by I spoke to my parents on FaceTime this morning. I had a good chat with Mum on the last day of her sixties, while Dad was out to get fish and chips. (That made me think. Why has fish and chips always been a Dad thing in our family? Is it like that in other families, just like with barbecues? Mum would never and will never go inside a fish and chip shop, or make fish and chip phone orders, or doing anything fish-and-chip-related except eat them. It also made me think that although Romanian food is lovely at this time of year, I could still just about murder some cod and chips.) Mum was tired, and wanted nothing to do with the birthday dinner she’ll be going to tomorrow at my uncle and aunt’s place. There are good practical reasons to avoid something like that; with all those people, Dad could pick up a cold, delaying his operation which is scheduled for Monday. We all just want the whole thing over with. If the surgery is successful, my parents plan to go to one of the islands and not do a whole lot.
Mum looks very good for 70. She has always kept fit, and I guess she has reasonably good genes. She shares her birthday with Steffi Graf (who will be 50 tomorrow) and Donald Trump (73).
Work. So far this week I’ve had loads of it. Fourteen lessons on the first three days, including six on Tuesday. The only way to handle Tuesday’s workload, and lack of preparation time, was to give three people exactly the same thing. It was an especially tiring day, with a 10:15 pm finish, and having to trek across the city in the baking sun, both for one of my lessons and to pay my rent. Tomorrow I’ll be starting with a five-year-old boy. Heaven knows what that will be like.
There’s not much else to say, except that I miss having my parents here, and I hope it won’t be long before I see them. Fingers, toes, and everything else crossed for Monday.
