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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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”.
I’m writing this after two full days without a headache to speak of. I’m still tired, but I slept well last night and got up this morning feeling something in the vague vicinity of normal. I had a long chat with Mum and Dad earlier, and last night I spoke to my brother on WhatsApp for the first time in a while. He commented that it seemed unusually dark where I was, and I told him that my headaches have made me want to cut the lights. I even have the contrast turned down on this laptop. Here I am in Romania, turning into a vampire. I’ve kept my phone on silent for several days too.
On Wednesday, when I wrote my last post on here, I had another splitting headache. The pain began to intensify at around 6pm while I was in the middle of a maths lesson in another part of the city. When I got home I had another maths lesson which I muddled through somehow. Luckily she only stayed for an hour; normally our lessons are an hour and a half, sometimes even two hours. Then the pain, like a screwdriver being rammed up my right nostril and into my eye, became unbearable. The only saving grace was that it was night-time, so relatively little light got in. The pain subsided just after eleven. I got to bed at 12:30.
The next morning I had a Romanian lesson at eight with Dorothy and our teacher, who didn’t show up. (I probably shouldn’t have shown up either. I was so tired.) I talked to Dorothy for over half an hour, then mooched around until my lessons started in the afternoon. Just three of them. Then it was Wizard of Oz time. Dorothy was back. In almost ten years in Timișoara, I’d never been inside the Opera House. What a beautiful building on the inside. I’d have preferred to have been on my own, perusing the interior, rather than being among a load of schoolkids and parents. I managed to get in without anything resembling a ticket. What other performances at the Opera House might I be able to gatecrash? As for the performance itself, I’d give it maybe two and a half stars. Dorothy herself was fine. The lion – a girl – didn’t look anything like a lion; this detracted from the experience somewhat. Neither was the scarecrow scarecrowy enough. The tin man, on the other hand, had made his costume himself and was very convincing. I had to keep reminding myself that, even though these teenagers go to a (really expensive) British school and have their lessons in English, they were still performing in a non-native language. Their command of spoken English varied wildly. Another thing – the set was far too sparse. Most of the time they cheated by projecting a backdrop onto the back wall. Seeing “TheatreBackdrop.com” in big letters in the corner of the wall didn’t do much for me. A lot of the time I wished I was watching the excellent original (colour!) Wizard of Oz movie from the 1930s – a superb film – instead. My general negativity probably came from another intense headache (but not as bad as the one the previous night) which started halfway through the play. I just wanted to get home.
On Friday morning my parents called me from Hampden. They’d just had fish and chips. As usual, the line was dodgy. When I got off the phone I felt beyond washed out. I felt gone. I knew at some point that day I’d have to force myself to do a big shop at the supermarket because I was starting to run out of things. When I finally made myself do, it, what an effort it was. Where did I put the trolley? It would need to be a big shop because who knew when I’d get to go back there. It reminded me of the shop I did at the start of Covid after coming back from an ill-advised trip to the mountains. Even the business of carrying it all in from the car wasn’t much fun. I only just had time to put it all away before my lesson started. My lessons have remained possible, but only because I’ve done so many of them by now and even if I mess up badly, it’s not like anyone can sack me.
I had four lessons yesterday, all in Dumbrăvița, from 8:30 till 4:30. Two English and two maths. Between my last two lessons I had a break which I spent in the park. That was nice and relaxing. Feeling I could really do with the exercise, I cycled rather than drove. Just like in March 2020, in those early days of Covid, we’ve had some beautiful spring weather.
When I spoke to my parents this morning, we (inevitably) discussed whether or not they’d be able to make it over in May. None of us has a clue. Donald Trump – what an irredeemable piece of shit – certainly doesn’t. His latest tweet (bleat? excrete?) followed the death of Robert Mueller who investigated Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election. “Robert Mueller just died. Good, I’m glad he’s dead. He can no longer hurt innocent people!” Now Mueller was a good man and a highly decorated war veteran. Where do you even start with this? It’s worth watching this too: the glee on Trump’s face when he announces that a congressman (a Republican congressman!) would be dead in three months following a terminal diagnosis.
Scrabble. It’s taken a back seat in my mind, even though I’m still studying words. In the latest round of the league I survived with a decent record of eight wins and six losses, despite my spread – points scored minus points conceded – being negative. (I lost one game by a whopping 300.) So, starting on Thursday, I’ll get another crack at division four. I think I’ll get to battle that Romanian player again.
The Opera HouseI was surprised to see her using her bedAn extra digit: fancy diesel was well over 10 lei per litre yesterday; normal diesel was only just under.
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.
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.
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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