Month: January 2025

Books - Cat - Dreams - Language teaching - Life :) - Other sports - Photos

We’re in Deep S***

January 31, 2025 plutomanby 0 Comments

Kitty. Yeah, she’s pretty good. Especially when she’s asleep, which isn’t very often. The last few days she’s shown plenty of affection, so I think she’s getting used to me. Tomorrow I’m taking her to the vet to her screened, or whatever they do, in preparation for next week when hopefully she’ll have her bits removed. I feel slightly sad about that. I mean, how much does the process hurt?

I had five lessons today instead of my usual seven on a Thursday. My mother-and-son combo got shunted forward a day. When I saw Filip in Mehala, I got the usual. His mum gave me a pair of size-seven slippers to put on as well as a perfectly good cup of coffee. Then I went up to his room where his thermostat was jacked up to 28 degrees. Even when the conditions for teaching aren’t ideal, I remind myself. Life insurance? Open-plan hell? This is orders of magnitude better than that.

DeepSeek. The new Chinese AI app. Even the name scares the crap out of me – X-ray eyes, watching your every move. It managed to knock a trillion dollars off the Nasdaq in a single day. A trillion dollars! I can’t make sense of 2025 at all. $600 billion of that was a single company called Nvidia who apparently make chips. So they must be in the fast-food trade or else they’re some casino outfit. Nvidia joins a long list of bland made-up modern company or product names containing a V and ending in A. Off the top of my head there’s Aviva, Arriva, Aveda, Veolia and, um, Viagra. Nvidia goes one step further though in breaking the rules of English phonotactics – it starts with N followed by another consonant – for increased fakeness.

Maybe that’s why so many people have tattoos now. In a world of artificiality, at least they’re real. You can see them, touch them, and for a time, feel them. (I imagine you can smell them for a time too.) I’m not tempted, because there’s nothing I identify with strongly enough to get it permanently stamped on me. And frankly, being a native English speaker in Timișoara, teaching English and maths, with a beard and a fair old mop of hair, is plenty. Getting inked would be overkill. But the real thing is something that is very important to me. My job feels very real. So does this city, even if certain parts (like bloody Dumbrăvița) are so depressingly fake as to be unlivable for me.

I read something yesterday about how unhappy Generation Z are in the UK. They defined Gen Z as (currently) between 13 and 27. There were comments that said “I remember 1977 and the Sex Pistols. Nothing new here.” Even though I wasn’t born in ’77 I’ve read plenty about that time, and I disagree. Back then, at least young people were united through music, how they dressed, and even their football teams. (Though it could be unpleasant and even dangerous to see live football then, at least it was affordable.) Now society is too fractured for that sort of unity to be possible. Blame smartphones and social media.

Lately I’ve been reading a post-apocalyptic sci-fi book called A Canticle for Leibowitz. It was written in the 1950s by Walter M. Miller Jr and has strong religious themes. I’m two-thirds of the way through it. Having got this far I’ll stick with it, but in my fairly simple brain I’m filing it under the “too clever for me” category. Some of the themes resonate today, in particular the anti-intellectualism, called the Simplification in the novel. (Right on cue, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has moved their “Doomsday Clock” forward to just 89 seconds to midnight.)

I had a strange dream last night which involved a game of cricket in a park in Timișoara. Several games, in fact, and I had great difficulty walking through the park without being hit by a ball. (Nobody plays cricket in Romania, as far as I’m aware.) Games come up a lot in my dreams. A few nights ago I had a dream involving my aunt (the one who passed away last April) and the card game bridge. I know next to nothing about bridge. I only know that it’s a trick-taking game that involves bidding, compass points and 13-card hands. This dream probably came about from something my aunt once said about endless parties and games of bridge in the RAF officers’ mess. She tried to make it sound glamorous, but I thought it sounded awful.

Earlier this week I wrote my first proper letter since 2009. When my friend from St Ives surprised and delighted me by sending me one, I decided to reply in kind. It would be wonderful if she and her husband could make a trip to Romania (they came in 2017), but they’ve got so much stuff going on and he narrowly escaped death in 2022. I don’t know how feasible it would be.

A football score from the Cypriot league that caught my eye earlier this month:

“Have you heard about Jim?” What’s happened? “He’s only just got over his omonia, and now he’s come down with a terrible case of anorthosis.” Poor Jim. I hope he pulls through.

I’m pretty sure the name Anorthosis has the same ortho- root as in orthopedic, orthography and orthogonal: it means straight ahead or correct. But at first glance it looks like something I’d want to steer clear of.

Some pictures from Sunday:

I had a bit of time on Monday before my lesson. I hadn’t noticed this chimney before:

Driving - Life :) - Other sports - Romania - Tennis

Coming unstuck

January 29, 2025 plutomanby 0 Comments

The last few days we’ve had incredible weather. Today it was blue sky all day and we got to 18. I don’t think they’re getting much more than that in Geraldine.

On Sunday I managed to get myself into a slight pickle. I was in Blajova, a small village a half-hour drive from me, when I somehow backed my car out over a culvert, leaving my front wheel hanging in the air. A woman opposite heard me revving the engine (to no avail; I was stuck) and came out. Could you or somebody else help me? No. OK, thanks, have a great day. This is fantastic, I thought. I’m in the middle of nowhere here. I had a weak signal and called some tow truck people. They didn’t even know where Blajova was until I sent them my location. Right, we can come in 45 minutes. It’ll be 500 lei. Ugh, that’s a bit much. More than I earned all day yesterday. Surely someone here can get me out of this. The car isn’t damaged, I’m hardly in the bottom of a ditch or anything, it just needs some manpower. I wandered around and as luck would have it there was a guy in an orange hi-viz vest, the kind that David Cameron used to wear, and he was willing to help. He got his two mates and the three of them pushed but it wouldn’t budge. I’ll get my Jeep then. Within two minutes he’d got his Jeep and attached the rope, and I was free. I tried giving them 100 lei but they wouldn’t take it. In this place we help each other. We’ll help anybody.

These villages are full of farmers and practical people who tow stuff on a daily basis. Before I got stuck, I was walking along the road in the village when an older gentleman wound down the window of his car. He wanted to know how an unknown person could possibly be wandering through his village on a Sunday morning. Being defensive, I said I was a tourist from England. I’ve been to Romania a few times before, that’s how I can speak a bit. He was very pleasant and asked if I was going to the church service which was about to start. When I told him that I thought his village was beautiful, he added, “but poor”.

I was in Blajova because it was close to a nature reserve called Lunca Pogănișului and I wanted to go for a walk through it. After getting stuck I nearly went back home, then remembered the men’s final in Melbourne was going on. I saw that Jannik Sinner had taken the first set against Sasha Zverev and the second was close. If Zverev gets the set I’ll go home because there’ll still be plenty of tennis to watch. If not and Sinner goes 2-0 up, I’ll go for my walk. Sinner won the second set on a tie-break. Walk it is then. But the track down to the Lunca was so hopelessly muddy that I soon went home anyway. By the time I got home, Sinner had completed a comprehensive win. It’s a shame I couldn’t see the women’s final which saw Madison Keys pick up her first grand slam in a brilliant match with Aryna Sabalenka. I was happy that the American won, as was Mum when I spoke to her. Keys came through a bunch of three-setters on the way. Madison Keys, by the way, sounds like some somewhere just off Cape Cod where you’d moor your luxury yacht and that no mere mortals could afford to live in. (It’s getting on for ten years since I visited Cape Cod. That was a good day.)

In my last post about the FA Cup, I meant to mention the match I saw in January 2000 between Aston Villa and Leeds United in the fifth round. I didn’t (and don’t) support Villa, but that game was one heck of a spectacle. Villa twice came from behind to win 3-2, Benito Carbone scoring a hat-trick. We saw four of the goals down our end. (I went with some other uni students.) I remember Paul Merson being an absolute beast in that game. For some reason I also remember Carbone’s blue boots which I thought looked pretty damn cool. Villa Park was rocking towards the end of that game. The Cup was already on the wane even by then, but 25 years ago it still meant a lot. (Villa made the final that year, losing to Chelsea in the last FA Cup final at the old Wembley.)

When I spoke to my parents this morning, Dad talked about the destructive potential of AI. I don’t use AI myself (I keep meaning to for curiosity’s sake, but I can’t be bothered) and am scared of what it might unleash, outside the realm of medicine where it seems to be beneficial. Dad said that at least he won’t see the destruction in his lifetime. It’s all happening to fast though that I wouldn’t be so sure.

Before I finish, some sad news concerning Romania. A band of thieves blew up the entrance to a small museum in the Netherlands and stole some extremely valuable (and extremely old) Romanian artifacts that had been on show there. It was the last day of the exhibition. One of the artifacts was a 2500-year-old gold helmet which I suppose the thieves planned to melt down, though the value of the helmet far exceeds that of the gold.

I’ve been sleeping better and have had more energy as a result. Not Kitty-level energy or anything crazy like that, but a normal level, which is definitely something.

Other sports

Why the FA Cup was great

January 25, 2025 plutomanby 0 Comments

The FA Cup was (and technically still is) the world’s oldest football competition. It started way back in 1871, a few years after the London Underground. But while the Underground still sends millions of passengers trundling through the capital every day, the FA Cup is on life support. It’s one more example of something that united and excited people, and that I personally enjoyed, that’s been killed by globalisation and hypercapitalism and pure greed. But here’s why it used to be great:

  • All that history. Even though they were aeons before my time, I know that the White Horse final took place in 1923 and the Stanley Matthews final was in 1953. I know about Ronnie Radford’s screamer for Hereford against Newcastle in 1972. The mud, the pitch invasion, the parka jackets. It’s been replayed so many times you couldn’t not know about it. And let’s not forget, there’s some very grim history among it all, most notably the Hillsborough disaster that took place in an FA Cup semi-final in 1989.
  • The sheer number of teams in the competition. Several hundred would start out in August, many of them amateur sides in the eighth or ninth tier of English football. A handful would survive to fight in the main competition rounds which started in November, or if they were really lucky, January, when your Man Uniteds and Arsenals entered. There’d be endless interviews with firemen or farmers or factory workers whose team had suddenly – fleetingly – found themselves in the spotlight. The biggest day of their careers, perhaps even their lives.
  • The wonderful simplicity of it all. You can’t beat a straight knockout tournament. Your team may well have played just one game. Play, lose, out. Better luck next year. But the next season you might have played six, eight, ten games. A long and winding road as some reasonably well-known band from the sixties may have mentioned. And which teams you played depended on…
  • The draw. Unlike tennis where there’s just one draw before the tournament that maps out each player’s potential progress, in the FA Cup the pairings for every round were determined by a draw, just after the completion of the previous round. These draws – numbered balls picked out of a bag, sometimes by famous ex-players – were events in themselves. In the old days, they were made on a Monday in the daytime, and school kids would crowd around radios to find out who their opponents would be. All that anticipation.
  • So much unpredictability. Because the draw was entirely random (again in stark contrast to tennis which is seeded), a big team might face another big team in an early round; local rivals and sworn enemies would happen to be drawn together; a team like Plymouth could face a 500-mile round trip; players from the fifth division got to fulfil their boyhood dreams of playing at Old Trafford or Anfield; superstars would have to negotiate muddy, sloping pitches and baying local fans. And shocks happened.
  • Replays. You lose, you’re out, the other team fights on. But what if it was a draw? Well, they’d do it all over again a few days later, but with the venue switched – the away team in the first match got to play at home in the second. Because home advantage was a bigger deal in those days than it is now, an away team would often be content with a draw and “take them back to our place”. If the replay was a draw, they’d play extra time, and then it would go to a third match and so on ad infinitum. Some FA Cup battles could turn into soap operas. The 1980 semi-final between Arsenal and Liverpool went to four games. (I was born between games two and three.) In 1991 there was a rule change to allow only one replay, followed by penalties. Now there are no replays at all.
  • The lack of live TV coverage. Yes, this was a good thing. Apart from the final and one or two other games, the competition wasn’t televised live. There were highlights, but if you wanted live coverage, you had to either go to the game or listen to the radio (as I did) and imagine.
  • The semi-finals. The stakes were massive. Everyone wanted to reach the final and to play at Wembley in front of the cameras. It was what dreams were made of. Unlike the earlier rounds, the semis were played at big neutral grounds. The best semi-final I can remember was between Chesterfield and Middlesbrough in 1997. Chesterfield were in the third division while Middlesbrough had players like Ravanelli and Emerson. The game was a classic which finished 3-3; Chesterfield were unlucky not to win. Middlesbrough won the replay comfortably, but the original game stands alone as something quite special. Now they play the semis at Wembley, which is rather crap if you ask me.
  • The final. Gosh. All that build-up throughout the day until the game finally kicked off at 3pm. Always 3pm, that was sacrosanct. You’d see the teams set off in their coaches and make their way to Wembley. Abide With Me was always played before the game, as was the national anthem. Really it was England’s Super Bowl without the ads.

Some surprise winners included Coventry (1987) and Wimbledon (1988). But for all the shocks and unfancied teams making the later stages, for almost the next 20 years it was all big teams from big cities lifting the trophy. That’s until Portsmouth won it in 2008. Back in the day when I listened to all those games on the radio, sometimes a Portsmouth game would come on. They always had a chant that sounded like church bells, which was distinctive and (I thought) rather nice. Their fans seemed pretty mental, but in a good way. What made me think of this is that Portsmouth is one of the very few UK universities that offer an applied linguistics master’s degree via distance learning.

Family - Life :)

Niece news

January 21, 2025 plutomanby 0 Comments

Yesterday morning – on the last day of Joe Biden’s presidency – my niece entered the world. She was eight pounds something, so bigger than my nephew. As far as I know both mother and baby are doing fine. A few hours after my brother sent me the picture with no accompanying text, he told me the name. No zeds, no exes, an eminently spellable and pronounceable name consisting of only four letters. That was a relief. My initial thought was to write a limerick using her name – “There was a young lady called…” – because her name lends itself rather well to that form, but I couldn’t get lines three and four to work.

But heck, they’ll have their hands full now. My brother has been truly incredible with his son, but I doubt he’ll be able to give his daughter the same kick-start in life. And I dunno, the world in 2025 just seems so devoid of meaning to me that I don’t think I’d want to bring any more humans into it. Personally I think I’d be a pretty rubbish dad anyway. A Kitty is about my limit.

Yesterday I caught up with Mark in town. It was his idea to eat at a place in the bastion, but when we got there it was totally dead. After almost coming a cropper on the icy tiling outside, we decided to check out Eat Like a Man just off Piața Unirii. We were intrigued by the name and bearded man logo. It’s basically a burger bar where you can order a normal-sized meal like we both had, or a totally abnormal-sized one. We polished off our burgers and chips in no time, while pondering whether this or that item on the menu was sufficiently manly. It’s quite a small place. The decor is bright yellow and black – Wellington colours – with none of that awful ambient music. So many places are all modern and insipid and hospitally and I can’t handle them.

Dad got an email from the people who manage their flat in St Ives to say that water had been leaking into two flats below. They had to get their friend to check it out. As it happened, there was no leak from their flat at all, but not before Mum and Dad had been sent into a mad panic over the potential cost. They still have their other St Ives flat too. At 75-odd, they shouldn’t be dealing with this. Dad told me recently about one of the model planes he flies, one that he’d designed and built himself a little while ago. (I tried to imagine doing that myself. Yep, I know what planes look like. I could probably draw out a plane and cut the bits out of balsa wood and glue them together. But would the thing fly? Not a chance. I wouldn’t even know what bits and bobs to put inside to make it fly.) This is the man who has made a living from his paintings for 45 years and put together 25 pictures for my small book. A man of many talents. He said he’d like to be in his shed designing and building model planes, but he can’t because of all the work that’s still required on the house. That made me feel sad.

Family - Music - Photos

At last some shut-eye

January 18, 2025 plutomanby 0 Comments

Still no baby news. I wonder who will be the US president when she’s born. I heard that Trump’s inauguration (ugh) will take place inside because it will – quite aptly – be bitterly cold on Monday. Heck, it’s been eight years since his first one and everything now feels eight times worse.

Elena, my neighbour who lives above me, got back yesterday. I’ve just been up to see her. She seems in remarkably fine fettle after such a trip. Her journey hasn’t affected her ability to talk, that’s for sure.

Mum and Dad have been down in Moeraki since Tuesday. They’re able to call me from there now by tapping into a neighbour’s wi-fi. Before they’d have to use some hotspot thingy outside the fish and chip shop in Hampden, and normally the line was terrible. So far they’ve had a disappointing summer, weather-wise. When we spoke it was unseasonably cold and windy there, despite the blue sky.

I slept better the last two nights. Last weekend and early this week were a total mess. Kitty’s constant darting around was doing my head in too. Seriously Kitty, you can stop this shit now. She’s calmed down a bit since. One of her favourite haunts is the top of the old cupboard in the “balcony” bit of my living room. Another of her favourites is my desk, because of all the pens and other stationery for her to play with. She’s very curious.

Since my self-imposed YouTube ban I’ve been using Spotify a lot more for music. There are two songs I’ve been playing over and over lately. One is Sad White Reggae by British band Placebo. Heaven knows why the song is called that. He talks about being on a train to Scotland (I think I just really like trains) and about every river flowing “back to Dundee”. The song is about loss. And insomnia. It just all seems to fit. The second song is Crowded House’s Four Seasons In One Day. Such a Kiwi expression. The weather could be pretty damn changeable in England too. But in Timișoara we don’t exactly get nor’westers springing up out of nowhere, or cold southerlies, or the river suddenly half-way up people’s gardens. We’re nine hours’ drive from the sea after all. Anyway, the best line of this Crowded House song for me is “Up the creek and through the mill” which is where a lot of us feel we’ve been dragged, a lot of the time. I should also mention the line “The sun shines on the black clouds hanging over the domain”. I bet a lot of people were confused by that one.

After visiting Kaufland (one of the big supermarkets) today, I decided to look around rather than head straight home. Here are a few of the pictures I took:

One of Timișoara’s other train stations

Bega-Pam: off to the left is the bread factory. I don’t know if it still operates.

A brace of bums. I don’t know how they managed to get BUM on both their cars.

The old water tower

Popa is the surname and perhaps Romania’s most common.

But how do they know?

Life :)

An invaluable friend at a trying time

January 16, 2025 plutomanby 0 Comments

The best news I had today was when one of the members of the “AI bot” generation said she didn’t want to carry on having lessons with me. I can’t face those teeth-pulling sessions right now.

The last few days I’ve felt a great sadness and a sickness in the pit of my stomach. Plus I’ve felt shattered after consecutive nights of shocking sleep, which of course is related to the previous sentence. Kitty has been a non-factor in all of this; she really just does her own thing.

Yesterday morning I met Dorothy for coffee. I’m realising now what an invaluable friend she is. When I met her at the fish fountain, it was minus five or thereabouts, but sunny and with ice crystals sparkling in the air. It was beautiful. We chatted for nearly two hours and could have managed another two but for our various obligations (five lessons, in my case). She made me aware of two brilliant poems about trains – one by Robert Louis Stevenson, the other by W H Auden. The Stevenson one, from the Victorian era of rail travel, captures the essence of travelling by train quite beautifully. We talked about some of her family members, then we discussed the book – in particular a couple of quizzes I’d put in there that she said I needed to make easier – and then we talked about how the glue that holds society together is now coming apart pretty rapidly. Finally I decided I’d briefly mention this thing that I’d never talked about with anybody before – how certain letters of the alphabet and combinations of letters elicit some pretty strong emotions in me that I manage to keep in check because I know they’re not normal. In one or two cases I can even smell them – for instance Gs and Hs make me think of the smell of horses. The Romanian word for a herd of horses is herghelie which just seems perfect to me. I’ll have to write a series of posts about this because it’s just a big part of my life.

This morning I went to the local produce market for the first time since the autumn. With the temperature well into the negatives, it was pretty low on stalls. I ended up buying a load of prunes which I didn’t expect to see there.

Elena, the lady who lives above me, is finally coming back to Romania tomorrow after six months in Canada.

Cat - Family - Language teaching - Other sports - Photos

Phase five (plus Kitty pics)

January 13, 2025 plutomanby 0 Comments

We’re all waiting for my brother’s second child to arrive. It can only be a few days away now. If my niece is born on Thursday, all three of the numbers in her date of birth (day, month and year) will be square. (That’s with the year as 2025, not just 25 which of course is also square.) That’s obviously the last thing that matters. Her name doesn’t even matter all that much. All that really matters is that she’s healthy.

Kitty. Yikes. She’s so damn active now. After four days of relative calm when she’d happily jump on cupboards and just sit there, she’s now darting through my flat at breakneck speed, often dragging something noisy. Especially at night. I just know she wants to be outside, running around chasing stuff. I hadn’t been sleeping well even pre-Kitty, and my doctor prescribed me Optisomn which has magnesium plus a concoction of other ingredients: melatonin, hops, vitamin B6, and passionflower. But hyperactive one-year-old Kitty isn’t helping me. Last night was pretty much a write-off, sleep-wise. Today I went (for the first time) to Jumbo, a Greek-owned hypermarket near the airport which sells cheap kids’ toys, cheap household stuff, cheap decorations, cheap stationery, and yes, cheap pets’ toys. I don’t know if I’ll go back there in a hurry because the floor was lethally slippery and it has a horrible layout where there’s only one way of getting from any point to any other point and you end up walking miles. I must have spent an hour there, all the time in a complete daze. I did however get Kitty a bed and a bunch of things that go rattle and ding, to go with the scratching post and few toys she already had. With a bit of luck (!) she might stop thinking that plants or flash drives or grout around the bath are toys.

Kitty pics, including the trip to the vet

I’ve had a good week of lessons, including (unusually on a Sunday) one today. No sessions with those “AI bot” young women, that’s probably why. I won’t be so lucky in the coming week. And in between I’ve had some brilliant customer service. The vet was simply a lovely person, the little lady at the pharmacy was extremely pleasant as always, and even at the mall (which I tend to avoid) I got service with a smile. I often lament Romania’s poor customer service, so when it’s the opposite it deserves to be mentioned too.

There was an interesting moment in my lesson with the 14-year-old twins on Thursday. They played Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? in a joint effort. For the £8000 question, I asked them what Concorde was. A very fast what? Plane, train, car or boat. They used their 50/50 lifeline which gave them just plane and train as options. They went for train and it was game over. While I was in the middle of explaining what Concorde actually was, the boy said “who cares”. Seeing my face, he then said “only joking”. Ah, but you’re not really joking, are you? You actually don’t care. And that isn’t your fault. It shows that when you move 20 years forward and 1000 miles east, something culturally pretty damn important (there was the crash in 2000 too which was a massive news story at the time) becomes a total nothing.

Football. Birmingham beat Lincoln 2-1 in the FA Cup. They took the lead after just 30 seconds, then with 15-odd minutes to go, Lyndon Dykes rifled home the sort of volley they use the word “exquisite” for. It was a brilliant strike. Lincoln got a late penalty that probably shouldn’t have been a penalty, but Blues held on for the win. They’ll be at home to Newcastle in the fourth round. Quite a fun draw. Another game that caught my eye was Tamworth against Spurs. It was 0-0 after 90 minutes. Up until last season, that would have meant a replay at one of the best grounds in the country, a heck of a day out and a nice big windfall for plucky little Tamworth. But no, replays have been scrapped. The game proceeded to extra time, and Tottenham won 3-0. In a few years, they’ll probably ditch extra time too. Everything just gets that tiny bit more crap, doesn’t it?

In my head I can split my time in Romania so far into four stages. The fourth stage has been the longest, starting at around the time Russia invaded Ukraine. But I’ve just had the feeling in the last few days that phase five has begun. The books, the cat, tuning out of the news, thinking about what the hell I’ll do if and when I leave Romania, and even maybe studying again.

Cat - Family - Life :) - Other sports

Kitty update

January 9, 2025 plutomanby 0 Comments

This morning I took Kitty to the vet to be jabbed. She had a thermometer stuck up her bum (What is normal body temperature for a cat? It’s not something I’d ever thought about. Turns out it’s a couple of degrees higher than for humans), then she got the rabies vaccine. The vet – a middle-aged lady who was lovely – said we were on the verge of being rabies-free after 15 years of no cases, then a case popped up in Timiș two years ago which reset the clock to zero. The vet said that three-coloured cats like Kitty are almost always female, for some genetic reason. I can see there’s a long Wikipedia page all about the genetics of cat fur.

She’s been a pleasure to look after so far. I was amazed this morning how easily she slipped into a pink zipped bag I’d bought for her. Having a pet means you have conversations and interactions that you otherwise wouldn’t have. For instance, my brother called me on WhatsApp so his wife and son could see her. He told me not to put the food and water near each other, and gave me the evolutionary reason why: a cat (whose sense of smell is much stronger than a human’s) may think that its water is contaminated if its food source is too close by. There’s a lot I’m finding out.

Last night I spoke to Mum and Dad. They’d clearly been speaking to my brother who must have knocked some sense into them about the cat. I really didn’t understand it – my brother has had a cat for years. It’s maybe something to do with me living in an apartment, whereas my brother lives in a house. Dad thinks you can’t do anything if you live in a flat. But the way they were talking on Sunday, it was like I’d have to pay to put Kitty through university.

On that note, I’ve been thinking about doing a master’s degree in linguistics. Probably applied linguistics – the practical implications of it – though I wouldn’t mind knowing more of the theory too. I still get confused when it comes to velar fricatives and the like, and I doubt I could accurately diagram a sentence. If I did it, I’d probably do it over two years (I have too much work to do it in one) as a distance learning course from a UK university. The biggest benefit would simply be the knowledge, though having the piece of paper at the end wouldn’t do me any harm if, say, I wanted to go back to New Zealand and work there. There’s one major snag in all this: the cost. It would set me back £10,900. Eleven grand. It’s a fair old chunk of change, especially when I live in Romania and everything is at a much lower level. I might not even get accepted. I’ll ask my brother what he thinks – he seems to be the go-to guy for just about everything right now.

I see that Blues play Lincoln in the FA Cup on Saturday. It’s an early kick-off, so I’ll be busy teaching. Lincoln are known as the Imps – their club crest is a funny imp mascot thingy. All these cool little traditions of English football. Lincoln, by the way, is where my brother did his degree through. His graduation ceremony took place in the picturesque Lincoln Cathedral. The whole city is extremely picturesque if Google Maps is anything to go by. (I don’t think I’ve ever been there.)

One last thing. This morning I saw an article in the Guardian on the unremitting beigeness of people’s homes, a few days after I’d (sort of) written about the subject myself. Dressing your kids in beige is bordering on cruelty to me. One sentence that stood out to me was: “It is difficult to resist being a leaf in the wind of trend and fashion.” I dunno, I seem to find that quite easy.

We’ve had lovely spring-like weather the last three or four days, with temperatures climbing into the mid-teens. We’ll be back down to earth with a wintry bump very shortly, though.

Books - Cat - Films - Other sports - Writing a book

Stress-free so far

January 8, 2025 plutomanby 0 Comments

Kitty has spent most of today sleeping. So far she’s been pretty stress-free. My student was quite taken with her last night as she wandered into our maths lesson. He’s 18 and lives with his parents. I’d definitely want to have a pet if I lived on my own, he said. Yes, the companionship is rather nice. (I’ve lived on my own for almost as long as he’s been alive.) I really was taken aback by that barrage of negativity I received from Mum and Dad. As my brother said, I’m in my mid-forties (!) so surely I can do what I like at this point.

I watched all two hours of that Michael Moore film called Sicko from 2007 (still the Bush era) which was recently released for free on YouTube. It was hard to watch it and not get angry and upset. And to think that the American people have voted to make things even worse. I had to laugh though when the US healthcare system was rated 37th in the world, “just ahead of Slovenia”, as if that was really terrible. I went to Slovenia last summer; I bet their health system is way ahead of America’s now. It isn’t the only aspect in which the film hasn’t aged well. “Look how wonderful the British NHS is.” Well, it kind of was back then. It’s sad to see how much Britain has regressed since. My aunt might still be alive now if it was in its former state. (Covid is partly to blame, but only partly.) Another thing: for three years (2011 to 2014) I worked for an American insurance company that featured (damningly) in the film. If I’d seen the film beforehand, who knows, I may never have applied for the job and my life might have taken a different turn.

Luke Littler. World darts champion and a phenomenon. Still not 18, though he looks more like 28. The final didn’t go that long, so I stayed up and watched the whole thing. Scoring-wise, there wasn’t a whole lot in it between Littler and Michael van Gerwen, but by the time the Dutchman figured out how to finish, he was 4-0 down. Littler was too good (also too confident in his ability and unbothered by the occasion) to let that lead slip. He was especially strong when he threw first in a leg, not giving van Gerwen a chance to break his throw. He could rack up a dozen or more world titles, he’s that good, but you never know – van Gerwen himself was practically unbeatable for a while, but he’s “only” won three world titles so far. Darts players can have such long careers that Littler could still be competing when I’m a very old man.

After my three two-hour lessons on Saturday, I tuned in to watch the second half of Birmingham City’s game at Wigan. Blues were already two goals up at half-time. A player called Ethan Laird ran riot and they scored again, running out comprehensive 3-0 winners. Blues are now top of the league with 53 points at the exact half-way stage. Last season (in the league above) they managed 50 points in total and still nearly survived. I noticed Wigan had someone called Aasgaard. To go with your shin guards and mouth guard. By the end of the game, the home stands were deserted, while the away fans applauded the winning team and cheered and chanted and all the rest of it. When I see something like that, I’m reminded of how incredible English football can be, especially outside the top echelons. Those away fans. Birmingham to Wigan isn’t that far, but you get fans of clubs like Plymouth or Carlisle trekking up and down the country to follow their hometown team. I always think it must be a whole load of fun. The trips at least as much as the games. Part of me wishes I’d grown up in a football supporting family with strong ties to my home town, instead of being the sort of person who can up sticks and move somewhere where they don’t even speak my language. (I doubt the travelling is as much fun as it used to be. It’s got so damn expensive now. And cup competitions – which can take you to some surprise locations – used to be massively exciting, but the Champions League and the ridiculous sums of money in football have sucked the life out of them.)

Writing about away football supporters has also jogged my memory of a book I read in 2002: A Season with Verona by Tim Parks. The author was a Brit who lived in Italy and was mad about Hellas Verona. He’d cover vast distances on overnight buses to away games. I remember his trip to Bari for the first game of the season; Bari in the deep south is practically a different planet from Verona in the north. His tales made for good reading, but he revelled in the racism and insults and tribalism a bit too much for my liking.

As for my first book, it’s pretty much done now. Dorothy pointed out one or two errors and omissions, which I have now corrected. Only one typo, surprisingly. I still have to write an introduction, and then (in theory at least) it should be ready to go.

Cat - Family

This one wasn’t on my bingo card

January 7, 2025 plutomanby 0 Comments

Get cat. Not on my “goals for the new year” list. But on day five of 2025, I took possession of Kitty. My British friends in Dumbrăvița somehow acquired it – her – but because they have two large dogs, they were desperate to have it rehomed so she didn’t get killed. She’s been vaccinated and dewormed and defleaed, but not spayed. I really hope she isn’t pregnant. I hope to keep her within the confines of my flat. She’s little – just under three kilos – and a mixture of black, white, and a kind of caramel brown colour. So for now at least, I’ve joined the 48% (accordingly to a survey) of households in Romania with at least one cat. That’s a really high number, but when I look at the sheer number of cats skulking around any street or apartment block, it passes my sniff test. Yes, Kitty is her actual name. I’ve got a cat that’s basically called Cat. My friends called her that, and it’s even written on her little booklet. Though they said I could change the name, I won’t, because I can’t think of anything better (it’s harder somehow when she’s multicoloured), and I live in Romania where Kitty isn’t a generic cat name.

When I told my parents that I’d acquired a cat, they were apoplectic. Really angry, both of them. As if I’d destroyed my life. Why would you do this to yourself? You’ll have to clean out the stinky litter tray, it’ll make a mess of your furniture, you’ll have to make trips to the vet, and how will you ever be able to go away? You live in a flat, for crying out loud. You damn well get rid of it before we come over. They were also angry with my friends for foisting the cat on me, as they saw it. And yes, I get it. Having a pet is a complication, and fewer complications is nearly always a good thing. Before Kitty arrived I was up half the night thinking of all those complications. But jeez, they spent nearly a million dollars on one massive complication that utterly dwarfs having a mostly independent animal in your home; because of it they couldn’t go away for years, and it ended up making my brother pretty upset. Me too, honestly. When I showed Mum the cat on our Skype call, she perked up a bit – “It is actually quite a nice-looking cat.” When I was little, we had a female cat called Pep. In 1989, prior to our six-month stay in New Zealand, Mum gave Pep to one of the other teachers to look after. After a couple of months in Temuka we got a letter from her: Pep had gone missing. We never saw her again. Since then, my parents have become pretty anti-pet. A few years later my older cousin dumped her fat cat on us; I’m sure it had a name but for us it was just The Cat.

It’s quite possible I won’t have Kitty for all that long. Dorothy said she’d really like to have a cat, whereas I’m basically cat-agnostic. Fine with one, fine without one. If she really wants Kitty, she can have her.

I stumbled upon something online today that said that 48% of Birmingham residents have at least one tattoo. I wasn’t looking for anything related to Birmingham, and certainly not tattoos, so I’m not exactly sure how it came up. Anyway, that’s a staggeringly high figure, and the same as the cats-in-Romania number. Maybe I should get a tattoo as well. Mum and Dad would really love that.

Update: I’ve just spoken to my brother. I showed him the cat and told him about Mum and Dad’s reaction. They’re being bloody ridiculous, he said. Without prompting, he mentioned their insane house business.

My niece is likely to arrive any day now.