by Dad called me this morning as I was sitting in the café by the market and the river. I’d finished my coffee (which now costs 8.50 lei; I remember when it was 3.50), so I wandered over to the river away from the TV noise. One of Whitney Houston’s music videos – I Wanna Dance With Somebody – had been playing. She was not much older than me and my brother when she died.
It’s my brother’s 45th birthday today. Dad handed his device to my brother so I could wish him a happy birthday and have a chat, but he was too preoccupied with the kids to manage more than 30 seconds. I did see both the kids, which was rather nice. My nephew knew how old his father was. I think the six of them will take the train to Swanage as they did last June (on Dad’s birthday) when I was over. That was a lovely day. I wonder if they’ll have cream teas this time.
I’m a bit better today, certainly. I still had that business when I woke up in the morning where my body felt leaden and it was an effort to extract myself from bed, but I could walk to the market at close to my normal speed, which I haven’t been able to do for some days. Apart from Dorothy’s thing on Saturday I’ve tried to do very little. After a slow start I’ve made some headway with Cloud Atlas which seems to be nine books in one.
I’ve also been trying to learn Scrabble words. The four-letter words will require a monumental effort for me to master. There are 5662 of them, many of which are highly obscure. Knowing the words isn’t enough; I have to ensure I’m not confusing them with non-words. (Some people find this easy. I have no idea how.) My memory isn’t very good so I try to recognise patterns. MANG, MENG, MING, MONG and MUNG are all valid. As are SNAB, SNEB, SNIB, SNOB and SNUB. KOR is a valid three-letter word, and you can plop any of the five vowels on the end to make a valid four (including KORU, the Maori design). The four valid anagrams of AIKM all have A as the second letter. But that only gets me so far, especially when I’ve been battling brain fog. I got relegated last time (four wins, ten losses) and nearly didn’t sign up for the next round because I didn’t think I could manage it, but I’ve now decided I will.
Oh yes, Dorothy’s birthday do in Buzad. That was tough. I made an apricot tart the night before, despite feeling very tired. The drive used to take an hour but because of the road works both at my end and on the way there, you can add an extra 15 minutes. At least they weren’t actually working on Saturday, or else who knows how long it might have taken. Although I felt like crap, the drive there was pleasurable in a way because there was no-one to bother me. On the radio they talked about an international maths competition (these are a big deal over here) in which several Romanians had done well, but nobody could now compete with AI. Erasure came on with Love to Hate You, reminding me of my bus trips to and from high school. They mentioned a large asteroid that they thought may actually be heading our way in 2029 but will in fact just miss us. What a shame, I thought. There was an old song about kids spending their summer holidays with their grandparents – common in Romania, and used to be even more common.
I got to her place at just after 1pm and I knew it would be hard. I was in no fit state to chat to people. And there were a lot of people. Apart from Dorothy, the first person I met was a young African woman called Queen. She was very nice. There were people I’d met before but whose names I couldn’t remember. Slightly awkwardly, our Romanian teacher was there. We’ve taken a break from lessons. I found I could hardly cobble together a semi-coherent sentence in Romanian. I’d have struggled enough in English. The food, part European, part African, part Asian, was amazing. The location too – it’s a beautiful spot. But I couldn’t appreciate any of it. At least people gobbled down the apricot tart, once they’d figured out the apricot halves weren’t actually egg yolks. (One lady had made an apple pie that looked rather like a large Yorkshire pudding or maybe a Lancashire hotpot.)
I left at 3:30. That was all I could handle. I drove back feeling quite sad, wondering what I might do with my life if I won’t have any energy or anyone to help me. I felt very alone. Lost in France by the recently departed Bonnie Tyler came on the radio. She recorded it before her voice changed. The host commented that being lost in France wouldn’t be a great idea right now with all the fires. My parents called me the next morning. I was in the park nearby. We hadn’t spoken for four days which by recent standards is a lot. I can’t have looked or sounded that great.
In the last few days I’ve watched some videos about ME. My best friend had it when he was twelve or so. I also had a female colleague in Auckland who was ambitious and played rugby. Her father had been the New Zealand snooker champion; that seemed to impress me more than her. Anyway, by 2009 she was taking regular time off for ME or, as they (unfortunately) called it at the time, chronic fatigue syndrome. I think she left the company about the same time as me. I wonder what she’s doing now. From the (mostly UK-based) videos I watched, it was apparent that many patients have been treated absolutely scandalously, and that what I’ve been experiencing could be many times worse.
It’s been much cooler of late – that was a real saving grace on Dorothy’s birthday – but I’m now nervously eyeing the forecast for later this week. We’re predicted to reach at least the mid-30s.
I’ve got a lesson coming up, my first in a few days. There seems to be a cat in heat in the car park.
