Driving

Driving - Language teaching - Life :) - Maths teaching - Music

A hot mess

August 20, 2024 plutomanby 0 Comments

It’s all got a bit crappy today. I got up at 6:30 after nowhere near enough sleep (three hours? four? That’s been pretty standard in this heat) and then started shouting and crashing into stuff. It was like 31/1/23 (that date is etched in my mind), but not quite as bad. It’s been coming. Although I’ve been to places and (sort of) done stuff lately, I’ve been going through the motions. Yet again. I’ve got a sodding master’s degree in going through the motions. No enjoyment, nothing means anything, everything feels like an obligation or even a chore, and the cherry on the top is a complete inability to relax.

Today I did actually get some stuff done. Three lessons, totalling 5½ hours, including maths with Matei in Dumbrăvița. Last week he got his IGCSE results; he got a B in maths and maybe I could have got him up to an A but it was a question of too much to do in too little time. It didn’t help that the buggers at his school didn’t let me see his mock paper in which he got a D – that would have been invaluable to me. (By the way, a B is the third-highest grade; the top grade is an A-star.) This afternoon I had two hours with a 13-year-old football-obsessed boy who lives in Spain but is in his native Romania for the summer. His English is good. In other words, he’s pretty much trilingual. We went through a English textbook of his with instructions in Spanish, most of which I could understand without too much difficulty.

Something else I got done today was get my car battery replaced. It was dead when I got back from the UK – the heat doesn’t help. There’s no such thing in Romania (as far as I know) as the AA which I was always a member of in New Zealand. Over there my battery would die, I’d call them up, and a man with a van would be round in minutes. Here it’s more complicated and that stressed me out no end. I’m supposed to be going to Slovenia on Thursday. A man did come over with some jump leads and I drove to another part of the city where I got a replacement. It was early afternoon – already crazily hot – and I felt shattered.

On Saturday they had a free concert in Parcul Civic. I wish I’d known that Zdob și Zdub were the opening act because I really like their music. I did get to see Passenger though. Or kind of. He was a speck in the distance. Passenger isn’t a band, he’s just one Englishman with a guitar. And a distinctive voice. He shot to fame in 2012 with his Let Her Go. You only miss the sun when it starts to snow. Or however it goes. He had three or four other songs on his album that I liked, but that one hit was the making of him. (He talked about what an extraordinary lucky break that was for someone who was a busker up until then.) He started his set by saying, “Is this a normal temperature for you? I’m from England where it never gets this fucking hot.” This was after 8pm and it was 35 at least. The crowd never properly got into his stuff. I don’t think he realised that only 5% of the crowd properly understood him and all his idioms. Even though I really like him, I just wanted to get home. I wasn’t in the mood for anything. Certainly not Rita Ora who came on after Passenger. She’s British too, but her stuff isn’t my thing at all.

Yesterday I met Mark at Berăria 700. I hadn’t seen him for ages. It was great to catch up and have a laugh. That didn’t stop me from feeling like utter crap a few hours later, though. I wish I knew the secret.

It would help if it would just cool down. Being outside in nature or even among the architecture we have here is hugely helpful if you’re prone to iffy mental health. But when the infernal heat imposes what might as well be a curfew on you…

I had a rather brief catch-up with New Zealand on Saturday. Dad had a sore throat and could hardly speak. Everyone else was suffering too. As for Mum, she didn’t have a cold (yet), but she was exhausted. I hope their fortunes improve.

My first lesson tomorrow is at 11am, so I’ll get on the bike beforehand. That’s if I get some sleep first.

Driving - Other sports - Travel: Romania

Maramureș și mai departe — Part 2 of 2 (with photos)

August 7, 2024 plutomanby 0 Comments

I’d been to Maramureș twice before, and it still felt a world away. In every village you saw babe – old ladies who probably weren’t even that old – dressed almost identically in dark clothes and a shawl. Once I saw a woman spinning wool with a spindle and distaff like I’d seen in videos. But on Friday morning I left the region and made my way to Turda (which is nicer than it sounds), only 30 km from the major city of Cluj-Napoca.

It was a three-hour drive or so. The first half of the journey, which took in the beautiful county of Bistrița-Năsăud, was a pleasure, but after hitting the town of Beclean it all became dull and industrial. I reached Turda earlier than I’d told the apartment owner I’d be there, and tried to park in the city but the payment on my phone didn’t work. I wished we still had self-explanatory coin-operated meters. Then I found a Dedeman which is one of the most useful things in the whole of Romania. As well as being a hardware store which sells anything you could possibly want in that vein, you can also park for free, pee for free (a big deal in Romania) or get a coffee for not far off free. The apartment was in a pretty seedy part of town to be honest, full of brutalist blocks and semi-derelict shops. I hung around a bit more, finishing my book, before calling the owner who let me in. As is often the case, it was much nicer on the inside than the outside. It had everything I could possibly have needed.

We don’t want your dirt here

That evening I watched a bit of the Olympics which I haven’t otherwise bothered with. They were showing the athletics. Mixed relay – what’s this? The British stadium announcer did a great job. The world and Olympic records for the women’s 800 metres appeared on the screen. Some Russian set those records in the early eighties and they haven’t been equalled since. All totally undodgy, nothing to see here, according to the Romanian commentator. The event I got into the most was the decathlon high jump. So far Romania have claimed seven medals (three gold, three silver and one bronze), all of them in water – five in rowing and two in swimming.

From the museum. On Sunday morning I tried to visit the Roman site – the castrum – but it was closed off.

On Saturday I visited a museum in town; I was the only customer which meant I was watched the whole time. Turda was conquered by the Romans, at which point it was called Potaissa. I was impressed with the presentation of the museum, and the translations into English were excellent. My only gripe was a lack of way-finding signs; this meant I was constantly told to go this or that way, to my slight embarrassment. After the museum I tried to get a coffee from a bakery, but the woman there was spectacularly unhelpful. Olympic-level stuff. Eventually I did get my hands on a simple coffee.

The main reason I visited Turda was to see the salt mine. Salt was extracted there over centuries; the mine closed in 1932 but was opened as a tourist attraction in 1992. After standing in a half-hour queue, I entered through a tunnel and descended into a cavern which is now a sort of theme park with a ferris wheel and assorted games, then went down another 13 flights of stairs to the bottom where you could row boats on a salt lake. I guessed it was 200 feet deep in total, but in fact it’s about twice that. I read Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials series 20-odd years ago and the whole place seemed somehow Pullmanesque. I rushed back from the depths of the tunnel to avoid going into a third hour of parking fees. I had lunch in the car on the hillside just outside the town centre; it was pretty there in a Romanian sort of way. Then I hung around the town for the afternoon; I had a very nice boysenberry-like ice cream.

I bought a melon from one of the least helpful stallholders I’d ever encountered (this anti-service still takes me aback after all these years in Romania), then grabbed a shaorma for dinner. I ate it in front of the judo finale – France beat Japan in a sudden-death tie-break to win the team event – then it was back to the athletics. I couldn’t get properly into it. I realise how anti-big I’ve become in the last eight years; the Olympics, the Champions League, the soon-to-be-expanded football World Cup, it’s all got far too big for me. (Olympic controversy has erupted here in Romania – I only knew about it when a student told me. The 18-year-old gymnast Ana Bărbosu won bronze and celebrated with the Romanian flag, only for the Americans to successfully appeal a minute later. The American got a 0.1 boost to her score, shunting Bărbosu down into fourth. She was in tears. Now we’ve got Nadia Comăneci weighing in and the Romanian prime minister boycotting the closing ceremony.)

On Sunday morning I drove back home. The super-fast motorway made this the easiest trip of the lot. (Romania’s motorways are great. There just aren’t very many of them.) My Peugeot was very happy bombing along at 130 km/h. On the way I stopped at Deva. Back in 2016 it was the first Romanian town I visited after Timișoara. Its main feature is the fortress on the hill. Eight years ago I took the lift to the top, but this time I walked up. If there was a proper paved track, I didn’t see it. I practically hiked to the top, then when I got up there I bushwhacked 300-plus degrees around the wall of the fortress before eventually finding the entrance and other people. Then I scaled 240 (?) steps to the actual top, took a few pictures, and walked down via the paved track like I did in 2016. A couple of hours later I was home.

Two students have so far raised eyebrows at my decision to go camping alone. Boring? Ever so slightly dangerous? (At 30 lei per night, it was certainly cheap. It was basic but it had a hot shower, a fridge, and even low-G internet. I saw a deer but no bears came near the tent.) The trip as a whole was fine, but I never felt I could fully relax. Very early tomorrow morning I’m flying to Luton; relaxation is the entire goal of my stay in St Ives. Very few places to go or people to see; it should be great. (Unfortunately I’ll miss my brother who flies to New Zealand on Saturday.)

Driving - Travel: Romania

Maramureș și mai departe — Part 1 of 2 (with photos)

August 6, 2024 plutomanby 0 Comments

I got back yesterday from my latest trip. It was interesting in many ways but I struggled to relax, probably because a trip like that requires a certain level of organisation, and being organised is always something I have to work at.

On Tuesday I did 487 km getting up to Bârsana. A few more than I needed to; for that I can blame crappy signs (or lack of them) and myself for not using GPS. The campsite was two kilometres up a steep lane from the town of Bârsana. It was basic and when I arrived it was pretty empty. There were three host cats; the woman at the entrance was slightly surprised that I didn’t have a dog. I pitched the tent between apple and plum trees. My first night was starry like I hadn’t seen in years – I wish now I’d stayed up to watch the meteor shower – which also meant it was much colder than I’d bargained for. There was the pleasant clang of cowbells, and in the early morning the sound of cockerels. Over breakfast the next morning I chatted to a French couple, using a mix of English and French. After speaking French for a bit, or trying to, I then had to talk to the campsite owner in Romanian; what came out of my mouth was pure gibberish, as it often is when I have to switch between two foreign languages.

Just up the hill from the campsite, shortly before sunset

The nearby cemetery. The big shots from the Bârsan family are buried there.

On Wednesday I visited the 600-year-old wooden Orthodox monastery in Bârsana – there was wooden everything for miles around, making the whole region visually distinctive. There was a lot to see outside the engine room of the place which was closed to visitors. I then drove to another, much smaller, monastery on the other side of the Iza river; not much to see there, so I sat for a bit by the river and read my book – Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card. The author is a clever bugger. After that I spend a couple of hours in the town of Ocna Șugatag, whose name conjures up images of a childhood game. (An ocnă is apparently a salt mine; I’d visit one of them a bit later.)

The monastery had a pair of peacocks

I was more prepared for the cold on the second night. The following morning was the most strangely fascinating part of the whole trip as I visited Cimitirul Vesel – the Merry Cemetery – in Săpânța. A well-known tourist attraction, this consists of an ornate church surrounded by hundreds of brightly painted wooden gravestones.

Each “stone” has a naive picture of the deceased, usually illustrating what they did for a living, and below that a poem giving the story of the person’s life, sometimes in informal dialect rather than strict grammatically correct Romanian, and always in the first person. These poems could be amusing (merry if you like) but often they told tales of great sadness. Accidents, long illnesses, lost loved ones, the running theme that these people did everything they could. They died young, or they lived to a good age but saw their friends and family die young. One or the other, mostly. Worst of all might have been a three-year-old girl, together with an illustration of the tractor that ran her over. It was interesting to see people’s jobs – there was the occasional picture of a teacher at a blackboard but for the most part they worked on the land, as they still do now. No management consultants, no business development managers, no actuaries. And no pure housewives either; the women did (and do) hard physical work, just like the men. (It’s a very common sight in a village to see women carrying rakes and scythes.) It isn’t clear how this unusual tradition of painted stones came about. They’re made in a workshop nearby and each one takes considerable time.

Above is one of the happier stones. Irina was a part-housewife who weaved woollen cergi (rugs, I suppose) as you can see in the picture. She taught her children, enjoyed her time with her grandchildren, and wishes nothing for the best for them all. She hopes they grow old like she did. She lived to 93.

All the saints’ days, including (in this shot) my birthday

I spent the rest of the day at Sighet, or Sighetul Marmației to give it its full name. It was my third time there. I visited a small museum and read more of my book in the park.

Above are just some of the tennis trophies in the museum. There was a local champion in the over-70s.

Above is a selection of locally produced board games. They all got published; presumably they were crowd-funded. One of them uses a whopping 72 dice.

A scaled-up version of those 72 dice. Yes, I counted them.

A few pictures from Sighet. Dogs in doorways seemed to be a theme.

After a third night in the tent, in which it rained, it was time to make tracks.

Driving - Family - Travel: Romania

Sad news about my aunt

April 11, 2024 plutomanby 0 Comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

The route I took on Sunday

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

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

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

Driving - Family - Music - Photos

About to shoot off, but I think I’ll be here a while

March 28, 2024 plutomanby 0 Comments

It’s my last day before my Easter break – one of the windiest days I can remember in Romania – and it’s going by in slow motion. I say Easter break, but in fact it’s the first of two Easters I’ll celebrate this year. Due to the vagaries of moon phases and an obsolete calendar, the gap between this year’s “normal” Easter and Orthodox Easter is five weeks – usually it’s just one week, and sometimes they even fall on the same day. My second Easter, when I won’t have to see anybody or do a whole lot, will feel like more of a break than the first.

To get my driving confidence up, I need a window of a few hours so I can get the hell out of the city. A trip around the block won’t do it. This isn’t Geraldine; around the block involves the main road right outside my block of flats (turning left onto it is horrible, I’ve realised) with 18-wheelers bearing down on me. After this afternoon’s trip I got straight into the white wine I bought from Recaș last week. Getting out on the open road though is a whole heap of fun. At this point it seems my car is going to be pretty economical, as French cars often are. (Last night a student told me there’s a saying in Romania that you should avoid the letter F when it comes to cars. That means Ford, Fiat, or French.)

I met Dorothy in town yesterday. We talked about Timișoara and how it suits us both down to the ground. There’s so much to like here: the architecture, the parks, the river, the markets, the funny hole-in-the-wall shops, all the imperfections that make you feel more alive. Add in the welcoming people and the fact that it’s safer than almost any city in the UK. (If you don’t feel safe in a city, everything else falls away.) Plus all the signs being in an exotic language is massively cool. Having everything in my native English would now seem humdrum and tame. Returning to live in the country of my birth is a complete non-starter; New Zealand is an option but unless things ramp up horribly a few hundred miles east, I’ll be in Romania for a while yet.

Dad sent me a video of The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down, an extraordinary piece of music by The Band. I was more familiar with Joan Baez’s rendition of the song, but The Band’s original version is really quite something. In fact The Band have produced amazing stuff all round; I’ll probably end up adding one of their albums to my collection. Last night Dad told me about a programme he’d been listening to on the radio, all about accents, or more specifically what causes people to keep them or change them when they move. Mum certainly softened out the edges of her Kiwi accent when she moved to the UK; attracting the nickname Iggy based on how she pronounced “egg” might have given her the impetus to do that. Being a teacher must have been a driver too. (My brother’s name contains the same vowel as “egg”; Mum made a conscious effort to say it in the English way so it didn’t sound like a certain pulse that is sometimes preceded by “Mr.”)

I’ll be up at four tomorrow to get a taxi to the airport. Today my brother has taken the little one over to see his great-aunt in the home. My cousin was concerned that if he had a sniffle and his mum were to catch a cold, that would likely be the end of her. I’m planning to cycle over to her place on Monday.

Here are some snaps I took yesterday – a slice of Holland in the middle of Timișoara.

Driving - Family

Blueberries and pomegranates

March 23, 2024 plutomanby 0 Comments

A miracle occurred about the time I got back from New Zealand. (Coincidence or not?) My left nostril had been running almost constantly for 18 months since about when the Ukraine war started, then magically it stopped. It still runs if I’m outside in cold weather or when I exercise, and I still take paracetamol most days for low-level pain, but otherwise it’s a spectacular improvement and one I didn’t expect.

Last weekend I emailed a friend from Wellington. He’s such a nice bloke, but I hadn’t heard from him since just after the 2020 US election, so I wrote only a couple of lines, not expecting a reply. But to my delight he got back to me. I hope we can keep in touch now.

On Wednesday my brother passed on a short video of his son. His mum was feeding him – Weetabix with blueberries – and he made a decent attempt at saying “blueberry”. He came out with something like “blubby”. I talked to my brother about this, saying that the repeated B is nice and baby-friendly. I also wondered what he’s doing getting blueberries in March, the spoilt little chap. We never got them in any month. My brother said that if it was up to him, his little boy wouldn’t be getting them either. Under six days till I see them all; I’m looking forward to that a lot.

Today I had to make two trips to the mall for all my car insurance and paperwork. And new number plates. I got to pick my three-letter combination from about two dozen options all around the middle of the P series. (I could have got pretty much any combo if I’d been willing to fork out for it.) When I saw POM among a load of all-consonant blends I went straight for it. It’s easy to remember and it’s hilarious honestly when I look back at all my Kiwi cousins and classmates in Temuka calling me a stinky pom or something even less flattering. By the time I started working over there, I felt quite proud of the term – Britain was cool back then. In fact I even mentioned it in a post in late 2022. In Romanian, a pom is a fruit tree. (Wouldn’t it be nice to have a garden with pomi one day?) A non-fruit-bearing tree is a copac, though sometimes I hear non-fruit trees being called pomi too; languages are complicated. By the way, that’s the closest I’ll ever get to having a vanity plate. They were popular and advertised all the damn time on the radio in New Zealand; they always seemed a great waste of money.

That was the fun bit. Letters and words always are to me. The rest of the process was just weird and confusing, like so much of Romanian bureaucracy. People (my students, mainly) told me to use one of the several brokers in the mall because doing it myself would be a massive struggle. The extra cost would be worth it. They were absolutely right; I’d have been stuffed on my own. This morning there were crowds of people carrying files full of paper. Two supermarket trolleys laden with old plates were wheeled into some kind of oblivion. There was a policewoman with five stripes on her epaulettes – how do you get that many? There were counters that the broker lady could go to but I couldn’t, and vice versa. They’re sending me an updated talon – a kind of log book – that you must have on you when you drive. But because changing my address at the immigration office has proven impossible, they’re sending it to my old address. I’ve asked my tennis partner (he still lives in the block) if he can somehow intercept my mail.

I’m now worried I might have picked up a cold from the girl who has come here for two-hour maths lessons two nights running and will be back for round three tomorrow.

Driving - Music - Photos

A quick trip

March 21, 2024 plutomanby 0 Comments

Earlier starts are good for me. This morning I had a one-hour lesson from eight, then cycled to the local produce market where I bought a sack of potatoes, cheese (cow’s this time), some spinach and some spring onions. I heard a stallholder say “crumpir”, a regional word for “potato”: it comes from the Serbian “krompir”. As usual at this time of year there were bags of stinging nettles for sale; I should probably try cooking with them at some stage.

After I got back from the market I took my car for a spin because I was free of lessons until 2:30. What’s great about Timișoara (among many other things) is that when you’re out of the city, you’re properly out of it, so I drove to Recaș, 25 minutes down the road. Famous for its winery, it’s easy to get to from my side of the city. When I arrived at eleven, I found a town brimming with life and bathed in sunshine. It was lovely just to sit for a few minutes on a bench in the small central park where the trees were in pink blossom and the birds were chirruping away. There was a small indoor market and a popular outdoor stall selling mici and chips. Most of the folk were older; a fair few of them were gypsies. I’d only been to Recaș once before, back in 2017, to pick up wine with one of my students. After a quick look round the place I went to the winery outlet (in a more modern building now) and got five litres of medium dry white wine from the tap for NZ$18 or just under £9, then came home. On the way back I saw a Wizz Air plane come in to land – probably the one I’ll be coming in on two weeks tomorrow. Though it was a chilly start to the day and the temperature barely made it into the teens, there’s hardly been a cloud in the sky.

In recent weeks I’ve felt a lot of anxiety. I’m not sure why. It’s probably a combination of pessimism about the modern world as a whole (I keep wanting to escape it by putting on 50-year-old records) and recognising that I’m getting older and need to change aspects of my life but don’t know what or how. It’s also the being on my own thing. It’s been so long that I hardly remember anything else, but it’s not supposed to be like this, is it? You’re supposed to have a rock, a safety net, someone to share your experiences and problems and foreign-language life admin with. Without that, life can get precarious, overwhelming, and expensive. (Single people are screwed over financially all round. Politically, we are second-class citizens, not in the same league as hard-working families that David Cameron and his ilk liked to woo.) During my chat with Dad, he wondered how on earth he would manage his banking should anything happen to Mum. He doesn’t even have an operational cell phone.

My records. I’ve now got 18 albums. What are my favourites so far? My top three would probably be Leonard Cohen’s 1975 greatest hits album (one of the first batch of records I bought), Paul and Linda McCartney’s Ram, and Mike Oldfield’s Ommadawn. All brilliant. Ram showcases Paul in his raw state, shortly after the Beatles broke up and before he got all sugary. Some honourable mentions too, such as ELO’s double album Out of the Blue, and Paul Simon’s Graceland which doesn’t really count because I’d played it hundreds of times on CD so its brilliance wasn’t exactly a shock. I mean, the first track Boy in the Bubble, good God. And if you’re talking individual tracks, Ramble Tamble – track one of Cosmo’s Factory by CCR – that’s mindblowingly cool.

I’ll be off to the UK next Thursday, coming back the following Thursday. After staying in St Ives, my brother will kindly pick me up from the airport and take me to Poole; I’ll probably stay there until Easter Sunday. Then I plan to get the bus to Cambridge and stay in St Ives. On the Monday I’ll try and see my aunt in the home – that will likely involve a long bike ride, then the next day I might see my friend in Birmingham. On Wednesday I’ll have to make my way to Luton and stay there overnight. I think I’ll just stay the night in the airport, as tiring as that might be.

I was apprehensive about getting a car but after today’s excursion I’m glad I’ve done it. It will open up all kinds of possibilities to see this beautiful country. And rather than being a cause of stress, it might have the opposite effect on me – outside the city, at least – just like it did in New Zealand.

Driving - Other sports - Tennis

Four wheels good, and a rare chat with Dad

March 20, 2024 plutomanby 0 Comments

My neighbour has just given me a chunk of sheep’s cheese. I’ve got very used to sheep’s cheese, with its rich farmy flavour, in my years of living here. I’ve also just had a message from a student who mixed up Tuesday and Thursday. Hmm, are you sure you mean Thursday? I’d better check. I even get people who hedge their bets with the delightful Thuesday. So far two students have actually shown up on the wrong day as a result of this misunderstanding, which isn’t that bad considering how widespread the confusion is.

I called my parents on Sunday night. Five minutes later she was off to Mayfield to play golf, meaning I got the chance (which I get two or three times a year on average) to talk to just Dad. As always on these rare occasions, he talked about Mum’s manufactured stress that profoundly impacts both of their lives without her even being aware of it. When I was over there I didn’t want to be in the same room as her a third of the time. She’d be fine one minute, then the next I’d hear that deep sigh, and that was the only cue I needed. A storm was brewing and I’d have to strap myself in for a bumpy ride. Dad told me about her wish to sell the place in Moeraki – it’s more than doubled in value since they bought it nine years ago. We agreed that selling it would be crazy because she invariably feels calmer when they go there, but then she has close to zero awareness of mental health, including her own. We talked about how sad it is that Mum – one of life’s great winners – can never be content. We discussed other topics like the unstoppable and terrifying freight train that is AI, and what sort of future their grandson will have. When I talk to him I realise how lucky I am to have him; above all he’s a great friend. I’m lucky to have Mum too of course, but I can’t help but be upset at how big a dent she puts in her and Dad’s enjoyment of their later years.

In more Dad news, he should soon get the confirmed results of his heart check-up. In 2005 he had a replacement aortic valve fitted in the UK – the procedure damn near killed him – and was supposed to have regular check-ups in New Zealand but somehow slipped through a bureaucratic net all this time. The initial check looked fine, but it’ll be good to get the final confirmation.

The car. So far I like it. Yes, it was terrifying last Wednesday when I picked it up and had to negotiate a busy city when my brain hadn’t dealt with anything like that for years, but I’ve taken it out for a couple more short trips and slowly but surely I’m getting used to driving again. It’s a 1.6 – right at the top end of what I wanted engine-wise, though smaller than any of the four cars I had in New Zealand. When I tell my female students that I’ve bought a car, the first thing they want to know is what colour it is. I must say I like the blue – anything to get away from the insipid greyness I see everywhere. The registration process is quite a rigmarole here and I went to the mall this morning to kick all that off. Romanians pronounce Peugeot as /peˈʒo/, as if it were written with an é instead of eu.

Tennis is back, much pricier than before. I had two hour-long sessions with Florin over the weekend. The first time we just rallied – I’m a fan of that – but the second time we played a game. I came from 3-1, 30-0 down to win the first set 6-3, then I struggled in the remainder – I missed a shocking number of returns and had trouble with my ball toss – but got to 4-4 when our time ran out. After Saturday’s first session we went to the bar by the river where we met some others for some drinks and mici. That was nice to begin with, but soon I was starving and desperate to get home and eat something more substantial than bloody mici. At least that meant I missed Blues’ football match – despite playing much better this time at home to Watford, they lost 1-0 for the third straight match. It’s a miracle they’re still outside the relegation zone, albeit only barely on goal difference. Today I’ve heard that Tony Mowbray isn’t in a good way at all, poor chap, and they’re bringing in Gary Rowett (he’s managed Blues before) to maybe shore things up for the final eight games.

Recently some students have told me that I’m funny. Comedy funny, not strange funny, though I’m sure I’m that too. I’m taking that as a complement. Last night I had a lesson with the 16-year-old who wants to become a pilot. His head is very firmly screwed on, and he’d rather not spend (waste?) four years at university, as his dad would like him to do, before starting his pilot training.

Under nine days till I fly to the UK. I still haven’t properly thought about it.

Driving - Other sports

Wheely scary

March 14, 2024 plutomanby 0 Comments

Yesterday I had a look at the bright blue 2006 Peugeot 307. A diesel, which I’ve never had before. Diesels get a terrible press from all the ghastly shite they pump into the atmosphere. The guy I met outside the cash-and-carry was young. It was registered in his mum’s name – she was born in 1973. It only had 133,000 km on the clock – I hope that’s genuine – and both the car and its vendor were the least dodgy I’ve come across so far. It had air con, an absolute must here, plus a load of fancy computery stuff that looked beyond me even though I’m sure it’s already old hat – every car I’ve ever owned before was built last century. Its warrant (or ITP as they call it here) runs out in July. So today I bit the bullet. It was going for €2250, I offered €2000, he bumped that up by €100 and we had a deal.

This morning I met him back at the cash-and-carry, armed with the 21 green euro notes I’d just withdrawn from the bank. (He said he’d accept either euros or lei; I had €2800 in my euro account – that I rarely use – after buying this flat and receiving the odd payment for lessons with the German girl.) On the way I met the mother of the 12-year-old boy I’d be seeing this afternoon. I was early and nervous as anything. I popped into the store to use the loo. Near the entrance were a variety of football tables for sale. I think my parents still have the one I had as a kid. I wondered why table football always uses a 2-5-3 formation. Then he turned up and we drove to the village hall in Sânandrei where I met his mother – they made copies of my residence permit and I had paperwork to sign – and blow me down (as my mother would say) I saw the mother of my 12-year-old student again. What on earth are you doing here? The business at the village hall was only the start of all the bewildering bureaucracy I’ll have to contend with now that I’ve bought a car. This took nearly an hour, then I was free to go.

But my god, It had been seven years since I last properly drove, and I was in a completely new car. The Sânandrei bit wasn’t too bad – take it nice and slowly, no rush – then I hit the city. Roundabouts and lane changes and bugger me, can I even do this again? I got hooted at just once. I wish I had an L-plate on the back (here it’s an exclamation mark) or a great big neon poo to tell everyone just how out of practice and shit-scared I was. For some of the way I was behind a car whose number plate was TM 13 DIE. When I finally parked just round the corner from my block, I breathed one hell of a sigh of relief.

In theory this will be good, and I’ve always been a fan of French cars after living in France in 2000-01 and seeing all manner of shapely jalopies on the roads, but driving again will take some getting used to and I’ve just injected another layer of life admin which I could do without. I won’t get the chance to drive again until Sunday because I’ve got a packed schedule of lessons until then. And no I won’t drive to lessons in the city. Not yet anyway, that’s for sure.

Last night I watched bits of Blues’ home game against Middlesbrough. In a far cry from their win over Sunderland last month in front of a full house, the crowd – sparser this time – sounded nervous. Panic had set in; the spectre of relegation with a capital R was hanging over the place. Middlesbrough scored the only goal – a very good one – in the 16th minute, while Blues were dire from what I saw. Since Tony Mowbray’s serious illness forced him to step down, the stuffing has been knocked out of the team. Keep playing like they did last night, or the two games before that, and they will be relegated.