by Yesterday was a Barclays day, so crappiness was guaranteed. I hadn’t slept well, my 8am student had slept in – she’d got back from Lisbon (nice) the night before – and it all got crappier from there. I called the Embassy about the authorisation business but the human I got through to at the third time of asking said they couldn’t help me and I should call a lawyer. Not a notary, the likes of which I’ve already dealt with, but an actual lawyer. I phoned some actual lawyers and they all said to call notaries instead. Great. I had quite a long chat with a notary who was pleasant and helpful but said in no uncertain terms that no notary or other legal person in Romania can legally certify a utility bill or bank statement. Simply put, Barclays will only release my funds if a legal person in Romania is happy to break Romanian law. Isn’t this bloody fantastic?
I felt shattered all day yesterday, a day that was low on lessons. Before getting on the phone, I went into town to visit some lawyers and notaries, including the one who dealt with my flat purchase, but they’d to make their long Easter weekend a bit longer. It was all a giant waste of time. I did grab two small pots of red paint on the way back so I could paint my bookcase before people start coming for lessons at the end of the week. I thought about what else I could paint. My bedroom? The sheer amount of white in that room was starting to get to me.
I’ve been buying some clothes and accessories on a second-hand site based in France. That’s meant communicating with people in French, especially the woman who sold me some cufflinks. (I didn’t have any, but I have a shirt that needs them.) So that’s been good practice. I’ve bought jeans, shorts, shirts, a bag, a jumper, the shirt that Marat Safin wore when he won the Aussie Open in 2005 (well not the exact shirt, but you know what I mean), and more besides. I’ve had to get them delivered to a warehouse on the outskirts of Paris, and with a bit of luck they’ll get forwarded to me as a job lot. I rarely buy clothes these days, so this has been something of an adventure.
On Monday I met the English lady at her place, and we chatted and tried to figure out some more tricky Romanian grammar. She has a Rolls-Royce brain, while mine is more like an old Peugeot. The great news is that from next Monday we’ll be having Romanian lessons with a teacher she knows. I mentioned that I’d been watching the snooker and she said that she found it terribly boring. Lots of people do, and that’s fine. In fact I often have it on in the background while preparing lessons or doing some other task; I’m not always totally engaged in it. That changed though on Monday when this happened:
A woman tried to glue herself to the table I was watching, but the referee manhandled her off it. Then a man jumped on the other table (above) and dumped a bag of orange powder all over it. They were protesters from Just Stop Oil, the same group who threw soup at Van Gogh’s Sunflowers last year. Why they targeted snooker for their protest beats me. Play resumed a little while later on the non-orange table, but the orange one had to be re-covered. Some excitement, certainly.
The great thing about the snooker is how much it means to the players. Luca Brecel, the Belgian top-ten player, had never won at the Crucible in five attempts. In his first-round match this time he led 9-6 but was pulled back to 9-9. When he potted the ball that got him over the line in the deciding frame, he banged the table with his fist in celebration, or was it relief? Finally. Yesterday I saw Anthony McGill move 6-3 up on a misfiring Judd Trump; that match resumes today. (Update: McGill won 10-6.) The first round is nearly complete; second-round matches are first to 13 over three sessions.
Today is the my last day of being 42. Last night the doctor asked me if I had any travel plans for the summer. I’ll be going quite a long way, I said. What, Japan? This was a joke on his part, and when I said I’d be going further than that he was taken aback a bit.
