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Life :) - Other sports - Politics - Tennis

Two near misses (well, one was actually a near hit)

July 16, 2024 by 0 Comments

Firstly, the Trump shooting. I don’t feel sorry for him in the slightest. All he’s done for the last nine years is sow hatred and division. More guns, more violence. Then after being shot, he raised his fist – Fight! Fight! Fight! (against what exactly) – with the American flag as a backdrop, creating perhaps the most enduring image since 9/11. That I suppose is why he’s such a good campaigner – he knows what buttons to press. In America, those are the “playground bully” buttons. The cesspit of social media makes his strategy all the more effective. It’s now even more likely that Trump becomes president again (unless Biden gets out of the way I’d say it’s a racing certainty) and living on the doorstep of Ukraine I fear for what will happen next. After the last election I thought that Trump running again in 2024, or Biden for that matter, would be ridiculous. Common sense, in the shape of two new faces, would prevail. How naive I was.

When we were playing tennis on Saturday, a bird in a tree sounded as if it was being strangled. My partner identified it as a jay – gaiță in Romanian. He said that some people’s voices are said in Romanian to be like a gaiță, and I immediately thought of Elena (the 80-year-old lady who lives above me). She’s lovely, but her voice cuts through these thick walls. Yesterday morning I took her to the airport – she was flying to Toronto via Munich. She yapped and screeched the whole way in the car – all very distracting for me when it isn’t in my native language and I’m trying to drive – and I missed the turn to the airport. No problem; it was easy to turn back and we had plenty of time. We went to the brand spanking new Schengen-zone terminal which smelt of rotten fish. Her 10:50 flight wasn’t on the board, but a 9:40 one was. It seemed Elena had got the wrong time. When we got to the check-in desk at 9:03, it had officially closed three minutes earlier. (I was cursing my wrong turn.) The check-in lady made a phone call and eventually Elena and her suitcase were allowed on the plane. Phew. By this point Elena was hot and flustered and had trouble navigating the snaking security line. I’ve just had an email from her daughter to say she arrived safely in Toronto.

I saw a comment after the Euro final: “I’m beginning to think that football doesn’t want to come home. It seems to like it better elsewhere.” I liked the commenter’s A. A. Milne-style gentle humour. I wish there was more of that instead of the tedious memes, piss-takes and in-jokes. I watched the second half of England’s match with Spain – it was very watchable. Spain were clearly the better side and it would have been something of an injustice if England had won. It’s funny watching England games now – I hardly know any of the players, even if I’ve heard some of the names. When Cole Palmer equalised (great goal, by the way) I thought, ah yes, that’s the guy Luca said was his favourite player. (Luca is a 13-year-old boy I teach.)

I watched the men’s Wimbledon final, having not seen any of the men’s tournament prior to that. A fairly major wobble for Alcaraz when he served for the match, but in the end he beat Djokovic comprehensively. The sky’s the limit for Alcaraz. People are already talking about 20 grand slams. (He’s already 20% of the way there.) It’s very possible; the differences between the surfaces and the grand slams in general is much smaller than it used to be – the days of a Sampras who was imperious in two of the slams but always fell short at Roland Garros are over.

The Olympics start soon, apparently. I can’t be bothered with them.

This is the longest, deepest heat wave in Romanians’ living memory. I’m seeing 34s and 35s for the coming weekend – that will feel like some respite.

Language teaching - Life :) - Maths teaching - Other sports - Tennis

Keeping out of the outside world

July 14, 2024 by 0 Comments

I’ve just spoken to Mum and Dad. They asked me if I’d seen the news. What news? Oh, I see. Someone tried to assassinate Donald Trump. I’ve since caught up with the news and watched the scenes of blood and mayhem. Living on my own, big news can pass me by at weekends – for instance I didn’t find out about the Christchurch earthquake of 2010, which happened on a Saturday, until many hours later.

We’re in the middle of an infernal heat wave. Far from my first I’ve experienced in Romania, but this one is unremitting. The last week has reminded me of Covid. Stay at home during the daytime if at all possible. Outside is scary and dangerous, or at least very unpleasant, between 11am and 8pm. If I visit the market in the morning, I can’t mess around. Make a list and stick to it, just like in the Covid days. Last night I played tennis between 8 and 9; I was glad Florin was happy to just bat the ball around without getting tangled up in a set which would have been brutal. Cycling is a breeze, literally, until you have to stop at a red light.

Last week was a busy and challenging one on the work front. Online lessons with tech falling over everywhere. A maths lesson where I had a girl (who is being taught under the British system) and a boy (doing the bone-dry, difficult and hopelessly impractical Romanian curriculum) at the same time, and felt all at sea. Wanting to print coloured worksheets when I’ve run out of coloured ink. A mother who printed out sheets for her son in black and white where he had to draw arrows to a blue ball or a red shoe. And in between, some much easier sessions with a new lady whom I’d put at an 8 on my 0-to-10 scale. She’s keenly interested in the language, and because she already speaks it so well, these lessons are a piece of cake and fly by in no time.

Apart from shortish trips to England in 3½ weeks and Vienna at the end of August, I don’t know if I’ll be going anywhere. I had planned to visit Maramureș and maybe even Slovenia, but the sudden uptick in my hours and the ridiculously hot weather might make those plans overly ambitious.

Sport. The final of Euro 2024 takes place tonight. England have lucked their way into the final, while Spain have been the stand-out team of the tournament and logically should win. But football doesn’t work like that. England could easily win their first big tournament for nearly 60 years, and it would be huge if they managed it. My brother mentioned a possible public holiday if “we” win, and I realised that for me the whole concept of a “we” in sport feels very weird now. I’ve been out of the UK for practically half my life.

This year’s Wimbledon has hardly featured in my life. Yesterday, however, I watched the deciding set of the women’s final between Krejcikova and Paolini. I thought about how the women’s game has changed beyond belief since the nineties when I watched it far more keenly. The first few games of the final set flew by, then there was a key moment at 3-3 on Paolini’s serve with break point against her. Her first serve was called out. She challenged it but lost, so she had to serve a second ball with her rhythm disrupted. A big double fault and a crucial break. Then Krejcikova just about served out the match in a long final game where nerves clearly got to her. The men’s final between Djokovic and Alcaraz takes place this afternoon.

In some good news, I got rid of one of my old bikes. The guy who nicked it in 2021 did a good job of buggering it up, so I was pleased to get even 100 lei for it. My latest one, by the way, cost 800 lei (£140 or close to NZ$300).

Life :) - Music - Other sports - Tennis - Travel: Romania

Dunken disorderly

June 26, 2024 by 0 Comments

On Sunday I went to Dorothy’s Baptist church to see, well, a baptism. Just like the other times I went there, I felt out of place. Before the service I stood in a queue for the loo, staring at a boiler which showed warning messages in 16 European languages, none of which was English. I thought how exotic the Polish word for “warning” – uwaga – looked compared to the others. I could be Swahili or something. I did manage to relieve myself and then it all started. Two Baptist churches combined for the two-hour service which took place outside. (It was a few degrees cooler than on previous days. I would have stayed at home otherwise.) In the middle of the service a four-month-old boy named Abel was “dedicated”. This involved words only – no water. Then at the end, after the long sermon, came the main event. A tall woman of twentyish in a white dress was about to be properly baptised. She stood in an inflatable swimming pool. This also had warning messages on it – “no diving” – in several languages. My favourite was the Dutch – niet dunken. The young woman gave a short speech standing in the pool, then got fully dunken. (I took three pictures at various stages of dunkenness, but won’t put them on here.) When that was over we had a kind of smorgasbord for lunch, including a quiche that I’d made the previous day. I got talking to a young chap who had recently arrived from Benin. He knew neither English nor Romanian, so we spoke in French. My French is very rusty and I’m liable to mix French words with Romanian ones. I was glad to get home after all of that – more than enough crowds for one day.

On Saturday I played tennis with Florin. It was pretty warm, even at 8pm. Because the grip on my usual racket was in such poor shape, I brought an older one. Leading 5-2 but with game point to Florin, I popped a string. This can happen on a racket that has been unused for a while. Luckily Florin had a spare – a Donnay that was made in Belgium in (he guessed) the late eighties. Romania would be playing Belgium shortly after we finished. I actually played better with his racket, and was up 6-3, 4-1 at the end.

I didn’t watch Romania’s 2-0 loss to Belgium. Tomorrow they play Slovakia in their final group game. A draw would guarantee both teams a place in the next round. The odds reflect this; you can only get 11/10 on a stalemate, where you normally see more than 2/1 on a draw between two evenly matched teams. If I had to pick a score, I’d go with 0-0.

At the weekend Touch of Grey by the Grateful Dead came on my car radio. I know shamefully little about the Grateful Dead, but I really like this song that was released in 1987, two decades after most of their stuff. I did the fill-in-the-gaps exercise with Hozier’s Too Sweet this morning; it went down well, I thought.

I’m now reading Christopher Robin Milne’s autobiography Enchanted Places. A fascinating read. I discussed it with my parents when I spoke to them yesterday. Mum started our chat by complaining about all the people who pronounce “route” as “rout”; that made me think she must be feeling OK.

On Thursday I’m going on my trip. I’m staying three nights in Prigor, close to the Nera River. There should be plenty to see there: a water mill, a monastery, multiple tracks for hiking and places in the river to swim afterwards. And not a lot of tourists. Sounds great.


Family - Life :)

More about Mum, and a famous family

June 23, 2024 by 0 Comments

There was much more I could have said about Mum two posts ago, but at 1100-plus words, that “essay” was already getting up there. So I’ll add a couple more things right now.

First, obligations. Fulfilling obligations is very important to her and always has been. If she says she’ll be at x place at y time, she’ll damn well be there. Sometimes she’ll take this to extremes by turning non-obligations, where nobody is going to care if she turns up or not, into musts. When I was a kid this got particularly bad when Mum and Dad had signed up for some event or other, and then Dad got one of his crippling migraines as he so often did in the eighties and nineties. Mum would seethe and sigh and huff and puff. Why are you being so awkward? She treated him like a disobedient child. Not an ounce of sympathy. Watching from the sidelines, it was painful. Apart from that, which I find unforgivable, I see a strong sense of obligation as a good thing, and I like to think it has rubbed off on me. (I do fulfil the vast majority of my obligations, partly because I try not to have too many of them outside work. I know my limits.) Some of my students in Romania don’t have this sense, and I’ll admit that does frustrate me.

Second, church. Mum has attended the Catholic church since she was tiny. (I did too until I was 16 or so.) But really it comes into the category of obligations. She goes because she always has done. I’ve never seen her read the Bible or express any profound religious thoughts; I don’t even know if she believes. What church does do for Mum is promote a certain way of living. She looks after herself. She gets plenty of exercise, doesn’t gamble, doesn’t smoke, drinks very little (that’s just as well; two glasses of wine and she’s gone), and has an impressive level of self-control over her eating. Growing up I remember the big platefuls she’d dish out to the three men in the house, while she’d give herself half the amount. Church also gives her a social benefit; after the service she has coffee with other women who attend, which probably means a whole load of inane gossip.

I thought about the church thing because Dorothy has invited me to attend tomorrow, including the baptism afterwards. Under normal circumstances I’d have said no, but because I’m going through a lighter period of lessons I should be able to cope with this extra human contact. I just hope it doesn’t last too long.

The most interesting lesson of last week was the Romanian one. Our teacher asked, Have you ever met a famous person? Like actually interacted with someone famous? I said no. I’ve seen plenty of famous people – members of the royal family, top tennis players, and so on, but I’ve never had a conversation with any of them. Dorothy said yes because she happens to be a member of the vast, and vastly successful, Freud family. Good grief. Sigmund Freud is her great-grandfather. Clement Freud (who had his fingers in numerous pies) and the artist Lucian Freud are both uncles of hers. The fashion designer Bella Freud is her cousin. I’d always wondered about Dorothy’s background because she has quite a clipped upper-class accent and uses elevated words and expressions that my parents wouldn’t use despite being a few years older. When she said that it was easy for her to get into Cambridge, that set off alarm bells. I wonder what her upbringing was like. She did say that she was happy to rid herself of the Freud name when she got married; I can imagine. In New Zealand I knew one of the daughters of Keith Holyoake, whom I think was the country’s longest-serving prime minister. She also felt burdened by the name.

This morning I drove to Mark’s place to pick up a tent. I’m thinking of going camping later this summer. The tent is a breeze to put up, but putting it away is another matter. I’m likely to have all kinds of fun and games there; I’ll have to practise before I use it for real. I met his wife who was in a moon boot; she managed to break her toe last week. She was complimentary of the level of care she’d received, saying it was much better and faster than it would have been in the UK. The NHS is a hot-button issue (as it should be) in the upcoming election.

Tennis coming up tonight. After that will be Romania’s next match at Euro 2024. They play Belgium. A draw should see them through to the next round with a game to spare.

As we pass the longest day, the temperature is forecast to drop tomorrow after four scorching days in a row. That should mean I’ll have a more comfortable time when I go away.

Dreams - Life :) - Photos - Politics

Make politics boring again (and some photos)

June 11, 2024 by 0 Comments

Life is really just a case of lurching from one mini problem to another, hoping all the while to dodge the big ones. The plumber fixed the leaking pipe in the bathroom but now it reeks of sewage in there, just like in the guest houses I stayed at when I arrived in Romania. And now my bank app has stopped working so there are bills I physically can’t pay. (I booked some accommodation for a couple of weeks’ time but had to cancel the booking because I couldn’t make the payment.) I made two trips to the bank yesterday but they couldn’t sort it out. I’ll go back there later today. All stupidly time-consuming.
Update: On my third visit to the bank, a younger cashier got involved and it looks like it’s now working. However I’ve just had a no-show from one of my younger students. She only has lessons with me at all because her mother has the money to pay for them; she really couldn’t give a damn. One of my goals for the coming months (before the schools go back in September) is to get rid of all these time-wasters.

I’ve mentioned dreams before on here. Last night I had a dream in which I was hopelessly physically weak. Then a week or two ago I got the results of some general knowledge test that had vital implications – exactly what I don’t know. I went with some friends to receive the news. While they mostly got scores well into the 30s (the max was unclear), I got 25 which was bang on the pass mark. I was relieved but embarrassed and tried to hide my score from my friends. Yep, I passed, no worries. My paper was returned to me covered in red ink. I was branded as “incurious” and in one instance a “dumbass”, then at the end the examiner scrawled “I can’t prove it, but you know and I know that you cheated.” Do other people have to endure dreams like this? Inadequacy and embarrassment are running themes. Is my self-esteem that bad? The only positive from this dream was that I seemed to have a few friends.

Tests, exams, education. On Thursday my student in Slobozia – an English teacher – was rather upset with me when I criticised the Romanian education system and its knock-on effects. I explained that I certainly wasn’t critical of her. (Why a teacher should be so keen to defend the system is beyond me.) I felt bad, but right on cue the next day a viral video emerged from Ineu, a town around two hours’ drive to the north of me. A girl by the name of Iulia who had just finished her final year with the best grades in her school (in New Zealand she’d be the dux) gave a damning acceptance speech. The system has stripped me of my personality and taught me how to lie. It has taught me how to be a shallow hypocrite rather than to develop ethically and morally. Ouch!

Last week Nigel Farage entered the fray in the UK election campaign. He talks some sense on immigration but I wish he would stop there. When he criticised Rishi Sunak’s D-day desertion, he said “he doesn’t care about our culture,” implying that Sunak (who is of Indian descent) is from a different culture. Something other. In fact Sunak, who was born in Southampton, is about as British as they come. Then there’s Farage overt support for Donald Trump. His Reform party may well pick up 15% or so, though under the ridiculous first-past-the-post system they may only get one or two seats. The party I’m most impressed with right now are the Liberal Democrats. Their leader Ed Davey doesn’t take himself too seriously (so far in the campaign he’s been falling off paddleboards) and he has a compelling life story that shows him to be greatly empathetic. Yesterday they talked about pumping money into the care sector, and so far they’re the only party who are even daring to mention Brexit – the elephant in the room.

When I spoke to my brother he said he wished to go back to politics being boring again. Apart from maybe in the days just before or after an election, the subject never came up around the kitchen table when we were growing up. He mentioned the Monica Lewinsky scandal and what a big deal that was at the time. Now something twice as big happens every week it seems. Back to boring would be nice. After what happened in the European elections at the weekend, we might be waiting a while. Here in Timișoara the current mayor Dominic Fritz has been re-elected – he beat Nicolae Robu who was mayor from 2012 to 2020.

On Sunday I met Dorothy at Scârț, the place where they have the theatre and the museum of communism. I ordered a lemonade in Romanian, then the young lady asked me if I was from Birmingham or somewhere in that area. Well, I studied there, I said. Nobody had ever “accused” me of having a Brummie accent before, and as far as I’m aware I definitely don’t have one. (I think I have a hard-to-pin-down standard British accent that has been “contaminated” a little by all that time in New Zealand.) When you move around as I’ve done, bits and pieces are bound to rub off on you, so who knows?

My trip into the wilderness on Sunday: I was pleased to get a shot of the bounding deer

Lugoj last Thursday. An abandoned swimming pool and restaurant.

The cemetery at Toager near the Serbian border on Saturday 1st June

Life :) - Politics - Tennis

Tennis sensation and a sticky end for Rishi (I hope)

June 10, 2024 by 0 Comments

I’ve just been up to see Elena, the lady who lives above me. She’ll be off to Canada in mid-July for another six-month stint and is already packing Romanian stuff you can’t get over there, like games of rummy and Rom biscuits.

Before that I watched the men’s Roland Garros final. Carlos Alcaraz won his third grand slam (already!), coming from 2-1 down in sets to beat Alexander Zverev in five. I couldn’t quite get into the match until mid-way, maybe because I have the TV in the kitchen. Two extraordinary points, both in the fifth set, told the story. On the first, Zverev needed half a dozen overheads to put Alcaraz away. You won the point Sasha, but look how hard he’s making it for you. Then in the penultimate game Alcaraz came up with a frankly stupid half-volley that clipped the tape and whizzed past Zverev. It was all the more ridiculous because they’d been playing for 4¼ hours by then. At this rate, the sky’s the limit for him. I didn’t see the women’s final where Iga Świątek beat Jasmine Paolini in roughly an hour. Świątek is certainly regina zgurii as they’d say in Romania –⁠ queen of clay.

Last night I played tennis with Florin. These days it’s just us two, we play once a week if we’re lucky, and only for an hour. Not like the good old days. We played just one set which I won on a tie-break, 7-3, in 47 minutes. I led 4-2 in games but then lost a 16-pointer on my serve on the way to going 5-4 down. He pinned my forehand corner for a winner on the first point of the tenth game, then I made a bad error to go down 30-0, but he seemed to lose focus a bit as I won the next four points. I struggled with my depth of shot; too many short balls allowed him to take charge. There were four deuce games in the set and I lost the lot. After the game we picked cherries from the two huge trees on the edge of the court; I’ve already eaten my small bagful with ice cream.

Earlier today I went to Satchinez, a village 30-something kilometres from here. (Satchinez, which means Chinese village, is a puzzling name.) It was a tricky trip because I got lost on the way. There was supposedly a nature reserve nearby. It turned out it was alongside the nearby village of Bărăteaz. I didn’t have my GPS device switched on –⁠ I find it distracting –⁠ but used Google Maps on my phone, relying entirely on Romanian voice directions. Left here? Here? Seriously? The GPS took me across a track in a field for almost two kilometres. It looks dry at least. I hope I don’t get stuck. When I got there (if there really was a there), I hung around just long enough to see a deer bound in front of me before turning back. This afternoon I met Dorothy at Scârț. Yesterday I saw Mark and his wife (yes, they’re now married) in Dumbrăvița. I didn’t expect her to be there. During our chat I could see she had all the hallmarks of an excellent teacher. We sat in the garden of a restaurant; I didn’t order any food.

Last night I spoke to my brother and my sister-in-law. As always we discussed the prospect of Mum and Dad coming out this way next spring. The three of us had a good laugh about their “can’t afford it” excuse. Then my brother mentioned Rishi Sunak’s bizarre decision to leave the D-Day commemorations in Normandy early. As well as being totally disrespectful (there are still D-Day veterans alive), it’s one hell of a way to piss off your base. The Tories are massively underwater with every age group except the over-65s who will be the most angry of all at his crazy decision to come home and record a campaign interview. Most bafflingly, what were his advisors playing at? Three and a half weeks until election day; I really hope the Tories get the damn good kicking they deserve. (Today in Romania both the local and European elections took place.)

Books - Life :) - Music - Writing a book

Getting into print (but counting no chickens)

June 3, 2024 by 0 Comments

An interesting day yesterday. At 12:30 I turned up at Porto Arte for lunch to celebrate Florin’s wife’s birthday. There weren’t many of us there – that was fine by me. I had a traditional Romanian lunch: pork, sausages, a fried egg and some vegetables. We sat outside where the music wasn’t bad. Dragostea din Tei by O-Zone came on; this was a massive hit throughout Europe in 2004, but by that point I’d moved to New Zealand so it passed me by. (The tei referenced in the song is that lime tree which provides an olfactory backdrop to this time of year.) Later Gordon Lightfoot’s Sundown played. Lightfoot died last year aged 84. His haunting Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald often came on when I listened to the Sound in Wellington. I said I’d have to leave at two to attend a meeting about the book, and that provoked some interest. When 2pm rolled around I got out some cash to pay, but Florin told me it was an invitation and that I should put my money away. If only it ended there. But once again he gave me a lecture on how we do things in Romania and you need to learn. All unnecessary. What was I supposed to do? Just assume I didn’t have to pay? Seriously man, piss off.

So on to the book meeting. Dorothy came too. We stood outside the offices of Editura de Vest where there were aging signs that were partly in Serbian, and tried to read the Cyrillic. Then the lady in her sixties showed up and opened the door. It was a large old building which I’d been in several times before – it used to house a branch of Banca Transilvania before that closed around the start of the pandemic. She spent half an hour (!) showing us around the offices of the publishing house – high-ceilinged caverns (the ceilings leaked in a storm) piled high with musty books. The outfit was founded in 1972 and showed little sign of change since then. I was getting pretty antsy. Are we going to move on the actual book here or what?

Mercifully she switched on a PC with a large screen – the only piece of tech I could see – and brought up the eighth and final part of my book. Yes, we can publish this. Really? Sure, 500-odd pages in B5 format, no problem. (B5 is around ten inches by seven, I found out.) I didn’t expect that at all. I explained that it wasn’t quite finalised and no, there are no page numbers because what I have in my document won’t match up with what appears on paper. I still need to include a pronunciation key and a “legend” describing all the symbols I’ve used. She gave me free rein over what fonts to use. (Romanians just love Arial and Times New Roman. I really can’t abide Arial, and though I don’t mind Times in itself, to me it smacks of “boring” and “you haven’t thought about this”. I plan to use a mixture of Cambria and Franklin Demi.)

Next I showed her a picture Dad had done, illustrating perfectly the difference between “exercise” and “practice”. I suggested a second, smaller book in a landscape format with 30 or so of Dad’s illustrations. Sounds good. She then said that they have a link with the Minister of Culture and there will be some event next May, so main book would need to go to press before then. As for the illustrated one, that could be published sooner. Gosh. Dorothy often chipped in; in fact she spoke at least as much as I did. At 4:15 the lady’s daughter arrived. Unlike her mother, she could speak English, but we continued in Romanian. Dorothy had to leave at that point. It’s all extremely positive and it would be incredible if the book(s) made their way into print, but I’m not counting any chickens. Far from it. I think back to the time in 2016 when a language school offered me a job, then later un-offered it. This is Romania; take nothing for granted.

I went for another drive on Saturday, skirting the border with Serbia. I got stopped by the border police. It’s kind of weird living close to land borders. The two policemen took down my details and I was free to go.

I’ve just started reading Franz Kafka’s The Trial. I had no idea it was the centenary of his death. Everything is Kafkaesque these days; it’s about time I saw what the fuss was about.

Last night we had a thunderstorm. We had a good downpour this morning too.

Family - Language teaching - Life :) - Maths teaching - Writing a book

Wouldn’t it be nice

May 29, 2024 by 0 Comments

Today was my aunt’s celebration, the last ever get-together at her house which is already on the market for half a million quid. I haven’t heard from my brother yet to see how it went; I expect he’ll have been part of a small contingent. I’m just so glad I was fortunate enough to see her a week before she passed away. Today would have been my grandmother’s 102nd birthday. I wrote about her 88th birthday here: how time flies.

This afternoon I had a lesson with the boy who wants to be a farmer. So refreshing when so many of them want to be YouTubers. Last week I taught him some irregular plurals, so today I gave him a worksheet on them, complete with pictures. Easy peasy, he said. Seconds later he’d written mouses and foots and sheeps and childs. Tonight I gave my new maths student (a 15-year-old girl) what I called a quick quiz. Target time two minutes, three max. After about twelve minutes she was still slaving away, so I put her out of her misery. She’d forgotten just about everything I’d taught her about prime and square numbers. I wasn’t annoyed by this in any way; maths is just tough and weird for a lot of people.

Before all of that the plumber came and put in the new pipe. I had to go to Dedeman with him to pick up some blocks to which the tiles will be attached in front of the bath. I’m getting used to being actively involved, even though it’s bloody annoying when I have lessons.

I forgot to mention that I got stung by a bee at Șag on Sunday. It was my left middle finger. As a kid I got stung quite often on my foot. I was barefoot most of the time in summer – my Kiwi mum encouraged that – and the bees would be in the clover. That was back when the UK still had bees. When I was in the car I thought, wouldn’t it be nice if my parents were with me, but my blog posts for June 2017 have given me second thoughts. That got pretty fraught. If my family friends from St Ives came over, that would be quite wonderful. Even when I wander around my little patch of a warm evening I think it would be lovely if they were here, doing simple things like wandering from one funny little bar to another. It’s sad that I never get the chance to do that.

Yesterday I had a lesson where my student (a manager at a big bank) read an article about giving feedback to low-performing employees. I said that a lot of this poor performance comes from low engagement which shouldn’t be a surprise. She said that the objectives and deadlines are all there in black and white, so there’s no excuse. I replied that frankly who cares if xyz has to be done by 31st May if xyz seems pointless. How do you get motivated, when most of what you do all day is meaningless crap? The answer to that of course is that people are motivated by money and status and power, or simply job security when they have family members who depend on their income, but the “pointless shit” aspect (which is more salient than ever before) can’t help.

The book meeting, which I had to reschedule two lessons to accommodate, has been postponed again to who knows when.

Language teaching - Life :) - Politics - Travel: Romania - Writing a book

Get rid of them please, and an important day beckons

May 28, 2024 by 0 Comments

First of all, Wednesday could be a very important day because I’ve got the meeting about the English book with the publishing house.

A follow-up on the UK election. My view of it lacks nuance I’m afraid. It’s simply get the buggers out by any legal means possible. If I lived in a swing seat, I’d vote for whichever party (probably the only party) able to beat the Tories. First-past-the-post makes tactical voting a must. If I lived in a safe seat where my vote didn’t matter, I’d probably vote Green. My ideal scenario would to the see Tories obliterated to the point where they aren’t even the official opposition anymore, because that’s what they deserve. They’ll mop up enough blue-rinse votes to make the final outcome far from that I’m sure. You can but dream. Dad said in an email that he still has misgivings about Labour because of the way they were controlled by the unions in the seventies, and even mentioned links to Russian spies. Wow. How much time needs to pass for you to finally let it go? And didn’t you actually vote Labour in ’97? I’m no great fan of the current Labour party – they should be far more ambitious – but anything has to be better than the current lot.

The Conservatives have announced plans for national service if re-elected. They’re trying anything now. As I read on a forum yesterday, “put down your books, pick up a gun, you’re gonna have a whole lot of fun”. Here’s Country Joe McDonald singing that Vietnam protest song at Woodstock.

Today I had the plumber back in. He removed the sink and smashed half the bricks and tiling to get at the bath, then found the pipe to the bath had a hole in it. A relief; I worried that the eighties cast-iron bath itself might be leaking. Tomorrow he’ll put the sink back in place and then I’ll need a plasterer to fix up the bricks and tiles. (I still have leftover tiles from the original work 18 months ago.)

This morning I had my weekly Romanian lesson. Lately Dorothy and I have compared notes. She has much greater fluency than me and better intonation. (She has been here longer and gets more opportunities to speak Romanian than I do, but she might just be better.) Even though my pronunciation of individual words is mostly fine, I rise and fall too much and overemphasise syllables. It’s hard to get out of the habit. I wrote on here 8½ years ago that Romanian, like French, is syllable-timed, while English is stress-timed. Romanianising my intonation is especially hard for me, I’ve realised, because I’m actually pretty expressive when I speak English. (When I accidentally recorded part of a video lesson, I couldn’t believe how much head-shifting and arm-waving was going on. Plus being a teacher incentivises me to be more animated and emphatic.)

Yesterday I went out in the car. I didn’t go very far; I stopped at Șag (pronounced “shag”) on the bank of the Timiș. It was a popular place for picnics and barbecues. My parents Skyped me when I was there. I spent the rest of the time either walking, eating lunch, picking mulberries, or listening to music on the radio. This great (if slightly depressing) song came on, telling me that death doesn’t have a phone number. It reminded me a bit of the French singer Renaud, and I imagined it was from the eighties, but then I heard “roaming” in the lyrics and found out it was from 2007.

Family - Language teaching - Life :) - Politics

Not a moment too soon

May 24, 2024 by 0 Comments

I haven’t talked about politics much of late, but then yesterday British prime minister Rishi Sunak called a general election for 4th July. It was an absurd scene as he made the announcement, dripping wet in his suit, to the backdrop of D:Ream’s Things Can Only Get Better which was a number-one hit in 1994 and the theme tune to Labour’s landslide win in ’97. Why he called the election in six weeks’ time rather than waiting until the autumn is beyond me. I even thought he might wait until the latest possible date, which would have been January 2025. The British economy was looking a bit brighter, or at least a bit less dismal, and there was always the chance that something might happen. I honestly think Sunak was just over the whole business of being prime minister. Let’s slam the plane into the ground, and who cares about the hundreds of passengers I take with me.

I’m not sad about four months being lopped off the term of the parliament. The Tories have been in power for 14 years and have left the country in a much worse state than when they took over. Takes some doing, really. It’s long past time they vacated the stage. My fear is that Labour (if they win) won’t be nearly ambitious enough. At least I trust them to halt the slide though, and right now that’s something. I also look forward to a much greater working-class contingent among the governing party. Ever since Tony Blair’s government gained power in ’97, there’s been a deeply damaging Etonocracy (“born to rule”) – let’s knock that on the head for a start. I’d love it if the whole UK political system could be overhauled, but sadly I don’t see that happening any time soon because those in power benefit from it staying this way.

This morning I had a lesson with the priest who gave “relationship with God” as the main reason why women are having fewer children. He’s the eldest of six and wasn’t sure that the reduction was such a good thing. “A balance would be good. Some parents could have just one child, others four or five. And the statistics show that women live longer and suffer from fewer diseases when they have more children.” I gave him my opinion on the matter. I said that when he was born in 1963 there were 3.2 billion people on the planet (I looked that up); there are now two and a half times as many, and that’s been a complete disaster. A lower birth rate will cause short and medium-term pain but is one of the very few bases for long-term optimism.

I’n feeling much better now, despite an annoying number of cancellations this week. The lower workload has at least given me the chance to work on the novel. On Monday I spoke to my brother. At the weekend they had a barbecue and when it was still hot my nephew burnt his hand on the side of it. They rushed him off to A&E where he got bandaged up. He’s such an active boy all of a sudden, and these things happen in a split second. My brother said that when you have a child to look after, every day is the same with the exception of injuries and other mishaps, and you never have a moment to yourself. Sounds awful.

I’m enjoying the last few days of not-quite-summer. The smell of the lime trees is in the air, the strawberries and cherries are ripe, and the temperature is comfortable. On Tuesday night we had a downpour and a thunderstorm.