by Tonight’s tennis was cancelled because the courts were wet following overnight rain; my next outing won’t be until March. I suggest to my singles opponent that we go out for a beer at some point, and he called a friend who (after he’d been to church) picked us up, and in the end there were six of us (and a dog) who went to a bar that served Hungarian beer, including an older couple who joined later. We all needed our Covid certificates. Everybody was really nice, but we were there for what seemed an eternity. Almost two whole football matches played out on the TV, and there was a gap in between. (Poli Timișoara scored twice in the last ten minutes to come back and beat Steaua Bucharest 2-1, then the depressingly rich Paris Saint-Germain also came from behind to beat Saint-Etienne 3-1. I’ve been to Saint-Etienne.) I hit the social wall pretty damn fast in my own language, and in Romanian that happens even sooner. Some interesting conversation, though. One woman said that the five glass monstrosities next to Piața 700 are the ugliest buildings in Timișoara, and it’s hard to disagree with that. One of the guys, the driver, smoked a pipe. The dog really got off on the nicotine. The driver had three beers before getting back in the driver’s seat; the limit in Romania is nil.
We’ve now got the Omicron coronavirus variant to contend with. It appears to be a different beast to anything we’ve seen so far, with dozens of changes to the shape of its spike protein. We can be sure that it’s more transmissible than the previous versions including Delta, but we don’t yet know if it makes people more sick. The WHO skipped over two Greek letters (Nu, because calling the super-scary new variant the Nu variant would have been slightly ridiculous, and Xi, which would have been hilarious but they couldn’t call it that).
My aunt, who visited Timișoara after my brother’s wedding, and whom I’ve always had a lot of time for, has now ventured deep into the rabbit hole of Facebook, sharing any anti-Jacinda material she can get her hands on. Last week she sent my parents a video of a woman’s crazed rant about the supposed damage to the country’s economy that the Covid restrictions are doing. I have no problem with the rant itself. The woman is entitled to her views, even if they’re crazy. The problem is that the bile she spouts is spread throughout her band of followers (like my aunt), people who agree with her already, and they think it’s great. She isn’t changing anyone’s opinion. All she’s doing is making people’s opinions more entrenched, and that’s dangerous. My aunt has sent my parents several Facebook links along the same lines. Dad emailed me to say that Mum might be slowly disappearing down the rabbit hole too. None of this stuff is unique to the political right; I remember “Fuck John Key!” circulating when I lived over there. This morning I listened to part of Kim Hill’s programme where a woman (who was brought up in China) explained why we still don’t know whether the coronavirus arose zoonotically or if it escaped from a lab. She then said that she was lambasted on both sides for her balanced views, and her personal safety was threatened on social media. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikBloodyTok, I wish we could nuke the whole lot.
Yesterday I tried a new fruit for the first time. I bought some scorușe from the market. They’re soft, brown, and a bit smaller than a golf ball. They taste a bit like pears, but with some extra tang, and their texture is mushier. They’d probably go well in a pie. I might make a pie with quinces and scorușe and see what happens.
Friday was a crappy day. We had awful weather, and I had a terrible headache which left me sapped of energy even when the pain had subsided.
I watched the first episode of Squid Game yesterday. Whoa. Not sure I want to watch another.
