by This virus is still wreaking havoc. I’ve just heard that Novak Djoković has tested positive, along with three other players who took part in some exhibition event that Djoković himself organised. They even went clubbing after the tennis because, you know, they’re all young, super-fit, super-rich, and basically immune. You set a pretty crappy example there, Novak. Thousands have picked up the virus at an abattoir in Germany, sending the country’s R-rate skyrocketing. Several hundred of those infected are Romanians – their living and working conditions must basically be a petri dish. There have been similar outbreaks at American plants.
I started with a new student on Sunday – a 53-year-old man who lives in eastern Austria, having left Romania in 1989, making his way illegally over the border, risking jail (at least). The revolution came at the end of that year, but he didn’t come back. He got married and had two children; he still sees his parents in Arad. He had a beer and smoked two cigarettes during our lesson.
I haven’t been sleeping that well and by mid-afternoon I’m often struggling to stay awake. Maybe it’s the headaches I’m getting. Maybe it’s the grey, wet, soporific weather. Maybe I’m just getting old.
Yes, after a bone-dry spring that we spent mostly under lockdown, we’ve had the most unsettled spell of weather in all my time here. Timiș has been hit particularly badly – some villages have been flooded.
“All my time”! On Friday I popped in to the immigration office to ask what was happening with Brexit. There was no queue, obviously. Will I be safe after 31st December when the transition period ends? (It’s crazy that in these circumstances they aren’t extending it. The UK government are using Covid – and tens of thousands of deaths – to their advantage, so they can ram through a hard Brexit when people’s attention is elsewhere. The bastards.) The guy said I just have to go back in December and they’ll replace my certificate with a new one. But did he really know? I speak Romanian whenever I can, but it’s especially important to speak the language in those sorts of situations, to show that I’m serious. I really would like get residency here, and maybe one day have a place with a garden, or even just a deck or a balcony, and most importantly rope off part of my home for work. Oh, and a car. So many beautiful places in Romania are out of bounds to me because I don’t have one.
I’ve had a good few days with the language. When I spoke to my new student on the phone in Romanian, he told me I had a “slightly unusual accent”. That’s quite the compliment! And on Saturday I had that beer by the river with Bogdan.
Joe Biden has, on average, a nine-point lead over Trump in the polls. He’s getting on for eighty, dammit, way too old to even think about becoming president, and not exactly the spark that America and the world badly needs right now. But still, he must beat Trump. He has to. He still might not of course, because there are over four months until election day, the wacko electoral college works against him, and who’s to say the election will be free or fair? But he simply has to win. (It’s clear to me that people have underestimated Biden, as an election candidate, and probably as a person too. He’s got more humanity in his little finger than Trump has in his entire body.)
