by My brother’s in Scotland on heaven knows what exercise. I’ve just tried FaceTiming him, but no luck. Before that, I had two phone calls in quick succession from new students. I’m going to be snowed under with work at this rate. Five lessons scheduled tomorrow. My energy levels are depleted for whatever reason, so that might not be ideal, but at the moment I only have to leave the house twice a week.
Rafael Nadal. What a beast that man is. A ridiculous 13 Roland-Garros titles, and 20 grand slams altogether, tying Federer’s mark. Nadal and Djokovic were only in their fifth game of what was tennis of the highest order, when I left to play my own version of the game. I was a bit bummed honestly, because I could hardly take my eyes off what I was seeing. It took, I think, 46 minutes for Nadal to win the first set 6-0; that must be some kind of record for the longest whitewash set. In the whole match Nadal made 14 unforced errors. Fourteen. Extraordinary stuff. Interestingly, he won by dominating the shorter rallies. I wouldn’t be shocked to see Nadal reach 25 slams.
My tennis was eventful too. Domnul Sfîra wasn’t there. Perhaps he was watching the final. He’s a keen fan of the professional game. I played with the woman against two men, and I played one of the cleanest sets I can remember as we won 6-3, winning all our service games including all three of my partner’s. (By some crazy nonsensical tradition, she serves the first game of every set she plays. Always, always, always.) From memory I made only one unforced error, and I played quite aggressively, especially at the start. In the fourth game one of our opponents, who was serving, got mad. Because it was his first service game of the evening, the “double faults don’t count” rule was in play. He was struggling to get the ball in the service box, and his unusually high rate of lets weren’t helping either. Then I played another set with the same partner, though one of our opponents was different. Again she served the first game, meaning she served two games in a row. This time we weren’t doing so well – I think we were 3-0 down – when I abruptly changed direction to chase a ball, felt a jabbing pain in my knee, and almost keeled over. I decided to leave the game at that point, and maybe I’ll take break next weekend.
There are new rules in place for Timișoara now, as we’ve breached the threshold of 1.5 cases per 1000 inhabitants over a two-week period. Masks are now a must practically anywhere you go. In a recent John Campbell video, he talked about some of the secondary complications, sometimes long-term, of Covid-19. One of the more surprising is derealisation, when you feel that nothing is real, that you’re watching everything on a video. Campbell said he’s had that, and so have I. While playing tennis (more than once), while shopping at Sainsbury’s, and once even in a job interview. It’s scary stuff.
