Month: May 2025

Family - Life :) - Romania

Keeping my arms to myself

May 28, 2025 by 0 Comments

A lighter day today, which is just what I need. Having my parents here was quite stressful honestly, and since then I’ve loads of lessons plus all the book stuff. (I’ve now sent off the cover for the dictionary. That should be it.) Probably the most stressful thing about Mum and Dad being here (well, Mum, lets be frank) apart from the two really shitty bits, was all the washing and cleaning. In theory it should have been a plus having Mum around to help, because normally I have to do it all myself, but while she was here the chores went from being a gentle drum beat that accompanies my life to crashing cymbals constantly in my ear.

On Friday I asked Dorothy if I do have a problem with arm-waving when I get stressed or annoyed. She said yes, she remembered a time when the older woman at the publishing house gushed forth with confusing information, as is her wont, and I waved my arms furiously in frustration, something Dorothy called “concerning behaviour”. She emphasised that it happened just the once. So it’s something I’m going to watch out for and will try to curb. (Mum walking out of the pub because I waved my arms is clearly quite ludicrous, though.) One time I accidentally recorded part of a lesson and I was taken aback by how much I waved my arms and tilted my head, even when I wasn’t frustrated at all. Maybe it’s just a nervous tic. (There’s also the leg-shaking which a younger student pulled me up on.)

My most enjoyable hour and a half since my parents left (so far) has been meeting Mark in town on Sunday. We went to Berăria 700 and had two beers each and plenty of conversation. I liked the simplicity of that.

Yesterday I booked a trip to the UK. I’m taking the early flight from Timișoara to Luton on 24th June, then coming back on 3rd July a different way: I’ll fly from Stansted to Budapest in the afternoon and then catch a train to Timișoara. My sleep-free experience at Luton Airport last summer is something I hope never to repeat.

On Monday I took possession of something pretty important: my permanent residence permit, as they call it, which doesn’t run out until April 2035. That piece of plastic is made even more valuable by Romania’s presidential election result. By the way, Nicușor Dan still needs to pick a prime minister and cobble together a government. He was sworn in on Monday amid a torrential downpour. I’ve been careful not to mention the election to my students unless they do so first, or unless it’s come up before in conversation.

Some other things I didn’t mention from Mum and Dad’s stay, probably because I’d forgotten them. One was all the dogs on the roadside during the stop-start drive from Brașov to Râmnicu Vâlcea. They were mostly old, scraggy things. Until fairly recently, when there was a drastic cull, Romania had a big problem with stray dogs in cities. Another thing that comes to mind is Romanians’ priorities when it comes to accommodation. This was of some frustration to Mum. She wanted a place with an electric kettle (I agree, for us that’s a basic requirement) but instead these places on booking.com all boasted that they had slippers. “Fuck the slippers!” Mum said. Highly amusing, I must say. Last weekend I saw a YouTube video by the excellent RobWords which delved into the most loved and hated words in the English language and gave the results of a poll. “Ethereal” topped the survey of best words (it’s OK, but it wouldn’t feature in my top ten), while “phlegm” was the most hated. I get why; it doesn’t sound too bad, but it looks disgusting and describes something pretty nasty too. In the Black Church in Brașov, Mum noticed the word “pewage” repeatedly on signs next to the pews: “This pewage is not in use.” Neither of us had seen the word before. That’s got to be up there with “phlegm” if you ask me.

I’m now making a concerted effort to contact Mum more via email. Normally I email Dad, but I think the more I communicate with Mum the better the relationship between us will be. That’s my hope anyway.

Next time I’ll post some pictures from the trip.

Family - Politics - Romania - Travel: Romania

Stress test: my parents’ stay

May 26, 2025 by 0 Comments

The weather has been cooler and wetter than normal for this time of year. The pungent whiff of lime trees all over the city has therefore been delayed. If it could stay like this all through the summer I’d be most happy, but it most certainly won’t.

Nicușor Dan will be sworn in as president later today. When I spoke to Matei’s parents on Saturday, they talked of their plans to leave the country in the event of a Simion victory. Like many others with good jobs in the main cities, they weren’t joking. A win for Simion would have meant another brain drain out of Romania. On Thursday, however, I had a lesson with a 14-year-old boy who said the election results were fake because just look at how many followers Simion has on TikTok! He said he expected “chaos” in Romania now and lamented the fact that Romania couldn’t have a “real man” as president. Ugh. If he is at all typical of his generation, Romania’s long-term future is bleak.

I’ve been exhausted ever since Mum and Dad left early on Thursday morning. I’ve had some very busy days of lessons, plus on Friday I had a meeting about the books. Plural now, because the publishers have decided to wrap both books into one “project” that still needs to be approved by an organisation called the AFCN (Administrația Fondului Cultural Național) which provides funding for cultural projects like books. The older lady went through all of this in great detail while I struggled to stay awake, even though I knew it was important. I was just that tired. (Also, in the morning, Dorothy got me to deliver a table from her friend’s house to hers. The table was an inch too wide to fit in my car, so it needed to be taken apart. Her friend didn’t have enough screwdrivers and spanners – I’d have brought some if I’d known – so she had to borrow some off her neighbour who luckily was in. I could have done without all that.) After nine hours of lessons on Saturday, I spent most of yesterday getting bits and pieces together for the AFCN, including CVs for both me and my father, a “justification” for the project, excerpts and so on. I still haven’t got the title finalised for the large book.

So I set the alarm for 3:50 on Thursday morning which, as it turned out, was far earlier than I needed to. I let Mum cuddle Kitty one last time (how much she liked the cat was a revelation after all the negativity when I got her), then took Mum and Dad to the airport where they checked in, and that was that. Their flight and trip from Luton to St Ives were painless. When they got to the flat, Mum sent me a lovely email to say how much she appreciated my help in Romania and also how helpful the staff at the airport bus station were. On Friday my brother came to the flat, then on Saturday he drove Mum and Dad down to Poole. They’ve now seen their granddaughter for the first time. Mum was busy playing with her grandson in the background and everything looked very jolly.

She wasn’t quite like that with me. Just like when I visited New Zealand in 2023, she would switch from being lovely to being someone I didn’t want to be within a mile of, at the drop of a hat. With all the talk of her digestive problems, which still need to be properly looked at, her stress levels are a much bigger issue. That’s why that trip we did was badly planned on my part – all that booking accommodation and driving was just begging for her to turn shitty. I mean, I even don’t like to move that often. And she now lacks that sense of adventure that she once had.

Last Tuesday I had lessons until 7:30. We went to the beer factory afterwards – a pretty late dinner by our standards. That didn’t help. Mum wasn’t in a great mood – maybe she was nervous for the trip to the UK – and she loses interest in food if it’s not at her normal time. Unlike the other time we ate there, the tables were free of paper menus and instead had QR codes to scan. I’m not at all a fan of QR code menus, but Mum really couldn’t face the idea of ordering dinner in that way. I suggested we eat outside; maybe there’d be paper menus there. Indeed I could see some, but when I asked the waiter for one, he told us – in aggressive fashion – to scan the damn QR code. The paper menus aren’t in English, he said. Look, I can read Romanian. I then got a bit animated, I suppose. Then Mum decided she couldn’t handle me waving my arms like that and stormed out. Great. Dad and I ordered a beer each. Dad told me how hard it is to live with Mum and how he’ll often go to his studio even if he has nothing to paint, just for the peace and quiet. He said he’s resigned to living the rest of his life under constant stress; his remaining years will not be happy ones. It’s all so very sad. A man who would normally float calmly through life, almost like my favourite snooker player Mark Williams, having to live like that. And it’s sad for Mum too – as well as being my mother, she’s fundamentally a very good person who wants the best for people. To see her under so much stress when she’s one of life’s great winners, someone who has everything she could possibly want, is so upsetting. Fifteen minutes later Mum came back, still very angry. We ordered food. Mum’s mood lifted just a little – there were two people who must have been identical twins on the table opposite that looked just like someone she knew in Geraldine. We got home, I put some music on, and we went to bed.

I had no lessons on Wednesday morning, so I took Mum and Dad to Ciacova, a place south of here that I’d only previously been to on a Sunday. In midweek it was much more interesting. Ciacova was a bustling little town, complete with its huge cobbled square, old men on bikes that were almost as old, meeting up for a coffee or (even at that time of day) a beer. As my parents said, it would have made a good film set; it could have been 1950s France. And the surrounding architecture is quite something. They really enjoyed Ciacova and (earlier) Buziaș; going to those places was stress-free – they were good decisions on my part. I know now that the trick is to keep stress to an absolute minimum.

Dad isn’t immune to stress either. So much of it is caused by modern tech. Both my parents struggle with that. I do to, if I’m honest, or rather I make a concerted effort to pick and choose the tech that I can handle. The very idea of a smart watch that can receive messages makes me break out into a cold sweat, so I’ll never get one. Neither will I get one of those “hey Google” thingies that sit on your desk. Dad would also benefit from deleting the damn Daily Mail app from his tablet. So often I’d see him engrossed in it. Come on Dad, you’re better than that. It gets him worked up about LGBTQ stuff which I see as mostly an irrelevance. It’s not even the political position of the paper that bothers me (though it is firmly on the right, while I’ve always thought of Dad as being squarely in the middle); it’s the bile and hatred that it – and the people who comment on it – spit out. Reading it will make you bitter and angry.

I plan to spend nine days in the UK from 24th June – I’ll meet up with the whole family over there – though I haven’t yet decided what to do with Kitty. Later in the summer I’m planning to visit Poland. Stay in the same place for five nights. Don’t move. Life is easier that way.

I’ve got more to say, but this has already been a long one. I’ll put up some photos next time.

Driving - Family - Travel: Romania

Tough trip with Mum and Dad — Part 2 of 2

May 22, 2025 by 0 Comments

So we were walking up the hill to our apartment in Brașov when Mum decided to spout some bollocks about Jacinda Ardern. Seriously, why New Zealand politics here and now? I told her what I thought, which I probably shouldn’t have done considering she was already in a crappy mood. That evening was so terrible I don’t want to write about it, though I will say that Mum talked about wanting to die. It was similar to the time I fell out with her in 2016 just before coming to Romania, although this time Dad was also involved and she got really shitty with him too. In fact she accused us of ganging up on her. It was made worse by having to book our next place to stay – she insisted on doing that, even though she was in no fit state to do so. It took her two angst-filled hours. She booked a night in Râmnicu Vâlcea which sits on the Olt River.

The trip to Râmnicu Vâlcea started off great with all the sleepy villages and picturesque countryside, complete with hay stooks and storks up lamp-posts. We stopped in the well-kept, bustling town of Râșnov, not too far from Brașov, whose focal point is a 13th-century fortress. But as we traversed the hills, we ran into a massive roading project which required incredible manpower and considerable expense. Mum was extremely anxious the whole time, and that didn’t make driving any easier. We were constantly stuck at red lights as traffic was reduced to one lane. It was also pretty warm and I was having trouble with the air con. At one point I was at the head of the queue and the traffic light was out, so I just bowled on as you would, only to meet head-on traffic which I was lucky to be able to swerve clear of. Then near our destination there was a maniacal driver that could have wiped out several cars with his overtaking manoeuvre. Nothing unusual for Romania, but it frightened the bajeezus out of Mum.

Finding our apartment at Râmnicu Vâlcea was stressful in itself. These privately owned places just are stress-inducing. We stayed there the night without even seeing the town or the river, then hung around for a maddeningly late breakfast (9:20) that was delivered in a car.

Then, off to Sibiu. Not an especially long drive, but a wet one. The temperature had plummeted. I found what seemed to be the right address but it was way out of town. We got there in the end; the owner guided us through the narrow archway into the courtyard that housed our apartment which was the best of the three we stayed in by a mile. Mum had an afternoon nap, which did wonders for her. She was fine after that and for the next three days, after which it all kicked off once more. We ventured into the city which was close at hand. We seemed to spend a lot of time in shoe shops before looking around the Catholic church. We’d all been to Sibiu before and the familiarity was nice, even if it was still raining. I didn’t feel any of the wonder and excitement at seeing Sibiu that I did in 2016, though. Looking back, that was something quite special. Magical, even. We had a simple but decent meal, and after a good sleep we were on the road again, back to Timișoara. (We’d planned to wander around Sibiu in the morning, but it was still wet and horrible.) The rain made the first half of the drive tricky, but it then brightened up. When we got back, I went over to Dorothy’s to pick up Kitty. She’d been well looked after.

If Mum and Dad come back this way again, there’s no way I’ll do a trip like that with them. I wanted to show them a bit of the country, but that kind of travelling is far too much, for Mum especially. Four nights in Sibiu or maybe Cluj, staying in the same place the whole time, would be fine. Maybe. With Mum, there’s no guarantee that anything will be fine.

Family - Politics - Romania - Tennis

Dan the man (what a relief)

May 19, 2025 by 0 Comments

Frankly I’m shocked. Romanians used their collective brainpower to not elect George Simion, a thug, a bully, an ex-football hooligan, an isolationist (which you can’t sensibly be in Romania), a Trump fan and a Russian sympathiser. Instead they gave a five-year presidential term to Nicușor Dan, mayor of Bucharest, who is pro-Europe and pro-brain. Dan got 53.6%. At the beginning the result was in doubt. At 9pm a pair of exit polls showed Dan in the 54-55% range, but the diaspora (who made up about 14% of the overall vote and for some bizarre reason favoured Simion) weren’t included in those estimates. The polls only had to be off by three points or so and Simion could have won. Both Dan and Simion claimed victory initially, but Dan and his supporters were clearly in a chirpier mood while Simion was dripping with aggression – there was a man in a red MAGA hat alongside him which told you all you needed to know. (Simion had called his opponent “autistic” and had refused to debate with him.) The results came through impressively quickly and by 10:30 there was no realistic path to victory for Simion. With the diaspora factored in, the exit polls were pretty much bang on. (By the way, of the 301 New Zealand-based Romanians who voted, only 37 cast their votes for Simion.)

It was interesting watching the coverage with Mum and Dad. I was able to translate the speeches and commentary. The election is hugely consequential for Romania and for Europe, even if it’s had limited press around the world. It really looked like Romania would be the latest domino to fall. After all, Simion won the first round by a huge margin; Dan only just made it into the final round. Yesterday I was encouraged by high turnout in obvious Dan-friendly areas like Cluj and lower numbers where Simion would be strongest – turnout figures were reported throughout the day – but didn’t dare to believe. I’d been there before with Brexit, Trump and heaven knows what else. But it was clear that there was a heavy mobilisation of people in the second round against Simion. Two million more people turned out compared to the first round – turnout was almost 65% which in Romania is very high. Dan will now set about forming a government made up of pro-European parties.

In some ways I get the appeal of someone like Simion. Capitalism and globalisation are no longer working. Societies are breaking down. The invasion of tech is becoming more sinister and taking away people’s jobs. The environment is deteriorating as I type. Something needs to change. But certainly not in the simplistic, belligerent way Simion wanted. For the moment we’ve dodged a bullet. I should be able to live and work in Romania in peace, to see more of the country, to at least try and improve my command of the language. I still have a future here, and that’s a blessed relief.

Mum and Dad have gone for a walk into town. That’s a blessed relief too after Mum’s endless cleaning and tidying and rearranging. Earlier this morning Dad helped me move a disintegrating chaise longue into the car; I then took it to the tip. That was a good job done.

Yesterday I took Mum and Dad to Scârț where we met Dorothy. After our coffee we looked at all the weird and wonderful Ceaușescu-era artifacts downstairs. I was on edge all day yesterday; mostly I was dreading the results of the election. When we got back I had a two-hour maths lesson. After that we watched the men’s tennis final from Rome (on clay courts next to the Tiber River) between Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner. I hadn’t thought of watching tennis for some time, but Mum still follows it. Sinner had two set points in a long opening set, but Alcaraz won it on a tie-break before racing through the second 6-1. Dad was surprised they didn’t play best of five sets. They once did play five sets in these big finals; Rome had two absolute classics in 2005 and 2006.

Family - Travel: Romania

Tough trip with Mum and Dad — Part 1 of 2

May 18, 2025 by 0 Comments

We’ll get the results of the exit poll in just eight hours. I fully expect Simion to be elected as president. He talks just like Trump. He’s pro-Trump, pro-Putin, and anti-brain. All the progress I’ve seen in the last nine years is about to be undone in a flash. That’s where the zeitgeist is right now. It’s terrifying and there’s nothing I can do about it. I’m just glad I put the wheels of my residency renewal in motion prior to the election.

After Mum and Dad’s ordeal which I hope they won’t repeat – Dad’s feet had swollen up like nothing I’d ever seen before – they acclimatised pretty quickly. But now they’ve only got three full days left in Romania. We left Timișoara on Tuesday and got back yesterday after spending two nights in Brașov and one each in Râmnicu Vâlcea and Sibiu.

I messed up twice on this trip, or really before the trip. I had a long, exhausting day of lessons on Monday and had to give Kitty to Dorothy, so my preparation wasn’t fantastic. Due to lack of time on my part, I let Mum book the accommodation in Brașov – she said she’d used booking.com dozens of times and was very adept at it. Hmmm. My other mistake was travelling to three different places with my parents in such a short space of time – I really was asking for it. Dorothy had given me some elderflower heads, which can normally make a very nice summer beverage, but under the circumstances were a pain in the arse. I was frantically trying to bottle the socată (elderflower champagne) even though it hadn’t had enough time to brew.

It was a long old drive to Brașov, but nothing I hadn’t done before. Before we left, Mum went to the loo for the first time in a week. Fantastic news. The motorway (one of Romania’s few such roads) is very good and mostly empty, so I could bomb along at 130 km/h without many problems. We stopped in a lovely little village called Porumbacu de Jos, just to the east of Sibiu. (De jos means lower. For every de jos there was also a de sus, or upper. In this region, the de joses were on the main road.) Near our destination, we stopped in Codlea and got a pizza from a sleepy little restaurant with no other customers apart from us. When we arrived in Brașov, we found our apartment in a handy spot just up the hill from the centre of town. I’m lucky that my parents can still do hills. But otherwise the apartment was pretty crappy – it was too small for the three of us and it lacked some of the most basic facilities.

Brașov is a great city. I’d always wanted to visit it, but the only chances I’d got previously were in the height of the tourist season – no thanks. We spent Wednesday morning walking by the fortress and then into town where we visited the Black Church – a Lutheran church whose construction began in the late 14th century. The soot from the fire it suffered 300 years later gave it its name. In between it was struck by a series of earthquakes. Because you had to pay and my parents don’t really like paying for stuff (yeah, that’s something I’ve picked up from them), we nearly didn’t go in, but we did. We learnt of the importance of guilds back in the day. Parishioners sat in different sections of the church based on which guild (association of tradesmen or professionals) they belonged to. There was a clear hierarchy of the guilds; if you represented a trade with status, you’d get larger seats nearer the front. Perhaps the main attraction of the church is its enormous collection of beautiful Persian rugs from the 15th and 16th centuries.

We went back to the apartment for lunch. At this point I could see (and hear, and practically taste) that Mum was getting anxious. It happens so quickly. You hear those big sighs and you know you’re in for a rough ride. Batten down the hatches. In the afternoon we visited the local museum. The two main attractions of the museum for me were the building itself – it was once a fancy council building, which must have become less fancy before getting an extreme makeover 20 years ago – and everything about the two photographers that had successive monopolies in the industry at the back end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th. We found a Vietnamese place to eat in the middle of town, as you do in Romania, and walked back to the apartment.

What happened next wasn’t much fun, to put it mildly.

Cat - Family - Travel: Romania

Weary and washed out, but they made it

May 12, 2025 by 0 Comments

Mum and Dad arrived on Tuesday afternoon, pretty damn tired, and also shocked that there were no passport checks at the airport. (Because Romania had recently joined Schengen and they’d flown from Munich, they could go straight through.) Their trip wasn’t bad as these things go, but when you’re 75 that kind of journey is an ordeal whichever way you slice and dice it, particularly that 13-hour leg from Singapore to Munich. They said that next time – if there’s a next time – they’ll stop off in Singapore on the way. (They will spend a couple of nights there on the way back.) Unsurprisingly they’ve been sleeping a fair bit during the day.

Yesterday was a beautiful day. While I was working in Dumbrăvița, Mum and Dad walked into town. They remarked on how much the city centre had smartened up since they were last here; there have been yet more building renovations. Today I took them to Buziaș which they found just as fascinating as I do. That park with the ornate walkway and the extremely tall trees but also the abandoned buildings and that somewhat dilapidated theme park restaurant with the soviet planes. In the park we saw a woodpecker – well, Dad was the one who spotted it; he has an eagle eye, honed from half a century of finding things to paint. On the way back we stopped at Decathlon (so I could get two new inner tubes for my bike – yesterday I got a flat tyre because the valve broke) and Dedeman (so Dad could get some DIY bits and pieces).

Tonight we ate at the beer factory that is so close to me that when anyone asks where in Timișoara I live, I say “near the beer factory”. Dad and I both had bulz which meant a heck of a good meal but an extraordinary amount of meat, while Mum had a pasta dish. For dessert we had papanași (which isn’t far off a rum baba) and a tiramisu between the three of us. I’d lost eight pounds since early March but I could almost feel that weight coming back on after such a rich meal.

After a full day of lessons for me tomorrow, we plan to travel to Brașov – a place none of us have been to yet – on Tuesday where we’ll spend two nights, then go somewhere else (Cluj? We haven’t decided yet) before coming back on Saturday or Sunday. No lessons for me while we’re away.

It’s been great having Mum and Dad here. Even more so because I’d almost given up hope of seeing them at one point. We’ve had a lot of good chat about Ernest Shackleton, the new pope, and Mum’s old colleague from her school in St Ives who died of mad cow disease. I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how well my parents have got on with Kitty. They’ve come at a good time in that regard. In the last few weeks she’s gone from being skittish at best and a pain in the arse at worse to a much more placid, friendly little thing. Tomorrow I’ll take Kitty to Dorothy’s – she kindly agreed to look after her while we went away.

Family - Life :) - Politics

Romania, where power is cheap

May 8, 2025 by 0 Comments

If I’ve got it right, Mum and Dad have just arrived in Munich. Or at least their flight has. It was a 13-hour leg from Singapore. Yesterday I was tracking their progress across Australia on FlightRadar24 – one of the best sites out there. They were just west of a village called Camooweal (fun name; Australian outback placenames so often are) which was just west of the mining town of Mount Isa where Greg Norman and Pat Rafter come from, but of course nothing is just west of anything out there. Anyway, in a few hours I should actually see my parents. What state they’ll be in is anyone’s guess. I spent some of yesterday cooking for them. I’ve always wanted to make an enormous pizza covering the whole baking tray and bursting out the sides, and yesterday I did it using Mum’s recipe (Mum has always made very good pizzas). I also made a mix to go with pasta, using the 18-inch sausage I got from the market. So they shouldn’t go hungry. Another thing I did was to start the process of brewing elderflower cordial like I did last year, using 20 or so heads from Dorothy’s plants.

At 3:28 yesterday afternoon, just before I was about to start an online lesson with a young boy, my doorbell rang. God, who is it? It was a youngish man in a uniform. I opened the door. He was from PPC, the power company. “Look, I’ve literally got two minutes.” He told me that prices are going to shoot up because of something the government are doing, then he said a lot of other very fast Romanian that I struggled to keep up with, and he told me I had to sign a contract right there, right then, to get “120% cheaper” electricity. Jeez, 120% cheaper. They do all this mind-numbing abstract shit in maths classes here, you see, rather than anything vaguely practical like percentages. “But that’s impossible.” No, believe me. “No, it really is impossible. You’d be paying me to give me electricity. Anyway I have to work now so I can’t sign anything.” I had lessons until 8:30. The other residents – most of whom are retired – got a visit too. Just after 8:30 I went up to see Elena, the lady above me. I didn’t take Kitty like I normally do. She said I really did need to sign, otherwise my bills would indeed shoot up. Is there any way I could still sign? I’ll try and see someone at the PPC office on Friday, but this is one life admin thing I could do without.

Skype was killed earlier this week. I’d used it since way back, before it was taken over by Microsoft, and I already miss it. Skype had become a verb; Teams (its replacement) doesn’t work so well as a verb, even if it sounds vaguely like times which some kids do use as a verb in elementary maths – “I timesed it by seven and then minused four”. The good news is that they’ve transferred the Skype dial pad over to Teams, so I’m able to use Teams as a phone. Yesterday I had to call my web host (based in America) and that was the only way to do it. That was because plutoman.com is coming up for an automatic renewal but they had my old bank card on the system.

It was good to see Dorothy again before my parents come. As I tried to negotiate the deep potholes coming into her village, she said the tarmac on the road was put there ten years and two presidential elections ago. Vote for me and we’ll tarmac your road. Pork-barrel politics, I think they call that. But it was a crude, rushed job.

I was pleased to see Australia move away from anything vaguely Trumpian in their election. Albanese was re-elected by a surprising margin. It was similar in a way to what happened in Canada. But here in Romania we’re doing the exact opposite. Ten days until the second round.

My parents should arrive in Timișoara around 1:30 this afternoon.
Update: They’re just about to fly over Lake Balaton. Some weird codeshare thingy meant it took me a while to locate their flight from Munich. I’ll make my way to the airport pretty soon. It’s a wet day here; I doubt that’ll bother Mum and Dad too much.

Life :) - Other sports - Politics

The big break from life is over

May 7, 2025 by 0 Comments

Well, the snooker’s over. Seventeen days of blissful escape, and now I’m back down to earth with a bump, or rather a beep – I’m getting regular phone alerts to tell me the latest terrifying developments in Romanian politics.

Mark Williams’ run to the final had been mad, uplifting, at times exhilarating, and I’d have loved him to have won his fourth world title, but alas it didn’t happen. Zhao Xintong, who became China’s first world champion (surely the first of many), could pot anything from anywhere, as he had all tournament. Williams wasn’t a patch on the player who had beaten Judd Trump in such gutsy fashion. He looked weather-beaten after four close matches, the balls didn’t exactly run his way either (he would pot great long reds but could never get on a colour), and he ended the first session 7-1 down. He shaded the second session 5-4 to give him a faint glimmer. Maybe, just maybe, the dream is still alive. I didn’t see the third session, apart from one frame in which Zhao fluked both the green and the blue. It didn’t go well. Williams only just took the match into the final evening session; he (quite preposterously) needed all ten frames while Zhao wanted just the one. Then came a glorious cameo, four frames of Williams brilliance. His break of 73 in the fourth frame – jam-packed with very difficult shots – was superb. With the pressure off, he was having fun out there. Then Zhao won the following frame to complete the victory that he richly deserved. Coming from the qualifiers, he’d had to win nine straight matches. He’s 28, but looks much younger. An immense talent, he displayed an almost Williams-like attitude to playing the game. He seemed a thoroughly nice guy too.

George Simion got 41% in the first round of the election. Nicușor Dan, mayor of Bucharest, squeaked into the second round on 21%, just ahead of Crin Antonescu. Dan, who is also an accomplished mathematician, would have been my pick, but I can’t see how he wins the run-off. The government has also collapsed. The parties who could have united to oppose Simion and his mob are instead fighting each other. The leu has dropped to less than a fifth of a euro. Most people I’ve spoken to in the last couple of days – people who have brains – think this is all very bad news. Romania has made very real progress in the time I’ve been here, but now runs the risk of throwing that all away – and more – in the blink of an eye. So sad, and in the long term who knows what it will mean for me.

This morning I took Dorothy to Buzad. No car issues. She gave me some elderflower and herbs from her garden to take back, while I gave her some pizza that I’d made. On the way, there were an impressive number of storks up lamp-posts, and not all nesting.

Mum and Dad’s arrival is just a day and a half away. They’re flying from Christchurch to Singapore, then to Munich, and finally a short hop to Timișoara. I can’t wait. I wonder what they’ll think of Kitty.

Family - Other sports - Politics

Excitement ramping up

May 4, 2025 by 0 Comments

I thought I’d forgotten how to get excited. But right now I suppose I am. First and foremost, Mum and Dad are coming in only four days. Just seeing them again will be great. There are still unknowables – how the flight over will affect them and what sort of trip (if any) they’ll be in the mood for. I’ve thought of three options: (1) Maramureș, which I visited last year and earlier, (2) the mountains near Brașov, and Brașov itself which I still haven’t been to, (3) the Danube Delta which would be amazing but would require some serious travel time. The most stressful part right now is what to do with my lessons. I have half a mind to simply cancel everything while they’re here.

Snooker. Damn. I haven’t got this excited by any sporting event in years. Seriously. And it’s nearly all down to one man, Mark Williams, the Welshman, my favourite. What a player, and what a man full stop. He was magnificent in his win over Judd Trump who was none too shabby himself. The first session was cagey and close with plenty of errors on both sides, Trump grabbing a 5-3 lead. Trump stretched further ahead early in the second session. I had a maths lesson at that point. Afterwards I checked the score, expecting Trump to have disappeared into the sunset. But no, he led only 7-6, having been 7-3 up. Williams won two wonderfully tense frames to close the session at 8-8. Yesterday I raced back from a lesson in Dumbrăvița to watch the snooker. To watch Mark. I was fortunate to have that gap in my schedule. Williams was absolutely sublime. He won a crucial frame to make it 10-10 at the interval, then took a 13-11 lead by the end of the session. Then on to last night. Williams took a 16-12 lead to be only one away, Trump hit back in the next two, but the Welsh wonder got over the line, 17-14, with a century. There was a heart-in-mouth moment early in that break as the black wobbled in the jaws four or five times before toppling – thank God – in the pocket.

As well as being extremely talented, Williams’ mindset is just perfect for snooker. Every time he comes to the table, he treats each situation as a puzzle to be solved, independent of the score or what he might have missed or some obscene slice of luck his opponent might have had. Unlike the crash-bang fireworks of Trump or Brecel, he strokes the ball in; the longer it takes to reach the pocket the more I enjoy watching it. Much was made of his failing eyesight (he’s 50) and a planned operation after the tournament, but y’know, I think he can see just fine. I like his dry sense of humour in his interviews; his Welsh accent helps there too. He now plays Zhao Xintong in the final, the Chinese sensation who had to start in the qualifiers after coming back from a ban. Zhao was superb against Ronnie O’Sullivan, whitewashing him in a session. The fourth session of their match didn’t even happen – Ronnie made damn well sure it didn’t happen. He was over it, though he was impressively graceful in defeat. I felt sorry for the spectators who shelled out something like £130 for tickets to that session, only to see an exhibition themed around the famous final from 40 years ago. That’s a lot of money for literally a joke. As for the final, Zhao has been so good that I expect him to win, but just imagine if Williams were to do it. He’s the oldest ever World Championship finalist. It’ll also be the first ever final between two left-handers.

I’d almost forgotten about the football. Birmingham did finish with 111 points. Playing at Cambridge with the scores at 1-1, Lukas Jutkiewicz (the huge fan favourite) came on and scored the winner in the 83rd minute in his last appearance for the club. I haven’t seen any clips, but I’m picturing bedlam.

On Friday I had one of my best lessons with the twins. In my ninth year, I still have to pinch myself that I’m doing this.

The first round of the Romanian presidential election takes place today. The eventual outcome could be extremely scary. The snooker is a blissful escape from this.

Other sports

Watching 50-year-olds poke balls into holes

May 1, 2025 by 0 Comments

We’re having beautiful warm, sunny weather to start the month. I wish it could stay like this for the rest of the spring and summer. The birds twittering away and the storks up the lamp-posts and the pungent smell of the lime trees and the ripe fruit, but still only 20-something degrees. You can dream. But no, before long it will be unbearably, brain-addlingly hot.

The snooker. Oh man. Yesterday’s match between the old guard – Mark Williams and John Higgins – was bloody brilliant, made even better by the fact that I was invested in it (not literally) and I really wanted Williams to win. Which somehow he did. Williams was unlucky to be 5-1 down, but had clawed it back to 8-8 at the end of the second session. I watched the final session while doing the cleaning. Higgins was well short of his best and Williams took advantage to win all four frames before the interval. Four up, five to play. Just about there. But Higgins was a changed man after the break. He played with such confidence and was deadly accurate even with his long potting. At 12-10, Williams finally got a decent chance. He potted the red, but the referee called a five-point foul. What? He’d brushed the blue while leaning over to take the shot. Higgins duly knocked in a century, then another sizeable break to make it 12-12. Ugh, this is horrible now. I was in the middle of preparing a maths quiz, plus I had an imminent online English lesson with a boy and the way the final frame was going I’d miss the end of the match. Even though you’re a very nice little chappy, do we have to meet right now? They were on the colours when my lesson started. I’d brought up a stream so I could keep one eye on it. Higgins stood over the not-so-easy blue that would win him the match. He tried to pot it at pace, but it rattled in the jaws. (Williams would have tried rolling it in instead, in that wonderful way of his.) Williams then potted the blue (which was just as hard for him), then pink and black for victory. It finished ten minutes into the lesson. The result put me in a particularly good mood, and I think the rest of my lesson went better than if the snooker hadn’t been a factor.

There’s always been lots to like about Mark Williams, who is now 50. (Higgins turns 50 next month.) His ability to see shots, his creativity, his smooth cue action, and his incredible unflappability. It’s like he doesn’t give a damn out there. I wouldn’t mind being like him. Plus he’s got a great sense of humour. He must be dyslexic judging by all the random letters in the messages he sends out. Or maybe again he just doesn’t care. He’s one cool customer, that’s for sure. Yesterday brought back memories of the Williams–Higgins semi-final in 2000 which I watched with my grandmother who was Welsh, like Williams is. The Welshman came from 15-11 down to win 17-15. Now he faces Judd Trump in the semis. It’s a repeat of the fantastic semi from three years ago which Trump won 17-16. This time I expect Trump will win rather more easily, though I hope I’m wrong. The other semi is between Ronnie O’Sullivan and Zhao Xintong. These are absolute marathons. It’s been an excellent tournament so far; I’ve enjoyed it much more than last year’s – it didn’t help that I was going through one of my tricky patches.

Today is a public holiday in Romania, so it’s not quite as busy as on a normal Thursday. I do wish Mum and Dad could have come earlier to take in Easter, the school holidays, today’s public holiday, and so on.

Yesterday the maths girl, who has now had dozen of lessons at my place, told me she was scared of Kitty. She must have been too polite to say it before.