Writing a book

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

Kitty and some pretty shitty publishers

February 8, 2025 by 0 Comments

Kitty is recovering from Wednesday’s ordeal. She vomited twice at the vet’s; anaesthetic even does that to humans. When I picked her up that evening, the vet said she’d been “talkative” (no surprises there), then gave me a list of dos and don’ts. Don’t remove her collar for 12 to 14 days was the big one. Fine, I won’t. I got her home, then locked her in the small bathroom while I gave an online lesson. For the first few minutes I could hear her yowling, then she stopped. When I went back in there, she’d ripped her collar right off. She must have been pretty determined. I tried to put it back on, but she got so angry that I gave up. I’ll have to risk it. Since then she’s been very subdued and has hardly eaten anything. She hasn’t licked or bitten the wound, thankfully. This morning I had a scary moment when, after locking her in the bathroom, she seemed to have disappeared when I went back in there. She was nowhere to be seen. How? I heard a squeak but couldn’t tell where it was coming from. Then I saw her little head poking out of a hole in the tiling in the side of the bath. I didn’t even realise there was a cat-sized hole there. Are you stuck? Will I have to smash the tiles? She came out, eventually. Phew.

Monday was a crappy day. What’s going on with the book? I contacted the older woman from the so-called publishers – the only person from there I can contact. We had a three-minute phone call. No, we can’t arrange a meeting, she said, because of X, Y and Z. It’s all about you, isn’t it? I’m not sure she’d even looked at the text of the book that I’d sent her. In fact I’m pretty sure she hadn’t. At the end of the call she said how nice it would be to meet up with Dorothy and have a glass of wine. You can take your glass of wine and shove it, was what I wanted to say. Everything about the publishers (and they’re really just printers, if that) stinks of unprofessionalism. At this stage I’d say it’s 70-30 that the book will see the light of day. In other words there’s a fair chance that it won’t. And of that 70%, a large chunk involves shitty production quality and next to no distribution. I’ve got a long list of things to do with the second book, but I’m not touching that again until I’m sure that the first one will actually happen.

I spoke to my parents yesterday. They talked a lot about my brother. It’s easy to forget that he was just about incommunicado with my parents for years. He had no time for them, honestly. They mentioned how upset they felt in 2007 when they watched TV and saw the British troops reunited with their families after being in Afghanistan, and they didn’t even know he’d got back. My brother felt, and still feels, a certain bitterness about them emigrating to New Zealand in 2003. That wasn’t helped by them spending the year 2000 in Australia as well. (I never felt that way. We’re grown men. If they want to move to where Mum was born, that’s up to them. In fact I was glad they moved because Mum would have been particularly unhappy if she’d stayed in the UK and carried on teaching. Of course I made the move myself.) Mum and Dad could easily have broken all ties with my brother, but they didn’t, and now they’re in contact with him about twice a week. There’s a lesson there.

This week I’ve watched a Romanian film called The Death of Domnul Lăzărescu, which came out in 2005. It’s an excellent film, both funny and very sad, which highlights the problems in Romanian healthcare (and wider society) that existed back then and haven’t exactly gone away. Look at Colectiv, or the two fires that took place during Covid. Domnul Lăzărescu, the patient who was dragged from pillar to post through various Bucharest hospitals, died in real life only two years later. Mioara, the paramedic, died three years ago. I really wanted to punch the doctors who verbally abused Mioara in one of the hospitals towards the end of the film. Annoyingly, the film had un-turn-off-able English subtitles – I covered them up with a piece of paper.

Birmingham play Newcastle at home in the FA Cup tomorrow. The two teams have had some real FA Cup battles in the not so distant past. In 2007, they drew 2-2 in Birmingham before Blues pulled off a shock 5-1 away win in the replay. That won’t happen this time – replays have been axed – and I fully expect Newcastle to win comfortably. They’re in the upper echelons of the Premier League, and the gulf between that and even the top of the third tier is immense. I doubt I’ll see much of the game because I’ve got a big day of lessons scheduled – eight to nine hours. Then on Sunday I’m planning a trip over the border into Serbia to take a look at Novi Sad, the country’s second city. It’s been in the news lately. Three months ago a roof collapsed at the train station, killing 15 people, and protests have since erupted.

Before I go, I should mention something about Simona Halep’s retirement. A great ambassador for Romanian tennis who, it seems, is calling it a day. I’ll write more about that next time.

Books - Cat - Films - Other sports - Writing a book

Stress-free so far

January 8, 2025 by 0 Comments

Kitty has spent most of today sleeping. So far she’s been pretty stress-free. My student was quite taken with her last night as she wandered into our maths lesson. He’s 18 and lives with his parents. I’d definitely want to have a pet if I lived on my own, he said. Yes, the companionship is rather nice. (I’ve lived on my own for almost as long as he’s been alive.) I really was taken aback by that barrage of negativity I received from Mum and Dad. As my brother said, I’m in my mid-forties (!) so surely I can do what I like at this point.

I watched all two hours of that Michael Moore film called Sicko from 2007 (still the Bush era) which was recently released for free on YouTube. It was hard to watch it and not get angry and upset. And to think that the American people have voted to make things even worse. I had to laugh though when the US healthcare system was rated 37th in the world, “just ahead of Slovenia”, as if that was really terrible. I went to Slovenia last summer; I bet their health system is way ahead of America’s now. It isn’t the only aspect in which the film hasn’t aged well. “Look how wonderful the British NHS is.” Well, it kind of was back then. It’s sad to see how much Britain has regressed since. My aunt might still be alive now if it was in its former state. (Covid is partly to blame, but only partly.) Another thing: for three years (2011 to 2014) I worked for an American insurance company that featured (damningly) in the film. If I’d seen the film beforehand, who knows, I may never have applied for the job and my life might have taken a different turn.

Luke Littler. World darts champion and a phenomenon. Still not 18, though he looks more like 28. The final didn’t go that long, so I stayed up and watched the whole thing. Scoring-wise, there wasn’t a whole lot in it between Littler and Michael van Gerwen, but by the time the Dutchman figured out how to finish, he was 4-0 down. Littler was too good (also too confident in his ability and unbothered by the occasion) to let that lead slip. He was especially strong when he threw first in a leg, not giving van Gerwen a chance to break his throw. He could rack up a dozen or more world titles, he’s that good, but you never know – van Gerwen himself was practically unbeatable for a while, but he’s “only” won three world titles so far. Darts players can have such long careers that Littler could still be competing when I’m a very old man.

After my three two-hour lessons on Saturday, I tuned in to watch the second half of Birmingham City’s game at Wigan. Blues were already two goals up at half-time. A player called Ethan Laird ran riot and they scored again, running out comprehensive 3-0 winners. Blues are now top of the league with 53 points at the exact half-way stage. Last season (in the league above) they managed 50 points in total and still nearly survived. I noticed Wigan had someone called Aasgaard. To go with your shin guards and mouth guard. By the end of the game, the home stands were deserted, while the away fans applauded the winning team and cheered and chanted and all the rest of it. When I see something like that, I’m reminded of how incredible English football can be, especially outside the top echelons. Those away fans. Birmingham to Wigan isn’t that far, but you get fans of clubs like Plymouth or Carlisle trekking up and down the country to follow their hometown team. I always think it must be a whole load of fun. The trips at least as much as the games. Part of me wishes I’d grown up in a football supporting family with strong ties to my home town, instead of being the sort of person who can up sticks and move somewhere where they don’t even speak my language. (I doubt the travelling is as much fun as it used to be. It’s got so damn expensive now. And cup competitions – which can take you to some surprise locations – used to be massively exciting, but the Champions League and the ridiculous sums of money in football have sucked the life out of them.)

Writing about away football supporters has also jogged my memory of a book I read in 2002: A Season with Verona by Tim Parks. The author was a Brit who lived in Italy and was mad about Hellas Verona. He’d cover vast distances on overnight buses to away games. I remember his trip to Bari for the first game of the season; Bari in the deep south is practically a different planet from Verona in the north. His tales made for good reading, but he revelled in the racism and insults and tribalism a bit too much for my liking.

As for my first book, it’s pretty much done now. Dorothy pointed out one or two errors and omissions, which I have now corrected. Only one typo, surprisingly. I still have to write an introduction, and then (in theory at least) it should be ready to go.

Life :) - Writing a book

Ending the year on a more positive note

January 1, 2025 by 0 Comments

I’ve just been to pick up my prescription, and now Mark has sent me a message asking if I’m “doing anything this New Year’s Eve”. But that’s, like, now. Sorry mate, normally I would go into town, but this time I’m staying in. Maybe we can catch up in a day or two.

Last night I had a WhatsApp call with Elena who is nearing the end of her stint in Canada. She’d had a traditional Romanian Christmas in Burlington, Ontario, by all accounts. She’s always easy to talk to. No pressure whatsoever.

The book is taking centre stage at the moment. There’s an awful lot of faffing around with fonts and margins and what have you, which wouldn’t normally be my job.

The UK is in the midst of what the Sun is calling a “quad-demic” of Covid, the flu, a respiratory virus, and norovirus which tends to make you pretty active at both ends. I’m glad I’m over here.

I’m just reading the Wikipedia article on the plane crash in South Korea that killed 179 people. I’m wondering if the article was written by a Kiwi, because it uses the word “berm” for the bank that the plane crashed into. Why on earth that berm was even there utterly beats me, but what do I know?

Three hours of the old year left. I had two trying spells to contend with, one in April and May, and the other in the summer which I really think was caused by the infernal weather. Then I’ve had this general feeling that world is falling to pieces. But lately I’ve been following the news less, have almost completely quit watching pointless YouTube videos, and this book business has given me a new lease of life as we head into 2025 (which for the vast majority of us will be the only time we live in a square-number year). For that I’m grateful.

This afternoon, by the Bega. The temperature didn’t get above freezing today and the fog never fully lifted.

Books - Family - Life :) - Writing a book

My un-Christmas

December 27, 2024 by 0 Comments

It’s Boxing Day here. The day after my un-Christmas and the 20th anniversary of the tsunami that killed nearly 230,000 people.

Last Thursday, the 19th, I had a video call with my friend who came to visit in September. He was about to travel to Normandy to spend Christmas with his girlfriend’s family. I told him that seeing him in Timișoara was a real highlight of my year, which was the truth. He surprised me slightly when he said that it was a major highlight for him too. I suppose I’m just not used to people saying that seeing me is a highlight.

On Sunday, straight after I wrote my last post, I went to Dorothy’s church. Unlike a lot of churches, this one seems harmless. The service lasted 1¾ hours and included a few carols, including one with a verse in French. I quite enjoyed the mini-detour into French. But gosh, that sermon. When will this thing ever end? He was tireless, not even taking a sip of water. Mercifully, at last he said (in Romanian), “As I come to the end…”. He spoke for 45 minutes. I was subjected to some pretty bad sermons as a kid – the priest mumbled so much that you couldn’t make out what he was saying – but at least none of them lasted 45 minutes. Afterwards there was food – good food and plenty of it – and chat, which I wasn’t really in the mood for, though I did talk for a while with the Aussie lady. Before I left, Dorothy gave me an old map of Timișoara, printed in 1983, as a sort of Christmas present. The cathedral, which was completed during the Second World War, was conspicuous in its absence. The government thought it could deny the existence of a major religious landmark by simply leaving it off maps. How bizarre.

The following day I had three lessons, all of them with boys, then later I had dinner with Mark and his wife in Dumbrăvița. It had started to rain just before I got on my bike, and I very nearly wimped out and took the car instead. I took my salată de boeuf and other bits and pieces. Whenever I go to their place at the far end of Dumbrăvița I think that I could not live there. No little bars, no market stalls, no ornate cast-iron doorways, in fact nothing at all more than a few years old. It would do my head in. When I got there, I was immediately greeted by the less placid of their two big dogs. (The one nice thing about where they live is the wood nearby, which is great for the dogs.) We sat down and shared a meal. Ambient music, the sort that I never choose to listen to in any circumstances, emanated from their smart TV. They were mostly very good songs, but annoyingly “ambientised”. We talked a lot about teaching, which makes sense – we all have that in common. We also talked about religion. It isn’t taught at all at their school, when really it should be. We all wondered how a very high IQ doesn’t stop a person having very staunch – and sometimes dangerous – religious beliefs. I only drank one glass of wine, because I knew I’d need to be alert the next day. After we ate, they taught me how to play the card game Shithead. I do remember playing it in France in 2000, but couldn’t remember a thing about it. Mark’s wife gave me a whole load of information without ever telling me that suits didn’t matter. Finally I twigged. So suits don’t matter?! That was the first thing you needed to say! I mastered the rules eventually, but as the game relies pretty heavily on short-term memory and mine is pretty bad, I can’t imagine I’d ever be any good at it. The rain had stopped by the time I left, though I still got pretty muddy. When I got home the darts was still on – this was the last session before Christmas, and the best of the tournament so far, but I couldn’t watch much of it because I needed to be up the next morning. I did however see Florian Hempel lose out in a close match; I’d really wanted him to get through.

The next day was Christmas Eve. A work day. Ten hours on the book, in five two-hour chunks. No interruptions. At one point my doorbell went. Almost certainly carol singers who had tailgated through the front entrance. I ignored it. This reminded me of when I studied for my final university exams. I spent the day writing explanations for the 25 pictures that Dad drew. Some were simple, others much more complicated. There’s probably still some tweaking to do, and then there’s the business of getting the layout right. Neither the pictures nor the explanations are a uniform size.

Christmas Day. I felt a cold coming on. In the morning I spoke to my brother who was up early sorting out his son and about to sort out the turkey too. Then I called Mum and Dad who were already done with Christmas dinner which they had at their place. Mum’s brother and sister-in-law had been, along with Mum’s niece with her (I think) third husband. We talked about a potential name for my little niece. My nephew has a five-letter, one-syllable first name, which follows all the rules of the English language, right down to a magic E to prevent it from being the plural of something sticky. My brother chose that, as far as I’m aware. But we have a feeling that my sister-in-law is less conservative than him (or me, for that matter) when it comes to names of humans, and it’s probably her turn this time. We’ll see what they come up with.

After the video calls, I read the whole of Nevil Shute’s On the Beach yesterday, with the exception of the first chunky chapter which I’d already read. Imagine if that could be a regular thing. No work, no having to see anybody or deal with any ghastly instant messages, just sitting down and reading almost a whole novel. On the Beach, written in 1957 and set in Melbourne following a nuclear war in the Northern Hemisphere, really was a compelling read. I read it with a map of eastern Australia open; at times he would refer to places as they were gradually “taken out” by radiation as it spread southward. I read the final chapter in bed, still not knowing what would happen. As always with an older book, there were a lot of interesting language aspects. One, he uses ‘ld as the contraction for would, instead of the now standard ‘d. Two, he uses directly as an adverb of time, to mean “as soon as”, as in “I went home directly I finished work”. That threw me the first time I saw it. Three, he calls a fridge a frig, which means something very different to me. Frig is also one of the two Romanian words for cold, the other being rece. I suppose fridges were still pretty new in 1957, and the spelling hadn’t been standardised. I’m glad we settled on fridge rather than frig. On the same theme, I remember when mike was used as the short form of microphone. Then mic took over, which is nowhere near as good in my book. Mic goes against English spelling rules, and the c ending makes the verb forms mic’d and mic’ing clumsy; miked and miking worked just perfectly. Imagine if we called a bike a bic. Ugh. Four, he uses the ligatures æ and œ in words like anæsthetic and manœuvre, which you rarely see these days. As for manoeuvre, that’s such a messy word. Yes I know it’s from French. The Americans spell it maneuver, which I prefer, but ideally I wish we’d all just go with manoover and have done with it. And five, he calls babies it. Yes, we still do that sometimes today, but not usually when we know the gender, which is the case when he says it.

Wow, this has been a long one. I went for a brisk walk this sunny morning after taking a Lemsip. Here are some pictures:

Big Ceaușescu-era apartment blocks on the other side of a large vacant section

This bar was once open from 8am to 11pm, but has been closed a while. The patio area next door now looks to be a car wash. This is on Strada Mătăsarilor, or Silk Merchants Street. The Mătăsarilor cemetery is nearby.

I don’t know what the story is of this writer who is seemingly still alive (yes, they erect gravestones in advance here).

A rather nice gravestone and poem; this young woman died during WW2.

I must have been past this large building several times without really noticing the designs on the top.

Family - Photos - Politics - Romania - Writing a book

Good news about the books, an un-election, and some pictures

December 8, 2024 by 0 Comments

I see I somehow neglected to mention my meeting with the publishers, so here goes. It was a weird meeting with the mother and daughter that lasted all of two hours. The mother likes to talk. She’s a French teacher, and sometimes she even switched from Romanian to French. Like I said, weird. At the beginning I was presented with a print-out of both the picture book and the A-B section of the dictionary. I started to comment on the picture book – for the love of God, don’t stretch or squoosh Dad’s illustrations as you’ve done here – before zooming out to the big picture. Before we start talking fonts and formats and stuff, can you assure me that this book, I mean these books, are actually going to see the light of day? The answer was yes, which was by far the most encouraging thing in the whole meeting. I was worried that everything Dad and I had done to this point might be in vain. It seemed EU funding will pay for a large chunk of it. (Of course, this is Romania, so until I actually see the books in print I can’t be 100% sure of anything.) Sometimes I struggled to articulate – in Romanian – what I wanted to say, but we managed to flesh out some important details. Surprisingly, I’m in charge of the layout, not them, and I agreed to a deadline of 15th January to get the small book sorted. This won’t be an easy task because the pictures won’t all be the same size, they’ll need varying amounts of explanatory text, and so on. We agreed that both books would be in B5 format, roughly 7 inches by 10, though the picture book will be landscape and the dictionary portrait. I have no plans for Christmas, which means I’ll have time to spend on the books.

Yes, Romania, where you can’t guarantee anything. Even whether elections actually happen. On Friday they (Romania’s supreme court, I think) invalidated the first round of the presidential election, less than two days before the second round was due to take place. (In fact, overseas voting for the second round had already begun.) This was a major shock. A couple of days earlier, documents were made available that showed that Putin supporter Călin Georgescu had been hugely promoted, probably by Russia, through algorithms (and money) on TikTok, which is Chinese-owned. The re-run of the election probably won’t happen until March, and it’s unclear if Georgescu will be allowed to run again. Last weekend’s parliamentary elections are still valid as far as I know, so presumably Klaus Iohannis (the current president) will stay in place, with the new parliament, until March. But really, all bets are off.

I spoke to my parents this morning. Mum had her shiny new crown. She described the space-age process of X-rays followed by scans from every angle that enabled the crown to be 3D-printed. None of this business of having to bite into a mould; it’s all cutting-edge stuff. The price is cutting-edge too. I could see a lovely painting of Dad’s which they’d hung in the kitchen; it was of the fruit and vegetable market in Cambridge. We discussed my brother, who has been pulling out every imaginable stop to complete his latest assignment for his master’s. Master’s. Where on earth has this motivation come from? He called me during the week for help with a spreadsheet. Luckily I spent quite a few years dealing with spreadsheets in a previous life. Only six weeks until I’ll be getting a niece.

I had four lessons yesterday – two English, two maths. Matei wanted to talk about the killing of Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, a gargantuan American health insurer. Delay, deny, defend: that’s apparently what was written on the shell casings. Matei said that his death was being celebrated all over TikTok. I suggested that celebrating the brutal killing of someone with a wife and family who was just doing his job isn’t really OK, even if the company is as parasitic as the one he headed. But at least this has shed a light on the unforgivable state of US healthcare and insurance. Unfortunately I suspect it will all just blow over like everything else in America. It’s headline news for a week or two, but ultimately nothing happens. Just think of George Floyd. Or the numerous school shootings. Or the 2008 financial crisis where the big banks got bailed out as people lost their homes, and people shrugged their shoulders. They just put Trump back in, after all.

Last Sunday I went out for a spin, visiting Peciu Nou, Cebza, Petroman (which isn’t far off my online name) and finally the decent-sized town of Ciacova which its cobbled streets and square. My brother called me while was in Ciacova, so I gave him a bit of a tour. I still hope one day he will visit me in Romania. After getting off the phone, a dog bit my leg, completely out of the blue. He or she (I didn’t pay attention to that) didn’t draw blood, otherwise I’d have seen the doctor.

On Sunday evening I went into town and saw the parade of army men with torches, for the national day celebration.

I sent this picture of Peciu Nou to Dad, who wants to turn it into a painting. He wanted to see the other side of the street, so it looks like I’ll be making another trip there.

Cebza

Petroman

Various pictures of Ciacova

40 kg piglets for sale

No trains have been down this track for a while

National day celebrations. Eight years ago, this was all so new and exciting, even though my feet froze.

Environment - Photos - Politics - Writing a book

Book plans and planning for the worst

November 3, 2024 by 0 Comments

A fairly productive Saturday. An online session (I hesitate to call it a lesson) with the priest, then two maths lessons in Dumbrăvița. After doing quadratic equations with Matei, we discussed the US election for the last 10 or 15 minutes. (It would have been helpful to have devoted the whole two hours to the election. So much maths there. The Electoral College, gerrymandering, and all the rest of it.) Matei brought up the site 270towin.com where you can plug in your own predictions.

After my lessons I met Dorothy to discuss the smaller of the books I (and Dad) have been working on. We wanted to meet at Scârț but it was closed for renovation. What kind of renovation, we wondered. Its messiness is kind of the whole point. I hope it’s for something structural rather than any kind of tarting up. The area surrounding Scârț, which has a park, cobbled streets, and architecture from the last days of the Austro-Hungarian empire, might be my favourite part of the city. We ended up having our tea and coffee a place called Viniloteca (as in vinyl records), which I’d previously misread as Vinoteca (as in wine). It was great, with all its proper music. I felt a certain pang when Tonight by David Bowie and Tina Turner came on. I’ll have to go there with Mark sometime. I didn’t buy any of the records or T-shirts on sale, but that wasn’t my focus. Dorothy and I looked at Dad’s 25 pictures, each one demonstrating a common error that Romanians make when they communicate in English. Seeing a whole body of Dad’s work really shows you what an extraordinary talent he has. (I know I’m biased.) On Monday I’ll try and arrange a meeting with the publishers to see what (if anything) will be the next step in getting the book into print. Will it cost me money? I say “if anything” because this is Romania, where nothing is guaranteed.

Yes, the election. I read an article that described it as bearing down on us all. “Bear down on” – an ominous three-word phrasal verb if ever there was one. Mum, Dad and I doomed for half an hour on Skype last night. What a Trump win would mean for Ukraine and the security of Europe as a whole. What it would mean for democracy. What it would mean for the environment which is deteriorating before our eyes. How the fuck the future of so much of Europe depends on a few thousand ill-informed voters in Cumberland County in Pennsylvania who don’t even care about foreign policy. (I know nothing about Cumberland County. It was a name I picked at random from the list of counties. I’m sure the people who live there are lovely. But that’s kind of the point.) The main thrust of our conversation was: how did we get here? When my parents were my age and I was a teenager, this sort of talk would have been unimaginable.

This was my guess on the 270towin website:

Of the seven swing states, I gave only Michigan to Harris. The most likely map is in fact all seven states falling to Trump. That’s because of how correlated the states are with each other. If there’s a polling error of a few points, it’ll likely be reflected across the board. In the last couple of days, things have looked marginally better for Harris, so I’m still hopeful. It’s certainly not a done deal, as Dad called it last night. But it’s best to mentally prepare for the worst, especially when there’s absolutely nothing you can do about it.

Talking of the environment, more than 200 people have so far died in Biblical-level flooding in Valencia.

Crysanthemums at the market yesterday. It was 1st November, the Day of the Dead.

The two pictures above were taken today.

Language teaching - Politics - Writing a book

Democratic drama begins in 53 hours

July 3, 2024 by 0 Comments

Democracy in Britain can be dramatic, high-octane stuff. I recently watched a clip of the results from Sunderland in the 2016 Brexit referendum. This was only the second local authority to declare; Leave got 82,000 votes against just 52,000 for Remain. The woman who announced the results – to wild cheers – was sitting on market-shattering, tectonic-plate-shifting dynamite. In the general election of 1997, Michael Portillo, a high-profile Tory thought to be a potential leader, lost his seat to a Labour guy named Twigg that no-one had heard of. The declaration came after three in the morning. The announcer (a man that time) stumbled over Portillo’s middle name Xavier, coming out with the four-syllable ex-ay-vi-er. His shock loss became a symbol of the Tories’ crushing defeat, and people still call it the “Portillo moment” now. Credit to him though for slipping away in a dignified manner; afterwards he made some very good documentary series on railway journeys.

We could get this level of drama on Thursday. Let’s hope there are a whole raft of Portillo moments. The Conservatives bear little resemblance to the party I remember when John Major was prime minister. (He was our local MP.) They’re not interested in conserving a damn thing and have made people’s lives measurably worse in their 14 years in power. A dream result, though unlikely, would be the Tories’ relegation to third place behind the Liberal Democrats. My prediction is for the Tories to do catastrophically badly, but not (unfortunately) the extinction-level stuff seen in some of the polls. Unusually many seats are too close to call this time around; Reform have risen and there has been a notable decline in the overall vote share of the two big parties, so just 30% will sometimes be enough to snag a seat. I’d love to see some momentum build for electoral reform – the current system is unfair and isn’t fit for purpose. The exit poll is always a huge moment on election night; it comes at 10pm, or midnight my time, and in recent elections has been deadly accurate.

The big question is what will happen after the election. Look at the surge of the far right in France (their final round is this weekend). Look at America where the most likely outcome this November could have frightening repercussions. I expect Labour and Keir Starmer to be miles better than the Tories and their numerous leaders of late, but they’re being far too timid in their plans. (Yeah I know, they’re way ahead in the polls so want to play it safe.)

This afternoon I had a quick demo session with the lady this firm have given me. I’d completely forgotten that I was being observed in incognito mode by a woman from the firm itself. That was a good thing – I’d have been panicking like mad otherwise. We’ll have our first real session tomorrow evening.

Dad has sent me some more illustrations to go in the book. He’s less busy with painting these days, so he has more time than usual. The illustrations are mostly great, but I need scanned (not photographed) versions.

Edit: The Netherlands have just opened the scoring in the 20th minute of their Euro 2024 match with Romania. (I first wrote that Belgium had scored. I’m not following it all that closely.)
Update: Romania were basically thrashed in the end, 3-0.

Music - Other sports - Tennis - Travel: Romania - Writing a book

Three and easy

June 19, 2024 by 0 Comments

It’s getting hot and uncomfortable and soporific; we’re forecast to reach the mid-30s on each of the next four days.

Yesterday Romania’s match against neighbours Ukraine kicked off at four, just as my lesson did with the twins in their dark ground-floor flat near Piața Verde, one of the city’s many markets. We agreed to do English stuff with the game on mute in the background. We were discussing building materials when Nicolae Stanciu’s 29th-minute screamer went in. Romania scored twice more in double-quick time after the break. They were seriously impressive, surpassing all expectations. Most of the fans in Munich were decked out in the yellow of Romania. The match was still going on as I went past the bar at the market; old men sat there agog, probably reliving the golden age of Gheorghe Hagi. When I got home I met a young chap on the stairs. “Did you see the match? Trei-zero!” That was the final score. With 16 of the 24 teams qualifying for the next round (I’m not a fan of this format), Romania are already in prime position to do so. Then it’s a straight knockout and who knows.

I played tennis with Florin again on Saturday. I was up 7-6 (7-4), 4-0 when we finished. Once again I escaped after a frustratingly high unforced-error rate in the first set. In the middle of the set I felt I couldn’t execute anything.

Dad is knocking out some pictures to go in one of the potential books. (Doesn’t that sound weird?) Sometimes I have to nudge him in a different direction when, despite the artwork, it doesn’t quite get the language point across. One difficulty is getting the pictures to me without a loss of quality. So far he’s been sending me photos, but the lighting creates a grey background, sometimes verging on brown, that infiltrates the main colour of the picture too. I’m hoping he can scan them.

A song I’ve heard a lot over the last two months is Too Sweet by Hozier. It’s a rare modern mainstream hit that I actually like. I plan to use it for one of my fill-in-the-gaps-in-the-lyrics exercises. I usually resort to older songs for these, so it’s nice to have something contemporary for a change. A far less mainstream song that came on the radio yesterday was Lume, Lume by Vunk, one of my favourite Romanian bands. I was its 2014th Shazammer. I should also mention that today is Paul McCartney’s 82nd birthday.

Next Thursday I’m off to Prigor in Țara Almăjului, where I’ll spend three nights. The whole area is in an isolated valley of the River Nera; from the photos it looks beautiful. I’m looking forward to getting away. My shortish break will serve as a bit of a dry run for something more ambitious later.

Books - Life :) - Music - Writing a book

Getting into print (but counting no chickens)

June 3, 2024 by 0 Comments

An interesting day yesterday. At 12:30 I turned up at Porto Arte for lunch to celebrate Florin’s wife’s birthday. There weren’t many of us there – that was fine by me. I had a traditional Romanian lunch: pork, sausages, a fried egg and some vegetables. We sat outside where the music wasn’t bad. Dragostea din Tei by O-Zone came on; this was a massive hit throughout Europe in 2004, but by that point I’d moved to New Zealand so it passed me by. (The tei referenced in the song is that lime tree which provides an olfactory backdrop to this time of year.) Later Gordon Lightfoot’s Sundown played. Lightfoot died last year aged 84. His haunting Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald often came on when I listened to the Sound in Wellington. I said I’d have to leave at two to attend a meeting about the book, and that provoked some interest. When 2pm rolled around I got out some cash to pay, but Florin told me it was an invitation and that I should put my money away. If only it ended there. But once again he gave me a lecture on how we do things in Romania and you need to learn. All unnecessary. What was I supposed to do? Just assume I didn’t have to pay? Seriously man, piss off.

So on to the book meeting. Dorothy came too. We stood outside the offices of Editura de Vest where there were aging signs that were partly in Serbian, and tried to read the Cyrillic. Then the lady in her sixties showed up and opened the door. It was a large old building which I’d been in several times before – it used to house a branch of Banca Transilvania before that closed around the start of the pandemic. She spent half an hour (!) showing us around the offices of the publishing house – high-ceilinged caverns (the ceilings leaked in a storm) piled high with musty books. The outfit was founded in 1972 and showed little sign of change since then. I was getting pretty antsy. Are we going to move on the actual book here or what?

Mercifully she switched on a PC with a large screen – the only piece of tech I could see – and brought up the eighth and final part of my book. Yes, we can publish this. Really? Sure, 500-odd pages in B5 format, no problem. (B5 is around ten inches by seven, I found out.) I didn’t expect that at all. I explained that it wasn’t quite finalised and no, there are no page numbers because what I have in my document won’t match up with what appears on paper. I still need to include a pronunciation key and a “legend” describing all the symbols I’ve used. She gave me free rein over what fonts to use. (Romanians just love Arial and Times New Roman. I really can’t abide Arial, and though I don’t mind Times in itself, to me it smacks of “boring” and “you haven’t thought about this”. I plan to use a mixture of Cambria and Franklin Demi.)

Next I showed her a picture Dad had done, illustrating perfectly the difference between “exercise” and “practice”. I suggested a second, smaller book in a landscape format with 30 or so of Dad’s illustrations. Sounds good. She then said that they have a link with the Minister of Culture and there will be some event next May, so main book would need to go to press before then. As for the illustrated one, that could be published sooner. Gosh. Dorothy often chipped in; in fact she spoke at least as much as I did. At 4:15 the lady’s daughter arrived. Unlike her mother, she could speak English, but we continued in Romanian. Dorothy had to leave at that point. It’s all extremely positive and it would be incredible if the book(s) made their way into print, but I’m not counting any chickens. Far from it. I think back to the time in 2016 when a language school offered me a job, then later un-offered it. This is Romania; take nothing for granted.

I went for another drive on Saturday, skirting the border with Serbia. I got stopped by the border police. It’s kind of weird living close to land borders. The two policemen took down my details and I was free to go.

I’ve just started reading Franz Kafka’s The Trial. I had no idea it was the centenary of his death. Everything is Kafkaesque these days; it’s about time I saw what the fuss was about.

Last night we had a thunderstorm. We had a good downpour this morning too.

Family - Films - Music - Politics - Writing a book

Freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength

May 31, 2024 by 0 Comments

My brother said that about fifteen people turned up for our aunt’s celebration on Tuesday. Apart from food and chat and sharing of photos, not a lot happened. He’d hoped someone might say a few words about her life, but that never happened.

It’s the last day of May and the sweet smell of tei – lime trees – is filling the air as it always does at this time of year. Before this morning’s lesson in the fifth-floor flat, my parents called me from Hampden. They were about to get fish and chips from the Tavern. They’ve had a relaxing time in Moeraki even if they’ve seen little of the late-autumn sun. We discussed Trump’s guilty verdict, announced hours earlier. Being a convicted criminal may improve his chances in November. Even being banged up – precisely what he deserves – wouldn’t bar him from becoming president. Because that’s the world we now live in, where black is white and war is peace. How did we end up here?

After my lesson I had some time to kill before getting my hair cut for the summer. I sat for a bit in the so-called Botanic Park, then cycled to my appointment in Dorothy’s neck of the woods. I happened to bump into her. She was incredulous that I was about to spend 50 lei. It actually set me back 65. The hairdresser – a woman of 40-odd – recognised me from last time. She did a good job, and I won’t need another chop for months, but I’ll go elsewhere next time because it’s got too pricey. It’s a pity the place opposite me closed down.

Last night I watched the first episode of Eric, a British series on Netflix starring Benedict Cumberbatch whom I hadn’t seen for years. I enjoyed it and plan to watch the remaining five episodes. It was set in gritty, grimy eighties New York, which I liked, and they used one of the late Sixto Rodriguez’s songs at the end of the episode. Talking of music, Dad sent me a clip of this song by British band alt-J. It’s called Deadcrush and is supposedly about crushes that the band members have on Elizabeth “Lee” Miller (an American photographer before and during World War Two) and Anne Boleyn, second wife of Henry VIII. The lyrics are mostly indecipherable, but the song (and video) is a fascinating piece of art nonetheless. I’d heard of alt-J but was unaware of this song (the song of theirs I know best talks about licking someone like the inside of a crisp packet); I wonder how Dad came across it.

I recently watched a video where Kwasi Kwarteng, who served as Chancellor under Liz Truss’s infamous lettuce leadership, gave a long interview. He went to Eton, just like David Cameron, George Osborne and the rest. He’s got a massive IQ but frankly so what. He and Truss crashed the economy and though he knew he messed up, didn’t show much contrition. It’s all a game to him. He’s a damn sight better than Truss herself though; she’s never shown an ounce of self-awareness at any point.

Latest news on the English book. We’ve now got a meeting at 2:30 on Sunday afternoon. I’ll prepare some bits and pieces and see what happens.