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Language teaching - Life :) - Maths teaching - Other sports

Just enough time to keep afloat

May 3, 2026 by 0 Comments

I’ve bounced back a little but the fatigue and brain fog is still a problem. Mum asked me what I’d done with all that “extra” time after cancelling those lessons, but that was the wrong question. I didn’t have extra time at all. I had just enough time to keep my head above water. And then I had two lessons last night and another three earlier today and I feel buggered again. This morning, before I set off for Dumbrăvița for my lessons that started at 8:30, I felt I was drowning. No, this isn’t all going to fit in that bag. Where’s my lunch? The felt-tip pens, have I got them? What about the sheet on integration? First thing this morning I played Crazy Rabbits (a board game I’d created ages ago) with the boy who’s about to turn seven. The farmer’s wife wants to make rabbit pie, go back to eight. We did Simon Says and Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes and talked about dinosaurs and planets. We both coloured in a dinosaur sheet. He decorated one dinosaur (a diplodocus?) in the colours of the Romanian flag.

Yesterday I had my last maths lesson with the 17-year-old girl. The Louis Vuitton girl. She’s got her second paper – the one that allows calculators – on Tuesday. In the middle of our session her calculator battery died so I bought her one for 2 lei from the kiosk near the tram stop, where they sell just about anything. After the lesson I turned on the snooker. Wu Yize, whose shotmaking the night before was extraordinary as he took a 6-2 lead against Mark Allen, had found it much more heavy going. Allen won five frames in a row, including a 145 break and a huge steal, to nudge into the lead. And then, that frame. People will remember it for decades. I didn’t catch the first 20 minutes or so, but what I saw was mad stuff. Eight reds surrounding the black over a corner pocket, Allen not wanting a re-rack because he had a lead, half an hour (or was it longer?) of back-and-forth in which nobody was close to sinking the black… Utter madness, all of it. The crowd played their part with slow handclaps and all the rest of it. Eventually (after far too long) the referee practically forced Allen to concede a foul by potting the black. Wu cleared enough balls to leave Allen needing two snookers but still it wasn’t over. Wu inexplicably knocked the black in and then Allen laid an incredible snooker that Wu somehow wriggled out of. After an hour and 40 minutes (a century of minutes!) Wu potted the pink and it was over, the longest frame ever at the Crucible. (I also saw the previous longest frame, 85 minutes, which took place four years ago.) Because it took so long and there was even another frame that took around an hour, that was it for the session, which concluded at 7-7. I missed their third session (damn – Wu amassed two 140-plus breaks), and they’re still tied up, now at 11-11. They play to a finish tonight. The first to 17 wins, so it could be a very late one. In the other semi it’s John Higgins leading Shaun Murphy 13-11 with their last session starting in 40 minutes or so.

Dorothy invited me to a barbecue yesterday at her church, which they organised to help new immigrants get to know each other. A very good thing to put on, but there’s no way I could have gone. It’s mass participation, it would have gone on for hours (longer than the snooker) on a day in which I also had lessons, and it had nothing to do with me. Going to something like that would have messed me up. I will however go to her place tomorrow night for the English conversation club. Tomorrow morning I’m playing squash with Mark. It’ll be a physical test for me. I hope I won’t stay up too late to watch the snooker.

Update: Shaun Murphy (champion 21 years ago) finished with a four-frame flourish to beat John Higgins 17-15 and make the final. The better man won for sure. Whether I can stay awake for the other match I have no idea.

Life :) - Other sports

At a Romanian barber shop

April 29, 2026 by 0 Comments

Last night I didn’t bother with the snooker. Earlier to bed. A bit easier to get up in the morning. I spoke to Mum and Dad on Teams before they had dinner, or what we would have called tea.

Yesterday I finally got my hair cut. It had got pretty long and for the previous few weeks I’d had it tied back in a ponytail. The hairdresser, a woman of around sixty, asked me why I hadn’t been for a while. I told her about the headaches. How many doses of the Covid vaccine did you take? Um, three. Well that explains everything. I remarked that there were no other customers. Nobody has any money anymore. We’ve given it all to Ukraine. She then went on about how Romania has gone to the dogs in the last 35 years. So what was it like here in the eighties, I asked. Just wonderful. People had jobs. Look at all the factories we had! Food was so much better, not full of all those E-numbers like it is today. And we all went to the disco. It was fun. I decided to mostly let her talk; she had a weapon in her hand that I preferred her to use only for cutting my hair. Afterwards she showed me some jarred preserves she’d made. In particular, he was keen to show me a jar of bright green stuff. It cures haemorrhoids. I haven’t got haemorrhoids! We both laughed at this point, and she ensured me that it sorted out plenty of other ailments too. It felt pretty good to have rid myself of all that hair.

Yesterday I also went to ask about my car – the place is on the the way to the hairdresser’s – because the “anti-pollution fault” light has been showing on the dashboard for a while and I haven’t a clue what to do about it. I’ll take it in on Monday. I also put a new chain on my bike. That would have been so much easier if I’d had someone else to hold it. In so many ways, the world isn’t made for one.

Snooker. Since Mark Williams’ exit I’ve been sort of zoning in and out. There was a crazy (very long) frame yesterday between John Higgins and Neil Robertson where everything happened – off the table. First Robertson’s chair broke. Then there was a suspiciously loud ah-choo as one of the players was about to play his shot. Then there was a mystery beep. Not a phone. Where is it coming from? The female referee was perplexed. It was in fact someone in a wheelchair with breathing apparatus which beeped when he (she?) got low on oxygen. It couldn’t be turned off. The referee asked the players. Can you cope with the beep or shall we make them leave? The players were hardly going to agree to the latter. There were several protracted ball replacements after fouls. During one of them, the players used the opportunity to visit the loo.

My maths student had the first of her two exams today. She’s given me mixed messages about her performance. Fingers crossed she did OK.

Update: I managed to traumatise my eleven-year-old maths student today by giving her a so-called lightning quiz. Twenty quick mental arithmetic questions to do in five minutes. Her mother got involved and I think I was pretty close to being fired, so to speak. I will come back next week, but there’ll be no lightning quizzes for a while. I felt bad about the whole thing

Last year’s champion Zhao Xintong is out of the snooker, beaten 13-10 by Shaun Murphy in a bit of an upset. The Crucible curse, by which a first-time champion has never defended his title, is still alive and well. Zhao potted three reds in one shot (um, what just happened there?) during his loss to Murphy. Wu Yize is still going strong though. Tomorrow is the start of the semis, played over three days on a single table.

Language teaching - Life :) - Maths teaching - Music - Other sports - Scrabble

The big cancel

April 28, 2026 by 0 Comments

Right now I’m shot to shit, mentally and physically. Life has slowed to a crawl. I have just about all the symptoms of chronic fatigue syndrome or ME. Or long Covid, for that matter, not that I’ve ever knowingly had even short Covid. Terrible sleep, energy levels through the floor, and feeling generally discombobulated (great word) when faced with, well, just about anything. I have found pages online linking migraine attacks and chronic fatigue, but you’ll find pages linking anything to anything if you look hard enough. My hope is that given time I’ll get back to normal, as I did for ten days or so in the early part of this month.

So I’ve been cancelling lessons left, right and centre. I stumbled through my two-hour maths lesson this morning, then had a Zoom call with my uni friend (my brain fog meant that even arranging that meeting felt like a big deal). And that was it for the day. I’d let the three Ms (Matei, Mihaela and Martin) know that I wouldn’t be seeing them. Tomorrow I’m cancelling three sessions out of five. Even doing that is hard, because I can’t immediately think of their names to cancel them, and I feel embarrassed doing it. Paying bills online and shit – jeez. It’s all a massive effort, which is exactly why I’m cancelling all lessons beyond the few I need to give me some human contact and a sense of purpose. I’ve been thinking of those films where someone (usually on their own, but with a cat) ends up living in squalor with piles of unopened red bills and how easy it would be to get like that.

So I watched the snooker this afternoon. John Higgins beat Ronnie O’Sullivan 13-12. A fantastic match and all so improbable: Ronnie made all the early running and led 9-4 and had chances in subsequent frames. At the same time Wu Yize (who was my pick for the tournament before it started) edged past Mark Selby 13-11. My man Mark Williams bowed out. He lost 13-9 to Barry Hawkins. A shame, but Barry is a thoroughly likeable chap, just like most Barrys I’ve met. And gosh, there were some crazy frames in that match, like the one where they spent 15 minutes on just the green, then Williams fluked the pink to win it. They’re just about to start the last session of the second round. Tomorrow the quarter-finals (played over just two days) begin.

Last month O’Sullivan made a 153 break – the highest ever. Bigger than the “maximum” 147. A super-max. Of course it would be him to do it. It takes some very unlikely circumstances to make such a feat even possible. You need a free ball before any reds have been potted – that means being snookered on all 15 reds after your opponent has fouled themselves, which is pretty damn rare.

Talking of records, someone – in fact two people – did a sub-two-hour marathon in London yesterday. That milestone was always the big one to go. And now it’s gone.

Scrabble. This time around the league has been a pain in the arse. I feel like I can’t be bothered with it, like everything else. Saying that, I managed to post a 606-295 win in a game just finished, going out with my fifth bingo. It’s only the second time I’ve scored 600 or more. The problem is I’m losing the close games. One of them was against a very experienced Aussie lady who beat me in a high-scoring encounter, 472-454. I haven’t studied any words for a while now, but I will need to get back to that if I have any intention of playing real-life games.

The maths girl came in Louis Vuitton shoes this morning. Yikes. Maybe they’re fake; I wouldn’t be able to tell. Last week it was Hermès, which I said was pronounced air-mess but is actually air-mez. Those ès-ending French words and names are unpredictable in how (or if) the final s is pronounced. Many have a silent s, like après and succès, but others have the s pronounced as either s or z.

Edit: The evening session at the snooker is about to start. You get some crappy walk-on music sometimes, but some great stuff too like the Automatic’s Monster which Chris Wakelin just came on to. In gaps between frames on Romanian TV there’s an ad for Magnum ice cream which (surprisingly) uses Courtney Barnett’s Pedestrian at Best. I’ve always liked her; she’s a unique artist. Some other interesting songs I’ve heard lately are Pic Pic by Romanian band Voltaj and REM’s Supernatural Superserious.

Update: Getting out of bed has become like inching into cold sea water. Once out of bed this morning, I watched bits of the news and struggled to take it in. I didn’t quite get why there was such shock that the shooting suspect at the Trump event was a mechanical engineer with a master’s degree. An intelligent guy would want to do that?

Oh, and the other Trump lost to Iran last night. Hossein Vafaei beat Judd Trump in a deciding 25th frame. I had to switch it off at 11-all. That was a bit of a shock.

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

What a drag

April 24, 2026 by 0 Comments

Since Saturday I’ve been dragging myself out of bed, or around the supermarket, or off to lessons. It’s all felt like a huge effort. Just like in March, even fairly light physical activity has made me deeply exhale, as if I’m letting off steam. Monday was horrifically bad. Because it was my birthday, more people than usual wanted to communicate with me. I’m not talking a whole lot here, because I just don’t have that many contacts, but it was still far more than I could handle. I was not in a good place mentally that day, or the day after when all the new road works in two different parts of the city totally threw me. I don’t feel I should be driving at all right now. This feels dangerous. And the lessons of course. I’ve kept up a full week of teaching, including maths every day with the girl who has her IGCSE exams next week and the week after. I’m confident that she’ll get at least an A. Maybe even an A-star. She’s bright enough, and her determination is admirable, but it shows you what money can do. On Monday she brought me a box of biscuits for my birthday which was nice. That day, or was it the day after, she was wearing a pair of trainers. Normally she takes off her shoes when she comes in but this time she didn’t. I caught the brand: Hermès. Just imagine. I had half a mind to ask her if she knew how to pronounce it. It’s air-mess, by the way.

Seeing Mark for lunch on Wednesday gave me a slight boost, but it’s still a big struggle. I’m constantly fatigued. To make matters worse, I’ve just about lost my voice. Next week I’m going to cancel a bunch of lessons because that’s the only way I feel I can recover. I’ve never done that before, and when you work for yourself you feel a certain pressure to work whenever you can, but the way I am at the moment that’s a false economy.

Snooker. The second-round matches started yesterday and go through to Monday. The first round was slightly disappointing, though it had its moments. It looked for a while that the second round might be utterly (and depressingly) devoid of qualifiers, but Hossein Vafaei of Iran dismantled Si Jiahui 10-3 in the penultimate first-round match to finish. Just as he did in his last qualifying match, he won the last nine frames. So Iran versus Trump is still on. Vafaei is a colourful character and it certainly makes things more interesting that he’s still there in a sea of British and Chinese players. The most dramatic match I saw was Stan Moody against 2024 champion Kyren Wilson. Moody (born 14/9/06) was playing brilliantly and stood on the verge of an 8-3 lead, but lost seven straight frames, some of them in highly improbable fashion. Mark Williams (born 21/3/75) got through his first match comfortably, 10-4, and his next match starts 90 minutes from now. He plays Barry Hawkins (23/4/79) over the best of 25 frames – three sessions. That’s what’s so great about the snooker. These long, engrossing matches practically warp time and allow you to forget about everything else.

Scrabble. I did avoid relegation, just barely, in the last round. The latest suite of games started yesterday. There are so many Aussies in my division this time. In fact all the divisions have their fair share – I had no idea competitive Scrabble was so big there.

Update: My brother, having been offered that job, has since had to go through various security clearances. The process has been pretty onerous. Mum has even been involved because she has various info relating to his New Zealand citizenship. When I last spoke to Mum, she was really worried. What if the job falls through for him now? Mum looked like she had the weight of the world on her shoulders, her already small frame all shrunken up. It would have been really upsetting for us all if he’d missed out after all of this. But I’ve just spoken to her again and it seems everything will be fine.

It’s a bright sunny day here. I’ve just been to get a new watch strap and a block of sheep’s cheese – even doing that is an effort. That stallholder near the dairy market was blasting out Depeche Mode as usual. And now I’m about to sit down and watch Mark Williams until my first lesson starts.

Family - Life :) - Other sports

Just when I thought I was over it…

April 19, 2026 by 0 Comments

I only had one lesson yesterday (from 9 till 10:30 in the morning, with the 25-year-old woman) as the British School kids are still on holiday. And that was just as well: within half an hour of my lesson finishing I had a horrific headache. Pacing, eye shades, lying on the bed, the sofa, ice from the freezer, anything I could do to ease the pain. It didn’t go quickly. At 3pm it eased just a fraction and I tried to eat a bowl of cereal but could only finish half of it. I finally re-entered the world of the living just after four. Conveniently, Mark Williams’ first-round match with Antoni Kowalski started at 4:30. It wasn’t on TV – they had cycling on instead – but I could watch it online. I kept the cycling on (with the sound down) in the background because of the picturesque views of Pontevedra in north-west Spain. The snooker was good. Williams was fortunate to win a protacted second frame and his 6-3 lead at the end of the session flattered him somewhat. They finish their match tonight.

Since then I’ve just been trying to recover and to build up some strength again. This morning – my last morning of being 45 – I sat in the nearby park and read my book. So many dogs. And pigeons. Just two cats. After that I had a Teams call with my aunt and uncle in Geraldine. My uncle, now 84, didn’t talk much, though I had a good chat with my aunt.

Life :) - Other sports - Scrabble

Brightening up (and it’s snooker time again)

April 15, 2026 by 0 Comments

I’ve got a cold so I’m sluggish today, though still positively lithe compared to basically the whole of March. On Monday I went over to Sanda’s place where we had some traditional Easter food including painted eggs and cold meats. Her parents, whom I hadn’t met since Christmas 2018, were there. It was great to meet them. Her mother is the same age as my mum, while her father is in his mid-eighties. Sanda’s uncle, with whom I went to Vienna in 2024, was also there. They’re planning a trip to Belgrade in early June. If we go, it will be the same four of us (Dorothy, Sanda, Sanda’s uncle, and me). But it’s likely to coincide with my parents’ stay in Romania, assuming they make it. Sanda has no flexibility around the date, so it makes things awkward. The other three could go without me, but I’m the only one with a car.

Yesterday I benefited from my relative lack of work by watching a few hours of the last qualifying round of the snooker. There were eight first-to-ten-frame matches, played simultaneously, with the winners making it to the Crucible. There’s something soothing about watching snooker even when the stakes are high, as they certainly were yesterday. Some highlights were Hossein Vafaei of Iran who rattled off nine straight frames from 4-1 down to book his place (there may be some jokes if he draws Judd Trump in the first round) and 19-year-old Yorkshireman Stan Moody who beat one of the many Chinese players in a deciding frame. In that final frame, his opponent spent an age over a yellow which he missed, then slammed the table in frustration. That gave Moody all the encouragement he needed as he cleared up with a very impressive century. Matthew Stevens (who missed out dramatically last year) beat Stuart Bingham 10-7. Shame they couldn’t both make it. Another close match was 22-year-old Antoni Kowalski’s 10-8 win over Jamie Jones to become the first-ever Polish player to make it through. But when Kowalski was interviewed by the brilliant Rob Walker after his win, I couldn’t warm to him at all. He struck me as Very Online and very Gen Z (which I’m sure he’d pronounce as zee). Spare a thought for Martin O’Donnell who led 8-2, then 9-4 and 69-0 in the penultimate round of qualifying, only to lose 10-9 to Anthony McGill. There are eight more final qualifiers today, including the one involving comeback king McGill, but I don’t know how much I’ll watch of them. I think I’d rather read, and anyway I’ve got some lessons later.

In some excellent news, a long-term deal has been struck which will keep the World Championships at Sheffield’s Crucible until 2045. The venue will be revamped and 500 seats added. I imagined that in a few years it would be off to China or (even worse) Saudi Arabia, so I was very glad to hear that snooker didn’t decide to sell its soul after all. I’ve wondered whether it might be worth getting tickets one year, to either the qualifiers (which this year are just twelve quid; amazing value) or the main event.

Scrabble. This time I’m battling relegation. It doesn’t feel like I should be, seeing as I’ll most likely finish with seven wins and seven losses, but the promotion and relegation zones are enormous and my relatively poor spread (which acts as a tie-breaker) might sink me. It’ll be close.

The sun is shining, the temperature is perfect for me, there’s less traffic than usual (so I can hear the birds for a change) and most of my flat is no longer a pigsty. And Viktor Orbán got booted out. So there are reasons to be positive.

Family - Life :) - Politics - Scrabble

Energy desert

April 6, 2026 by 0 Comments

I feel a bit better now, but it’s like I’m travelling through an energy desert, both mentally and physically. Friday, for instance, was close to being a write-off. At one stage I was trying to gee myself up for a lesson when my student messaged me with 18 minutes to go. I’m really tired. Can we have the session on Sunday? What about me? And I prefer to keep Sundays free. But as I’d already scheduled a Sunday afternoon maths session with someone else, I agreed to see him at 9am.

On Saturday I had nine hours of lessons (six sessions: three English and three maths). I dragged myself out of bed for an 8:30 start in Dumbrăvița, wondering how I might cope. I stayed almost headache-free, and I survived, even if began to flag during my final maths lesson. I’ve done a lot of teaching by now, and even when I’m below my best I have my own systems and processes (and experience) to fall back on. The highlight of the day was a maths lesson with a girl who had taken a test on volumes and surface areas the day before. Formulas were still clearly visible on her arm. Did they help you in the test? No, it turns out they were wrong.

Sunday. Not Easter Sunday under the Orthodox calendar, but Palm Sunday. My 9am student failed to show up. Ugh. Dorothy had invited me to church (a 10:30 start) and although I’ve become increasingly anti-religion, I reluctantly accepted. Her church is mostly harmless and even benefits people in the community, especially recent arrivals from African countries. There was a huge congregation including a lot of children. The sermon went on, as expected. After the service a young woman of 18 or so was baptised, which at this church meant getting fully (and dramatically) dunked in a swimming pool. Then there was food. Tons of it. Dorothy is heavily involved and was in her element. I wasn’t. We all had to queue up and I found myself in that dreadful situation where someone in front of you talks to someone behind you and you’re stuck. In general there were too many people and I desperately wanted out. At one point someone sang Happy Birthday for one of the kids. “Wow, it’s someone’s birthday,” I heard someone say. With so many people it would have pretty weird if it hadn’t been anyone’s birthday. I’d mentally budgeted to be home by 1:30. I got home ten minutes after that, relieved that I’d be church free for another eight months. Then Mum and Dad called. I kept it very brief. My maths session was coming up and I couldn’t handle conversation with anybody. I had a nap before my lesson which went fine.

Some news from my brother. It looks like he’s got a job at British Aerospace in Portsmouth. Doing what exactly, I don’t know. Getting that degree must have made a huge difference. (These days you’ve got to have the piece of paper.) I expect I’ll talk to him this week and find out more.

I watched the Artemis II launch on Wednesday night. I happened to be awake at 1am, so I got out my laptop and watched it in bed on YouTube. At that point it was still in doubt. It had an eerie feel about it because all I had was the audio from mission control and I kept looking at that rocket, with four astronauts inside, and thinking, this is horrendously complicated. There are many ways that this could go horribly wrong. So far it’s been a success though, and last night they entered the moon’s gravitational sphere of influence, if I’ve got that right. It’s just a real shame that the four occupants of the spacecraft couldn’t have been Trump, Vance, Hegseth and Rubio, on a one-way trip.

I did speak to Mum and Dad properly this morning. We still have no idea whether they’ll make it to Europe. After “Open the fuckin’ strait”, all bets are off. I reminded Dad of a conversation we had immediately after 9/11. Dad talked about how terrible Bush was. No diplomacy, he said. “Smoke ’em out”? How did he ever become president with language like that. Now when they’re bombing a girl’s school to pieces with God on their side, that all seems so tame. There was no social media back then.

Scrabble. Amazingly I didn’t just get promoted in the latest round of the league, I actually won the division. I had ten wins and three losses; the four players behind me all had nine wins. I drew pretty well, it must be said. That result will put me in division three, starting Thursday. To say I’ve exceeded my expectations would be a massive understatement. I’m now going to be facing even more world-class players who know words that I couldn’t even dream of. I’ll have my hands full for sure.

Family - Films - Language teaching - Life :) - Politics - Scrabble

Everything else has flown out the window

March 31, 2026 by 0 Comments

I’ve just looked up “chronic fatigue syndrome”. I fit an awful lot of the criteria. The Wikipedia article mentions four levels, as classified by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) in the UK. This is how the least severe category is described: “People with mild ME/CFS can usually still work and care for themselves, but they will need their free time to recover from these activities rather than engage in social and leisure activities.” That sounds like me right now. Working and caring for myself is possible but a struggle, and everything else just about flies out the window. When you reach the second category you can forget about work, and as for levels three and four, they’re terrifying. There’s a paragraph entitled “unrefreshing sleep”: Even a full night’s sleep is typically non-restorative. That’s absolutely the case for me. What I don’t get is the link between what I’m facing now and the headaches. I’ve been headache-free since late Sunday afternoon. If I stay like that for another 48 hours will I bounce back a bit? And what if I don’t?

On Sunday I saw that film with Dorothy. I felt a bit better then, and walked into town. That took me 35 minutes, the same as normal. Before the film we ate dinner at Berăria 700. Dorothy told me about her packed Sunday, full of social activities which were mostly related to the church. “I don’t think you’d have enjoyed all of that,” she said. I wouldn’t have enjoyed it even if I’d been feeling normal, I said, let alone right now. Then we wandered to Studio to see the film. We saw Primavara, an Italian film set in the early 18th century at an orphanage in Venice. It follows the life of young Cecilia, a talented violinist who just happens to have Vivaldi as her teacher. The real attraction of the film is the music, and because we sat in the second row, we had no trouble hearing it. These revamped cinemas – there are now four of them dotted around the city – have been a real boon. Tickets are inexpensive, the website is fantastic, the cinemas themselves are very well looked after, and most importantly you no longer have to go to a mall to see a movie. Last week though an eleven-year-old boy told me of his bad experience at one of those cinemas. You couldn’t get popcorn! I don’t think you’re the target market. Yesterday Dad told me about the old cinema in St Ives and how he saw Tron there. Tron? I thought it had already closed by then. I found out (from someone’s blog) that the Regal Cinema closed in 1985.

When I got back from the cinema, I called my brother. He mentioned the possibility of fuel rationing in the UK, as happened there in 1973. Power cuts, kids skiving off school to see football matches on weekday afternoons (because obviously they couldn’t play under lights). Maybe people will be told to work from home, Covid-style, my brother said. I also spoke to my sister-in-law who seems better now, after going back to work. It’s always hard talking to her because she’s too far away from my brother’s device to hear her well. After our call, I thought about how Mum must have felt coming off the boat in Southampton in ’73, having come from a land of plenty, and being plunged into that.

Yesterday Dad and I talked about the upcoming Artemis II launch. It took just 66 years to get from the first manned flight of any sort to putting men on the moon, with the aid of computers far less powerful than the ones in everyone’s pockets today. Almost as long has passed since then, and look at us! We agreed that if and when a human walks on Mars, it won’t be the Americans who make it happen. Most likely it’ll be the Chinese. Dad also mentioned Rocket Lab, New Zealand’s space company. It’s pretty incredible that NZ even has one (though I think it’s partly American-owned). Rocket Lab launches off Mahia Peninsula, that little triangular-ish bit that sticks out between Gisborne and Napier.

Mum and Dad seem a lot better now. Having one really good eye all of a sudden has helped Mum immensely. With the ever-changing global situation, nobody knows whether they’ll make it over in May, and that’s OK.

In a lesson last week I had another young woman who, despite being highly intelligent, didn’t know about 9/11. She was born in 2000. I showed her the pictures of that fateful day when she was a baby. Romania wasn’t in the EU at that point, and few people would have had the internet. It didn’t have anything like the impact here that it did in the UK and much of the west. She grew up in a railway house at Cicir (pronounced chee-CHEER: it even sounds like a train’s whistle) just outside Arad. We’ve had a lot of productive sessions since she started in November, but she’s just got a new job. Great for her, but that will make it much harder for us to meet.

I need to stop watching YouTube. I’ve been watching a lot of late, mainly because I’ve had less energy to do anything physical, but it doesn’t help me mentally. Two recent videos I watched were about an ill-advised water slide in Kansas that cost a ten-year-old boy his life in 2016, and Balloonfest, the release of 1.4 million balloons in Cleveland in 1986 that (depending on who you listen to) led to unforeseen circumstances. At the very least, I need to stop watching videos about America.

In a post on 3rd November 2024, just before the last US election, I said how crazy it was that the votes of a few thousand poorly-informed people in Pennsylvania will have a massive impact on billions of us throughout the world. We’re seeing that play out now in devastating fashion.

Scrabble: I’ve drawn well in the latest round of matches and am sitting on four wins and one loss. That defeat was by just four points; I’m still incapable of nutting out an endgame properly. I managed to beat that Romanian guy at my third attempt. I picked both blanks and found a bingo each time. He stormed back with a bingo scoring in the 80s, the board got blocked, and I didn’t particularly fancy my chances until I got down VAPOURS (hooking the A onto the front of JAR) for 97. In the end I won 476-387. There’s a chance I could win promotion but it’s still too early to say.

Life :)

I want to hibernate until further notice

March 30, 2026 by 0 Comments

On the off-chance I do actually get better and this whole month is happily erased from my memory, I’ll leave this here: March 2026 has been absolutely bloody terrible.

I wrote my last post on Tuesday evening following a productive day by my recent standards. Things seemed to be coming right. On Wednesday I drove to Recaș for lunch. It’s a 25-minute drive. This was the place I went to on a sunny day two years ago just after buying the car; I remember how great that felt. Though it was overcast this time, it did feel good to be on the road. Wednesday is barbecue day in Recaș – I think they do it on Saturdays too – and I got a spicy sausage, two mici and chips. That all came to 41 lei – our inflation which has been high for years shows no sign of easing, especially not now. I bought a pair of two-litre bottles (red and white) from the winery, then I quickly headed home for a 1:30 lesson with a young girl – I’d done no preparation. After that I had two lessons, both in the Aradului area. On the way home my front tyre got a puncture – that damn sharp-edged valve hole in the wheel rim cutting the valve. I was lucky I suppose that I got the puncture after my lessons and I had just enough time to walk home before my evening session started. I locked it to the bike rack at a large hardware store two-and-a-bit kilometres from home.

Thursday was a trying day. Mentally it took me ages to get going. Plus I had a headache. I bumbled through my lessons and that was about it. Oh, and I got hopelessly confused when trying to pick up a package from an Easybox. I got to the place, then had to come home empty-handed because my PIN (or whatever) had been sent somewhere I couldn’t locate on my phone. It was a beautiful sunny morning and I didn’t want to be locating any fucking thing on my phone. Just like I wouldn’t have to do if it was 1996. Or even 2006. I sorted it out at home, then went back there to pick it up after my lesson, but jeez. Friday, on the other hand, was surprisingly productive. I did all my lessons, cleaned two rooms including the office which was strewn with paperwork and cat fur, learned a bunch of Scrabble words (or tried to), prepared for the next day’s lessons, and even had a 45-minute chat with Mum and Dad. My energy was back and things were looking up. Then on Saturday – yesterday – I woke up with another headache. It was at a manageable level – a 4 or 5 out of 10 – but still enough to exhaust me. I had no functioning bike and it was tipping it down anyway, so I drove to Dumbrăvița. During maths with Matei, I couldn’t stop yawning. Sorry mate, I’m struggling a bit here. Because Matei has known me for literally half his life, I could get away with functioning well short of capacity. After Matei I had a useful break which I spent in the park. Spending time in the park in the old part of Dumbrăvița relaxes me. Following another maths lesson, it was home time. Just as well: I felt gone.

But I had two jobs to do on the way home: wash the car and pick up the bike. Sounds simple enough, right? Er, no. Once I’d found my car wash card I put it in the slot of the big central machine, then inserted a 10-lei note. Nothing happened. Isn’t it supposed to spit out tokens? Suddenly I heard “Come here.” Cut out the English, would you? So I take it you understand how this thing works. “Of course I do. Why wouldn’t I?” At least he was speaking Romanian now. How come you do? How come anyone does? How come you aren’t all finding life so fucking impossibly hard like me? I think they’d stopped the token thing. Or maybe the token thing and the card thing were now either/or. I really don’t know. Or particularly care. I did get the car washed and rinsed and it was off to the hardware store where I’d left my bike. It was still there. I’d managed to get it in the car before without removing the wheel, but this time I simply didn’t have the strength. I shouted at the top of my voice in a busy car park on a Saturday afternoon, not caring that dozens of customers could hear me. I’d lost control of myself. A man turned around and helped me get the front wheel off, which is what I would have done myself if I’d been thinking at all clearly. The wheel would have needed to come off anyway. “Thank you, and sorry. I’m actually quite ill at the moment.”

I got home, unpacked all my teaching stuff, and took the bike up to my flat. Phew. It’s now 4:15 pm on Sunday. The clocks went forward last night. I’ve only just got rid of yet another headache and I feel beyond washed out. I’m seeing Dorothy a bit later for dinner and a film at the Studio cinema. I have no idea what the film is, but I know that meeting somebody is probably a good idea, even though all I want to do is curl up into a ball.

Cat - Life :) - Photos - Politics - Scrabble

Entering the world of the possible again

March 25, 2026 by 0 Comments

Today I’ve got a bit more energy. I’m even responding to messages. (I’d just about gone incommunicado for a while.) The trick is to get up at my normal time, even if I don’t have lessons. The lessons themselves, assuming I don’t have a splitting headache, are to my benefit too. I got 18 litres of water from the well today; that certainly felt a lot easier than the last time I did it.

Late last month I tried to pay my rates bill at the post office – you can do that there – but they had the wrong address for me. I was sent to the city hall. There I had to fill in various forms and make a small payment, then I needed to wait days or weeks for an email confirmation. That email came two weeks ago. Yesterday morning I went back to the post office. I was feeling like crap and couldn’t handle the length of the queue so I gave up. In the afternoon I returned – almost no queue – and they still had the wrong address. You’ll need to go back to the city hall.

This morning I did just that. When I got to the end of the short take-a-number queue, the lady told me I needed to visit the Direcția Fiscală which, according to a poster she pointed out to me, moved to Iulius Town in early 2023. Oh god, you’re telling me I have to go back there?! Iulius Town is the same dystopia I found myself in last week. Elevated fakeness, surrounded by soulless tower blocks, none of which existed when I moved to this city. Though it is no more than a few years old, I feel I’m in eighties Bedford or Milton Keynes. On one side you look down on abandoned factories and silos that really are from the eighties. So it was back on my bike to Iulius Town. I had no trouble locating the Direcția Fiscală where people were queuing out the door. There was somebody all securitied up who kept whizzing by on a kind of Segway, as well a policeman controlling the entrance and smoking, just like half the people in the queue. It took me a while to get inside, then it was take-a-number time again. I was 18th in line. The woman told me to make a written declaration (Can you do this in Romanian?), then commentated on my surname which was the same as someone famous-ish 35 years ago. Only I was born with it, he wasn’t quite. She said my address would be updated within 45 days. That means that when I come to pay my rates I’ll face a (very small) fine or interest payment.

Getting that done (assuming it is actually “done”) was encouraging. A few days ago, or even yesterday, I couldn’t have handled it. Physically and (in recent days) mentally, this month has been a right mess. I haven’t had a bad headache since last Thursday. I hope that on Friday, as long as I stay largely headache-free, I’ll be able to tackle the cleaning. Last night I went back to the doctor’s surgery and got my blood pressure checked again. It had gone down: it was 140/80.

Earlier this morning I had a lesson with the English teacher in Slobozia. She told me the latest chapter in her life with her 15-year-old son, who has turned into a monster. “He bit me,” she said. Sorry, what, he isn’t a cat. Oh, beat. Romanians fail to make the distinction between those two vowel sounds, short and long. Live and leave, fill and feel, to say nothing of pairs that involve beach and sheet. “But in the past he has bitten me too.” I gave her a quick test at the start of the lesson. I showed her Trump’s latest all-caps social media post where he talks (lies, probably) about recent conversations with the Iranians. Can you spot the mistakes in lines one and nine? She could. I remember as a very little boy our teacher telling us the difference between the witch that flies on a broomstick and “which one”. The fact that he can’t spell basic words or use caps lock properly is the least of our worries, but once again, how did we get here? (That post on Truth Social, if that’s where it was, was likely just to manipulate the markets. Trump doesn’t understand a whole lot, but he does understand financial markets.) When I asked my student if she’d been following the war, she asked “What war?”

I read something funny at the weekend about “Strait-of-Hormuz guy”, the sort of guy you meet at the pub who, a month ago, wouldn’t have known how to spell or pronounce Hormuz or locate it on any map, but now knows its every nook and cranny and knows about all the ramifications of West Texas crude hitting one-fifty a barrel.

On BBC News yesterday I saw an ad for the Burj Azizi tower in Dubai, which when completed will be only a little shorter than the Burj Khalifa. Oh yes. The second-tallest building in the world. Can’t wait to visit once it’s topped out.

Yesterday I bumped into Lili (who lives on the first floor) as I was collecting a package from one of those Easybox things nearby. The package contained eye shades which I’d ordered online. Lili asked me if my nephew and niece will ever come to visit. I’m sure they’d like to play with your cat, she said.

I met Dorothy at Scârț on Sunday. We sat outside and played Scrabble in Romanian. I won 354-234 after putting down SCAPATE for 92 and DOBOS for 54. (Doboș is a very delicious cake that comes from Hungary but is also popular here, just over the border.) Mainly it was just nice to be outside.

Doboș

I took the picture above by the Bega yesterday. This is recent abandonment. When I arrived in Timișoara it was full of purple bikes which you could unhook (with a card and PIN code) and rehook at another station when you’d finished with them. Now it’s just for pigeons and their poo.

I managed to get Kitty mid-yawn this morning. I know how she feels.

It might not look like one, but this is certainly a restaurant. It has opened in Iulius Town. And they called it that?!

Update: This evening I had a lesson with a man in his mid-thirties and his 16-year-old niece. He’d had his teeth professionally whitened. “Bleach 4”, apparently. They were very white. And as for her, she wanted to know how to spell “which”.