by The cathedral bells rang out in earnest this morning. What for? It’s the Feast of the Ascension in the Orthodox calendar. As I write, some kind of parade is about to begin on the steps of the cathedral. Someone is testing the microphone: “doi, zece, doi, zece”. Where I come from you go “one, two” and perhaps “three”, but Romanians say “two, ten” instead. No idea why. (Update: A brass band has started up.)
Last time I neglected to mention the role of religion in people’s attitudes to the pandemic and the vaccines. The impact is huge. A prime example here is No-Vax Djoković, a devout adherent to the Serbian Orthodox church, which is very similar to the Romanian version. Both Britain and New Zealand benefit from being increasingly secular countries. (Djoković had a battle on his hands last night against the impressive Matteo Berrettini, but survived a hiccup in the third-set tie-break to edge through in four. They started the match at 8pm local time; the spectators were forced to leave during the fourth set to avoid falling foul of the 11pm curfew. That was bizarre.)
I had a lesson this morning with a woman who caught Covid in early April along with her husband and small son. They’re still all suffering from memory loss, fatigue, and a succession of colds. Scary stuff.
In some sad news, the Bigăr waterfall, which I visited with my parents in 2017, collapsed on Monday evening. It was a popular tourist attraction, enhanced by being slap-bang on the 45th parallel north (the opposite of which might be familiar to certain readers of this blog). The weight of moss and the build-up of limestone caused it to give way.
I see that Auckland has leapt to the top of the ranking of the world’s most livable cities, with Wellington in fourth place. I’m not quite sure who’s measuring this. Lack of virus obviously comes into it, but last time the I visited Auckland I was sorely disappointed. A soulless city, with house prices beyond livability for most.
On Tuesday I got my first haircut in eleven months. A good job done. My next chop might be ages away.
