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About to shoot off to Cluj

June 8, 2026 by 0 Comments

I’ll be off to Cluj in an hour and a bit. It’s roughly a four-hour drive. I talked a lot with my parents over the weekend. As well as seeing those two shows in London, they visited the National Portrait Gallery and the Natural History Museum – after more than a century of visitors being greeted by Dippy the Diplodocus, they now get a whale instead. I went there a few times as a kid.

We had fun and games yesterday as Mum and Dad attempted to check in. We were hooked up to WhatsApp for 50 minutes as they found the right boxes to tick in the Ryanair app and then tried to scan Mum’s passport. (She only has a NZ one, not a British one, so had to go through this extra step.) I’ve made up a lot of role-plays for my students. Being stuck in the lift, between floors, with your boss and someone else who has bad BO. Going to the doctor for constipation, only to be prescribed horse pills. An interview for a job as a dog-food tester (the applicant didn’t know that it was dog food beforehand). A ride in a taxi with a driver on his first day in the city with no knowledge of the area and no GPS. An argument between messy flatmates. Parents’ evening – the parent is incredulous that their “perfect” child is getting F grades. Two kids, one who wants to watch the 1998 World Cup match between Romania and England, the other who’s a big fan of Star Trek and wants to watch that instead on a different channel. (It’s 1998, so there’s no streaming or anything.) And a dialogue between a teenager and his (or her) tech-clueless grandparent who has just bought a new Samsung Galaxy phone and doesn’t know the first thing about it. The teenager becomes increasingly exasperated and calls his/her granny or grandad a stupid boomer. Even though I’m far from tech-savvy, I felt a bit like the teenager yesterday. Look Dad, the camera lens needs to be able to take a picture of the photo page. No no, it’s no good putting it there, look where the camera is. You use cameras all the time. Your job has relied on you using a goddamn camera. Then Mum would try and it was no better. With anything involving phones or screens or apps, Dad’s hackles go up and he doesn’t want to know. Mum just gets stressed. The passport remained unscanned, so Mum will have to get manually checked in at the airport. Dad said that if Mum isn’t able to fly, he and I will have a lads’ session in Cluj. Getting hammered, I said. As if.

More concerning that any of that was Mum’s stomach. She was in pain. That didn’t make the check-in process any easier. I hope she’ll manage when she’s here. In the end, I booked the same place I stayed in almost ten years ago. Unsurprisingly, prices of accommodation have shot up. In the past decade Cluj has risen up to be the most expensive city in Romania.

Yesterday I met Mark for lunch in Dumbrăvița. He and his wife will go to Africa in two and a half weeks.

I read this morning that Tate & Lyle, the British sugar company, has been taken over by an American firm called Ingredion. One, what a shame for yet another proud British company to be bought out, and two, what an awful name Ingredion is.

I’m a bit nervous for my parents’ stay. I really hope it all goes well.

Family - Life :) - Music - Other sports - Scrabble

Nagging doubts as Mum and Dad are about to arrive

June 6, 2026 by 0 Comments

Not long until Mum and Dad get here. Assuming they get here. There are nagging doubts over whether their check-in (which they can’t do until Sunday evening, 24 hours before their flight) will work. I spoke to them this morning. They were just about to have breakfast before checking out of their Paddington hotel. They managed to see two shows: Moulin Rouge, which they both thoroughly enjoyed, and Beetlejuice, which they didn’t. (Mum said it was “yuck”.) I saw the Moulin Rouge film at the cinema with my grandmother. It didn’t do a lot for me then (I was 21), but it sounds like I’d now enjoy a theatre performance of it.

On Tuesday they said on the radio that there were only nine days until the football World Cup. So there are now only six. And this time, just like last time, I really couldn’t give a damn. Even though New Zealand are in it. With 48 teams, it’s such a bloated competition. It’ll take 72 games just to eliminate a third of the teams. Seriously, sod that. Plus it’s in America and all that has come to mean, and matches will be taking place at all hours of the night for me.

On the radio – probably the same day that they talked about the World Cup – they played Videli noci (“I’ve seen the night”) by Moldovan band Zdob și Zdub, a song I hadn’t heard before. It was in Russian and I couldn’t make out any words except “tram” and “taxi”. I really liked it, and assumed it was a new song of theirs, but in fact it came out in 2001. Recently I played one of Paul Simon’s albums on my record player. (I’ve got a few of them.) One of the songs was My Little Town. Ugh, I don’t like this song, I thought as I was listening to it. I mean, it’s a very good song (it’s Paul Simon after all), but the lyrics – “Nothing but the dead and the dying in my little town” – are upsetting. Right at the other end of the spectrum from very good songs, Life by Des’Ree came on the radio when I was in the car. I’m afraid of a ghost, let’s have a piece of toast, doo-doo-da-doo, or however it goes. It was a pretty big hit when it came out in 1998, so who am I to judge?

I saw on the BBC this week that in 2024 only 9% of transactions in the UK were cash. That figure would be much higher in Romania, but it’s gradually coming down here too. I was wondering what kids do with money in a cashless world. How does pocket money work exactly? I was also thinking about display technology. When I was growing up, different types of information were displayed in their own distinct ways. Newsstands with handwritten headlines. The newspapers themselves. Thermometers. Billboards. Road signs with their extremely clear font. (In New Zealand the smaller road signs were often hand-painted, which I thought was cool.) Petrol prices. Departure boards at railway stations and airports. Clocks, in many different forms. The scoreboards at Wimbledon (dot-matrix on the two biggest courts, manually operated on all the others). And so on. And now practically everything is, rather depressingly, just a video screen. I thought about this as I was driving along and there were video billboards everywhere with the exception of one which had those mechanical triangular prism-shaped slats and showed three different adverts in a cycle.

Scrabble. It isn’t getting any easier in the latest round of the league and I’ll do well to survive. I did however make BACTERIUM in one game, putting down my seven letters on the front of UM which was already on the board. It’s pretty rare that I ever make a nine-letter word.

It’s proper summer here now: the smell of the lime trees, the first mosquito in my bedroom, and birds (jackdaws I think) waking me in the morning with their strangled-cat sound.

Family - Life :) - Scrabble

They made it (and are in fine fettle)

May 22, 2026 by 0 Comments

Mum and Dad arrived in the UK on Tuesday afternoon. They’ve coped remarkably well with the flight, despite the 14-hour leg between Sydney and Dubai which they vowed never to repeat. (I’ve done a few 12s in my time, and maybe a 13, but 14 is certainly up there.) On Monday I had another bad headache. I was in the middle of it when Mum called me from Sydney. I could hear a screaming child in the background and if it was me having to deal with that I’d have wanted to die. My headache stopped just short of the level it has reached lately (otherwise I wouldn’t have answered that call), so it didn’t utterly mess me up for days afterwards. My cold is certainly better now too, though I’ve got a runny nose and I’m coughing up gunk. And fatigue is still a problem.

Last night I booked Mum and Dad’s Ryanair flight from Stansted to Cluj. At the fourth attempt. I was going nuts as things were disappearing from both my phone and laptop screens and at one stage it declined my card. But I got it done. Their flight will get in at close to ten on the evening of Monday 8th June. The next step will be booking some accommodation. The stakes feel high there. Obviously I’m greatly looking forward to seeing them. I just desperately hope things don’t turn sour with Mum.

I’ve had a whole load of cancellations this week. Today my six lessons have become three, and that’s assuming nobody else pulls the plug. In the past that would have been majorly annoying, but not now. Suddenly I need all the breaks I can get.

The new round of Scrabble – I’m now in the second division out of 13 – has started today. I’m expecting a bloodbath. The format of the league mitigates against the fact that I’m comparatively slow in finding my plays, but nothing will get round me simply not knowing enough words. Even getting this far has been nothing short of a miracle.

The strawberries and cherries are now out, as are the new potatoes and peas in a pod. I’m switching to my summer diet which involves very little meat.

The area around where I live is being revamped and is like a huge building site:

Yes, we have a dinosaur park. It’s in a horrible location next to the mall.

A heron by the river last week

Whoever owns this bike is a fan of the (very good) Romanian band Robin and the Backstabbers

Family - Life :) - Politics - Scrabble

Taking my medicine

May 18, 2026 by 0 Comments

Mum and Dad are flying to the UK tomorrow. It’s most likely they’ll come over to Romania on 8th June – three weeks tomorrow. In fact they may book their flights to Romania just before they set off to London. We had a bit of a discussion about that this morning. There are so many crappy options involving inconvenient departure times and having to stay a night in Luton or Stansted (or even on the floor of the airport, but I don’t think they’d be crazy enough to do that); finding an uncrappy one isn’t that easy. It’s looks like they’ll fly into Cluj. When I know that for certain, I’ll book a hotel there. A proper hotel, with a reception, a good breakfast (hopefully) and some decent facilities. I don’t want the stress of hanging around waiting for the owner to come (or even answer their phone) and not knowing which box to get the key from and not being able to make a pot of tea and X and Y and Z.

I visited the doctor on Wednesday. He saw my throat was all red and he wrote me out a prescription for six different medicines including my antidepressant as well as an antibiotic, a nasal spray and some things that fizz. My normal pharmacy didn’t have the antibiotic so I had to queue for 35 minutes – way out the door – at the place over the road. I wasn’t even sure they’d have it but thankfully they did. (And was my doctor even sure that I had something bacterial anyway?) One of the drinkable medicines tastes vile. When I was little, Mum would make my brother and I take a purple liquid – an anti-worm medicine – called Pripsen. “It tastes just like raspberries,” Mum would say. It did not taste like raspberries. We had to take it twice, at an interval of two weeks, the second time to kill the worms’ eggs. The thought of the stuff makes me shudder. Even the name sounds like retching. I remember writing notes to myself – Be brave. One time I puked on the floor. Circa 1990, they came out with worm pills, but too late for me and my brother. Four decades on from Pripsen, this yellowish-orange stuff is supposed to aid my immunity. It doesn’t taste quite as bad as Pripsen, but it’s not far off, and because you have to dissolve it in boiling water you’re forced to drink it slowly. That’s the worst part.

I am actually getting better. I’m still full of cold but it’s slowly subsiding. In fact, compared to Monday or Tuesday (when I cancelled a load of lessons), it’s a breeze. The big question is whether I’ll get my energy back when the cold has finally gone. Yesterday I was alarmed at how sluggish I was when I went for a walk.

Eurovision was last night. Our neighbours Bulgaria won it; Romania came a very respectable third. In between were Israel (!). The UK came bottom, with only one point from an entry that was apparently dire. So they narrowly avoided the ignominy of getting nul points. That’s a fake French phrase: I’m pretty sure the French would simply say zéro points. I didn’t watch any of it; in Romania’s advanced time zone, it’s on too late for me. (And it hardly piques my interest in the same way that the snooker does, say.)

British politics has gone a bit crazy. Keir Starmer is unpopular just about everywhere. Andy Burnham, the mayor of Manchester, has decided to run for one of the constituencies in that city in a by-election – a Labour MP stepped aside for him. If he wins, he’s extremely likely to become prime minister. He’s popular in the party. (For that matter, I like him – and his policies – too.) But he might not win, since Reform have done very well of late up there. The stakes in this by-election, which is likely to be in a month’s time, are huge.

Scrabble. Incredibly, it looks like I’m getting promoted to the second division. Out of 13 divisions. And that’s after only winning half my games in the league – the table has shaken out in a bizarre way. I’ll probably finish fifth and there are six promotion spots. I am nowhere near the level of division two. How I’ve got that high is a mystery. On the Eurovision theme, I’ll surely meet my Waterloo when it starts up again. The league has a chat facility which has been taken over by young bros, alienating people like me in the process. One older player mentioned this and I said “I agree”. The second division is likely to be pretty bro-heavy, unfortunately.

I’m dreading taking that orange liquid. If I’m dreading that, that’s probably not a bad sign.

Family - Life :) - Maths teaching - Politics - Scrabble

It’s ALL like freezing cold sea water

May 11, 2026 by 0 Comments

So last week I felt I was maybe coming back to life, then on Friday I came down with a cold – a horrible chesty one, coughing up gunge – and it was back to square one again. Right now I also have a headache, though certainly not one of those horrific migraines. Between Friday afternoon and Saturday afternoon I was supposed to have seven lessons, but two people cancelled, preventing me from disappearing down a pit that I may never have crawled out of. Recently I said that getting out of bed had become like inching into cold sea water. Now all of life has become like that. But worse, because at least the sea feels nice once you’re in. Nothing feels nice at the moment. Nice is history. I must say though that it did feel pretty good to get back home from Dumbrăvița just after three on Saturday afternoon, knowing that I wouldn’t have to see or talk to anybody for the rest of the weekend. I rarely used to take naps in the daytime but now I’m doing so out of necessity. On Thursday morning I had my Romanian lesson and then an English lesson with a new student – I met her at the conversation club – that finished at eleven. Then at 11:30 I could no longer stay awake. That’s pretty damn early to already be dead to the world, and that was even before I had the cold symptoms. I’m seeing the doctor on Wednesday.

I’ve been in touch with Mum and Dad. They leave New Zealand a week today. They plan to fly to Romania after giving themselves time to acclimatise in the UK. It’s likely they’ll fly to Cluj rather than Timișoara to avoid the horrors of flying from Luton and having to stay overnight there. (You can take a Ryanair flight from Stansted to Cluj at a sensible time of day.) I’ll make my way there – a four-hour drive – then pick them up at the airport and go to our accommodation, wherever that happens to be. I said I’d book it this time. Then we’ll spend maybe three days in Cluj before coming back to Timișoara. I don’t know how we’re all going to manage this. My parents will be 76 and 77 next month; I feel like I’m bloody 90. David Attenborough is 100 and I’m sure he’s managing better than I am. I spoke to my brother last night. Not for long – he was busy with the kids (I saw them both) and I didn’t exactly feel like much of a chat. He warned me about accommodation and Mum. You’ll need to tread carefully, he said. He’s right, which is why I decided I’d book it. Last time I let Mum book everything and it all got stressful. I’ll go for a proper hotel with a couple of extra stars this time. The hit to my back pocket (or someone’s back pocket – Mum will insist on reimbursing me) will be worth it. Then my flat has become hopelessly messy again and I’ll have to somehow sort that out in between the lessons and naps and feeling like crap.

The local election results in the UK were dire for Labour and fantastic for Reform and Nigel Farage who really could become prime minister in three years’ time. Under first-past-the-post, a majority is possible with only around 30% of the vote if the opposition is sufficiently fractured. That would surely be another big fat nail in the coffin. A Trump supporter and probably a fan of Putin too. He would have got the British forces properly involved in the Iran war. The Tories did badly too. They’ve tried to copy Reform in many ways, and why would you vote for a watered-down version when you can get the neat version?

I had my last-ever lesson with Matei on Saturday. (I saw him on Friday as well.) He has his two IB (International Baccalaureate) maths exams this week. His parents gave me a backpack as a present. All in all, I must have had about 300 sessions with him. Assuming he gets reasonable grades in his IB, he’ll be off to Bremen University in Germany in September. He’s signed up to do chemistry and biology but may switch to business studies instead.

On Wednesday I saw the girl whom I’d managed to traumatise with my “lightning quiz” the week before. This time she was OK. I think her mother might have drilled her times tables into her.

I haven’t mentioned Kitty for a while. She’s fine. As I write, she’s in her favourite spot atop the dresser at the end of the living room. I wish I had more energy to play and interact with her.

Scrabble. Once again I have a fight on my hands to stay in the division. In one game, which I may well need to win if I’m to survive, I have a small lead and it’s my turn. I’ve got the QU combination but no other vowels and I have no idea what to do.

Right now, life feels like one big relegation. I’m doing what I can to eat and sleep properly (I’ve put on weight) and get some exercise and sunshine. It’s about all I can do.

Driving - Family - Life :) - Other sports - Scrabble

Wu did it, but I’m glad it’s over

May 5, 2026 by 0 Comments

The snooker is over – yay! A pleasant escape, but what a time sink. With big breaks now in my rear-view mirror, my focus has shifted to the summer and making my parents’ visit to Romania as painless as possible, if indeed they get over here. We’ve even discussed them taking the train as I did nearly ten years ago – flying from Luton has become a pain in the arse. (Dad has just emailed me. Mum has been to the dentist, and they said she’s at risk of losing all her teeth! I don’t know any more details than that, but all the more reason for them to come to Romania, where dental bills are a fraction of what you’d pay in New Zealand.)

I’m still struggling with fatigue – the no-snooker thing should at least help there – and another migraine could totally wreck me. I had just over 20 hours of lessons last week, down from over 30 the week before – a number I simply couldn’t handle in the state I was in.

Yesterday I took the car in. The dashboard light is apparently caused by a faulty sensor. The noise I was getting from the front right is the result of a bearing that needs replaced. And they’re also going to clear out my misty headlights. It should all come to just under 1000 lei (£160-odd or nearly NZ$400). Though my car is 20 years old, I want to keep it running as long as possible. It’s kind of a fun car (it’s French!), it’s very economical, and it’s old enough not to have an on-board computer and ghastly (lethal) touch-screen controls.

Oh yes, the snooker. The semi-final between Wu Yize and Mark Allen had absolutely everything. The longest frame ever, massive breaks, and drama at every turn. I didn’t stay up for the last four frames because I had squash with a different Mark in the morning. When I got up, expecting Allen to have won, I couldn’t believe what I read (and then saw). Allen could easily have won 17-14. Then in frame 32 he had the match right there, a final black that he could practically pot in his sleep, for a 17-15 win and a place in the final. The referee even started taking off his gloves as Allen addressed the ball, ready to shake his hand and congratulate him. But he contrived to miss it. Pressure does extraordinary things. What’s more, in the deciding frame which followed, Allen amassed a 47-0 lead. He was four or five pots away from that missed black not mattering, to be able to laugh it off. But he was unlucky enough for two reds to be covering each other, then Wu got in, and that was that. Allen went up a lot in my estimation after I watched his interview. You could hardly be more graceful in defeat. That black reminded me of Jimmy White’s missed black in the 1994 final against Stephen Hendry (I really wanted Jimmy to win that) and Ken Doherty’s missed final black for a 147 against Matthew Stevens in the final of the Masters in 2000, back when a 147 was really something. He missed out a huge chunk of change and a luxury car, if memory serves.

And then came the final between Wu and Shaun Murphy who himself had only just squeaked through in the other semi. Two more days of it! The early going was actually pretty dire, but then it greatly improved. Wu’s long potting was phenomenal, and it gave Murphy huge headaches. How do you play safe when almost nothing is safe against this guy? Wu almost won it 18-16 but fluffed a black and Murphy (in his fifth final and trying to avoid a fourth straight loss in finals) cleared up imperiously. Another decider, the first in a final since 2002. Wu got in, made 80-something, and that was more than enough. It finished at about 12:30 last night, my time. Unlike Zhao Xintong, last year’s winner who was a bit older, 22-year-old Wu needed an interpreter. I have very happy memories of 2002. Peter Ebdon, probably my favourite player at the time, beat Hendry in the decider, on the eve of my final university exams. That gave me just the fillip I needed. (And that pink Ebdon knocked in against Stevens in the semi-final to keep him in it… just like Wu he won two deciders back-to-back.) Ebdon then moved to Dubai and became an anti-vaxer but the less said about that the better.

During the second half of the tournament I failed to find a stream so I was stuck with Romanian commentary on my TV in the kitchen. No big deal. I got used to the terminology. Buzunar (pocket, used in the normal sense of the word too), bilă (ball, a different word from say a tennis ball or football), mănunchi (the pack of reds; used for any bunch or bundle), mantă (cushion), tac (cue), sprijin (rest; also means “support” in all its senses), carambol (cannon, when two balls collide), and so on. The problem arose in the final, when the commentator (whom I thought had been pretty good) was joined by his mate and they kept yammering on about the most irrelevant stuff at the most crucial moments. Knowing when to shut up is a pretty useful skill to have. At times I had to mute them. When I did have the stream it was great. But sadly no John Virgo who died suddenly in February. A huge loss to the game.

The tournament started slowly, then really kicked into life with the Higgins–O’Sullivan match and grew from there. There were some bizarre moments such as a protest about the TV licence and someone who yelled “Don’t forget the Epstein files” or something like that. And all those phones that went off at just the wrong time. In the final, the referee had had enough and actually booted an offending audience member out. No more sport for me for a while. I don’t want the drama, I just want the quiet. As for the upcoming football World Cup in America, forget it.

Squash with Mark wasn’t bad. I started to flag by the end of it. We didn’t score points or anything. Later on Sunday I met up with a bunch of other people at Dorothy’s for the English conversation club. Domnul Mărgineanu, an older chap who hardly knew a word of English when I first met him, had improved beyond belief. We discussed a lot of topics, and unlike in most social situations I didn’t feel under pressure.

I survived again, just, in the Scrabble league. It’s becoming a trend. I won six and lost eight but my strong points differential was the deciding factor. I had some big wins, but lost four games by under ten. One of these days – perhaps very soon – I’m going to disappear through the trap-door. The next round starts on Thursday. I’ll get to play that Romanian guy again. He’s just been in Milton Keynes for a four-day (!) tournament; he won the second division, so I imagine he’s feeling pretty chuffed with himself.

Today it’s forecast to reach 28 degrees. It won’t be long before we get the strawberries, then the cherries, then the watermelons and the stone fruit…

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 committed a foul 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.