Crucially this time though, they had some partners to (comfortably) get them over the line. What an opportunity Labour squandered. They won a rare majority in 2020, a mandate for real change, and then they pissed around on fringe issues that didn’t help to make people’s lives better, instead of say, let me see, building homes that people can actually afford. This all serves as a warning to the UK Labour Party. The next UK election is a year or so away, and with the Tories being frankly disgusting right now, Labour should win. But if they don’t use that power to bring about positive change (and boy does the country need it), it won’t mean a thing, and the Tories will likely be back in charge next time around.

On Monday I met a lady from New Zealand (an Aucklander) who lived in Timișoara from 2006 to 2010 and was back visiting the city as part of a round-the-world trip. She was staying with Dorothy. She was pleasant enough, but we just didn’t have that much in common. In the evening I had a new maths student – a 15-year-old girl – who came here for a two-hour session. The following day – the day Dad arrived in London – was a shocker for me. I didn’t quite plumb the depths of 31st January, but at times I got close as I felt overwhelmed. The “emergency” online maths lesson with Matei, which finished at 9:45 that evening, helped to calm me down. Work was going OK; it was just everything else that was a mess. Wednesday was the miraculous day of the Barclays money. Thursday was a weird one. I rode to the north of the city for my lesson with the spoilt teenage girl, but she wasn’t there. I rang the doorbell and called her on the phone. Nothing. I hung around for 20 minutes and went home. Oh dear. Did I offend her so badly that she wanted nothing more to do with me? Did she tell her father and they decided to get back at me? Just after I got home, she sent me a message to say that her phone had died, and we had an online lesson in the evening. On Friday the electrician was supposed to come but he didn’t. Later that day I had an allergy test – 24 pricks on my arms – which confirmed what I thought, that my sinus problems aren’t allergy-related at all. When the receptionist gave me the bill for the test (525 lei, equivalent to NZ$190 or £90), my jaw literally dropped. Now that allergies are out, I’m free to get my prescription for various pills and sprays, which I’ll take until Christmas.

I had a good chat last night with Dad. I usually do have good chats with him. His days are dominated by bus trips to see his sister at a private hospital in Cambridge. He’s able to take advantage of the £2 bus fares that the government introduced earlier in the year, and which I also benefited from in June. My aunt has ups and downs but the trend is clear. She isn’t going to bother with chemo now. In fact she told him that she’d like to pop off in her sleep, sooner rather than later. I spoke to my brother on Friday, and we both sort of agreed that it might be better not to see her. In July he brought the little one over to her place, and it was the highlight of her year. She called me immediately afterwards, and the way she spoke about meeting her great-nephew was quite touching. Perhaps it’s best to leave it at that.