Month: April 2025

Family - Language learning - Language teaching - Life :) - Other sports - Photos

At least there’s a this time (touch wood)

April 29, 2025 by 0 Comments

Just been checking all my payments for lessons. A horrible job because of all the different methods – pre-Covid when almost everyone paid cash was way easier – and I only get round to it every two months or so. But I’ve done it, so I can cross that off. Phew.

Yesterday I went back to the immigration office. It seemed I had everything in order – or pus la punct as they say here – and the guy (with a star on his epaulettes rather than a stripe this time) told me to come back at the end of May to pick up my new residence card which will be valid for ten years (not five, like my current one). I might then need to get a new ID card for my car so that its address matches what’s on the ID card for me; as always I’ll need to ask a Romanian who’s used to all this bureaucracy.

On a side street near me

It’s a shame Mum and Dad couldn’t have come over Easter. I did suggest that before they booked, but as always, Mum had made up her mind (something to do with the garden, probably) and that was that. I had a lot less work over Easter; now I’m having days jam-packed with lessons again. So while they’re here I’ll have to cancel a load of work, or else have my lessons and see less of them. When we go away for a few days, I’ll clearly have no choice and that’s fine. Obviously I’m very thankful that I’ll be seeing them at all, but, y’know, it would have been way more convenient if they’d come just two weeks earlier. I did put this to them when I spoke to them on Sunday. “We can spend more time with you next time we come over.” My brother and I think we’ll be lucky if there’s a next time. There nearly wasn’t a this time. (I’m still not counting any chickens until I see them in the arrivals lounge.)

Mark Carney’s Liberals have won the Canadian election. It looks like being a narrow win involving a confidence-and-supply type deal that often occurs in New Zealand, but it was a heck of a comeback when it looked like Pierre Polievre (the Conservative) would win. Trump changed all of that. He put the very existence of Canada in jeopardy. I really liked Carney’s victory speech. All that talk of humility and unity and being a leader also of those who voted against his party. What a contrast from Trump who basically says, to the half of voters who didn’t back me, fuck you. They said this morning that Trump had been in power for 100 days. Is that all?! Less time than I’ve had Kitty. It already feels like an age.

Round one of Romania’s presidential election takes place this Sunday. The second round is two weeks later, when my parents will be here. The president’s power is limited in Romania but the stakes are high all the same. What sort of country does Romania want to be? Electing George Simion (or somebody like him – there could be someone practically unheard of like last time) will make that very obvious.

At the end of last night’s online session, my student said “S-a mărit ziua” which means “the days are getting longer”. I took me a while to figure out what she’d said because she talks so fast. That simple phrase which is not so simple made me realise what a devil of a language Romanian is gramatically. I’m not improving; if anything I’m getting worse. Chances to speak Romanian for any length of time are getting fewer and farther between. For a short time, when Dorothy dropped out, my Romanian lessons were useful, but now that Dorothy is back (she’s much better than me) I’m not able to learn much.

Snooker. The quarter-finals are about to start. Six real contenders, I’d say, plus a couple of surprises. I’d put Luca Brecel clearly in the “contender” category after his ludicrous performance against Si Jiahui. It was just mental. The two matches I’m most excited about are Williams versus Higgins (the old guys; a century between them) and Brecel against Judd Trump. Yes, another Trump. Ronnie O’Sullivan I suppose is the favourite because, well, it’s him, and he’s playing Si Jiahui who didn’t look that great in his last match. The other match is Zhao Xintong (a huge talent) against Chris Wakelin who has already produced two upsets. The matches take place on two tables still. It’ll be a fun two days – this round tends to produce more mayhem than any other.

Football. Birmingham totally dominated Mansfield 4-0 on Sunday. If they win their final two matches (both away, so it won’t be easy) they’ll finish on a whopping 111 points, which will be a very memorable number and will blow all other professional teams’ totals out of the water. The record is 106 which Reading achieved 20-odd years ago. But mostly I was interested in the presentation of the league trophy after the match. A big delay, then finally the champagne. Yes, a few hundred fans got onto the pitch. Some people think they should be hung, drawn and quartered. For me it’s no big deal.

Finally, it looks like Spain and Portugal are back in business after their massive outage; 60% of Spain was plunged into darkness in five seconds. You wonder how something that could even happen, but our systems are now hyperconnected like never before.

Cat - Family - Life :) - Other sports

Permission to stay

April 28, 2025 by 0 Comments

Kitty showed some serious affection while writing this post. That was very nice, but it didn’t make the task any easier. She has been more affectionate of late; what a difference that makes.

Kitty on my bikes in front of Dad’s painting of Piața Traian in Timișoara

Some excitement now: the time until my parents get here is less than the time they’ll spend here. I spoke to them this morning; I asked about their travel plans in Romania – would they prefer a mountain trip or a valley trip or a city trip? – but we won’t make any decisions until they arrive eleven days from now. Who knows how they’ll feel after the flight.

I’ve made two bike trips to Sânmihaiu Român in the last week. This morning I grabbed a coffee there. People were already drinking beer; a raucous game of cruce (the popular card game with the Hungarian deck) was in progress in the corner. Frogs were chirruping away on the banks of the river, as they do at this time of year.

My street on Wednesday night

The new patriotic bridge at Sânmihaiu Român

Probably the biggest thing for me in the last week has been renewing my residence permit. I went to the office on Wednesday – remarkably there was no queue – and was told to apply on their website. Their site, or portal, was hard to make head or tail of. I didn’t know which of the many application options to choose, and when I did select one, it told me I had to upload seven separate documents, some of which were unknown to me. To top it all off, the first available appointment was on 4th September, which would get more delayed as I got my documents together. On Friday I went back to the office. A short queue this time. When I reached the front, the young bloke (he had just one stripe on his shoulders; I’ve seen up to five, and some even have stars) told me it should be fairly easy because I’m in a special “Brexit” category. He went away for some time, then came back with a list of documents I needed. Best of all, I can make my application at the desk rather than the inscrutable mess of online. And it shouldn’t take until the autumn. (Ideally, I wanted to get my updated permit, which runs out next April and currently has the wrong address, before the upcoming election. I was worried that I might not even get it at all before my current one runs out, and I’d be unable to get back into Romania if I left.) The immigration office now has two people on the desks rather than just one, making it a lot less awful.

Last Friday I sent off the introduction for the book that may or may not ever get published. I really don’t like having to write about myself. (Yeah, I do it here all the time, but it’s not at all the same thing.)

Snooker. They’re now approaching the end of the second-round matches, which are all first to 13 frames. Last night’s action was some of the best I’ve seen. They had the first session of Luca Brecel (winner in 2023) and Ding Junhui (a former finalist and the first of the Chinese players to really hit the scene). Ding rattled in a 141 break in the first frame. What a start. But then Brecel won the next seven frames in electrifying fashion. He went for and got everything – doubles, plants, you name it – and Ding hardly even had a shot. He even knocked in a three-ball plant that moved so many reds I couldn’t figure out what had just happened. It was like, I don’t give a shit, I’m going for this, and it was mesmerising. He was spot-on positionally, too. He did the same thing to Ronnie O’Sullivan the year he won it. Seven frames, just like last night, against the best player ever. What’s even more remarkable is that the intervening two years he’s done nothing of note on the snooker table. He has a private jet, which is interesting (it’s not like he’s got mega-rich from the game). He jet-setted off from Sheffield to sunny Portugal in between his first two matches. He’s a highly unconventional character, that’s for sure. Brecel and Ding are about to get under way again.

After that lightning session, on came John Higgins and Xiao Guodong to finish their match in an unscheduled fourth session. Higgins was on the verge of winning 13-10 within the scheduled three sessions, but he missed a simple (for him) red and Xiao cleared up to make it 12-11 and they had to come back. The 24th frame was lengthy and tense. This time Higgins missed match ball. Xiao cleared again; 12-12. Finally in the decider Higgins got over the line at 12:30 am my time, but not before suffering an awful kick. Great value for money for those who were there. The match as whole took over ten hours; there was a 63-minute frame amongst them. Higgins now plays Mark Williams who had a marathon of his own against Hossein Vafaei of Iran, winning 13-10.

Family - Life :) - Other sports - Politics

The new religion

April 23, 2025 by 0 Comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Books - Family - Life :) - Other sports - Politics

Halfway to ninety

April 20, 2025 by 0 Comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cat - Family - Life :) - Other sports

God it can be hard sometimes

April 19, 2025 by 0 Comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cat - Other sports

Kitty: the first hundred days

April 16, 2025 by 0 Comments

It’s actually a bit over 100 days. So has it been worth it? Kitty is a lovely little thing with a beautiful soft coat, and that’s probably what made me take her on in the first place. It’s fascinating just to watch her. Cats – especially young ones like her – are amazing animals. I often marvel at how well designed she is, with her speed, strength (those back legs!) and flexibility. As I lumber around my flat, I feel utterly pathetic in comparison. I’ve also become acutely aware of how few places on my body I’m capable of licking. (She can get to almost anywhere, and for the few places she can’t, she’ll just lick her paw, then wipe her wet paw on the desired area.)

So, Kitty is great to observe, but is there any benefit to actually having her? After all, there are cats all over the show in Timișoara. I could just watch them. That’s a tough question. She knows where to pee and poo, and she hasn’t wrecked my furniture as I’d feared, so really she hasn’t been a problem. The real disappointment is that she hasn’t become a friend. She loves to play, but not really when I’m involved. Expressions of affection – or even interest in me – are extremely rare. Some of that must be down to her start in life. The only time Kitty seems halfway friendly (and only sometimes, even then) is when she’s purring away in an inactive state. If I come into the living room at night, she’ll sometimes rub up against me. It’s lovely when she does that, but all too rare. At times I feel sorry for her as she looks longingly out the window. I bet she’d love to be on the other side. I’ve got used to the zooming which took me aback at first, but I really wish she wouldn’t jump on my desk so much. My desk is a place for work and concentration, not a place for Kitty to play. I often end up manhandling her off my desk, but she usually jumps back on anyway unless I lock her in the living room – I so sometimes resort to that. I’m going to invest in a water pistol.

In short, Kitty is fine and I don’t regret having her, but if someone (a student, say) told me they really wanted a cat and had some outdoor space at home, I’d probably palm her off onto that person.

Last night I watched the Champions League quarter-final second leg between Aston Villa and Paris St-Germain. I almost never watch football at that level, but by golly, what a match it was. So open and so fast. It was like a different sport from the other games I’ve seen lately at a lower level, or even the top-level games I’d watch back in the nineties. The sheer pace was dizzying. Villa, already 3-1 down from the away leg, conceded twice to go four goals behind on aggregate, and surely it was done. But they got one back before half-time and though they still had a mountain to climb, the game was so ridiculously open… They got two more early in the second half. Madness. Just wave upon wave of Villa attacks against perhaps the best club team in the world. And they still had ages to level things or even win it. Villa had some great chances, and some superb saves from PSG keeper Donnarumma basically made the difference in the end. I have no idea why they played only three minutes of added time. PSG had a player called Désiré Doué. What a name. Doué means gifted or talented in French. It was a night that will live long in the memory of Villa fans, including Prince William who was there (no idea why he supports Aston Villa – the name?) but it was nearly one of the all-time great comebacks in the sport.

Snooker. Drama, as expected, in yesterday’s last-round qualifiers. The best match was between Zhao Xintong (a supreme talent; he’d just come back from a suspension for match-fixing – ugh) and Elliott Slessor who had the misfortune of having to play him. They both played at such a high level; Zhao won 10-8. There were also two 10-9 finishes. I felt sorry for Irishman Aaron Hill who had been well in front but was pipped by David Gilbert – he was just about in tears at the end. You could tell how much it meant. Eight more qualifiers today. The tournament proper starts on Saturday.

Can he keep the black out? This was a crazy tippy-tappy exchange. Wells (in the picture here) did eventually sink the black and Wilson won the frame, but Wells was the winner in a decider.

After watching both football and snooker, I’ve decided that snooker is more my thing. It has a nice mix of drama and relaxation.

We’ve got warm weather in store for the next little while.

Driving - Family - Other sports - Writing a book

If you’re worried about that…

April 15, 2025 by 0 Comments

Yesterday when I called Mum and Dad – I’m doing that a lot at the moment – Dad was pulling his hair out trying to get his Skype transferred to Teams. A good sign, I thought, if you’re worried about that rather than Mum’s health. Conversation then turned to Rory McIlroy’s play-off win in the Masters and a packet of coffee beans that Mum showed me with an annoyingly pointless Māori translation on it (Pīni kawhe; there’s no B in Māori, so they use P, its voiceless counterpart). More good signs. Then they talked about actually booking a flight to the UK for 22nd May and luggage allowances and all that stuff. (They’re scheduled to arrive in Timișoara on the 8th.) Mum was looking good once again, and seems to be more regular now. She still mentioned nausea, and hasn’t played golf (which was always a given in her life) for some time. No guarantees of course, but things are much more positive than two weeks ago when my brother had almost accepted that we wouldn’t be seeing them.

Big news from the snooker qualifying. I mentioned last time that Jackson Page was in line for a bumper payout if he could somehow make a second maximum break. Well, he went and did it in the same match. Nobody had ever made two in the same match before. One of the commentators was left practically speechless. For Page, who is ranked 35th in the world and is just 23, that £147,000 (plus various other assorted prizes) will be life-changing. I stayed up last night to watch two matches (at the same time) that both finished 10-8. In one of them, Matthew Stevens got over the line after the lightning quick Thai player Thepchaiya Un-Nooh went for a kamikaze shot on a red. Today and tomorrow the final-round qualifiers take place. The spectators in Sheffield pay just £12 for a day’s action – such great value. It reminds me of qualifying for grand slams in tennis. I really wish I’d seen Wimbledon qualifying when I was younger. I had no idea of what drama can unfold until I saw Australian Open qualifying one time (for free).

A wet day today. I called Mark’s car mechanic guy but he said he’ll be on holiday until 5th May, so I’ll just leave it until then. There are many reasons to like my car, such as its Frenchness (I’ve always thought French cars are cool), its age (it pre-dates the era when “everything’s computer” as Trump put it), and its incredibly low fuel consumption. I really hope it survives.

Encouraging news on the book front, which I’ve sort of neglected of late. I have a recommendation from somebody Dorothy used to know, and may also have a second one. That should increase the chance that it gets accepted by the Minister of Culture. (I still don’t properly understand all of this.)

Trump called the latest Russian attack on Ukraine “a mistake”. It really is a case now of “make America go away”.

Driving - Family - Life :) - Other sports

Floriile

April 14, 2025 by 0 Comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

Family - Language teaching - Life :) - Other sports

The madness of Mum

April 11, 2025 by 0 Comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Driving - Life :) - Other sports

Body talk

April 8, 2025 by 0 Comments

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

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

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

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

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

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