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Fantastic Mr Fox

July 20, 2026 by 0 Comments

I watched the final round of the Open golf today. And guess what, a Kiwi won it for the first time since 1963. Ryan Fox. He held his nerve when so many around him didn’t. In fact he played the final holes spectacularly well. He didn’t look a likely winner when his chip shot spun back to where it started, somewhere around the turn – I can’t remember which hole. But there he was, on the final green, standing over a twelve-footer or so. He probably won’t get this… but he bloody well did. Good on him. I called Mum as soon as the putt dropped, because I knew she’d be happy to hear the news. What’s more, Fox shot a record-equalling 62 in the third round. I had to feel a little sorry for Cam Young who hit a superb final-round 64 and spent hours on the driving range and practice green in anticipation of a play-off – he could quite possibly have even won outright – only to get pipped at the last by Fox. And yes, Mum was pretty happy. She said her brother in Palmerston North would have been up all night watching it. (Bob Charles was the winner in ’63. When I lived there he was on TV all the time, selling his Bob Charles deer velvet capsules. He’s still alive at the age of 90.)

It’s been a good day all round, because I feel I’ve made a significant recovery from the last seven days which have been pure garbage, such has been my lack of energy. It’s been absolutely horrible. Thursday was the crappiest day of them all, but every day has been a contender. What really gave me a boost today was catching up with Mark – for the second-to-last time before he says goodbye to Romania – at Casa Bunicii in Dumbrăvița. He and his wife had just got back from their epic African adventure where they scaled Kilimanjaro and then went on safari. It was great to hear about it all, after so much negativity coming from all directions. Scaling the mountain was predictably tough. Brutal was the word Mark used. The ascent itself wasn’t all that challenging, but the altitude – nearly 6000 metres – made things pretty damn messy. They didn’t skimp on having properly paid porters, who they tipped as well. It was all a very well-run operation. The pictures of the safari were good too. The highlights were a woman having a picnic oblivious that there was a huge elephant behind her, and a vast herd of wildebeest crossing a river.

The World Cup final is about to start. Dad hasn’t stopped moaning about England’s loss to Argentina in the semi-final. They should have done this or that. Dad knows bugger all about football and never follows it at any other time. And he was still going on about it after England had won an utterly batshit mad ten-goal thriller against France. Yes it was a shame that England lost, but the sky hasn’t fallen in. It would be nice now though if Spain could thrash Argentina.

I’ll write more about my crappy week, and the supplements my doctor has given me, in my next post. As I write this, or try to, I’m being mauled by Kitty in one of her displays of affection. Like me, she’s been avoiding the heat in the last few days. We’ve been up into the mid-30s again.

Books - Family - Life :) - Scrabble

Bully boy

July 1, 2026 by 0 Comments

It’s 39 degrees here as I write this. I’m pretty much confined to just the living room, which has air con. At one stage the air con was dripping like a tap but clearing the outlet pipe thankfully stopped that. Nights aren’t easy. The night before last I had Bic Runga’s Get Some Sleep in my head for some reason. She sang of being “stranded in June”. It still is June here. In this part of town the heat has meant that people are out and about pretty late. Even small children. The nearby park was a hive of activity at 10pm on Sunday.

On Saturday I went to Buzad and drove Dorothy and her friend back to Timișoara. It was such a hot day, not far off today’s temperatures, and when I got back home at nearly four I was basically gone for the day, I was so exhausted from the heat.

Mum and Dad are back in St Ives after their tough time down south. Mum has picked up a cold. The good news though is that my brother’s commanding officer has gone into bat for him and it looks like he’ll be able to leave the army – and start his new job in early August – after all. I spoke to him this morning and he certainly seemed a bit perkier. He said he’s been through a horrible three months, not knowing what the hell was going on. Our chat lasted 20 minutes – much longer than anything we’ve managed of late.

It’s not just the job stuff. His son is incredibly demanding. Probably similar to me and my brother combined when we were little. There’s just no downtime with him. He’s extremely bright, and that poses a problem. My brother is extremely proud of him, and why shouldn’t he be, but I think he’s a bit too proud, to the point where the sun shines out of his arse and he can do no wrong. In reality my nephew is a bully; he often hurts his little sister and enjoys it too. He receives no real discipline from either of his parents. There’s no wooden spoon like me and my brother got. I suppose you just can’t do that these days. In around 14 months my nephew will start school. He’ll be one of the oldest in his class, and inevitably one of the biggest. In contrast to all of this, my niece is lovely. I don’t know when I’ll next get to see them.

I did win that Scrabble game with the 16-year-old Australian, by just six points. I didn’t exactly navigate that endgame in optimal fashion, but I find endgames particularly difficult because I simply don’t know enough words. I finished second bottom of the league, he finished bottom, and we’ll do battle again in the division below, starting on Thursday.

I’ve ordered a new laptop. The mouse pad on this one is starting to hurt my hands after nearly five years of use, and it’s been compromised to some degree ever since Kitty spilled water on it, so really I had no choice. It’s coming on Thursday, which will be quite a busy day. I paid 4850 lei (£800 or around NZ$1900) for it. Far from the cheapest, but I really can’t skimp on a laptop which is vital for my job.

Andy Burnham can do human, which means that he’s halfway there. Whether he can do the other half (and be allowed to do it) remains to be seen, but I’m optimistic. I totally agreed with Dad when he said they should hammer the banks who are making huge, unjustified profits. Especially after my debacle with a UK bank in 2022-23.

I’m glad to got to the end of The Junior Officers’ Reading Club, whose title is about as misleading as it gets. It was hard to properly empathise with the author. He was born in 1982, just two years after me, but we’re poles apart in just about every way. He’s also very different from my brother, who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, just like he did.

Kitty is great, but the heat is even getting to her.

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A deep, dark, hot place

June 27, 2026 by 0 Comments

Mum and Dad called me yesterday. They’re still at my brother’s place, but he was out at the time. They told me what’s been happening with my brother who has entered a deep, dark place. Worse than when he had the business with his ex, I wondered. Yes, far worse, they said. And for the love of God, don’t come here later in the summer.

We all thought it was family-related. His wife, her family (who come over all the time), his son being particularly hard work, and so on. But no, it’s to do with his job. He was very excited to get that job with BAE back at the beginning of April; he’d be starting in early August. I was very happy for him too. But now the Army won’t release him in time, mainly (from what I can tell) because his boss’s boss is being a bastard. He’ll be forced to stay for an extra six months, doing very little of importance, so he’ll miss out on that bright future that he’d studied so hard for. The military is a very weird place, and my brother has no time for it anymore. It’s all so upsetting. Not just that it has happened to him, but that it’s affected him so profoundly. This is my brother, whose mental health has always been unimaginably good. Every disappointment like water off a duck’s back. And now this.

My parents said he is hardly talking to them. Or anyone else. It’s been a crappy week down south for them. The searing heat has left them practically imprisoned in a single room, and they haven’t been able to travel back to St Ives because it’s been dangerously hot for them (especially Dad) to do so. They did go to the cinema on Thursday and see Toy Story 5, a sad film about kids being glued to their screens and no longer playing with toys, but that’s then only “thing” they’ve done. (They took my nephew. It would have all been beyond him.) Tomorrow is Dad’s 76th birthday. The following day, with the temperatures down in the 20s, they’ll finally get away.

In the last few days my parents and I have compared notes, all of us becoming very heatist. Yes, it’s been hellishly hot all over Europe, including the UK, where they broke the 1976 record for June three days running. (Mum can’t stop talking about that freakishly long heat wave fifty summers ago. Even Mark mentioned it last weekend – he’d just started school. Damon Albarn referred to it in one of his songs. It’s certainly part of British lore.) This weekend we’ll hit at least 37; on Monday and Tuesday we could just about melt in 40 degrees. The worst thing about the heat isn’t the days but the nights. Broken sleep, leaving me exhausted. On Thursday afternoon I had my first lesson with the girl who was in the ballet. An hour and a half with her big brother, followed by an hour with her, and that got me a useful 200 lei. Their mum asked me if I wanted to do two sessions each next week, but I couldn’t face the idea of cycling to Mehala in the early part of the week. Maybe on Thursday (when it should be cooler) I’ll ask if we could meet on Friday too. (The 200 lei…) I gave the boy a test, which isn’t something I do very often. He took it super seriously and got 93% – very impressive. His little sister seemed to be excited at the prospect of having me as her teacher; that isn’t something I always see.

What else? I’ve seen the devastating pictures from the already devastated Venezuela following the two huge earthquakes there. You always see the amazing scenes of children being extricated from the rubble, but those are the all too rare exceptions. Tens of thousands are missing.

I’ve been reading Patrick Hennessey’s The Junior Officers’ Reading Club, which is all about the author’s time as an army officer, first training at Sandhurst, then serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. Gripping stuff, but a bit too close to home for me, and all the unnecessary pop culture references – look at me, how worldly I am – grate after a while, even if he writes extremely well.

Scrabble. I’m getting relegated again. I’m sure it won’t be the last time. My opponents are just too good. I’ve had four wins and nine losses, with one game still outstanding (and very close in the endgame) against a 16-year-old from Australia who will go down with me. In one game against a guy from Hungary I scoured the board looking for what he could do before playing my final move. Surely this will win it for me, won’t it? But then he stuck a D on the end of QUICHE on his last move to beat me by three points. Really? That’s a word now? I felt well and truly quiched. What’s more, earlier in the game I’d got 102 for BRATTISH and 92 for sATIRIC and I still couldn’t win. In the 14 games my opponents played 33 bingos. (By the way, heatist isn’t valid, but it has two anagrams that are: atheist and staithe, which is a kind of wharf.)

Life :) - Photos - Politics - Travel: Romania

23/6/16 (plus photos)

June 23, 2026 by 0 Comments

Ten years ago today, the Brexit vote happened. I’d expected it to be close, as you can see from my blog posts in the days before the referendum. (My uni mate, who is far more intelligent than me but lived in a kind of bubble, said that Remain would get 60% or more.) I was at work, on a Friday in Wellington, when the results came through. The first two declarations in the north-east were earth-shatteringly bad for Remain. Oh shit. When the next ten or so councils had announced their figures, it was basically all over. (The numbers were very close at that point, but if you had any idea at all of how voting in Britain plays out – rural areas declare later – you’d have known the writing was on the wall. And I’d been through it all a few dozen Fridays before when David Cameron won an unexpected majority, initiating the referendum in the first place.) My boss had scheduled us all to give sodding talks that afternoon, and I had to do mine and half-listen to everyone else’s, when my mind was well and truly elsewhere. I was halfway round the world and very few of my colleagues gave a damn, while there was me wanting to move to an EU country a few months later.

The arguments by both sides in the lead-up to the vote were facile. From the Leave side, it was all emotion, take back control, big unproven numbers on the side of a red bus. The Remain camp demonstrably failed to make an emotional case for staying in. (And it was easy to make! Peace was all they needed to say.) Instead you had remainers talking about falling house prices if they left the EU. I dunno, if I was a 23-year-old with little prospect of ever buying a property I’d have thought, sounds good to me. And then there were the remainers who called leavers stupid. But the whole campaign was just awful from start to finish. It whipped people up into a frenzy, creating divisions that hadn’t previously existed. EU membership just wasn’t that big a deal beforehand.

Then there was the aftermath. It was like an earthquake that nobody had prepared for, and nobody was there to clean up the mess. Cameron announced his resignation within hours of the result. Since then, Britain has gone through a slew of prime ministers including the laughable Liz Truss. They’re about to get another one who I happen to really like, but dammit he’s facing a tough task. Dangerous enemies to the west and east, the enshittification of everything thanks to toxic social media and AI slop, a stagnating economy, and still very much out of the EU where Britain has, guess what, some actual friends.

Ten years later, the Brexit vote is still a common topic of conversation. It came up with my parents when they were here. To my mind, where Brexit has done the most damage to Britain isn’t actually that they’ve left the EU, it’s the way is was done and how divided it has made the country. It was all so terribly unnecessary. And now, many of those who voted to leave are angry that it isn’t working and want an even more extreme option in Farage.

I spoke to Dad yesterday. He was struggling, as he so often does, with the heat. My brother has a conservatory which turns the whole place into a heat trap. He would love to replace it – it makes summer uncomfortable for him too – but doing so would be horrendously expensive. I saw my niece and my nephew who were both nonplussed. That’s your uncle, look at him! My nephew is still an extremely live wire.

As great as Mum and Dad’s visit was, it’s good to have my own space again. Washing and cleaning have gone from being front and centre, as Mum made them, to a gentle drum beat once more. I also no longer have to worry about putting things on shelves that Mum can’t reach (which was quite easy to accidentally do). They said that if there’s a next time they’ll try and come earlier and go straight to Timișoara as they did last year. Coming later though meant that they benefited from all the fruit that they really enjoyed, and even the sweet scent of the lime trees, so there are always pros and cons. When we were in Cluj I said, wouldn’t it be nice if we had a swimming pool? I haven’t swum in a pool for absolutely ages. I might try and go to the ștrand (basically a pool) in the coming days. I just hope I can cope with the music they play.

I just hope I don’t get any more bad headaches for a while. Dad wondered why they’re becoming such a feature of my life at my stage of the game.

The Opera House

Timișoara at dusk

Lipova

The war memorial: the Romanians, Serbs, Germans and Hungarians are on separate sides

A couple of cat pictures

Family - Headaches - Life :) - Travel: Romania

A night at the opera, and more

June 22, 2026 by 0 Comments

It’s the longest day here – the shortest in the southern hemisphere – and it’s been an eventful one weather-wise. In late afternoon we’ve had a thunderstorm and driving rain that have sent the temperature tumbling 15 degrees from a high of 34. It’s sheeting down as I write this.

Mum and Dad took the WizzAir flight from Timișoara to Luton very early on Friday morning. Later that day my brother arrived in St Ives, and then the next day Mum and Dad were whisked off to Poole. Great that my brother picked them up, saving them either a bus or a train journey, but they might have preferred a couple of days to recuperate.

Yes, I was really happy with my parents’ stay. I was far better prepared than last time. Fewer lessons certainly helped. After we’d got back from Cluj – I’ll remember that epic journey for a while – I tried to give them interesting things to do and places to go. There was Ciacova last Saturday, with those huge pastries from the bakery, then the following day (Mum’s birthday) we had a meal at Berăria 700 before settling down to a night at the opera. My parents had been before a long time ago, but it was a totally new experience for me. We saw Adriana Lecouvreur, not exactly a well-known opera and probably not the best for a first-timer to see. When I read what it was about before I went, it said that I would be utterly baffled by the plot. Which indeed I was, even though it subtitled in both Romanian and a particularly flowery (though correct) version of English above the stage. Adriana was a real French actress 300 years ago, but her story in the opera was entirely made up. To be honest though, the plot was secondary to the talented singers, all extremely colourfully clad, and just being there in such a beautiful building. The performance was made up of four acts, with intervals after acts two and three, and took just over three hours. The sheer scale of the production was impressive. We sat at the bottom, but I think I’d have preferred being higher up so I could have seen the orchestra pit. The first half dragged a bit, but the dancing brought the show to life in act three. Tickets were 70 lei (£12 or NZ$27) each – extraordinary value.

When we got back from the opera, Mum was keen to go back there the next day to see a ballet gala. We booked online, grabbing some of the last available tickets, to sit two floors above the stage. They were just 20 lei each. Before the ballet, I decided to take Mum and Dad out for an excursion. We left at 10:30 and made a stop in Buzad where Dorothy has her house. We did a lap of the village on foot. As always, my parents had a good look at the houses. They marvelled at the sheer number of plum trees everywhere. From there we went to Lipova, which I last went to during the winter. It was slow going with all the road works and potholes. Lipova is a lovely town. We had coffee at the old Turkish bazaar which had furniture made out of old farm machinery. Dad and I wanted to get pastries from the bakery, but Mum vetoed that idea. I thought of going to the fortress at Șoimoș, just outside Lipova, but we didn’t have time. The journey back was long, with constant stoppages. We got back at 4:30; the ballet would start at seven. Inexplicably, Mum then flipped her lid because she’d planned to cook up a chicken for dinner and we might not have time for that. She told Dad and me, “You expect me to produce a meal for you,” when in fact we had no expectations at all, then said, “Most women wouldn’t put up with this.” Yikes. Her behaviour was beyond irrational. Thankfully it all blew over, the chicken did in fact get cooked, and we took the tram into town in plenty of time for the ballet. (Mum got agitated on a number of occasions while she was here, but that was as close as she got to crossing the line. Last time she crossed it twice, and from my perspective that made a mess of my parents’ whole stay.) The gala was basically two and a half hours of girls of all ages doing ballet at all levels. They all went to ballet school in Mehala. One of the girls was the little sister of a boy I teach; soon I’ll be teaching her too.

On Tuesday Mum and Dad went into town by themselves. They came back saying how wonderful Timișoara is now, and I thought, yes, you’re right. So many buildings have been renovated and now look really smart. Because I live here, I get blasé about it all. On Wednesday I’d planned to take Mum and Dad to Recaș – they have a big barbecue there on Wednesdays and Saturdays, as well as the winery – but at around 11:30 I got struck down suddenly by a horrific headache that lasted about four hours. Having my parents here made it harder to deal with. Being in the middle of a bright sunny day didn’t help either; darkness is my friend when I have a bad headache. By the evening I’d recovered sufficiently for us to go out for another meal at Berăria 700. The highlight of that meal were the desserts. We had to wait ages for them. I got papanași which are dumplings with sour cream and a kind of jam, Dad had a stack of pancakes topped off with a kind of meringue (a speciality of the Banat region), while Mum had cremeș which is a puff pastry dessert. They were delicious. And enormous. We took some of it all back in a doggy bag for the next day. On Thursday morning I did take Mum and Dad to Recaș. No barbecue but they still had a good look round the park and the churches, and we got a two-litre bottle of white wine (for just 21 lei) from the tap in the winery.

On Wednesday Dad got an email about roof repairs being needed on one of their places in St Ives – the one on which the sale was agreed ages ago – and that really set things off. If the sale ends up not going through after all – that remains a possibility – I have no idea how my parents will handle that. One thing’s for sure, I don’t want to be dealing with that sort of crap when I’m heading for 80.

Mum struggled a lot with her tummy business; she seems to be perpetually constipated. Because she is rarely keen to visit the doctor, I don’t know how her situation improves.

Mum kept reiterating how appreciative she was of the effort I’d put in to make her and Dad’s stay as comfortable as possible. Mum is a good person and she loves me dearly. I’m very happy with how things panned out with her. And by the way, she seemed to really love Kitty. I shouldn’t have been surprised – she was fond of the cat we had when I was little – but both she and Dad were very anti me ever getting one.

After Andy Burnham winning that by-election by a mile, he’s highly likely to become the UK’s next prime minister. Personally speaking, he’s the most likeable PM (or potential PM) in a very long time. And there have been a lot. He’s not slick, he’s not an amazing orator, he doesn’t have airs and graces, he just talks frankly, which is what you want. Or what I would want, at any rate. If he does become PM, he faces a monumental task. He’s battling a hostile media, endless cynicism around politics, and a highly unstable world over which he has little control. I wish him all the best.

This morning, having slept dreadfully, I met Mark in Dumbrăvița where we played squash for the last time, then had beers outside at the restaurant nearby. He and his wife will be off on their big Africa trip this coming Friday. He’s now done with teaching definitively, and is applying for a cheese-making job (quite a departure) just outside Preston.

Family - Headaches - Life :)

A successful stay

June 19, 2026 by 0 Comments

Mum and Dad are off to the UK very early tomorrow morning. We’ll have to be up at around four. They’re choosing a good time to leave as the temperature is rapidly rising beyond Dad’s comfort zone. Their stay here has been a success and the highlight of the year so far for me. Since I last wrote we’ve been to the opera and the ballet, had meals out, and been on various road trips. Oh, and I’ve had another terrible headache. That was yesterday. More details next time. And Mum seems to really like Kitty. Whether I see my parents in the UK before they return to New Zealand in six weeks’ time I really don’t know at this stage.

In the last couple of days an Iran peace deal has been signed; all reputable news sources have reported the deal using loads of inverted commas. And tonight Andy Burnham might win that by-election in Manchester. If he does, he may well become the UK’s next prime minister.

Family - Life :)

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.

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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 - Headaches - 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.