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A day in the life

March 19, 2026 by 0 Comments

Let’s talk about yesterday. I didn’t sleep fantastically the night before last; I spent a fair portion of the night on the sofa with Kitty. When it was time to properly get up, I had a low-level headache, and with five lessons scheduled I got straight into the Advil before it got any worse. My parents decided to call me just before my first lesson was about to begin. That lesson (from 8:30 till 10:30) was online with the teacher in Slobozia. Her students had to do short presentations in English and she wanted my help in extending them from two minutes to three, or thereabouts. This talk of two or three minutes makes me think of sex, she said. I burst out laughing at that point. My next lesson (from 11 till 12:30) was with the twins in another part of town. It was an effort to get there in time on my bike. I’d planned to do some life admin tasks and visit the supermarket on the way home after the lesson. I was carrying 6000 lei (just over £1000) in cash in a bum bag.

After that lesson, I visited the bank nearby but the machine for depositing money was different to anything I’d seen before and when it rejected my card I simply left, declining the lady’s offer of help. I cannot possibly deal with explanation and communication and some new sodding machine right now. Thanks, but I’ll try somewhere else. Wise decision when I’m feeling like this. Next stop was the mall. Malls are horrible places at the best of times. I got a few bits and pieces from the supermarket, then went to the branch of the bank that sits somewhere in the middle of the god-awful mall complex. Hang on, where even is the bank? It’s so hard to navigate that place, partly because I try to avoid it so I never get to know where anything is. I went up and down escalators and around the horrible fake park, all the while worried that I’d forget where I’d left my bike. Finally, the bank. It took four attempts for the machine to accept all my notes. Each attempt is a rigmarole as you try to smooth out the notes or swap a 100 for two 50s but it still rejects some of them. By previous standards, four wasn’t too bad. I was about to go straight home when I remembered I needed to visit the clinic to look at the roster. I didn’t know whether my after-hours doctor would be available that day or the next day. He seems to switch between Tuesdays and Wednesdays. It turned out it was that day. On the way back I saw that fuel prices had already gone up since the morning. I got home at 2pm, exhausted after being disoriented by the traffic and very nearly falling off my bike in Piața Traian. My headache intensified a little, so I took some paracetamol in addition to what I’d already taken earlier, plus the ibuprofen.

I made myself a late lunch (pasta with bacon, kidney beans and vegetables), then tried to do as little as possible before the rest of my lessons started at five. I even took a nap. My first lesson was a 90-minute face-to-face session with the guy who works in insurance and his niece. I then had a boiled egg and some jam sandwiches before my two back-to-back online sessions. Both my students were called Olivia: a 12-year-old in Germany and a 24-year-old in Cluj. At 9:15, while I was still teaching, Dad called me again on Teams. I called my parents back after I finished at 9:30, but I kept it short because I needed to see the doctor. They were about to go to Moeraki in their electric car. All of a sudden, electric cars are in high demand over there. It reminds me of the oil price spike at the start of the global financial crisis (before people had electric cars) when people were practically giving away four-litre Ford Falcons. I remember a litre of 91 smashed through $2 for the first time, while a block of Tasty cheese hit $16. I wonder what cheese costs now.

I got to the surgery at ten. There was only one guy in the queue in front of me. When it was my turn, I told the doctor about the headaches and my conspicuous lack of energy and how I’d also had a cold last week which I’ve maybe sort of recovered from. Astenie, he said. Ah yes, asthenia. Weakness. It’s a useful high-probability Scrabble word. Have you been taking ibuprofen? Oh yes. Let’s take your blood pressure. I rolled up my right sleeve. It was higher than I’d ever seen before; the bottom number was over 100. Hmmm, let’s do the other arm. That gave an even higher reading: 151/109. “You won’t die from this,” he said, in English for some reason. Was that reassuring? I don’t know. He told me to drink loads of water and put me on some specific headache pills called Quarelin, which I’ve just got from the pharmacy. They were quite expensive. After I got back last night, I started to feel dizzy, though I’m fine now in that regard; I’m just tired and have a headache, this time on the right side.

Tomorrow evening Mark’s school are putting on a performance of The Wizard of Oz at the Opera House in town. He got me a ticket, so I’ve rejigged my lessons so I can go. In 1988 I was in a Christmas production of The Wizard of Oz. The bigger kids had proper parts, while I played the wind at the beginning. Even though I’m not in the mood for very much, The Wizard of Oz is great, so I’m kind of looking forward to it.

In a few minutes I’ll probably have to do Simon Says with a young girl. Simon Says just leave me alone.

Update: That was a tough session. She seemed to have forgotten every word I’d ever taught her, as if she’d hit “select all” and “delete”. Maybe it was just that she didn’t want to talk. The only time her face lit up was when she said it was her ninth birthday soon, on 2nd April. So two weeks today, right? Will you come and see me on your birthday? No, it’ll be on a Thursday. Are you sure about that? She was right of course. I should have taken her word for it – young kids generally have a good idea of how many days it is till their birthday.

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Challenging times

March 16, 2026 by 0 Comments

It’s been a pretty challenging two weeks now. We’ve had beautiful spring weather but the headaches haven’t stopped (sometimes the pain is on one side of my head, sometimes the other) and the perpetual fatigue has made me want to curl up into a ball. Just when I’m beginning to recover, or sometimes well before that, I’m crippled by another bad headache, so as well as having to deal with the pain I feel permanently exhausted. It’s like chronic fatigue syndrome or what they used to call ME. Maybe it’s what long Covid would feel like. Yesterday morning I managed to walk to Karlsruhe Park (named after one of the places that Timișoara is twinned with). When I got there it was already quarter to twelve. I read my book for a bit in the sunshine, then dawdled home via the supermarket. When I got to my shamefully untidy home I was exhausted. Kitty, who has been lovely of late, was all meeaa-eeeaa-yyeeeoww and in my face. Seriously, just piss off, would you? She then scratched me on my hand there was blood everywhere. Great.

I need to stop watching YouTube. It isn’t helping. I saw a podcast at the weekend in which two youngish anti-Trump Americans mentioned Trump’s message to Keir Starmer. We don’t need your help because we’ve already won. One of the podcast hosts said, “If I’m Starmer, I’m like, fuck you man.” Too right. And then a few days later Trump sent a message urging several countries including the UK (and China!) to send warships to free up the Strait of Hormuz. Not enough has been made of Trump’s tweet (or whatever it was) saying that they might bomb an Iranian island again “just for fun”. Dear God.

When I last filled up with diesel, the price was somewhere in the upper sevens (lei per litre). At the weekend, diesel prices nudged over nine. Fancy high-octane diesel (if that’s a thing) has reached the mid-nines, so some of the stations are now getting pretty close to running out of digits.

Kitty during a lesson on 4th March

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Battery just about flat

March 9, 2026 by 0 Comments

As I recovered from Monday’s excruciatingly painful headache, I felt a sense of déjà vu. It was late winter (or early spring), I was (or had been) in a lot of pain, a terrifying war had just broken out, and all I felt like doing was reading a book and not a lot else. It was a basically a repeat of four years ago when I had the kidney stones. On Wednesday, around the time I wrote my last post, I felt things were getting back to normal, but I had a lot of lower-level head pain late in the week and my energy stores have been through the floor. I’ve been able to get through my lessons, just about, but cleaning and life admin have gone by the board. This flat is an unholy mess. My students – those who don’t pay cash at least – could be behind half a dozen payments and I wouldn’t have a clue right now.

Yesterday I was really flagging by my fourth and final lesson. My student, a 17-year-old girl, could certainly tell. This afternoon I went down by the river where I read a few chapters of Colony. Even walking there took 50% longer than normal. There were some interesting people down there, including a large group of gypsies in the park, and a couple in their sixties (the woman short and fat, wearing a Red Hot Chili Peppers T-shirt, the man tall and slim with white hair) who kept walking past me with their five small dogs as I sat on a bench. People were attracted by the warmer weather – we were in the high teens – and the (misplaced?) optimism that blossom and colour brings.

Mum didn’t have the easiest of weeks either. She had a urinary tract infection and on Tuesday was in a lot of pain. I had a good chat with her on Wednesday when the antibiotics were already kicking in. Unusually, Dad wasn’t around. We talked a lot about the war in Iran. She said she doesn’t even want to talk to her Trump-supporting brother now. I know what it’s like to have my son on the front line. Iraq was terrible, Afghanistan even worse.

I tried to watch Pete Hegseth’s speech at the Pentagon but had to switch him off after about three minutes. “Death and destruction from the sky all day long.” What a nasty, and unhinged, piece of shit. And as for Trump’s message to Starmer – We don’t need people that join Wars after we’ve already won! – where do you even start? Stop the world, I want to get off.

This morning I spoke to both Mum and Dad. We discussed the very real possibility (yet again!) that they don’t make it over. I was pretty sure they’d booked their trip with Singapore Airlines, but at the last minute they switched to Emirates because it was cheaper. It’s anyone’s guess whether planes will be flying in and out of Dubai, or anywhere else in the region, in mid-May.

Scrabble. Guess what, I got another promotion. After winning both those last two games, I finished third in the league. That means I’ll be in the fourth division out of (probably) twelve. I’m fully aware that I’m punching well above my weight here, and they’ve even introduced a statistic that shows how lucky or unlucky you’ve been. According to that new metric, I have indeed been lucky. I’ll be delighted if I can avoid relegation next time – I’ll have my hands full, that’s for sure.

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A brutal morning

March 3, 2026 by 0 Comments

This morning was just horrendous for me. I had what I used to think of as a “sinus headache” but I’m pretty sure was actually a migraine. I don’t get these too often, and the severe pain normally subsides within two hours when I do. But this morning I suffered at least four hours of excruciating pain. Light and sound became unbearable – I blocked them out as best I could, and had no choice but to shut Kitty away in the living room. For some time I writhed around on my bed, then decided I was better off pacing around and bumping into the door jambs while trying to let as little light into my eyes as possible. I was fortunate not to have any lessons until later in the day. Otherwise I don’t know how I would have coped. I had a simple late lunch of banana sandwiches and yoghurt (rich food would have made me sick), then managed to walk to the supermarket. Even though the pain had eased and survived my lessons, I was (and still am) on a major go-slow. This episode reminded me of my father; when I was a boy, he got migraines of terrifying intensity, duration and frequency. One work day in five was pretty much wrecked by them. Like I do now, he had no boss, so he could get by. (In his twenties, before I was born, he did have a boss. I’m sure his migraines were very bad then too. Heaven knows how he managed.) Though he still gets headaches, they aren’t anything like as severe as they used to be.

When I spoke to Dad yesterday, he wondered why Trump has been able to make a mockery of America’s famous “checks and balances”. It must just be his popularity, Dad said. Well no, Trump isn’t that popular. He never has been. He’s got an extremely vociferous base, that’s certainly true, but that’s not the same thing as popularity. For each of his fans, there’s more than one person who hates his guts. Really Trump’s success in breaking those norms is down to him wanting to be a dictator and having zero respect for the job of president. None of his predecessors – not even George W. Bush who was hopeless – were anything like that. And then there’s social media. I can’t imagine a Trump presidency would have been vaguely possible without it.

I didn’t play squash with Mark yesterday after all. He messaged me first thing to tell me he’d had too much Guinness the night before, so I had to call up the sports centre and cancel. There’s something typically British about getting rip-roaring drunk in your mid-fifties. (Personally I think any Guinness is too much Guinness.) Though I have a beer fairly often, it’s usually just the one, and three would be my absolute limit. The hangover isn’t worth it, and any social event that involves a lot of drinking isn’t one I’m likely to enjoy anyway.

After getting through Walter Mitty I’ve started a new book: The Colony by Annika Norlin, published last year. It’s based in Sweden and translated from Swedish into English. The author is a pop star (I didn’t know that when I bought the book) and to my surprise she was born in 1977; I guessed she was several years younger. I’m thoroughly enjoying it so far. Anything that involves chucking iPhones into lakes gets my vote.

Scrabble. In the latest round of the league I’ve had seven wins and four losses, with two games still outstanding and in the balance. If I win both of those, I’ll very likely get promoted. Even one win could be enough depending on other results. Being in this position is a surprise; two days ago my sights were set on avoiding relegation, but then an opponent missed an out play, enabling me to win by twelve, when I’d given that game up for dead.

I start at 9:30 tomorrow morning. I’m pleased it’s not too early. I need some sleep.

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A happy tradition in a scary world

March 1, 2026 by 0 Comments

It’s the last day of February and the last day of winter, and we’ve had beautiful sunshine all day. I’ve just been up to see Elena (the lady who lives above me) and give her a mărțișor, which is a kind of small good-luck charm on a șnur – a red-and-white string. Romanians traditionally give mărțișoare to women to mark the beginning of spring. It’s one of my favourite traditional Romanian traditions, mainly because it costs very little: you can buy these trinkets – some of which are handmade – for just a few lei apiece. The one I gave to Elena was in the form of a black cat.

Unusually for a Saturday, I only had one lesson today, first thing this morning. After my lesson on food with Noah in Dumbrăvița, I decided to drive to Jimbolia. On the way there I listened to Bogdan Puriș’s music programme. He played songs by Bruce Hornsby, including the new Indigo Park as well as The Way It Is which, according to Puriș, came out in 1986. That date checks out because when I was a kid the BBC used the song as background music when they showed the football tables on a Saturday. Then my phone made that six-beep alert when something seismic has just happened and when I got to Jimbolia I found out that Trump and Israel had just bombed Iran. I’m as far from an expert on Middle East geopolitics as you can get, but to me this is absolutely terrifying. And for the love of God, Britain must not get involved in it. I didn’t do a lot in Jimbolia. I was just trying to take advantage of the warmer, brighter weather. I wandered around for a bit and then sat near the railway station and read a couple of stories from The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. I suggested to Elena that we go out for a drive sometime.

I spoke to Mum last night; she’d just had the operation done on her second eye. It seems to have gone well, though we don’t really know yet. Before that I spoke to Dad. We discussed his own mother’s unsteadiness in later years, such as in 2000 when they were living in Cairns and she and I came to visit, and suddenly she couldn’t go up and down escalators. Heck, Mum is only a year and a bit younger than she was. When put in those terms, Mum is doing very well. Dad too. (His own father died at almost exactly the age Dad is now, after a decade of living with Alzheimer’s.)

On Thursday night there was a UK by-election – in a part of Manchester – which the Greens won surprisingly comfortably. Reform came second while Labour, who had won the seat by a huge margin in 2024, were consigned to third place. The woman who won the seat for the Greens is – well, was – a plumber. Her victory speech, while strangely lacking in actual green stuff, was mighty impressive. “If you work hard, you deserve a nice life. And if you aren’t able to work, you still deserve a nice life.” Uncomplicated but effective. This result, plus everything else, might force the very disappointing Keir Starmer out of his position as prime minister.

Scrabble. Two wins and two losses so far from my completed league games. This time around there will be 13 games in total instead of the usual 14. A few days ago on ISC (the other site I play on), I was unfortunate enough to concede a 185-point triple-triple (SHERWANI, a word I didn’t know), and despite playing three bingos I lost 527-460. My opponent also found three bingos. That’s the highest total score in any game I’ve played.

Tomorrow I’m playing squash with Mark.

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Avoiding arguments

February 22, 2026 by 0 Comments

On Wednesday I asked the doctor about my back. As I suspected, it was just a contusion – nothing was broken. He gave me two packets of pills and some cream. That all seems to be working, so that’s nice. Early in the week (Tuesday?) I had a pretty terrible morning with sinus pain. Even after I recovered, it put me on a go-slow for the rest of the week.

Mum and Dad seem good at the moment, although I can never be 100% sure. I expect they’ll make it to Romania in early June, before it gets too hot. I have no idea what we might do when they get here, but any big cross-country trips – to the Delta, say – might not be a clever idea. Avoiding stress (and falling out with Mum in particular) is a top priority. I’m happy to say that I’ve made a decent start to 2026 as far as Mum is concerned. Even though I felt a bit upset at Mum’s attitude to my potential trip to New Zealand (which basically knocked it on the head), I haven’t had any arguments with her and I really want to keep it that way. Last week she emailed me a picture of a car (a Range Rover, I think) parked in Geraldine whose number plate included the POM combination, with a Union Jack added for good measure. That would have cost several hundred dollars, unlike the POM I ended up with. I was just happy that she sent me a rare email. (Part of the problem is that she has several email addresses. Anything I send her is liable to go to her junk or vanish into the ether entirely, so I don’t email her, and as a result she doesn’t normally email me either. When I see her in June I hope I can sort all this out for her.)

Dorothy has gone to England for a week. She’s spending time with her late husband’s family, many of whom don’t get on with each other. I didn’t mention that last weekend Dorothy and I saw a film at Cinema Victoria. We saw a French film (subtitled in Romanian) called La Réparation. Its Romanian title is Ultima Rețetă (The Last Recipe). It’s all about a famous Michelin-starred restaurant in France, though the second half of the film is mostly set in Taiwan. The plot was more complex than I expected something like that to be, and whoever produced the film showed some in-depth knowledge of haute cuisine.

The latest round of the Scrabble league is over. I finished with eight wins and six losses, surpassing my expectations, and will stay in the same division when it restarts on Thursday. There was some unpleasantness in the group chat last week which was a shame, though I think things are resolved now. This weekend a tournament in Cluj is taking place; that’s the one I was invited to. I couldn’t realistically go; I’d have needed to go up there on Friday, taking both Friday and Saturday off work. That would have been too much. I’m targeting a tournament in Iași in early August, when I’ll have a much lighter workload. Iași, which I visited in 2021, is a long way from here, but I’m planning a trip to the Republic of Moldova – over the border – and maybe I could stop in Iași on the way back. By that point I’ll have hopefully improved a bit and will have had the chance to practise tile tracking.

Early in the week a song came on the radio that I hadn’t heard in a while – Sowing the Seeds of Love by Tears for Fears, which came out in 1989. I hadn’t appreciated its complexity; it feels like four or five songs in one.

Having obtained a distinction in his master’s degree, my brother is proudly brandishing his qualifications in his email signature. I’m very proud of you, but when you display all those letters after your name so overtly, I only see four letters: dee eye cee kay.

Some good news: my bike is back in business and the repair cost less than expected – 268 lei (around £45 or just over NZ$100).

I’m meeting Mark in town for lunch in an hour or so.

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Loss of a family friend

February 18, 2026 by 0 Comments

I spoke to my brother last night. He told me the sad news that an old family friend had died. She was born and bred in Ireland and was the mother of two boys who were friends of my brother’s and mine. Growing up, we saw a lot of her. She had a number of health complications in later life (and earlier – she had a heart valve operation, similar to what my father had, at a pretty young age). She was a little older than our mother – we reckon she must have been 80, give or take a year.

I’ve had some problems with my bike. When I took it into the shop, they told me they had no choice but to fit a whole new front gear system and pedals. That’ll set me back 350 lei (£60 or NZ$135). So that means I’ve done more walking than usual. The benefits of that are that I see more. Even practical things at times, like a handy appliance repair shop which I didn’t know existed, and the fact that I can my pay local rates bill across the road.

In a recent English lesson, an eleven-year-old boy showed me his maths homework. “I don’t like maths,” he said. I asked if I could take a picture of his homework, which you can see below. It’s a bit grainy, but you get the idea. I’m not surprised you don’t like maths. Who in their right mind would set something so boring and intimidating? So much is wrong there, I don’t know where to start. There are far too many questions, there’s far too little variety in them, the font size is way too small, the font itself – Times New Roman – is hopelessly unfriendly for kids, it’s not even typeset properly (it uses the letter x for times and a hyphen for minus), there are triple brackets (why inflict that on them?!), there’s nowhere near enough white space, and so on. I’d never dream of producing something like that. (Yes, fonts matter. The two I avoid at all costs are Times New Roman and the ubiquitous Arial.)

What happened to questions 31 to 42?

Crappy assessments aren’t limited to Romania, sadly. On Friday I had a lesson with a 17-year-old girl who will take the C1 Cambridge exam in about three months. I really can’t stand the reading part of the test, and neither can she. The first part of the reading we did was a text about the UK shipping forecast which I actually wrote about on this blog in 2022. A slightly bizarre topic for a young person with no connection to the UK, and although it would have been interesting for me in theory, the text was made to be utterly tedious; virtually nobody would want to read something so vapid. If you knew nothing about the topic before reading the next, you’d still know next to nothing afterwards. After that, we did another text – I can’t remember what that was about, though my student said it was even less inspiring than the one about the shipping forecast. The grammar part of the text isn’t quite as bad, but at times it spectacularly fails to test 21st-century (or even late 20th-century) English. In one question, it expected my student to come up with “Despite my not having spoken to him.” Practically nobody talks or writes like that anymore.

I was pissed off with Mum last week, but I’m over that now. As my brother said last night, you never quite know what she’s thinking. He also told me to save my money rather than make a costly trip to New Zealand this year. I’m pretty sure that’s what I’ll do. A bit sad in some ways, especially because Dad would clearly like to see me and even sent me some fares from Flight Centre (a NZ travel agent), mostly with China Airlines who are in fact Taiwanese.

I’ve had some more weird dreams. Two in the same night, in fact. In one of them I was working in some office job and went to the wrong floor and had to move a chair whose owner I didn’t know. When I asked who the owner was, I got a patronising reply. “Who do you think that chair belongs to?” Then in an even worse dream, I was transported back half a lifetime to my early twenties and another job which had some sort of initiation camp involving thousands of employees in a field. Everyone had special clothes delivered (By courier? Post? This wasn’t clear), but Mum and Dad came to deliver mine in person. I said to them, “I can’t do this,” to which Dad replied, “I know you can’t” and then I woke up. So often, the theme of these dreams is embarrassment.

A new café has opened up in the middle of town. I saw it on one of my walking trips last week. Whoever the clientèle is for this place, I’m very much outside it.

In Romania, avoiding places with bullshit English text is good policy. It’ll save you money for a start.

Scrabble. Last night I was able to see (on YouTube) the tail end of a fairly major tournament based in Canada. With seconds left on both players’ clocks, world champion Adam Logan was barely able to hold off Josh Castellano in the deciding seventh game of the final. He won that last game by twelve points. After the game, rather than just congratulating and commiserating, these elite players discussed potential moves in great depth, as if winning and losing were secondary to solving a fiendish puzzle. Adam is one of the best mathematicians alive, while Josh has a top job at Google. As for my progress, I started the latest round of the league with a good number of wins, but it’s an uphill struggle in the latter stages and I may have a fight on my hands to avoid relegation. We’ll see.

It’s five weeks since I fell over on the ice, and my back still hasn’t fully recovered. The pain (which luckily isn’t too bad) comes and goes. I’ll mention it to my after-hours doctor when I see him tomorrow to get my monthly supply of pills.

Kitty has been exceptionally friendly this week. Long may it continue.

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I wish I could have known the story

February 3, 2026 by 0 Comments

Earlier today I went to the supermarket to get one or two bits and pieces. There was a very old lady, dressed in not much more than rags on a zero-degree day, and all of about four foot nine, looking at the sachets of hot paprika. “Not hot,” she said, “I want the not hot.” These sachets were on a special stand, away from the rest of the herbs and spices. I didn’t know where the mild paprika was, or even if they had any. There are supermarkets everywhere in Timișoara. That’s convenient, but it means that each of them has hardly any staff. I got frustrated. Can’t somebody help this woman? Eventually a young female member of staff located the lady’s non-spicy paprika. Then the old lady asked me where the small tins of tomato purée were. This time I could help her. Is there anything else I can help you with? She didn’t reply. I wanted to ask where she lived and whether she had children or grandchildren. There was a story there, spanning eight or nine decades.

Some good news – there has been a development with the books. The other lady (not Dorothy) with whom I went to Vienna in 2024 has put me in touch with a woman who runs a publishing house. She’s based some way south of here, close to the Danube. She seems to like both books, based on the samples I sent her. Today she asked me why the font size I used for the headings in the small book (the one that Dad illustrated) is so much larger than the body text. Well, it’s simply to make an impact, rather like a newspaper. After all, it’s not a textbook designed to be ploughed through from beginning to end. I’ll see what happens next, but the fact that she’s even asking about these sorts of details is encouraging.

More good news – my brother and I had practically given up on Mum and Dad coming over, but now they’re at least considering it. If they do make the trip, it won’t be for nearly as long as last time. A lot will depend on what happens with the flat in St Ives. Yesterday I had a chat with my brother. My nephew was running around constantly while my niece is very nearly walking. I don’t always get to see the kids, so that was great.

I watched the third and fourth sets of Carlos Alcaraz’s history-making win over Novak Djokovic in the Australian Open final. I missed the early stages when Djokovic apparently played lights-out tennis (at the age of almost 39!) and Alcaraz was in second gear. The age gap became pretty apparent as the match progressed, but even then Djokovic found a second wind of sorts in the fourth set and came close to sending the match to a decider. Djokovic also served pretty damn well. Amazingly that was the Serb’s first loss in a final at Melbourne – he’s won it ten times. But for Alcaraz, whose lack of weaknesses borders on terrifying, the sky’s the limit. That was his seventh major title and he’s now completed the career grand slam before his 23rd birthday. The match reminded me a bit of the 2005 US Open final, in which Agassi at 35 faced, and ultimately lost to, Federer who at the time was all-conquering. That was a great tournament. I was flatting then. We had no Sky TV so I just listened to it on the radio in between studying for my professional exams. The American commentator referred to the net as the twine, I seem to remember. Saturday’s women’s final wasn’t too shabby either, but with a busy work day I had no chance of seeing it.

In the latest round of the Scrabble league I’ve so far won four and lost four; I’m up in five of the six remaining games, so you never know… They may tweak things a bit soon – when experts join the league, they enter in the bottom division, mostly thrashing the poor schmucks who aren’t at that level. That isn’t fun for anybody.

At the weekend I was reading an article about UK salaries and pension plans and the expense of living in London and I thought about how much I’ve checked out of what you might call normal life. The great thing about living Romania – well, one of them – is that being here makes checking out perfectly fine. If I went back to New Zealand I don’t think it would be anymore and I’d likely go back to thinking that something is drastically wrong with me.

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Taking a tumble

January 13, 2026 by 0 Comments

I’ve just finished my lesson with Matei. Not that Matei, the one who will have maths lessons with me for another few months until he goes to Germany, but another Matei, who wears gallons of after shave and will be doing a Cambridge C1 exam at some point. Kitty scratched me seconds before our lesson, so I had to get a plaster as soon as we started. We did reading exercises. One of them was about Olympic medallists who give motivational speeches at companies, after which the employees think, yeah, that was kind of fun to listen to but how will it help me in the slightest to do my job better?

Yesterday afternoon, when we reached our top temperature of minus 5, I went for a walk. Having got to the river (which was partly iced over) and turned for home, I took a pretty big tumble on the ice. I fell on my back and must have hit my head, though I don’t remember. I got up OK, but I was dizzy and felt absolutely terrible. I was winded and stood up against a window ledge for five minutes before feeling able to carry on. I walked the kilometre or so home very gingerly.

On Friday Elena (the 82-year-old lady who lives above me) got back from Canada. Yesterday she invited me up for coffee. She seemed to be coping extremely well with jet lag. I brought Kitty along; for whatever reason she wasn’t a happy camper.

Last night I had a 55-minute chat with Mum and Dad. They were about to make another trip down to Moeraki, and then on to Wanaka, to retrieve a painting that didn’t sell at an exhibition. I’m not sure any other paintings sold there either. I came away from the call feeling quite worried about Mum, whose digestive issues are still very unsorted, and coupled with all of that she’s now practically blind in one eye. She’s also been full of cold the last few days. She hasn’t been to golf for a while and yesterday she didn’t even go to church. From 11,000 miles away where I can do absolutely nothing, it’s all a bit of a concern.

Family - Life :) - Music

A quiet Christmas

December 26, 2025 by 0 Comments

It’s been a very uneventful Christmas Day which I don’t mind at all. The living room looks halfway decent now so I attacked the bathroom. Then I made a salam de biscuiți – well two of them, actually – and a salată de boeuf to take to Dorothy’s tomorrow. I’ve had a lot of Merry Christmas messages with a couple of Marry Christmas ones thrown in. No Mary Christmas ones yet, but there’s still time. A bit earlier I had a chat with my neighbour Elena who is still in Canada bit will arrive back in Timișoara on 9th January.

I haven’t spoken to my brother today, though we had a chat last night. I imagine it’s pretty full-on for him, with his son now three and a quarter and amped all of a sudden by Christmas. Mum and Dad had a stress-free Christmas Day which I’m very happy about. They had dinner at Mum’s older sister’s place in Timaru; my cousin, her husband, daughter and son were also there. My cousin is simply a nice person with a great family, so that would have made everything way easier. My parents had been invited to go out somewhere on Christmas Eve, but Mum did something out-of-character (and utterly brilliant): she said no. She had stuff to do for the church and desserts to make for Christmas Day and all the rest of it, so hats off to her for uttering that very handy two-letter word.

Another of my twenty cousins, the one who lives in New York state, is over in New Zealand with his wife. Just before Christmas they went to Stewart Island with my cousin’s parents. My uncle is 84 and is suffering from memory loss, so I’m not sure what the trip would have been like. My cousin is a keen golfer and recently got a super-rare two on a par-five, known as an albatross. Holes-in-one are ten a penny when compared to an albatross. I’m impressed he was even able to drive the ball far enough to reach the green in two. Yes, I have exactly twenty cousins, just two of whom are on my father’s side.

Yesterday I ended up watching a YouTube video about the 1996 Ethopian Airlines flight that was hijacked. Not long after the plane took off from Ethiopia, three men stormed the cockpit (as you could do in pre-9/11 days) and attacked the pilots with an axe and a fire extinguisher. They beat up the co-pilot, then ordered the pilot to fly to Australia, which was impossible – the plane didn’t have nearly enough fuel for that. Eventually the plane ran out of fuel and ditched off Comoros Islands, near a beach resort. The ditching was spectactularly caught on amateur video – whoever shot the video initially thought it was some kind of air show. Fifty of the 175 people on board survived, including both pilots. I had no recollection of this incident, even though I could remember two other crashes from the same year.

On Monday when I was at Mark’s, they had some music playing. I can’t remember who, but I commented that it sounded rather like Tracy Chapman. Mark’s wife then put on all of her first album, which I much appreciated. I never imagined she’d be a fan. Today I’ve been listening to a few Christmas songs including Chuck Berry’s Run Rudolph Run which I don’t remember hearing before.

I’m still a bit hazy about Dad’s health. Mum’s too, to be honest. Dad told me he was disoriented when he flew his model plane last Sunday. When the plane is flying away from you instead of towards you, left becomes right on the controls and vice-versa. He said he was momentarily confused with that, even though he’s been flying these planes since the late nineties. I can see worries about my parents’ health dominating large chunks of 2026.