I felt sad after talking to my parents yesterday. Seeing them was something to look forward to. They can justify it all they like, but refusing to come after the dozens of times my brother must have asked them – I mean yeesh. We’re talking some serious stubbornness here. Steely determination. OK, they’ve got their self-inflicted house shite to deal with, but the trip would still be very doable. Hopefully my brother will make the journey in our late summer and the rellies (do people still say that in NZ?) will get to see and hold the little man.
This morning, after the lesson with the priest, I had back-to-back lessons with a woman in her late forties and her 13-year-old son who’s a piece of work. I feel sorry for her. Before that I watched a spot of Romanian breakfast TV and they talked about digitising the post office here. Not before time, because right now it’s a clunking wreck. But there are bound to be teething problems (to put it mildly) when the new system doesn’t function properly and the system grinds to an even screechier halt than it does at the moment. And in 2024, talk of computerised post office systems will frighten anyone with even half an eye on the UK: the post office scandal there, which took a four-part docu-drama for people to sit up and take notice, has been appalling. Here’s what an American who lives in the UK, and now has British citizenship, has to say on the matter.
Music. I’ve been listening to a lot of R.E.M. lately. Their song Driver 8, which I mentioned in a previous post, made me think of other great train-based songs. Here’s a few I can think of: Marrakesh Express by Crosby, Stills & Nash City of New Orleans by Arlo Guthrie (I’ve actually been on that train) Downbound Train by Bruce Springsteen Last Train to Clarksville by the Monkees (yeah I know) 5:15 The Angels Have Gone by David Bowie Long Train Running by the Doobie Brothers Midnight Special by Creedence Clearwater Revival I thought Wagon Wheel by Old Crow Medicine Show was about a train (it does say “southbound train” in the lyrics) but it turns out I was wrong.
So I’ve just had a long chat with Mum and Dad. It would now be a massive shock if they came to Europe in 2024. Their vanity project is more important than seeing their family; that much is clear. They even talked about what a hassle their late-2022 trip was because it was spring in New Zealand and, you know, plants grew while they were away. So inconsiderate of them. They did see their family in that time including their tiny grandson, but whatever. A minor detail. These conversations get progressively more bizarre. The bright spot is that my brother and his family are likely to make the trip to NZ in August or September; Mum said they’d help them out financially. Help. I’d say a fair level of help would be 100%.
I had a fascinating chat with my brother at the weekend. He was in St Ives, dodging the storms that are battering the country, and had just seen our aunt. He said that for the first time in his life he’d had a proper conversation with her. Her responses were dependent on what he had just said. She went cold turkey on booze and fags when she got to the home; half a lifetime of brain-addling drinking gone at a stroke. Her muscles have atrophied to the point where she doesn’t get out of bed, but he said she was strangely content.
I saw the doctor last night, as I do once a month, to stock up on pills. He told me that he’d divorced from his wife last summer; she’d been cheating on him for two years. They have a ten-year-old son. It’s still all extremely raw. Then he said that their surgery would be moving to one of those horrible new glass buildings next to the mall. Ugh. That will mean more of a trek, and having to enter a depressing building to get my antidepressants. Some people even work there. Just imagine. The building is called UBC 0. United Business Center zero. It’s number 0 presumably for the same reason that King’s Cross built a platform 0 in 2010, leaving me momentarily baffled when I needed to catch a train from there. I could transfer to another surgery but that would be a pain too.
Five lessons yesterday. At least three of them are making no discernible progress; that’s the harsh reality. One of them is a university student who seems quite content with not improving. Not much I can do about that. One is a kid who’s got way behind at school and doesn’t quite realise it. And one needs to up his level of focus in my lessons by at least 300% to have any hope. I need to change tack entirely with him.
My high school didn’t do much for me (I was glad to leave at 16) except in one important respect. In a country where school food had a terrible reputation, my place provided substantial, nutritious cooked meals every day. Then I’d have another cooked dinner when I got home. On a Friday I’d get fish twice. At that age, both my brother and I packed it away. We had a proper breakfast too – porridge and toast, usually; going without breakfast would have been unthinkable. Importantly, we practically never ate between meals, apart from pieces of fruit which were in plentiful supply. Mum was in control of 90% of this – no surprise there – and the values that she’d gained from growing up on a farm, thousands of acres and a couple of decades from any fast food outlets, helped us boys considerably. Yesterday I was talking to a kid who skips breakfast, practically inhales a rudimentary sandwich and a few wine gums at school, then finally has something meaningful – schnitzel or the like – when he comes home. The boy who is falling behind at school only has a single meal per day as far as I can tell. And it’s not like the parents of kids I see can’t afford it. So what’s going on? It’s probably a number of things. Blame modern society, blame TikTok, blame the messed-up Romanian education system that forces kids to spend hours cramming pointless facts about lakes in China in order to get the coveted 10 grade.
Writing the book. It’s hard. I finally planned out the chapters, 19 of them, something I should have done years ago. I’m still learning, right. It’s tough because you can spend hours plugging away, moving words and paragraphs around, and it just doesn’t work. I should think of it as the new online poker.
I’ve bought seven new records and will grab a few more. I’m getting them delivered to a single location in France to be forwarded on to me. Ups the cost slightly, but it’s worth it for the huge increase in convenience.
She’s back. Elena, the lady who lives above me, after a long stay in Canada. The walls and floors of this Ceaușescu-era apartment block are so thick that no sound permeates them. Except her voice. I’ll pop up and see her later today.
Last night I played tennis with one of my students – Lucian, who’s almost certainly gay. He’s had 146 lessons with me so far. We played on an indoor clay court. It wasn’t cheap, but for a one-off I can handle it. (He’s got one of those proper job thingies, and plays there all the time. He even gets coaching.) I come from a land of virtual claylessness, so the dusty orange stuff feels quite exotic to me. Like me, he’s left-handed; that always adds an extra dynamic. (Presumably he also writes with his left hand. I don’t. In that respect (only), I’m just like Rafael Nadal.) We knocked up, then started a game. I won the first game, then led 0-40 on his serve thanks to some double faults, but he came back in that game and was soon all over me. Yeah, he’s too good, isn’t he? He could accelerate through the ball like I could only dream of, and sometimes he imparted sidespin – his coach had probably taught him the technique – that left me floundering. He led 3-1 and had a point for 4-1. But I somehow found a way back. Early on I struggled with my range, often hitting long. When I located my radar I was suddenly in business. I led 5-3, then dropped serve, but from 30-0 down in the tenth game I won the next four points for the set. The second set was bizarre: I won it 6-0, but it was a close 6-0 if such a thing exists. The majority of games went to multiple deuces. In truth I fed off his mistakes, of which there were many. We started another set – I won the first two games, then he reeled off the next three before the clock ran out on us. After the game he said that he focuses on producing “nice shots” and found my shots unusual and hard to read. Though I’m not a very competitive person, I’m not big on aesthetics; I select strokes that give me the best chance of winning points and games. We spoke mostly in Romanian; that’s always a bonus for me.
On Friday I had a new student. I got him through word-of-mouth, which is my most common method these days. His mother had contacted me; he was a 16-year-old named Peter who goes to the British school. Hmmm. In Romania you’re called Petru or Petrică, not Peter, so what’s the story here? At 7pm a message flashed up on my screen, asking me to let Zhong Mao (or something similar) into the meeting. Peter and his mother had come over from Nanjing, a city of nine million, a few months ago. I’m still not sure of the full story of how they ended up in Timișoara. He’s a nice guy. Fairly serious, I suppose – the unremitting Chinese education system practically forces you to be like that. Suddenly having the odd break from intense study was a revelation to him. When I asked him what he likes best about Timișoara he said the food. Kebabs in particular. Ha! He said he knew just one Romanian word – ciao – which doesn’t exactly count. (Ciao, sometimes Romanianised into ceau, is the go-to word in Banat where I am. In the east of the country you hardly every hear it.) I was impressed with his English. Tomorrow it looks like we’re having a face-to-face lesson.
Yesterday I had my usual suite of lessons, minus the one at 8am. The most interesting one came at the end. My student (a 15-year-old girl, or is she 16?) had to write a 500-word article about anything. No pointers at all. We homed in on a subject pretty quickly though. She’s travelled a fair bit in Romania, and decided to write about the Danube Delta which she visited when she was ten. I’d love to visit that area of natural beauty, preferably with my parents if and when they ever come this way. We nearly finished the article in the time she was with me. This brainstorm was pretty handy; I think she was able to decipher my writing.
When I finished that lesson I saw that Stoke had just scored, reducing Birmingham’s lead to 2-1 in their away game. But Blues clung on to the win, and Tony Mowbray’s revolution continues.
Dad sent me this 14-minute YouTube video from Neil Oliver, a Scottish ex-presenter on matters historical and archeological. It started off fine. The idea of personal money having restrictions and an expiry date isn’t that far-fetched; in China it might already be happening. (Only I wish he hadn’t said it was a fact. It’s just a prediction.) Then he went down the rabbit hole by talking about the Kennedy assassination, and just as I thought he might avoid Covid entirely, there it was. Lockdowns. Bloody masks. Please make it stop! My biggest issue with all these people – and there are no shortage of them – is that they bang on about being silenced. No you’re bloody not! Social media gives you an audience for your stinking fact-free horseshit like never before. At least Dad agreed with me.
I’ve had a busy Saturday, chock-full of lessons. Two maths sessions – two hours apiece – and three English ones. Everything from a creative writing piece about a murder and tactile Little Mermaid books to construction of perpendicular bisectors and probability tree diagrams. Marginally preferable to yesterday though, when I took five paracetamol for my sinus pain.
It’s been cold. Actual proper winter, like my first one in Timișoara, not the half-arsed stuff we’ve had of late. On Monday it snowed all day, making for a pretty sight, but getting around the city for lessons was quite a challenge. Today was the first time since then that the mercury – ever so briefly – touched freezing point. We’d been at (minus) sixes and sevens all week.
Last Sunday – just before the wintry blast hit us – I met Mark in Dumbrăvița and from there we went to Arad in his car. I hadn’t been there for six years. Arad is a fine city, with beautiful architecture much like we have in Timișoara. (Just like my home, it was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire for half a century until the First World War.) After a good wander, be both agreed that in some ways we preferred Arad to its bigger cousin. (Timișoara is roughly twice the size.) There were all kinds of photo opportunities. We managed to go inside the Palace of Culture, which reminded me of the larger one in Iași; the lobby and the concert hall were both superb. The Mureș, a much more substantial river than Timișoara’s Bega, runs through the city. The Christmas market was still running, but rather than grab overpriced food from there, we had a major feed at one of a clump of kebab shops at one end of the main drag. Kebab Alley, we called it. Unlike Timișoara with its three main squares, Arad has one long, broad main street where everything happens, though some of the side streets were impressive too. After our kebabs, we decided to go back home. Mark had parked in an area of town not far from the centre called Boul Roșu – the Red Ox – but despite seeing a sign depicting a red ox, it took us a while to find the car. Coming home from that very enjoyable trip felt like the absolute end of any kind of holiday-related downtime.
My record player – turntable, if you like – arrived yesterday. It’s still in its box. Getting that going will be tomorrow’s “thing”.
Here are some photos from Arad, and of the snow.
Above is one of those Roman numerals date word puzzle thingies that I mentioned on this blog some years ago. But did they have to make it so complicated? Someone must have really pissed off whoever made this in 1779 (if I haven’t gone wrong somewhere – I may well have).
Arad does have a square, and it’s in the process of being revitalisedOn the left is the old water tower which I visited in 2016
It’s already 2024 in New Zealand. The last embers of the old year were still flickering when I called Mum and Dad. I thought I wouldn’t get them – they’d probably be at Caroline Bay for the fireworks and a spin or two of the chocolate wheel – but they’d had thunder and hailstorms and didn’t fancy it. The last time I visited Caroline Bay for New Year was with my brother eleven years ago. He was very subdued, having been through a nightmare few days. The next day we went to Methven – appropriately, it was completely dead – and saw a terrible Australian film at the cinema in Geraldine. Just like now, the darts was on TV. My parents had Mum’s old colleagues from Cairns staying with them; they really could have done without that. This morning Mum talked her elder brother’s daughter, who thinks the world revolves around her, and didn’t want anything to do with her elderly parents over Christmas. Having loving, caring parents hasn’t stopped her becoming a selfish arsehole.
This morning I went to the market in Mehala on the off-chance that there might be a cheap second-hand record player, but no such luck. There were quite a few records, though I didn’t buy any. It was nice to browse all the same, and take in the sights and smells on a sunny morning. The beer, the mici, the vehicles, the signage, the haggling. I had a particularly greasy langoș and then went home.
“You’ll find us on the street, between the langoși and the police station.”A new footbridge being built over the Bega in the west of the city
No lessons today. Yesterday I had my 945th to 948th sessions of 2023, including my usual battle to get Matei to understand fractions. If you don’t know fractions, you’re screwed when it comes to calculating probability, and much else besides. Next weekend I’m going to spend the whole session on fractions. It’s what he needs. (His cluelessness about fractions is hardly his fault, as I’ve mentioned before here. He missed out under the Romanian system, and now he’s at the British school where they just assume he has all that knowledge.) After him I had the brother-and-sister combination. I normally spend two hours with him and one hour with her, but the boy said he had to meet some friends in town, so could they do 90 minutes each? She’s six. That’s an eternity with someone so young. Luckily I had a secret weapon: a rather tricky dinosaur maze (see below). I printed it off before our session, not realising how T-rex-like it actually was. Impressively to me, she persevered. (At her age, I think I’d have given up.) I tackled the start, she worked backwards from the end, and eventually we met in the middle. That ate up a good chunk of time. I had an online session with the guy in England when I got home.
The darts. There were three matches last night. First up was Brendan Dolan, the Northern Irishman who started as an underdog against Gary Anderson, winner of two world titles. Dolan, who uses Dropkick Murphys’ I’m Shipping Up to Boston as his walk-on song, raced into a big lead against Anderson who was misfiring at the start. Anderson then kicked into gear and went 3-2 up in the first-to-four-sets match. Dolan then made it 3-3 before hitting double three to pull off a dramatic and fully deserved victory, his third knife-edge win in a row. His wife’s face at various points throughout the deciding set was a picture. Next up was Raymond van Barneveld, an old hand who has been a top player since the nineties, against Luke Littler who is at the other end of the scale (though you wouldn’t think it by looking at him). Littler, who turns 17 next month, has been a sensation. The Dutchman played very well but Littler was unstoppable. The youngster won 4-1. I couldn’t stay up to watch the last match. Snooker, yes, but I draw the line at darts. A pity in a way, because it was one heck of a finish, with Luke Humphries beating Joe Cullen in a sudden-death leg, hitting the winning double at his tenth attempt. (Those outer slivers are pretty skinny, and even the best players miss them more often than they hit. All those misses ratchet up the tension.)
I managed to get the adminstrator to recalculate my catch-up water bill at the old rate, so this month’s bill ended up being a monster 983 lei instead of a gargantuan 1470.
I plan to see in the new year in town, where there will be fireworks and music. I’ve found 2023 to be quite stressful, with the exception of the period around Easter and (in grounds for optimism) the last couple of months. The early part of the year was bloody terrible. Simply put, I couldn’t cope. My “big thing” this year was spending a whole month in New Zealand. Stunning beauty around every corner. The stress my parents have been under became apparent when I was over there, and I’ve found it upsetting. I hope things become less fraught when their building work is done.
The word of the year for me is a depressing one: billionaire. I remember when billionaires were few and far enough between to be ignorable with the exception of Bill Gates and his Mr Clippy. Not any more. Every other article I read is about the antics of some mega-rich egomaniac fucking up the world for the rest of us just because he can. He, of course. Next year, with massively consequential elections taking place all over the world, their influence is unlikely to wane.
A couple of new year’s resolutions, both about writing. Firstly, this blog. I’d like to get back to more free-flowing writing such as I produced right at the beginning eight years ago. Hopefully being more relaxed will allow me to do that. Second, the book about my tennis-playing friend. I made progress last January, then things stalled badly. It needs to be a top priority again.
I regularly posted pictures taken out of the window of my old flat, with the view of the park and the square. Not so much this place, though the sky – just before my 8am lesson on perhaps the second-shortest day of the year – made for an interesting shot.
Yesterday wasn’t such a great day. Way back in October 2022 I had a problem with the loo in the small bathroom which I hardly ever use. I went to the UK for a few days, and in that time the cistern ran non-stop. I shut off the valve when I got back, but in that time many thousands of gallons of water had gone through the system. I sent the block administrator my meter readings as I do every month. She misread the reading – 337, when it was actually 377 (an understandable error – how could I have possibly used that much water?) and charged me accordingly, “promising” to correct the mistake the following month. I got a plumber to fix the loo, but the fix lasted about two days. I thought my water bill did get rectified, but obviously not because yesterday the administrator sent me a message, finally asking for the extra money. What’s more, she’s billing me at the current rate (which has gone up in the last 14 months), not the old rate. I’ll pay the bill of course, but only if it’s calculated at the old rate. We’re talking a couple of hundred quid here, which is a massive pain but nothing I have (or had) any control over.
Mum and Dad only made a short stop in their showerless pit in Geraldine, and Skyped me from Hampden this morning. They’re still some way off fully recovered from their bout of Covid. Mum said she’d been sleeping most of the day. No harm in that. Dad used a word – pantechnicon – that I’d never heard before. It’s a British word for a big truck or van used for transporting furniture. I feel I should have known the word, being British and all, but the Pantechnicon company, which the name comes from, ceased trading in the seventies. More often than not these days I’m too old to know a word, not too young, so that made a change. In a previous chat with Dad, we got talking about Auckland for some reason. A city with so much wasted potential. What a disappointment the centre is (or was – maybe it’s magically improved since either of us visited). But there are nice parts, Dad said. I replied by saying, yes, but the nice parts are inhabited only by people who can afford stupidly expensive houses, making for a funny kind of nice that I wouldn’t want anything to do with even if I had that kind of money.
At this time of year I give my students a sheet of paper asking them to write down five new year’s resolutions, then to pick one to focus on. How will you go about achieving it? This afternoon my able 11-year-old student wrote “Make my parents feel proud of me” for one of his resolutions. “Don’t they feel proud of you?” I asked. He replied with a definite no, and that made me feel sad. He also wrote “Be nice”, which surprised me because he’s always seemed perfectly nice around me. He probably feels comfortable around me: a harmless hairy man wearing (today) an orange jumper with a multicoloured llama on it, rather than his classmates. He says all the bullying makes him morose when he gets home.
Earlier today I watched a YouTube video from a guy who goes around decaying British high streets. Once thriving, they’re now struggling up and down the country. Today he went to Slough, which rhymes with now. Not far from Slough are Eton and Windsor, England’s two most famous public schools, and many affluent towns, some of which even (much to their disgust) have an SL (for Slough) postcode. He opens his video by reading a few lines of John Betjeman’s poem that asks for “friendly bombs” to be dropped on the town. Betjeman wrote the poem in 1937, so the bombs didn’t have long to wait. I went through the poem a few years ago in a lesson with a woman who once spent a few months in Milton Keynes, whose reputation is no better than Slough’s.
More drama at the Darts. Matt Campbell, from Hamilton, Ontario, pulled off an upset by beating James Wade 3-2 – he was clearly the better player – and has made it to the post-Christmas stages. Prior to this tournament, he’d never won a match in four attempts. He’s flying back to Canada to spend Christmas with his family. Yesterday afternoon saw a whole host of upsets and wins for players outside the UK – all good for the game. Steve Beaton, someone I remember from my bigger darts-watching days in the nineties, got through his first match. Age is no barrier in this game.
Mum and Dad called me again from Hampden yesterday. It was a relief to see a smile back on Mum’s dial. She’s always more relaxed down there, away from what is now (let’s not mince words) a shithole. Mum seems strangely magnetised to that dreadful place which they should stay away from as far as humanly possible until the building work is completed.
Yesterday Dorothy messaged me to say there was a vinyl and book sale on at Scârț. Sounded good. Sale wasn’t quite the right word though – some of the LPs were really quite pricey. I picked up five second-hand records for a total of 300 lei (just over NZ$100 or £50): Selling England By the Pound by Genesis, Bookends by Simon and Garfunkel, 18 by Chicago, Oxygène by Jean-Michel Jarre, and Leonard Cohen’s greatest hits album. That’s a start; I just need an actual record player now. Oh, and I bought one book for 5 lei: H. W. Longfellow’s epic poem The Song of Hiawatha, in Romanian.
Four English lessons today. I started at 8am with my Bucharest-based online student – I found out today that he’s only two months older than me – who wanted help with adverbs of manner and uncountable nouns, among other things. I was in contact with the east of Romania again for my second session, this time with a 35-year-old woman. She said that if her six-year-old son (her only child) doesn’t get what he wants for Christmas, he’ll make his disappointment very obvious. He’s still very little, I said, but by twelve he’ll have learnt to hide it. You can’t always get what you want. She said, no, he won’t do that when he’s twelve because I’ll have told him to fight for what he wants. If he doesn’t like something, even a glass of juice, I want him to make his feelings clear. I still remember at seven or eight telling a family friend that I didn’t like some juice – probably something Ribena-like – and wouldn’t drink it. My grandmother told me I was already too big to act in that way, and I think she was right. Little Vlad (I don’t think that’s his name) has the pleasure of going to intensive after-school classes, which include nine hours of English lessons a week. Right Vlad, I’m going to make you work stupidly hard, and in return you get to be total dick. That’s the modern way, it seems. She earns well by working extremely hard at an investment bank, doing something that I would find utterly pointless.
In between my first two English sessions was the Romanian lesson, which was mostly spent discussing the downfall of Ceaușescu during an unseasonably warm few days in the lead-up to Christmas 1989. Our teacher was 20 at the time; I would have guessed several years younger. Yesterday the song Timișoara, produced by Pro-Musica in the wake of the Revolution, came on the local radio. It starts with a few bars from the Romanian national anthem and turns into something spine-tinglingly powerful. I recommend that you watch the video. My third English lesson was with a 17-year-old girl who came to my place. We went through some B2 Cambridge papers. I struggled to get her to write anything. In the end she wrote about her “happy place”, the mall, but didn’t even say much about that. My final lesson was the twins who live near Piața Verde. Because it was our last meeting of the year we had an extended Bananagrams session, which is always fun.
The World Championship darts. It’s back on again. Though the game is skin-deep compared to the multi-layered wonders of snooker, this tournament can be worth a watch because it’s the pinnacle of the sport. If you can get past the tedious football-style chants, you find an event filled with personality and drama. I’m a big fan of the format which, like in snooker, is a straight knockout and calls for matches of increasing length as the rounds progress. In the pre-Christmas phase, matches are best of five sets. The top players only need one win, and anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour, to book their place in the post-turkey stages. Yesterday I saw a great game involving the Canadian player Matt Campbell. He was two sets up and had multiple opportunities to win the match in three. His Filipino opponent Lourence Ilagan took advantage of his reprieve to tie the match at 2-2, only for Campbell to storm through the fifth in some style. After Christmas the matches are best of seven, and in the new year they get longer still, culminating in a best-of-13-set final. Update: I’ve just seen Man-Lok Leung of Hong Kong (he goes by Hugo) win an absolute belter of a game against Dutchman Gian van Veen, coming from two sets down – and missing no end of chances – to win 3-2 in a joyous finale. He fired a whopping eleven 180s and was a very popular winner. A Kiwi by the name of Haupai Puha – he lives in Wellington – is on next, but it’s bedtime for me.
I went over pronouns and possessive adjectives with my extroverted beginner student this evening (see below). When I asked him what should replace the question marks, he said “shim”, which I thought was funny because (a) it has a certain logic to it, and (b) who knows, maybe “shim” is actually a pronoun now. Edit: “shim” is already a word: it’s a thin sliver of material (wood, usually) that you wedge into a gap to ensure a nice tight fit.
In my previous session with him we talked about his extroversion. He has to be around people all the time, and the more the merrier. At 33 he’s never spent a whole day alone; the very idea filled him with dread. We’re at opposites ends of the spectrum, I said, and be thankful you’re at your end – life will treat you better.
I called up my tennis friend yesterday and told him that no, I wouldn’t be going to the New Year’s do because I had “other plans”. I said I felt bad for not going (which was true – they’re all lovely people) and I’d like to meet up for a drink at the usual place by the river (also true) in the near future. Saying no was really hard, but after doing it I realised it was still eight times easier than going to the bloody party would have been.
Next week things will start to wind down a bit. I’m going over to Dorothy’s for Christmas; there should be four of us there. Other than that, I’m looking forward to the time to myself – reading, watching the darts (I know), and working on the book I started a year ago but soon put to one side. I’ve got to finish it.
Last night I watched a film called The Whale, which Dad had recommended to me. The title is a reference to the main character, a morbidly obese online university professor, as well as to the novel Moby-Dick. I found the story gripping, even if it was harrowing a lot of the time. I certainly recommend it.
I’m about to call my parents. Last time we spoke, there was a chink of light at the end of the Covid tunnel, so let’s hope it wasn’t a false dawn. If I really wanted to wind Dad up, I could ask him what “shim” means. Update: I gave them a call. They’re on the mend, but it’s been a really rough time for them. With all their ridiculous building work which will continue into the new year, their living quarters would be dangerously impractical even if they were in rude health.
Now Dad’s got Covid too. He didn’t look too clever when I spoke to him this morning (my time). Mum had already gone to bed by then. He told me that Mum had forced herself to do painting and other ridiculous DIY that day, despite being sick as a dog herself, and had been angry with Dad for not doing the same. It beats me how Dad has lived with Mum for half a century without ever (as far as I know) telling her to eff off.
Last week I got an email from one of the other ex-owners in our Wellington apartment block. Ex. Thank our lucky stars that we’re ex. Still being embroiled in that misery (which about 650 owners in Wellington are) hardly bears thinking about. The email contained the words disproportionate, unfair and inequitable, which the whole situation absolutely is. (I spelt that out to letters I sent to Grant Robertson, my local MP, but they got passed on to the housing minister who was bloody hopeless.) The ball is starting to roll now, but up a depressingly steep hill.
Last week it was Boris Johnson’s turn in the hot seat at the Covid inquiry. He had aged, and at times he looked quite ill. The interesting bit came right at the beginning as some protesters were asked to leave during Johnson’s initial apology, and then Hugo Keith (the KC) pointed out that the UK had the second-worst mortality rate in Western Europe, behind Italy who were extraordinarily unlucky in the early stages and have a very high elderly population. “Look at the table!” the ex-PM protested. “Why are you excluding countries like Bulgaria [top of the European Covid death league overall] or Romania [fourth, I think]? When you include these vastly poorer countries full of anti-vax nutters, we’re slap-bang in the middle!” What a joke. After he’d got that apology out of the way, he spent two days justifying and normalising everything, including missing those five emergency Cobra meetings prior to mid-March. No, the toxicity in government at the time was not normal nor in any way desirable, and I seriously doubt it would have been like that had Theresa May or Gordon Brown or any of a number of former prime ministers had been in charge. This week the current PM Rishi Sunak, of Eat Out to Help Out fame, is stepping up to the plate.
Before my maths lesson yesterday, I met up with Mark at the beer factory. I had a pasta dish while he had a very Romanian combination: a slab of pork, some sausages, some mici, and mămăligă. I’ll go for that next time. Just one beer each; I’d soon be explaining algebraic fractions. We discussed various ongoings in his job which are making the experience rather less fun, and the possibility of my one day getting Romanian citizenship. Becoming actually Romanian and having triple nationality would be totally mad, wouldn’t it?
Talking of mad, someone else to put in the mad-but-good category is Luke Thompson, an English teacher based in Paris who has a long-running YouTube channel with over 850 episodes. I use his channel as a teaching tool for my more advanced students.
Five English lessons for me today after my initial Romanian one. Plenty of work, and with a welcome drop in my life admin, I’m not complaining.
Almost four years after everything went nuts, Mum’s got Covid. She’s been ill for five days – fever, sore throat, aching joints, the works, and different to anything she’s had before – but she only tested positive this morning. A bright second line in under a minute, she said. I’m glad it’s Covid – she looked wiped out when saw her on Friday on our Skype call, but now the mystery (as it was then) has been solved. Let’s hope she’s back to normal ASAP and Dad doesn’t now come down with something five times worse.
“Shine your light,” big bright yellow posters proclaimed at the beginning of the year, as Timișoara became European capital of culture. The slogan alluded to Timișoara being the first city in mainland Europe to get electric street lights, back in 1884. Since then we’ve mostly been kept in the dark. The whos and whats and whens and wheres of the events have been badly publicised, and visitor numbers have been well down on expectations. It’s done about as well as the Festival of Brexit. This weekend has been something of an exception though, with a well-signposted (by Romanian standards) closing ceremony in town. On Friday night I was lucky to finish lessons at 6:30, and I managed to drag Dorothy along to the free concert in Piața Unirii. I’m very glad I did. It kicked off at eight with Delia, a celebrity in Romania and an exponent of bubblegum pop. It was visually impressive – dry ice and streamers and fireworks – but the music did nothing for me and even less for Dorothy. Fifteen-odd songs that blurred into one another. We didn’t have much of a vantage point; the square was rammed with young people who then filed away the moment Delia’s hour-long set ended, allowing us to get much closer to the stage. On came Katie Melua who is very, very good. British but born in Georgia (the country, not the American state) she hit the scene in oh-five with Nine Million Bicycles, the inspiration for which was a guided tour of Beijing. Because why not? Her other main successes were The Closest Thing to Crazy, which is partly in 7/4 time, and The Flood, a track with regular changes of tempo and a total shift half-way through. She treated us to all three of these and several other songs – all dripping with emotion and creativity – that I hadn’t heard before. I felt so lucky to see her in Timișoara, at a cost of zero lei. Dorothy seemed to like her too. When she’d done her bit, I was keen to get home – my hands and feet were like ice, and I had an early start in the morning.
During Delia’s setKatie Melua during The Flood and I Cried For You
I’ve had a busy week of teaching. I was supposed to have a two-hour maths lesson at nine this morning (Sunday – not my preferred day), taking me to 33 hours, but my student messaged me 35 minutes before we were due to start. Any chance we can move it? Hmm. Where I come from, you’re committed at that point. At the very least, the word sorry needs to appear somewhere in your message. But this is Romania. She’ll now be coming at 4pm instead. Yesterday I had my first online lesson with a guy in Bucharest whose wife I used to teach, then it was off to Dumbrăvița to see the kids. The heating in Octavian’s place is always jacked up to something crazy and I’m unable to stifle my yawns.
In a recent lesson I asked a very capable 14-year-old boy to write a short essay responding to this statement: Some people think women should be allowed to join the army, the navy and the air force just like men. Do you agree? His well-articulated response was a resounding no. His first sentence was: No, I don’t agree, because women have to take care of children, not take men’s occupations and manners. They shouldn’t steal men’s jobs, in other words. His mother, for what it’s worth, is vehemently anti-vax (though he himself was very careful during the pandemic, especially around masks). I asked him what he thought about women’s sport. Tennis and badminton were fine, but football?! God no. He’s a big football fan. Nobody actually watches women’s football, do they? Um, I hate to break it to you, but there was a World Cup recently and, yeah. His views are far from universal here – a 12-year-old boy I teach knows many of England’s top female players by name – but it’s interesting that they’re still so easy to come by in 2023. The pair of “position vacant” ads below are on the window of a popular second-hand clothes shop near me. I often cycle past it on a Saturday morning just before it opens at 9:30, and it’s heaving outside. Both the ads specify a woman (implicitly through feminine forms in the first ad, and explicitly in the second).
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