by I’ve had a cold for the last few days, and though I’m still struggling, I made it to the swimming pool this morning.
Yesterday I called Mum and Dad from Buziaș, among the rich autumn colours. So they’re coming to the UK in 2027. They’ve already booked their tickets. They’ll be staying for absolutely ages, from sometime in May until mid-August. That’s even longer than this year, which they said was too long. Maybe they feel it’ll be their last trip over. I’d planned to go to New Zealand in August, to get out of the heat for one thing, but I can nix that idea now, unless I go in late August and into September (after school starts, which will mean missing out on work). It would have been cool if they (or Mum, let’s be honest) had run it past me first before committing, but hey, Mum would have booked the cheapest option regardless of how it affected anyone else. They’re flying direct to the UK – a silly idea – although at least they’re having a stopover on the way back. Whatever happens, there’s no way I’ll be staying in Timișoara all of next summer. The heat just messes me up too much.
Update: As I write this, two cars have collided in the car park.
There’s no further news about the sale of Mum and Dad’s flat in St Ives. There are still legal hurdles to be overcome that I don’t understand. My brother told them that he doesn’t want to hear about the flat anymore. They “drone on about it for half an hour”, as he put it. As I don’t have kids, I suppose I have more “bandwidth” for this stuff than he does, and more sympathy. Nobody should be dealing with this in their late 70s. It keeps them up at night.
I’ve had a bit more success with the nine-year-old girl from Thailand. It’s no wonder she’s struggling. She’s had no continuity whatsoever. She moved to India at age five, then to Romania at eight. Though her spoken English is good, her go-to language is Thai. Then at school her classmates will mostly be speaking Romanian. When I saw her on Friday she cut up rough as soon as I arrived. But then she calmed down and she did far better than I expected when it came to adding numbers. As for English, her teacher seems to have figured out that comprehension exercises are beyond her. Her latest worksheet just tested sh- and ch- words. One of the words was ship. I asked her what it meant, just to be sure. Something you find on a farm. I see. I’ve got another session with her later today. She’ll be the last of three young girls, one after the other.
On the way to Buziaș yesterday I stopped briefly at the village of Chevereșu Mare. There was a woolly ram, stock-still, next to someone’s fence whose colour it matched perfectly. This thing wasn’t moving and I seriously thought for a minute that it was a new sculpture. Then it budged.
At the weekend I watched a rather depressing, but very well made, 2009 documentary from Canada about serious bingo players. I wonder how it was recommended to me. Years ago I made a variety of bingo games which I still play with my students to improve their vocabulary (they have pictures rather than numbers), and “bingo” is a term in Scrabble for when you use all seven tiles in one turn, so maybe the algorithm picked up somehow that the word “bingo” features quite prominently in my life. I didn’t even know serious bingo was a thing, but it absolutely is. I was shocked by how joyless the experience was for these people. For a start it’s different from British-style bingo that you might get at slightly seedy seaside resorts where the numbers go from 1 to 90, many of which have special “calls” like “two fat ladies” for 88 or “unlucky for some” for 13. In this version the numbers only went up to 75 and any vestige of comedy was gone. There was so much denial, as expected, from these gamblers about how much they were losing. Saddest of all was the lady of about 90 who won $700 one time, and happily proclaimed that she’d spend it on bingo.
I finished the Scrabble league with seven wins and seven losses. That surpassed my expectations; I didn’t draw fantastically and I faced some strong opponents. I’ve signed up for the next round, where I’ll be in the same division.
