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The new religion

April 23, 2025 by 0 Comments

In this morning’s weekly Romanian lesson, the presidential election came up. It is now looming large once more, after it was declared null and void in December. One of the frontrunners is George Simion, from the anti-everything party. He came fourth in November, but the Georgescu business may well have helped shore up his support. Our teacher said that, thankfully, the president has limited powers in Romania, but if Simion were to win it would at least give Romanians a “cold shower”, as she put it, which is probably what they need. A reality check. Electing a Simion won’t cure Romania’s ills. It’s amazing what guff I get from boys of 11 or 12, which of course they’ve got from their parents. Romania has gone to the dogs. We need Simion, or even better Georgescu, to fix it. They may well then mention God. Romania hasn’t gone to the dogs, at all. With all the uncertainty surrounding the election, I’m trying to get my residence permit updated. I’ll go along to the office at 8:30 tomorrow morning, armed with paperwork. God knows if I’ll get to the front of the queue, or whether my paperwork will be adequate if I do. (If it turns out they started an overnight queue like two years ago, I’ll just go home.)

Yesterday as I was cycling to Sânmihaiu Român, I got six loud beeps from my Biziday news app. Six beeps mean something major has happened, so I pulled over. The Pope had died at 88. I’d been a supporter of his, I suppose, like many outside the church. As we’ve headed down a darker path, he had been a rare bright spot. He recognised the massive failings of the modern economic system. I’m just looking at some of his quotes now. Here are four:
“Human rights are not only violated by terrorism, repression or assassination, but also by unfair economic structures that creates huge inequalities.”
“If investments in banks fall, it is a tragedy, and people say, ‘What are we going to do?’ but if people die of hunger, have nothing to eat or suffer from poor health, that’s nothing.”
“More and more people work on Sundays as a consequence of the competitiveness imposed by a consumer society.”
“You cannot be in a position of power and destroy the life of another person.”

Vice-president JD Vance met the Pope on Easter Sunday, just hours before Francis died. How and why?! To force a meeting with someone so gravely ill is just crass and cruel.

There’s a chance that Francis’s successor will send the Catholic church heading in a more sinister direction. As for religion as a whole, its influence has plummeted in most Western countries, but I predict we’ll see a resurgence. There’s some evidence that we’re already seeing it among young men. But I don’t expect it’ll be church as I know it, with a rambling sermon and an aging congregation and that churchy smell. It’ll be a modern version but ultra-primitive at its core, fuelled by social media and money. The new churchgoers may be the same young men who “invest” in crypto – that’s pretty much a religion anyway. Dorothy shocked me on Sunday by saying she donates 10% of her income to the church, and has done since she was 18. Just imagine. Where does that money even go? She even used the word tithe, which I consider prehistoric.

I’m still reeling from Robert F. Kennedy’s comments on autism. In a similar vein, Linda McMahon, the 76-year-old WWE promoter who is for some bizarre reason now the Secretary of Education, gave a speech in which she twice called for more A1 (“ay one”) in schools. She meant AI (“ay eye”), or artificial intelligence. The mind boggles. She really seemed to think it was called that. Apparently A1 is the name of a popular American steak sauce.

Snooker. On Sunday, after doing my church bit, I sat down and watched the concluding session of Mark Williams against Wu Yize. Williams won 10-8. The session took more than three hours, which was great. Late afternoon, into the evening, watching the snooker, drinking a beer, with no immediate obligations apart from maybe feeding Kitty. Wu Yize was brilliant – his long potting was exceptional – but Williams’ vast experience just got him over the line. There was one shot in particular at 8-8 where Williams used the spider and had to contort himself in an almost excruciating fashion to pot a red. Today they’ve had the first session of Ronnie O’Sullivan against Ali Carter. Good to watch; Carter won the last two frames to be only 5-4 down.

Some family news. My aunt accepted the offer on their property in the end. The eventual buyer came up a fraction. Not as much as my aunt had hoped, but I’m pretty sure she made the right call there.

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Halfway to ninety

April 20, 2025 by 0 Comments

Great news – Mum has booked their flight from Timișoara to Luton in the early hours of 22nd May. So it looks like they might actually come. The only negative is that Mum has broken a tooth. If she can’t get it repaired in Geraldine before they leave, I’ll book her in somewhere in Timișoara. There are loads of dentists here, and they’ll all be cheaper than in New Zealand.

Easter in Romania is huge, so when your birthday coincides with it, it’s a bit like having your birthday on Christmas Day. I did my church bit this morning – hopefully for the last time until Christmas, even if a lot of the churchgoers seem really nice. I remembered the Easter etiquette this time – “Good morning” or even “Happy Easter” is what you don’t say on Easter Sunday, inside or outside church. You say “Hristos a înviat” (Christ has risen); the response to that is “Adevărat a înviat” (Indeed He has risen). The sermon was all about how you deal with death – pets or maybe grandparents dying when you are younger, and fear of death as you get older. A great subject on a birthday that makes me feel pretty old. But the priest told us that death isn’t the end of the story, as the resurrection proves, so there’s nothing to fear. That’s fantastic news, I must say. There were hymns, with the “lyrics” appearing on an overhead projector. I wish they could have chosen a font where the upper-case I was distinguishable from the lower-case l. They both exist on their own as pronouns in Romanian. No problem if you’re a Romanian who regularly goes to church, but I was left guessing. In the middle of the service, ten kids of various ages and levels of shyness each said an Easter-related line. After that, they were each given a Boomwhacker (I’ve just learnt the name) which is a coloured plastic tube that you literally whack against the floor. These tubes are tuned to different notes (they’re different lengths); if each kid whacks their tube at the right time, they can produce a passable melody which they sort of did.

There was some chat outside after the service. The large Australian lady, just a few months shy of 45, shocked me by saying she was pregnant. There was another lady, much much thinner and heavily pregnant, who clearly had problems. Dorothy told me that she was homeless and was having perhaps her fifth child, a daughter this time. Like the others, she won’t be able to keep her; she lacks the wherewithal to look after a child. All very sad. There was a boy of about eleven who spoke excellent English and talked (at serious length) about some game he’d been playing where, weirdly, he built transport links between East Anglian towns like Ipswich, Bury St Edmunds and Harwich.

Yesterday I went to Dorothy’s house in Buzad. It was a beautiful sunny day, just like today. It really is a lovely place she’s got there, though the garden (seven-eighths of an acre, full of trees) is a lot of work. Dorothy does plenty of planting and seeding and weeding herself, but employs various men too. We went for a walk around the village. Dorothy knew many of the villagers (being the only foreigner there, she’s semi-famous) and sometimes she’d stop for a chat. One of the women was extraordinarily chatty; she was with her husband who could hardly get a word in. Though the village is beautiful, I don’t think I could live there because I wouldn’t be able to hide. I then drove Dorothy back to her actual home in Timișoara. I drove 100 km there and back without any juddering at all. However, since that guy “diagnosed” all of my supposed issues and gave me that enormous quote, my brakes have been squeaky.

Robert F. Kennedy, the Secretary of Death (as I call him) has made some monumentally stupid comments about autism. He clearly knows nothing about it. “Perfectly normal” kids “regress into autism” at the age of two as a result of “environmental exposure” – it’s sickening stuff. He went on to say that autistic children will never go on a date, will never play baseball, will never pay taxes, and most baffling of all, will never write a poem. What. The. Fuck.

What a match yesterday on day one at the Crucible. I couldn’t stay awake for all of it. Kyren Wilson, last year’s champion, played Lei Peifan, one of the many Chinese. From Wilson’s point of view, the match oscillated from 0-2 to 6-2 (and almost 7-2) to 6-9, then to 9-9. The Chinese player then pulled off the upset in the deciding frame. Quite a surprise. Lei Peifan didn’t miss a thing in the first six frames of the evening session. I see another Chinese is already through and a third – the extremely gifted Zhao Xintong – is well on his way.

Football. On Good Friday, thinking Birmingham’s game with Crawley might be a non-event with so little at stake, I tuned into the Championship match between Norwich and Portsmouth instead. I’m glad I did – it was wonderfully chaotic from start to finish as Portsmouth (whose away form had been terrible) ran out 5-3 winners and have probably done just enough to avoid relegation. Portsmouth (the football club, the navy base, even the town) are known as Pompey. Nobody quite knows why. Fun nickname though.

On Friday I finally finished A Town Like Alice. Great story, brilliant writing, thoroughly enjoyable, even if Kitty mauled the cover of the book to pieces the second day after I got it.

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God it can be hard sometimes

April 19, 2025 by 0 Comments

My brother and I got an email from our aunt to say that Mum is indeed better. She also said that their deadline sale didn’t go as hoped – they got only one offer which much less than what she wanted. She’s in a tricky spot – they could really do with moving before my uncle goes downhill much further.

I’d hoped that Mum could have got the flight from Timișoara to Luton booked today, but it got complicated with all the baggage allowances and so forth, so I may end up booking it myself. I spoke to my brother last night; we talked about how technologically unsavvy both our parents are. (I’m not even that great myself, but I can at least do the basics.)

I had a surprise Good Friday lesson this morning. That one with the twins went well, but I had some tricky ones earlier in the week. Easter can make discussion awkward because of the religious aspect. People can’t talk about their Easter meal or egg painting or trips to see their family without also bringing religion into it. I often get asked whether I’m Catholic or Orthodox, as if only those two options exist. I sometimes say I’m a Catholic to make my life easier. (I did go to a Catholic church until I was 15 or so.) One boy mentioned the word atheist this week (or rather the Romanian equivalent ateu), practically shuddering with disgust as he said it. The more I think about it, the more I like Mum’s attitude to church – she keeps up the family tradition by going through the motions of attending the weekly service, then chats to her friends over coffee afterwards. I don’t think she really believes. Church certainly doesn’t get in the way of any other aspect of her life – whether to take a vaccine, for instance. Right on cue, Dorothy has just messaged me, inviting me to the Easter service at her church on Sunday.

Watching the last two Crucible qualifiers on Wednesday bordered on being painful. Both of them reached a deciding 19th frame at the same time and were shown on a split screen. Both final frames were extremely cagey, such were the stakes. There were three re-racks between the two of them. Seeing Matthew Stevens miss out was a real shame – he reached the world final in 2000 (back in what I think of as my era) and again a few years later. Having built a good lead in the decider, he potted a superb red but then instead of playing safe and gaining a tactical upper hand, he went all-out for an overly ambitious black. He missed, and Wu Yize, one of ten Chinese to make the main tournament, took advantage. The other decider was between Matthew Selt (who has serious issues, it seems) and Jimmy Robertson, who was a perfectly nice bloke as far as I could see. Robertson, who had been way ahead at 8-3, had a difficult pink to make it through. It didn’t find the pocket, and Selt (bugger him) potted pink and black to qualify. The phalanx of Chinese qualifiers made the post-match interviews interesting. Some had a smattering of English, but others didn’t speak a word and needed an interpreter.

This morning I saw the result of last night’s Europa League second-leg match between Manchester United and Olympique Lyonnais. They’d drawn 2-2 in the first leg, so this was a straight decider. United went two up, but Lyon scored twice to force extra time and then led 4-2, only for United to score three in the final few minutes and run out winners in extraordinary fashion. I saw Lyon play a bunch of times when I lived there in 2000-01; they had an exciting team. (Tickets were way cheaper than in England.) That match last night sounds amazing, but what even are Manchester United or Olympique Lyonnais, really? Brands, badges, entities? Are they even the same things as they were, say, in 2000 or even further back? I’ve always struggled with that, and that’s why I like individual sports (as much as I even like sport at all, these days).

I bought that water pistol, from the toy shop down the road, straight after I wrote my previous post. It’s worked a treat, so far. Kitty has cottoned onto it very quickly. Already, just brandishing the thing does the trick. No squirting needed.

Driving - Family - Life :) - Other sports

Floriile

April 14, 2025 by 0 Comments

Today is Floriile, or Palm Sunday in English – the last Sunday before Easter. When I went to church as a kid, we were all given palm fronds which we made into a cross; here they use willow boughs instead, and this morning I found some willow draped over my door handle. It’s been a beautiful day, sunny and 20 degrees or so. After a 90-minute maths lesson (I try and avoid teaching on Sundays), I met Mark in town. It was heaving, or rammed as people often say these days. A combination of the fine weather, the religious festival, and all the brightly coloured tulips, brought people out in their droves. We wanted to have lunch, but the sheer numbers of people meant service was even more crappy than normal. Mark seemed to fancy eating in Piața Unirii, but I wasn’t prepared to pay the prices you get there. We sat down at the Timișoreana place in Piața Victoriei, but nobody ever came to take our order. We got something kebabby from next door instead. Then we got a beer from some place. They had different sized bottles including an extra large one. Could we get one of those and two glasses, please? Sorry, no can do. Two glasses means two separate bottles. Sorry, that’s bloody ridiculous. Eating and drinking out in Romania just isn’t worth it most of the time. And if you find a rare place where it is worth it, keep going back there.

Yesterday was a monster day of lessons – nine hours of them. Although they were tiring, I didn’t have any of those online ones with young kids that are so often a struggle. Three of them were in Dumbrăvița, which is a different world, and not one I would wish to inhabit. My maths student’s mum noted that a box of chocolates on the desk were eleven days out of date and threw them away. Just imagine doing that. Chocolates. The mind boggles. It also gets me how many water bottles people from Dumbrăvița get through. Vast multi-packs of those half-litre ones. I always fill large bottles from the well, as is common here, but the modern Romanian way is mindless consumerism.

In the middle of my lessons I spoke to Mum and Dad who had got back from Moeraki. Mum looked good, and the plan seems to still be that they make the trip, but I know that one turn for the worse would probably can the whole thing. Still far from any guarantees at (as my brother called it) t minus three weeks. Then there’s what happens if they do make it. If you’re properly ill, a long-haul flight isn’t a great place to be, and the flight itself (pressurised cabin and all that) can really mess you up if you’re a bit flaky to begin with.

My car. I took it in to another place on Friday. They put it on one of those ramps, then the guy took it for a spin (without me). He told me I’d need to replace the steering rack. Sounds expensive, but I could live with that. I hung around a bit, then he updated his assessment. What about the valve timing? (I think that’s what he meant.) And the shocks. And something else I’ve forgotten. We ought to replace all of that too. I stuck around a while longer as he prepared a quote, which was just over 5700 lei, or £1000 or NZ$2250. The car is only worth about that, so obviously I didn’t take him up on that offer. My spidey senses told me that because I was foreign he was trying it on a bit. Would all of that go wrong at the same time? When I got back I went for a 40-minute drive and, but for a two-second judder, it was fine. I drove it for half an hour yesterday with no problems at all. Mark says he knows a mechanic, so I might try him next. My Peugeot has been my favourite of all the cars I’ve ever owned, so I’d be sad if I had to get rid of it after barely a year. If my parents are coming, it might be an idea to buy the equivalent of AA cover before they arrive.

Football. A surprise in the EFL Trophy final as Peterborough beat Blues 2-0. Posh scored two superb goals in the first half, including one just before the interval, and for all their work it just didn’t happen for Blues. Posh have had a disappointing season, so good on ’em for such a strong performance in the final and a well-deserved trophy. Vast armies of Blues fans descended on Wembley, and they wouldn’t have gone home too happy.

Snooker. Qualifying for the Crucible continues. There have been huge comebacks, at least one final-black decider, and today even a maximum break by Jackson Page. (If he gets another in the qualifying or the main tournament, he’ll win £147,000. You used to get that just for one maximum, back when they were much rarer.) For sheer drama though, I doubt you could top what happened on Friday night. I was trying to follow two matches at the same time: Jimmy White against Ashley Carty and 53-year-old Anthony Hamilton versus Steven Hallworth. When Carty won a close frame to go 9-5 up in a first-to-ten, I switched it off because I had an early start the next morning. Surely it was bye-bye Jimmy. Hamilton, who had been 9-0 up in his match, was still miles ahead, even though Hallworth looked like closing to 9-3. When I got up in the morning, I saw that Carty had beaten Jimmy alright (10-5) and Hamilton had eventually squeaked through 10-8, winning the 18th frame on the black, sometime after midnight. In other words, he narrowly averted the biggest collapse ever in the game. In his post-match interview, he said his eyesight had deteriorated badly, and that had he lost, that collapse would have followed him for the rest of his life. He also said something very British: “It would have been on quizzes and stuff.” I’m glad it didn’t come to that. Hamilton comes from Nottingham, and his nickname is “the Sheriff of Pottingham” which I absolutely love.

Family - Language teaching - Life :) - Other sports

The madness of Mum

April 11, 2025 by 0 Comments

Yesterday morning I had a 64-minute Skype chat – surely my last ever – with my aunt and uncle who still (and probably not for much longer) live at their place in Woodbury. It’s up for what they call a deadline treaty, basically a silent auction, and the deadline is just a few days away. I once tried to buy a flat in a similar way in Wellington. (I found the whole thing a bit intimidating, and that made me lowball my offer.) Mostly I spoke to my aunt; my uncle (83) has slowed down a bit. They’ve already put down a deposit on a place up the Downs (they always say up the Downs for some reason) in Geraldine which has something like a third of an acre. Sounds as if it should be ideal for them. (They’d go nuts if they didn’t have a decent amount of outdoor space.) And best they move now before my uncle deteriorates to the point where the move totally throws him.

We spent half our time discussing the move and the other half discussing Mum. My aunt is in regular contact with her. (Even more regular now.) She’s been practically tearing her hair out over Mum’s refusal to see the doctor. She’s been quite forceful with Mum of late, because she knows Mum respects her and won’t get angry with her in the way she does with Dad. Like me, she sees Mum’s recent decision making (the house, and now the business with her health) as a descent into madness.

Mum and Dad have gone to Moeraki for a few days. Mum broke her promise to see the doctor after finally going to the loo for the first time in a week. Crisis averted. Yeah right. I’ve been getting loo updates and tummy pain updates from Dad, which I’ve passed on to my brother. To find out what’s going on with Mum, we all have to basically ignore Mum. I hope she’s managed to get some sleep down in Moeraki – she’s been fatigued a lot lately.

I’ve had six lessons today, all of them with kids. The “highlight” was probably the lesson with ten-year-old Filip. I looked over the homework I’d set him last week. He’d made a few mistakes with the past simple. “Mum told me to write this,” he said. “Well I’m sorry, your mum is wrong.” I didn’t realise his mother had been listening in. At the end of the session she asked me what she’d done wrong. She couldn’t have been too offended because she gave me two Nutella pancakes. Occasional food is one of the little side benefits of my job.

Our beautiful warm weather ended abruptly last Saturday night; it’s been much chillier since then. Not that I mind too much. For one thing, it’s given me an excuse my mustard woolly jumper that I bought second hand a couple of months ago and makes me happy.

Football. Birmingham are promoted following their 2-1 win at Peterborough, aka Posh. Cue wild celebrations. Now they’re aiming for record points. They’re playing Posh again in Sunday’s EFL Trophy final. I’ll try and watch that; it should be fun. Barry Fry, director of football at Posh, was in attendance on Tuesday night. He’d turned 80 the day before. Birmingham’s arch-rivals Aston Villa lost 3-1 at PSG in the Champions League last night, conceding a late goal, but are still not out of the two-legged tie. They’ve done remarkably well just to get this far. Villa have also made the semis of the FA Cup. For all their success, they haven’t won a trophy since 1996, though they’ve had a number of near misses.

Snooker. Now it’s the qualifiers for the Crucible. I hope I can see some of the final-round matches. Two years ago I was able to catch them; it was pure drama. Jimmy White – incredible that he’s still even playing – fell over the line on Tuesday night after coming from a long way back to beat a Ukrainian who played painfully slowly. He won 10-9 in a match that finished at 1:20 am. (That’s British time, not my time. I certainly didn’t stay up to watch it.)

I took my car in yesterday. Somewhat predictably, they found nothing wrong with it. If the juddering only kicks in after half an hour or so, what do you do? What a pain. On Saturday I’ve got a chock-full day of lessons scheduled and I’ll have no choice but to use the car.

Today has seen a record up day on global stock markets. My back seems to have just about come right.

Driving - Life :) - Other sports

Body talk

April 8, 2025 by 0 Comments

Some news about my body (which will be 45 in a couple of weeks) for a change. On the night of 28th-29th March (Friday-Saturday), I had sudden back pain out of nowhere. I couldn’t lie on my right side. The pain abated over the next day or two and I thought it would just go away, but it hasn’t done. I now have low-level burning pain in the right side of my back. It doesn’t stop me from doing anything, but what is it? I’m now icing my back regularly. If it hasn’t gone away by the time I next see the doctor (the 18th I think), I’ll ask him.

My car’s body (19 years old) is playing up too. I got its thermostat replaced in February, but the juddering is back again. The last two times I’ve been out in the car, it’s started to shake after half an hour or so. It’s an intermittent back-and-forth shaking which happens at speed and it’s somewhere between disconcerting and bloody terrifying. I’m taking it in on Wednesday after a video call with my aunt for her birthday. I can manage fine without a car – I did just that for over seven years – but it’s certainly nice to have it, and it’ll be a must when – if – Mum and Dad come over in a month’s time.

Kitty’s diminutive body (just over a year old) is absolutely fine. Too fine. She doesn’t stop.

I’ve been thinking back to my trip to America almost ten years ago. In one of my first posts on this blog, I wrote that the yawning gap between the haves and have-nots was the most noticeable thing about American society. It can only have got worse since then. The word freedom is tossed around like confetti, but it’s all a big lie – freedom is a commodity, like everything else over there, available only to those lucky enough to afford it. And if you can’t afford it, that’s all your own fault. What a country. I’d probably be OK if I visited the US because I’m white and haven’t posted anything anti-Trump on social media – I don’t do social media – and this blog doesn’t have my name attached to it. But right now I wouldn’t dream of it. Nor am I likely to visit McDonald’s or Starbucks anytime soon, or order anything on Amazon. (I didn’t do those things anyway.) I wish I could avoid WhatsApp and even Microsoft. Talking of McDonald’s, I still remember the first time I had McDonald’s in the middle of Birmingham with the other guys from my university hall. I’d only been there maybe twice before in my life, and only had fries each time. The other guys, on the other hand, were fluent in Mac-ish. I ordered a Big Mac because it was something I’d heard of. “Why didn’t you get a meal?” they asked me. Um, I’m not hungry. Oh, I’m supposed to get a Big Mac meal. Good to know. I haven’t had a Big Mac, meal or otherwise, since I left uni in 2002.

Amid all this stock market turmoil, there’s one thing people always forget. You can short stocks and shares as well as buy them. In other words, you can bet on them to go down. Some shysters must be making a killing here. For them, they’re loving the chaos. Up equals win, down equals win. What we’re seeing is pretty seismic – a shock on the scale of the ’87 crash, or the financial crisis in ’08, or the start of Covid five years ago. Notice that those four “shocks” have got closer together. (I’m looking right now at a picture of a family picnic in Caroline Bay in the summer of ’86-’87 when the market was rocketing away. Brierleys and all that. My uncle thought he would make a mint. Dad still remembers all that talk – and his skepticism.)

When I went to bed, Mark Selby was 7-5 up on John Higgins and well on his way to 8-5 and seven straight frames. He did make it 8-5 alright, but then Higgins rattled off the last five in a row to win 10-8. What a finish that must have been. It made me think of the role of momentum in sport. You hear the word a lot. My view is that momentum exists, but it’s much less of a factor than people think, and has a smaller impact in team sports than in individual sports like golf, where nerves play a bigger part. In tennis, if your 4-0 lead has been whittled away to 4-3, you’d still rather have (in my opinion) that slender lead than be 4-3 down, even though you wouldn’t feel good about it. The reason being that a 4-3 lead isn’t that slender, especially at low levels of the game where server advantage is small. Win the next game and you’ve got a huge edge at 5-3 needing just one more, and even if you lose it you’re level at 4-4.

Family - Life :) - Other sports

Getting Mum unblocked

April 2, 2025 by 0 Comments

Good news from Mum. After a painful day on Sunday that made it likely my parents wouldn’t be flying, she saw the doctor the next day. He said her constipation was a result of her colonography rather than the (still mysterious) underlying issue itself. The doctor gave her a box of sachets, kind of like the ones I put down the bathroom sink when it gets blocked. She took ten (!) of these sachets on one day, and they seem to have unblocked her. Unless something else kicks off, it’s more than likely they’ll make the trip now – I’d put it at something like 85–90%. (It must have been under 50% on Sunday. They were fearing the worst.) They’re due to arrive five weeks from tomorrow.

Around the world and beyond, we’ve had a deadly earthquake in Myanmar, an near-total eclipse, and major political developments such as Marine Le Pen being barred from running in the next French presidential election (for now at least). But as for me, not a lot has happened. The eclipse, which I tried to watch with an eight-year-old girl during our lesson last Saturday, was a damp squib. It all looks pretty normal so far, doesn’t it? And then the came over and that was that. On Sunday I went up and saw Elena, the lady who lives above me. I took Kitty along for the ride. Kitty hasn’t quite been the friend I’d hoped for. She’s just, well, there. And here, and everywhere. I might talk more about her next time.

Last night I watched Birmingham’s match at Bristol Rovers. The first half was great: Blues scored early (a brilliant strike from Keshi Anderson) but Rovers equalised and really dominated the half. They were unlucky not to be ahead at half-time. The second half wasn’t anything like as open. A few minutes from the end, Blues were awarded a soft penalty which Jay Stansfield tucked away, and they snatched a 2-1 win which they hardly deserved. After that result and a 4-1 home win over bottom-placed Shrewsbury last weekend, a colossal points total is still on. I see that Blues have entered a partnership with Birmingham University, my old alma mater. I also noticed the players had “Visit Birmingham” on the lower back of their shirts, before realising it also said “Alabama” in small letters. So they’re palling up with anything called Birmingham, even if it’s 4000-plus miles away. That’s something that their local rivals Aston Villa, far more successful than Blues over the years and with a fancier-sounding name, can’t really do.

One final thing: this morning I got the cazier judiciar which is a document that I’d applied for in early March that should allow me to update my residency permit in time for the upcoming Romanian presidential election.

Family - Life :) - Maths teaching

It’s all gone to shit in America

March 25, 2025 by 0 Comments

Last week I got 31 hours of lessons. My best lesson was probably the one with the 16-year-old girl on coordinate geometry. She was clearly cheesed off with her latest maths teacher – she’s had so many now – and I thought I explained the topic in a way that she could understand. It was a productive session.

Yesterday I spoke to my cousin in Albany, New York. Inevitably we discussed the Trump presidency, world events since he took over, and where we go from here. Who might get nukes next? We agreed that the world is a volatile, more dangerous place now. Where we disagreed was on America itself. I have a far more negative outlook for the US than he does. He thinks America’s famous checks and balances will still hold and that there will be proper midterms in 2026 and a proper presidential election – which Trump will play no part in – in 2028. I’m far less convinced. The checks and balances nearly failed on January 6th 2021 and they did fail four years later because there’s no way Trump should have been allowed to run again. Yes, I know about the 22nd amendment and how changing the constitution is practically impossible at this point, but who’s to say the constitution will even mean anything in 2028? Or the courts, or congress, or anything? I keep coming back to a podcast I watched the day after the election. Nothing is off the table now. Absolutely nothing. Trump could be a dictator, in power for life, and the vast majority of Americans will either be perfectly happy with that or too caught up their own pointless shit (or just trying to survive) to even care.

I watched the rest of Nomadland. It was beautiful in a way. A lot of it was very moving. The saddest moment was when Swankie died. (The woman who played Swankie is very much still alive. But she lives in a van in real life; her husband died of a brain tumour.) The abject failure of the American system, whatever that even is, just about forces people to go off-grid. Live in a van, become trailer trash (I think that’s the term), maybe homeschool your kids. America is a country of extraordinary natural beauty and very welcoming people, but its incredible culture already seems to be a long way in the past. Diners, baseball, neon signs, Chevrolets, sixties counterculture, Simon and Garfunkel’s America with a four-day hitchhike from Saginaw, Michigan to Pittsburgh. I visited some of the southern states ten years ago because that’s what I wanted to see. Now it’s giant stroads with no pavements, giant SUVs, giant retail parks, giant billboards advertising insurance, constant reminders that you could lose it all, with everything sponsored and monetised and commodified.

Yesterday I was in Peciu Nou when I spoke to Mum and Dad on Skype. There was a discordant peal of bells from the nearby church and a crane – I hadn’t appreciated the wingspan of these birds – landing on a lamp-post. Mum is still much the same, with her stomach pain and irregular trips to the loo. She’s on various medicines, presumably to shift it all.

There’s one other lesson I should talk about: maths with an 11-year-old girl. Her knowledge of compass points was sketchy to say the least. I mentioned this to my brother who’s been teaching his son compass directions at the age of two and a half. I think he’s got a better handle on them than this kid does. Compass points are less ingrained in Romanian life than in the UK (or even more so in New Zealand). Northland, Southland, Westland. Warm nor’westers, cold southerlies. I grew up in East Anglia. I went to university in the West Midlands. Places are “up north” or “down south”. When I was at school, the mnemonic for compass points was “never eat shredded wheat” which I thought was rather good. It even rhymes.

Cat - Family - Films - Life :)

Tough to take

March 21, 2025 by 0 Comments

So when I spoke to Mum on Wednesday night I said that I’d fly over to New Zealand if they couldn’t make it over to Europe. She replied, “Are you sure? What about your work?” Well, you know, if I come it’ll be in the height of my summer when I’ll want to escape the heat and will have less work anyway. Plus I can still give online lessons if I want. It was only yesterday that it dawned on me. She couldn’t give a damn whether she sees me or not. Or my brother. Perhaps she’d even prefer not to see us. It took so long for me to figure it out because it didn’t seem possible. How can somebody not care about seeing her own children? Yesterday I sent her a message: “I really hope you can get your tummy troubles sorted and start making regular trips to the loo. Right now Kitty is sunning herself on the window ledge and she says she can’t wait to see you.” In her reply she just blanked the whole issue. As for Dad, he’s certainly better than Mum in this regard, but even he isn’t exactly champing at the bit to see his kids. Or grandchildren. This is tough to take. Last night I woke up at 2:18, checked in on Kitty, then spent the next three hours chewing all of this over in my head. I’m now putting the chances of Mum and Dad coming at 70% – down a bit, but still decent. But even if they come, it won’t be with any real enthusiasm.

On Wednesday morning I went to the bank to pay some money in. It’s a horrible branch, but it’s near the supermarket and I wouldn’t need to talk to anybody anyway. Just deposit the cash via the machine, then leave. The place stank and the machine’s screen seemed to be covered in a hazy brownish black muck. It was only when I tried to wipe it off that I realised the “muck” was on the inside. As usual, the machine rejected some of my notes and I had to repeat the process six or seven times. Finally I was done. Not the exact amount I’d planned to put in, but close enough. But then it swallowed my card. Um, did I just imagine that? I looked around just in case. No card. Jeez, what now? If you wanted to see anybody, there was a long queue. I spoke up. The machine has taken my card. The teller, a woman of 40-odd, told me to join the queue like everyone else. At this point I made a scene. This isn’t normal! Join the queue. The woman didn’t even look at me, or anybody else. I was braced for an hour in the queue followed by who knew what. A few minutes later I heard a young woman say, in English, “Is this your card?” The machine had spat my card out while she was using it. Amazing security they have there. I was relieved, but won’t dare visit that branch again for at least a year. Half an hour later, at the queue for the supermarket checkout, an older man was having difficulty with his Kaufland app. The cashier (a woman of 50 or so) really laid into him. You have to do this, then this, don’t you get it?! The man simply accepted this appalling treatment in a way I never would have. I love Romania, but the customer service here continues to be dire.

I’ve started watching a 2021 film called Nomadland. I’ve only seen the first 20 minutes, but I can tell it will be fascinating. It’s about Americans who have lost their jobs and survive by travelling around the country in RVs, getting odd jobs here and there. I was going to write more about America and its decline, but I don’t feel like writing much more today. I’ve teed up a video call with my cousin who lives in New York state.

My latest maths student is proving hard to teach. She can calculate, up to a point, but hasn’t yet learnt how to think. Teaching that isn’t an easy task at all.

Driving - Family - Language learning - Life :)

If we come over

March 19, 2025 by 0 Comments

Mum’s scan was all clear. A relief: it isn’t colon cancer. But what now? She’s already seen the doctor since then (great that it was so quick) and she’ll now have a colonoscopy. Dad has been more insistent of late – it won’t just magically go away if you ignore it – without bugging her to the point where she gets angry. On Monday Dad said “If we come over…”. If. Yikes. It’s seven weeks until they’re due to arrive. I told my brother that they’ll still probably make the trip – I said an 80% chance – but he thinks I’m being optimistic. If they do cancel, the first thing I’ll do is book a trip to New Zealand. For my brother, who can’t simply do that, it would be pretty devastating. (My parents know this, you would hope, which is why I’m saying 80%. Also, Mum’s pain hasn’t got any worse.)

Last week I got a reminder to renew my car insurance. Seriously? It’s been a year? I clearly remember the day I picked up the car. All that gubbins at the town hall in Sânandrei, then actually having to drive the thing. It was fine to begin with, but then I hit the city traffic and am I even going to survive?! It’s been seven years. When I finally parked it after a hair-raising 20-odd minutes, I was distinctly clammy. I remember my drive to Recaș the following week – on a sunny day – and how exciting it was to visit another town at the drop of a hat like that. Then there were those trips to the mall to get all the paperwork done. These state-controlled offices are always so forbidding, and the vehicle registration office was no exception. I did end up with a comedy number plate, so there was that, and it was worth paying for a broker to sort me out. Without her, I’d have been sent from pillar to post without having a clue what was happening. I’ve been really happy with the car and the added freedom it’s given me, but at times on my various trips last summer I thought, you know what, it would be quite nice now chugging along on a train and looking out the window or reading a book. As for driving in Romania itself, well that all seems pretty normal now, though roundabouts (there are so many of them) still feel kind of weird here, and I’m not the world’s best parallel parker. I suppose I very rarely park in the city, parallel or otherwise, so I don’t get much practice.

Last weekend there was a fire at a nightclub in North Macedonia which killed at least 59 people. It happened at a club called Pulse in the town of Kočani, which only has around 25,000 people. The fire was caused by a pyrotechnic display, but a raft of safety violations contributed to the terrible death toll. It’s all very reminiscent of the Colectiv fire in Bucharest, not long before I came to Romania, which killed 64. Just like the one in North Macedonia, Colectiv only had one exit. Of those 64 deaths, most of them didn’t occur at the club but later, in hospital. The hospitals had diluted disinfectant which was a dreadful scandal in itself. (When I was a student in Birmingham, there was a popular club called Pulse. I only went there once. That was enough for me.)

I had my weekly Romanian session on Monday morning. The truth is I’m not learning anything anymore. If anything I’m going backwards, and I’m at a loss to know what to do about that. (One-on-one sessions, which I had for a short time in the autumn, would certainly help. Dorothy is at a higher level than me, and her involvement doesn’t help.)