by It’s not a bad day to be in Timișoara. The temperature has dropped into the very pleasant low twenties. (That’s only a reprieve, surely.) Earlier this afternoon I was in Piața Libertății, reading the start of Tender Is the Night by Scott Fitzgerald, when a man in his sixties came up to me, impressed that I was reading a book in English. Then the mayor, and presumably his wife, walked past. They were eating an ice cream. Walking alongside the School of Music at the northern end of the square, on the other side of the tram tracks, I was treated, as always, to the sounds of vigorous practice in just about anything you can strum or tinkle or blow into.
I read that the boats (vaporașe) on the Bega, which they were trialling when I arrived here 21 months ago, will finally be put into action. There had been some bureaucracy emanating from Bucharest that threatened to put the kibosh on the whole thing.
This morning I had a lesson with my Italian student, taking my total for the week to 20 hours. After all those interruptions, I’ve lost some momentum, but I’m relatively confident I can build it again, even if August (the big getaway month) is only one month away. As my student and I completed an IELTS writing exercise, I saw the man with no legs ride his hand-cranked wheelchair to the cathedral, park it beside the steps, and painstakingly clamber up all twelve of them. For god’s sake (literally), can’t you build a bloody ramp?! Some things about Romania make me angry.
My student was disappointed that France beat Argentina yesterday, citing the number of black and Muslim players in the side. How bigoted. He also unashamedly cheats in his exams. But he has a lot of lessons with me, so I don’t complain too much. Friday was my best day of the week – four lessons, including one with three people. For that lesson I sat on what is probably called an ottoman, because I only have three chairs.
The World Cup continues to delight. Both of yesterday’s matches were crackers. Long may it continue, while the spectre of 2022 looms darkly in the form of Qatar Airways advertising hoardings surrounding the pitch. From a personal viewpoint, there is some well-founded optimism this time in the England camp. For once they have a non-Delboy-like manager with a good tactical brain, who hasn’t had to be imported from Sweden or Italy. On Tuesday they face Colombia, who (like four years ago) have been one of my favourite teams so far. I’d quite like to visit Colombia, if this 1997 video of the song Demons by Super Furry Animals is anything to go by. In the same original group as Colombia, I was disappointed to see Senegal go out by virtue of accumulating two more yellow cards than Japan, after both sides had amassed four points, scored four goals, conceded four, and shared four in their head-to-head encounter. Yellow cards are dished out too subjectively to be a good tie-breaker. If some sort of play-off game is unfeasible (and I don’t totally believe it is), flipping a coin might actually be better. As for the Mannschaft, which still sounds like part of the male anatomy, they just weren’t quite good enough. The victims of very un-German complacency, perhaps.
Fishing. One day I’ll know what I’m doing enough to spend a pleasant, relaxing morning by the water. One day I’ll even catch a fish. But today is not that day.
