by I’ll be off to Cluj in an hour and a bit. It’s roughly a four-hour drive. I talked a lot with my parents over the weekend. As well as seeing those two shows in London, they visited the National Portrait Gallery and the Natural History Museum – after more than a century of visitors being greeted by Dippy the Diplodocus, they now get a whale instead. I went there a few times as a kid.
We had fun and games yesterday as Mum and Dad attempted to check in. We were hooked up to WhatsApp for 50 minutes as they found the right boxes to tick in the Ryanair app and then tried to scan Mum’s passport. (She only has a NZ one, not a British one, so had to go through this extra step.) I’ve made up a lot of role-plays for my students. Being stuck in the lift, between floors, with your boss and someone else who has bad BO. Going to the doctor for constipation, only to be prescribed horse pills. An interview for a job as a dog-food tester (the applicant didn’t know that it was dog food beforehand). A ride in a taxi with a driver on his first day in the city with no knowledge of the area and no GPS. An argument between messy flatmates. Parents’ evening – the parent is incredulous that their “perfect” child is getting F grades. Two kids, one who wants to watch the 1998 World Cup match between Romania and England, the other who’s a big fan of Star Trek and wants to watch that instead on a different channel. (It’s 1998, so there’s no streaming or anything.) And a dialogue between a teenager and his (or her) tech-clueless grandparent who has just bought a new Samsung Galaxy phone and doesn’t know the first thing about it. The teenager becomes increasingly exasperated and calls his/her granny or grandad a stupid boomer. Even though I’m far from tech-savvy, I felt a bit like the teenager yesterday. Look Dad, the camera lens needs to be able to take a picture of the photo page. No no, it’s no good putting it there, look where the camera is. You use cameras all the time. Your job has relied on you using a goddamn camera. Then Mum would try and it was no better. With anything involving phones or screens or apps, Dad’s hackles go up and he doesn’t want to know. Mum just gets stressed. The passport remained unscanned, so Mum will have to get manually checked in at the airport. Dad said that if Mum isn’t able to fly, he and I will have a lads’ session in Cluj. Getting hammered, I said. As if.
More concerning that any of that was Mum’s stomach. She was in pain. That didn’t make the check-in process any easier. I hope she’ll manage when she’s here. In the end, I booked the same place I stayed in almost ten years ago. Unsurprisingly, prices of accommodation have shot up. In the past decade Cluj has risen up to be the most expensive city in Romania.
Yesterday I met Mark for lunch in Dumbrăvița. He and his wife will go to Africa in two and a half weeks.
I read this morning that Tate & Lyle, the British sugar company, has been taken over by an American firm called Ingredion. One, what a shame for yet another proud British company to be bought out, and two, what an awful name Ingredion is.
I’m a bit nervous for my parents’ stay. I really hope it all goes well.
